The Lost Timeline | Dramione | ✔

#29 Time to Hunt

The potion was wearing off by the time Harry reached the headmaster's office and the gargoyle looked menacingly at him as Harry tried to guess the password, throwing out random names of sweets when the door opened unexpectedly from the inside.

"Ah, Harry, Fawkes was convinced–"

"I have it, professor! The memory from Slughorn!" Harry interrupted, unable to contain his excitement.

At the sight of the memory glowing gently in its vessel flipped a switch in the headmaster's demeanour and a certain intensity seeped into his actions. He stood a little straighter and there in his face was a peculiar expression. A mixture of pride and excitement... tinged with a touch of grief or was it guilt? It was so fleeting that from one second to the next, it had already disappeared.

Dumbledore swept Harry into his tower and had the pensieve out in no time, the memory swirling within its depths, beckoning to the two...

Harry felt his feet fall away from his body and he was transported into the past and found himself face to face with a jovial and much younger Professor Slughorn. His hair was a richer colour and his office was filled with bright young faces. Very much unlike his office today – dreary and lonely, if compared to this picture of hospitality.

With Dumbledore by his side, studying the memory through his half-moon spectacles, Harry felt taken aback by how familiar Tom Riddle and Professor Slughorn were. In fact, everyone in that room seemed magnetised by the boy, charming and effortless. If Harry hadn't known who he would grow up to be, might he have befriended him?

As Tom began questioning Professor Slughorn about horcruxes, Harry saw his mask fall away. From under the boyish charms, there seems to lurk a sinister entity, as if he were being possessed. Good genes could only get you so far, and the Riddle boy was blessed with good looks... Though greed and arrogance twisted his features as he blatantly manipulated his Head of House to get the information that he wanted.

Finally, Professor Slughorn snapped and brushed the whole affair away like it were wisps of smoke.

"This is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic..." The professor said, trying to find himself a justification for discussing a topic that Dumbledore had explicitly banned, "Dumbledore's particularly fierce about it..."

"And for good reason," Dumbledore said gruffly, placing one hand on Harry's shoulder. "Very few seek immortality for the right reasons and fewer still achieve true immortality... there is always a cost..."

"Like the Philosopher's Stone?" Harry asked.

Dumbledore nodded, "Exactly like that..."

The professor seemed more tired than Harry had ever seen him, weighed down by this new discovery.

"It confirms the theory that I've had, ever since you gave me that diary in your second year, Harry."

"The... diary? Sir?" Harry thought that Dumbledore might be losing his mind, but the headmaster smiled genially.

"I forget how much of the magical world is still new and foreign to you... While cursed artefacts might possess a person, it is not at all common for an artefact to gain sentience, and even rarer still, the ability to construct a new body for itself. No, when I heard that Ginny's death would mean his resurrection, I knew that Voldemort had managed to do it. He had made a Horcrux." Dumbledore paused, giving Harry a moment for his words to sink in.

"But... Voldermort isn't above murder, he isn't even above torturing children," Harry said, referencing a memory that they had visited earlier in the year. "Why are you surprised that he's made a Horcrux? With his murders, he could have easily made twenty."