Written for Prompt of the Day at The Golden Snitch forum. Prompt: (action) a stupid decision. Word count: 608, more or less.
This is my ninety-ninth story, guys! One away from 100! Give a review? ;)
Enjoy!
Well, this was different.
Regulus studied his wand curiously, only vaguely listening to the screams and laughter around him. It was strange that an act of an unforgivable would do nothing to change the object that it was casted from. His hand shook for a moment before settling swiftly down by his side. It would only change the caster, he reminds himself and a moment of sarcasm creeps into his thoughts. Oh. the horror.
Did he feel different?
His gaze fell upon the still figure of the young woman he had casted a curse on just moments before. Unlike his companions, he had prefered to murder her outright than draw it out by listening to her screams. Her long brown hair had spread out on the white ground and her face was pale.
They were laughing...
...
He stumbled a little as he tried to back away from one of his fellow Death Eaters as they playfully casted an Unforgivable on a poor man. Regulus tried to remember if the man was a Muggleborn or had been pureblood. Somehow, amongst this bloody battle, it didn't seem to matter. It was merely a war versus who was wearing dark masks and who wasn't.
Masks that Regulus was very glad to be wearing at the current moment. That way, nobody could see his look of confusion. One that grew only more distressed as he stared upon the young woman, noticing small details about her. Her wide brown eyes were open in a look of fright and she was laying very still on the snowy white ground. In a morbid way, Regulus thought she would've been very pretty, had her eyes had more life in them and a warm smile on her face. She couldn't have been younger than him by a few years.
Yes, he did feel different. He felt a little sick, actually. It would probably be a good to join the killing fray again before a stray curse could hit him. For some reason, he found it impossible to move at the thought of that young woman smiling warmly. She had been in Hogwarts most likely. Regulus wondered briefly if he had been hit with a curse because something similiar to shock was settling in and he was having much trouble getting air to go through his lungs.
She would've been in Hogwarts.
As a student, he had never thought of killing someone else and it made him wonder if after one year of leaving Hogwarts it had given him the right to start to killing people.
He was helping the Wizarding world by ridding them of tainted blood. He was keeping to their age old traditions.
Regulus tried to ignore one very important fact, one that stood out to him very brightly on the ground. Muggle blood or wizard blood. Tradition or change. Masked or un-masked. What difference did it make? Whether she had been either, she was nothing more than dead now and him, left with nothing but the urge to break his wand and run far away from this bloodshed.
Why had he...
It had become only laughter around him now.
Everyone was happy, they had won this battle. Regulus supposed he should feel some pride as well, but he felt rather empty at the moment. Everyone was joyous. Everyone was dead.
...stupid.
His gaze fell to his Dark Mark, moving gruesomely against his skin, almost as if praising him for his efforts.
This was a stupid decision.
Regulus felt that he was going to be haunted by wide brown eyes and that warm smile that never existed and never will again, for a rather long time.
So stupid.