Author's Note: Hello! This was written for the Globetrotter Drabble Competition on the Harry Potter Challenge forum posted by why the caged bird sings for the Prompt #12 Los Angeles. The character here is an OC, but he could also be any other Death Eater who you imagine didn't really believe in Voldemort but went along with it anyway. Special thanks to NiftyGirl for betaing, and to TheHaloFreak for the idea. I do not own Harry Potter.
"Yesterday, I killed a man, and today?" He swallowed the rest of his Firewhiskey before he answered the darkness's silent question of what he was today. "Today I am nothing." He let the finality of that drift into the air around him. The darkness offered no argument, and neither did he. He was entirely alone, but for the half empty bottle of Ogden's finest beside him.
"Which is fitting I suppose, since that's what he is today." He thought back to him, to the one man he was sure he'd killed that day. He couldn't actually remember him; he couldn't place what he'd looked like, who he'd been fighting with or if he'd died like a hero or a fool. The only part of him that he could actually remember was the way he had fallen back when his curse had hit his chest. It seemed like slow motion, as if he had been suspended in midair for hours before he had finally crashed into the ground.
And today he was alive and that man was dead.
His mother had told him as a child that killing destroyed part of oneself, but he hadn't felt a thing; a little shock maybe, but certainly no pervading sense of loss or destruction. At the time his own life was all that had mattered.
He supposed there were other deaths for which he was responsible, he hadn't exactly been cautious with his curses. But that death, unlike any others he might have caused, he could not escape. That man was dead because of him. Only that man was a hero, he had fought to protect his world and his mother would hold pride in her heart as well as grief.
Today, the war was over. Good had triumphed over evil, just as the stories said and it was he who had backed the wrong horse. The tattoo on his left arm offered a flash of pain as he remembered the day he had received it. He'd known better really. True, he'd worn the Slytherin colors proudly while he'd been in school and he had no love of Muggles or Mudbloods, but that hadn't really blinded him to what he was agreeing. But there was no alternative once the deal was struck, everyone knew what happened to Death Eaters who ran away, Igor Karkorof and Regulus Black and hundreds of others, all found dead with days. Deserting wasn't an option if you wanted to live, and all cowards feared death. He was no different; in his heart he was afraid of the Dark Lord, so rather than turn away from the murder of children, he'd served him.
They would find him, if not today than before long and he would go to Azkaban or death or whatever punishment his cowardice had earned him. He wasn't going to fight them when they came; it was too late for that. He was just going to sit here with his Firewhiskey and enjoy what was left of today.
