Clean

The Revelation

Chapter 20: The Revelation

Hermione sighed heavily, looking at the entrance to the restricted section. "Shush, Granger," she heard Malfoy say, the memory flashing through her mind. "This is a library."

Was there nothing left in this castle that didn't remind her of him?

She had not heard from him in six days.

Horcruxes, she reminded herself, closing her eyes briefly and drawing her cardigan closer, shivering even as she tried to concentrate. Lately, the slightest memory of Malfoy's smirk was enough to send chills up her spine. She grimaced. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, she reminded herself skeptically, frowning.

She lost track of what she was doing. Horcruxes, she thought vigorously, kicking herself. Focus.

She had already flipped through the cursory textbooks without finding any mention of horcruxes, though that did not surprise her. Having already read them numerous times before – this being not even remotely the first time that Harry needed information on some forbidden object – she was confident that she would have recognized the term if she'd already come across it. She gazed warily at the dark collections of shelves before her.

Ready or not, she prompted herself with a shrug, stepping forward.

Where to look? She glanced around slowly, considering her options. What had Harry called it? Taboo, she thought, concentrating. She closed her eyes, heightening her other senses. The entire section buzzed with energy, as though the books themselves were chattering to each other, quietly revealing their secrets. Magic as dark as she was looking for left traces; she felt a hollow darkness in the corner of the restricted section and headed towards it, her eyes snapping open as she identified the source.

One book in particular seemed to be vibrating, its spine trembling as it rattled noisily on the shelf. Hermione smiled; she'd spent enough time in the library to know that books, innocuous as they seemed, could be particularly feisty when they needed to be found. She walked over to the shelf in question and squinted at the book's worn cover.

"Magick Moste Evile," she read quietly, nipping at her lip as she considered its contents. She cocked her head slightly as she noticed the book's placement, leaning diagonally across a vacant slot where another book might fit. The space between them had gathered dust, and she was fairly certain that something else used to sit there, this book's next-door neighbor.

She pulled Magick Moste Evile off the shelf, choking slightly as dust blew into her face. The pages were thin and fragile, and she noticed already that she was leaving fingerprints on the pages. "Sorry," she muttered apologetically to the book, picking up her wand. "Invenire horcrux," she instructed, tapping the top of the spine.

The book ripped itself from her hands and clattered to the floor, flipping open to a page about three-quarters of the way through its contents. She crouched beside it on the ground and ran her finger lightly down the page, stopping as she saw the item she was looking for.

"Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction – "

She stopped abruptly and mouthed the word "fuck," biting her lip angrily. She collapsed into a cross-legged seated position on the ground, pulling the book into her lap even as she cursed it. She didn't like to swear, but found herself extraordinarily frustrated at this lack of information. She had also found that there was something strangely appealing about the word when Malfoy was saying it, his silver tongue transfiguring it somehow into an appealing method of expression.