Cursed (SnapeXreader)

The Restricted Section

Uploaded: 07/10/20

"There must be something here." You whispered to yourself as your illuminated wand lit up the leather-bound spines of the books on the cob-webbed shelves.

You had already checked the majority of the books on ancient curses when you slid out a rather tatty-looking edition of "The Strange and Suspicious" by Gunther Galsthorpe. There was a rather ghastly looking illustration on the front of a man who appeared to have a disfigured face.

You opened the book, looking through the contents page, looking straight for the section which included hair curses;

'Unstoppable hair growth curse' , 'balding curse', 'snapping serpent strand curse'... To your dismay you couldn't see anything based on hair colour. Before giving up you decided to read through most of the chapters, in case of any leads. Skimming through, something stood out to you; "hair healing power." You had never heard of this before, this wasn't a charm that had been taught to you by professor Flitwick, nor was it a defence spell taught in DADA... (not that you really have learnt much from Lockhart at all, him being one of the absolute worst teachers you have ever had.)

'...Although extremely rare, this healing power is rumoured to be passed on to the child of a killing curse victim. The victim of a killing curse, gives this power unknowingly, but can only be done if they are holding a dark magical object.

The person who receives this power will start to notice symptoms such as fatigue, aches and pains, flashbacks, heightened sense of smell. The most common symptom is a sudden change in hair colour resulting in silvery white streaks to appear in ones hair over night.

The power is only able to be used once the magical object that the deceased was holding at the time of death has been destroyed. At that point the power can be used to perform strong healing charms by placing ones hand on the heart of the person that needs to be healed and saying the incantation 'novismortem vivus respirare."  It has been known for the hair of the healer to glow bright white as they perform the charm. This special power dates back to 1854, with only one known case as of 1907, the famous Auror Hamish Delanta passed this power onto his daughter, Mertuna Delanta.

Mertuna was killed in 1908 by dark wizard Eric Gotherick,  for the use of her hair. unknown to him the hair could not be used once it had been cut, the white/silver colour faded back to the original colour once it was cut, along with the rest of her hair when she was murdered.'

Your head ached with the information overload. Everything matched up to the description in the book.

Your mother was holding a dark magical object when she died - the ring that Voldemort asked her to keep safe.

His Horcrux.

Those white streaks of hair that just started appearing in your hair...it must be the hair healing power. It just had to be.

This power was so rare that only one other person ever had it...and they were killed because of it. You knew that you had to keep this discovery on the down low...at least only between yourself, Dumbledore and Snape. You quickly stuffed the book back into the shelf, dust cascading onto your robes as you pushed it between the ancient volumes of 'cursed botanics'.

Suddenly you heard a scamper on the floor behind you, your lit wand casted a shadow on the floor of none other than the furry friend of Argus Filch.

Bloody...Mrs...Norris.

You ran as fast as your legs could take you, through the bookshelves of the restricted section and into the main library. You tried to ignore the fact that you were making such a racket as your footsteps echoed against the walls of the library.