notes: no characters are mentioned directly by name but are implyed. This is a dark fic, as stated before if you want a happy ending, I recommend you leave now and find something else to read.
The air is crisp, frost clings to the blades of grass: a dusting of glitter shimmering in the rising December sun. It's a beautiful morning in the Hogwarts grounds, already there are voices on the air. Teachers and pupils come from the entrance way, querying the scene that has been discovered. So early in the day, around eight am, it is not at all what anyone expected to see. Fairy lights twinkle inside the building, the sunlight catching glimmers of red, green, gold and blue tinsel.
Something else gets caught in the light.
A tall, waif-like figure casts a long black shadow. Screams resound through the still morning air, cutting like hot swords. Disbelief is etched on the faces of the spectators as a cloud of collective frozen breath begins to develop then disperse around them. Several pupils retreat inside, rapid moving swarms of yelling, terrified children. Others, the brave, naive and idiotic, step forward, flanking the faculty on either side. Then there are those who come a little bit further forward, so far forward in fact that they adorn the crimson-eyed man ? Creature ? Like malicious serpentine bracelets. Smirks can be seen clearly on each cold flushed face. Yells and insults from those naive lions who have moved neither forward nor inside are heard but do they make a difference ? No, of course they don't. Cruel smirks broaden until the little snakes are laughing, cackling at their folly. A faculty member, the people children are supposed to be able to trust, walks proudly forward. Robes as black as black billow, yet there is no breeze, it matters not, the effect is the same: gasps, shrieks, proclamations of "Traitor ! Traitor !". The little snakes and their master are surprised that they are surprised, nevertheless the black clad professor kneels to his Lord. The others around him follow.
Those, questionably, brave pupils, yell with predestined futility, raising their wands: thinking somewhere in those small little minds that some difference will be made. The teachers stay stock still, with age comes not only wisdom but the ability to resign yourself to the facts of a situation. There is one person alone who can rid the frosted grass of this white skined, crimson-eyed evil before them.
Therein lies the problem. This person of whom they think is lying at the feet of said evil, naked and turning blue with cold. Steam rises from the deep cuts and gashes that decorate the once flawless skin. The ebony haired head of this mangled corpse lies at peculiar angle: the body is almost flat on its back but its face is practically buried in the ground. How easily things can break, the Lord wonders as he and his snakes glide away. Sixteen years of the best laid plans yet in the seventeenth a tiny, albeit loud, sickening, crack was all it took. So simple, so brilliant.
All desperation of actions ceases: the Lord and his snakes now have all the time in the world.