Through the Long Dead Night

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. I own nothing but my car, which incidentally, does not make an appearance in this story. Shameful.

Enjoy


You raised him like a pig for slaughter.

The words echo in my ears, far louder and more cutting than any curse shouted in this retched battle. The Final Battle, what a joke. This will never end. Mad men don't become leaders without other mad men to agree with them. There will be another; there's always another. Vernon, Snape, Riddle…it doesn't matter. There's no shortage of evil in this world, but don't you fret, I'll handle this one and maybe…if I'm really lucky, I won't be around to see the next one…or be him.

The path to the Forbidden Forest stretches out before me like the cruelest gang plank…walk to your death boy; it's all you're good for, all you're meant for. I wish I could hate him for it. Dumbledore's betrayal is nearly beyond my ability to understand. How do you do that? How do you look into the eyes of a child you claim to love and not just know the will die, but want them to die? At least Snape of all people had the decency to be outraged by the notion. I'm under no illusion that such outrage was really on my behalf. In his eyes I will only ever be Lilly's child on a good day and Potter's child on the rest.

The trees begin to close around me. I can feel his presence in the near distance. My scar burns like the worst of beacons. Just face him. Get it over with. Neither may live while the other survives. No shit. That was no mystical comment; that was just plain logic. I will never have a future while Riddle is alive. He haunts my every move like a twisted shadow. It's a dogged devotion that would be funny if it weren't so fatal.

And his "life" is meaningless as well. The irony is that this is all of his own creation. He simply cannot move on because I make him vulnerable. He decided to kill me, he made me a Horcrux and now I am the only one capable of bringing him down. Not because I'm super powerful, brilliant or even clever. It's because I was loved. I was loved and he wasn't and now, somehow, that makes me his biggest threat.

He's here, just where I expected him. Surrounded by Death Eaters, he paints an imposing picture: a most horrible army. I see Mrs. Malfoy and I wonder if she cares to know the fate of her son. My mother would have cared. Does she? Does she love Draco the way Lilly loved me? Why wasn't that enough to make Draco strong? Or, do you have to taste the loss of love to be willing to fight?

Riddle's curse is swift and I know better than to resist. My last thought before the sickly green light slams into my chest is, perhaps my eyes are not green like my mother's. Perhaps they are green like death. Perhaps now I can go home.


With enough reviews, drabbles turn into stories.

Arwen Thandiel