What did it matter? None of it mattered.
He opened his eyes to the sound of rain on the roof, the sharp pattering that so resembled a child's eager footfalls. Wretched sound. He turned his head farther into the pillow, wishing it away.
But it wouldn't go away.
It seemed an eon when he stood, staring off into the wilderness of shadows that was his bedroom, willing himself forward another inch to begin a new day of misery. The face that looked back at him from the mirror was ugly, a mask of pain and sorrow, and he couldn't look at it. He wanted to go back to his world of dreams, but did not. He decided that suffering was better than imagined serenities.
And so he dressed, with the efficiency of a machine, and stepped out onto the fine balcony, noting the slate gray of the sky overhead, even as the rain came rushing forth to embrace him. Everything was dark, and the railing of the balcony was like ice to touch. Yet he welcomed it. He'd never known anything warmer.
The snakes that were his friends looked tender to him, even as he knew their malicious demeanours. They were all cold and beautiful, with their porcelain masks and their painted smiles, with the ruthlessness that always glimmered in the depths of their black eyes. Purebloods, like him. How lovely they were.
How lovely he was not.
He was not cold to the marrow, though he so desperately wanted to be. Part of him, a very large part of him thirsted for it, for the callous love the rest of them received from their parents, that he did not. It showed in the jewels that glimmered at their throats, in the fine robes of which they all bragged. Yet still they fell into shadow. Still they went to Voldemort without shame or second thoughts.
He didn't know what he wanted anymore.
Did he want to serve the Dark Lord?
It was difficult to know.
At times he wanted to simply watch as he always did, to meld into the woodwork and simply be part of the background that was the Pureblood Slytherins. Yet there was that other part of him which wanted badly to take drastic measures after so many years of silence. To take the power the Dark Lord would provide, rise above the father who never accepted anything, above the mother who bled into herself. Cast aside the lid of the box in which he hid, and be recognized at last.
The thoughts thrilled him like none ever did before.
He made up his mind.
He would follow.
The rain slackened and died, but the sky was still the colour of despair.
End