Note: This is the sequel to my story "Of Intellectual Relationships and School Crushes" that Angel of Music wasn't quite sure about asking for. So if you have not read that, I strongly recommend that you do so prior to reading this. But don't just give up on this story because you have to read another one first; enjoy reading and reviewing both! By the way, this is far from my prediction of what will happen at the end of the Harry Potter books. This is an alternate, "what if" sort of ending. I do not think this will happen; I do not want this to happen.
All of these characters and the setting belong to J.K. Rowling, before whom we prostrate ourselves in worship. (Okay, maybe that's overstating it.) The quote from Romeo and Juliet and the brief reference to Javert of Les Misérables – see if you can find it – would belong to William Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, respectively, if they were still alive.
Thanks to my beta reader, Meliara, for assuring me that the story really was good. Without you, I would never have the courage to post it.
The Dark Lord's Armageddon or
Beautiful Once
On this day of judgment, the hallowed halls of Hogwarts are made unclean with their own heart's blood – the blood of the people that made them live. My Death Eaters are excited, like wolves with the tantalizing, intoxicating scent of fear and flesh filling their nostrils. They are humans, and hot-headed. I have given them free rein to do as they wish with most of our victims here. Their glee and triumph are tangible as they kill again and again, using deadly spell after deadly spell. I coldly relish the screams that echo uselessly through the corridors. Let my followers have their fun randomly raping the girls and women and murdering. The murders I commit myself are…selective.
Sixteen years have I waited and struggled for this day. This is my revenge on those who would have prevented me from rising to dictator of all the wizarding world. This is my revenge on all the world that killed my mother, the one person I may have loved had I ever known love, and cast me out long ago.
I have set aside eight people for myself to murder – the ones I have reason to want to dispatch with my own wand, and not leave to my inferiors: Harry Potter and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who have thwarted my attempts to destroy my enemies and take this school for the past six years; Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore's greatest allies and the faithful friends of James Potter; Dumbledore himself, the one person that prevented me from conquering Hogwarts in my years of power; Severus Snape, my follower – friend, even – turned traitor; and Minerva McGonagall. Minerva, who was beautiful back when I was handsome.
My Death Eaters cast many different kinds of spells, bloody, violent, painful ones. But I only use Avada Kedavra, the quick, invisible, unstoppable, Unforgivable Curse. It is my signature, showing that I am cold and ruthless in my pursuit of power and ultimate justice. The "rush of speeding death" my favorite curse is often described as is part of my name: "Vol-de-mort," "Flight of Death."
I am above the thirst for blood and the exhilaration of killing that drive my Death Eaters, animal predators. Like a god, I am not the ripping fangs and tearing claws of death; I am the iron hand, the stroke of lightning from above that destroys my opposition.
How amusingly metaphorical.
And so it is that I stand over my eight nemeses that do not cower in fear, but remain futilely defiant to the last. I have deprived them of their wands, so they cannot attempt to hold me off. I shall pick them off in order, not randomly, as a less calculating wizard than I might do.
"I believe I shall start with my newest enemies," I say aloud, but in a tone that would suggest my musings are to myself. I am smiling my cruelly amused smile. Minerva knows that my smiles are often false, but I shall truly enjoy today's victory.
With magic, I draw Ron and Hermione away from the other six. They cling together like what they are – frightened children. Ah, tragically torn from life when they barely stand on the brink of adulthood. And they have only found each other's love minutes before their impending death.
"Ladies first, I think?" I say politely, pointing my wand at the brilliant witch whose unusual intelligence, so like my own at her age, has been a small but extremely annoying barrier in my path to my final triumph.
"No!" cries the red-headed brat, throwing himself heroically in front of his love. How useless; he would only postpone her demise by moments.
"Ah, no – this is better, I think," I say softly, amusedly. " 'Eyes, look your last on fair Juliet,'" I jest wryly, not moving my wand from its aim. "Avada Kedavra."
The green flash of light casts ghostly shadows momentarily on the haggard, grim faces of those who are to be my victims. Then the girl – a beauty, almost, I muse carelessly – screams, a sound so full of agony that it would tear at any heart but mine. I have been beyond empathy for many, many years.
I gaze at the face of my most frustrating enemy, Harry Potter, in whose features great suffering is written as he tries to tear his eyes away from the heartrending sight of the pitiful figures on the floor: the awkward, young-looking teenage boy lying dead, and the broken girl kneeling listlessly where she has fallen beside him. "Avada Kedavra," I say again, just as casually, and she slumps softly, with a small sigh, to the carpeted floor. Then I turn to the six remaining, a small sneering smile curling my lips as I take in with delight their reactions. It is surprising how many are glaring defiantly and gnashing their teeth. Albus Dumbledore, though, is just gazing at me with startlingly blue eyes that bore into my soul. Too bad the only thing there is a pit of blackness. Tears stream silently down Minerva's cheeks.
I select my next victim: the werewolf. As I lead him to stand before me with my wand like a puppeteer with his marionette on a string, I taunt, "What you wouldn't give for a full moon now, eh, Lupin?" The moon is dark tonight.
"I am a man," he says softly.
"Which is more than can be said for you!" Sirius Black spits at me. "Crucio," I say casually, pointing my wand at the offender, and he falls to the floor, writhing and screaming. I use the Unforgivable Curses frequently; I like them because the last thing I want to give or be given is forgiveness.
I raise my wand and turn back to Lupin. "You were saying your last words? How irritating to be interrupted."
"I will die a man," he finishes. He looks so weary. I must let him rest! "Avada Kedavra," I recite for the third time. The poor, shabby man can finally get some well-deserved sleep.
Sirius Black rushes to his fallen friend and kneels by his side. Then he glares up at me, unafraid, and challenges, "Kill me like you did James." He stands bravely, his feet planted firmly. "Kill me defenseless, but still upright."
"I think not," I say softly. Pointing my wand wordlessly, I smite him to the ground. Like a physical blow, the stroke of magic draws blood from a gash at the side of his mouth. "I believe I would prefer to kill you cowering. Avada Kedavra." I never exclaim the words, because they are so routine for me. I find no exhilaration in killing, just a bit of satisfaction.
"Harry Potter," I whisper. I will enjoy this immensely. "I have been trying to kill you since you were a baby. I have been close to my goal every school year since you came to Hogwarts, but you kept evading me. It's so frustrating." I smile nastily at him. I know I'm horrifying. Pity I don't have a mirror handy; I should like to see just how fearsome I look. "Yes, I know you had the protection of your mother's love those first times; but now I have it, too, because your blood brought me back into flesh. That wretched phoenix has been taken care of," I say wickedly, gesturing to the cage I conjured, in which the proud, beautiful bird is bound. "So now I can kill you, at long last. It shall satisfy me greatly." I point my wand at him, then pause. "Strange, though, that my mother's love kept me alive, too, when I was young, and she died, too. The difference between my mother and yours is that my mother's life and death weren't in vain." The despair on Harry Potter's face when I say this makes me smile cruelly as I say – ah, finally! – "Avada Kedavra," and Potter falls dead like the four I killed before him.
I am so neat with my murders, unlike my Death Eaters, whose handiwork litters the hall with corpses and blood. The corridor is stained mostly scarlet. Blood is almost a lovely color, I muse.
"Professor Dumbledore. My Transfiguration teacher." If I am the king of the red chess pieces of power, then he is the king of the yellow pieces too weak to seek it. Metaphors, metaphors…
"My instinct was right about you all along, Tom. You blinded the rest of us with your brilliance, though." The customary twinkle in his eyes has gone out. He is not defiant. "Shame you had to waste it on the Dark Arts." His eyes are still penetrating, while not sparkling, and he seems to read something deep inside me. Perhaps I am not just a blank, hollow cavern after all. "I know you were hurt by your father. But hurting others is not the right way to cry out. Would your mother have wanted you to avenge her this way?"
"Touching, Dumbledore, but I am not the misunderstood bad guy who gets reformed at the end," I sneer. He just looks at me pityingly. "Avada Kedavra," I say again, perhaps only to stop him from staring at me that way.
Fawkes the phoenix, the headmaster's faithful pet, lets out a strange, agonized, broken sort of song. Made unable to beat his wings against the bars of his cage by the cords I conjured around him, he thrashes his gorgeous head. In his mad flailing, his beautiful, swanlike neck snaps, and he peacefully lets himself rejoin his master somewhere.
"Ah, Severus," I say, selecting my seventh personal victim. "I never doubted your fidelity! Why did you betray me?"
He gazes at me stonily, glaring with his dark, hollow eyes so like my own. "I couldn't go on killing pointlessly like that. I couldn't pretend I was as blind to morals as you were. I hated myself for seeking the protection of the strongest. I didn't know whether light or dark would prevail, but I realized that I should be with the forces of good because I believed in them."
"Even more touching!" I exclaim mockingly. "But of course, Severus, you know the penalty for treason, don't you?"
"Yes." Anger and defiance blaze through the emptiness in his eyes. "And I committed treason because I was not afraid of the penalty."
"Very well, then. Penalty will be administered. Crucio!" Death by torture was one ancient method of punishing treason, but that is much too slow, so I shall settle for torture, then death. I am very humane, really.
I lift my wand, and Severus stares up at me challengingly, accusingly, his face filled with pain. It is a sight that makes me almost happy. "Avada Kedavra," I say for the seventh time, and my seventh murder today is complete.
Now there is only one left.
~~~~~~~~~
I have seen all my students, all my colleagues and friends brutally violated or killed. I have watched the school I love and gave my time and my heart to torn apart from the inside – though the shell still stands, whole but empty. If the Dark Lord had struck me with the Cruciatus Curse a thousand times, he couldn't have caused me more pain than he already has.
"Why did you leave me for the last?" I spit bitterly. "What do you want from me?"
"Minerva," the pale, snakelike monster whispers almost tenderly. I flinch as he brandishes my name at me. "You were beautiful once."
"You were handsome once, Tom," I snarl in return. "You were charming. Your smile is still a mask." I remember, vaguely, a time long ago when I thought I liked Tom Riddle, and he liked me in return. I remember that he cast me aside like a used rag and smiled as he did so.
"Why don't you kill me, too?" I challenge, wanting nothing else in the world more. Hogwarts has fallen; the last stronghold of good has been defeated. Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter are dead – there is no hope left for the wizarding world.
The claw-like, white hand raises its wand to point it at me – but the ghostly lips say nothing. What goes on in the evil, ingenious mind behind those black, lifeless eyes? Then the serpentine slits of nostrils flare, and the high, cold, cruel voice of the inhuman creature hisses, "I can't."
That response leaves me speechless. Are the remnants of a relationship from long ago so powerful that they stop this heartless beast from committing one more murder? Did he really, truly love me then?
Does he love me now?
"Why can't you? What is stopping you, you monster?" All fear is gone, and there is only pain in me. Whatever he does to me cannot affect my broken spirit.
"Damn you, Minerva!" he cries, showing an emotion other than his signature cruel amusement for once. "You are stopping me!"
He hits me magically in the same way he did Sirius. Another sharp twinge of anguish stings my soul. As the painful blow strikes my face, my spectacles fall and shatter, and strands of hair are pulled from their bun to hang limply. Then the angry face of Voldemort, once Tom Riddle, softens, and his wand untwines the rest of my hair and lets it fall about my waist. In another bout of sudden memory, I recall him saying… "I like your hair better down." I look up suddenly as the Dark Lord speaks the same words he said fifty-five years ago.
"It isn't all raven black anymore," he teases me. "You have a streak of silver."
"I'm old," I snap, my voice hard. "And so are you. Old and twisted. You told me," I say, remembering again. "You told me you were going to become what you are. I thought you were joking. But it was the only time you ever said anything true." Damn my practicality for not believing him! Damn me for not seeing the warning! This is my fault…
"I knew you would think I was joking. I wouldn't have told you otherwise. Now I get to enjoy the irony."
I am sobbing as my tortured mind wracks itself with agonizing guilt, thinking again and again, This is my fault. This is my fault!
"Wonderfully amusing, isn't it?" I snarl through anguished tears. "If murdering innocent people is for your enjoyment, then what is preventing one more murder?" He has not yet answered that question which I put to him again and again.
As Tom sighs, part angry and part confused, I see some of the humanity I once believed was in him. "You were beautiful once," is all he can say after all his cruel eloquence. "You still are," he adds unexpectedly. Then he amends, "Almost. With your hair down those ridiculous rectangular spectacles off."
My tears still fall for those who lie dead around us, those whose life's blood stains the fortress of light dark and red. I cry for what was lost in Tom Riddle's heart long ago, when he hardened to the world. If he had remained flesh and blood, instead of turning to stone – or wood – this school would live on as a haven of learning and safety. I weep that I am the last one left in the destruction of the heart and soul of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Then Tom – Voldemort – kneels down with me, bringing his hideous, monstrous face close to mine. I am forced to gaze into those empty eyes, that deathly white, snakelike face. Slowly, deliberately, he comes yet closer. I am overcome with repulsion as his cold, white, lifeless lips brush my cheek, dangerously nearing my own lips; it is like a kiss of death.
But I know what he is doing. He is repeating history.
~~~~~~~~~
"Like repeating history, isn't it, Minerva?" My deceitful mask of a smile is plastered to my face, as it was when I was a student here.
"You loved me, then?" she whispers, disbelieving, hopeless, tears still streaming down her pale face.
I shrug nonchalantly. "Perhaps. But it was just an intellectual relationship, a school crush."
"That's what I always though of it as. When I wanted to dismiss it as such."
In the silence, I ask myself, I loved her, then? No. Love is for ordinary witches and wizards. I am far from ordinary. My mother loved; I will not.
"It's over. I ended it," I say shortly, raising my wand once more, prepared to say my favorite two words for the eighth and final time today.
"Good. End it again, you bastard," she spits at me, plainly willing me to end her suffering.
Odd that all I can think as I make ready to do so is, She was beautiful once.