He has felt his skin burning many times before.

There was that time at the beach when he was barely a child, and his mother had forgotten to cast the protective spell over him. He has gone home with a terrible sunburn that day.

There was the time that he bumped into the elf and spilled a few drops of boiling oil on his hand. He remembered how his parents had given Penny, the house elf, quite a scolding for not being more careful.

There had been the time he accidentally set fire to the wooden chairs of his home. In tryong to put them out, his own clothes had caught fire too. Quite a fiasco, that had been.

Thus, he was no stranger to burns. Physical ones anyway. But this, this was something else. There was a reason it was called Fiendfyre, he realised, and it was not just because it could not be put out with a simple Aguamenti.

One touch of the devilish thing, and the sensation of pain began to spread through his entire body. It was as if he was standing in the center of a fireplace, unable to move, with salt raining down on his wounds.

What hurts more is his current situation. He is trapped in an impossible room, deserted by the only two he could ever call his friends; one who he loved like a brother, and one who he served loyally. They had left him, alone, to suffer, saving their own skins in favour of his. If they had waited a few moments more before closing the door, just a few... He had felt like the door was right there, just a few steps...just out of reach. His chest felt like it was burning, and not from the Fiendfyre.

There was no escape, no way out, nothing he could do. Except, perhaps...

He stopped running, and stood where he was. There was no point to running, after all.

As the flames engulfed him, he felt tears run down his face.

Notes: For the Around the World Competition. Prompt: Fire

Also for the Through the Universe Challenge. Prompt: just out of reach