Author's Note: I am Chaser #2 for the Falmouth Falcons. This is written for the Finals of the QLFC. My prompt is a quote that is widely associated with one particular character: "Only I can live forever." - Voldemort
My optional prompts are:
8. Ministry of Magic (setting)
6. We've eased each other's boredom for quite a while; it's been quite fun. (quote)
1. Claustrophobia (word)
Word Count from Google Docs: 2796
Only I Can Live Forever
Aleksandar Grey was the last scion of an old and easily forgotten wizarding family, whose parents had no delusions about their own, and their only child's, prospects in life. They named him Aleksandar in the hopes that being named after a great man in history might be inspirational, but no one was surprised when he remained ordinary.
His father was the lowest ranking member of a small division in the Ministry of Magic, but he had been allowed to give Aleksandar a job in his department. There was no actual work required for this position, as well as no money. It was a job in name only. It did, however, give the awkward young man an excuse to get out of the house and a reason to be at the Ministry. He had a small office in an out-of-the-way corridor where he spent the majority of his time, reading and working on little experiments. He had one small accomplishment, namely that he had converted an Xbox video game console to run without electricity, and he followed in the footsteps of Muggle misfits everywhere in devoting untold hours of time playing.
When Aleksandar had decided to dabble in bigger things, no one could say. He had always been a voracious reader, and the Ministry of Magic contained the largest library of magical books in the English language, which might have been his inspiration. At some point, he made an effort to dress a little better, to slouch a little less, and to attend a few social functions at the Ministry. His parents had been quite surprised, as well as pleased, and they urged him to date and to bring any girls he was interested in to their home for dinner or tea. This he never did, but he did bring girls to his office in the Ministry of Magic. He had a rather large nameplate on his desk, and a table with lab equipment; beakers, scales, microscope and such that would give the impression of scientific work.
The girls were duly impressed, except that Aleksandar never knew what to do next. They sat around his office for a few minutes, and when it became really uncomfortable, he would suggest getting coffee at a cafe around the corner. No girl ever came back more than once until Mallory Boothe. That became the first night of the rest of his life.
"We've eased each other's boredom for quite a while; it's been quite fun," he said, licking his dry lips.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I no longer find you interesting. I'm bored."
"No, no, you don't mean that," Mallory pleaded. "I can change, I can be anything you want."
"That's the trouble, you see. I don't want someone who I have already conquered. You are groveling at my feet; you are no longer a challenge."
"But I could be. You just have to tell me how." She could feel the tears sliding down her face, knowing that her makeup was becoming smeared, knowing that he hated it when even an errant hair was out of place, but she couldn't stop, she couldn't help herself. She had to find a way to make him love her again.
"Do you trust me?" he asked.
Mallory Boothe met Aleksandar Grey at the Ministry of Magic, where they both worked. It was in the canteen when they both sat down at the same empty table.
"I'm sorry," he said, picking up his tray.
"No, please sit down, I would love to have some company." She reached out and touched his arm, and slowly he put his tray back on the table and sat down.
"I've seen you around, haven't I?" Mallory asked.
"I work here at the Ministry," he said and put his napkin in his lap. Picking up his silverware, he began to eat his lunch.
Mallory kept up the conversation with a stream of small anecdotes and questions, while Aleksandar answered with grunts and monosyllabic words. They kept up this pattern for several weeks before Aleksandar agreed to see her outside of work. They saw a movie, had a cup of coffee at a cafe, and slowly she was able to draw Aleksandar out of his shell. She found him charming and smart, but pathologically shy everywhere they went. She felt protective toward him, felt she was important to him, felt that he needed her, and she wanted to be needed so badly. She couldn't wait to see him, he was her first thought in the morning and her last thought at night.
She thought he felt the same way about her, and when he offered to show her the work he was doing, she was ecstatic. Sharing his secrets meant he loved and trusted her, and she was sure they would never be apart again. She wanted so badly to believe that he loved her, wanted to be with her. She was sure that they would be together for as long as they both should live.
Deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic, in a hidden room, he showed her the experiments he was working on. She was so proud of him, that he was trusted by the Ministry to undertake research that would benefit all of wizardkind. He wanted her help, and she was only too happy to oblige.
"Do you trust me?"
"Of course I do," she said.
He pointed his wand at her, said the incantation, and she felt herself shrinking. She was frightened and threw her arms up to grab hold of him, but she couldn't reach him. She felt dizzy, nauseated, and her head was spinning. She cried out. Then she passed out.
When she awoke, she was unsure of where she was or what had happened. She looked around, and nothing seemed familiar.
"There, there, my pet, everything is all right," he said softly.
She looked at him and was shocked to see that he was huge, with a monstrous-sized head. She tried to stand but was too weak.
"Help me," she said and was shocked to hear her voice. It sounded like a tiny little squeak, high and brittle.
"You're all right, my pet, don't be frightened. I have you safely taken care of."
Suddenly she was moving, and she tried to grab something to hold onto. She realized that she had taken hold of his hand, or rather, one finger. One very large finger. She was in his hand, but a gigantic hand, that she was standing on. He brought her close to his face, and talked softly.
"You are the first person I have successfully shrunk to this size. You should be honored to have this special place in my life and in my work."
"You didn't tell me you were going to shrink me," she said, cringing at the sound of her new voice.
"You said you would do anything," he reminded her. "You begged me to let you help me."
"I—I did," she said slowly. "But I had no idea what you were going to do."
"Don't you trust me?" he accused her.
She was silent then. She looked around, taking in the scale of life she was now bound to. She began to shake, she couldn't help it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "This is all so new to me. When will you make me big again?"
"Make you big again? Why would I do that?"
Fear gripped her then, driving out all other emotions. "I can't stay this small forever," she said, trying to sound firm and in control of herself.
"You will be with me always, from this moment forward. I thought you would like that. You said you wanted to be with me forever."
"But… how can we be together like this? We can't even kiss, much much less have a family."
"A family," he said, furrowing his brow, "I don't want a family. Ever."
"But I thought that's what we planned, a life together; that would of course include family, children, parents, siblings…"
"No, that was never in my plans," he spit out the words. "Families just get in the way."
She sat down in his hand, rested her forehead on her knees, and softly cried. He set her down on the table. She did not stop crying. He made her a little bed out of a folded handkerchief and left the room.
She fell asleep, her head resting on the book she had been reading.
"Only I can live forever!" he yelled at her.
"But why?" she cried. "Why wouldn't you want me to live forever with you?"
"Because I can't be held back by the likes of you. You have no vision, no understanding of the power that I wield, of the power that you yourself could share with me. No, you are not worthy of immortality."
She jerked awake, looking around. She realized that she was still in the Ministry of Magic, and sighed. The dream came more and more often.
'Why would you choose that?' she had wondered. 'Why wasn't I worthy?'
Aleksandar had been shocked at how different he felt after shrinking Mallory, the rush of power that he felt, the energy coursing through his body. He was a different man, a man who had more confidence. He began to speak to people at the Ministry, sometimes complete strangers, sometimes even women.
Aleksandar was a thinking man. If the power he had felt at shrinking Mallory gave him this much energy and confidence, how could he get more?
Mallory didn't know how or why, but she felt the change in Aleksandar when he came into his office. He walked briskly across the room and sat down at the table.
"What's going on?" she asked.
I've developed a new experiment, and you will have the honor of being my first witness and subject." He picked her up from the dollhouse that he had created for her to live in, and placed her in a large glass beaker.
"Please don't send me away," Mallory whispered.
"Only I can live forever."
"No, no, no," she cried, anguish filling her soul.
"I will be with you for the rest of your life," he said. "You can't ask for more than that."
"But the afterlife, where will you be after I die?"
"I'm sorry, truly I am, but I cannot follow you," Aleksandar said, smiling wryly.
She felt her heart breaking. She felt bereft, the darkness surrounding her.
"Please, help me, I can't live without you," she wailed.
"That's not true," he said. "You can live with me. You just can't die with me, for I will never die."
She began to cry, her tears large drops of water. She was lifted off the floor of the beaker. She floated, the salty water giving her buoyancy. She floated as the beaker filled higher and higher until she felt herself bump up against the cover over the beaker.
'That's strange,' she thought, 'I don't remember there being a top on this beaker.'
She had stopped crying, yet the water still rose higher and higher. Inch by inch, the water level rose and rose. Claustrophobia set in; she felt her teeth begin to chatter as she grew colder and colder, the water sapping her heat.
"Help me," she cried out, "I'm drowning."
"Only I can live forever."
As the water covered her face, she kept her eyes open, pleading with him for help. Her lungs began to burn—she needed air. When she could resist no longer, she breathed out, then in, the water gagging her. She began to pound on the glass walls of her tomb, crying out. The last thing she saw was his face, smiling at her, saying one last time, "Only I can live forever."
"Only I can live forever!" the little boy shouted as he jumped behind the couch, brandishing his sword.
"We're coming for you, Snake Face," the other little boys shouted.
Their mother's head jerked up from the newspaper she was reading.
"What did I hear you say?" Samantha Boothe asked.
"Motherrrr," the boy behind the couch whined, "We're playing Order of the Phoenix, and you've interrupted us."
"Why did you just say, 'Only I can live forever'?" she asked.
"Because that's what he used to say," the little boy stood up. "You know, old Snake Face."
At the blank look on his mother's face, he sighed dramatically. "He Who Must Not Be Named."
"When did you kids start playing that game?" His mother was a little shook up, she admitted to herself. "Who invented it?"
"Nobody invented it, it's just something we play at."
He turned back to his friends, raised his sword, yelled, "Mouldy Voldy rides again!" and ran after the other children out the door.
Only I can live forever. Samantha shuddered at the thought. Who would want to live forever? And to be the only one, to boot, always outliving your friends and your family. What a lonely, tragedy-filled life that would be.
Even Nicholas Flamel discovered that immortality was not what it seemed at first blush. Living forever seems like the goal of all humanity, until they actually try it, and discover that they outlive their own time. It's hard to keep up with all the changes that occur around them, particularly in these modern times when technology changes drastically every eighteen months.
She turned back to the newspaper, staring at the pages, slowly turning them one by one, searching for… what? Then she saw it. The missing piece of the puzzle. She threw the paper down and rushed out of the room.
Luring girls to his secret room in the Ministry of Magic was easy when it was a witch he was trying to attract. They were all very interested in the secrets the Ministry was said to hold. Simply invite them to see his experiment and they were eager to accept his invitation.
It was when he had branched out into luring Muggles into the Ministry of Magic that he had experienced resistance. Frankly, it had whetted his appetite, the challenge of getting the Muggle girls to follow him into the old-fashioned phone booth and descend down to this mysterious place, never to be seen again. But it had become harder to lure Muggles recently, after a newspaper article that mentioned the disappearance of several young women in the same neighborhood as the Ministry of Magic, and he thought that he might lay low for a while.
Aleksandar busied himself with several chores, cleaning up, putting away the ingredients, creating the specific kind of order only someone with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder could appreciate. His pride and joy were his shelves of beakers, all identical except for their contents.
The beakers contained the dead bodies of women who had given their lives so that he might live longer. They didn't give their lives willingly, but that was of no consequence to him. 'Only I can live forever' was the only thing that mattered to him now.
He fed on their panic and fear. He fed on their realization that they were about to die. He drove himself to find new and gruesome ways to kill the girls, to have it happen slowly, to extend their pain and panic. He became a master of death and despair, becoming a fate worse than being a dementor.
Until the day he lured a girl he hadn't realized was a witch into his secret room in the Ministry of Magic. She had played the part as expertly as Judi Dench and gained his confidence. But when he tried to shrink her so that he could put her in a beaker she whipped out her own wand and turned the tables. She shrunk him and placed him in the beaker, sealing his fate.
After he was safely ensconced in the beaker, without a wand, and after putting many spells that would keep him in the beaker, Samantha began to investigate his quarters. It didn't take long to find his victims. She gasped when she stumbled upon them, as she realized what they were, and who they contained. The glass beakers had become the watery tomb for these helpless girls, now floating in embalming fluid. Some of their faces looked as if they were merely napping, while others had their final scream of horror etched into their faces.
She dropped to her knees when she discovered her sister Mallory, lost for several years, ensconced in his evil experiment. She opened the beaker, praying that her sister was merely in stasis, but as she pulled the tiny, limp figure out of the fluid she knew that her sister was gone forever.