Harry Potter Short Stories

Inner Slytherin 5

Harry gasped.

"I've been dreaming about a corridor, would that be it?"

"Undoubtedly, Mr. Python, and you should avoid that corridor like the plague," said Snape. "It will be a trap. As to what a horcrux is, it is a construction of great evil. Murder splits the soul; remorse may heal that split, but if it is done deliberately with a ritual the split off part of the soul may be placed into an inanimate or indeed animate object. If the body of the said murderer dies, his spirit may remain without being a ghost in order to occupy some other body. The diary you killed in your second year was a horcrux. Dumbledore believes that Riddle made a number of them, and that your scar is an accidental one made with the murder of your parents. His theory is that you have to permit Riddle to cast the killing curse at you, which will kill the horcrux, but that you may resume life without it, able to kill him. If it does kill you, it will be for the greater good, and he will be able to kill Riddle once the last horcrux is gone. But he wants you, I suspect, depressed and vulnerable so you will not go seeking him in a Gryffindorish sort of way until he has found the others."

Harry sat down hard, and Hermione put her arms around him.

"That makes Dumbledore hardly any better than Riddle!" she cried, indignantly.

Snape gave a half-smirk.

"Closer than you realize," he said. "At first, Riddle's aims seemed good, which is why I joined him; keep our customs and stop muggles destroying our world. He became increasingly insane, and I suspect that was the effect of splitting his soul so many ways. Not that he was sane to begin with, I think, but he sounded reasonable at first. But many joined him in the pure belief that they were fighting for the survival of all they knew. Lucius Malfoy for one. And he has become thoroughly corrupted."

"You're telling me," said Harry.

"Once, he was a kind prefect looking out for a kid who was picked on by the bullies," said Snape. "I don't know what happened to him. But Draco does not have an easy home life, whatever he pretends."

"I guess he'd be a demanding father," said Harry, grimly.

"Let us say his expectations are high," said Snape, reflecting on the punishments Draco received for sitting below a mudblood in class. "Draco is not suited to be a Death Eater, and the time may come when I ask the aid of both of you to keep him out of it."

"We don't exactly have a track record of getting along," said Hermione, dryly.

"Why would he, when he is whipped for being beaten in class by you?" said Snape. "And that is a confidence and only told to you to give you understanding of why he is as he is."

"Hell, professor, that makes Ron Weasley worse than Malfoy; he has a loving family and kind parents, even if they are smothering, and he's still a bigot," said Harry.

"Weasley is brainwashed, and as there's not much there to wash, it took particularly well," said Snape.

"What are we going to do about this?" Harry pointed to his scar. "It strikes me that maybe killing myself might be the best solution."

"No," said Snape. "Now we know he may have used Parseltongue in the ritual we might be able to research a way of removing it."

"Could we work on your dark mark first to practice?" asked Hermione. "If we can get rid of it, you won't have to go to that awful man any more."

"And we lose a spy," said Snape.

"I'm not sure it's worth having a spy at the cost of being in constant danger," said Harry. "If we can control my scar so I can watch using legilimensy ..."