Thanks to everyone who read, fav'd, alerted and most of all to Lunaterre224 and ImsebastianstanButter for reviewing!

(So, you know how we discussed Horcrux-creation a while back? It's discussed again here in the first half of the chapter, and again, it's nothing really bad, but if that's not your kind of thing, then feel free to skip over it.)


Immortality


"I can't believe," Blaise wheezed as he threw another shovel of earth behind him. "That you're making me do this."

I huffed as I dug my own shovel into the dirt. One could not really say that I had made him do this. I had merely suggested that I needed help and he had not protested harshly enough. This was hardly my fault.

"Well, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't want to bury a corpse in the dead of night by myself."

Blaise straightened and laid a hand over his chest in a dramatic gesture of astonishment. "That I'd live to see the day!" he said. "Cassie Riddle - scared!"

I rolled my eyes at him. I had been afraid many times in my life, this surely was not the first. Besides, 'scared' might have been a little too strong a word. All of this was more uncomfortable than anything else.
Wormtail's body was very heavy - I had somehow figured that he would loose weight after I had removed the heart, but that clearly had not been the case. It was also for that reason that I needed Blaise's help: the body was too heavy for myself and I had wanted to forego magic as to not attract your attention.

See, you had been less than pleased when you came home and found that the prisoners had escaped, Harry Potter included. I had woken up just in time to dash into the cellar and hide the body away; I did not know if you could identify the killer by seeing the victim, but I did not want to risk it.
Besides - I had needed the heart's blood. It was currently steaming in a cauldron at the bottom of an enchanted suitcase hidden under my bed in a securely locked bedroom. I feared you might find it.

"Just dig the grave," I told Blaise. "I want to get out of here."

"Honestly," he said. "You should be on your knees thanking me. How many people would come out here and dig a grave with you?"

"How many people told me to make a Horcrux?" I shot back.

Blaise huffed out something between a groan and a laugh. He did not deny it, though. How could he have? When we had thought about it, when he had suggested it, he had known that making a Horcrux entailed taking a life. A corpse tended to go along with that.

It was lucky we only had the one. You had tortured Bellatrix for hours and then put her on house arrest - as if keeping her locked up inside was doing us any favours.
As for me, you had believed that I had, indeed, only returned to the ground floor when I heard the racket and had immediately been stunned. It was surprising to me that you had believed this lie when you were usually not as easily fooled. Not that I was not grateful, mind you. I was just... wary.

"And, just so I get this right," Blaise said. "This really is the murder? You're going through with it?"

"What else should this be?" I asked. "Me killing for fun?"

Blaise's face fell and he started shaking his head frantically. It was not needed - I knew very well that he did not consider me a psychopath; even though I sometimes suspected that he might be better off if he did.
The most prominent fear in my mind was that I might be on the way to becoming one. Look at yourself, after all.

"This is it," I confirmed. "When we're done... he's going to be dead and I'm going to be alive."

Blaise threw another shovel over his shoulder. "And are you going to be all right?"

Who knew? I sure had no idea if I was going to be all right or not. It was the right thing to do, giving Potter the chance to kill you. It had to be done, or graves like this would have to be dug all over the country.
You were my father, though. Betraying you felt like betraying myself. I had dreamt of family all my life and now I was throwing all of it away.

"Let's just get him in there," I said.

I had wrapped the body in linen and we rolled, rather than carried him into the grave - for such a small person to gather so much weight was a right wonder. He landed at the bottom with a dull thud and I could not help but think that snivelling coward as he had been, he would still have deserved better than this, especially considering that his last act had been trying to help Harry escape.

"This feels terrible," Blaise said as we stared down on the linen-covered form lying six feet beneath us. "I didn't think it would, but it does."

"Well, don't beat yourself up," I said. "This isn't even close to the most horrible thing I'll do this weekend."

Honestly, I had not known just how horrible it would be. I feel like you could have told me how bad drinking a person's blood actually was. Because it was... unspeakable. I had never felt more disgusted with anything in my life, and had never held so much contempt for myself before, either.

The last of the blood had to be spread across the vessel. Back when you had used me, you had just dragged one finger of blood over my forehead. I drenched the whole picture in it, just to be sure.
See, there was only one thing in my possession of even remote emotional value: the picture Slughorn had given me, that one picture I owned of you.

It was then that I discovered the process was painful, too. The pain ripped through me - I felt as if being torn apart, as if my skull was split and as if I was burning up at the same time. For a short moment, I was sure that this was it. I was going to die, right here and right now.
It stopped as suddenly as it had started and left nothing but a dull ache in my chest. In the end, I could not be sure if it had taken hours or seconds.

Breathing heavily, I reached for the picture that had just been soaking wet and red - and now it seemed like it had never even laid close to the blood.
I turned it over, amazed. It seemed... normal. The picture-version of you stared up at me with raised eyebrows. Lucky that this version of you did not speak or I was sure it would have ratted me out first chance it got.
I would have to hide it either way, because from the moment I let go of it, I felt it radiating. The dark magic that lived in it now practically called out to me.

I backed away, robbing over the floor on my arse, my eyes fixed on the picture.
My mind could not wrap around the fact that I had actually done this. I had made a Horcrux. There it lay, the ultimate evil in form of a black-and-white photograph.
Yet it was a part of me. This was a bit of my soul, stored outside me - was it really that evil? Was I that evil?

Then I heard the footsteps on the hallway. My heart sped up and I scrambled to my feet, all fear of the picture forgotten. I grabbed it and stuffed it below my pillow. The steps came closer. I pushed the cauldron under my bed. There was a knock on the door - I waved my wand and cleared away the stains of blood.

"Come on in!"

Draco stuck his head in and frowned when he saw me standing in the middle of the room like an idiot. "Dinner's ready," he said. "If you are?"

"Sure," I said. "Be right there."

He shook his head slightly and closed the door behind him again. My eyes fell on a corner of the picture peeping out from beneath my pillow. I needed to get this thing out of the house as quick as I could. Only question was: whereto?

"It is so strange," Mrs Malfoy said at dinner. "They still haven't found a trace of Wormtail."

You had not joined us tonight, and I almost felt angry about it - there were only two days left before I had to go back to Hogwarts, after all. At the same time, it served to relax me. How could I have been calm around you after what I had done?

"Really?" I asked. "None? I can hardly imagine..."

Draco shot me a look but did not say anything and instead stuffed a bit of roast into his mouth. We had not talked about it, but Draco was not stupid. He had to know what I had done, even if he did not know why.

"Perhaps that hand of his finally did him in," Mr Malfoy commented. "Would have served him right."

My own fork froze halfway up to my mouth. Wormtail's hand. The shiny, magical hand, the replacement for the hand he had lost in the ritual to bring you back. The cursed, vengeful hand that had tried to strangle him.
While a part of me wondered if you had always know that the hand would betray its master, if even Lucius suspected such, there was a more pressing matter on my mind that had been brought to the forefront with Mr Malfoy's words: I would need a way to come back.
I suddenly did not feel like eating anymore.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lucius," Narcissa said. "We would have found a body. I tell you, he's been making off with Potter and hides himself away now."

"Then the Dark Lord will find him," Mr Malfoy said. "And it will be all the same."

"Certainly," I said. "He will dole out just punishment."

Narcissa bit her lip while Mr Malfoy nodded gravely - if I was not entirely mistaken, tears had filled her eyes. My heart broke, once again, for this family. This family that lived in constant fear of their unwanted house-guest. This family that had gotten in way to deep and now saw no way out.
The Malfoys were terribly mislead, caught in their prejudices and they could be cruel to those they considered below themselves, but ultimately they were people who just wanted to be safe. And they could be good - even when my father was the one to do this to him, they welcomed me at their table and treated me like a friend.
The evil hidden beneath my pillow was for people like them. So that they could have their safety.

"Either way," I said and told myself that just this once, it was okay to say this thing that I had promised myself not tell people anymore. "We are going to be just fine. He doesn't doubt our loyalty."

"He has no reason to, does he?" Draco said.

"Of course not," I said. "That's why we're all going to be okay."

When I was lying awake later, tossing from side to side in my bed because sleep escaped me, I could not help but regret my words. Because it was not at all okay.
The mention of Wormtail's hand had reminded me that, while I now was immortal, I had no idea how to come back into a proper body. I shuddered slightly at the though of ending up like you, with snake-like eyes and without a nose.

Even that, though, would be better than living forever as a wayward soul separated from its body, worse off even than a ghost. All my effort would be worth nothing if I could not come back to the living properly... and if I had to wander the earth for the next fifteen years like you had, I, too, would surely be driven mad.
Mind you, you had probably been mad before that, but you catch my drift.

Before I knew it, I had sat up again and my bare feet hit the ice-cold floor. Wormtail had carried out that spell, I had just realized. No way an incompetent wizard like him could have remembered it all without writing it down.
You, of course, would have never approved of that... which meant that if there was an instruction manual, he would have hidden it away deep within his own room. That unoccupied room right down the hall.

"Merlin," I whispered to myself as I tip-toed across the room to where my wand rested on a desk. "I can't believe I'm doing this..."

This was the second night in a row that I had to steal out of my room and presumably would not get any sleep.
The tip of my wand lit up as I stepped into the hallway and left the door slightly ajar - I did not want to risk the extra noise of it closing. I had seen you earlier, just for a split second, as you locked yourself away in Mr Malfoy's study downstairs, so I was fairly certain that I would not have to worry about running into you, but I was still worried that I might have to make a quick escape.

Wormtail's door was locked, but a simple 'Alohomora' opened it - it just confirmed my belief that he had not been a very good wizard.

"Merlin," I whispered again when I stepped inside. The room was meticulously clean - and there was a book on the nightstand, a volume on Transfiguration with a bookmark about a quarter of the way through. My stomach twisted at the sight. I had ripped this man from his life, right in the middle of it, like it had been nothing. He would never read the rest of that book.

"Knock it off," I told myself. "Focus..."

There was no spell on his desk or in any of the various drawers. There was nothing beneath his bed or under his pillow - but perhaps it was just the teenage girl in me that thought hiding things beneath pillows was a good idea.

"Apparecium," I whispered, but no secret trapdoor or anything like it was revealed.
When all this had failed, I did what I least wanted to do and opened his closet - I really did not want to go through a dead man's underwear. First it looked like that was all it was - robes and socks and trousers - and then I noticed the little wooden box tucked a way behind a staple of jumpers.

I knew it even before I opened it - knew that this was something special or he would not have made an effort to let it appear so ordinary and he would not have hidden it away.
It was not locked; indeed, it sprung open easily. There were quite a few papers inside - first on top was an old picture, barely in colour. One of the boys looked suspiciously like Harry and one other's cheekbones reminded me slightly of Bellatrix; the third, I had no doubt about. Professor Lupin, barely older than me, smiled up from that picture. I had the sneaking suspicion that Pettigrew had once been on it, too, but there was no trace of him now.

Beneath that, finally, was what I was looking for. It was the most used, the most crumbled peace of parchment, it even was smudged slightly, as if it had fallen into dirt. I barely glanced at it - this was not the time and place to study it.
I folded it even smaller and put it in the pocket of my dressing gown.

I put the papers back into order - the box I hid with an extra jumper, just in case. I tip-toed back across the room and cast a last look around, this room that was the last memory of a man that would be barely remembered.
The door I locked with the firmest spell I could muster. I did not want anyone else to break in here like I had. It was a lousy bit of redemption, but it was the best I could do for now.

The hallway was as deserted as it had been when I came here. I tip-toed back across, careful not to make a sound. My fingers reached for the door-handle - and I found the door, so carefully left ajar, to be closed.


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