And so there he was, drawing a glass he'd captured on the way onto his skin, scratching it in a clean straight line with ease. Blood slowly dripped and the pain didn't deter him. He then placed his hand onto the boulders that secured the entrance to the cave, his cave. He slid the blood onto the surface until it magically opened by itself.

The darkness didn't faze him, not a single bone in his body was scared or anxious. Too many things had happened to him to have something as simple as an inferi, who still obeyed his command, scare him away. He walked across and lit a light on his wand, tossing it across the water.

His eyes only darted for the anchor of the boat that was in front of him. He didn't want to spoil the moment where he'd finally see his loved one. He took the anchor and pulled it with only a hand, revealing a boat floating toward him. He swiftly got on it and casted a spell for it to move on its own.

Of course, he was different now. Much different. His eyebrows were no longer there but had blended in with the rest of his skin. His eyes had changed colour from the brooding and mysterious ones to deep, sunken icy-blue eyes. His body wasn't that of a man who took care of it, but of a man who experimented with dark arts too much that he'd failed it.

But his goal was never to be the handsome young man, but to be the globally feared wizard there has ever been in the entire world, forever. He wondered deep down that if he looked the way he did now, would Alisha still love him? She reacted fairly terribly to the mere change of his name. What about now that he looked like a monster?

The boat stopped when it clicked onto the surface of the crystal, and then he got down. His eyes scattered through the layers of crystals that fell on top of each other where he finally saw Alisha, her hair still the beautiful golden locks as they had been before, her robes grotesque and filthy. But the clear patch of the Slytherin logo was still there.

Though her corpse lay miserably, nothing else came to his mind but the thought of how enchanting her bones looked. "Even in life and in death, you're still beautiful," he said to himself.

He bent down and gripped on a fragment of her hair softly, he had no idea how they still looked healthy and shiny as they did when he first met her in 1938. It was impossible. He looked directly on the hole of her skull where her blue eyes would've been. He could just imagine the look on her eyes right now. Scared and relief.

"Fifty years," he guessed. "It took you only fifty years to die? Muggles die within 80 years. And you died at what? 60? 70?"

He shook his head in disbelief, the grip on her hair fastening. "You're so weak. Haven't you any bone in your body that had the will to fight? The love in your heart to wait until I would visit you again? Did you give up? Did you not love me anymore?"

He waited for a response as if there would be any. But truthfully, he just wanted to talk to himself. "I haven't been able to get you out of my head in years. Did you know that a little baby boy was destined to equal to me? Alisha, I succeeded. I am the most powerful wizard of all time. I have killed that daft of a professor, Dumbledore. And I have brought the entire wizarding world to its knees. Aren't you proud of me?"

He looked down at her, a dull expression on his face. "Of course you're not. You care about everyone. Because nothing affects you. There's nothing for you to risk."

He lifted the clamp of her hair all the way up to his nose as he did before, time and time again, sniffing the faint scent she had in her teens. "Did you die thinking that nobody came looking for you?" he suddenly asked.

"Because they did. Within a day, they did. They all noticed you hadn't attended any of your classes and they've yet to see you in the great hall. A search party was on within 17 hours. But I made sure you stayed in here all by yourself. Don't ask me why. Just know that I did it because..."

He hesitated on the next words he was going to say. She was dead. What was the use? It wasn't like she was going to melt and then kiss him. "I never loved you. But believe me I wanted to. I haven't been able to admit it to myself until today, but I can never love anyone."

He thought back to the time he'd confronted his grandfather, right before he killed everybody in that impoverished family. "You see, my mother had given my father a love potion when I was conceived. He left because he never loved her. I was conceived from deceit. I had no chance. Of course, I had to use the killing curse on my entire family. I couldn't be related to any of them anymore."

He felt weirdly comfortable talking to her - or her corpse, at least. Throught their 4th and 5th year, he'd always been able to tell her everything. She knew how to listen, how to sympathize, and unlike everyone, she didn't do it to gain his approval, she did it because she was in love. But he did it because he was manipulating her. It was an awful series of events that gradually grew worse.

"Can I just say that..." he began. "I appreciate you. And everything you've done for me. Everything you had to have dealt with in being with me. I'm not capable of love, but I loved you in all the way I could. In the way I didn't think anyone could've. It's flawed, but I like it because it's true. You were never stupid, Alisha. You were just a clueless girl who was very much in love with the wrong person."

His hands slowly drifted to her shoulders and onto her hands, their fingertips just grazing each other until he brought them in for him to hold. They were just bones, but they brought warmth in his cold body. Then his eyes looked at the other bones that surrounded Alisha, the people he'd brought in and forced her to murder in attempt to break her.

"I apologize for being the way that I am. I apologize that I was created in this world to kill. I apologize that I chose being this - a scaly, slimy, package of evil - over you. I'm sorry. But it was just something I had to do."

He held on to her hands a little tighter, remembering the sacred moment of his where he'd brought her to the Chamber of Secrets as their first date. It was barely noticeable, but a smile formed on his face. Then his eyes wandered back to her skull.

"3 words that consists of 8 letter remember?"

He let go of her hand after a painful kiss on the back of it. Then he pulled her body away until her hand dipped into the water. He walked over to her feet and waited, waited until the webbed-hand of an Inferius grabbed her bones. In a matter of seconds, thousands of Inferi came, hunched over each other in desperate attempts to grah ahold of Alisha's dead body.

None of the Inferi touched him, his power prevented them from doing so. But he watched as his loved one was dragged and manhandled by thousands and thousands of Inferi. The other corpses behind him were also dragged down by the undead and desperate hands. Alisha's feet soon sunk, with an Inferius jolting up to pounce her onto the bottom of the lake. She was not to become another Inferi, just a dead body underneath.

"Maybe if things were different..." he drawled. "Maybe if my mother didn't use a love potion. Maybe if my father fell in love with her. Maybe if I let myself learn how to love... Things would be different."

He reached down inside his black robe that covered his skeletal body, pulling out the dead rose that he'd given Alisha more than half a century ago. There was no wind inside the cave, so he simply took a few steps forward to lay the petals on the dense body of water.

"3 words... 8 letters..." he mumbled incompletely. But it was all he could bring himself to say. He had to do it. Harry Potter was not to know anything about Alisha van der Austrelle.

0•0•0•0•0

Harry jolted up from the cement on the grounds of Hogwarts, reviving from invading He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's mind as he was in his weakest and vulnerable. He gasped for air, pain electrocuting his veins. Hermione and Ron knelt beside him worriedly.

"What is it, Harry?" Hermione asked hurriedly.

"He killed her... He forced her to stay in the cave... She was going to leave him... But- he couldn't..."

"Harry," Ron said fatherly. "Breathe."

Harry followed and took a huge breath before exhaling shakily. He swallowed the lump in his throat and focused his mind into one thing.

"What do you know, Harry?" Hermione urged in panic.

"I know everything."