Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
even sound angry, but Harry would have preferred him to yell; this cold disappointment
was worse than anything.
“Sir,” he said, a little desperately, “it isn’t that I wasn’t bothered or anything,
I’ve just had other — other things...”
“Other things on your mind,” Dumbledore finished the sentence for him.
“I see.”
Silence fell between them again, the most uncomfortable silence Harry
had ever experienced with Dumbledore; it seemed to go on and on, punctuated
only by the little grunting snores of the portrait of Armando Dippet
over Dumbledore’s head. Harry felt strangely diminished, as though he had
shrunk a little since he had entered the room. When he could stand it no longer
he said, “Professor Dumbledore, I’m really sorry. I should have done
more I should have realized you wouldn’t have asked me to do it if it wasn’t
really important.”
“Thank you for saying that, Harry,” said Dumbledore quietly. “May I
hope, then, that you will give this matter higher priority from now on? There
will be little point in our meeting after tonight unless we have that memory.”
“I’ll do it, sir, I’ll get it from him,” he said earnestly.
“Then we shall say no more about it just now,” said Dumbledore more
kindly, “but continue with our story where we left off. You remember where
that was?”
“Yes, sir,” said Harry quickly. “Voldemort killed his father and his grandparents
and made it look as though his Uncle Morfin did it. Then he went
back to Hogwarts and he asked... he asked Professor Slughorn about Horcruxes,”
he mumbled shamefacedly.
“Very good,” said Dumbledore. “Now, you will remember, I hope, that I
told you at the very outset of these meetings of ours that we would be entering
the realms of guesswork and speculation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thus far, as I hope you agree, I have shown you reasonably firm sources
of fact for my deductions as to what Voldemort did until the age of seven-
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