Close Brush
with Death
He is screaming.
So this is pain, is his only conscious thought. He has no time to think of the people he has subjected to the Cruciatus Curse and wonder whether the pain he is experiencing now is similar to theirs. He has no time to gloat about the fact that it was always he who inflicted the pain, not the other way around. The tables have turned. The green light is burning him, and he has no doubt in his mind that this is the most excruciating experience any man will have. Lord Voldemort will have it in no other way--if he must be subjected to pain, it must be of the highest kind.
He can feel his blood boiling, bubbling beneath his skin, oh so ready to break out. They look like giant goosebumps running all over his body. But his still-pale skin does not so much break or tear, keeping the pain just below the threshold of mindless screaming. His bones are disintegrating into off-white dust, his blood evaporating into the night air. His skin crumples and cracks, starting with his feet. A large mouth has opened up under him, ripping the flesh off, little by little, limb by limb. His wand clatters to the ground.
He has just lost his right hand. The backlash of the Avada Kedavra continues to consume him, faster now, as if with a vengeance. As it climbs up his torso, Lord Voldemort releases another inhuman scream, piercing through the night, before dying out as his vocal organs are burned.
.
.
The pain stops. Surprised, he looks down at himself. He can see the Potters' floorboards through his gauze-like body. Is this what death feels like?
"That's weird."
He snaps his head in the direction of the voice. It belongs, apparently, to the young woman sitting on the window sill. Her hair is as dark as the midnight sky, and her skin as pale as death. The ankh around her neck gleams brightly silver in the moonlight.
She is looking straight at him, arms crossed, for all the world a mother about to scold a child. Narrowing his eyes, he unfolds his body from its slightly slouched gait, drawing himself to his full height. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm doing my job," she answers without the hint of fear he usually gets from his Death Eaters. "Or I'm supposed to be doing it. And you're supposed to be dead."
He suppresses a smirk. "And I suppose you make a job out of collecting dead people."
"Of course I do. I'm Death."
This girl in front of me is Death? He sneers. "That's ridiculous."
"No it isn't. But splitting yourself up into god-knows-how-many parts is. From what I see, you probably put bits of your soul into containers so you won't ever die. Do you have any idea how unhealthy that is?" She jumps off the window sill and walks towards him. Her eyes go up and down his incorporeal form. "Wizards always give me a headache, especially megalomaniac ones like you. Why can't you be normal people and give me a break? Don't you know how hard this job is?"
He smirks at her. "I'm sure it is very hard, madam."
She narrows her eyes, and puts her hands on her hips. "Don't give me any of that! Ooh, just you wait—I'll see you another time when I don't have so many people to deal with."
"I'm sure your busy schedule won't give you any time to meet with me," Lord Voldemort says triumphantly. "However, it was a pleasure meeting you."
She begins to disappear, her feet fading out of existence first. "Don't be so sure of that. Everyone meets me, sooner or later, Tom."
He is left in silence and shadows. He gazes at the Potter brat, unconscious but not dead, forehead bleeding profusely, where the Avada Kedavra had struck... and rebounded. His lips form an angry snarl. The brat shall pay. His wand has disappeared. He spares one last glance at the red-haired woman lying supine on the floor before making his way out of Godric's Hollow.
"Well, certainly not me."
.
--
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Um. Just a short drabble about Voldemort meeting Death (from Sandman). I think the idea came from thinking too much about a Dark!Harry fic I was planning. I suppose I got carried away.