Title: R.A.B.
Warning: Character Death
Challenge: Write about a character overcoming one of their weaknesses to achieve a goal. Be as creative as you like!
Summary: A certain someone's thoughts as they die.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it probably does not belong to me. How sad.
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we would become.
~Charles Dubois
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
I once asked a ghost what it felt like to die. Only a first year at the time, I had been curious and filled with a morbid fascination. The idea of death had been as foreign to me as speaking to a mudblood. I have never done the latter but the former has since become more tangible; and the words of the ghost, even after seven years, echo loudly through every corner of my mind.
"Dying is altogether everything you might imagine it to be and at the same time as far from anything you have ever known."
How frightfully true those words have proved to be. Pain, unimaginable and sharp, moved through my body like fire through a river of dry grass. I always knew that when my time came it would be painful. A Death Eater-even one so disenchanted as I-should expect no less.
As the thought of Death Eaters crossed my mind, I could not help but think of the one who had brought me to this sad state. Charismatic and powerful, he was the representation of all that I lacked. My heart still yearned after the fleeting dream of what could have been. With him to guide the wizarding world, we would have had a glorious age upon us. But the dream had long since melted into a terrifying nightmare. I had seen the true face of the man who I had once so admired. Even an obliviate could not erase the anguish in my heart. So much of my past was him that I wondered if I had ever truly lived.
It had been so easy to fall under the sway of his intoxicating presence. He exuded charm and a deadly intelligence that made even men like Lucius Malfoy fall under his sway. My parents had been no different. And I-like the good little pureblood I was-fell in line right alongside them with barely a twinge to my conscience.
I can still remember the first time I met him as clear as the day it happened. My heart had been beating so loudly I was sure the whole room could hear it. I remember staring into his coldly intelligent eyes for a moment too long and the slow, deadly smile that had crossed his face. Perhaps that had been the moment I first felt a tremor of doubt.
When I received the Dark Mark at the tender age of sixteen, I began to wonder if I should truly follow my parent's example. I began to think that perhaps my brother had the right of it. Even now, I wish I had had one last moment with him to tell him how sorry I was for all the things I had said.
By the time I had turned eighteen, my faith in the cause, and most especially in our Lord had begun to wear thin. Still, how do you tell the most powerful man in the world that you no longer wish to serve him? The only way to leave his service was through death. Death. The word conjured horrible feelings in my stomach as though I were not already dying.
It has always been my deepest fear. To die. I have been told it is a common fear, one that most people feel. But the deep, gut-wrenching terror that gripped me even at the thought of dying is nothing compared to actually experiencing it. I was dying. Dying. My body convulsed helplessly against the inevitable.
But as my senses grow dim and the pain began fading to an almost negligible edge, I started to feel the strangest sensation crawling up my spine. It wasn't until the feeling reached the back of my skull that I realized what it was. My fear was gone.
A euphoric smile crossed my face and I almost laughed at the thought of how strange I must have looked. But I supposed that laughing while water poured fatally into my body would only speed up the process of drowning. Would that be a bad thing, though? My thoughts were a muddled mass of confusion. I could no longer tell which way was up. Pale, grasping hands pulled me deeper into their deadly embrace. The inferi were all around me, a sea of death.
At last, the violent shaking that had taken over my limbs subsided and I knew my time was up. Closing my eyes, I send a last, desperate plea to Merlin that my one and only act of bravery had worked. That Kreacher had indeed taken the locket and destroyed it. That a piece of that man's horrible soul had been erased forever.
I had known I would die in pursuit of it but there was a part of me that had finally had enough. Enough of the fear and the cowardice. I was no Gryffindor to rush boldly into things that could get me killed but for just this once I had wanted to feel what it was like. To take a risk where death was the most probable outcome. For a moment, just a moment, I had wanted to be like the brother I had sworn to hate for all eternity.
I prayed that wherever his life took him, he would never forget me. That he would think kindly of me even once. And that someday, Lord Voldemort would meet his match.
End.