𝑆𝐴𝑉𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐷𝑅𝐴𝐶𝑂 𝑀𝐴𝐿𝐹𝑂𝑌

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟒𝟔 - 𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐈𝐈𝐈

╭────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────╮

𝐃

In Plato's Republic, people are chained into a cave from birth. They cannot move but only watch. In front of them, a wall. Behind them, a fire. Should someone raise an object in front of the fire, all the chained men will be able to see is the shadow of the objects cast on the wall. Consequently, the prisoners will never know what is truly moving to and fro behind them. The shadows of reality will be all they know.

Should one of the prisoners ever escape from their captivity, each move will be difficult, painful. Once they escape from the cave, the light of the higher things will be nearly blinding.

My eyes were burning.

⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼⎼

February

Snape, who always seemed to know more about me than I did and predict things about myself long before I was able to admit them even to myself, very soon realised that he got what he wanted without intervening intensely. No more late-night walks to the Black Lake, no more distractions. The story that was threatening to blow up an entire operation was over. All threats regarding Ophelia or her family, futile though they seemed now, stopped at once.

Snape let me go on about my business without much intervention. There was the occasional undermining of my plans but other than that, for a while, he stopped insisting on assisting me. I think that when all was said and done, Snape, too, believed in the inevitability of my nature and its vulnerability in external influences. Ophelia had also been an external influence, a very certain obstacle hindering me, something that made my efforts as good as none. In everyone's minds, she was the only thing standing between me and determined work – so now, why worry? I would do it eventually, wouldn't I?

The funny thing is that I believed all this as well. I sought to convince myself. All this was just a rough start, a thorn in a well-oiled machine and now I would be able to resume what I'd started. Ophelia was a break. A wonderful break from 17 years worth of immunity to bad deeds. Four months were not enough to change my entire personality. I went back to my old ways.

My old mantra came back:

You need no soul.

And so I felt nothing.

Very soon after that day in the lake, I set a plan in motion, something that I'd devised a long time ago and hadn't given much thought to after summer was over: a poison. I found something quite untraceable (at least it seemed like that to me) and with Snape supplying many ingredients, it was ready in just three days. I needed something solid, a sure way to place the poison in Dumbledore's office. And for that, I needed a middle-man, someone who would be over any suspicion.

I used whomever I could, however I could – and felt nothing.

That's how I learned that Slughorn had ordered a mead from Madam Rosmerta as a gift for Dumbledore. He was supposed to have picked it up for Christmas but the fool was forgetful. I poisoned the mead and had her send an owl with a reminder to Slughorn that the bottle was still waiting for him at the Three Broomsticks. By the weekend, the poison was in Slughorn's hands.

From then on, it was a matter of time for it to end up in Dumbledore's office. I waited patiently and expected that any day now, I would wake up to the professors telling us in shock that our Headmaster is dead.

And all the while, I felt nothing.

Days dragged on and nothing happened. By the end of the month, I started suspecting that Slughorn had completely forgotten to give Dumbledore his present; I should have found someone more reliable to act as my middleman. And then out of nowhere – Ron Weasley almost dies.