Make Me.

Book 3 - Chapter 25

It was Wednesday - late February - two days after Snape had tossed his poison dipped sliver knife at Ellie.

Ellie had half a mind to go straight to the Great Hall for her lunch break, but there was something better she would get from showing up to her scheduled lesson on the castle's front steps. It was oddly warm outside for it being February. Ellie was fidgeting with something in her left hand, twirling it between her fingers, waiting for Professor Snape.

As she waited, large, plump raindrops started leaking from the clouds in the sky, dropping onto the top of her hood and dripping down into her face, warm and wet. As the castle's front doors creaked open behind her, Ellie turned and moved the object from her left hand to her right, keeping it concealed underneath her long, slender fingers.

"I didn't think you were going to show up," Ellie said casually, looking down at her watch. Snape was fifteen minutes late.

"I had to deliver your father's potion," said Snape coolly.

"You did it without me?" Ellie asked, eyebrows furrowed, annoyance rising.

"I thought you'd have had enough on your mind," said Snape. His eyes slid down to Ellie's left hand and stayed there. "Or perhaps you didn't do as much thinking as I had expected."

Ellie huffed and held her left hand out in the air for the professor to get a better look at. There was a long, sharp, fresh looking cut across the entirety of her palm, crusty on the edges with seepage, a product of the healing process beginning to start on her skin.

"Ah," Snape said, squinting at her hand. "Where is it?"

"This?" Ellie asked sweetly, holding up the thing in her right hand. The vile of blood Snape had forced into her possession on Monday afternoon was clasped tightly between her fingers and palm.

"So. . . you didn't think about what I said, even in the slightest?"

"Oh, of course I did." Ellie turned her head to look at the vile. "But then, around hour four or five of my life draining from my hand, I had another thought. How naive do you think I am?"

Snape didn't answer, he only looked at Ellie with a vexed look on his face.

"It probably took you an hour, maximum, to whip this up," said Ellie, plunging her left hand into her robe pocket, retrieving the green tinted knife. "It was tricky at first," Ellie continued, like she had practiced everything she was about to say (she had). "I didn't know exactly what it was, but I figured it out. You really are a fool for assigning an essay on poisons and their antidotes before giving this to me." Ellie flung the knife around in the air before dropping it back into her pocket. "Took me half an hour to stop the bleeding. . . didn't even need this."

Ellie looked at the vile and again and without thinking twice, squeezed her hand tight. The glass exploded into charged shards that lodged themselves in her skin and then fell to the stone steps below her. The blood from inside mixed with the rain following down from the sky and cascaded down Ellie's hand and wrist and dropped to the ground in perfectly circular droplets.

"I'd rather die a thousand times over than do that. Cut me open, stab me until I'm nothing but holes, send me to the face of the sun - and I still wouldn't do it."

Snape didn't look phased, not even in the slightest. He just stood and watched the girl's theatrics, thinking. It was silent for a moment as Ellie picked the glass from her hand and wiped her palm off on her robes.

"Miss Dracula -" Snape started, looking deep into Ellie's eyes, "I dare you to keep that promise."

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