Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling [156]
“Thanks a lot, Hermione,” said Harry, giving her a hasty pat on the back as he checked his watch and saw that it was nearly eight o’clock. “Listen, I’ve got to hurry or I’ll be late for Dumbledore. …”
She did not answer, but merely crossed out a few of his feebler sentences in a weary sort of way. Grinning, Harry hurried out through the portrait hole and off to the headmaster’s office. The gargoyle leapt aside at the mention of toffee éclairs, and Harry took the spiral staircase two steps at a time, knocking on the door just as a clock within chimed eight.
“Enter,” called Dumbledore, but as Harry put out a hand to push the door, it was wrenched open from inside. There stood Professor Trelawney.
“Aha!” she cried, pointing dramatically at Harry as she blinked at him through her magnifying spectacles. “So this is the reason I am to be thrown unceremoniously from your office, Dumbledore!”
“My dear Sybill,” said Dumbledore in a slightly exasperated voice, “there is no question of throwing you unceremoniously from anywhere, but Harry does have an appointment, and I really don’t think there is any more to be said —”
“Very well,” said Professor Trelawney, in a deeply wounded voice. “If you will not banish the usurping nag, so be it. … Perhaps I shall find a school where my talents are better appreciated. …”
She pushed past Harry and disappeared down the spiral staircase; they heard her stumble halfway down, and Harry guessed that she had tripped over one of her trailing shawls.
“Please close the door and sit down, Harry,” said Dumbledore, sounding rather tired.
Harry obeyed, noticing as he took his usual seat in front of Dumbledore’s desk that the Pensieve lay between them once more, as did two more tiny crystal bottles full of swirling memory.
“Professor Trelawney still isn’t happy Firenze is teaching, then?” Harry asked.
“No,” said Dumbledore, “Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself. I cannot ask Firenze to return to the forest, where he is now an outcast, nor can I ask Sybill Trelawney to leave. Between ourselves, she has no idea of the danger she would be in outside the castle. She does not know — and I think it would be unwise to enlighten her — that she made the prophecy about you and Voldemort, you see.”
Dumbledore heaved a deep sigh, then said, “But never mind my staffing problems. We have much more important matters to discuss. Firstly — have you managed the task I set you at the end of our previous lesson?”
“Ah,” said Harry, brought up short. What with Apparition lessons and Quidditch and Ron being poisoned and getting his skull cracked and his determination to find out what Draco Malfoy was up to, Harry had almost forgotten about the memory Dumbledore had asked him to extract from Professor Slughorn. “Well, I asked Professor Slughorn about it at the end of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn’t give it to me.”
There was a little silence.
“I see,” said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles and giving Harry the usual sensation that he was being X-rayed. “And you feel that you have exerted your very best efforts in this matter, do you? That you have exercised all of your considerable ingenuity? That you have left no depth of cunning unplumbed in your quest to retrieve the memory?”
“Well,” Harry stalled, at a loss for what to say next. His single attempt to get hold of the memory suddenly seemed embarrassingly feeble. “Well … the day Ron swallowed love potion by mistake I took him to Professor Slughorn. I thought maybe if I got Professor Slughorn in a good enough mood —”
“And did that work?” asked Dumbledore.
“Well, no, sir, because Ron got poisoned —”