Irresistible Poison DRARRY

Irresistible Poison -Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: Faithful Scars

Then shall you know the wounds invisible
That love's keen arrows make.

There were no classes on Saturday morning, and as lunchtime approached, Harry found himself curled up in a corner by the fireplace. His brow was furrowed with what some might call an intelligent frown as he tried to concentrate on the words of the book spread open in front of him, which blathered on in shameless run-on sentences with no sign of a full-stop anywhere on the horizon.

Ron had insisted on going down to the Quidditch pitch to spy on the Slytherin strategy, since they were booked for practice that morning. Ever since last night when he'd returned to the dormitory, and this morning all the way through breakfast, Harry had listened to Ron seethe about finding Malfoy lurking around the pitch 'spying'. Harry didn't try to dissuade him from his little excursion, since he wanted to talk to Hermione in private about the events that had transpired in the storage room.

Hermione was sitting next to him, absorbed in reading; at this point, when Harry had given up actually reading text and was just scanning for the phrase 'love potion', she looked up and asked, "So that's all the book said? The Latin phrase Traicit et fati litora magnus amor?"

"And that two-line verse," Harry nodded at the piece of paper lying between them, where he had written out as much as he could remember of what was legible in the spellbook (Draco had taken it back with him). "That's all there was — anything else had been ripped away."

"Hmm," said Hermione, chewing daintily on the tip of her quill, "well, I can't seem to find even one reference to this Latin phrase in any of the magical books. I've spent the last hour checking indexes, concordances, everything — it appears nowhere else."

"How about the short poem?" Harry prompted.

Hermione shook her head. "That's way too vague to be cross-referenced anywhere — A chemical emotion, falsely real; the power to hurt, and the power to heal. I figure even if I could check, it'd come up empty as well — that spellbook seems to be only place that anything specific relating to the love potion appears." She gave Harry a look. "Anything legal and orthodox that we're privy to, at least. Raid Malfoy's library and I'm sure they even offer recipes for preparing love potions in different flavours."

Harry cracked a smile. "So did you verify that what the vial contained was love potion?"

Hermione gave a half-shrug. "As far as I can tell, it certainly looks like it. If I wanted to be completely sure I'd have to test it in a Potions lab, then there's the Snape factor to consider... and it's not like I can taste the potion to see if it's the real stuff."

"No, no," Harry said quickly, vaguely wondering how he would cope if Hermione got roped in under the spell of the potion, too. "That won't be necessary — the lab testing, that is. I mean, I think I'm fairly convinced that Malfoy's telling the truth."

Hermione had been thoroughly fascinated by the account of Malfoy's knife-wound, and had made Harry tell it three times over so she could analyse exactly how the miraculous healing came about. She still couldn't explain it, and Harry had started to look rather queasy from the multiple vivid recollections of what happened.

She nodded slowly, pondering deeply. "The healing effect you had on Malfoy — it's almost unbelievable, that you have such power over him. I mean, isn't it scary? To have so much control over someone else?"

"According to Malfoy, all the love potion actually does is recreate the effect of real love — that you'd do anything for the person you're in love with, and in a way, that's how he or she has a complete hold over you." Harry paused thoughtfully. "Makes sense, really. But you're right, it's scary. I almost had an aneurysm when Malfoy stabbed himself with the knife I was holding." He shuddered.