He watched it come towards him; the spell that would end his life, as it had ended the parents of the dratted creature. Only this time, it was a mixture of red and green, death and defence, good and evil. It slammed into the centre of his chest, squeezing the air out of him and he felt himself thud to the floor.
How could this be happening? He had been so close to succeeding, so close... Close enough to hear the agonised screams and see his own victory.
Yet he'd lost.
He'd lost... To a child that shouldn't exist.
He struggled to stay alive, to restart his heart somehow, to take one more, straggling breath, to fight the cloying, sickly sweet darkness that was beckoning him as it had beckoned so many others.
But it was in vain.
His vision darkened, the colours all blurring together until all that he could see were outlines which burned his eyes, branding their shape against the backs of his eyes until all he could see was blackness. An empty, souless void that enveloped him, creeping inside him, pushing out the life that he'd fought to keep for so long.
The fingers of death crept up to him, grasping hold of him, dragging him down with them, down to a place he would never return from.
"I don't want to die."
He tried to say those words. Tried to voice them but no sound came out.
Then he heard it. It was like hearing music, hearing your mother's voice for the first time in your life. Fleeting as a song or poem and as beautiful and ethereal as a faerie. Something beautiful and fascinating. Something he had never appreciated.
"Oh trust me, I want exactly jumping for joy either."
He felt his eyes roll over in their sockets to look at her.
There, in the blackness was a ghost. Or what looked like one; with long, messy and curly dark hair that cascaded down her shoulders. Skin that was smooth and flawless like fine china, only less brittle and softer, more like white marble, worn smooth with age. Large, dark eyes that had an eerie, one could say deranged glint to them and a small, smirky smile that only widened at the sight of him; her lord.
Bella.
Of all people.
She walked towards him with the usual, untamed, swaggering arrogance that had always earned her a few crucios and knelt down beside him, drinking in the sight of him like she always had as the people, cheering for the boy's victory and crying at his defeat, around then were sucked into the blackness.
"You can let go." She said distractedly, gazing at him in a way that made the skin on his back feel cold and prickle, like someone was dripping a thick, icy cold sticky liquid down his back. It was oddly pleasant.
"What?" He only managed to form one word. Afraid that the second he did, the cloying darkness that was settling on the two of them would suffocate him.
"It doesn't hurt. And... And..." She glanced down at him embarrassedly before continuing, "you won't be alone..."
He could've sworn she was blushing.
He raised the place above his eyes where, had he had the hair he once did, his eyebrows would've been.
She smiled down at him and started stroking the side of his face tenderly, as if he might suddenly shatter into a million dark lord shaped pieces. Her hands were soft with a glowing, comforting warmth radiating from them. He still flinched at the contact, but he couldn't do much else. He felt that it was better off for them both that he couldn't; nobody had ever talked to or touched him in that way, and now that somebody had, he was enjoying it much more than he let on.
"I stayed." She said lovingly, just like she has spoken when he collapsed in the forest, the only death who held out a hand to help him up, "I stayed with you, until the end. I stayed. I didn't leave you."
He raised his whatevers again.
"I am your most loyal; they all moved on, they all- Rodolphus and Crouch and Avery, "You could almost taste the disgust in her voice, spitting out the names of the traitors, of the sinners who's devotion was stained and tainted compared to hers, "They won't join us; they aren't pure enough."
He nearly laughed out loud at her choice of words; pure. She, a murderer, a thief, a psychopath and sociopath who bathed in the blood of her enemies, referring to herself as pure.
She must've seen his reaction because she instantly started explaining herself, her cold, clear voice igniting the air with her beliefs, the way it always had done when she spoke against mudbloods, against were wolves, goblins, blood traitors and what she-he, had deemed as filth. The same voice that she talked about The Cause with.
"to be pure doesn't mean to be free of evil or bad," she explained to him, still tracing patterns on his face, "it just means to be made of one thing, of one substance, one belief. So in that way, we are both the purest creatures that have ever existed."
She slipped her hand down and cupped his cheek lightly now. He wondered how many times she'd fantasised about that one gesture, how many times a night she'd lain in bed next to the husband she had never loved, next to the man her mother had forced her to marry, dedicating all her loving thoughts to him.
I'll be there, forever." He looked up at her ghost, which was now more real and alive to him than any of the people around him- any of the people that had been around him- the people who were now celebrating his fall, or weeping as they realised it had all been for nothing, more real than the outside dusk, the soft breeze that had been blowing when he'd last stood in the forest, more alive than the boy that had defeated him.
"Forever?" He asked, tasting the word. He didn't believe in it; it was too fickle, not reliable or useful to him in any way. He didn't believe in it one bit.
But she did.
"Forever." She repeated her eyes roaming his face once more before settling on his eyes. Black eyes met red ones, onyx and rubies, darkness and fire.
Suddenly, it didn't seem so horrible, so weak, so human, so- although he didn't dare admit this, even to himself- frightening.
She held out her hand, thin thanks to all the years she had been rotting in Azkaban and translucent thanks to her death. Her death, which he now realised with slight guilt, he could've stopped.
He looked at it. Then, slowly raised his own and placed it in hers, watching the same translucent hue spread from their touch into his fingers and slowly creep down his arm.
She seemed to flush, he wondered if it was possible for ghosts or spirits or whatever to flush.
He allowed her to help him up and, knowing that it wasn't the cold, skeletal hand of death but that of his most loyal, the one person from the millions of people that he'd recruited who had stayed with him until the end, he let her lead him.
They both went, knowing that they wouldn't be alone.
It was a small gift, he thought to himself, to have someone by his side, someone who had the same thoughts as his. Someone who also had hands that were red with blood.
He felt his face split into a smile as he looked down at their interlocked hands; both red with blood.
A small gift. Wrapped in red.