46[@more@]admiration and incredulity.
“Just after his – Dumbledore’s – funeral,” said Hermione in an even smaller voice. “Right after we agreed we’d leave school and go and look for the Horcruxes. When I went back upstairs to get my things it – it just occurred to me that the more we knew about them, the better it would be . . . and I was alone in there . . . so I tried . . . and it worked. They flew straight in through the open window and I – I packed them.” She swallowed and then said imploringly, “I can’t believe Dumbledore would have been angry, it’s not as though we’re going to use the information to make a Horcrux, is it?”
“Can you hear us complaining?” said Ron. “Where are these books anyway?” Hermione rummaged for a moment and then extracted from the pile a large
volume, bound in faded black leather. She looked a little nauseated and held it as gingerly as if it were something recently dead.
“This is the one that gives explicit instructions on how to make a Horcrux. Secrets of the Darkest Art – it’s a horrible book, really awful, full of evil magic. I wonder when Dumbledore removed it from the library. . . . if he didn’t do it until he was headmaster, I bet Voldemort got all the instruction he needed from here.”
“Why did he have to ask Slughorn how to make a Horcrux, then, if he’d already read that?” asked Ron.
“He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen if you split your soul into seven,” said Harry. “Dumbledore was sure Riddle already knew how to make a Horcrux by the time he asked Slughorn about them. I think you’re right, Hermione, that could easily have been where he got the information.”
“And the more I’ve read about them,” said Hermione, “the more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of your soul by ripping it, and that’s just by making one Horcrux!”
Harry remembered what Dumbledore had said about Voldemort moving beyond
“usual evil.”
“Isn’t there any way of putting yourself back together?” Ron asked.
“Yes,” said Hermione with a hollow smile, “but it would be excruciatingly painful.”
“Why? How do you do it?” asked Harry.
“Remorse,” said Hermione. “You’ve got to really feel what you’ve done. There’s a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can’t see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?”
“No,” said Ron, before Harry could answer. “So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?”
“Yes,” said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if examining rotting entrails, “because it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I’ve read, what Harry did to Riddle’s diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux.”
“What, stabbing it with a basilisk fang?” asked Harry.
“Oh well, lucky we’ve got such a large supply of basilisk fangs, then,” said Ron. “I was wondering what we were going to do with them.”
“It doesn’t have to be a basilisk fang,” said Hermione patiently. “It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can’t repair itself. Basilisk venom only has one antidote, and it’s incredibly rare –“
“– phoenix tears,” said Harry, nodding.
“Exactly,” said Hermione. “Our problem is that there are very few substances as