Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling. No money is being made.
Written for Quidditch League Competition – Round Four
Prompt – SEEKER: Your task is simple: to write about whatever you want whilst portraying your given emotion in your fic. The twist? (C'mon, you didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you? ;D) You CANNOT explicitly tell the reader what the character is feeling. For example: if you are given 'sad/sadness' as a prompt, you are forbidden from using those words anywhere in your fic. - Number picked: 3 – Emotion: Anger [forbidden: anger]
Seeker for the Wimbourne Wasps
Calm before the Storm
It was strange how utterly calm he felt. Truly, when he thought himself in the situation he was currently in, he had never thought that calm would be one of his emotions.
Not that he minded, quite on the contrary actually. He knew that this calm was just what he needed so that he would be able to do what he knew must be done.
He wasn't even thinking about where he needed to go. He would have been able to walk there with his eyes closed.
Though he wouldn't close his eyes. He couldn't. Not without seeing everything play out in front of him all over again. He didn't think he would have believed it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears... but he had.
The corridor lit up with light.
He lowered his wand and kept walking. Nothing, no one, would keep him from his destination.
How could he have been so stupid? How had it taken him so long to truly see it?
He should have suspected it a long time ago.
But he hadn't.
He scoffed mentally. Of course he hadn't. They had made sure of that. Pulled all the right strings, said all the right things, showed all the right emotions, and he, naive little idiot that he was, gobbled it all up.
No more, though. He was tired of being a puppet. Their puppet. He had cut the strings and everyone would know.
Another light and he kept walking.
He could still hear the whispers.
'He'll have to die,' they said, as if he were nothing more than a chess piece that had outlived his usefulness.
Another light. He didn't know how he had ever believed that particular shade of green to be ugly.
He reached the stairs without further interruptions and walked up into the office with almost lazy steps. Strangely enough he was in no hurry to finish this. He had been under their thumb for six years, he could enjoy this chase for a couple of minutes.
The door opened on it's own and he entered the office of the man that he had seen as a grandfather since he stepped foot into the Wizarding World.
"Harry..." the defeated tone the old Headmaster had made a tiny crack appear in his calm demeanor, though nothing more than a tightening of his grip on his wand showed it, "Why?"
"You dare to ask that?" he almost didn't recognize his tone. He had never spoken in such a cold voice before, nor with a slight hiss preambling his words.
"You heard." Dumbledore realized and the chips of ice that were once so full of emerald fire darkened.
"I did."
"I am sorry, my boy." Dumbledore slumped on his chair, missing the snarl that graced Harry's expression before it was smoothed away by a deadly calm.
"Tell me why, at least," Harry demanded, "I do not want to believe that you would want my death simply out of spite or greed." no matter how he may feel about the man at the moment, he didn't truly believe the man evil.
"It's the only way," Dumbledore confessed, his head bowed, "You are one of the Horcruxes, one of the reason Voldemort can't die. To save the Wizarding World, to save hundreds, thousands, of lives. It must be done."
"What about my life?" Harry asked in a harsh whisper, "Is my life worth less than theirs?"
"Never!" Dumbledore denied, shaking his head, "Harry, you cannot think that I truly believe that. But I cannot put your life before everyone else."
"I understand," Harry murmured and Dumbledore looked up, surprise, hope, and pride fighting for a place in his expressive blue eyes, "You can't. However I can."
He raised his wand.
Dumbledore didn't.
Green light lit up the office.
He turned around and walked away.
He made it out of the castle undisturbed.
By the time people noticed the bodies he was long gone.
He woke up the following morning in a warm bed. It took him a moment to realize where he was.
"Quite an impressive show," he turned his head slightly, not really surprised to see the man sitting beside him, "Truly, never expected something like that from the little Gryffindor that faced me in that Graveyard."
"Is there anything you wanted?" Harry asked, still in that detached tone, something that his newly acquired companion noticed.
"Come now, we both know why I am here." Voldemort told him, far more civilly than he had ever been with Harry, "My Horcrux, did you think I would let you just walk away?"
"Did you think I would allow another person to plan out my life, or my death?"
"What about a compromise, little Horcrux."
Harry glanced at the man. Compromising wasn't something that he thought was part of the Dark Lord's dictionary. It made him slightly curious about what Voldemort was planing, not that he would ever tell him that.
"You can still feel it, can you not?" Voldemort asked, a knowing glint in his carmine eyes, "Your magic is bubbling in your veins, begging to be released. You want to, you desire it. You want to let it raze the world around you for what was done to you. Come with me and I will let you unleash hell."
How could Harry have refused it? How could he say no when just thinking about what they had planned for him made his blood lust rise and his magic crackle?
He couldn't.
He had taken Voldemort's hand and let himself be apparated away from the rusting park bench he had been lounging on.
Harry had always wondered why they called it the calm before the storm. Now he knew.