I own nothing but the plot!
To watch a helpless person, to watch them hurt, that was pain. To watch them twist and plead with the gods to spare them, that was torture. To watch a young girl sink and fall and lose herself within herself, that was agony. To stand high and aloof in a windswept tower and watch Ginny Weasley waste away killed him. The deadened nothing in her face, and the hopelessness behind the 'windows to her soul', he couldn't stand it. He had been watching her. He had watched as she had slowly faded in to the background, forgotten by those around her, and then faded from herself. He watched while she stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and then stopped living. He kept a vigil, witness to the pain that consumed her then faded away as she accepted her fate. Witness to the dying of hope. And he couldn't stand it anymore. There she was, alone on the ground, and here he was, alone upon his open tower top. He turned from his vantage point and descended through the hallways. A pause on the cold front steps and he looked around at the evening.
The clouds scudded overhead, flitting past in the nature of pre-winter skies. Twilight was just beginning, and dark had not set in yet. Short winter shadows covered the grounds and the dry, brown grass. Bare trees clawed up at the sky, white and gray. The lake was dark and calm, cold-looking. He watched her, standing there, neither near the castle nor near the lake, but somewhere random in between, unaware of the cold biting at her exposed flesh. She stood so still, as she always did, as if in an uncaring trance, impervious to the rest of the world. As he approached her, he couldn't help but study her, as he always did. Her head forward, her lifeless hair falling in front of her face, and her arms limp at her sides. Her thin t-shirt, her faded jeans, and her shoeless feet. He stepped closer, facing her bowed head.
"I am here." He told her, wanting her to move, to acknowledge. He did not comfort, not yet. She didn't move for so long, he almost tried again. Just as he opened his lips to reach out to her again, she twitched, almost imperceptibly. But he had been watching her. Slowly, her head retracted and came up, her limp hair parting and falling back, flowing away from her face as gravity pulled it to the side. Those eyes, so lost, so soulless, so dark. All lively color drained away, she was left with nothing but obsidian black coal orbs that creepingly moved to face his own. No expression moved her face, but when the pale lips moved it wasn't her voice.
"You can't have her." the voice whispered, a voice so hauntingly familiar, so coarse; it was overlapping her own dead whisper. "She is mine." It said. She made no move to leave him, or to make him leave. Her arms stayed limp at her side. He was watching her. He saw that her wand wasn't even anywhere on her person. But the dark voice over hers made no other words, her lips closing again for him to see how thin they had become, as thin as he had watched her become. The air was still, and made not a sound as they stood there in the cold air on the dry dead lawns. And then there came a slight brush against his cheek, the slightest stirring of air on his hand, as the first snowfall began soft and silent. The sharp contrast between the white purity of snow and the dark hateful hopelessness of her struck a cord in him.
"No," he whispered back, "You can't have her. I want her." He was watching her. He saw the pale, thin lips part again, and saw how the wasted muscle shifting beneath her cheeks emphasized how hollow they were. How hollow she was. How far she had gone from him. How long he had waited. An ominous chuckle ghosted from her husk, and yet she had no expression.
"But she is mine." It told him. He disagreed. "Why don't you take her from me?" It challenged. He agreed.
"I will take her from you with something you do not understand. And I will keep her from you." He replied. Another ghostly chuckle emanated forth, a challenge in itself, full of dark scorn.
"There is nothing I do not understand. I understand your petty love. I understand your useless courage, and your fallible loyalty. I understand." Her lips so pale stayed parted and her arms so thin prickled, unyielding to the cold she couldn't feel. He allowed a small smile of sad triumph too late.
"You do not understand my magic." He whispered. A wandless magic. A magic of the soul. A soul uncorrupted, only misled. He watched her. And he watched her non-reaction as a part of his soul broke and drifted out from his chest of earthly flesh. He watched as it spun and grew brighter between them, larger and larger. And he watched as it moved towards her.
"I resist your magic." The voice told him and he smiled again. It was uncertain, unaware, ignorant of the true import if the whirling, growing light floating nearer.
"Perhaps. But not my soul." He whispered back. He was watching her. He watched his whirling soul come so close as the breathe between her shirt and her skin and stop to hesitate. And he watched her breathe a little faster, blink a little harder, live a little more. Her flesh quivered with rediscovered life, cold and warm. Limp arms twitched and flaccid fingers flexed. He watched. She saw him, he knew.
"Help me." She whispered, so scared and alone.
"No!" The voice came from her lips, angry and possessive. "She is mine!" He shook his head and he knew she could see him. Now was the time to comfort, now was the time to save.
"I am here." He told her and she moved, she nodded.
"No!" the voice faded, scrabbling to hold on.
"I am ready." She told him. He nodded and stepped closer.
"Let me in." he told her, and she smiled, and complied. The light of his soul exploded in to her, filling her with light and he watched as she sighed and heaved, welcoming life. The dark screaming whispering voice rasped out of her throat, and then it was disembodied, screaming without a body to scream through, and then shattered. Her body shuddered with the welcome loss and slumped sideways to the ground. He bent and held her head, waiting, watching. Finally, she smiled, and she opened her eyes. The black had receded, but the green was so dark and he knew she had been marked. "And now you are of me." He told her softly, but she was made content. Content in this rediscovery of life and love she fell deeper in to his embrace.
To watch a lost person find their way, to see the spark of hope burn first in their eyes, that is happiness. To watch the deadened hopelessness recede and make way for new life, that was joy. But to watch a rebirth, to give away a part of your soul to help another and know that the binding love would consume the rest of your lives together, that was ecstasy.