PART ONE: UNTO THE ENDING OF THE WORLD
The Traitor
It was painfully cold and the stars were dead.
For some reason, this gave me an ugly satisfaction. It helped me to believe I had been right, that the Darkness was unending. Allowing these thoughts to drift with me offered no strength; my Lord had given me my strength. I flexed the fingers of my right hand, the air collapsing so willingly before me. It was a beautiful thing, and he was a great man. No, he was a great Lord. He was no man.
I was standing beside the mausoleum at the crown of the hill. It was dotted with headstones, though not so heavily as the surrounding level ground. At the very peak stood the Dark Lord, towering over the stones of death. Behind one of them I knew the coward boy was hiding, preparing himself to scream another stream of accusations, then throw another collection of childish jinxes and then to duck and cower again when his protective stone was broken. I could feel his panic, I could feel his fear. What would he do when the last stone was broken? A voice inside my head was busy reminding me that I knew this fear because it was my own, because I did not know what would happen when my last defenses were gone, when I could provide no more service but sport. And so I resigned myself to continue service, unto the ending of the world. It would be service in fear, hoping that the Dark Lord would be victorious over the Mudbloods and Traitors against their kind, hoping to come with him into dominance, his loyal servant. My eyes jerked unwittingly toward Bellatrix, behind a tall obelisk leaning, crooked, on the slope of the hill. Rodolphus signaled me from behind a nearer tombstone. It was time.
I stroked the frigid wall of the mausoleum, my beautiful hand feeling nothing but its pathetic, crumbling stones. It no longer knew the touch of cold. As I caressed it gently, almost lovingly, this house of death, I crooned his name. And then my nickname for him, mocking him, taunting him. I heard him shift inside Death, creep away from the doorway, where the moon was sparkling. The clouds were floating idly along, and I felt the moonlight on my back.
"Moony, come out Moony. How about another nighttime stroll, for old time's sake? Come on Moony. Can you hear him? Is that James? Your precious James? Screaming for help, will you help him Moony? Can you do anything now? Come Moony, we will save him from the traitor together…"
I felt a fine dust spraying over my robes and realized I had crushed a chunk of the wall in my hand. The Dark Lord was positively cackling now, the stupid boy was behind another stone. From beside the mausoleum I surveyed the scene, and was kind enough to relate it to Remus, still cowering in the darkness of the mausoleum.
"Do you hear them Moony? The giant is out there, and the Weasley boy, who is not my master anymore. He is cowering behind a stone, I can see him now. Can't you see it, Moony? Move a bit closer to the doorway, Moony, there they are. What will you do Moony? Can you save them? Save Ron or Longbottom? Can you save the Mudblood, or Molly, or Minerva? Can you save Harry, Moony, after all these years, can you save James's son?"
I scraped four deep crevasses into the wall. More screams echoed around me. I carved them deeper and then stood back to examine my handiwork. My beautiful hand. One more caress and there would be a gash in the wall, right through solid and ancient stone. I saw my own shadow where I intended to etch it, and gently slid my lone index finger in the deepest of the wounds. It crumbled beneath my touch, raining dust on the expectant face of Remus Lupin. I could see him wince. I put my face up to the hole and grinned at him.
"Why, hello Remus. Long time no see."
He cringed at the sound of my voice, his eyes barely open, scanning the edges of the fissure I had formed in the wall of his safe haven.
"Oh, you are safe for now, Moony. I think I fancy a little chat though, don't you think?"
I felt my words slide through the hole, smooth and oily, as I had never spoken before. And I knew I belonged here, here in my absolute element, tormenting my tormentor. I glared at him, putting behind my eyes, for him to see, all the hatred, for his laughter and his silence, for the days he tried to stop them and the days he did nothing, and most of all the days he bid them carry on, drag me to hell and back. Bastard. He was staring at me, a look of terror, a look I had never seen on him. Except perhaps just before his more painful transformations. How ironic.
"I have nothing to say to you, Worm," he mumbled, sounding very afraid and very sick. And of course, who could blame him? Then I remembered that I blamed him, him and his cronies. But he was the last of them.
"No," I muttered, drawing back and feigning thought, "No, you're right- I have nothing to say to you either..."
I saw my shadow shrink as I straightened up, barely covering the opening I had etched into the wall. Remus shrunk toward the back of the house of Death, still dusty grey and shriveled, an old man long since dead inside. I just had one more job for his body...
"Oh no, Remus, I have nothing to say. I am not, however, through with you."
And I plunged my hand through the stone, closing it around his limp throat, still full with his gasp of surprise. I drew his miserable face, stretched in a hideous grimace toward my own, and we eyed one another through the gaping hole. I asked him if he was afraid and he choked in my hand, spittle dribbling pathetically from his creased and colorless face. His eyes tried to sparkle, but failed. Instead they shone vaguely, with a light that went out under my own gaze. I closed my hand just a bit tighter, and his mouth opened. I slid a gentle, frigid finger along his neck, and then leaned even closer.
"Can you save him now, Remus?"
I watched the tears form in his eyes, and took them as my answer. One of them slid down to his chin and danced across the silver of my wrist, but I did not feel it. It slid off quickly, not caught there as on Remus's face, trapped in wrinkled rivers and ashen canyons. No, he cannot save the boy. He stopped writhing then, resigned himself to my grasp, but I did not loosen it when his resistance waned. I pressed my thumb just a bit deeper into his soft and empty flesh, displayed my teeth in a cruel grin, and felt him cower yet again. There were footsteps behind me, but the sounds were muffled, unnecessary distractions. Moony was still crying.
"No, Moony, you cannot save him, but you can bite him, can't you? It's time, Moony. Let us go together…"
I stood up slowly, his neck craning to follow me. A shaft of moonlight shot into the mausoleum, narrowly missing him. He choked into my hand again.
"Let us… Let us reawaken the wolf."
A sharp pain exploded in my head, and I heard Moony's body hit the far corner of the mausoleum. I ripped my beautiful hand out of the house of Death and wrapped it around the thin wrist which had just come down on my temple. Another blow struck my shins, this, clearly, from a foot, and we were tumbling down the hill behind the mausoleum, my hand crushing bone and sinew and squeezing the thin hand off the arm of a boy, about sixteen. He rolled over top of me and was gone without his hand, and I felt my body stop moving. My head was falling backward, and I felt an explosion of life as everything I had ever known crashed through my mind and burst around my eyes. The rock drilled deep into my skull, the spray of my body exploding like a sunset from my mouth. My head bounced up another few inches, ready for another impact, the earth taking its revenge. I could see them all, shadows on the hill, black against tangible mass of light. Were they human forms or just more markers of death? There was an instant where the air pounded against my ears, trying to say something…
And time froze as the world ended.
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~*~ A/N- The world ending isn't death. The person who attacks Peter loses his hand, as Peter did, and is thus the anti-Peter, to the anti-Voldemort…sorta… got it? Up next- The Giant-Man. It's all the same few minutes here in part one, then we'll see what happens in part two, which begins with chapter 6…~*~