The fact that Harry Potter was going out with Ginny Weasley seemed to interest a great number of people, most of them girls, yet Harry found himself newly and happily impervious to gossip over the next few weeks. After all, it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic.

‘You’d think people had better things to gossip about,’ said Ginny, as she sat on the common-room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.‘

Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘ ? told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,’ said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. ‘Much more macho.’

Thanks,‘ said Harry, grinning. ’And what did you tell her Ron’s got?‘

‘A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.’

Ron scowled as Hermione rolled around laughing.

‘Watch it,’ he said, pointing wamingly at Harry and Ginny. ‘Just because I’ve given my permission doesn’t mean I can’t withdraw it -’

“Tour permission”,‘ scoffed Ginny. ’Since when did you give me permission to do anything? Anyway, you said yourself you’d rather it was Harry than Michael or Dean.‘

‘Yeah, I would,’ said Ron grudgingly. ‘And just as long as you don’t start snogging each other in public -’

‘You filthy hypocrite! What about you and Lavender, thrashing around like a pair of eels all over the place?’ demanded Ginny.

But Ron’s tolerance was not to be tested much as they moved into June, for Harry and Ginny’s time together was becoming increasingly restricted. Ginny’s O.W.L.s were approaching and she was therefore forced to revise for hours into the night. On one such evening, when Ginny had retired to the library and Harry was sitting beside the window in the common room, supposedly finishing his Herbology home-work but in reality reliving a particularly happy hour he had spent down by the lake with Ginny at lunch-time, Hermione dropped into the seat between him and Ron with an unpleasantly purposeful look on her face.

‘I want to talk to you, Harry.’

‘What about?’ said Harry suspiciously. Only the previous day, Hermione had told him off for distracting Ginny when she ought to be working hard for her examinations.

The so-called Half-Blood Prince.‘

‘Oh, not again,’ he groaned. ‘Will you please drop it?’

He had not dared to return to the Room of Requirement to retrieve his book, and his performance in Potions was suffering accordingly (though Slughorn, who approved of Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick). But Harry was sure that Snape had not yet given up hope of laying hands on the Prince’s book, and was determined to leave it where it was while Snape remained on the lookout.

‘I’m not dropping it,’ said Hermione firmly, ‘until you’ve heard me out. Now, I’ve been trying to find out a bit about who might make a hobby of inventing Dark spells -’

‘He didn’t make a hobby of it -’

‘He, he — who says it’s a he?’

‘We’ve been through this,’ said Harry crossly. ‘Prince, Hermione, Prince!’

‘Right!’ said Hermione, red patches blazing in her cheeks as she pulled a very old piece of newsprint out of her pocket and slammed it down on the table in front of Harry. ‘Look at that! Look at the picture!’

Harry picked up the crumbling piece of paper and stared at the moving photograph, yellowed with age; Ron leaned over for a look, too. The picture showed a skinny girl of around fifteen. She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face. Underneath the photograph was the caption: Eileen Prince, Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team.

‘So?’ said Harry, scanning the short news item to which the picture belonged; it was a rather dull story about inter-school competitions.

‘Her name was Eileen Prince. Prince, Harry.’

They looked at each other and Harry realised what Hermione was trying to say. He burst out laughing.

‘No way.’

‘What?’

‘You think she was the Half-Blood…? Oh, come on.’

‘Well, why not? Harry, there aren’t any real princes in the wizarding world! It’s either a nickname, a made-up title somebody’s given themselves, or it could be their actual name, couldn’t it? No, listen! If, say, her father was a wizard whose surname was “Prince”, and her mother was a Muggle, then that would make her a “half-blood Prince”!’

‘Yeah, very ingenious, Hermione…’

‘But it would! Maybe she was proud of being half a Prince!’

‘Listen, Hermione, I can tell it’s not a girl. I can just tell.’

The truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been clever enough,‘ said Hermione angrily.

‘How can I have hung round with you for five years and not think girls are clever?’ said Harry, stung by this. ‘It’s the way he writes. I just know the Prince was a bloke, I can tell. This girl hasn’t got anything to do with it. Where did you get this, anyway?’

‘The library,’ said Hermione, predictably. There’s a whole collection of old Prophets up there. Well, I’m going to find out more about Eileen Prince if I can.‘

‘Enjoy yourself,’ said Harry irritably.

‘I will,’ said Hermione. ‘And the first place I’ll look,’ she shot at him, as she reached the portrait hole, ‘is records of old Potions awards!’

Harry scowled after her for a moment, then continued his contemplation of the darkening sky.

‘She’s just never got over you outperforming her in Potions,’ said Ron, returning to his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.

‘You don’t think I’m mad, wanting that book back, do you?’

‘Course not,’ said Ron robustly. ‘He was a genius, the Prince. Anyway… without his bezoar tip…’ he drew his finger significantly across his own throat, ‘I wouldn’t be here to discuss it, would I? I mean, I’m not saying that spell you used on Malfoy was great -’

‘Nor am I,’ said Harry quickly.

‘But he healed all right, didn’t he? Back on his feet in no time.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry; this was perfectly true, although his conscience squirmed slightly all the same. Thanks to Snape…‘

‘You still got detention with Snape this Saturday?’ Ron continued.

‘Yeah, and the Saturday after that, and the Saturday after that,’ sighed Harry. ‘And he’s hinting now that if I don’t get all the boxes done by the end of term, we’ll carry on next year.’

He was finding these detentions particularly irksome because they cut into the already limited time he could have been spending with Ginny. Indeed, he had frequently wondered lately whether Snape did not know this, for he was keeping Harry later and later every time, while making pointed asides about Harry having to miss the good weather and the varied opportunities it offered.

Harry was shaken from these bitter reflections by the appearance at his side of Jimmy Peakes, who was holding out a scroll of parchment.

‘Thanks, Jimmy… hey, it’s from Dumbledore!’ said Harry excitedly, unrolling the parchment and scanning it. ‘He wants me to go to his office as quick as I can!’

They stared at each other.

‘Blimey,’ whispered Ron. ‘You don’t reckon… he hasn’t found…?’

‘Better go and see, hadn’t I?’ said Harry, jumping to his feet.

He hurried out of the common room and along the seventh floor as fast as he could, passing nobody but Peeves, who swooped past in the opposite direction, throwing bits of chalk at Harry in a routine sort of way and cackling loudly as he dodged Harry’s defensive jinx. Once Peeves had vanished, there was silence in the corridors; with only fifteen minutes left until curfew, most people had already returned to their common rooms.

And then Harry heard a scream and a crash. He stopped in his tracks, listening.

‘How — dare — you — aaaaargh!’

The noise was coming from a corridor nearby; Harry sprinted towards it, his wand at the ready, hurtled round another corner and saw Professor Trelawney sprawled upon the floor, her head covered in one of her many shawls, several sherry bottles lying beside her, one broken.

‘Professor -’

Harry hurried forwards and helped Professor Trelawney to her feet. Some of her glittering beads had become entangled with her glasses. She hiccoughed loudly, patted her hair and pulled herself up on Harry’s helping arm.

‘What happened, Professor?’

‘You may well ask!’ she said shrilly. ‘I was strolling along, brooding upon certain Dark portents I happen to have glimpsed…’

But Harry was not paying much attention. He had just noticed where they were standing: there on the right was the tapestry of dancing trolls and, on the left, that smoothly impenetrable stretch of stone wall that concealed ‘Professor, were you trying to get into the Room of Requirement?’

‘… omens I have been vouchsafed — what?’

She looked suddenly shifty.

The Room of Requirement,‘ repeated Harry. ’Were you trying to get in there?‘

‘I — well — I didn’t know students knew about -’

‘Not all of them do,’ said Harry. ‘But what happened? You screamed… it sounded as though you were hurt…’

‘I — well,’ said Professor Trelawney, drawing her shawls around her defensively and staring down at him with her vastly magnified eyes. ‘I wished to — ah — deposit certain — um — personal items in the Room…’ And she muttered something about ‘nasty accusations’.

‘Right,’ said Harry, glancing down at the sherry bottles. ‘But you couldn’t get in and hide them?’

He found this very odd; the Room had opened for him, after all, when he had wanted to hide the Half-Blood Prince’s book.

‘Oh, I got in all right,’ said Professor Trelawney, glaring at the wall. ‘But there was somebody already in there.’

‘Somebody in -? Who?’ demanded Harry. ‘Who was in there?’

‘ ? have no idea,’ said Professor Trelawney, looking slightly taken aback at the urgency in Harry’s voice. ‘I walked into the Room and I heard a voice, which has never happened before in all my years of hiding — of using the Room, I mean.’

‘A voice? Saying what?’

‘I don’t know that it was saying anything,’ said Professor Trelawney. ‘It was… whooping.’