Snake Charmer // Draco x Reader

Chapter 88- The Union Of Bill and Fleur

After dinner and a rushed birthday celebration, Harry drags Hermione and I up to his and Ron's room. As we sit down Hermione raises her wand. "Muffliato," she whispers, waving her wand to keep the others in the house from hearing us.

"Thought you didn't approve of that spell?" Ron says.

"Times change," Hermione says, "Now, show us that Deluminator." Ron obliges at once. Holding it up in front of him, he clicks it. The solitary lamp we lit went out at once.

"The thing is," whispers Hermione through the dark, "we could have achieved that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder." There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flys back to the ceiling and illuminates us all once more.

"Still, it's cool," Ron says, a little defensively. "And from what they said, Dumbledore invented it himself!"

"I know, but surely he wouldn't have singled you out in his will just to help us turn out the lights!"

"It has to do more," I say to them, "it might become more useful once we leave."

"D'you think he knew the Ministry would confiscate his will and examine everything he'd left us?" Harry asks.

"Definitely," Hermione says. "He couldn't tell us in the will why he was leaving us these things, but that still doesn't explain..."

"...why he couldn't have given us a hint when he was alive?" Ron says.

"Well, exactly," Hermione says, flicking through The Tales of Beedle the Bard. "If these things are important enough to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you'd think he'd have let us know why... unless he thought it was obvious?"

"Thought wrong, then, didn't he?" Ron says. "I always said he was mental. Brilliant and everything, but cracked. Leaving Harry an old Snitch—what the hell was that about?"

"I've no idea," Hermione says. "When Scrimgeour made you take it, Harry, I was so sure that something was going to happen!"

"Yeah, well," Harry says, his pulse quickening as he raises the Snitch in his fingers. "I wasn't going to try too hard in front of Scrimgeour, was I?"

"What do you mean?" asks Hermione.

"The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match?" Harry says. "Don't you remember?" I smirk at him.

"The snitch from your first match. The one you nearly swallowed," I say to them.

"Exactly," Harry says. He pops it into his mouth. It did not open. Frustration and bitter disappointment fills the group.

"Writing! There's writing on it, quick, look!" Hermione yells.

He nearly drops the Snitch in surprise and excitement. Hermione was quite right. Engraved upon the smooth golden surface, where seconds before there had been nothing, were five words written in the thin, slanting handwriting.

"I open at the close."

"What?" I ask.

"'I open at the close...' What's that supposed to mean? I open at the close... at the close... I open at the close..."

"And the sword," Ron says finally, "Why did he want Harry to have the sword?"

"And why couldn't he just have told me?" Harry says quietly. "It was there, it was right there on the wall of his office during all our talks last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn't he just give it to me then?"

"And as for this book," Hermione says, "The Tales of Beedle the Bard... I've never even heard of them."

"You've never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?" Ron says incredulously. "You're kidding, right?"