"Draco!" My father's voice was seething with anger as I walked down the stairs. "What have I told you about reading books by muggle authors?!"
'I'm dead as a doornail,' I thought. "Not to read them," I said. The words were forged and dry.
"How many times have I caught you reading one?"
"Three. Please don't send me to that awful death eater camp, please, I'll die of . . . something that I haven't figured out yet," I said. My father had threatened to send me to a camp where all the children of death eaters who read books by muggle authors went. I heard it was horrible and I believe it to this very day.
"That's exactly where you're going on Sunday. I suggest you get packing now, so you can have the rest of the time to have fun," he said. I nodded, still in shock that I was going to that camp.
As I walked back up the stairs I muttered, "I must have worse luck than the Baudelaire orpahans."
"WHAT WAS THAT?"
"Nothing, nothing at all." I didn't want him knowing that I'd read a single muggle book without any blood or gore, such as the Lemony Snicket books! If I ever had a halo it would probably have killed me before I turned five due to being so crooked it would serve as a cross between a noose and a guilloteen.
The door to my room had never seemed so solem as it did right then. I knew better than to keep my whole colletion at home, where Daddy Dearest could find them. Sometimes I wonder if he's the male equivalent of Joan Crawford, though I dare not say it to his face.
I had to wonder what would happen to my collection if I left all the books by Stephen King and Dean Koontz at my house. I knew my mother secretly read them and would take good care of them if I were to give them to her, but would she find a place good enough to hide them? I could take them to camp, but don't they search you to see if you have any? I hate paradoxes!
I had to cover my hand with my mouth to prevent myself from screaming when I realized that he hadn't found a Stephen King or Dean Koontz, it was an Edgar Allan Poe that my father found. Edgar Allan Poe was my favorite book! Now I have to watch it smolder in the fireplace! I guess I can blame it on my cursed foot, the one that's stepped on needles and has shifted skin . . . need I go on?
As night approached I found an ice pick on the counter and gave it an evil eye because in my mind I could just see it flying through the air and stabbing me in the throat. I'll admit it here and now, every time I see an ice pick I don't look away because a slasher could sneak up behind me and kill me with it.
After dinner was the time of the book burning. My mother put her hand on my shoulder in sympathy, "I'll see what I can do to get you a new copy," she whispered. "I'll hold all your other books for you, so that your Daddy Dearest doesn't find them while you're away."
"Thanks," I whispered back.
Author's Note: Can't you just see Draco with a Stephen King or Dean Koontz novel? Maybe I'm crazier than I thought, but who cares (I don't). Anyone out there read the Lemony Snicket books? I recently started The Wide Window. I've already read The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room, which I enjoyed.