I was watching the Chamber of Secrets for the umpteenth time when something hit me... and I came up with this. This is probably the weirdest pairing you'll ever find in the HP universe... but tell me what you think. I'm curious as to whether you all think I'm as insane as *I* think I am. XD
Disclaimer: If you can guess who the characters are, then you should know they are not mine. I shall trust this much in your intelligence.
*~* To Lose a Soul *~*
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Of all of them... of all the tainted, filthy trash that contaminated his sanctuary, she was to be spared. She, and she alone, had managed to stir a feeling he thought he had long lost.
Sympathy.
Oh, he made of good show of still having it... along with compassion and pity. But in reality, he was nothing more than a body full of anger and hate. He wanted to rip, to tear, to purge.
If such thoughts were known, however, he wouldn't have been made prefect.
Yet the smile he always showed was cold, and his eyes dark and hard. She was the only one to whom they would soften, the smile turned genuine.
Ever since she'd gotten off the train... already in tears as the other girls picked on her, the ugly duckling. The outcast.
The unwanted.
He knew how that felt.
Without realizing what he was doing, he had gone to her, helped her stand up after Olive had cruelly shoved her to the ground. He had offered her a kerchief to dry her eyes... a plain one. He couldn't afford the ones with their initials sewn on every corner: there were other things he needed money for. And then she had looked at him with such gratitude, such heartfelt relief... he felt something inside him reawaken. Like dying plant being given the sun once more.
From then on, he looked out for her as well as he could. It was not easy, for the entire school seemed to have something against her.
He knew how that felt too... but he had risen above.
Power was the key.
Make them listen, make them obey... make them see. He was no weakling to push around.
But she did not have his strength, his ambition.
So he shared it, something else that was new to him. In the orphanage, it was every boy for himself. If you couldn't get what you needed, you didn't survive. Yet she... she gave him affection. She gave him kindness, but not pity, like those old fool professors did. He didn't have to pay for her friendship; she gave freely, not even expecting him to protect her.
He tried anyway.
Tears were an annoyance to him, a waste of time and energy... yet he always stroked her head as leaned upon his shoulder to weep, those very droplets he scorned so soaking into his shabby robes or when they were older, gliding down his prefects badge.
In return, he found happiness in her smile. The rest of him was stone, finding excitement and pleasure only in knowledge and power. He knew what everyone took to be a legend was true... and it was his. His to command and control... and indeed, he found a sense of happiness there too. But it was when she laughed, when she threw her arms around him in a oh-so-brief hug before blushing scarlet and scampering away, that he found a calmness and a warmth he had thought would never be his.
He found peace.
So she was to be spared. He did not care about her bloodline: she made him happy, and that was all that mattered. His own very blood, while he tried hard to forget it, was also tainted, though not as much as she. Still, she brought an ease, a summer to the winter that was his heart. He would not let her go... he could not.
That was the plan, at any rate.
The others would die, one by one. Or perhaps, all together if he could manage it. Only the pure would be left to live, to fix what the weak-willed had started when they mixed their blood with inferior beings of non-magic.
He'd heard. It never took him long to find out when she had been bullied again. The other girls always cackled over it, congratulating each other over making the tears fall down her cheeks as they so easily did. Today, he had thought, he would begin. He would bring her revenge, although she wouldn't know it. Not in the beginning anyway. She was fragile, and would blame herself even though her tormentors were far more guilty than she. No... he'd wait until it was too late, until she was the last... and then tell her how of them all, she was to be spared, that she was to remain with him. Then she would be grateful, thrilled to be told she would be with him for all of time, at his side always.
Yes, that was the plan.
He hadn't known she had been there, stifling her sobs, thinking he had been one of the other girls come to add to her misery. He hadn't known he was not alone as he called the beast to him, ordering it to kill those who reeked of Muggle filth.
He hadn't known that all those times he gently coaxed her to stand up for herself, to take charge and let them see the fire in her soul, that she would chose that moment. That she would realize it was a boy in there, and boys shouldn't be there, and it was now or never she would tell someone what they were doing was wrong.
She hadn't recognized his voice. It always sounded a bit different when he talked to the beast.
He had turned, as the beast's head had snapped towards the stall at the creak of the door...
And he watched her die.
Those eyes... the eyes he had so loved to look into... the eyes that sought him out wherever he went... they widened with fear and shock... then rolled to the back of her head as she fell to the floor, as cold and dead as the stone she collapsed on.
And he had cried... one long pained call, almost more animal in sound than human, for indeed, the last of his humanity died with her.
It wasn't supposed to be her. Of all the tormentors and tainted, the scorners and the hypocrites... not her.
That cry cost him his plans.
Someone outside had heard, and he had fled after the beast to hide and emerge elsewhere. No one suspected him... or at least if they did, they had no proof. But he knew he didn't have the power or control to begin his plans yet. They would have to wait... until he was ready to bring his wrath upon the entire magical world.
The beast had not been pleased, but it obeyed his command to go sleep... to wait until he returned and called for its strength once more.
No one stopped him as he left the dungeons, alone, after hours, even though the professors had said not to. No one paused to ask him where he was going. He stood on the corner of the landing, a hand resting on the railing, as they carried her down, covered in a white sheet, one of her frail hand dangling limply off the side.
He had found it later, as he strode purposefully to where he knew that idiot and his blasted "pet" would be: a kerchief, still damp from her tears, probably fallen from the hand he had seen. It had been his once... only now it was no longer plain. On one corner, stitched carefully, were the initials T.M.R. Much later that night, after he had been questioned, told to remain silent, and given a pretty trophy for his troubles, he threw the kerchief into the fire in the common room. His eyes bore no pain, his expression no loss.
She was dead now. Gone forever. And as far as his soul was concerned, so was he.