Harry potter and the descent into darkness

Chapter 16

Harry stuck his head through the study's door and glanced inside. Voldemort was sitting in his chair, but it wasn't behind the desk where it would normally be. Instead it was to the side of the desk, and he was working away on a very large piece of parchment. He was hunched over it, and scratching away at certain areas with a quill, and appeared quite focused on his work.

"Oh... excuse me, I'm sorry," Harry said quietly. Voldemort's head turned infinitesimally to one side so he could better see Harry out of his peripheral vision.

"Yes, Potter?"

"I got the items out of the Room of Requirement."

"Place them against the wall by the door," Voldemort said without looking up, as he continued on his work.

Harry nodded his head and slipped through the door, into the room. From there he could finally tell that the large sheet of parchment on Voldemort's desk was actually a topographical map. From what little he could see, he suspected it was a map of the manor grounds and surrounding area. He quickly focused on his task, crouched down, slipped his trunk from his pocket, enlarged it, and began pulling the items out of it while neatly stacking them in a pile.

The process took about ten minutes until he was sure he had removed every one of the strange objects, trinkets, and books he had pulled from the box in the hidden room. He sighed, closed the trunk, shrunk it, slid it back into his pocket, and stood to his feet. "They're all here. I'll just head back to Hogwarts, I don't want to bother you."

"Wait," Voldemort's voice called out through the thick silence and Harry froze. "I will be done shortly and I have a few things that need to be dealt with concerning you."

Harry blinked. "Alright. Where shall I wait?"

Voldemort's left hand rose and indicated that Harry should approach, so he did. "Sit. I am working on planning the manor's new wards. It will take me another twenty minutes to reach an appropriate stopping point. You will read this," he paused and dug a book out of one of the desk drawers, "until I am ready."

Harry quickly accepted the offered book before looking around, searching for a place to sit. There weren't any other chairs in the room at the moment. He wondered where the one he sat in the last time he was here had gone, but Voldemort, once again, was engrossed in his work, and Harry didn't want to bother him. Harry's mind quickly settled on the floor. The idea didn't really bother him any, the question was where on the floor to sit.

He eyed the open space between the door and the desk, but his body was yearning to be closer to Voldemort. Closer to the man's magic, and the pulsing invisible waves of his magic. Harry's eyes lulled closed a tiny bit as he lost his senses in the feel of the magic and found himself sitting down in a smooth motion, directly beside Voldemort's chair. He opened his eyes and furtively darted them up to see if the Dark Lord had watched him sit, and if there appeared to be any disapproval in his choice of spots. There was none. Voldemort was still engrossed in his work.

He sat cross-legged and hunched over the book. It was on creating false auras and false affinity signatures. Deceiving the Inner Senses, and other detection spells by Barat Facen.

Harry began to open the book and saw there was a small bookmark about half-way through the book. The chapter that was marked was about the counter to the affinitatem reveleo spell, so it was pretty obvious that this was where he was intended to start.

Quite some time had passed before he heard the scratching quill and ruffling parchments finally quiet, followed by Voldemort heaving a quiet sigh and shifting in his chair. Harry didn't even know when it had happened, but at some point he had shifted his position from sitting and hunching over the book about a foot from the side of Voldemort's chair, to actually leaning his back directly against the side of the chair, and stretching one leg out while the other was bent up.