Playing With Fire (Harry Potter x Lord Voldemort)

New Friends

True to his word, Voldemort had given Harry a book to read for the day. It hadn't been a book trying to persuade him to the dark side, nor a book all that dark at all. Harry would have much rathered a book like that, it would at least have been interesting. Reading the title, Harry recognized it as one of the required texts for Hogwarts. It must have been one for the sixth-year students.

The book was quite old as the spine seemed to be on its last legs. He could tell from just a quick glance that the pages were yellowed. An older edition perhaps? Achievements in Charming. It was definitely the same book, but it felt different from Hermione's copy. The one he had used to help her study for their O.W.L.S.

He remembered laughing with Hermione after she had hit him with the book. She had been so frantic, and when quizzed her on the contents she wanted to check the text herself. It rendered Harry quite useless.. 'I'm sorry, Harry! I just need to be sure it's right!' Harry had no doubt in his mind that she would receive O's in every subject. Maybe none of that mattered anymore.

Had Voldemort really wanted him to read a textbook? What could the point be, he couldn't even do magic. Maybe it was a way to torture him or rub in the fact that he was powerless here. 'Here Harry, have a book on spellwork even though you won't get to practice any of it.' It didn't make sense.

Shaking his head, the teen pulled out the chair and sat at the desk. He didn't have anything else to do, so he might as well. He hadn't really studied this book himself, only looking at it when helping Hermione. Maybe he really could learn something.

Fingering the cover, he trailed his hand along the beat-up edges. This book seemed well-loved. He opened the cover and was surprised to find the usually blank page before the actual index to be covered in a familiar scrawl. Notes. A lot of them. It was like a personal index, listing page numbers, and then other titles that Harry assumed tied together with the subject at hand. In big black letters, at the top right-hand side, read Jane Court in beautiful cursive writing. It didn't match the written notes.

She must have owned the book first before the Dark Lord got his hands on it. It was the Dark Lord's handwriting. It looked so very similar to the writing in the diary. Staring at it gave Harry some serious deja vu and he ran the pad of his fingers over the ink. Voldemort's writing was so much nicer than Harry's. His was chicken scratch, Hermione used to joke about him having the perfect hand to write doctor notes.

Voldemort had the smooth calligraphy, perfect points, not a drop of ink was out of place. He couldn't believe he was jealous of the Dark Lord's writing. He roamed his eyes over the notes, and couldn't make much sense without checking the coordinating pages. So that was how he began reading it, starting from the first notes and going page to page that way. On each page, there were more notes, updated information, or crossed out lines and re-written to be more accurate (in Voldemort's opinion of course).

He carefully read every line. Snake-man wasn't going to quiz him on this, right? He sure hoped not, as interesting as some of this was, Harry wouldn't be able to read off pages like Hermione. What if he had to write an essay? Merlin's beard, he really would drown himself in the tub.

One thing that kept catching his eye, was a title that was often written in. The name Corpus Leporem: Details of the human anatomy and their reaction to magic had been on several pages. A couple of times it had been shortened to CL, due to space constraints. Was it wrong that Harry wanted to read it? It almost sounded like a book that could be about torture.

Medical books about anatomy had gathered a large majority of their knowledge from terrible times in history when men experimented on prisoners. The tragedies had offered closer looks into biology. It was an ugly thing, yet so very interesting. Like serial killers, or other violence and horror.