Harry Potter and the Joke that Killed: Chapter Nineteen
A/N: Hey, I changed my title from "Harry Potter and the Joke that Killed" to "Harry Potter and the Rise of Lord Voldemort" because the original title didn't make any sense. But I feel like "The Rise of Lord Voldemort" is NOT a very original or catchy title, so pleeeeeeaaaase, if you have any good title ideas for me, jus leave them in a review. Thanks bundles!!
Oops, and yah, from now on, this means thoughts.
*authoress is having a kickin' dream about owning Harry Potter and being rich and famous and British. Suddenly, a bunch of lawyers break into her house, wake her up with an oversized ACME alarm clock, tip their hats, and leave.* Jeez, I can't even DREAM about owning Harry Potter!!!
* * * * *
Harry, Ron, and Hermione felt like that evening couldn't come sooner. Lunch and dinner were filled with cooing imitations of Ron and Parvati's very brief love affair, and Professor Binns' droning about Hector the Horrid in History of Magic was largely accompanied by taunting sniggers from the students. So, needless to say, Ron was not a very happy camper when the three friends were sitting nonchalantly in the common room, waiting for it to clear out. The fuming redhead even hollered at a group of third-years who seemed to be enjoying lolling around the common room.
"HONESTLY, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR HAMSTER, GIRL!!! GET UP TO BED ALREADY!!" Ron roared.
"B-but it's only seven-thirty." the girl protested in a frightened voice.
"GO!!!" bellowed Ron, making the shy girl stuff her new pet inside its cage with a squeak, and scamper out the portrait hole.
Harry could tell that Hermione was on the brink of reprimanding their friend, but he jarred her in the ribs with his elbow to stop her; now was not the time.
"So. erm, you about ready? The staff meeting starts in a couple of minutes." Hermione remarked casually instead.
"Sure!" Ron replied brightly, doing an about face from his previous rage.
Together they hiked down the stairs, and were milling around uncomfortably in the entrance hall when the bell-like jingling sounded, signaling the commencement of the staff meeting. Their covert operation had begun.
Stealthily, Harry, Ron, and Hermione gathered under Harry's invisibility cloak and stole down the damp staircase towards the dungeon, praying to God that they didn't run into any Slytherins. But, they didn't, and in no time at all they were standing in front of Professor Snape's office. The last time Harry and Ron were here, they'd been in serious trouble. This factor didn't help the feeling of foreboding in their stomachs.
"All right, well. I guess this is the part when we go inside." Hermione stated, and bravely reached out and tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
Harry thought he knew exactly how Egyptologists felt as they entered a possibly cursed tomb as the group walked into the Potions Master's office. It was sparsely decorated, cold and organized with a soft greenish glow coming from the specimens in jars placed around the room. The smell alone made Harry's stomach lurch.
"Let's begin at the desk." suggested Hermione, taking charge as always. She threw off the cloak, her materializing out of thin air as she did so. Harry and Ron followed suit, walking reverently over to the formidable desk and staring at it. Sighing deeply, Harry was the first one to touch anything. He picked up a paperweight that was weighing down a bunch of graded papers. Released from what bound them, they fluttered in a breeze from some indeterminable source.
The fear was broken now, and the three wandered around the office at will, rummaging through anything of interest. Ron took over the large file cabinet in a corner, Harry investigated the rest of the desk, and Hermione took over the cabinets lining one wall.
The first thing that caught Harry's attention was a large wizard's photograph in an ornate frame sitting in a dominant position on Snape's desk. Picking it up to examine it further, Harry noticed that it was of a much younger Snape - twenty, even twenty-five years ago perhaps. His nose looked as if it had only been broken three times then, rather than the current twelve. Snape was surrounded by other cloaked figures - women, men, and some that Harry couldn't quite discern their gender. But the most startling thing about the picture was that all the people in it had one of their sleeves rolled up and were displaying a very infamous tattoo - the Dark Mark.
"Hey, you guys," Harry whispered to his other partners in crime. "I think this is something you should take a look at." Ron and Hermione quickly rushed over.
"What, what is it?" Hermione asked apprehensively. Harry shoved the photo at his friends, a sick feeling building inside him. Was Severus Snape, the one he had defended and thought was saving his life, still a Death Eater? And if not, then why did he have that picture fondly put on display on his desk?
"These people. they're. they're." Ron mumbled.
"Servants of Voldemort." Harry finished. His friends shuddered at the mention of The Name.
"Why?" whispered Hermione.
"D'you think it's a family portrait or something?" Ron guessed, disbelieving.
Harry snorted. "Maybe if Snape's got ten siblings his same age. but look, they're all different looking. This girl here's got curly brown hair, and the guy next to her's blonde."
"Oh no," Hermione groaned, pointing to the blonde Harry just acknowledged. "Look at that face. it's Lucius Malfoy."
And indeed it was. In fact, with the picture being taken when the youngsters in the group looked about seventeen, Lucius closely resembled his son, Draco. That bleached hair, that determined jawline - but Lucius's face somehow looked colder than Draco's, if that was possible. His eyes were meaner, more unpredictable. next to him, his son looked downright buoyant.
Glancing around for more familiar faces in the picture, a portly figure caught Harry's eye. The small, watery eyes and weak, mouselike nose. it was Peter Pettigrew. Harry moaned.
"What, what is it?" Hermione asked, worried.
Harry couldn't speak, he just pointed a shaking finger at the portly figure. Judging by Hermione's sharp intake of breath, she saw it too. "Wormtail." she stated, and Ron's face now copied that of his friends.
Harry was shaking his head. "I - I can't believe it. He was a Death Eater then. this can't be more than a year after graduation, when he was supposedly my dad's best friend. And he was a Death Eater."
Ron set a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder, and Hermione just stared at him, her mouth gaping like that of a fish, not knowing what to say. In the end, she just stood there, letting the silence console Harry.
Suddenly, Harry's hands faltered and the picture fell. With a deafening crack, it shattered into a million pieces, and the faces in the photograph looked even surlier than before. "Harry!" Hermione scolded in spite of herself, and repaired the glass with a flick of her wand, setting it back in its place on Snape's desk.
"C'mon. we haven't got much time." Ron prodded, and the three went back to work. Harry rifled through his things with a vengeance, not caring if a few papers were torn or a few ink bottles upset in the process. Angry thoughts had run away with his brain. Snape was still a Death Eater.
You don't know that. the saintly angel reminded him as it popped up on his shoulder.
Suddenly, the saintly angel was shot with a cannon from Harry's other shoulder. Snape's a git, the maniacal demon retorted. He's always hated you, Harry, and he hated your father too. Said so himself.
Harry was so tempted to agree with the little demonic thing, because he was highly inclined to hate Snape right now. But his now quite ruffled angel got in one more argument before he was wrestled to the ground and silenced by his rival. Remember what Callahan said? DON'T JUDGE!!
Hell, Callahan's a Death Eater too. the demon added, before running the saint off with his pitchfork.
My subconscious is even weirder than I am. Harry thought, getting back to his snooping duties.
It was ten minutes later that Hermione's wand went off. She had set it on a timer to buzz when time was almost up, to give them sufficient time to scurry away to an inconspicuous spot and act that they weren't doing anything wrong. "Oh no!" she yelped in alarm.
"Guess we didn't come up with anything, eh?" Ron questioned.
"No, ugh, I'm so close to something, I can feel it! If only I had a few more minutes." Hermione persisted.
"Suit yourself Hermione, but if we get busted, you put us under the Imperious Curse and forced us to do this." Ron replied.
Hermione just kept ruffling through things a mile a minute, breathing heavily and every once and a while letting out a squeal of frustration. Finally, after a very anxious two minutes, Hermione must've come upon what she had been looking for. "A-ha!" she shrieked, tapping it with her wand and copying it instantly.
"C'mon, I've got it, let's get out of here before we're expelled!" Hermione urged, grabbing both boys by the arm and running out the door.
"What, what is it?" Harry asked curiously.
"Shh, not right now!" shushed Hermione, checking around the corner using a "Coast Clear" spell. The hall must've been vacant, because she led them running pell-mell down it, until they were standing, chests heaving, in front of the dungeon stairs.
"I'll go up first and see if anyone's there. It's much less conspicuous if I'm alone." Ron volunteered.
"Don't get caught!" Hermione hissed, giving his robes a tug of warning before releasing them.
"Eh, I can always say I'm disoriented from the Love Potion or something." Ron answered with a wink before disappearing around the bend. A couple of seconds of pregnant silence went by before the redhead returned.
"Coast is clear, not a teacher in sight." he assured, and the three crowded once more under the invisibility cloak and exited the dungeons at last.
Harry hurried the two of them off to Gryffindor tower, tugging the cloak as some sort of leash to get them to walk faster. But Hermione was worried that they were making too much noise, and Ron was just plain lazy as always, so Harry had to settle for walking slowly and cautiously, mind whirring impatiently.
What was it that Hermione had found, anyways? A signed confession saying that Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater? A birth certificate showing his phony citizenship? A dirty magazine? Harry could only imagine.
After a long and excruciating walk up the stairs and slinking by the Fat Lady, who was snoozing softly so she didn't notice that the voice uttering the password didn't have a body, they were in the common room at last. Harry threw the cloak off instantly and begged Hermione to tell him what she had discovered. "C'mon 'Mione, I've waited like a good little boy, tell us what it is!" he whined.
But, of course, Hermione just got that incredibly patient and all- knowing demeanor that she displayed when she was withholding important information. "Let's sit closer to the fire, those dungeons are certainly cold, aren't they?" she asked casually, strolling over to the chairs.
Harry rushed over and sat in a rocking chair, watching while Hermione fluffed her cushions with leisure. Ron looked amused by the whole thing, and let out an immense yawn before lying facedown on the floor. It was, after all, past eight o'clock on a Friday.
"Well," Hermione began, smoothing her robes. Even Harry's saintly angel was becoming agitated. "I was searching through Snape's file cabinet, as you know -"
"Yes yes, we know that, now please go on!" burst Harry.
Hermione sighed in a wounded way before continuing. "Anyways, so I was sifting through his papers when I spied a system. Most of his papers seemed just old and graded, but none seemed like assignments, and they all had a tiny squiggle in the corner of the page. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the squiggle was actually a snake."
After a long pause, Ron snorted. "So?" he asked.
"So, the snake is one of You-Know-Who's symbols!" Hermione answered, shaking her head.
"It's also a very well-known reptile, and the Slytherin mascot." Ron argued.
Hermione groaned. "But it was the snake that's used in my Ancient Runes class to symbolize evil or dark magic. It's very old, not even the most advanced wizard knows of it." Harry and Ron weren't about to ask how Hermione learned of it, if it was so hard to come by.
"Alright, so they all had a snake on 'em. Big whoop." Harry pushed.
Hermione shook her head violently. "No, but you see, to perform a Coding Deceit spell, all the documents you're disguising have to have a certain symbol in common!"
"So the diddly-ma-joodle means it was coded?" inquired Ron.
"Uh-huh. So anyways, I cast the countercharm and took a stab at a few test passwords before I came upon the right one." Hermione continued.
Harry leaned forward on his knees; this was getting interesting. "What was it?"
"Erm, well. it's quite obvious, really." said Hermione, looking down at her hands.
"What? Slytherin? Severus? Stupid greasy git, what?" Ron guessed.
Hermione shook her head. "No, no. it's silly actually, but I can't bring myself to say the name."
"Oh, Voldemort." Harry stated. Both Ron and Hermione jumped.
"Jeez, give me a little warning before you go and do that again." pleaded Ron, clutching his chest like the name of the Dark Lord alone had given him a coronary.
"Sorry." Harry apologized.
"Well, yeah, that was the password," Hermione confirmed. "After I said it -"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you can say it to a piece of paper, but you can't say it to us?"
"Naturally." Ron replied.
Hermione went on like the boys hadn't been talking. "After I said it, the content of the papers totally changed. They were no longer simple reports on Sleeping Draughts or Hair Growth Potions, but secret documents that would be devastating if they fell into the wrong hands."
"Secret plans about Hogwarts, or the Ministry?" Harry gasped.
"No no no, I mean devastating if they fell into our hands." Hermione corrected.
The boy's eyes grew large, then dropped all of a sudden with confusion. "Wait, they were secret plans about Death Eaters?" Ron asked.
Hermione nodded with satisfaction. "Yup, and that's not it."
"What - you don't mean Vol.. You-Know-Who?" asked Harry, sparing Ron the apparently painful name.
"The one and only. Snape had detailed documents about curses and hideouts, even spells You-Know-Who used, including the one that brought him back to life. The one you were a part of, Harry." Hermione explained.
Harry gaped at her. "Wha-what did it say?"
"I've got it right here." Hermione replied, handing the boys the much coveted paper. It was old and ragged, and the writing was messy and only brief notes were given.
**
Revestation Potion
OLD MAGIC. Bone of father, flesh of servant, blood of enemy. Revives Death Child full strength.
Year long incubation, vulnerable IN THAT PERIOD.
After incubation, unstoppable.
**
Harry held the parchment delicately, even though it was an indestructible copy. Since the paper was only written in fragmented quips, it took Harry a while to process it all.
He remembered those ingredients only too clearly. for a full minute, he let himself relive it all over again.
That voice ordering "kill the spare," and Cedric's body falling so limply to the ground.
What looked like an infant wrapped lovingly inside Pettigrew's robes. But no mere baby had such eyes, such evil possessed in it's being. Harry guessed that's what the words 'Death Child' written on the parchment meant.
Flesh of servant. Wormtail cutting off his own hand. His cries of pain, enticing Harry to pity him even though he was the one who murdered his parents.
Blood of enemy. Harry himself contributing to the uprising of the darkest wizard known to mankind. Oh, that was the worst part. To know that his own blood, his mere existence, had now guaranteed the demise of thousands of strangers around the world.
STOP!! Harry ordered himself, locking the skeletons back in the closet of his mind to haunt him another day. Right now there were more pressing matters.
What did it mean, 'year long incubation?' And those highlighted words, 'vulnerable IN THAT PERIOD.' Snape obviously thought that was a very pertinent part of the potion. But what was Harry going to do with it?
Did it mean that Voldemort was weak for a full year after the potion took affect, that he could be destroyed only in that 'incubation period,' as Snape had put it? What was all this time being wasted then, all these months that the Dark Lord could have been hunted down and stopped, preventing so much lost innocence?
And the last part of the document. 'after incubation, unstoppable.' No, oh no. that meant that Voldemort was indomitable after one year, after this incubation period of being as conquerable as a child.
"We've got some work to do." Harry murmured to Ron and Hermione.
* * * * *
A/N: Ah, and the snooping chappie is complete. Enjoyed it, did you? Begging for more, are you? Wanting to flame me for writing such a horrible story, are you???
Eh, two out of three ain't bad. ;)
Love from,
Saranimal
HaloGal5@aol.com (WRITE ME!!!!! pweese??)
A/N: Hey, I changed my title from "Harry Potter and the Joke that Killed" to "Harry Potter and the Rise of Lord Voldemort" because the original title didn't make any sense. But I feel like "The Rise of Lord Voldemort" is NOT a very original or catchy title, so pleeeeeeaaaase, if you have any good title ideas for me, jus leave them in a review. Thanks bundles!!
Oops, and yah, from now on, this means thoughts.
*authoress is having a kickin' dream about owning Harry Potter and being rich and famous and British. Suddenly, a bunch of lawyers break into her house, wake her up with an oversized ACME alarm clock, tip their hats, and leave.* Jeez, I can't even DREAM about owning Harry Potter!!!
* * * * *
Harry, Ron, and Hermione felt like that evening couldn't come sooner. Lunch and dinner were filled with cooing imitations of Ron and Parvati's very brief love affair, and Professor Binns' droning about Hector the Horrid in History of Magic was largely accompanied by taunting sniggers from the students. So, needless to say, Ron was not a very happy camper when the three friends were sitting nonchalantly in the common room, waiting for it to clear out. The fuming redhead even hollered at a group of third-years who seemed to be enjoying lolling around the common room.
"HONESTLY, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR HAMSTER, GIRL!!! GET UP TO BED ALREADY!!" Ron roared.
"B-but it's only seven-thirty." the girl protested in a frightened voice.
"GO!!!" bellowed Ron, making the shy girl stuff her new pet inside its cage with a squeak, and scamper out the portrait hole.
Harry could tell that Hermione was on the brink of reprimanding their friend, but he jarred her in the ribs with his elbow to stop her; now was not the time.
"So. erm, you about ready? The staff meeting starts in a couple of minutes." Hermione remarked casually instead.
"Sure!" Ron replied brightly, doing an about face from his previous rage.
Together they hiked down the stairs, and were milling around uncomfortably in the entrance hall when the bell-like jingling sounded, signaling the commencement of the staff meeting. Their covert operation had begun.
Stealthily, Harry, Ron, and Hermione gathered under Harry's invisibility cloak and stole down the damp staircase towards the dungeon, praying to God that they didn't run into any Slytherins. But, they didn't, and in no time at all they were standing in front of Professor Snape's office. The last time Harry and Ron were here, they'd been in serious trouble. This factor didn't help the feeling of foreboding in their stomachs.
"All right, well. I guess this is the part when we go inside." Hermione stated, and bravely reached out and tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
Harry thought he knew exactly how Egyptologists felt as they entered a possibly cursed tomb as the group walked into the Potions Master's office. It was sparsely decorated, cold and organized with a soft greenish glow coming from the specimens in jars placed around the room. The smell alone made Harry's stomach lurch.
"Let's begin at the desk." suggested Hermione, taking charge as always. She threw off the cloak, her materializing out of thin air as she did so. Harry and Ron followed suit, walking reverently over to the formidable desk and staring at it. Sighing deeply, Harry was the first one to touch anything. He picked up a paperweight that was weighing down a bunch of graded papers. Released from what bound them, they fluttered in a breeze from some indeterminable source.
The fear was broken now, and the three wandered around the office at will, rummaging through anything of interest. Ron took over the large file cabinet in a corner, Harry investigated the rest of the desk, and Hermione took over the cabinets lining one wall.
The first thing that caught Harry's attention was a large wizard's photograph in an ornate frame sitting in a dominant position on Snape's desk. Picking it up to examine it further, Harry noticed that it was of a much younger Snape - twenty, even twenty-five years ago perhaps. His nose looked as if it had only been broken three times then, rather than the current twelve. Snape was surrounded by other cloaked figures - women, men, and some that Harry couldn't quite discern their gender. But the most startling thing about the picture was that all the people in it had one of their sleeves rolled up and were displaying a very infamous tattoo - the Dark Mark.
"Hey, you guys," Harry whispered to his other partners in crime. "I think this is something you should take a look at." Ron and Hermione quickly rushed over.
"What, what is it?" Hermione asked apprehensively. Harry shoved the photo at his friends, a sick feeling building inside him. Was Severus Snape, the one he had defended and thought was saving his life, still a Death Eater? And if not, then why did he have that picture fondly put on display on his desk?
"These people. they're. they're." Ron mumbled.
"Servants of Voldemort." Harry finished. His friends shuddered at the mention of The Name.
"Why?" whispered Hermione.
"D'you think it's a family portrait or something?" Ron guessed, disbelieving.
Harry snorted. "Maybe if Snape's got ten siblings his same age. but look, they're all different looking. This girl here's got curly brown hair, and the guy next to her's blonde."
"Oh no," Hermione groaned, pointing to the blonde Harry just acknowledged. "Look at that face. it's Lucius Malfoy."
And indeed it was. In fact, with the picture being taken when the youngsters in the group looked about seventeen, Lucius closely resembled his son, Draco. That bleached hair, that determined jawline - but Lucius's face somehow looked colder than Draco's, if that was possible. His eyes were meaner, more unpredictable. next to him, his son looked downright buoyant.
Glancing around for more familiar faces in the picture, a portly figure caught Harry's eye. The small, watery eyes and weak, mouselike nose. it was Peter Pettigrew. Harry moaned.
"What, what is it?" Hermione asked, worried.
Harry couldn't speak, he just pointed a shaking finger at the portly figure. Judging by Hermione's sharp intake of breath, she saw it too. "Wormtail." she stated, and Ron's face now copied that of his friends.
Harry was shaking his head. "I - I can't believe it. He was a Death Eater then. this can't be more than a year after graduation, when he was supposedly my dad's best friend. And he was a Death Eater."
Ron set a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder, and Hermione just stared at him, her mouth gaping like that of a fish, not knowing what to say. In the end, she just stood there, letting the silence console Harry.
Suddenly, Harry's hands faltered and the picture fell. With a deafening crack, it shattered into a million pieces, and the faces in the photograph looked even surlier than before. "Harry!" Hermione scolded in spite of herself, and repaired the glass with a flick of her wand, setting it back in its place on Snape's desk.
"C'mon. we haven't got much time." Ron prodded, and the three went back to work. Harry rifled through his things with a vengeance, not caring if a few papers were torn or a few ink bottles upset in the process. Angry thoughts had run away with his brain. Snape was still a Death Eater.
You don't know that. the saintly angel reminded him as it popped up on his shoulder.
Suddenly, the saintly angel was shot with a cannon from Harry's other shoulder. Snape's a git, the maniacal demon retorted. He's always hated you, Harry, and he hated your father too. Said so himself.
Harry was so tempted to agree with the little demonic thing, because he was highly inclined to hate Snape right now. But his now quite ruffled angel got in one more argument before he was wrestled to the ground and silenced by his rival. Remember what Callahan said? DON'T JUDGE!!
Hell, Callahan's a Death Eater too. the demon added, before running the saint off with his pitchfork.
My subconscious is even weirder than I am. Harry thought, getting back to his snooping duties.
It was ten minutes later that Hermione's wand went off. She had set it on a timer to buzz when time was almost up, to give them sufficient time to scurry away to an inconspicuous spot and act that they weren't doing anything wrong. "Oh no!" she yelped in alarm.
"Guess we didn't come up with anything, eh?" Ron questioned.
"No, ugh, I'm so close to something, I can feel it! If only I had a few more minutes." Hermione persisted.
"Suit yourself Hermione, but if we get busted, you put us under the Imperious Curse and forced us to do this." Ron replied.
Hermione just kept ruffling through things a mile a minute, breathing heavily and every once and a while letting out a squeal of frustration. Finally, after a very anxious two minutes, Hermione must've come upon what she had been looking for. "A-ha!" she shrieked, tapping it with her wand and copying it instantly.
"C'mon, I've got it, let's get out of here before we're expelled!" Hermione urged, grabbing both boys by the arm and running out the door.
"What, what is it?" Harry asked curiously.
"Shh, not right now!" shushed Hermione, checking around the corner using a "Coast Clear" spell. The hall must've been vacant, because she led them running pell-mell down it, until they were standing, chests heaving, in front of the dungeon stairs.
"I'll go up first and see if anyone's there. It's much less conspicuous if I'm alone." Ron volunteered.
"Don't get caught!" Hermione hissed, giving his robes a tug of warning before releasing them.
"Eh, I can always say I'm disoriented from the Love Potion or something." Ron answered with a wink before disappearing around the bend. A couple of seconds of pregnant silence went by before the redhead returned.
"Coast is clear, not a teacher in sight." he assured, and the three crowded once more under the invisibility cloak and exited the dungeons at last.
Harry hurried the two of them off to Gryffindor tower, tugging the cloak as some sort of leash to get them to walk faster. But Hermione was worried that they were making too much noise, and Ron was just plain lazy as always, so Harry had to settle for walking slowly and cautiously, mind whirring impatiently.
What was it that Hermione had found, anyways? A signed confession saying that Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater? A birth certificate showing his phony citizenship? A dirty magazine? Harry could only imagine.
After a long and excruciating walk up the stairs and slinking by the Fat Lady, who was snoozing softly so she didn't notice that the voice uttering the password didn't have a body, they were in the common room at last. Harry threw the cloak off instantly and begged Hermione to tell him what she had discovered. "C'mon 'Mione, I've waited like a good little boy, tell us what it is!" he whined.
But, of course, Hermione just got that incredibly patient and all- knowing demeanor that she displayed when she was withholding important information. "Let's sit closer to the fire, those dungeons are certainly cold, aren't they?" she asked casually, strolling over to the chairs.
Harry rushed over and sat in a rocking chair, watching while Hermione fluffed her cushions with leisure. Ron looked amused by the whole thing, and let out an immense yawn before lying facedown on the floor. It was, after all, past eight o'clock on a Friday.
"Well," Hermione began, smoothing her robes. Even Harry's saintly angel was becoming agitated. "I was searching through Snape's file cabinet, as you know -"
"Yes yes, we know that, now please go on!" burst Harry.
Hermione sighed in a wounded way before continuing. "Anyways, so I was sifting through his papers when I spied a system. Most of his papers seemed just old and graded, but none seemed like assignments, and they all had a tiny squiggle in the corner of the page. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the squiggle was actually a snake."
After a long pause, Ron snorted. "So?" he asked.
"So, the snake is one of You-Know-Who's symbols!" Hermione answered, shaking her head.
"It's also a very well-known reptile, and the Slytherin mascot." Ron argued.
Hermione groaned. "But it was the snake that's used in my Ancient Runes class to symbolize evil or dark magic. It's very old, not even the most advanced wizard knows of it." Harry and Ron weren't about to ask how Hermione learned of it, if it was so hard to come by.
"Alright, so they all had a snake on 'em. Big whoop." Harry pushed.
Hermione shook her head violently. "No, but you see, to perform a Coding Deceit spell, all the documents you're disguising have to have a certain symbol in common!"
"So the diddly-ma-joodle means it was coded?" inquired Ron.
"Uh-huh. So anyways, I cast the countercharm and took a stab at a few test passwords before I came upon the right one." Hermione continued.
Harry leaned forward on his knees; this was getting interesting. "What was it?"
"Erm, well. it's quite obvious, really." said Hermione, looking down at her hands.
"What? Slytherin? Severus? Stupid greasy git, what?" Ron guessed.
Hermione shook her head. "No, no. it's silly actually, but I can't bring myself to say the name."
"Oh, Voldemort." Harry stated. Both Ron and Hermione jumped.
"Jeez, give me a little warning before you go and do that again." pleaded Ron, clutching his chest like the name of the Dark Lord alone had given him a coronary.
"Sorry." Harry apologized.
"Well, yeah, that was the password," Hermione confirmed. "After I said it -"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, so you can say it to a piece of paper, but you can't say it to us?"
"Naturally." Ron replied.
Hermione went on like the boys hadn't been talking. "After I said it, the content of the papers totally changed. They were no longer simple reports on Sleeping Draughts or Hair Growth Potions, but secret documents that would be devastating if they fell into the wrong hands."
"Secret plans about Hogwarts, or the Ministry?" Harry gasped.
"No no no, I mean devastating if they fell into our hands." Hermione corrected.
The boy's eyes grew large, then dropped all of a sudden with confusion. "Wait, they were secret plans about Death Eaters?" Ron asked.
Hermione nodded with satisfaction. "Yup, and that's not it."
"What - you don't mean Vol.. You-Know-Who?" asked Harry, sparing Ron the apparently painful name.
"The one and only. Snape had detailed documents about curses and hideouts, even spells You-Know-Who used, including the one that brought him back to life. The one you were a part of, Harry." Hermione explained.
Harry gaped at her. "Wha-what did it say?"
"I've got it right here." Hermione replied, handing the boys the much coveted paper. It was old and ragged, and the writing was messy and only brief notes were given.
**
Revestation Potion
OLD MAGIC. Bone of father, flesh of servant, blood of enemy. Revives Death Child full strength.
Year long incubation, vulnerable IN THAT PERIOD.
After incubation, unstoppable.
**
Harry held the parchment delicately, even though it was an indestructible copy. Since the paper was only written in fragmented quips, it took Harry a while to process it all.
He remembered those ingredients only too clearly. for a full minute, he let himself relive it all over again.
That voice ordering "kill the spare," and Cedric's body falling so limply to the ground.
What looked like an infant wrapped lovingly inside Pettigrew's robes. But no mere baby had such eyes, such evil possessed in it's being. Harry guessed that's what the words 'Death Child' written on the parchment meant.
Flesh of servant. Wormtail cutting off his own hand. His cries of pain, enticing Harry to pity him even though he was the one who murdered his parents.
Blood of enemy. Harry himself contributing to the uprising of the darkest wizard known to mankind. Oh, that was the worst part. To know that his own blood, his mere existence, had now guaranteed the demise of thousands of strangers around the world.
STOP!! Harry ordered himself, locking the skeletons back in the closet of his mind to haunt him another day. Right now there were more pressing matters.
What did it mean, 'year long incubation?' And those highlighted words, 'vulnerable IN THAT PERIOD.' Snape obviously thought that was a very pertinent part of the potion. But what was Harry going to do with it?
Did it mean that Voldemort was weak for a full year after the potion took affect, that he could be destroyed only in that 'incubation period,' as Snape had put it? What was all this time being wasted then, all these months that the Dark Lord could have been hunted down and stopped, preventing so much lost innocence?
And the last part of the document. 'after incubation, unstoppable.' No, oh no. that meant that Voldemort was indomitable after one year, after this incubation period of being as conquerable as a child.
"We've got some work to do." Harry murmured to Ron and Hermione.
* * * * *
A/N: Ah, and the snooping chappie is complete. Enjoyed it, did you? Begging for more, are you? Wanting to flame me for writing such a horrible story, are you???
Eh, two out of three ain't bad. ;)
Love from,
Saranimal
HaloGal5@aol.com (WRITE ME!!!!! pweese??)