“What about?” said Harry suspiciously

“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.”