Chapter 4; Heavenfall

Lily brandished her wand at the three remaining boys, huddled together uncertainly in the snow.

"Get away from here," she hissed. Without a word, they scampered. Others lay frozen, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated on the ground. Lily kicked a couple of them solidly in the ribs.

"'Lo there, Evans," Sirius greeted wryly, unharmed aside from the thin cuts I'd inflicted on his forehead. Lily herself looked a little worse for wear – a scratch along her cheek and a couple of articles of torn clothing, nothing more. "You always make an entrance, don't you? Your shirt is torn in the wrong place – oi, looks like Macnair cut straight through your–"

Lily responded by approaching swiftly and cracking him across the face. He winced visibly, trying to suppress a grin. "Sorry – I didn't mean it like that–"

"Sirius Black, what the hell do you think you were doing, walking around alone at night in a dark alleyway?"

"This isn't exactly a dark alleyway. It's the main street of Hogsmeade. And I wasn't alone, I was with Cammie."

Lily uttered an unattractive snort of frustration. "Black, you idiot, that bimbo isn't worth her weight in Pygmy Puffs. She wouldn't know a Death Eater from Albus Dumbledore if he–"

"As eternally grateful as I am to you for kicking Slytherin ass, Evans, I won't let you insult my girlfriend all you like."

"Girlfriend? Hardly! More like your little lapdog. Disgusting, honestly. C'mon, let's get back to Rosmerta's before these imbeciles wake up – come on! Now, you know better than to go out alone. Where are James and Peter? You're lucky I was having coffee with a friend or who knows where you'd be . . ."

Their voices got fainter as they moved away.

"You know James and Peter lately, Evans. Peter's always sulking and James went home early. He's been a terrible sport lately, no fun at all. It's entirely your influence, no doubt . . ."

The cuts drove me crazy. The cuts drove me absolutely insane.

I couldn't help but notice it – I noticed it more every single time I saw him. The three slender cuts I'd inflicted on Sirius's forehead still hadn't healed. He could get them removed at a hospital, or heal them himself, more likely. So why were they still there?

I saw him a few weeks later at a café in Hogsmeade. He sat with James, Lily, and Remus, sipping a coffee for once instead of something alcoholic. Although I sat alone, close to them, their backs were turned to me and I didn't think they noticed me watching them.

"Why are those scars still on your forehead?" I asked, approaching abruptly, but Sirius didn't look up. Suddenly James took notice of me, and he stood up carefully, as if weighing his next move.

"Message from Sirius to you," James announced loudly, "get the hell out of his life. Don't you think you've screwed it up enough already?"

"I wasn't talking to you," I explained patiently. "I was talking to my brother."

"Who?"

Sirius looked up, smile still in his eyes, and directed the question toward me.

"My brother," I repeated slowly, sarcastically.

Sirius glanced around in an over-exaggerated fashion, and then turned back to me with a small, polite smile. "There must be some mistake," was all he said.

I narrowed my eyes. "What?" It came out in a whisper.

James looked smug, happier than an idiot like him had any right to be. He said, "You're supposed to be some sort of genius, right? Work it out yourself, mate. But do it somewhere else, so that we don't have to look at you."

Then it clicked.

My brother. There must be some mistake.

Brother.

I turned away and didn't look back.

As the months wore on, whispers began to pervade the ranks, whispers of the biggest mission we'd ever planned coming to a head.

"Rumour has it the Dark Lord wants to reveal himself," Locksley whispered to me. "The Ministry doesn't realize how much power he's accumulated; they play it down in the newspapers to keep government ratings up. But rumour has it that the Dark Lord wants to do something so noticeable that even the Ministry won't be able to cover it up. That's why he's asking everyone to participate in the next mission. This is it, the first step in his Ministry takeover."

I begged Bellatrix, begged her incessantly to let me go. Every time I asked, she always gave me a searching once-over. "Not this time," she would perhaps answer, or, "The next one, little cous. This one's too dangerous."

I believed, at the time, her reluctance to let me go stemmed from concern for my well-being. I was wrong about that as well. Finally, my repeated pleas broke her down.

"Fine. I'll speak to the Dark Lord," she relented at long last. "You're so eager! I should be proud of you, but right now I'm just annoyed."

I grinned. "Thanks, Bella!"

That was how I ended up in Matthew Avery's drawing room the night before the mission, packed in excitedly with some of the younger Death Eaters and their friends.

"I've never been on a big mission before," Anthony Gibbon admitted excitedly. "I mean, just a few raids, not much action . . ."

"Bet I can rack up more kills than you!"

"I heard it'll be a massacre!"

And I laughed along with them, speculating and making ridiculous bets, cheeks flushed and heart pounding in anticipation. This was it. I wasn't just some lightweight. I'd really gone through with it. Of course I would use the Unforgivables – I had never encountered a spell that I couldn't perform correctly on the first try. I knew I would be up to the challenge when the time came. Coward was the last thing I would ever be again. That promise had been cemented by taking the mark.

And now I'd prove at last that I was worthy, important, some crucial part of this war, like my brother. Next time I saw Sirius, I'd be more than a match for him.

Though it was difficult, I finally managed to fall asleep. I didn't dream that night.

The St. Giles massacre was one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of London. Textbooks would use it to paint a picture of Voldemort at the height of his regime. Reporters ruined it, with their Quick-Quote Quills and incessant typewriters, with their endless statistics and commentaries.

Forty-one dead. Nine buildings torched. Fifty estimated missing or critically wounded. The words seemed utterly hollow to me.

I can't remember the exact moment I gained perspective. It was somewhere between Apparating into the middle of a Muggle street (surprised shouts pervaded the scene, not quite fearful) and watching Death Eaters lock a family of Muggles inside a burning house (screams so loud as their skin melted off that I could hear them from three blocks away). It was somewhere between watching Avery kiss his girlfriend goodbye (a short giggle of giddiness and a hasty "Good luck!") to witnessing a snarling, wolf-like man press his lips to a Muggle girl's throat (a muffled scream of protest, then nothing else). I gained perspective somewhere between discussing techniques for the Cruciatus ("a sharp flick of your wrist, and you really have to mean it!") to watching a grown man vomit up his own liquefied lungs (Voldemort's Cruciatus did indescribable things to its victims).

Then the Aurors and Order members arrived, and spells flew through the air so quickly that I didn't know what was happening. The world broke down into flashing lights. I couldn't tell friend from foe, and their curses were more powerful than I'd ever imagined. I ducked into a house (the door blown inward by Reducto), knees wobbling, breath hitching in my chest, eyes shut tight against the flashing lights.

My eyes flew open as I realised that the room had other inhabitants. Three people were backed against a wall, a young couple and their daughter. Five Death Eaters cornered them there, wands leveled casually at their heads.

Upon hearing glass shatter, the girl screamed and burrowed deeply into her father's arms. He wrapped an arm around his wife as well, as if he thought that doing so would protect her from five (six, if you included me) armed men.

"Who are you?" the Muggle whispered, voice shaking.

A Death Eater responded by wrenching his daughter away from him with a crude laugh. The woman screamed in dismay as three of them dragged her daughter into another room. I followed numbly, legs moving on their own accord.

They'd taken her into some sort of bedroom. A grown man shoved her against the wall so that you could hear the breath cracking out of her lungs between desperate sobs.

He removed his mask, confident that she would never live to identify him, and shoved his body up against hers, hot breath streaming onto her face, no doubt addled with alcohol. Some of Voldemort's followers got ragingly drunk before missions.

"What's your name?" he bit out in a cajoling voice.

She didn't reply. She couldn't, she was crying too hard.

"He asked what your name was," another cloaked man said, taking a threatening step forward.

"Lindsey," was the tremulous, nearly incomprehensible reply.

"Oh? What school do you go to, Lindsey?"

"H-h-hog–"

"What was that?"

She attempted to speak again, but she could only manage to stutter, saliva leaking out of the corners of her mouth.

"Hogwarts," I supplied, head spinning. "She was trying to say Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts, eh?" the Death Eater answered. He looked around meaningfully at the others. "What are the odds, boys? Your parents – both Muggles?"

She nodded after a moment.

"And how old are you, Lindsey?"

"Tw-twelve."

"Twelve? Are you sure?"

She nodded frantically.

The man responded by placing his wand at the point where her blouse met her bare skin and muttering an incantation. The blouse split down the middle, revealing a white chest and pink, budding breasts. A child's chest, little more. She squirmed now as his intention crystallized itself, uttering a small, desperate keen of panic.

The man stared at her for a good five seconds, and then his lip curled.

"Are you good at arithmetic, Lindsey?"

She bucked against him, trying for all the world to escape.

He leaned down, whispered so softly into her hair that I could barely hear him. "I'll bet even you can do this equation. Three men, three holes . . . perfect, don't you think?"

Either she was too young to understand or too shocked to even change expression.

"Well, what do you say?" the Death Eater asked his companions indulgently. "Shall we have a go?"

"She's too young, even for my taste," the one closest to me proclaimed simply. There was a general murmur of agreement from the others.

"Old Rosier will want her – he's always liked the young ones. Bring her to him," someone said casually.

"No," replied another. "He's busy with that woman out there."

"Regulus, you want a go? She's not much younger than you – perhaps you know her from school?"

Bile rose up in my throat, hot and thick. "Never seen her," I managed.

"Pity," the Death Eater said. "Well, have your way with her in any case. Just be sure to use the proper incantations on yourself beforehand – you don't want Muggle blood all over your skin. It causes rashes."

The man slammed the girl against the wall, hard, and dropped her suddenly. Her legs buckled without his support and she slid down the wall.

The three men left momentarily, muttering something about the house next door. On the way out, one of them said, "After you're finished with her, do what needs to be done, boy." He made a throat-slitting motion with his hand.

I stood for a good ten seconds, paralyzed, after they had gone. Then I made my way over to the shaking girl in the corner, curled up in a tight ball, trying desperately to hide her non-existent breasts from me.

I looked at her closely for the first time. She had the greenest eyes I'd ever seen.

Images came to me unbidden. Lily and James, the most high-profile couple at Hogwarts – a green-eyed Mudblood and a pureblood. I saw James, tweaking Lily's nose and laughing. James, swinging a squealing, giggling Lily into his arms. Interlaced fingers, soft kisses, everywhere together, and sometimes when they walked too near too many Slytherins, a subtle protectiveness in the way he wrapped his arm around her. I had assumed this behavior to be an unfair, unfounded prejudice, or some arrogant form of possessiveness that wouldn't have surprised me, coming from him. Now I understood. This green-eyed girl in front of me was no different from his Mudblood girlfriend. If Death Eaters ever got their hands on Lily Evans, James knew exactly what was at stake. He understood the consequences of failure more clearly than I'd ever comprehended the consequences of Voldemort's success.

James Potter was so far beyond me that it was sick.

I knew what he'd say to me, if he saw me right now. He'd laugh harshly, laugh right in my face. What's wrong, you little prat? he'd hiss. Did you think that this was all some big heroic war drama? Did you think that Sirius and I were fighting to be cool or popular or powerful? Did you actually think that we got off on it? Look around, you little shit. Do you get it yet?

I had lied to the others when I'd said I didn't know Lindsey. I never forgot a face, and I had seen her on occasion, walking through halls, laughing with friends, traipsing across the grounds. I hadn't known her name, but I knew her. She was every twelve year-old girl at Hogwarts: ambitious as hell, eager to learn, whispering to her housemates at night about her latest crush. He's Slytherin? her friends would jeer. You can't date a Slytherin; they're dangerous!

They're all bark, no bite, she would perhaps reply confidently, with a giggle. Not as cruel as they're made out to be . . . so dark and mysterious!

I dropped to my knees; she shrunk back further, eyes squeezed shut tightly.

Was this real? Was she real? I stretched my hand toward her to verify that I wasn't dreaming some horrible, repugnant dream. She flinched away violently, as if from flame. I snatched my hand back. Stupid. Idiotic.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

It rushed out of my mouth like wind through trees, an utterance so profound, so fragile, that it didn't sound like a human voice.

Glass shattered. I smelled smoke on the air. A female scream rent the stagnant haze. The girl whimpered in fear and recognition.

"My wife! Please, that's my wife . . ."

I didn't want the girl to hear her mother die, didn't want the girl to know that her father had watched, so I started talking loudly over the noise, spewing jumbled, fragmented thoughts, anything to distract her from her mother's screams.

"I didn't know, when I came. I didn't know . . . I swear I didn't know that James was right, that Sirius was right. You look so much like Lily. So beautiful. Same hair, same eyes – so much like her. She was the one who got me thinking, maybe Mubloods did have brains – she's a Mudblood but she thinks when she speaks – really thinks. She was the one who got me thinking, maybe light doesn't have a meaning, maybe it's just there to illuminate faces like hers. Maybe light – maybe it isn't anything at all."

I fell silent, and the only sound that remained was the crackling of flame. Was it near? I neither knew nor cared.

"You're Regulus," she said tremulously. "Regulus Black."

I drew in a sharp breath, pierced. Did I know, from that moment on, what I would have to do?

"How do you–"

"That man said your name. E-everyone knows you. Sixth year. Top of your class."

Panic fluttered into my consciousness, the strongest emotion I'd felt all night.

"You can't know my name," I hissed.

"I'm sorry." Her chin trembled and she finally looked up. "I won't tell . . . pinkie promise."

I nodded numbly, mutely.

"You're not like them, are you?"

"No," I answered, voice cracking. I was worse. So much worse. What if she blabbed, or someone put her under Veritaserum or the Imperius? Even a memory charm could be broken. If she talked, they would all find out what I really was.

"Can you help me, Regulus?"

If she walked into her living room, she'd see her mother lying dead in a pool of blood and semen, she'd see her father's neck snapped in three different places. All her neighbors were dead too. Half of her house had been burned to the ground. The rest would collapse momentarily.

"Rosier!" a man's voice called over the flames. "In here!"

"They're coming back," Lindsey whispered, face whitening. "Please – Regulus – I can do arithmetic. Please don't let them come back here. Help me."

"You can't know my name," I repeated, as the footsteps quickened, grew louder.

"Help me!" Her voice had risen to a high-pitched wail. I wrenched off my mask and looked straight into her desperate eyes; I owed her that much, at least.

"Give me your hand," I said calmly.

Hope filled her lucid green eyes – blind faith in a boy who was her worst enemy. Rosier appeared in the doorway. I heard his shallow, lusty breathing behind me.

She grasped my hand and focused dead centre on my eyes.

"Avada Kedavra," I whispered.

Killing someone is not the same as watching someone die. When you kill, you feel the death, like a light going out. That simple. That passionless. Something there, just outside of you, vital and pulsing. Then nothing.

There was no slowing of motion, no moral anguish, no strangled gurgle, no indication at all that she had died. Just a little girl slumped on the floor, hand still warm in my own.

I suppose I remember Rosier jerking me up, shaking me, something about why'd you kill her and what a waste and I'm not a necrophiliac, you know, I like them live and squirming and then stumbling outside as the walls crashed down around me and thinking maybe the world had ended. Fire panic human refuse laughter screams. A face contorted forever in frozen horror, bloody mangled limbs and a flickering lamppost which threw the scene in and out of focus.

I Apparated somehow, with a vagueness of intent that should have splinched me.

I landed feebly in a pile of freshly fallen snow outside of Grimmauld Place. Snow seeped through my torn clothing but I felt nothing as I opened the door, climbed up to my room, sat down on the bed.

Threw up abruptly, all over my robes and boots. Cleaned it up. Stumbled into the bathroom. Brushed my teeth. Threw up again.

Shaking. I remember trembling so bad, freezing cold. Colder than I'd ever been in my life.

I fell asleep at some point, slept for twenty-four hours and probably wouldn't have woken up if not for Kreacher, come to see if I was still alive.

I read the newspaper. Forty-one dead. Forty-one dead, it played through my head over and over again. That little 'one' right next to the 'four' was entirely my fault, and it seemed like the most important number I'd ever read in my life. That tiny black smudge of ink was my fault. I couldn't make it go away.

Right then I learned what it was like to make a mistake, one so big that it can't be forgotten and it can't be erased. But you can try. You will try. You'll shove it to the back of your brain, hard, and you'll keep it pinned there until something innocent crosses your path – a flower in a girl's hair, the smell of smoke, the tinkling of a bell – and you're done for. The memory rips through you like an animal unleashed, made more ferocious by its long captivity.

And it has grown. The wound has festered in the back of your mind and it isn't a scab anymore, it's a lesion and it taints almost everything you ever knew.

Eventually they forgive you. They all forgive you. But you will never forgive yourself.

So you seal it tight, make sure the container is air-proof, and forget about it. And all the while it is growing, feeding on itself so that the next time you dare open it – well, you cannot, will not, open it ever again. But every once in a while you hear a rhythmic thump-thump-thump in your chest, and it's the beast, thumping against its air-proof container, reminding you that it is always, and will always, be waiting.

After that, I went through the motions like an afflicted creature, sleeping through classes and waking in my dreams, the same dreams over and over and over again.

Words had no meaning. Language broke down. Sound became mere vibration, a never-ending, tuneless serenade. Every sound has a frequency, every single one, and I could identify them on the spot. A sickly cough– that was an A-flat, 440 hertz. The cadence of a quill scratching on parchment, F-sharp, 390 hertz. The din in the Great Hall, that struck a minor chord, if you listened long enough. Everyone sound has a frequency – every single one.

Faces slid in and out of my vision, slippery, one indistinguishable from another. The world became a sort of spectral kaleidoscope, greens and greys and blues and A-flats and arpeggios all blurring into one another until sometimes I couldn't even figure out where colour ended and sound began.

At the centre of it all, an idea. The idea swirled around and around in my head like a poem so intent that it didn't even make sense.

Does it sound like I went crazy? I did, for a few months. They have a clinical name for it, I think. Post-traumatic stress disorder mixed with a healthy dose of psychosis, cognitive hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.

Perhaps it seems like I overreacted. But it came down to this. Everything I'd ever known or been taught or been raised with – Pureblood supremacy, social Darwinism, hatred for Muggles – this was the reality of it. This was what I'd given my life to, this was the conviction I'd been faking all along. Every time I uttered the word 'Mudblood,' every time I preached Voldemort's doctrine, this was what it meant. It meant a half-naked little girl holding my hand as I killed her, eyes hopeful even in death.

I wasn't sure why I'd killed her. Had it been because I'd finally realised that death would be more merciful to her than life, or was it because I was afraid she'd tell people who I was, a pathetic coward that didn't know a thing about war or morality? Or was it for another reason, one more unspeakable? Had I liked watching her die? It wasn't just the not knowing. It was that my whole world fell down like a house of cards. Impossibly fragile.

So I cracked up. Colours and sounds and frequencies were all I could process for weeks. A whole part of my brain shut down. I could understand the relationships between chords and colours without thinking, but I couldn't string two words together, or wrap my head around the idea of time. Hours seemed like minutes, seconds like months. I took up piano and painting because they were the only things that made any sense. They called me a musical and artistic prodigy on top of all my other honours. That seemed to solidify it: Regulus Black, the best bloody thing since the opposable thumb.

I don't remember days, now, or weeks. I don't know how many passed before I came to. Only one memory stands out from the blur of colour and sound that comprised my memory of those months. Her funeral.

Of course there had to be a funeral at Hogwarts, commemorating the loss of a brilliant, ambitious, and promising young student.

The candlelight vigil was to be held at dawn, because dawn had been her favorite part of the day. I lay awake most of the night, hoping that I would lose consciousness by the time it started. But as the sky paled, I gave up on sleep and rose from my bed.

Students clustered sleepily in the halls, sad and tired and a little bit scared. The entire scene took on the quality of an impressionist painting, blurry faces lit by golden light, blue shadows and greyness, greyness all around. I stopped in the doorway of the Great Hall and took in one hundred flickering candles like bright daubs of paint on a grey canvas. I can't remember one single face.

When the candles began to swirl together, one light and a hundred thousand patches of darkness, I stumbled away, disoriented.

Somehow, instead of going to the funeral afterwards, I found myself sitting on the edge of a balcony in the Astronomy Tower, scrutinizing the landscape below. The sun rose behind the clouds and lit the snow a pale, rosebud pink. It rained, warm rain for February, and I swear that in the sunlight the rain came down in pastel colours, pink and cerulean and pale yellow and lavender and colours I'd never even seen before, featherlike in the predawn stillness. The lack of sound made me wonder if I was dreaming.

If the Great Hall had been a Renoir, daubs of colour and clarity, this was Rembrant, light and shadow colliding like titans.

I once read a Muggle poem that described light as heavenfall. You know, like rainfall, particles pouring from heaven onto the earth. Light drenching objects and activating pigment, colour saturating the earth like snow.

Heavenfall. I liked the idea.

I realize now that atop that spire, I was waiting for something. I liked the idea of heaven raining down on me; I liked the idea of judgement, of retribution for what I'd done. I was pleading for punishment.

Before that day, I'd never believed or disbelieved God or angels or heaven, because I hadn't seen evidence to the contrary. The only evidence I'd heard of that confirmed the existence of angels was the works of ancient Muggle sculptors like Michelangelo. These artists had sculpted wings on humans so naturally that it was as if they'd seen the creatures themselves. It was the only way you could turn marble to flight, if you'd seen a real angel and captured it in the stone.

Any kind of angel I wanted to believe in would have punished me for what I had done, made me suffer at least as much as she had in her last moments of life. If heaven didn't save people like her and smite people like me, I didn't want heaven to exist.

Punishment. I craved punishment, but all I found was warm, silent, pastel coloured rain, Rembrant and Renoir and Monet and Michelangelo blurring together until the tears finally fell from my eyes, down the stone turrets and past the windows of the flickering Great Hall, frozen before they reached the ground.

Only an angel, after all, can rebel against God.

– Gaarder