YOUTH ━━ s. black

[ 069 ] green-leather book

Snape arched one brow and blinked. "You saw me falling asleep and did not wake me up?"

"No." She shot back quickly and tapped her nail against the leather of the book. "You looked comfortable enough." He rolled his eyes and led his hand forward, and Scarlet shut the book to hand it to him, somehow wanting him to study the piece—after all, he has always been intelligent enough. 

"Merlin, this practically radiates dark magic," Snape's brows pinched together in a suspicious manner as he tugged at the covers of the book in his hands, and his bored eyes travelled back to the witch. "It doesn't open."

"What are you talking about—? Let me see," she snatched it back rapidly, catching him off-guard as he flinched away with an irritated facial-expression. With ease, she opened the book up to the first page and handed it over to him again. "What's the matter."

"I'm not incapable of opening a book, Bridget," Snape snapped back, shutting it again and trying to peer it open. 

Scarlet pointed at his struggles, "Your failed attempts suggest otherwise, Snape." The girl moved forward again and harshly opened it up and tapped on it, then leaned back onto her seat. The gesture clearly annoyed him and he rolled his eyes. His cloudy-dark eyes roamed over the page, and he flickered through a few pages for a couple of minutes—Scarlet almost fell asleep in those times.

He concluded, "This hints at immortality."

"Where exactly did you surmise that from?"

"The book, Bridget, the book." Snape replied, separating each word with a grit of his teeth. It was unimaginable that the two could sit and tolerate each other's presence without it turning into an unpleasant scene.

He took out a pen and wrote something down right above one of the emboldened phrases, and turned it in her direction to show it to her.

vivere in aeternum
—to live forever

Scarlet sat up with her curiosity peaking, clasping her hands together in morbid inquisitiveness. He translated the subtitle in his cursive handwriting. "You mean, like a Horcrux."

"What's a Horcrux, now?" asked the boy.

"Oh, Snape, you haven't been doing your wider reading much, have you?" Scarlet mocked in a sickly-sweet tone, blinking innocently before her expression fell back to an icy-cold one with a roll of her eyes.

"Do you want me to explain?" An irritated snap came her way. 

"Go ahead," the witch muttered back.

Snape inhaled sharply. "These are not random Latin words, these are recipes to Potion-Making, very advanced Potions," he glanced back up at her intense gaze and continued, "this potion is suggested to be providing someone a path to immortality."

"So, you drink that potion and live forever," the girl nodded at his words, believing about one-third of it. "like a vampire."

"How do you know about vampires?" Snape squinted his eyes, a pureblood reading Muggle-fiction was not a common thing, he heard. "And no, this one here comes with a price."

"And that is...?" A bored Scarlet trailed off, Snape does speak excruciatingly slow.

"Well, to continue living, you take someone else's life," Snape read over it, translating parts of it briefly and a bit inaccurately. "Every time you're on your path to death, you'll be able to take someone's life. Not their soul, merely the energy to keep your heart beating. Of course, one's death must occur for the process of giving life to another."