𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒-ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪 ℙ𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣❥

𝐇𝐁𝐏 𝟐𝟕

"Harry, I found something out this morning, in the library."

"R.A.B.?" said Harry, sitting up straight.

He did not feel the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery; he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcrux had to be completed before he could move a little farther along the dark and winding path stretching ahead of him, the path that Emily, he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone.

There might still be as many as four Horcruxes out there somewhere, and each would need to be found and eliminated before there was even a possibility that Voldermort mort could be killed.

He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them within reach: the locket . . . the cup . . . the snake . . . something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's . . . the locket . . . the cup . . . the snake . . . something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's . . .

This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry's mind as he fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups, lockets, and mysterious objects that he could not quite reach, though Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb. . . .

He had shown Hermione and Emily the note inside the locket the morning after Dumbledore's death, but Emily could barely speak that day so she didn't really register anything, and although she had not immediately recognized the initials as belonging to some obscure wizard about whom she had been reading, she had since been rushing off to the library a little more often than was strictly necessary for somebody who had no homework to do.

"No," she said sadly, "I've been trying, Harry, but I haven't found anything. . . . There are a couple of reasonably well-known wizards with those initials — Rosalind Antigone Bungs . . . Rupert 'Axebanger' Brookstanton . . . but they don't seem to fit at all. Judging by that note, the person who stole the Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can't find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him. . . . No, actually, it's about . . . well, Snape."

She looked nervous even saying the name again.

"What about him?" asked Harry heavily, slumping back in his chair.

"Well, it's just that I was sort of right about the Half-Blood Prince business," she said tentatively.

"D'you have to rub it in, Hermione? How d'you think I feel about that now?"

"No — no — Harry, I didn't mean that!" she said hastily, looking around to check that they were not being overheard. "It's just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the book. You see . . . she was Snape's mother!"

"I thought she wasn't much of a looker," said Ron. Hermione ignored him.

"I was going through the rest of the old Prophets and there was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she'd given birth to a —"

"— murderer," spat Harry.

"Well . . . yes," said Hermione. "So . . . I was sort of right. Snape must have been proud of being 'half a Prince,' you see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the Prophet."

"Yeah, that fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them. . . . He's just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father . . . ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name — Lord Voldemort — the Half-Blood Prince — how could Dumbledore have missed — ?"