A/N: I'm trying to publish these in the order I wrote them. This one was from way back in 2004.
The flames sent a plume of smoke billowing up hundreds of feet in the air, but the street remained silent around him. No one seemed to notice or care that one of the houses on Grimmauld Place was burning to cinders in the middle of the night.
He could feel the heat beginning to blister his skin, but he refused to step away until it was finished. It was no less than he deserved; perhaps it was an early taste of the Hell that his aunt had so loved to threaten him with when he was younger. He didn't believe in Hell anymore, at least, not in any other besides the one he had resided in for the past seventeen years. Flecks of ash lit upon his dark robes, smoldering briefly before they extinguished themselves. He wondered if anyone would take more notice than they had of the house if he were to ignite in front of it. Would he scream? He thought not. He had learned, in seventeen years, that the pain was only worse if you screamed.
No ordinary fire, the flames consumed the timber of the old house the way a starving wolf might devour the flesh of its prey in great gulps, leaving nothing behind. It had taken him months to find just the right spell. Incendio simply wouldn't do. He wanted nothing left, no reminders of the house, its former inhabitants, nothing that might reach out from the blackness to suck him back into a life he was determined to leave behind.
He was startled when a dark figure shuffled across the sidewalk in front of him, but the man—or woman, he couldn't be certain—paid him no mind other than to nod once in his direction. He wondered why the person didn't stop to question the orange glow that had to illuminate his face, but perhaps he or she hadn't noticed it anymore than they had noticed the inferno roaring just a few steps to their right.
Finally, the fire burned itself down to the point that the only things left were small bits of metal lying in a blackened hole in the ground, still glowing red. And if he noticed a small, twisted skeleton there in the corner, where the boiler would have been, so be it.