Lily of the Valley
By: Demonic Psycho
Disclaimer: I own nothing except the plot.
He didn't want to kill this vivacious red-haired woman who pleaded for her young boy's life. He wished that the damn prophecy had indicated another child, that the lifeless body of James Potter could stop him from doing this, that she would vow hypocritically to join his unerring ways and marry him, because cruel fate had forced him to fall in love with her.
She was courageous, a true Gryffindor down to her aching heart, so pure and so innocent that he had to have her, but tainted by her Muggle parents. She was so damn religious, too, he noted endearingly, hearing her pray fervently to God under her trembling breath.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
He cursed internally. She was a lily, and a type of lily was lily of the valley. Why couldn't she be the lily of the valley of the shadow of death? Why couldn't the pale petals of the lily – the unique lily he claimed for himself – give off the heavily intoxicatingly iron nectar of carmine blood and the equally enthralling pollen of cold-blooded murder instead of the sickly sweet odour of untainted innocence the white colour of snowy lily petals? He could make her his beautiful, untouchable lily, encased in frosty, icy sheets of fiery diamond.
She had rejected him, though, rejected his obsessive ownership of her. Did he have to squat down and piss on her tempting flesh like the ever-wary wolf did to what he claimed for his so that his stench would come from her in heavy waves? No, he couldn't, because she would still defiantly buck off the oppressive reins and fight the sharply edged spurs that he dug into her sleek flanks.
So he killed her, killed her and watched when her lifeless corpse veiled in vibrant ruby hair fell downward from its kneeling position, her white forehead hitting the sharp corner of the changing table, making a deep scratch. None of her precious crimson lifeblood gushed out, seeped out, or oozed slowly onto her white skin and lubricated the dark hardwood floor. She was dead, just as the coldly rushing emerald-green light coming from his cherished wand had indifferently killed her.
Her wide-open eyes were the colour of the light.
Then he turned to her young son, the weak symbol of the undeniable, irrefutable love she had held for feeble, goody-goody James Potter, not the powerful Dark Lord Voldemort – not him – and raised his wand.
He hesitated for the scant space of a breath as the innocent, childlike eyes of this one-year-old lad stared at him. They were almond-shaped, the colour of the most precious emeralds. They were Lily's eyes, his beautiful Lily's eyes.
After he's dead, I'll take his eyes out…
Then he raised his wand again, unflinchingly, and opened his thin, bloodless lips to utter the Killing Curse. He would take this bastard child's – for only the child he had killed with Lily, the child he had planted in her with cold force was legitimate in his biased eyes – eyes and preserve them with a spell, set them into his crown as jewels.
A green light burst from the tapered tip of his wand, enveloped the room, struck the child's forehead…
Lord Voldemort knew no more as his body diminished, except that he had loved Lily, he was the only one, the single being, worthy of the gentle caresses of her unwavering love.
Endless days later, as he dragged himself weakly across the ground, possessing the form of a dying opossum, he found himself envious of this child. This infant's unerring protection was his mother's undying love, the love that he should've had to hold, to let flourish.
It was the love of a single white lily, the love that he had never been able to get.