Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling's in its compressed form
Author's Note: I'm sure this sort of thing has been done several times over, but I can't help myself. Do tell me if my writing is disgustingly prententious, because I made a different sort of effort for this story.
It grows dark unusually early. But the space between sunset and moonshine is too long; for an hour there is no moon. The only distinctions from the inside of the outside are the mottled shadows the overgrown tree casts on the windows, tapping out of rhythm occasionally. There are moments when he expects the tap to sound (a tap from there or elsewhere) but there are also moments when the tree leans forward, winks ominously, and disturbs the glass when he does not anticipate it. His heartbeat, too, feels irregular, perhaps because he is constantly holding his breath and letting go. He also feels slightly lightheaded.
It is like a scene from a play, a very badly arranged ensemble in a poorly-lighted set. There are few emotions that materialize in their faces, albeit sudden jaw-and fist-clenches. She has immobilized the clock in their dining room, and so they have been counting seconds with their pulse. Even if it is irregular. They pretended, at first, to joke and fuss with the baby, but the air grew moist and suffocating as it grew darker. They stop speaking and breathing loudly, and he believes his son is quite asleep.
He pulls the heavy curtain over the window. There is a cold air whistling at every crack in the house, and a chilling breeze creeps toward his toes. They are clustered in the room nearest to the door.
She bravely attempts a joke, but he can actually see it falter and slip from her tongue even before it is out. He smiles tersely in reply, glancing quickly down at the bundle in his arms. She moves closer.
"Prongs."
She reaches up and ruffles his hair, which he finds juvenile and perhaps odd. Her fingers are clammy, and when they touch his scalp his hair stands on end. The child is very, very still.
No one tipped them off—no one gasped out a hurried Patronus and whispered a frantic message, complete with rolling eyes and heaving nostrils. No one stared at the floor in apologetic agony, no one grasped his shoulder and shook him forcibly, no one slumped over in front of them.
No. One did. She dropped her spoon, swiveled around, and slammed down the shade.
And here they are, with cool tosses of air swirling around them. He lifts a bit of cloth from the child's forehead, and she leans in to kiss it. She looks up from her downcast face.
Her green eyes glitter with tremulous emotion, so compressed and so wretched that he cannot tear his own away. They glare at each other this way, with their child between them.
"Don't do that to my hair." He catches a slim wrist and skids his fingers up to press her digits together. Together they lower their arms, and familiarly shift their hands to fit each other.
"Don't stare at me." She almost smiles, but it disappears when she thrusts up her chin stubbornly. "I'm not an object."
"I know. You've told me that every night since we were married."
"It didn't work though, did it?" She smiles then, and pulls her hand away from him.
Somewhere in the stretch of a minute their hands warmed each other; he feels the cold again taking the place of her hand. A black tendril wafts out from the baby's blanket.
A noise erupts in the outside. A hardened moment encases them in ice, thrusting them together but freezing them at the same time.
"Go." He shoves the boy in her stiffened arms and runs his hand through his hair.
No wave of nostalgia crashes onto them, despite the irony of the situation. She merely tightens her grip on the child and forgets to remind him that he always looks down-right idiotic when he does that. She runs her own hand over her boy's curling head of hair. Another noise claims the moment.
"Go!" He now pushes her roughly away from him, away from the window, where he is nearly transfixed by the sudden light.
A light. It grows and grows in his eyesight and never flickers. His eyes feel burnt, because there is no respite from the steady flame. The heat from her body lingers briefly, like the flowery scent from a better day, but he knows that she is gone. She listens to him for once.
He gropes inside of his sweater pocket, fumbling for the mahogany stick. Wand. (He forever blames Sirius for nicknaming his wand—among other things.) His glasses nearly tumble off, but he catches the rim with a spare hand and wipes off a bead of sweat that was not there a second before. The wand, however, slips and rolls off and stops near the tea table. A horrible panic clutches him when he considers how much time is already wasted in dropping the wand—and even more so in thinking so furiously about everything.
Stop thinking.
A hand firmly grips the clammy wand and lifts it up in an expectant position. He closes his eyes, envisions a better day (perhaps in the future) and accepts his mortality in a swooping motion of feeling and insensibility, aware of a brightness hinging on his eyelids.
"I am Lord Voldemort."