After the laughter died down, Harry put the photograph and the diary back in the shoebox, which he then carefully placed in his trunk. He turned to see Ron and Hermione staring expectantly at the pensieve. He wanted them to see exactly what he had seen with Dumbledore, but he himself was keener to view the memories he hadn't seen yet. Hermione pointed out that maybe Dumbledore had categorized them for a reason and that they should be viewed chronologically. After a short discussion, they decided that Hermione's idea was the best route to follow.
After giving them a quick tutorial on how to enter the pensieve, Harry dug out the vial with the earliest date on it. It read "Ogden, B. 1926." Using his wand, Harry emptied the wispy contents of the vial into the pensieve. The trio grabbed each other's hands, and on the count of three dunked their heads into the basin. Harry felt the familiar falling sensation and tightened his grip on his friend's hands as he heard anxious moans escape their lips. Finally, they landed. "Sorry guys. I should have warned you about the falling part. You can't get hurt, but it still takes some getting used to."
Harry was once again at the crossroads between Great and Little Hangleton. Since he had already seen this memory, he spent most of his time watching his friend's reactions to the scene. Hermione was disgusted at the way Merope was treated by her brother and uncle. Ron was finding it very hard to believe that these filthy, inbred people were Voldemort's family, wondering aloud; "That's what people like the Malfoy's are so proud of? Of being purebloods like them? His muggle dad's no bargain either mind you... sort of a self important prat if you ask me."
Once they were back on the bedroom floor, Harry explained that Dumbledore thought it likely that Merope had used a love potion on Tom Riddle senior in order to gain his affections. "Of course!" Hermione practically shouted, "Slughorn said that in our first class last year when he was talking about Amortentia! He said it was the most dangerous potion in the room and to not underestimate the power of obsessive love! Obsessive love created Voldemort!" Ron stared at her shaking his head. "How do you do that?"
"I pay attention Ronald." Harry was riveted by what she had said. There was at least a fair chance that Slughorn was referring to Voldemort's mother when he made that comment. How much else did he know about Voldemort that he wasn't letting on? He would have to find out when he went to Hogwarts to speak with McGonagall. Hopefully Slughorn was still there. Harry further explained to them that Merope's magical powers had returned once she was out from under the tyrannical yoke of Marvolo and Morfin, and then vanished again after Tom Riddle senior had left her broken hearted. When he had finished, he could tell that Ron and Hermione were thinking of Tonks and the way she seemed to lose some of her powers two years ago when Remus wouldn't return her affections. He felt a sudden stab of guilt, which Hermione instantly picked up on. "Harry don't. Don't do this to yourself. It's not your fault." Harry knew she was right, but the undeniable fact that people he associated with seemed to end up dead didn't do anything to improve his mood.
Eager to put it from his mind for the moment, and to get to a memory he hadn't seen yet, quickly explained the contents of the vial marked "Burke, C. 1927."
Hermione was incensed that Caractus Burke had taken advantage of Merope Gaunt. "It's as much Burke's fault that Tom Riddle became Voldemort as anybody's. If Merope had gotten a fair price for that locket, she might never have died. Voldemort might have had a mother. Everything might be different if not for him." When she had finished ranting, he then opened the vial that had been marked 'Cole, A. 1928.', and emptied it's contents into the pensieve. Was this the same Mrs. Cole he had met in the pensieve on the day that Dumbledore invited Tom Riddle to Hogwarts?
Once again, the three of them dove head first into the basin. Harry looked around and immediately recognized the orphanage where Tom Riddle grew up. Sitting at a desk that contained a formidable amount of paperwork was Mrs. Cole, looking much younger than when Harry had previously seen her, the gin blossoms not yet apparent on her nose and cheeks. "Did her job drive her to drink like that? Did Riddle?" She sat, scribbling away, occasionally looking up at how much work she had left to do with a particularly defeated disposition.
Hermione and Ron looked around the drab office not quite sure why they were here. "What is this place?" Ron asked.
"It's a muggle orphanage. It's where Riddle grew up." After a moment, there was a loud knock on the door. Mrs. Cole looked up, slightly irritated at being interrupted and said; "Come". A woman slightly younger than Mrs. Cole entered. She could have been pretty, Harry noted, if she didn't look so completely miserable. Noting the amount of paperwork Mrs. Cole had on her desk, an apologetic look formed on her face.
"Sorry to bother you Annie, but there is something I need to talk to you about and it can't wait."
Mrs. Cole looked as if she knew what the woman was going to say before the words had left her lips. "What is it Martha?"
"I'd... I'd like to be transferred to a different floor."
She let out a heavy sigh and replied; "Martha, he's just a baby, you're being completely irrational."
"Maybe I am, but I'm not going into that room again. Someone else can feed him and change him. Every time I go into that room, I leave feeling like I'll never be happy again. It lasts for hours, sometimes longer. Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about either Annie. Don't tell me I'm imagining things. You've felt it too, I've heard you talk about it. I've heard the children talk about it in whispers, and no one on staff wants to go near him. You know I'm dedicated. You know I'm a hard worker. You know I love children. That's why I'm here; same as you, but there is something unnatural about that child... something evil..." Harry noticed that Martha was absent mindedly fiddling with a crucifix that hung from a chain around her neck.
Harry felt himself flying upwards as the three of them left the pensieve and landed on Ron's bedroom floor. He looked at Hermione, who seemed to be sharing his exact thought; "That's it?" He couldn't understand why Dumbledore would bother leaving him a memory depicting a woman getting creeped out by Voldemort. Yes, he was an infant at the time, but he was still Voldemort! Ron on the other hand looked pensive, which was not a look he wore often. "What is it Ron?"
"Well, it's just... I don't know if it means anything mate, but that lady's words, Martha, 'I leave feeling like I'll never be happy again', that was almost exactly what I said the day the Dementor came into our train car."
"I think she was just reacting to Voldemort Ron, what would a Dementor be doing at a muggle orphanage?"
"Dunno. It just struck me as odd though, the look on her face, what she said, it was like déjà vu or something. It was almost like being back in that train car during third year."
Harry could see Hermione's gears start to turn, but for the time being, she remained silent. "There's smoke coming out of your ears Hermione, should we press on or do you need some time?" For a moment it was as if she didn't hear him as the wheels inside her head spun furiously. Finally, she answered; "one or two more I think, then we should stop. It's getting late and this is a lot to take in."
Harry immediately recognized the next vial as a memory he had seen before. He wondered how Hermione and Ron would react to seeing Tom Riddle for the first time. He emptied the contents of the vial marked "Dumbledore, A. 1938." And couldn't help but notice how the silvery wisp seemed to sparkle as if a bit of the headmaster's personality was intermingled with the memory.
When they landed, they were outside the orphanage they had visited moments ago. Ron laughed out loud at Dumbledore's ostentatious plum colored velvet suit, until Hermione reminded him of his first set of dress robes and began to giggle. Ron scowled at her; "Did you have to bring that up Hermione?" She flashed a coy smile and gave him a peck on the cheek. "You looked adorable in those robes." Ron, placated, turned a light shade of pink. Harry merely rolled his eyes.
They followed Dumbledore across the road and into the orphanage. Once again, Harry was paying more attention to his friend's reactions than to the memory itself. Hermione was shocked at how much Annie Cole had aged in ten years time; "Only presidents and prime ministers age that quickly." she said to no one in particular. She began muttering to herself, seemingly making mental notes as Mrs. Cole described what Tom was like as a baby. When Mrs. Cole related the story of Billy Stubbs' rabbit, she added; "He was already consciously doing magic, fascinating. Levitation? Or something else?" which earned her sideways looks from the boys. Ron shuddered as his imagination grappled with what Riddle must have done to those poor children in the seaside cave. He shook himself out of it as Dumbledore and Mrs. Cole got up from their seats and made their way to Tom Riddle's room.
As they piled into the room with Albus Dumbledore, Hermione let out a gasp; "He looks exactly like his father!" she cried, looking straight at Harry. When she saw that Harry was not getting where she was heading, she continued; "That may be why he chose you and not Neville, Neville looks like his mother. You're a half blood and so is he. Neville is a pureblood. He assumed that the prophecy referred to you because you were more like him than Neville." Harry wasn't sure if Hermione was right. How could Voldemort have known what he or Neville looked like? The answer came immediately; Snape. Harry couldn't believe he could ever hate someone as much as he hated Snape, and yet it seemed that every day he found new and improved reasons to hate him even more.
Ron was slightly appalled at the amount of leeway Dumbledore gave Tom Riddle during their encounter. "How could Dumbledore not see that this kid was bad news?" he wondered aloud.
"He knew Ron; he just thought he could save him. He allowed himself to hope for the best. He didn't know how much of a maniac Riddle would turn out to be." There it was again; Albus Dumbledore's fatal flaw. He always had to believe the best of people. That character trait was at least partially responsible for Tom Riddle turning into Lord Voldemort and was almost completely responsible for his own death. How could someone so intelligent and powerful be so blind to the obvious? Harry would learn from Dumbledore's greatest mistake, he would not be so trusting.
Hermione's voice brought him back to the present. She was thinking out loud, categorizing things in her brain as she spoke. "'Tell the truth.' He feels that he's been lied to. He sees people as fundamentally dishonest. Who betrayed his trust? Paranoia... delusions of grandeur... secretive, a loner... doesn't have friends, doesn't want them... pathologically afraid of death... wants to be separate from humanity... how did he get like this? Who did this to him?" Harry couldn't believe that Hermione was speaking about Lord Voldemort as if he were a victim and as they returned to Ron's bedroom, he told her so in no uncertain terms.
Hermione had expected this. She knew that Harry would have a hard time accepting Lord Voldemort as anything but pure evil. The idea that someone or something else may have had a hand in creating Lord Voldemort out of Tom Riddle was not going to go over well, but it was something she firmly believed in. People, in her experience, were not inherently good or evil. They were at least in some part molded by the circumstances of their lives, especially their formative years.
"Harry, while it may be true that certain people are genetically predisposed to committing evil acts, it's still all about percentages. Just because Tom Riddle is arguably genetically more likely to commit an evil act, it still doesn't mean he was 'born evil'. Someone or something made him this way and it happened long before he got to Hogwarts. It may have even happened before he could walk and talk. You saw how that woman Martha spoke about him. He couldn't have been more than a year old at the time. Voldemorts and Hitlers and Stalins are made Harry, they're not born. Something happened to him in that orphanage – I'm sure of it."
"Even if you're right Hermione, what difference does it make? I've still got to kill him, how does that help me?"
"If we know why Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort, it could make all the difference in the world Harry. I'm sure that orphanage wasn't the greatest place to grow up in, but it was a damn sight better than being raised by your aunt and uncle as far as I can tell. At least the staff seemed to genuinely care about the children they were charged with. I refuse to believe that you turned out okay and he didn't because you were 'born good' and he was 'born evil'. I'm telling you Harry, something very dark happened to him at an early age, and I don't think it was maltreatment at the hands of the staff."
Harry wasn't going to win this argument right now, and he wasn't even sure it was worth arguing about. If Hermione wanted to investigate Tom Riddle's past, it couldn't hurt even if he believed it really couldn't help either. "All right Hermione, you may have a point. If you want to go down that road and see if you can dig anything up, it's okay with me. Are we up for one more, or should we call it a night?"
Ron was already reading the next vial; "'Gaunt, M. 1943.' Is that the grandfather or the uncle?" Harry didn't see the point of delving back into this memory. "It's the uncle; the grandfather was dead by then. Voldemort murdered his father and paternal grandparents with his uncle's wand, and then planted a fake memory in Morfin's mind. His uncle confessed to the murders and rotted away in Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit, his only regret being that he had lost a ring that was a Slytherin family heirloom. Tom had stolen it from him of course, that was the Horcrux that Dumbledore destroyed.
The next vial was Slughorn's memory of the night that Tom Riddle came to him with questions about Horcruxes. They decided to skip this one as well since they all knew the gist of it already.
Ron put the vial back and read the next label. "'Dumbledore, A. 1945.' What's this one about Harry?"
"Dunno, I haven't seen this one yet. Let's make it the last one, it's getting late." Harry uncorked the vial and unloaded the sparkly contents of his former headmaster's memory into the basin and the three of them took their last plunge of the evening.
When they landed, they found themselves in what could only be described as a massive stone fortress. Albus Dumbledore was about twenty yards ahead of them and he seemed to be bent over something. As they approached, they could see the headmaster's robes were covered in blood. He had deep slashes on his face and his nose had quite obviously been shattered. He was attempting a very complex healing spell on someone who must have been an auror. The wizard was choking on his own blood as his entrails spilled out onto the cold stone floor. Hermione quivered as a chill ran up her spine. Ron instinctively took her in his arms as they watched the bloody scene of death unfold in front of them. The auror took his last breath and Dumbledore did something they had never seen him do before; he swore. The three of them exchanged shocked looks as Dumbledore left the corpse where it was and kept slowly and carefully moving forward.
Harry couldn't help but notice the fierce, hardened look on the headmaster's face as they followed him, discovering more and more dead bodies the further along they went. The sparkle in his blue eyes had been replaced by a raging fire. The smile on his normally kind face replaced by a grimace of rage. There was no other word for it, Albus Dumbledore looked positively terrifying, and became even more so as the body count grew. As they turned a corner, they saw what must have been a dozen Dementors hovering over the body of a fallen wizard. "Expecto Patronum!" A dazzling white phoenix emerged from Dumbledore's wand, plunging headlong into the group of soul eaters, driving them away. Dumbledore ran to the fallen auror but it was too late. They had already performed the kiss.
Roughly fifteen feet ahead of the catatonic auror, the passageway came to a dead end. It was a sheer stone wall with an indentation in the middle roughly the size of a fist. He paused, running his fingers along the wall, eyes closed, until he found whatever it was he had been looking for. A look of disgust crossed his face as he turned back to the alive but soulless auror on the ground. He seemed to be gathering his nerve, but none of them could figure out why. After a few moments, he looked down at the auror with tears in his eyes. "I'm truly sorry Colin" he said to the man, "I wish there were another way. If you can hear me, know that it is with your death that the entire world will be saved." With a wave of his wand, Colin's chest cavity was hewn open, spraying blood onto the headmaster's face. Another flick of his wand ripped the man's still beating heart out of his chest. He guided the heart to the wall with his wand, fitting it neatly into the indentation which caused the wall to vanish.
"Avada Kedavra!" A jet of green light was headed directly for Dumbledore, but before any of them had time to react, the headmaster had disapparated as the spell took chunks of stone out of the wall next to them. They ran into the chamber where the spell had come from. There stood Dumbledore, squaring off against another wizard. Dumbledore's adversary was old and grizzled, his white hair matted with grease and dirt. His brown rotten teeth showing through what could only be described as a sick, perverted leer. His voice was low and gravelly. "Found me at last Dumbledore? Are you so keen to die like the rest of your friends?" he growled. Dumbledore fixed him with a steely gaze. "You cannot win Grindelwald. Your muggle ally shot himself in the head last night in his bunker. Perhaps you would do well to follow in his footsteps. All of those innocent people dead Grindelwald. Millions of them...women... children... why?" Dumbledore fixed the dark wizard with a look of pure loathing.
Grindelwald laughed at this, an unearthly howl emanating from his throat. "Because it was so easy. Mudbloods are animals, I have proven it. Look at how easily they are manipulated into killing each other. Plant a few suggestions that Jewish muggles are a plague upon society, then sit back and watch the show. How many millions of them did I kill without so much as raising my wand? It is you who cannot win Dumbledore. You who are too blind to see mudbloods for the reptiles they really are, you who are afraid to use an unforgivable curse and it is you who will beg for my mercy before I am through with you. Crucio!" Dumbledore flicked his wand and a brilliant white phoenix shot out of it. As the jet of light hit it, it burst into thousands of brilliant stars, blinding the dark wizard. "Expelliarmus!" Dumbledore bellowed. The spell from his wand hit Grindelwald in the chest and sent him flying into the stone wall behind him.
The wizard got to his feet enraged, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. The disarming spell had not relieved him of his wand however. "Avada Kedavra!" Once again, Dumbledore disapparated before the killing curse could hit its mark. He reappeared behind Grindelwald, with a look of cold rage on his face; "Reducto!" The spell hit Grindelwald in the upper back. Harry could hear the man's shoulder blades reduced to powder by the force of the spell. Grindelwald screamed in pain and fury. "Reducto!" The next one hit him in the leg, pulverizing his femur and dropping him to his knees. Albus Dumbledore looked like a wild animal closing in for the kill. "Reducto!" Grindelwald's pelvis shattered as he fell on his back. "Reducto!" His wand arm snapped backwards, a sliver of bone protruding from his forearm.
Dumbledore stood over his fallen adversary, his entire body shaking with rage. "It is over Grindelwald. Do not force me to kill you." The dark wizard let out a raspy laugh as he looked up in hatred. "Over? Nothing is over Dumbledore, not even if you kill me is it over. I ensured my victory seventeen years ago. You will feel my wrath for the rest of your pathetic life!" Harry tried in vain to call out to the headmaster. Grindelwald had used the time Dumbledore had given him to switch his wand into his still functioning right hand. "Avada-"
"Reducto!" The jet of light from Dumbledore's wand caught Grindelwald squarely in the head. Harry heard the sickening sound of the man's skull being squashed like a melon. Blood shot from his mouth, nostrils and ears in huge spurts, and Grindelwald fell over dead. Dumbledore poked at the body with his wand as his eyes became moist. Silent tears began to fall until the sorrow possessed him entirely. Albus Dumbledore, his body trembling with grief and rage at the countless millions of innocents who had died, fell to his knees, weeping violently.
No one spoke when they returned to the reality of the Burrow, all of them lost in their own thoughts. None of them had ever seen this side of Dumbledore before and it was both awesome and terrifying to behold at the same time. Ron, who looked as if he were on the verge of tears himself, broke the silence. "He didn't just kill him, he bloody crucified him. Why did he want us to see that? I don't want to remember him like that. I don't..."
Hermione, silent tears running down her cheeks, answered. "The man didn't leave him much choice. It was as if he wanted Dumbledore to kill him. As if Dumbledore would be tainted by it somehow. Dumbledore is not a killer Ron. That evil bastard knew what it would do to him."
"But why did we have to see it? What good does it do any of us?"
"Maybe we need to see how far we might have to go" Harry said, as if in a dream, "Maybe he wants us to be prepared for the worst."
"And maybe" Hermione offered, "he wants us to take Grindelwald's threat seriously. He said he ensured his victory seventeen years previously. That would be 1928. Tom Riddle was born on the last day of 1927. It's connected somehow. It has to be, and I'm willing to bet that if I'm right, and something happened to Riddle when he was a baby in that orphanage, it's linked back to Grindelwald."
Harry had to admit that there could be something there, however at the present moment, he was physically and emotionally exhausted, and could tell that his friends were as well. "I think that's enough for tonight." he said quietly, "I'm absolutely knackered and I don't think I'm thinking too straight right now." Hermione nodded in agreement; "I think we could all do with some sleep. We'll talk about this more in the morning." She gave Harry and Ron each a peck on the cheek, said goodnight, and exited the room.
Harry carefully put the pensieve away in his trunk along with the vials of memories. He and Ron changed silently, neither one of them wanting to discuss what they had just seen. Harry had known since his first year that Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald. He had always just assumed that the dark wizard was captured and sent to Azkaban. Before tonight, he had not thought that Dumbledore was capable of killing someone with such viciousness, and seeing the headmaster torn with grief made him suspect that Dumbledore, at least up to that moment, had not thought so either.
OOOOOOOOOOO
Draco sat across from the potions master, and listened intently as the man spoke. "...the difference Draco is that you cannot allow the Dark Lord to know that you are practicing Occlumency in his presence. The wall you have built around your mind is serviceable at keeping out other intruders, but in the case of the Dark Lord, you will need to be more cunning. You must allow him to think that he has full access to your thoughts, while at the same time denying him access to things you do not want him to see."
"How am I supposed to do that?" the boy asked, "How am I supposed to let him in and keep him out at the same time?"
"We will begin with a practical demonstration. Once you have experienced what I am talking about, it will be like flying a broom, once you learn how, you never forget. Now, I am going to enter your mind and place a suggestion in it. The suggestion will be an innocuous word, one that you will not have any emotional attachment to. I need you to start with a clear mind, as if you were practicing the kind of Occlumency you have already all but mastered. Are you ready?"
Draco nodded as he cleared his mind and gazed into Snape's eyes. The potions master counted to three and with a flick of his wand, said "Legilimens". At first Draco only saw darkness, his mind completely empty of thought. Then, quite suddenly, he saw a chair. His thoughts quickly jumped to him sitting in his favorite overstuffed armchair in the Slytherin common room as Pansy did his homework for him. Shifting again, he found that he was now leaning back in the chair, Parkinson straddling him, kissing him passionately, both of them in various states of undress. She began to kiss his way down his body as he moaned softly...
Snape pulled himself out of Draco's mind, seemingly unfazed by the intimate moment he had just witnessed. "Do you see Draco? Do you see how even harmless suggestions such as 'chair' can, by association, lead to thoughts that you do not wish to be compromised?" Draco nodded; hanging on Snape's every word. The potions master continued. "That is because your mind automatically makes certain specific associations with any and all words and concepts. When I suggested 'chair', you immediately thought of your favorite chair. Then, your mind immediately brought up memories of pleasant events that had occurred while you were sitting in that chair. You must learn how to change those associations. Now, I will use the same suggestion – the concept of 'chair'. As soon as the first image of a chair enters your consciousness, I want you to immediately picture the chair you are sitting on. Think of how that chair was made. Was it made by a wizard or a muggle? What kind of wood was used? What did the tree that the wood came from look like? What kind of forest was it in? Do you understand?" Draco nodded again, fascinated by this new information.
Once again, after Draco had cleared his mind, the potions master counted to three and entered Draco's head. As soon as Draco saw the image of a chair, he followed Snape's directions. He envisioned how the chair was made, who made it, what kind of wood it was made of, and followed the tree backwards in time until it was nothing but an acorn. Snape pulled himself from Draco's mind. "Very good Draco; you are picking this up as quickly as I had anticipated."
"But what if the suggestion is something like 'Weasley'? Am I supposed to think about how he was made? Am I supposed to picture his parents shagging?"
"Not unless you want to be put off your supper," came the potion master's reply, "I have found that deliberately making myself nauseous has not helped in learning Occlumency."
Draco laughed at Snape's crack at Ron's expense as his professor continued. "What you have just experienced will only work for suggestions that have no emotional value to you. The value in it is that you can do it on the fly with no preparation, and it will work for any inanimate object or concept that holds no emotional charge for you. The hard part is to shield your mind from emotionally charged suggestions; words like 'Potter', 'mother', 'Voldemort', or 'Snape'. This is most likely the kind of attack you can expect from Voldemort. In these instances, you must actually practice a linear train of thought over and over again until it becomes second nature. You must purposely arrange your thought patterns in such a way that your mind will instinctively follow the pattern of associations you have forced it to, leading the Legilimens down a specifically pre arranged path without him realizing it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but why wouldn't Voldemort be more subtle about it? Why would he use a highly charged suggestion, if an innocent word like 'chair' would achieve the same results? No one would think to safeguard themselves against a word like that."
"The Dark Lord's greatest weakness is that he is exceedingly arrogant. He is so confident in his power he does not believe that you, or I, or anyone else has the sufficient skills to resist him. We are going to exploit that weakness Draco. Now, as far as suggestions that you have emotional attachment to go, the first step is to picture the person that you are thinking about as if you were reading about them in a history of magic text. The point of this is to take away the personal feelings you may have about this person. To turn them into someone you have never met, just a character in a book."
"You may still have feelings of love or hatred for them, but it will cease being personal. You will still hate Weasley for example, but it will be in the same fashion as your hatred for a villain in a piece of fiction, as opposed to the personal vindictiveness you currently associate with him. Once you have mastered your emotional relation to the person in question, you will select the least incriminating memories you have of them, and arrange them in order as if you were writing a story about them."
Draco and Snape practiced in this fashion for hours. Keeping his mind blank had enabled him to recognize at once when Snape placed a suggestion in it. His ability to separate his own thoughts from the suggestions that Snape was planting was exhilarating. It was a mentally and physically draining process, but as Draco caught on, the excitement of each small success made him forget about his fatigue.
After a couple of hours, they moved from inanimate objects to human beings. They had initially started with Seamus Finnegan. Draco had a vague dislike for the boy as he was a Gryffindor, and even worse, he was Irish, but the negative feelings he had towards him were not nearly as intense as the feelings he had for someone like Potter or Granger. By the time they had taken a break to eat supper, he had successfully redirected his thoughts concerning anyone he had vague feelings of like or dislike about. He knew that the hardest part was yet to come. After supper they would begin to tackle the big guns, starting with Ginny Weasley.
Pettigrew had come downstairs during the end of their session. The hexes he had been hit with the night before ensured that he would sleep away most of the day. He looked moody and sullen, glaring at Snape with resentment through his watery eyes. "I know you two are up to something!" he whined, "You modified my memory last night! I can't remember anything that happened after I came downstairs! I'm going to go to him! I'm going to tell him!"
"Calm down before you soil yourself Wormtail." Snape replied, as calmly as if they were discussing what to make for supper, "You and I both know you will do nothing of the sort."
"How do you know I won't?"
"Unless I'm much mistaken, you have an almost uncanny sense of self preservation. I highly doubt it would allow you to subject yourself to the same experience as poor Bertha Jorkins. What do you think Draco? Do you think that Wormtail here is so dedicated to the cause that he would willingly tell the Dark Lord that I obliviated him? That he would want the Dark Lord to fry his brain like an egg to get at that memory?" Draco merely snorted, glancing at Wormtail with disdain. "Or perhaps I should notify the Dark Lord of your little secret."
"I don't have any secrets!" he shouted, "I keep nothing from the Dark Lord!"
Snape raised his eyebrows as he surveyed the rat like man cowering before him. "Nothing? Really now? Do you mean to tell me that the Dark Lord is aware of the fact that you owe a life debt to Harry Potter?"
Draco's eyes shot towards Wormtail in surprise. Pettigrew's breath caught in his throat as fear crept over his features. He began to perspire as he looked back and forth between Snape and Draco, nervously caressing the fingers on his silver hand. "Harry Potter is dead!" he squeaked.
"That may be Wormtail, but you know as well as I, that debt is still owed to someone and it must be repaid. Whether it is to Granger, or Weasley, or someone else in the Order of the Phoenix makes no difference. You are eventually magically bound to assist his enemies and work against him. I wonder how the Dark Lord would react to that bit of information, that one of his servants has no choice but to eventually betray him... No Wormtail... you will never tell a soul that there is a hidden memory concerning me somewhere in your brain, not if you want to live. Now, if you would please be so kind as to start supper, Draco and I are famished."