Fifty Shades of Erised
.o0o.
His skin is alabaster pale, stretched parchment thin across an almost skeletal frame, stark in contrast to his scarlet eyes. Like a serpentine monster, he hisses at her, his slit-like nostrils flaring as he glares through the cool glass.
She reaches out, pressing her palm against the mirror. Closing her eyes to mask her tears, she fights the urge to turn away and leave. The Mirror is obviously broken – there is no way that she still loves him, wretched demon that he is.
When she opens her eyes, she gasps, because he isn't the Dark Lord any longer. Instead he's simply her Riddle, tall and handsome, pale, with high cheekbones and a smile that never fails to melt her heart. He's the young man she met during the first year, the guy who spun her across the dance floor and kissed her in the rain.
"I don't know even know you," she whispers, her wrinkled fingers tracing his lips. "Not anymore."
She often wonders if it's her fault that he became the greatest source of darkness their world has ever known. By walking away from him when he first began his descent into the malign . . . did she condemn him, and the entire world, to shadow?
"Minerva," the reflection says, his voice breathy upon her ears, and she remembers the sight of his mangled corpse lying broken in the Great Hall, all those years ago. It's a painful memory, because she remembers being thankful for being free of his reign of terror, and mourning her former friend and lover, all in the same breath.
If history could be rewritten, she thinks, would she still walk away from him knowing what she knows now? Or would she choose to walk in darkness beside him, keeping his shadows at bay with her own heart.
"I loved you, once upon a time, Riddle," she whispers, settling back down into her rocking chair and closing her eyes one final time.
(The next morning she is found, stiff and icy cold, and like all great dames, her legacy lives upon as the Goddess who fell in love with the Devil in disguise.)