The cat is black, with silver eyes and a white blotch on the back of her neck. She came to him when he was lying on his bed and watching the nonexistent stars. She was holding a tiny scrap of emerald ribbon.
He remembers this ribbon; it has been locked up in his trunk for as long as he can remember. When he was young, he had held it as he cried in his cupboard, and wished for salvation.
He carries it now, as others would carry a locket, or some object of great value. It has all of his memories, his childhood dreams.
He takes it from her, and watches it as she does. First there is nothing, and then there are small threads of black ribbon, but they are not threads. They are words, half forgotten as he whispered them in the dark.
No..........please..........I'm sorry..............I didn't mean to........no!.......don't........accident..........wasn't me.............I swear..........
And he is caught up in surges of memories as he remembers everything.
The cold.
The hurt.
The fear.
The pain.
Oh, God the pain….
It stuck like a knife, wounding him and clouding his thoughts and giving terrible, pure release.
He couldn't forget the words, they called to him the next day whispering into his ears and fogging his thoughts and making him stumble as old scars reopened and somewhere is his mind he screamed.
He slept clutching the cloth to his body and his dreams were filled with red and black and green and pain and helplessness and death and screaming and the pain ripped into his soul and he bled and loved it.
The next day he had Potions and his exploded and covered the floor in some sort of emerald green substance that seemed to flicker. He stared, and heard the harsh words of the Professor turning to other words as memories made themselves known and he felt the pain as he collapsed forward into the blackness.
They let him go from the hospital with worried words and flustered faces, with the Nurse murmuring about some sort of addiction or poisoning but he made himself be normal until he had the ribbon once more.
This time the others found him on his bed, clutching the cloth and with blood soaking his body from a million invisible cuts.
They put him in a private room, with walls that were all white too white and he prowled the room the a wild beast and even as the cold seeped into his bones and the fever took hold he snatched at the remaining scraps of reality that soon eluded his grasp.
As he writhed on the bed delirious with the fever he saw the monstrous shape of something twisted and wrong and he screamed and felt the blood bubble from his lips as the voices came thick and harsh and then ice trickled onto him and cooled the fever but left the delirium there burning with a flame no one could quench…….
And the cat
came
and sat
on his
chest
and held
the ribbon
that was
the exact shade
of
Avada Kedavra
as it
speeds
through
air
and strikes
and kills
and the ribbon shone
and burned
crumbling to ashes
And as the ribbon burned in front of him so did his soul in one last fiery burst of pain. He spasmed on the bed and frantically looked about with unseeing eyes but it was too late and he died there and the cat left, and would not return and the red blood soaked the sheets as he clutched the emerald ribbon to his chest.
It had all been some plan of Voldemorts, to drive him insane but they hadn't counted on him dieing as the ribbon did, and the world collapsed in chaos
and the boy once known as Harry Potter watched with pearly-white eyes as he sat on his marble tombstone, a small black cat with a small piece of green cloth in its jaws at his feet.
And the boy who was thin and bruised and a wizard even if he didn't know yet stopped and picked up the cat, and mindlessly tucked the ribbon into a pocket.
And the cycle that had started with Tom Riddle so long ago continued.