The Mark of a Death Eater : Sequel

Chapter Eight

"Draco learned that name when he was seven years old. He came across it one day in my library."

Lucius Malfoy lit a row of lamps and began muttering spells while waving his wand along the door. I recognized a couple as sealing spells and ones that ensured we wouldn't be overheard. As much as it freaked me out to be locked in a room with Draco's father, I wanted answers. Mr Malfoy stepped back to examine the parchment I gave him.

"When did you find the book?" he asked.
"I don't exactly remember. Around the first few months after the school year began, I suppose. I was looking for a book to help Draco."
Lucius' mouth was a hard line. "You were looking under the floor?" he asked drily.
"No," I shot back. "Obviously not. I came across the book when I was in my third year. It was an accident that I found it. I tried to get access to the restricted section again, but I didn't have a good enough excuse most of the time, and by the next year I'd forgotten about it."
"How did you get access to it last year?"
"I have an invisibility cloak," I admitted.
"Ah, yes. Draco complained about you a few years ago. Demiguise hair, from Mr Borgin?"
"Yes."

A moment of silence passed between us.
"Mr Malfoy, who put the book there?" I asked.
Lucius turned his back to me and grasped the back of a tall chair.
"I did," he said.

"It was my sixth year. I was researching about The Dark Lord as much as I could. That book took years to find, and almost as long to break the seals and charms that surrounded it. I had help."
"Help from who?"
He waved the question away. "You only have to use blood, and say a simple spell, is it not?"
"Yes."
"It was not always that easy. It took a long time to make that book accessible. When I finally managed it, it was a tremendous disappointment."
I leaned closer over the table. "What do you mean? What were you looking for?"
Lucius turned around. He looked as if he would rather not speak about it. "The same thing that you were searching for. Answers to The Dark Lord."

It didn't make complete sense to me. Granted, I did think the book would help me help Draco, but it hadn't. It sure hadn't mentioned You-Know-Who. If it did, I would have remembered.
"But you didn't find what you were looking for." It sounded a bit like a question to my ears.
"No," Lucius admitted. "What I found was his history, his ascendants, which proved to be valuable, as The Dark Lord doesn't share his life with anyone. I wasn't looking for what I found, but that didn't mean I didn't appreciate it."
"Wait, I don't understand. Who's family and life are we speaking about?"

Lucius' eyes reflected the firelight.
"The Dark Lord's, of course. Tom Riddle."

Time stopped. The small grandfather clock stopped ticking. The fire stopped flickering. My heart stopped beating.
Then it all came back faster than it should have.

He opened the Chamber of Secrets in his fifth year. His plan was to rid Hogwarts of all unworthy students. Mudbloods. Then the chamber was opened again. Didn't we know that even in his third year, Potter had faced Him more than once?
He was the parseltongue. He had that awful snake of his, Nagini.
He had murdered his family. He murdered everyone without a second glance.
Tom was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. It was always assumed that You-Know-Who was too.

All the things that I'd overlooked while reading Tom Riddle's diary flooded back to me.

The armrests of the mahogany chair became slippery in my hands and I realized it was because my palms were sweating.

Lord Voldemort. I've been reading a history notebook of the... thing that killed countless people, murdered, refused to be destroyed while destroying everything in its path.

The creature with no heart and no soul and no conscience.
I had been reading his diary.

I'd quite forgotten how to breathe. My chest rose and fell and I was aware that I was breathing but it felt like I was suffocating. I did what I always did when I felt like I was drowning: used logic.

It took a few seconds for me to get my brain into high gear.
Tom Riddle. How was he Lord Voldemort? Was the diary before he became an evil overlord? Somehow, it was difficult to picture him as a schoolboy. And how did Lucius know? Did Draco know this when he was seven? Did this mean that all the time I was reading the book right next to him while he was sleeping, he could have woken up and told me who I reading about?

"Slow down. I can't understand half of what you're saying."
Apparently I had voiced all of that out loud.
"You didn't know who you were reading about?"
"No! How should I have known? I thought he was just some Slytherin descendant, and I only wanted to know why you cared so much as to write a footnote about his patricide in his notebook!"
Lucius looked almost as shocked as I felt.
"Did Draco know all this time?" I asked.
"Yes. As I said, he found it in a book when he was seven."
"This is so strange."
"Indeed," Lucius murmured. He stood up from his seat and opened the door. "You seem to have the answer you need."
I took a minute to catch my ragged breath on the chair while Lucius politely held the door open.
"Thank you, Mr Malfoy."
"Of course," he said, his lips tight.

I was out the door when he called out, "Emma?"
The use of my name from him took me by surprise. "Yes?"
He looked as if he was trying very hard not to say what he was about to say.
He forced it out anyways.

"Reading the book right next to him while he was sleeping?" he quoted. arching an eyebrow.
I was sure I must've turned crimson. I tried to formulate how to explain to Draco's father that when I couldn't sleep, I found it easier to fall asleep next to his son, all the while stuttering a magnificent amount of 'um's'.
Lucius shook his head. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

I blushed at my boots as I hurried away as fast as I could go.