Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
She won't pretend that she ever loved him, because now she knows better. They had never loved each other in the way of lovers, that strange and mysterious thing called Love. That Love was of roses and thorns and blood. Theirs, was ice. Cold and smooth, nothing below the surface.
He was handsome, but that didn't allure her. It was the aurora of power, of ambition, that drew her towards him. She wanted-no, she needed to find out more, to see him completely as her own. It seemed that other girls felt that power as well, but while it drew her closer, it pushed them away for reasons they couldn't understand. He was handsome, he was cordial, but they could only watch from a distance, fearful but admiring. She was willing to close that distance.
And when they kissed it was her who pulled towards him and closed that space between their lips. And there was no warmth spreading to her toes, no happiness swelling in her heart, those symptoms of Love. There was only a hunger for more. So even as her silly heart called it Love, her stone mind knew better...
They would never love each other in the way of lovers, that strange and beautiful thing called Love. That Love was of roses and thorns and blood. Theirs, would be ice. Cold and smooth, nothing below the surface.
But what could she do? She was young, and impatient, and willing to smell the fragrant roses even while feeling the prick of their thorns.
And they became a couple. The other students seemed to feel that they were meant for each other, and not even one would laugh at them, tease them like they would to their other coupled friends. Because together, the aurora of power became like a wave of ice water that swallowed anyone they met. She was proud to be called his, because she felt inside that it was actually the other way around. They kissed, they touched, they did everything couples did. And it was only because she herself was ice that his cold hands and his cold eyes did not make her flinch. Can a monster flinch at the sight of an equally monstrous monster?
Yet part of her was glad. The idea of Love had enchanted her, but also frightened her, because of the thorns. There would never be thorns between their love...no roses either, but that was okay.
When he disappeared, she mourned and wept cold tears that held no grief, only a slight bitterness that she would no longer feel that alluring power. They had stayed with each other for two years, neither passionate nor distant, but in the vast emptiness between. Holding hands, kissing, embracing. She had never felt any longing for other boys during that time. Ice cannot melt.
She knew she was a monster when she realized that there was no ache of grief. She knew she was a monster, knew she was stone, and felt pleasure at that. That's how she knew...
They had never loved each other in the way of lovers, that strange and bitter thing called Love. That Love was of roses and thorns and blood. Theirs, had been ice. Cold and smooth, nothing below the surface.
Life drifted by on a frigid breeze, and then she was twenty. Still young, still ice. Rumors about the Dark Lord were spreading, news of the dead spreading like blossoms of blood on white cloth. But she was not afraid of dying, because there was nothing that could happen to make her life better or worse, not even death.
Still, when they arrived at her house she felt confusion. She was pureblooded, and lived an invisible life away from society. Why would they hunt her down? It was only when he stepped forward that she understood.
He was a different man, his face twisted and drained of life in a way that anyone would call gruesome, but she felt nothing. Only, there was that aurora of power she had found alluring, more than looks, more than words, as unique to him as a fingerprint.
"Tom," her voice came as if from the depths of a gaping chasm, and when the green light came she was not frightened, not upset, not angry, not even surprised. Because somehow it felt right. Perhaps this was what she had loved about him, if she ever had...the ability to kill without emotion.
And Sophia Celandine Lestrange dies, not gently like ice in warm light but like ice shattered by a blow. But as she does comes the wish like a whisper in a howling wind...a wish, a little wish... that perhaps she would have liked to feel Love before she died, the Love of roses and thorns and blood. That strange and frightening thing called Love.