Note: Large portions of Jules' lesson with Dumbledore have been lifted directly from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. If you recognize it, I didn't write it.
Harry
The first week of classes melted by with little fanfare. Every one of the NEWT professors gave some variant of the ‘your workload will be worse than ever this year so buckle up’ speech, and they were, without exception, right. Harry had never been more grateful for the years spent pushing himself: he already had a system for managing his time and he’d already taken a pass at a lot of this material with Barty, albeit not as in-depth as the actual classes tended to go.
Friday brought the first Potions lesson of the year. Harry stayed up until midnight the night before, flipping back and forth through ink-marred books and his personal grimoire until Draco threw a pillow at him and told him to fucking go to sleep already and Blaise banished the books into Harry’s trunk. Snape and Barty would both be expecting him to make a good showing of it. Slughorn was also the first known Potions expert Harry had ever had a chance to work with, other than Snape, who was pretty infamously reclusive and irritable.
And the best part—
“There’s going to be so few lions in this class,” Pansy said dreamily as they made their way down to the dungeons. “Hermione and maybe the Gryffindor Patil and that’s it.”
“Nev said Dean Thomas kept on with it too,” Theo offered. “Didn’t know he was O level.”
“Maybe he’s just been caught in Finnegan and Weasley’s miasma of toxic incompetence,” Blaise said with a smirk.
The Gryffindors usually took longer to get anywhere in the dungeons than any other House, but Hermione knew her way around down here fairly well, so Harry wasn’t surprised she, Thomas, and Patil were already waiting outside the classroom door.
“Any word on what the new professor’s like?” Blaise said, sauntering up and planting an elbow on Hermione’s shoulder. “The littler snakes had his classes already, said he’s nice, which isn’t all that helpful.”
“Our seventh years liked him,” said Patil after it became clear that Blaise had been speaking to the Gryffindors. “He’s a bit more hands-on than Snape, apparently.”
“That’s a low bar,” Daphne said.
Thomas snorted. “You’re telling me. If Snape was any less hands-on he might as well not be in the classroom.”
“His teaching methods aren’t great for the younger students,” Harry allowed. “He gets impatient with people who don’t already have the basics mastered.”
“Everyone says he’s some kind of prodigy,” Thomas said. “I was actually kinda looking forward to this year—no, really!” he insisted when several people scoffed. “I mean, there’s blokes like him in Muggle academia, y’know? Really bloody good at what they do and bloody awful to work with until you already know what you’re doing. Dunno why they’ve made him teach the OWL stuff for so long but I bet he’d be better with, uh.”
“People who’ve proven they value the subject and are willing to work for it,” Theo said.
Thomas looked at him a little funny, which was fair, given Theo’s track record with Gryffindor House as a whole. “Yeah. I mean, we’ve all gotten Os on the OWL, right?”
There was a general murmur of agreement.
“So did we, but I heard Slughorn takes E students,” said a new voice. Harry turned: the Ravenclaw contingent had shown up, consisting of Anthony Goldstein, Terry Boot, and Madelyn Brocklehurst. Anthony had spoken, and he grinned and waved as the group turned towards him.
“Es? Really?” said Blaise.
Brocklehurst rather pointedly looked away.
“Er, yeah,” said Anthony. “Ravenclaw has some records on old professors—he was here from, like, the nineteen thirties through the seventies or so,” which really just drove home how long wizards lived, “and that’s how he ran it then. Of course, Snape has the lowest injurious accident rate of any Potions professor in the last three hundred years, so.”
“I was looking forward to a year without explosions,” said Hermione mournfully. The group laughed.
The door opened then, and they all swiveled, taken off guard; it was still five minutes early for class. Slughorn beamed at them from its threshold. “Welcome, welcome! NEWT Potions, such an exciting year, yes indeed! Come right in, have a seat, there you are—yes, excellent to see you, Mr. Zabini, ah! you wouldn’t happen to be Miss Brocklehurst, would you, my dear—? Indeed? I’ve heard good things, very good things—go on and get settled, you must excuse me, I’ve a bit of a surprise to prepare!” And with that Slughorn disappeared back into his office, winking at them before closing the door smartly.
“Well then,” said Daphne. “I suppose we’d better sit down.”
“The ‘surprise’ had better not be Cornish pixies,” said Theo.
NEWT Potions students brewed individually instead of in pairs, so the tables were larger to accommodate four stations instead of two. Theo, Harry, and Blaise had gone right to a table towards the back of the room as soon as Slughorn opened the door. Hermione and Daphne pairing off was a foregone conclusion; Patil sniffed disdainfully at them, and Hermione glowered. Pansy had already been beckoned into a seat across from Daph. The Hufflepuffs arrived then, the usual assortment of overachievers and Healer and Auror wannabes—Ernie Macmillan, Susan Bones, Sally-Anne Perks, and Hannah Abbott, the latter of whom sent a brilliant smile and a wave Harry’s direction before dragging Perks towards the empty seats at Anthony and Boot’s table. Harry wondered where Draco had got to; Defense hadn’t been the only class this week that the blonde almost missed, and it looked like he was continuing the trend.
Harry shook the thought away. Draco would make it to class in the next two minutes or he wouldn’t, and in the meantime, Harry had a brewing station to prep.
The Ravenclaw Patil twin thumped into the seat across from Harry with a brilliant smile, so suddenly that he nearly dropped his best knife.“Hi, Harry, how was break?”
Harry stared at her.
“Should I take care of this?” Blaise said conversationally.
Patil’s smile turned brittle and she spoke softly through her teeth. “Look, I’ll owe you, just don’t make me sit with her, okay? This was the first empty spot I saw.”
Harry cocked his head and examined her.“I had an excellent summer, thanks for asking.”
“I’d want to avoid such company too,” Theo said with a smirk, looking at the table where the frustrated other Patil sat with Macmillan and Brocklehurst, scowling at her sister and right next to a seat she had clearly been saving. “How’d Macmillan even get in this class? He’s about as creative as a dead stump.”
Patil shrugged over her cauldron. Harry eyed the tools she lined up neatly next to it: fine make, well used, well cared for. “Slughorn accepts E students, not just O. He’s less strict than Snape.”
“We heard,” said Theo. “That how you got in, then?”
“Not hardly,” Patil said, and that was that, she ignored the three of them and kept to herself as they got out their things.
Draco skidded into the room with less than a minute to go. He’d barely gotten to the empty seat at Pansy, Daphne, and Hermione’s station when Slughorn made his grand re-entrance. “Hello and welcome to sixth-year Potions! I am Professor Horace Slughorn, some of you may have heard of me from parents and the like—” he winked at Boot— “but for those of you who have not—”
The classroom door slammed open. Slughorn broke off mid-sentence and stared bemusedly at the two people who had just arrived, panting and red-faced.
Hermione let out an audible groan and then blushed fiery red. Harry felt like doing the same. Instead he just slumped a little as Jules and Ronald practically fell into seats across from Thomas and Bones.
Slughorn descended on them like a locomotive wrapped in green velvet. “Merlin’s balls,” Harry hissed. “Just one class. That’s all I wanted. Do you know how much I’ve been looking forward to this year?”
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” said Blaise, visibly trying not to laugh.
Theo sighed and patted Harry on the shoulder, which elicited nothing but a scowl of impotent fury before Harry remembered Patil and schooled his face.
“I’d give a lot to have some classes without Parvati either,” said Patil drily, “but our parents insist we take all the same ones.”
“Makes you look better, doesn’t it? Being the smart twin and all,” Blaise said with a charming grin.
Harry resolutely did not pay attention to Slughorn getting Jules a used textbook, asking if he needed anything, fawning all over the Boy Who—
“It’d be nice to be judged on my own merits for once.” Patil’s voice was flat and her eyes lingered knowingly on Harry. “I imagine you know what that’s like.”
“Don’t presume familiarity where it is not welcome,” said Theo, soft and deadly.
“It’s all right.” Harry turned a cutting smile on Patil and enjoyed her barely-there flinch. “Family’s a complicated thing, isn’t it? Twins even more so. Tell me, Patil, can anyone even tell you apart if not for your ties?”
Her lips twisted and she looked away. “Usually not.”
Slughorn clapped his hands together, calling their attention again. “Welcome, welcome, boys and girls, to NEWT Potions! I must say, it is a delight to see so many of you—Mr. Macmillan, I hope your uncle is well—Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, no doubt it would give dear Severus a coronary to see you here, but I’m sure we’ll have a grand old time together—now, then! I’ve prepared some potions for us all to look at, a sort of teaser,” he winked and leaned forward, so the buttons of his waistcoat strained, “of the year to come! These are the kind of challenge you’ll be able to brew by the end of this class.” He dramatically waved his wand, and the door to his office opened, a row of cauldrons gently floating out of it and coming to rest on the professor’s desk in what Harry grudgingly admitted was a confident show of skill. “I’m sure you’ve heard of some of these, excellent students as you are—who can tell me what this first one is?”
Hermione’s well-practiced hand hit the air first. Slughorn pointed at her. “Miss…?”
“Granger, sir. It’s Veritaserum, a colorless, odorless potion and the most powerful truth serum in the world.”
“Excellent! Five points to Gryffindor.” Hermione beamed. “And this next one?”
This time, he pointed at Harry. “Oh-ho, Mr. Black! Care to try your hand?”
“Polyjuice Potion, sir,” Harry said politely, smoothly, and Slughorn awarded him points to Slytherin before looking away.
Rather quickly, in Harry’s opinion.
The third potion was amortentia, identified by Goldstein. Harry wanted to test its scent the way Odysseus wanted to listen to the Sirens.
And in the fourth, smallest cauldron…
Harry’s eyes were not the only ones to fill with hunger at the sight of a small golden cauldron bubbling with equally gold Felix Felicis. The pinnacle of luck potions and almost impossible to brew on account of the demiguise cerebrospinal fluid required: trade in demiguise parts was highly restricted and wildly expensive, and the fluid itself was tricky to work with, losing its power if even slightly mishandled.
“And that,” said Slughorn, “is what I will be offering as a prize for this lesson.”
Harry’s fingers twitched.
“One tiny bottle of Felix Felicis,” said Slughorn, taking a minuscule glass bottle with a cork in it out of his pocket and showing it to them all. “Enough for twelve hours’ luck. From dawn till dusk, you will be lucky in everything you attempt. Now, I must give you warning that Felix Felicis is a banned substance in organised competitions … sporting events, for instance, and examinations or elections. So the winner is to use it on an ordinary day only … and watch how that ordinary day becomes extraordinary!” He gave an oily smile. “So! How are you to win my fabulous prize? Well, by turning to page ten of Advanced Potion-Making. We have a little over an hour left to us, which should be time for you to make a decent attempt at the Draught of Living Death. I know it is more complex than anything you have been set before, and I do not expect a perfect potion from anybody. The person who does best, however, will win little Felix here. Off you go!”
Everyone jumped into motion at once. Harry and Theo didn’t need to share a word: Theo took off for the ingredient cupboard to get the few things they didn’t already have for Draught of Living Death, while Harry started arranging the main components, summoning Theo’s ingredient kit since they were working separately this year. “Get mine?” Blaise said, and Harry nodded curtly. Blaise vanished on Patil’s heels and Harry popped open Blaise’s top-of-the-line kit as well. It was a bit nicer than Harry’s, actually, and the stylized Z carved on the lid looked very old. Likely an heirloom of sorts.
Theo was first to return. He shoved a vial of infusion of wormwood and another containing preserved hearts of pipistrelle bats at Harry, taking the asphodel and valerian Harry tossed back. Harry poured the infusion of wormwood into the cauldron immediately and set it to heat faster than the book recommended: his own copy of Advanced Potion-Making was annotated to hell and back, and in his grimoire he’d recorded another set of experiments with Dreamless Sleep, another potion that used the wormwood. Its potency increased if you heated it slower but you could correct for that by adding the valerian root twenty-one seconds before it boiled instead of immediately after. Figuring out how to feel for that sweet spot had taken him hours of sweaty, exhausting work.
Valerian reduced to a fine powder, Harry turned to the pipistrelle hearts. He kept a feel on the infusion of wormwood and paused in his quartering of the hearts to dump the valerian in when it was time. Three deosil stirs and he pulled the lead stirring rod out of the cauldron, going back to the hearts. The book called for sloth brains but pipistrelles were the best hibernators native to Britain and at Barty’s suggestion Harry had experimented with them last year.
Next to him, Theo was doing the same. Blaise had stuck with the sloth brains but appeared to be julienning them instead of reducing them to cubes as in Borage’s instructions. Patil was giving him a side-eye, but Harry saw her reach for a lead stirring rod instead of the standard glass one and smirked a bit over his bat hearts.
The room filled with blueish steam within minutes. Harry added half the asphodel and stirred on a steady deosil beat, seven seconds per rotation with a three second pause between each. The potion was a lovely rich blackcurrant jelly color with just a hint of a silver sheen.
All four of them crushed the sopophorous bean instead of cutting it. Harry separated the solids and poured the juice into the potion with one hand while reducing the heat with a twist of the ash wand in his other. Now the potion was a nice lilac and the shimmer was more pronounced; silver steam wafted off its surface, but it was a shade too dark. He peered at it. Perhaps the pipistrelle hearts? Heart tissue imparted more intensity than brain, generally, but the sopophorous should’ve countered it…
“Fifteen minutes!” Slughorn bellowed.
Harry thought quickly. Slowing down the reaction… he stirred gently widdershins with one hand and sifted through the things on his table.
The answer was so simple he nearly laughed. Ice—naturally. Harry poured a vial of distilled water out in midair, caught it with wandless magic, and froze it with a charm in a series of motions so smooth it happened almost all at once. He held the perfect ball of ice over the cauldron and shattered it with a pulverizing spell that reduced it to a gentle rain of shards so fine they were nearly snow.
As the bits of frozen liquid settled gently onto the potion’s surface, he kept stirring smoothly widdershins. Lilac lightened and reddened with every stir. He barely registered that he was smiling as the snowfall continued.
When the potion was the silver-tinged pink it should be, he swept his hand over the cauldron, dispelling the remainder of the ice.
Time to let it simmer gently. He reduced the heat further and paused to look around. Hermione’s was giving off silvery steam but she was frowning, so something had to be wrong. Harry knew the level of experimentation and intuition required of advanced potions wasn’t really her wheelhouse, nor Daphne’s, truth be told, but Pansy seemed to be doing more than fine. Theo’s and Blaise’s were excellent and Harry was vaguely impressed by the rich pink Patil’s had come out. “What’d you do?” he asked quietly, nodding to it.
She gave him a suspicious look. “Peppermint. I think it’ll make it easier to wake up, after.”
“Might reduce shelf life.”
“Who just keeps this stuff around?” she said.
Harry quirked an eyebrow but let it go. He turned to check on the Gryffindorks instead. Weasley was cursing over his cauldron, predictably, but Jules… his cauldron was emitting perfect silvery steam. And Weasley kept shooting him confused, angry looks.
What the hell?
Something about his potion shifted and Harry turned his attention back just in time to add three drops of dew collected under the light of a full moon—for peace and tranquility. “Moondew. Eases the impact and the waking up,” Harry said to Patil’s questioning glance.
She cursed quietly. Next to her, Blaise grinned.
“Time!” Slughorn called. “Stop stirring, please, let’s see how you all did!”
Harry methodically began to clean his tools as Sluggie went around the class. Malfoy’s potion got an approving nod, as did Pansy’s and Hermione’s. He winced at Weasley’s but stopped next to Jules. “Oh, my, what have we here? A clear winner, Mr. Potter! Good Lord, it’s clear you’ve inherited your mother’s talent, she was a dab hand at Potions, Lily was—my, so perfect a drop could kill us all!”
“No it couldn’t,” Theo hissed.
“Sir,” Patil said loudly, as Slughorn reached for the pocket that held the Felicis and Harry’s grip on his dish of unused valerian tightened to the point of pain. “Sir, shouldn’t you check the rest of them?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, of course, silly me.” Slughorn stopped reaching. Harry’s grip relaxed and he looked curiously at Patil.
She smiled with some bitterness. “He’s not the only son of Lily Potter here.”
Harry gave her a slight nod.
Slughorn’s eyebrows rose when he stood over their table. “My, my, four wonderful aspiring potioners here—Mr. Black, Mr…”
“Nott.”
“Nott, ah, yes, of course.” Slughorn didn’t quite meet either of their eyes. “Excellent work, the both of you… but a bit strong, perhaps… it’s supposed to be easy on the system… pipistrelle hearts, you see…”
“An extra half measure of asphodel, to temper the heart’s intensity, and moondew to ease the transition,” said Harry smoothly, with a deferent, hopeful look.
“I used the moondew but no extra asphodel,” Theo added.
“I see.” Slughorn breathed deep of Harry’s potion and blinked hard. “Well then. Good work. The other Miss Patil, I presume? Do I smell peppermint? An interesting addition. And… I can’t quite determine what you’ve done, Mr…?”
“Zabini, sir.”
“Fascinating. It feels rather faster-acting than usual. Not ideal for the drinker.”
Blaise’s expression said pretty clearly he hadn’t had the comfort of the drinker in mind.
“Well!” Slughorn stepped back. Wet his lips. “I think… very difficult decision… but I think the victory must go to Mr. Potter for sheer ingenuity—the simplicity of the modifications to your stirring pattern, quite brilliant, never seen a student do so well—here you are!”
Jules, typically, had the most infuriating smirk on his face as he took the small vial.
“Harry,” hissed Theo.
Harry looked down and snatched his hands back from the table but the damage was done. A rime of frost had crept from his fingers and gotten to the cauldron. Draught of Living Death had to cool slowly and naturally, or it would go utterly useless—as his own had now done. The silver steam was gone and it felt dead, inert, lifeless at the bottom of his cauldron. Its magic ruined.
“How did he do that,” Blaise said under the noise of people packing up. “He’s an average student—you spend all your summers experimenting—”
“I don’t know,” said Harry, locking eyes with an equally irate Hermione, “but I’m damn well going to find out.”
Patil shifted a bit, eyeing them both. “I could ask Parvati.”
“Why would you do that?” Theo asked, looking at her with a predator’s stillness.
“I owe you, remember?”
It eased Harry’s ire somewhat. He appreciated people who paid their debts for all he hadn’t really meant to hold her to it so explicitly. “If it wouldn’t appear suspicious.”
“You lot aren’t the only ones who can do subtle.”
“We know,” Blaise said with the ghost of a smile.
By Monday, the whole school knew Slughorn was going ‘round singing Jules’ praises, and speculating on how a notoriously mediocre Potions student was abruptly being hailed as a prodigy. The going theories were that he had a secret tutor, a cheat sheet, or had had the memories of an Auror implanted in his head over the summer to improve his fighting skills.
“A tutor’s not implausible,” said Hermione over lunch in the Knights’ Room, “but I doubt he could’ve caught up that much in one summer. And if he has any sense he’d be getting tutoring in things like Defense. Potions isn’t realistically that useful to him, considering.”
Justin nodded. “A cheat sheet, then?
“That was very high-level brewing,” Harry said. “He’d need to be working from a cheat sheet by an apprentice at the very least, maybe even a Master, and Potions Masters specifically are kind of, er, particular about sharing their work.”
“Snape?” said Theo.
Harry snorted. “He would literally rather eat his own left arm than share his proprietary experimental brewing techniques with Jules Potter.”
“Dumbledore could’ve just taken Snape’s notes himself,” Hermione mused.
"I'm reasonably certain Snape's wards would've killed him for trying. I have it on good authority that the Dark Lord would struggle to crack them."
“That’s that ruled out, then.” Hermione made a mark on the scroll in front of her. “Parvati’s been helping me keep an eye on the boys but there are extra wards on their dorm, for ‘security reasons,’ and we can’t get in. Extendable Ears don’t work and I put one of Fred and George’s experimental listening devices under Seamus’ cat’s collar but the wards fried it. They’ve got a secret but they’re all being cagey about it. How did you get Parvati to help, anyway?”
“Padma needed a place to sit that wasn’t with her sister on Friday, and owed me one,” Harry said.
“I’ll keep an ear out,” Justin said. “People like to tell me stuff. Dunno why.”
“You have a trustworthy face,” said Harry.
“Why thank you!”
Plans aside, they made no progress for the rest of the week, and Jules demonstrated a confusing mix of mediocrity and the occasional blindingly clever insight during the week’s two theoretical Potions classes. Harry was at least convinced it was a scheme of some sort—Jules’ mix of knowledge showed clearly that he was just reciting something he read elsewhere; if it was real, he would have a better overall understanding of the subject. How Slughorn didn’t notice his star pupil’s inconsistent ‘talent’ remained a mystery.
A timely distraction arrived in the form of invitations that came in the post Saturday morning for another meeting with Nestor Selwyn. Harry, who’d been wondering about the man’s absence from the staff table thus far, arrived at the meeting that afternoon, held in a large and well-appointed office near the staff quarters, with great anticipation.
“Welcome back, and thank you all for joining me,” Selwyn said once they’d all been seated. It was the same group as last time, Harry noted; either Selwyn didn’t want to mix it up too much, or was trying to keep his presence out of the rumor mill by sticking to students who’d already proven they could keep their mouths shut. “Several of you have exchanged follow-up letters with me since our first meeting over the summer, and I appreciate your thoughtful attention. I’ve been in meetings with the Board of Governors and some parents who have approached the Board with concerns in the past, and I’ll be starting my public investigation on Monday. I hoped to touch base with you before that point in the event that being back at school for a week has prompted some new ideas.” He looked expectantly around the large conference-style table.
“Well, there’s… the Potions and Defense situation,” Patil said.
Selwyn made a polite grimace. “Yes, Dumbledore’s decision in that regard surprised myself and the Board as well. Slughorn would actually be a perfectly adequate selection for Defense, and no one believed he would seriously change Professor Snape’s post—his pedagogical methods are, shall we say, severe, but he has the highest rate of graduates progressing to a Mastery of the last four Potions Masters at Hogwarts, and the lowest rate of injuries. That said, Professor Slughorn is a widely respected Master. Do you all feel that Professor Snape will be a suitable Professor of Defense? He holds no Mastery in the field or a related one, but his skills are… beyond question.”
“He, er,” said Macmillan.
“Seems more interested in preparing us for a war than teaching to a Defense NEWT,” Goldstein said. “He’s brilliant, actually, best we’ve had aside from maybe Professor Lupin in third year. So far he’s launched straight into nonverbal casting and lectured a lot about how important it is to be flexible and creative rather than hidebound book learners.”
Selwyn made a note. “The NEWT examinations do test for creative applications of knowledge more than rote, so that’s in accordance with what one might expect. I saw that there was no textbook assigned?”
“We all got a copy of it on the first night,” said Bones. “He didn’t ask for any summer homework.”
“Which is out of character,” Pansy commented, to the group’s amusement.
“Mmm. And Professor Slughorn?”
“I mean, he knows what he’s doing,” said Bones with a shrug. “He seems comfortable with teaching, the lesson plans and so on. Knows the book, gives good feedback. Sometimes he’s a little, er, prone to playing favorites, but he doesn’t neglect anyone, he answers questions no matter who asks them.”
Selwyn nodded. His face gave nothing away, but he was old enough to have been taught by Slughorn, so he probably knew exactly what they were talking about. “And your other Professors? Anything new to add to what we discussed over the summer?”
“Muggle Studies is as abysmal as ever,” Hermione said, acidly polite in a way even Harry had never mastered. “Gryffindor third-years often seek me out for help with it. This week one of them asked me if Muggles actually believe ‘moving pictures’ have ‘real’ people in them. Really!” she insisted when Harry and Goldstein scoffed. “Professor Burbage is a perfectly nice witch but I don’t believe she’s set foot in the Muggle world in at least a decade or more. She doesn’t seem to understand that Muggle films are the same as moving portraits, just facsimiles of a real person, and not in fact based on living actors and actresses performing for a camera!”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Selwyn said, “but it’s worth mentioning that while I’ve traveled in and interacted with the Muggle world more than your average English pureblood, I’m not equipped to properly judge the curriculum, only the professor’s teaching methods. I’ll be auditing all of your professors starting Monday with an eye towards giving the Headmaster and the Board recommendations by the Yule holiday.”
“I know of a former Hogwarts alumnus who might be able to assist,” Harry offered, having reached out to a few people about exactly this issue in anticipation of Hermione’s Muggle Studies problem. “She grew up in a magical home but regularly visited her father’s Muggle family, if I remember correctly, and traveled to the States to get a Muggle higher degree in education. If she’s unwilling to come to Hogwarts herself I’m sure she can recommend someone qualified to assess Professor Burbage’s curriculum.” And possibly replace Burbage, but he wasn’t going to get ahead of himself.
Selwyn nodded to him. “I would appreciate if you might reach out to her and make inquiries, Mr. Black. Thank you.”
“Professor Burbage might be better suited to teach an introduction to wizarding culture course for Muggleborns,” Goldstein said thoughtfully. “She seems to do better with the younger students—” Hermione nodded— “and the Muggleborns in my House all say she’s the best professor to go to with questions about wizarding culture—she doesn’t judge and loves to answer.”
“That’s an excellent suggestion.” Selwyn scribbled something on his scroll. “Anything else?”
“I spoke with a friend of mine who suggested a live-in supervisor for the Houses,” said Pansy. “A Deputy Head, perhaps, someone who’s not too much older than the students, whose job is to mediate problems the prefects can’t handle, keep an eye on the common room in the evenings, be a listening ear for the students and so on. The Head can still do most of the formal duties but if the day-to-day stuff was handled by a Deputy, then the Head could keep teaching full-time as well.”
“The live-in monitors could be apprentices, or researchers,” Bones suggested, though with a look like she wasn’t thrilled to be collaborating with a Slytherin.
Selwyn nodded along. “There may be concerns that a research fellow would be more motivated to do their own work than supervise the students, but access to Hogwarts’ library is certainly an incentive, and no doubt it would benefit students to interact with academics and professionals from diverse fields. I’ll put that down for further consideration. Actually, this does remind me of something many of you noted during our summer meeting—the professors’ lack of time, essentially. I’ve already recommended to the Board that a supplementary Transfiguration professor be found as Professor McGonagall is effectively carrying out the duties of three independent roles—Head of Gryffindor, Transfiguration Professor, and Deputy Headmistress. Traditionally the Deputy Head is a professor but not a Head of House as they are expected to remain impartial. Is this something that the student body would find agreeable?”
The students traded glances. “Yes, I believe so,” said Harry after a moment. “I think you could make a case for splitting years one through three and years four through seven under different professors, or years one through five split from the NEWT courses.”
“It might make the most sense to have three professors per subject—one for the foundational years, one for the OWL years, third through fifth that is, and a third for NEWTs,” Goldstein said excitedly.
Pansy sniffed. “That might be rather too much of a change to expect all at once.”
“Yeah, true.” Goldstein deflated a bit.
“You’re both right,” Selwyn said with a small smile. “Three professors per subject is an entirely logical suggestion, but perhaps something to push for in a few years.” He shuffled his parchments. “Lastly, I think the most unanimously criticized professor on staff would be Professor Binns, which is in accordance with your comments over the summer—” there was a round of stifled laughter— “and, pending my audit, I expect I’ll be recommending that he be asked to step down in favor of a living professor or two. There’s no reason for an exorcism, which some people have suggested—” more laughter— “as one of Hogwarts’ most valuable historical resources is, of course, its concentration of ghosts and portraits, but he is a specialist in the various goblin wars, and not interested in the sort of general approach to history that a professor of the subject should have.”
“You won’t find any arguments here,” said Macmillan rather pompously.
Selwyn nodded at him. “Yes, thank you all for your efforts and engagement with this project. Again, please keep your participation and the contents of this meeting to yourselves until the school-wide announcement on Monday. We don’t want the rumor mill blowing anything out of proportion.”
Jules
The Half-Blood Prince was some sort of bloody genius, and now Slughorn thought Jules was one, too.
By now Jules was feeling distinctly uncomfortable using the book’s annotations like this. It wasn’t his work and he barely understood a single one of the Prince’s alterations and experiments, let alone the spells cribbed in the corners here and there, which he was, rather against Ron and Seamus’ enthusiasm, hesitant to try out. Especially the one that just said ‘for enemies.’ Jules was no Latin expert but he was pretty sure ‘sect’ and ‘semper’ were words that meant, like, to cut, which meant it was probably an unpleasant curse and whoever had come up with it while in school wasn’t to be messed with.
But after that first lesson, Slughorn had been looking at him expectantly, and raving about his abilities, and giving Jules all this disgusting extra attention, and as much as Jules hated it all he could think was that this was the perfect way in. He had a task to get close to Slughorn this year. What better way than by excelling at the bloke’s own bloody subject?
It was better than fucking Snape, anyway.
Jules realized he’d gotten lost in thought about the Prince, checked the time, and swore. “I’m going to be late for Dumbledore.”
“Oooh!” gasped Parvati. “Good luck! We’ll wait up—I can’t wait to hear what he teaches you.”
“Hope it goes okay,” said Ron.
Parvati smirked. “I’ll even look over your essay on the principles of rematerialization while you’re gone.”
“You’re the best,” Jules said fervently, shoving his half-finished and much-blotted essay at her before he bolted out the portrait hole.
Jules proceeded through largely deserted corridors. It was close to curfew on a Saturday night which meant everyone with any sense was already back in their dorms relaxing. Of course, ‘people with sense’ excluded Professor Trelawney, who Jules had to jump behind a statue to avoid briefly, but other than that his trip up to Dumbledore’s office was uneventful.
“Acid Pops,” he told the guardian, and the gargoyle leapt aside. The spiral staircase started moving obligingly but, impatient, he took the steps two at a time, breathing hard by the time he got to the top and grabbed the brass knocker on Dumbledore’s office door.
The door swung open at once. “Come in,” Dumbledore called from behind his desk.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Ah, good evening, Jules. Sit down,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “I hope you’ve had an enjoyable fortnight back at school?”
“Yes, thanks, sir.”
“You must have been busy, a detention under your belt already!”
“Er,” said Jules, but Dumbledore didn’t look particularly unhappy.
“I trust Professor Snape to prepare you all well for the dangerous world outside these walls,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully, “but I understand asking the two of you to suddenly become fond of one another is rather too much. Still, he is your professor, and due respect.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jules, who had more pressing matters on his mind than whether or not he could get along with Snape. The office held no indication of what they were going to do this evening: it looked exactly like it always did, with esoteric instruments standing around on tables and shelves, portraits pretending to sleep, and Fawkes standing on his perch watching them with bright-burning eyes. There certainly wasn’t a space cleared for dueling practice.
“So, Jules,” said Dumbledore in a businesslike voice. “You are wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for you during these—for want of a better word—lessons?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I have decided that it is time, now that you know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try to kill you fifteen yars ago, for you to be given certain information.”
There was a pause.
“You said, at the end of last term,” said Jules, carefully polite and not accusatory, “that you were going to tell me everything.”
“And so I did,” said Dumbledore placidly. “I told you everything I know. From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.” Well, that sounded like a crock of shite, but okay. “From here on in, Jules, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron.”
“But you think you’re right?” Jules pressed.
“Naturally, I do, but as I have already proven to you, I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being—forgive me—rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly larger.”
“So… does what you’re going to tell me have anything to do with the prophecy? Will it help me—survive?”
“It has a very great deal to do with the prophecy,” said Dumbledore casually, “and I certainly hope that it will help you to survive.” He got to his feet and walked around the desk, past Jules, who turned to watch him with all the focus that Moody had spent a summer drilling into his head. Dumbledore bent over a cabinet and emerged with a familiar artifact.
“A Pensieve, sir?” An empty one, too.
“Indeed, my boy. We will be going on a trip down Bob Ogden’s memory lane,” said Dumbledore, summoning a crystal vial from somewhere, already filled with silvery-white swirls of memory.
Ogden—Jules knew that name. Old family, rich as anything, known for their top-shelf firewhiskey and hair-trigger tempers. Ethan and—Ethan liked to joke that one never knew whether the liquor or the tempers came first. “Who’s Bob Ogden?”
“He was employed by the DMLE. Unfortunately, he passed several years ago, but not before I had tracked him down and persuaded him to confide these recollections to me. We are about to accompany him on a visit he made in the course of his duties. If you will stand…”
But Dumbledore was having difficulty pulling out the stopper from the vial: his injured hand seemed painful and uncooperative.
“Shall—shall I, sir?”
“No matter, Jules—”
Dumbledore pointed his wand at the bottle and the stopper plucked itself neatly from the vial’s neck.
“Sir—how did you injure your hand?” Jules asked again.
“Now is not the moment for that story, my boy. Not yet. We have an appointment with Bob Ogden.”
So much for telling me everything, Jules thought, as Dumbledore poured the memory into the pensieve. He reached out before Dumbledore could invite him, which was maybe kind of petty, but it did bring him a sort of satisfaction to do at least that much on his own.
Jules’ feet left the office floor and he fell, plunging through darkness that whirled around him, ripe with things he could not see or hear but felt just out of sensory range—then, abruptly, he was standing on firm ground again, and blinking in dazzling sunlight.
Dumbledore landed next to him as Jules’ eyes adjusted. They stood in a country lane bordered by high, unkempt hedgerows, beneath a summer sky as bright and blue as anything. Some ten feet in front of them was a short, plump man wearing enormously thick glasses, reading a wooden signpost sticking out of the brambles on the left-hand side of the road. This must be Ogden, with the ruddy cheeks and poor eyesight of Tiberius Ogden, who’d used to come ‘round for dinners with—Jules made himself think it—with Dad and Ethan and some either Wizengamot people sometimes.
Ogden set off up the lane before Jules could entirely process his grief; he had to run a bit to catch up with Dumbledore, who was walking briskly in Ogden’s wake. Jules looked at the wooden sign as he passed it: an arm pointed back the way they had come, reading ‘Greater Hangleton, 5 miles,’ while they were now going towards ‘Little Hangleton, 1 mile’.
They walked a short way with nothing to see but the hedgerows and the sky above. It was so very monotonous that even after less than five minutes of this Jules was taken aback when the road curved sharply to the left and fell away, sloping down so that they could see an entire valley laid out before them like a quilt. A village that had to be Little Hangleton had tucked itself between two steep hills, its church and graveyard clearly visible. Something about the white spire made Jules’ hackles rise. Across the valley from Ogden, on the opposite hillside, stood a handsome manor house surrounded by a wide expanse of what looked even from this distance like a manicured garden.
Ogden had broken into a reluctant trot due to the steep downward slope. Dumbledore lengthened his stride, managing it easily; Jules was again struck, as on the night they’d gone to see Slughorn, by Dumbledore’s comparative fitness, despite being obviously quite a lot older than Ogden in this memory.
All the while, Jules’ eyes kept drawing back to the church of Little Hangleton.
It was a relief when Ogden turned off the lane into a narrow gap onto a rough dirt track, and it became clear the village was not their destination after all. This path was crooked, rocky, and potholed, sloping downhill like the last one but much less traveled; Jules did his best to focus not on the weirdly unsettling church but on their destination, which appeared to be a patch of dark foliage a little below them.
The track soon opened up in front of a copse of old, tangled trees. Jules’ eyes landed immediately on the ramshackle one-story house tucked in under the branches, and fingered his wand even though he knew this was just a memory. The walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen off the roof that the rafters were visible in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching windows thick with grime. Just as he concluded that nobody with magic could possibly live there, however, one of the windows popped open with a clatter, and a thin stream of steam or smoke issued from it, as though somebody was cooking.
Ogden moved forward quietly and, it seemed to Jules, rather cautiously. Smart bloke. Jules walked at his side and stopped precisely as Ogden did, just beneath the shadows of the trees, when the front door became visible and, more to the point, the dead snake someone had nailed to it.
There was a rustle and a crack. A man in rags dropped from a tree overhead, landing on his feet right in front of Ogden; Jules sprang backwards and landed in a ready stance, wand up. Ogden leapt back into what would’ve been the same if he hadn’t stepped on the tails of his ill-fitting Muggle frock coat and stumbled.
The man opened his mouth and made a garbled, sinister hissing sound. His hair was thick and so matted with dirt it could have been any color. He appeared to be missing several teeth; his eyes were small and dark and stared in different directions. In the sunlight the effect might have been comical, but here, under the trees, thick with a malevolent aura, the effect was frightening. Especially in light of the wand in his right hand and the knife, stained with something dark, in his left.
“Er,” said Ogden. “Good morning. I’m from the Ministry of Magic—”
Again with the garbled hissing. Realization struck Jules and his eyes widened. Parseltongue.
“I’m… sorry, I don’t understand you,” Ogden said rather nervously.
The man in rags began to advance upon him, wand and knife held up menacingly.
“Now, look,” said Ogden, but it was too late: there was a bang, and Ogden had fallen to the ground, clutching his nose while a nasty yellowish goo squirted from between his fingers. He jerked his wand and the flow stopped but the goo remained stubbornly encrusted across his face and hand.
“Morfin!” someone bellowed.
They all turned: an elderly man hurried out of the cottage, shorter than the first and oddly proportioned, with broad shoulders and too-long arms. Unlike the first man, however, his eyes were bright with canny intelligence. He came to a halt beside the man with the knife, who was cackling at the sight of Ogden, who’d gotten up and was trying unsuccessfully to spell the goo off his face.
“Ministry, is it?” said the older man, somehow looking down at Ogden despite being shorter.
“Correct!” said Ogden angrily. “And you, I take it, are the elder Mr. Gaunt?”
“S’right,” said Gaunt. “Got you in the face, did he?”
“As you can see.”
“Should’ve made your presence known, shouldn’t you?” Gaunt said. “This is private property, this. Can’t just walk in here and not expect my son to defend himself.”
“Defend himself against what, precisely? I was merely standing here without even a wand in my hand.”
“Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth.”
Ogden finally managed, with a twist and flourish of his wand, to vanish the layer of what Jules really fucking hoped wasn’t pus from his face.
Mr. Gaunt made another of those horrible hissing sounds at Morfin. Jules couldn’t understand it any better this time, but he could guess what the old man had said, since Morfin turned and lumbered back into the cottage, slamming the door on his heels.
“It’s your son I’m here to see, Mr. Gaunt. That was Morfin, was it not?” said Ogden with some of his previous confidence recovered.
“Aye, that was Morfin.” The old man suddenly peered at him closely, and his stance grew aggressive. “Are you pure-blood?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” said Ogden coolly. Jules wasn’t much of a fan of the Ministry lately, but he could respect this bloke, whatever his job was, for coming out here and managing to stay composed in the face of a particularly disgusting hex and these incredibly terrible people.
Gaunt grunted. “Now I come to think about it, I’ve seen noses like yours down in the village.”
“I don’t doubt it, if your son’s been let loose on them,” said Ogden, and Jules snickered. He glanced back at Dumbledore and saw that he too was amused. “Perhaps,” Ogden went on, “we could continue this discussion inside?”
“Inside?”
“Yes, Mr. Gaunt. Inside your… er, home. I’ve already told you. I’m here about Morfin. We sent an owl—”
“I've no use for owls. I don’t open letters.”
“Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of visitors,” said Ogden tartly. “I am here following a serious breach of wizarding law, which occurred here in the early hours of this morning—”
“All right, all right!” groused Gaunt. “Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it’ll do you.”
Jules’ respect for Ogden rose again when the portly man followed Gaunt into the house without hesitation and no more than a quick sideways glance at the dead snake on the door. It wasn’t much better on the inside than it had looked from the outside, either; two doors led off the main room, which served as a kitchen and living space combined, and which featured not a single surface free of dust and grime. Morfin sat in a filthy armchair beside a fire that emitted unpleasant quantities of smoke, twisting a live snake between his thick fingers and crooning softly at it in Parseltongue. Jules looked away quickly.
Immediately his eyes landed on the third person in the room. Moody would have his arse for overlooking her this long, actually, but her dress was the exact color of the dirty grey stone behind her, and her head was half-lost in the steam coming out of the pot on the grimy black stove before her. She fiddled with a shelf of squalid kitchenware and hid behind a lank, dull curtain of hair, refusing to look at them.
“M’daughter, Merope,” said Gaunt, as Ogden looked curiously in her direction. The girl—Merope—looked up then, revealing a pale, plain face, with eyes like her brother’s that didn’t track together. She looked cleaner than the two men, but Jules had never seen a more defeated-looking person in his life. Alone among the Gaunts she aroused his pity rather than distrust and animosity. Jules sort of wished he could help her even though he knew this was all long in the past.
“Good morning,” said Ogden.
Merope did not answer, but with a frightened look at her father turned her back again and went back to fiddling with the pots.
“Well, Mr. Gaunt,” said Ogden, “to get straight to the point,” yeah, Jules couldn’t blame him for wanting this over with, “we have reason to believe that your son, Morfin, performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night.”
There was a deafening clang: Merope had dropped one of the pots.
“Pick it up!” Gaunt bellowed at her. “That’s it, grub on the floor like some filthy fucking Muggle, what’s your wand for, you useless sack of shite!”
“Mr. Gaunt, please!” said Ogden in a shocked voice, as Merope, who had already picked up the pot, flushed unflatteringly, lost her grip on the pot, drew her wand shakily from her pocket, and muttered an inaudible spell that caused the pot to shoot across the floor away from her, hit the opposite wall, and crack in half.
Morfin let out a mad cackle of laughter. Gaunt threw his hands in the air. “Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!”
Meope stumbled across the room, but before she could raise her wand again, which, Jules saw now, was the single spotlessly clean thing in the room, Ogden aimed his own and said firmly, “Reparo.”
Gaunt twitched, as though about to yell at Ogden, but thought better of it. “Lucky the nice man from the Ministry’s here, aren’t you? Perhaps he’ll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn’t mind dirty Squibs…”
WIthout looking at anybody, or saying a word, Merope picked up the pot and returned it, hands shaking, to its shelf. Then she stood quite still between the small filthy window and the stove, back pressed to the stone, as though she wished for nothing more than sink into it and vanish.
Jules’ hands were shaking now, too, but with rage rather than fear.
“Mr. Gaunt,” Ogden began again, with one last, lingering look at Merope, “as I’ve said, the reason for—”
“I heard you the first time!” snapped Gaunt. “And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him, what about it, then?”
“Morfin has broken wizarding law.”
“‘Morfin has broken wizarding law,’” Gaunt echoed in a pompous and singsong tone. Morfin cackled again. “He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that’s illegal now, is it?”
“Yes,” said Ogden. “I’m afraid it is.” He drew a small scroll of parchment from his pocket and unrolled it.
“What’s that, then, his sentence?” sneered Gaunt angrily.
“Certainly not, Mr. Gaunt. Your son cannot be tried in absentia. It’s a summons to the Ministry for a hearing—”
“Summons! Summons! Who d’you think you are, summoning my son anywhere?”
“I am not summoning anyone anywhere. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement is summoning him to stand before a trial session of the Wizengamot, which is, as you no doubt recall, composed of representatives of Britain’s oldest families.” Nothing in Ogden’s voice gave away how he felt about this or that he himself was from one of those very families. “I personally am the head of the DMLE’s Criminal Investigations Unit, hence why I’m here to deliver this letter, as our owl never returned.”
Jules was suddenly a bit concerned about what had happened to the owl.
“And you think we’re scum, do you?” screamed Gaunt, advancing on Ogden now, poking a dirty yellow fingernail into his chest. “Scum who’ll come running when the Ministry tells ‘em to? Do you know who you’re talking to, you filthy Muggle-lover? D’you think I’ll bow to those jumped up halfbloods running the Wizengamot these days?”
Ogden raised his eyebrows. “I was under the impression I was speaking to Mr. Marvolo Gaunt. Have I been misled?”
“Nay!” roared Gaunt. He shoved his hand in Ogden’s face, revealing, as Jules stepped closer to see, an ugly ring with a black stone set on his middle finger. A signet ring, it must be, but not from any family Jules knew. It definitely wasn’t the Gaunt crest, not that it mattered seeing as the Gaunts had gone defunct ages ago. Suddenly Jules grew suspicious: he’d dismissed these as a cadet branch, people who couldn’t inherit but kept the name. Surely they couldn't be the Gaunts? Merlin, that name was older than almost any! Jules tried to picture Malfoy and his snotty parents living like this, and failed so utterly that it made him want to laugh. They’d kill themselves before live in this kind of, of shithole.
“See this?” Gaunt went on. “See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it’s been in our family, that’s how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I’ve been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?”
“I’ve really no idea,” Ogden said, blinking as the ring sailed within an inch of his much-abused nose. “That’s quite beside the point, Mr. Gaunt. Your son has committed—”
With a howl of rage, Gaunt stormed towards his daughter. For a second, Jules thought he was going to throttle her, and jumped forward on instinct, but then he saw Gaunt had grabbed not her throat but a gold chain hanging around it, and dragged her forward by the necklace until he could shove it in Ogden’s face. “See this? See this!” he bellowed.
“I see it, I see it!” Ogden said hastily, looking alarmedly at a spluttering Merope.
Gaunt shoved her away. “Slytherin’s! Salazar Slytherin’s locket, that’s what it is! We’re his last living descendants, what d’you say to that, eh?”
“I say that’s all very well and good, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that your son has committed a crime,” Ogden said doggedly. “No one’s ancestry, no matter how pure, exempts them from the laws of this nation—not yours, not mine, not Lord Arcturus Black’s.”
“Black! Pfah! Pretenders, they are, Roman imports posing as true English purebloods—”
“The point,” Ogden said loudly, “is that Morfin performed a jinx or hex on a Muggle, causing him to erupt in highly painful hives—”
Morfin giggled. Gaunt hissed something at him, and then said in English, “And so what if he did, then? I expect you’ve wiped the Muggle’s filthy face clean for him, and his memory to boot—”
“It doesn’t matter. This was an unprovoked attack on a defenseless individual who didn’t do a thing to provoke—”
“Ar, I knew you were a Muggle lover,” sneered Gaunt, and spat on the floor again.
Ogden sighed. “This discussion is getting us nowhere. It is clear from your son’s attitude that he feels no remorse for his actions. Morfin Gaunt, this is your official notice of your hearing before the Wizengamot, scheduled for the fourteenth of September at three o’clock in the afternoon, to answer the charges of using magic in front of a Muggle and causing harm and distress to said Muggle. You are entitled to legal representation, and if you cannot provide a solicitor, one will be—”
Ogden broke off. The jingling, clopping sounds of horses and loud, laughing voices were drifting in through the open window. Apparently the winding lane to the village passed very close to the copse hiding the Gaunt house. Gaunt himself froze, listening, eyes wide; Morfin hissed and turned his face toward the sounds with a hungry expression. Merope raised her head. Her face, Jules saw, was starkly white.
“My God, what an eyesore!” rang out a girl’s voice. “Couldn’t your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?”
“It’s not ours,” said a young man’s voice, educated and crisp. “Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that’s the old tramp Gaunt’s place, and his children. The son’s quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell—”
The girl laughed. The jingling, clopping sounds drew nearer and louder. Morfin moved in his seat, but Gaunt Sr. hissed at him, and he settled.
“Tom,” said the girl’s voice again, nervous now, “I might be wrong, but—has somebody nailed a snake to that door?”
“Good lord, you’re right! That’ll be the son, I told you he’s not right in the head—don’t look at it, Cecilia, darling, let’s be off.”
“‘Darling,’” Morfin said, in English. “‘Darling,’ he called her. So he wouldn’t have you anyway.”
Gaunt said something in Parseltongue, the weird hissing taking on a sharper, reprimanding quality. Jules looked on in bemusement as Morfin and his father had an increasingly tense exchange in the language of the serpents, during which Gaunt grew angrier and angrier, approaching his daughter, until at last he lunged for her throat.
“NO!” shouted Jules and Ogden in unison. Jules, of course, could do nothing, but Ogden sent off a wordless jinx that threw Gaunt backwards, away from his daughter. Morfin leapt out of his chair with a scream and charged at Ogden, brandishing the bloodstained knife and firing hexes indiscriminately.
Ogden ran for his life. Honestly, Jules was pretty impressed he’d stayed this long. The CIU was made up of lawyer and researcher types, not Aurors; they weren’t trained for dangerous situations and were definitely not used to getting assaulted on the job. All they did was ask questions and sometimes hand-deliver Ministry paperwork.
Dumbledore indicated that they too should leave. Jules obeyed, looking back as Merope’s screams echoed from behind them.
They actually had to run to catch up. Ogden was pretty fast for a bloke in that condition, and in fact burst out onto the main lane at such a speed that he couldn’t stop himself from slamming right into a glossy chestnut horse ridden by a handsome dark-haired young man. Ogden bounced off its flank and took off again up the road while the young man and his companion, a pretty girl next to him on a grey horse, doubled over in laughter.
“I think that will do,” said Dumbledore. He took Jules by the elbow and tugged. With no noticeable transition, they were no longer on the ground but flying through darkness; and then once again he found himself on his feet back in Dumbledore’s now-twilit office.
“What happened to the girl?” said Jules at once. “Merope. What happened to her?”
“Oh, she survived,” Dumbledore said genially, reseating himself behind his desk and gesturing at Jules to sit down too. “Ogden returned to the Ministry for reinforcements and within twenty minutes had arrested both Morfin and his father—they resisted arrest, which was another charge. Morfin was sentenced to three years in Azkaban for Muggle-baiting, violating the Statute of Secrecy, resisting arrest, and assault on a Ministry official. Marvolo received six months for the latter.”
“That seems a bit light.”
“Yes, well, despite Mr. Ogden’s rather admirable commitment to the principle of equality under the law, the Ministry at the time was rather prone to allowing certain members of society to get away with things the, ah, lesser orders would not.”
Jules remembered something he had only half-registered at the time. “Marvolo. Ogden called the old man Marvolo Gaunt.”
“That’s right,” said Dumbledore with an approving smile. “I am glad to see you’re keeping up.”
“That old man was… what, Voldemort’s father?”
“Grandfather, in fact, but yes. Marvolo, his son, Morfin, and his daughter, Merope, were the last of the Gaunts, who as I am sure you recall were an ancient magical family noted for a vein of instability and violence that flourished no doubt due to their habit of marrying their own cousins.” Jules made a face. “Lack of sense coupled with a great fondness for grandeur meant that the family gold was squandered generations before Marvolo was born. He, as you saw, was left to live in squalor and poverty, with a nasty temper, a fantastic amount of arrogance and pride, and a couple of family heirlooms that he treasured just as much as his son, and rather more than his daughter.”
“So… was it Merope or Morfin, sir? Voldemort’s parent, I mean.” The alternative—that they were both his parents—was so revolting that Jules could only be grateful that there was no way the handsome young version of Tom Riddle he’d met in second year could have come from those two people.
“Merope was indeed Voldemort’s mother. And, as it happens, we also had a glimpse of Voldemort’s father.”
“The man on the horse?”
“You are correct. The Ministry’s case notes on the reversal of Morfin’s hex included a report that witnesses said Morfin was making ‘strange hissy noises’ and accused Tom Riddle Sr. of ‘seducing’ his sister. I suspect, though I cannot confirm, that in their last Parseltongue exchange, Morfin informed his father of Merope’s interest in a handsome local Muggle, which drove Marvolo into his murderous rage. Local rumors made something of a joke of the tramp Gaunt’s deformed daughter’s fixation on the handsome young lord’s son, who naturally never would have given her the time of day.”
“And they wound up having a kid?” said Jules in disbelief.
“You forget,” said Dumbledore, “that Merope was a witch. I do not believe she was quite so powerless as she appeared while being terrorized by her father. Once Marvolo and Morfin were safely in Azkaban, once she was alone and free for the first time in her life, then, I am sure, she was able to give full rein to her abilities and to plot her escape from the desperate life she had led for eighteen years.”
“The imperius curse,” Jules said. “Or—no, a love potion?”
“That is my primary theory, yes. I am sure it would have seemed more romantic to her, not to mention simpler than such an advanced curse; and I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to persuade him to take a drink of water. In any case, within a few months of the scene we have just witnessed, the village of Little Hangleton enjoyed a tremendous scandal. You can imagine the gossip it caused when the squire’s son ran off with the tramp’s daughter.”
Boy, could he ever.
“But the villagers’ shock was nothing to Marvolo’s. He returned from Azkaban, expecting to find his daughter dutifully awaiting his return with a hot meal. Instead, he found a clear inch of dust and her note of farewell, explaining what she had done. From all that I have been able to discover, he pretended from that point forth that she simply never existed. The shock may have contributed to his early death. Or perhaps he had never learned to feed himself. Azkaban had greatly weakened Marvolo, and he did not live to see Morfin return.”
Jules really couldn’t care much less about Marvolo Gaunt by this point. “But—Merope? She died, didn’t she? Wasn’t Voldemort brought up in an orphanage?”
“Yes, he was. We must do a certain amount of guesswork here, although I do not think it is difficult to deduce what happened. You see, within a few months of their runaway marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared at the manor house in Little Hangleton without a wife. The rumor flew around the neighborhood that he spoke of being ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘taken in’. I am sure what he meant is that he had been under an enchantment that had now been lifted, though I daresay he did not dare use those precise words for fear of being thought insane or possessed. When they heard what he was saying, however, the villagers guessed that Merope had lied to Tom Riddle, pretending that she was going to have his baby, and that he had married her for this reason.”
“But she did have his baby.”
“But not until a year after they were married. Tom Riddle left her while she was still pregnant.”
Jules hated love potions, yet still, his chest ached on behalf of Merope, remembering how desperately unhappy and trodden on she had been in the memory. It didn’t make love potions okay but he could… yeah, he could understand why she’d have done anything, used anyone, to escape her father’s house.
He shook himself. “What went wrong? Did the potion stop working?”
“Again this is guesswork,” said Dumbledore, “but it is guesswork based on the dozens of incidents of love potion usage I have witnessed overseeing this school. I believe that Merope, who was deeply, perhaps irrationally, in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him. I believe she simply stopped giving it to him. Perhaps she had convinced herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby’s sake. If so, she was incorrect. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Jules thinking, Dumbledore apparently staring at nothing. Jules could get why Riddle wouldn’t want anything more to do with Merope, but to abandon his own son like that…
“I think that will do for tonight, Jules,” said Dumbledore after a moment or two.
“Yes, sir,” said Jules. He got to his feet, but did not leave. “Sir… is it important to know all this about Voldemort’s past?”
“Very important, I think.”
“And it’s… it’s got something to do with the prophecy?”
“It has everything to do with the prophecy.”
“Right.” Clearly Dumbledore wasn’t going to explain how, nor was he planning to teach Jules anything about dueling or about magic. Jules sighed. “Goodnight, sir.”
He kept turning it all over in his head on the lonely walk back to Gryffindor Tower. Merope, mistreated so horribly; Tom Riddle Sr., stolen away as if by faeries, only to wake to a nightmare and abandon his own son; Tom junior, left to an orphanage by a dead mother, utterly alone in the world, raised by people who didn’t give half a shite for him.
And another thing—Jules had seen, just as he turned to leave, a ring, sitting on a cushion on one of Dumbledore’s many shelves. A ring with a gold band and a large black stone. He’d seen it before, on Dumbledore’s deadened hand the night they went to visit Slughorn—and also, just now, in the memory, on Marvolo Gaunt’s middle finger.
That night, Jules’ dreams were haunted by dead snakes, eyes that didn’t track together, and the church steeple of Little Hangleton, eerie and alone against the hillside.