Harry Riddle || Harry potter

Chapter 39: Any Means

"—which is so unfair, I mean, McGonagall must've been giving them points on the sly for them to be that far ahead, it's just impossible that they have that many with how idiotic the lot of them are—"

Harry nodded in appeasement but didn't look up from his book. It was usually only a title read by muggles, which didn't give it very many points in his mind, but Dante Alighieri had been a wizard. Why he had chosen to write about the muggle concepts of the afterlife was a complete mystery, and the fact that Harry couldn't make sense of the majority of it was quickly turning him off.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Harry looked up and found Hermione smiling widely at him, a chocolate frog halfway to her mouth. She was on the floor, leaning against the side of Draco's bed and eating some of the treats leftover from Harry's stay in the hospital wing. In front of her was a book he'd never heard of called "Brave New World". Surprisingly, it seemed less complicated than what he was reading, but he wasn't in the least bit shocked that she'd already read Inferno herself.

He glanced back at the book. "You've read this, haven't you?" he asked rhetorically.

She nodded vigorously. "It's amazing."

"You understand it?" he demanded.

She nodded again. "It's quite simple."

He scanned over the page again and realized with some embarrassment that he'd been rereading it for about ten minutes and still hadn't really gotten anything out of it.

"It's not. I mean, good muggle god, it's written in poem format."

She rolled her eyes. "So? It starts out with Dante—"

"Oh, and that's another thing," he cut in, "who puts themselves in a story? That's narcissistic, don't you think?"

"—and now they're going break our winning streak—is anyone even listening to me?"

Neither Harry nor Hermione were even paying attention to Draco anymore. He'd been on about Gryffindor winning the House Cup for the past hour, and it was getting old. Of course it rubbed Harry the wrong way, but what the hell could he actually do about it now? Classes were over, there weren't any points to be won.

"—with Dante walking in the woods, which is probably a metaphor for him contemplating suicide."

Harry stared at her. "And how do you figure that?"

"Then, Virgil comes to him," she continued, with the most dramatic flair he'd ever seen from her, "to lead him back to the light, away from the suicidal thoughts."

"And he does that through a trip to hell? You know, I'd think going to hell would actually hurt your mental state more than help it."

"Why are we talking about hell?" Draco cut in loudly. "We have a bigger problem, if you haven't noticed. Like, I don't know, those damned Gryffindors winning the House Cup? Doesn't it matter anymore?"

Harry frowned and glanced back at the book. He was on what he assumed to be chapter two, but if he didn't get moving it would take him a year to finish it. "Ah, yeah, Draco, of course it is, but as I believe I've told you several times before, there's nothing I can do. Sorry. So, tell me, Hermione, this Charon guy is like, the Ferryman, right? Who you have to pay to get across the river Styx?"

"Right," she said, ignoring Draco's annoyed growl. "But, Dante calls the river Acheron."

"Right . . ."

Frustrated beyond belief, Draco jumped up and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"But, wait, who the hell is Virgil again? And why the hell does he care about Dante? Does he have a mancrush on him or something?"