Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.
AN: Yay, something new. I'm on a bit of a Death Eater kick, might make this a series of one-shot type things, not sure. Happy Red Nose Day!
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It was never what he'd wanted.
You woke up, you ate breakfast, you talked to people. It was school; it was what everyone did.
You talked to people and people talked back. They'd talk of quidditch and classes and girls. But then just occasionally they'd talk of things he didn't understand. There'd be whispers in the common room, shadows on fire lit faces. They said he was too young so of course he felt inclined to listen. Immortality was one word they used. Cleansing was another.
Somehow around that fire a man established himself as god.
If not recognised by the general public it was definitely recognised by the troubled adolescents in his school. What was it they'd seen in him? Salvation? Hope?
But they didn't want saving. They didn't want freedom. All they'd wanted was more. To have more power than their fathers. To stand taller. To mean something.
He remembers this.
He remembers this and he focuses hard on that feeling and when he hears the crunch and her gagged whimper he closes his mind to everything else. Memories. His Lord would punish him, but his Lord is distracted.
They would cluster around the fire with stories fit for myths and legends, a handsome prince, banished by impostors, sent off into another world to find himself. He travelled, they'd say. So many places. Places they barely dared dream of, places of dark ancient magic, with its dark ancient curses and its dark ancient gods. Some said he met these gods. Some said he was one.
Her screaming is acute but she is gagged and he knows it is only his mind. Months ago he's not sure he would have heard that scream, but experience broadens the pallet of the imagination.
Trials of fire and rituals by moonlight. He'd unlocked something. Whether inside the very bowels of the earth or in the depths of his soul itself he broke the catch and out came a power so immense that the corridors of Slytherin were alive with it.
Their heir, the portraits whispered.
There was sobbing in his mind too, but that he knew wasn't hers. His mother's maybe. Or his sister's. He recognised it, anyhow. It was almost comforting as his eyes lay rooted to that face.
Dark green hangings hid him as he heard the voices outside his dorm. 'Returned to England', said one. 'Join him', said another.
He'd have followed them then if he'd had the guts. He'd have walked right out the castle, to pay homage or offer services or simply bow at the feet of this new hero.
He was on their side, that's what the whispers said.
There was another crunch and he knew it as bones breaking. There were sharp breaths and he knew them to be his own.
He was on their side but what their side was he was uncertain. Pure – he knew that much, and righteous, whatever that meant. They were fighting for freedom they said. Deflecting an invasion that could wipe them off the face of the earth.
He'd read books. He thought he understood invasions and the thought scared him. It scared him to the point of belief. He'd have followed them that night, but there was transfiguration first tomorrow, and they all knew what happened when Dumbledore found you skiving.
He wanted to screw shut his eyes, to close them so tight his head folded in on itself, engulfed the moment and wiped it from his memory. She was speaking now, gag removed. She was speaking and her voice was softer than any voice should be after so many screams (he'd heard them, silent and echoing). Her voice was soft and her words were frail; wisps of maybes set loose to the wind -, they fell through his head while he heard nothing but the sound. A cool breeze that had lost its final struggle. He knew what came next.
He hadn't followed then. Nor the next time. But months on and those students grew to such heights he admired them in a way he couldn't quite express. It wasn't idolatry; it was inspiration. He followed them then. To the dark field with the dark cloaks and the dark prince standing amongst them all.
His Lord stood up then, stepping back from the tortured female. He looked at him and there was command in the red depths of that gaze.
And then he threw back his hood and he wasn't dark. He was pale and he was power, he was cold and he was burning with a force so intense it hurt to look on. And he was thin, so thin and pale he must be dead and yet he lived. He was man and yet at once he was also snake and magic and the incarnation of so many imaginations. He was a god.
And he spoke like one too. Inspirational in a way no teacher had been. He spoke of things that mattered to them and then of things that didn't in such a way that suddenly they did. He spoke of them with bitter passion that scorched like ice, like magic. He'd said words then, that they'd never heard uttered. Dark words, rank and rotting with power that was never meant to be controlled. He'd spoke them then and they'd been beautiful. He'd spoke them then and made them something to dream of, to fight towards, to aspire to.
Bottomless eyes wide with fathoms of power and greed and bitterness. His heart was dark and his soul fraying and yet he still had a gaze that could sear you as you stood. Make your skin crawl with ice-cold flame. He looked and said, 'Now, MacNair, or would you like a knife?'
He hadn't wanted a knife. Knifes were for muggles and Herbology. Knives were toys. He raised his wand.
He'd spoken the words and the sky had been lit, the air hummed with magic and the taste of blood burned into them from that glow. Green, like the grass and the trees and the drapes around his bed. The light died and the body fell still. A muggle maybe? It hadn't mattered.
He focussed his hate. That rage the god had taught him. He'd focussed it until he thought he too could be bitter and snake-like and immortal. He thought that he too could be pale and thin and so like death yet live. He focussed on that divide. On that rift between living and nothing. He focussed on it until his vision grew red and he could almost imagine it were his eyes, dyed forever the colour of his Lord's. His eyes were red and her face was nothing but the trace of a memory, that whisper on the wind. He felt the pulse in his neck, beating so slowly he might have been dying, felt his lungs creak open-closed, open-closed, he heard her confused squeaking like the far off wing beats of an owl and from his own mouth he heard the whipcrack of a spell.
"Avada Kedavra."
"Avada Kedavra,"It meant unmake, their god had told them.
There was bile in his throat - blood on his tongue - flame in his eyes and green, green, green – all around, it was the sky the ground the faces of the people around him – it was their cloaks and their hands and their souls as his vision encompassed everything, the world and all within it before imploding. And then he saw only her. He saw her as a baby. He saw her getting married. He saw her first kiss, her first dance, her first swim in the lake with her dad. He saw her playing on the swings and he saw her playing with her daughter. He saw a girl call 'Mummy' and he saw her turn. He saw her the daughter, the sister, the wife, the mother. He saw her soul and he saw her die. He felt her die.
In an instant she was inside him and she was him. She stole the breath from his lungs and the blood from his head and she screamed to him.
He fainted.
Above him the god had laughed.
He'd taken the mark that night. And then he'd returned to school and for the first time seen the thestrals. His eyes had been opened, he thought. Beasts of such beauty and darkness, they must be slaves to his new snake-like Lord. He'd watched them that night, not knowing or understanding their true nature, but hoping a schoolboy hope that one day he'd reveal those strange, amazing creatures to others. Open eyes in the way his Lord had opened his.
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AN: MacNair. And because I read Heart Of Darkness last month.
If you've read it please review it.