Proliferated Petrification

Final Chapter

"Have I done something wrong, Amelia?" the fat wizard said ingratiatingly.

"Not at all, Professor Slughorn," Amelia replied. "This isn't about any of your activities. I called you in because we believe you may have important information about the illegal activities of one of your former students."

Horace Slughorn paled a little. "I've had a lot of students over the years," he said. "They've done a lot of important things, good and bad. I don't have any control over what they do when they leave school."

He was getting defensive fast. That wasn't a good sign. "I'm not suggesting you overlooked any illegal activities, Professor," she said, "although I am wondering if you might have looked the other way regarding some…suspicious activities of one particular student while he was still in school."

Slughorn had a bad feeling about where this was going. He absently pulled on his collar and asked, "Er…which student would that be?"

"One of your Slytherins by the name of Tom Riddle."

"I…I'm afraid I don't remember a Tom Riddle. Very common name, you see. And I'm sure he never amounted to much, or I'd have heard of him since."

"Not if he was using a nom de guerre, Professor. Surely, you remember him. He was Head Boy, Class of 1945."

"Nope, can't say that I do."

Amelia sighed. "Albus warned me you'd do this," she muttered.

His voice jumped a few pitches: "You—you've talked to Albus."

"Of course. He's the one who suggested I speak to you. Now, we both know that the Tom Riddle I'm talking about is You-Know-Who, so maybe you could drop the act?"

Slughorn paled further and nibbled his fingernails. After hemming and hawing for a minute, he said, "Amelia, I swear I had no idea what that boy would become."

She raised an eyebrow. "No idea at all?"

"Well, I…I did think he had an unhealthy fixation on dark magic, but that wasn't so uncommon in Slytherin, especially for a student as bright as he was. Did I look the other way, let the occasional indiscretion slide here and there? I'm sorry to say he wasn't the only one. And he seemed like he'd go so far—that he had so much potential—I didn't want to believe ill of him."

"I see. And did you encourage him in his research at all? His studies into dark magic?"

Bugger me, she knows, Slughorn thought. "T-t-tips here and there," he stammered. "I may have pointed him to a reference book or two—on a purely theoretical basis, of course. I was quite free with passes to the Restricted Section, but that's common enough. Plenty of students read into dark magic without becoming dark lords, right?"

And there she had him, Amelia thought. "Not certain kinds of dark magic, Professor Slughorn," she said. "Not certain books that Dumbledore removed from the library after Riddle graduated—"

"Why does all this matter?" he snapped.

"Because You-Know-Who is still out there. If you've guessed half of what Dumbledore has, you know that to be true. We want to stop him—for good this time. Dumbledore and I and a few others are trying to stop his return before he has a chance to make a move and make sure he can never come back again. But to do that, we need information. Dumbledore's guessed a lot, but it's not enough. We need to know anything you know about Tom Riddle's research into horcruxes."

Slughorn was silent for a long time. He was definitely nervous. After a while, he said, "You can't make me tell you—not without a subpoena to court, at least." And to make this a court matter would draw the Minister's ire, he added mentally.