Title: Cry of the Necronomicon
Summary: Harry spends his days with a book that whispers to him, and he wonders. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.
AN: Harry has a long list of obsessive tendencies, and, after seeing the sixth movie in theaters, I became very aware of it. (Following Harry's escapades as a reader takes away from this-- the visual really clued me in on how infatuated he was with the Half-blood Prince, among other things.) And so, Cry of the Necronomicon was born. Also, I don't own Harry Potter, and it might be slightly AUish because I've forgotten what happened to Snape's book afterwards.
Ah, and for those of you who don't know, the Necronomicon is a "incredibly dangerous and powerful book of black magic that has its origins in odd noises and demonology." I thought it really worked with the set-up. :D The reference is purely symbolic, though.
The book was frayed at its corners, a collection of blaring neons twisted and broken on its front, their images having long since dimmed to shadows of their former selves. Advanced Potion Making colored its upper half in black, crisp scrawl, and its binding writhed under the weight of worn pages.
He's learned that it wears a facade-- hides its true face from the world, pretending to be gray, demure and feeble; useless. The Half-blood Prince poured his soul into the text the way Harry does, and he thinks that he must have been a man who liked his pretenses. He was an enigma, with a quiet, dark sense of humor, and he made that book into his headstone. Any hand it passed through knew its legacy, and its owner's cryptic background trapped them in a web of silence and camaraderie. All those secret notes of spells and incantations, leaving the onlooker as changed as the book itself. No one but Harry and the Prince could share the mystery. It had noise buzzing in his skull, always filled him with thoughts and questions, and he wanted to meet his hidden accomplice.
Ha, Harry muses, even the name sings his praises. At first he thought it arrogant to parade as royalty, but he'd come to like that bold part of him. It was confident and airy-- the Prince was the heir to his own throne. He was born talented, albeit articulate, and his brilliance spread like a sickness. Harry could never agree to the idea that he was anything other than exceptional, because his scribblings were saving his potions grade.
He, however, was incapable of his creativity and genius. Having the Prince tucked safely at his side made him feel powerful, as though his obstacles shuddered in the face of his imaginary rank. Something deep in him knew the Prince had no fears. He drew from that, kept it as his talisman, and devoured his words as if they were his personal Bible.
Potions was suddenly a haven where he could show the Prince's theories to the world, something it had never been when Snape or Slughorn drawled at the front desk. He couldn't confide in anyone unless he was stirring ingredients beneath a burning limelight, faces looking on, but he was indifferent about his own growing fame. Harry was eager to let others indulge in the Prince's greatness, because the book was his, and that was what he yearned for-- an audience.
He couldn't voice his obsessions, but he wanted to pull others into his land of hasty chicken scratch and unknown identities. Ron and Hermione demonstrated that talking about the Prince was worthless; it was odd to imagine, but they didn't share his intrigue. Even so, he admitted it was mad to ramble about a faceless person and say they filled his life. Pathetic as well. A quiet part of Harry wanted to be like "him", but who was that?
His father had the heart to scribble all over textbooks, but he was full-blooded, and Remus was a strict rule-abider. In other words, the Prince was lost to him as soon as he strode through their school's doubledoors. The book was all he had, and its call was heavy and intoxicating, like a drug's. He felt strange and exposed when it wasn't with him, comparable to losing his glasses or days when his hair was tame. Awkward, as though he'd forgotten a piece of himself somewhere.
Harry added a cynical, 'Not to mention dry and a bit boring.' Probably more than a bit to be truthful, considering it went everywhere that he did, and he opened it whenever he had a spare moment. Bliss made it hard to put it down, because schoolwork kept him from finding the enjoyment he did with his writings. There was nothing as interesting as the Prince buried in Hogwart's shifting labyrinth of halls. He would slip into the boys' dorm when others were whispering their gossip, pull it free, and sift through the pages to understand whatever was left behind in it. It was relaxing, invigorating, and altogether enticing to pretend he could see what the Prince might have in his prime. It was impossible, a fleeting dream, but he wished to walk his same path for just a moment. To have similarities outside of their half blood births.
- - -
He never saw himself doubting the Prince until Malfoy wept red across the bathroom tile, dying it a sickly crimson as blood hissed towards the drain and slipped away into pipes spreading like veins behind Hogwart's walls. He refused to believe that he used it as a frivolous passtime-- he made it for enemies, exactly as he'd written! Hermione was wrong-- it couldn't be true! The Prince was no murderer. He could see himself in him, and didn't want to lose that familiarity!
Malfoy, however, was just a git and not a genuine monster, as well as gagging body fluid at his feet. Harry felt the bile creep up his throat and swallowed, Cedric's limp, mud soaked corpse flashing like lights behind his eyes. His voice died as he felt the urge to call out for help, and he fought with himself as footsteps bounded into the corners, drowned out by Myrtle's screams. Snape rippled inside as though he were a black wisp of shadow, and bent to heal Malfoy's broken limbs with words Harry hadn't heard. They were melodic and low, like the Prince's hexes when read aloud, but he found he couldn't think while Malfoy was a torn, living ragdoll on the floor.
As the pair wobbled into the halls, leaning on one another, Harry was left to watch him fall again and again, all the while wishing he'd never trusted so much or assumed that, in his fear, he should do something reckless. Then the Prince could still be as perfect as he wanted him to be, and without the memory of blood to muddle him.
He stood there, frozen, for what felt like years; the Prince was shattered, something different than he'd thought. Air pressed down on his lungs when Snape slithered back from whatever hole he came from, eyes ashy like charcoal-- hateful and empty as he stared him down.
"I didn't mean for it to happen," he tried to plead, but there was no sympathy for him anywhere.
"Apparently I underestimated you, Potter," it was a frigid, angry growl, "Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?" Harry tensed, the question ringing against the silence. No one he could, let alone would bring to Snape.
"I," the words spilled from his mouth, "read it somewhere."
"Where?"
"It was," he strung them together hastily, knowing the demand was coming, "a library book. I can't remember what it was call--"
He cut him down midsentence, sharp as knives. "Liar. Bring me your schoolbag-- and all of your books. All of them. Bring them to me here!" Harry struggled, but his legs wouldn't budge, "Now!" He raced towards the common room, everything a blur of gentle amber and creamy golds, as shouts echoed down the corridors and into the classrooms lining the walls. There had to be a second option; a way to get rid of the book without Snape suspecting him, or, god forbid, looking for it!
He ignored the sting of betrayal as he swiveled past a sharp turn, tapestries crying that he not run in the halls, and felt as though a good friend had lied to him. The Prince had promised him the moon without saying a word, the bastard, although treachery was another of his talents-- but, if anyone would destroy his memento, something in his head kept screeching it would be himself or Snape. He couldn't let that happen, and not at his hand, it was an insult to the Prince's memory! No, he chorused desperately, anything else!
"Where've you--? Why are you soaking--? Is that blood?" Ron finished in disbelief, Harry whirling on him.
His intuition took over, and he gargled a brief, "I need your book. Your Potions book. Quick, give it to me--" Snape would not rob him of anything else important! There was an unspoken oath he and the Prince kindled, and he swore to keep it safe in his own way for the face who couldn't anymore.
- - -
The Room of Requirement was a sea of clutter, its waves of lost trinkets brushing the domed ceilings while he scanned for the bust, ugly in a corner below a broken grandfather clock that chimed a mangled, eerie siren song. He slammed the head to the ground, let it twitch against the wood floors and fall still as the book glared from its perch.
Snape, who sent Dumbledore tumbling to his death, and fed his parents to Voldemort-- was their Half-Blood Prince, who guided them, and made them call him trustworthy. The room went red as he felt it, the cover cold beneath his fingertips, and held it at arm's length, loathing himself for believing in a murderer! For identifying with the man who made his parents suffer! He grabbed it, thumbed through the pages and stifled all the memories that rushed to the surface, before ripping one free. And another, and another after it.
He tore them one by one, let them slide along the floor in a dance of off-white, until he growled like a madman and flung it blindly. It fell with a dull thump, shrouded in loose paper with things he knew all too well written on their faces.
The Prince wore his pretenses like snakeskins, and fooled them all.
AN: Read and review, please. :D (Wow, I must admit . . . I never thought I'd write Harry Potter fic anytime soon.)