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Bibliomancer by bibliomancer [Reviews - 4]

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After some deliberation, Snape agreed. Now, they sat facing each other, sitting cross-legged on the floor before the glowing fireplace, the journal between them.


Snape drew his wand.


“No!” Adoxa grimaced. “Put that away. We mustn't interfere.”


Indignantly, he pocketed his wand, still stinging from the slight of having his flawless logic challenged. “I remain a sceptic,” he muttered.


“I have employed this technique many times before.” Adoxa smiled.


“With what results?”


“Mixed,” she confessed, adding quickly, “but the first time it happened was an accident. That night in the library, when you chastised me for dropping a book ...”


“I regret to inform you but I've chastised my share of students. I cannot recall the night of which you speak,” he replied coolly.


Concealing her disappointment, Adoxa shrugged. “I dropped a book, you rebuked me and after you had gone, I retrieved it and read the page on which it had fallen open.”


“Is that so?” Snape asked in a bored tone, wondering why he was sitting on the floor like a ridiculous schoolgirl playing at divination, about to employ his own meticulous notes as a tool with which to predict his death. Typically, he held little stock in such rituals. At best, a true seer could peer into the future without props. At worst, their efforts were nothing but a morbid waste of time.


“It is true.” Adoxa nodded. “I predicted then that we would be together.”


“A coincidence, no doubt.”


“Trust me, Severus. This will work. But I need you to focus on the question.”


“The question of how I shall meet my end?”


Adoxa nodded in reply. “Focus your energies, but do not interfere.”


Snape heaved a sigh and cleared his mind, staring at the journal, unblinking. With steady hands, Adoxa balanced the book on its spine.


“Reveal the means by which Severus Snape will die,” she uttered, barely above a whisper. Removing her hands from the journal, it splayed open on the floor.


The room fell silent, neither she nor Snape breathed as she retrieved the book and began reading the entry.


March 20, 1996


Curse that self-important witch! Dolores Umbridge is a blight upon Hogwarts and a dire threat to my personal potions stores. Veritaserum here, Veritaserum there. Will I be compensated for such extravagant waste? If given the chance, she would taint all that they touched in an effort to reveal the truth. Their tea, their pudding, their very inkwells. As before, I must suffer yet another incompetent assigned to the post for which I am most qualified!


Adoxa handed the journal to Snape and he accepted it, a smug expression on his face.


Skimming the entry, he declared, “So Dolores Umbridge will be my murderer then?” He shook his head, getting to his feet and offering Adoxa a hand. “I'll be returning to my own approach. See that I am not interrupted.”


She ignored his outstretched hand, rising in a huff as he feigned distraction, sorting papers on his desk.


“Wait!” Adoxa exclaimed.


Snape turned, casting an annoyed glance at his bride. “I've neither the time nor inclination to continue with your feeble attempts at divination. If my life is in danger, which most assuredly it is, so long as I continue playing the double agent, then I would prefer a more reliable remedy against death.” He snatched up his most recent notes and began paging through them noisily.


“Listen!” Adoxa repeated the final part of the journal entry from memory. “She would taint all that they touched: tea, pudding and inkwells, to reveal the truth.”


Snape stared blankly.


“Their very inkwells,” Adoxa emphasized. “Severus, you're brilliant! That's it!”


“I … am? What is?” he stammered, convinced that his wife was losing her mind.


“Atramentum Veritatis!”


Snape gaped at her.


“Ink of Truth!” she repeated.


“I know bloody well what you said!” he spat, reaching the limits of his patience with her fanciful notions. Why an otherwise practical woman would abandon reason for such methods, he could not understand. “No such substance exists!”


“Why?” Adoxa fired back in reply.


“Why? Because … well ...” Snape stopped, his wife's intentions suddenly clear in his mind.


Adoxa waited, a smile curving her lips.


“Because,” he declared triumphantly, “I've not yet created it!”


Bibliomancer by bibliomancer [Reviews - 4]

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