|6.19| Voldemort's Request

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WHEN GRACE AND HARRY hurried toward Dumbledore's office past the gargoyle, they found Professor Trelawney with him. Dumbledore on the other hand was looking very tired.

"Aha!" she cried, pointing dramatically at Grace and Harry as she blinked at them 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 Freya and 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 Grace and disappeared down the spiral staircase; they heard her stumble halfway down, and Grace guessed that she had tripped over one of her trailing shawls.

"Please close the door, Grace and sit down both of you," said Dumbledore, sounding rather tired.

Grace obeyed, noticing as she and Harry took their 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 two 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 Grace, brought up short. What with Apparition lessons and Quidditch and Ron being poisoned and Harry getting his skull cracked, the two had almost forgotten about the memory Dumbledore had asked them to extract from Professor Slughorn. "Well, we asked Professor Slughorn about it at the end of Potions, sir, but, er, he wouldn't give it to us."

There was a little silence.

"I see," said Dumbledore eventually, peering at Grace and 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 two 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?"

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