A/N: I just needed to clear my head. The best thing for that has always been Harry Potter.
This was written in honor of the only person I know who loves Harry Potter as much, if not more than I. I hope it will be sufficient. ;)
-ad
oOoOoOo
He can feel him.
Every breath he takes, every stab of loneliness he feels, every creeping fear that poisons him.
He can feel the life that stubbornly pulses behind his eyes, and he loathes it.
It taunts him.
It was nearly January. The snow was quiet as it fell, as silent as the streets where it settled. The waning moon gave an unnatural shimmer to the whiteness, casting an odd light onto the small homes which lined the road. All of the windows in them were dark.
There was no point in a disillusionment charm. Godric's Hollow slept, and the Dark Lord was free to pass where he would.
He walked onward.
The houses on the lane were spread out, leafless hedgerows and low stone walls separating them. Bare trees flanked the pavement here and there, with contorted limbs reaching for the moon.
Within the mottled blanket of moonlight which fell upon the quiet cottages, a stark patch of earth was visible, bare of snow and encrusted with leaves long since dead. The flakes that appeared to fall there quickly melted, as if the entirety of the property was suffused with heat. Ivy still glimmered waxy green on the corroded black fencing, seemingly impervious to the chill.
The moment he came within range of the gate, a house became visible in the seemingly barren lot.
It was with no small twinge of loathing that he took in the sight of the façade, partially blasted apart and rotting, the residual magic from the explosion still coursing through it.
In his shapeless years after that night, he had once heard a whisper from an Albanian wizard of a muggle tragedy in the north which yielded a similar result. The energy from the accident in the Ukraine had leached into the ground over time, poisoning it, just as it had done here.
Beyond the boundary of the fencing were a series of small parcels and bouquets of flowers, evidently left in memoriam. A small wooden cross leaned against the lattice on the gate, along with a tightly furled scroll of parchment. The carved face of the muggle god stared toward the sky in agony, a sickening reminder of the total suffering inflicted upon him, so many years ago.
Memories flashed before him.
Sputtering candles in grotesque Jack-O'-Lanterns.
The sound of a door blasted from its hinges
The delighted cries of costumed children chasing each other through the streets.
A scream ripped from a woman's throat.
In spite of himself, his fingers curled around the yew wand tightly, and he tore his gaze from what remained of the house where the Boy Who Lived should have died. His hatred for him prickled.
He continued on.
As the outskirts gave way to the hamlet, a church loomed in front of him, its humble stained glass frosted with snowflakes. The doors were barred.
A churchyard rested next to it, small but well-tended. Even from beyond the wrought iron gate, he could see a wreath of white roses which rested at the foot of a tombstone. It was too well preserved to be anything but magic, but he could have inferred, nonetheless. He had seen that grave many times.
Until recently, it was unadorned.
The padlock on the gate melted away like smoke. Unlike the graveyard in Little Hangleton, with its toppled, mossy graves and gothic statuary, this cemetery was orderly and entirely nondescript.
To the left were several wizarding graves intermingled with those of muggles, impure as the blood traitors which slept below them. The headstones of older, pureblood families were offset, and yet one among them did not belong. It stood out from the other handsome granite, worn and dark in color.
"Percival Dumbledore, Kendra Dumbledore," it read, with the faded dates below. A small stone to the left of Kendra simply read, "Ariana."
He passed by the names with a sneer. Albus Dumbledore truly was a wretched man in life, and even more so in death, too venerated to be interred with his own pitiful family! The great champion of love was far away, lying cold and totally alone, encased in marble his family could never have afforded and whose blood didn't deserve it in the first place.
The other graves fell away until the stone bearing the wreath of roses came into view once more.
There they were. There she was. The woman whose blood and sacrifice ran through his veins yet whose eyes filled him with bloodlust. Those terrible, green eyes which never lost their light, even after they rolled back in death. The eyes which lived on in the final threat to his power. Those eyes that were closed forever, far beneath him.
He can feel him. He can feel his heart beat its antagonizing rhythm. He closes his own eyes and he can see his.
When finally he has the whole world on marionette strings, the boy eludes him still, but he can always sense him these days. Perhaps whatever connection they share, bound by the Killing Curse which failed, is growing more intense... Perhaps it is merely his drive to finally, finally end Harry Potter, but every so often, he feels as if he could reach out and grasp the boy's throat and...squeeze.
Two days previously, the boy had at last come within his reach and he lost him once more. Potter lives due to his carelessness, he breathes because Lord Voldemort could not stop a seventeen year old with his magic, and now, as he stands above the mortal remains of James and Lily Potter who were felled by the same curses that cannot stop their son, he wonders if it would not be easier to merely asphyxiate him, to crush the life out of the boy's small neck himself, to watch his green eyes slowly turn red, like his own.
He returned to Godric's Hollow seeking the answer to the problem of their strange, intertwined fates, but before him is nothing but the hollow echoes of the first time that Harry and the Dark Lord met.
There is no answer here. There is just death, twisted by sixteen years of whispers and legends.
He must find a way. He must find the Elder wa-
The mouth moved and Parseltongue poured from it and a white hot pain seared its way through both of them. A torrent of black smoke engulfed his vision and he heard his own voice speaking disjointedly. The smell of sea salt and the lapping of water and the high pitched screams of a house-elf assaulted his mind and the boy's warped voice rang throughout all of it. He heard the ring of metal upon stone and the crunch of shattering glass and suddenly everything became blackness...
A frigid wind scraped through the evergreen boughs above him with sickening volume, and he was ripped from the visions.
He opened his eyes and became aware of the cold.
He was upon the ground, in front of the graves of the Potters. Deep scarlet blood had collected in a small pool behind his head where his fingernails had dug in. When he came to stand up, it became apparent that his robes were soaked with melted snow, and anger welled in his throat.
He felt the blood dripping down his shoulders as the perfect white roses of the wreath still shone in the darkness before him, and with no incantation beyond his own furious snarl, the headstone exploded straight down the middle with a noise like a cannon before his wandpoint, and the wreath ignited into flame.
The words of the prophecy lept to his mind.
"...The Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal but he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not..."
He had finally acquired the full prophecy five months earlier, when Severus became the headmaster, and at the time he had scoffed, sure of himself.
...This was suddenly far beyond him.
He had to find the boy. He must.
As muggles began stirring in the surrounding houses, terrified by the noise in the churchyard, he disapparated, black smoke blending with the dark night.
As he passed far above the village, a streak of blinding fire threw itself down from the sky, upon the lot which appeared empty to the naked eye, and the house it concealed, like the gravestone, exploded, flame engulfing all of it, and with it, the weakness that had held him back for sixteen years.
oOoOoOo
Far away from Godric's Hollow, Harry gingerly picked up the smoking remains of Slytherin's locket. Ron eyed it carefully, eyes still wet. It glinted evilly in the light of Hermione's borrowed wand.
Harry's scar prickled horribly, and he unconsciously brought his other hand to where the chain had nearly strangled him a few minutes previously.
"...Let's go back," he said in a hoarse voice, wanting very much to get rid of the remnants of the Horcrux. Ron said nothing, and with the Sword of Gryffindor by his side, followed Harry into the darkness, the screams of the shard of Voldemort's soul still reverberating in their ears.