Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

I left it there, right on the table with the rest of his things, he'll see it the first thing he does, as soon as he walks back to the table, he'll see it right there. He'll know I left it. He'll pick it up…

She sank down slowly against the wall, gathering the hem of her cloak in her hands, her head buried against her knees.

No wonder that was the book I picked up in the Manor, no wonder my hand went right to it, none of this would have happened if it hadn't been for me — Tom would never have heard of the Four Worthy Objects if it hadn't been for me, and Ron-This is all my fault.

She took a ragged breath, and lifted her head up off her knees. Without quite stopping to think about what she was doing, her hand slipped into the top pocket of her robe and drew out the diary. She looked at it for a long moment. It had been splashed with blood earlier that day; now it looked bare and clean. She remembered how it had once drunk up the ink she used to write in its pages, vampirizing her thoughts, draining out her dreams. She'd written in it so trustingly. Tom, where are you Tom? I waited for you, looked for you all day.

She remembered the boy in the library. His pale face, heart-shaped under its cloud of dark hair, the blue eyes the color of blindness. The hands that burned with cold heat where they touched her.

I heard you call me, Tom, this afternoon in the corridor. I ran so fast I thought I'd die, but you weren't there. You're never there. Where are you?

Her hands tightened on the book. Somewhere in the past, Tom Marvolo Riddle was sitting down to examine the book she'd left there for him so conveniently. Somewhere he was reading all about the Four Worthy Objects and the power they conferred. Somewhere his twisted clever brain was pondering the feasibility of obtaining these objects. Somewhere he was wondering how to get hold of a Diviner. How to drain out their blood.

Somewhere he was thinking that someday, when he had enough power, he would do this.

You don't talk to me any more, Tom. Did I do something? Are you tired of me? Talk to me, Tom. Talk to me, please.

With a sharp exhalation of breath that was like a sob, Ginny tightened her hands on the book and ripped at it — the binding was strong, and it took two tries before the first handful of pages tore themselves out. She hurled them away from her, and went back to work on the diary, clawing at it with a terrible dry fierceness that hurt like tears. In fact, she was also crying, although she did not realize that until later — her tears spilling down onto the diary as she shredded it apart, and the sound of her own weeping drowned out the sound of tearing pages and another sound too, a sound that rose from the crumpling pages, a soft sound that was very much like mocking laughter…

Harry almost didn't stop by Snape's office to ask him about Memory Charm removal potions. Later, he would be glad that he had. Much later than that, he would be less glad.

It was immediately evident to him when he walked into the office that Snape was furious. With him, he suspected, and tried to apologize for having missed their appointment that morning. Snape, however, was having none of it. "Speak your piece, Potter," he snarled, his pale face gone even paler with rage. "What do you want?"

Harry explained, whilst Snape looked at him with loathing, as if he were a particularly repellent fungus.

"There are no potions that remove Memory Charms, as you would know had you ever paid attention in my classes," said Snape, when Harry had finished. "Not without damaging the brain of the subject. Not, I suppose, that one could tell the difference with you, Potter."

Harry bit back his annoyance. "I know that," he said. "But Hermione thought there might be a potion that would at least let us know definitely if I'm under an Obliviate spell or not. She said it would ease her mind," he added, knowing that Snape actually had a grudging respect for Hermione and might do this for her sake, even if he wouldn't have for Harry's.

Snape gave him a long, inscrutable look. Then he turned away and crossed the room to the cabinet behind his desk. From it he took a slender blue bottle. He closed the cabinet door and came across the room to Harry. Harry jerked away in shock as Snape slammed the flask down on the table in front of him with such enormous force that a single long crack appeared in the glass, bisecting it from top to bottom.

"Take it, Potter," he said, through his teeth. "And in the meantime, is there anything else I can help you with? A Somnolus Potion so you can sleep at night?"

Harry, startled by the sound of cracking glass and even more by Snape's comment, blinked and stared. "What?"

"You heard me." Snape loomed above Harry like an enormous black bat, his thin lips curled in disgust. "I was beginning to think you might not be exactly like your father. I realize now that that was a vain expectation."

Harry's fingers tightened on the edge of the table. "My father," he said slowly. "My father was brave and kind and honorable. I wish I was just like him."

"Your father." Snape's voice was a dagger. "Your father was a complacent, selfish, unfeeling idiot. He assumed that because everyone loved him, he must therefore deserve that love. And look at everyone who loved him; where are they now? Your mother — dead. Sirius Black — twelve years in Azkaban. Remus Lupin — dragging through life as an unemployable failure. Peter Pettigrew — "

"Pettigrew never loved my parents!" Harry flung back, incensed. "And none of those things were my father's fault! He didn't ask for any of that to happen!"

"Of course he didn't," Snape sneered. "And you — look at you. He damaged you along with all the rest, left you orphaned, an outcast among Muggles.

And yet instead of blaming him you aim to follow in his footsteps and leave behind you your own trail of dead."

"My own what?" Harry couldn't believe his ears. Snape had said horrible things to him before, dozens of times, but never anything quite like this.

"You know what I mean," said Snape, his voice sharpening to a needle point. "Don't pretend that you don't know that what you've done to Draco is unconscionable."

Harry had been ready, with protestations and objections, to defend himself and his father, but this punched the breath out of him. He stared at Snape, trying to form a response, but the Potions professor silenced him with a fierce glare.

"Do you want to hear the symptoms of the poison?" Snape hissed. "The poison you seem to think it will be so easy to find an antidote for — so easy that I don't even need your assistance, so why bother showing up to help me? Do you want to know what will happen to Draco if an antidote is not found?"

Harry couldn't quite get enough air into his lungs to answer this.

Something was compressing his ribcage.

"The symptoms," said Snape, now in his driest classroom voice, "are as follows: lassitude and weakness first. Then loss of balance and coordination. As the toxins break down his muscles and organs he will begin to feel some pain. His magical ability will suffer. His ability to heal will desert him and at that point even a minor cut might prove fatal. He is already experiencing some dimming of his vision. Soon enough that will become blindness — "

"Blindness?" Harry gagged as a wave of nausea so intense it was nearly pain rose up and over him. The tabletop he was staring at seemed to explode in a thousand dizzying flecks of color, all flying apart. "I don't-"

"Blindness," said Snape again, his voice flat with a lethal finality. "After the loss of sight, things will progress rapidly. He'll have greater trouble staying alert until eventually he collapses into a coma. From that point on death will arrive inevitably within a matter of days. Perhaps you'll be around to hold his hand at that point — knowing you, I doubt it — but it won't matter. He won't know you're there. And then he'll die. Now," and Snape's voice dropped an octave, "does that mean anything to you, Potter, or do you accept it simply as the inevitable consequence of your own stupidity?"