How did Dumbledore track down Slughorn?

[sunnyskywalker]

Slughorn lived on the run for a year, never staying anywhere more than a week. Voldemort and the Death Eaters weren't able to track him down.

But Dumbledore was.

How? Does he place undetectable tracking enchantments on outgoing staff just in case he ever needs to reel them in?

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

He probably doesn't want Slughorn in the Order, but probably also doesn't want to make that perfectly clear from the outset--looks bad, right? Like he doesn't trust his old friend! So he probably offered a couple of times, knowing Slughorn would refuse, and then "reluctantly" gave up.

It is interesting to wonder what really scares Slughorn about that memory. He probably has figured out by 1996 that Voldemort could have killed him any summer vacation between 1945 and 1981 if he wanted to. (Did Slughorn spend the last few summers of the first war squatting in Muggle houses too, I wonder? Just in case?) Why didn't he? Does Voldemort think that isn't enough information for anyone to make good use of even if Slughorn passes it on?

I think Terri is probably on the right track that he didn't ask Slughorn hoping to get useful information in the first place. After all, Slughorn didn't tell him anything practical, did he? However he actually made the Horcruxes, he learned how somewhere else or figured it out on his own. And maybe already had by the time he talked to Slughorn. He was really blackmailing Slughorn into not letting his identity slip later, because he knew Slughorn was one of the few people who would work it out eventually. So maybe that was what Slughorn was really trying (mostly failing) to cover up--that he was foolish enough to get maneuvered into a position where he could be blackmailed, and that he'd been too cowardly to reveal Voldemort's past as Tom all these years? And the whole exercise with Harry getting the memory was more about training Harry than actually getting the memory, since learning that Voldemort once considered a seven-part soul in his teens is no proof that he actually went ahead with that number. He might have figured out that it was too unstable and gone with three, or changed his mind and decided that nine was better, or who knows what.

Whatever info Dumbledore got from Slughorn would be questionable in its accuracy and completeness, but the same is true of information he gets anywhere else. Anything Severus hears from Voldemort or his fellow Death Eaters is also likely to be incomplete or misleading, if Voldemort has the slightest scrap of competence left.

It would definitely be interesting to get non-Harry perspectives on both Dumbledore and Slughorn. I'd especially love to see Politician Dumbledore at work debating legislation and judging cases with the Wizengamot.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Based on what he said to Harry, Horace is ashamed for not just refusing outright to discuss Horcruxes with Tom. I like Terri's take on this - Horace had no idea about Tom's early exploits at the orphanage, nor that he was already a triple or quadruple murderer at the time of the conversation, so Horace believed that this conversation was what sent Tom over the deep end and convinced him to commit multiple murders in order to become immortal.