Seven

"Bad naughty Norton! Sneaking around the castle!" Peeves crackled as soon as Chris reached the seventh floor.

"Oh! Shut up Peeves!" Chris snapped.

"NORTON IS OUT OF —"

"Langlock," Chris pointed her wand at Peeves before he could finish. Peeves clutched at his throat, gulped, then swooped from the room making obscene gestures but unable to speak, owing to the fact that his tongue had just glued itself to the roof of his mouth.

Ignoring him, Chris hurtled towards Dumbledore's office. "Toffee éclairs," she said and the gargoyle leapt aside, permitting Chris entrance onto the spiral staircase. Without waiting, she turned the knob of the office room and entered. 

"Professor, I got —" Chris stopped seeing the odd scene in front of her. Harry and Dumbledore were bent over the Pensive and their faces were sucked into the memory gas-liquid thing and they looked very weird. Stifling her laugh, she sat down in a corner and waited. Fawkes gave a musical cry and settled on her shoulder. 

"I missed you too," Chris whispered stroking the Phoenix's feathers. Now that she had the memory and they had almost solved the mystery of Voldemort's immortality Chris thought she would feel happy. But all she felt was impatient. This was Harry's destiny but what about her? Was she any closed to figuring out how to defeat Malgino? She didn't even know why Malgino wants the keys if he is already immortal?

"Why?" said Harry at once, coming out from the pensive. "Why did he come back? Did you ever find out?"

"I have ideas," said Dumbledore, "but no more than that."

"What ideas, sir?"

"Er — sir?" Chris spoke and Harry jumped.

"Christina, how long have you been here?" asked Dumbledore calmly.

"Not long," said Chris, her voice was a lot steadier comparing to her thoughts. "I just got the memory from Professor Slughorn, sir."

For a moment or two, the headmaster and Harry looked stunned and they stared at Chris. Then Dumbledore's face split in a wide smile.

"Christina, this is spectacular news! Very well done indeed! I knew you could do it!"

Chris gave the bottle to Dumbledore without smiling.

"And now," said Dumbledore, emptying the contents of the bottle into the pensive. "Now, at last, we shall see. Both of you, quickly . . ."

Chris bowed obediently over the Pensieve and felt her feet leave the office floor. . . . Once again she fell through darkness and landed in Horace Slughorn's office many years before.

There was the much younger Slughorn, with his thick, shiny, straw-coloured hair and his gingery-blond moustache, sitting again in the comfortable winged armchair in his office, his feet resting upon a velvet pouffe, a small glass of wine in one hand, the other rummaging in a box of crystallized pineapple. And there were the half-dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle in the midst of them, Marvolo's gold-and-black ring gleaming on his finger.

The way Slughorn was sitting looked awfully same as he was talking to Chris and seeing him with Tom Riddle, Chris felt guilty creeping inside her.

Dumbledore and Harry landed beside her just as Riddle asked, "Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?"

"Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn't tell you," said Slughorn, wagging his finger reprovingly at Riddle, though winking at the same time. "I must say, I'd like to know where you get your information, boy, more knowledgeable than half the staff, you are."

Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks.

"What with your uncanny ability to know things you shouldn't, and your careful flattery of the people who matter — thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you're quite right, it is my favourite —"

Several of the boys tittered again.

"— I confidently expect you to rise to Minister of Magic within twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me pineapple, I have excellent contacts at the Ministry."

Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Chris noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as their leader.

"I don't know that politics would suit me, sir," he said when the laughter had died away. "I don't have the right kind of background, for one thing."

A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Chris was sure they were enjoying a private joke, undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader's famous ancestor.

"Nonsense," said Slughorn briskly, "couldn't be plainer you come from decent Wizarding stock, abilities like yours. No, you'll go far, Tom, I've never been wrong about a student yet."

"Too familiar," Chris muttered.

The small golden clock standing upon Slughorn's desk chimed eleven o'clock behind him and he looked around.

"Good gracious, is it that time already? You'd better get going, boys, or we'll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it's detention. Same goes for you, Avery."

One by one, the boys filed out of the room. Slughorn heaved himself out of his armchair and carried his empty glass over to his desk. A movement behind him made him look around; Riddle was still standing there.

"Look sharp, Tom, you don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect . . ."

"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away. . . ."

"Sir, I wondered what you know about . . . about Horcruxes?"

Slughorn stared at him, his thick fingers absentmindedly caressing the stem of his wine glass.

Chris held her breathe.

"Project for Defense Against the Dark Arts, is it?"

But Chris could tell that Slughorn knew perfectly well that this was not schoolwork.

"Not exactly, sir," said Riddle. "I came across the term while reading and I didn't fully understand it."

"No . . . well . . . you'd be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that'll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom, that's very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed," said Slughorn.

"But you obviously know all about them, sir? I mean, a wizard-like you — sorry, I mean, if you can't tell me, obviously — I just knew if anyone could tell me, you could — so I just thought I'd ask —"

It was very perfect, thought Chris, the hesitancy, the casual tone, the careful flattery, none of it overdone. Chris had had too much experience of trying to wheedle information out of reluctant people not to recognize a master at work.

"Well," said Slughorn, not looking at Riddle, but fiddling with the ribbon on top of his box of crystallized pineapple, "well, it can't hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you understand the term. A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul."

"I don't quite understand how that works, though, sir," said Riddle.

His voice was carefully controlled, but Chris could sense his excitement.

"Well, you split your soul, you see," said Slughorn, "and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form . . ."

Slughorn's face crumpled and Chris remembered the words she had heard nearly two years before: "I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost . . . but still, I was alive."

". . . few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable."

But Riddle's hunger was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.

"How do you split your soul?"

"Well," said Slughorn uncomfortably, "you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature."

"But how do you do it?"

"By an act of evil — the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage: He would encase the torn portion —"

"Encase? But how — ?"

"There is a spell, do not ask me, I don't know!" said Slughorn, shaking his head like an old elephant bothered by mosquitoes. "Do I look as though I have tried it — do I look like a killer?"

"No, sir, of course not," said Riddle quickly. "I'm sorry . . . I didn't mean to offend . . ."

"Not at all, not at all, not offended," said Slughorn gruffly. "It's natural to feel some curiosity about these things. . . . Wizards of a certain calibre have always been drawn to that aspect of magic. . . ."

"Yes, sir," said Riddle. "What I don't understand, though — just out of curiosity — I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn't seven — ?"

"Merlin's beard, Tom!" yelped Slughorn. "Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case . . . bad enough to divide the soul . . . but to rip it into seven pieces . . ."

Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: He was gazing at Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before, and Chris could tell that he was regretting entering into the conversation at all.

"Of course," he muttered, "this is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic . . ."

"Yes, sir, of course," said Riddle quickly.

"But all the same, Tom . . . keep it quiet, what I've told — that's to say, what we've discussed. People wouldn't like to think we've been chatting about Horcruxes. It's a banned subject at Hogwarts, you know. . . . Dumbledore's particularly fierce about it. . . ."

"I won't say a word, sir," said Riddle, and he left, but not before Chris had glimpsed his face, which was full of that same wild happiness, she had thought she would feel after getting the memory from Slughorn.

Chris wrenched herself out of the pensive and breathed only one important word from the entire memory, "seven."

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To be continued. . .