Blurry Lines: A Collection of Drabbles
Written by: Slice
"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared."
-Niccolo Machiavelli
Reckoning
They found him in the morning, with his old, wrinkled skin a waxy white and veins like sickly welts, his blue eyes glazed and empty of their twinkle, half rolled back. His jaw was dislocated, and sherbet lemons had spilled from his engorged and stuffed full throat onto the ground beside where he had collapsed; tea matted his white beard from where it had gurgled forth from his mouth.
It was a beautiful spell, Severus thought, subtle, deceptive, artfully done. It would have to be, he knew, for the great Albus Dumbledore to not notice it and die, choking and drowning, from the wretched sweets he had always forced upon unwilling people.
There was a delicious irony to it all, far more delicious than candy and tea, and Severus took moments and days and miniature lifetimes to savor it, almost as much as he savored his freedom now that his two Masters were dead.
The sky had darkened and most every one had gone home, to grieve or rage or forget there had ever been a meddlesome old man named Albus Dumbledore who thought that the ends really did justify the means no matter the cost when Severus, carefully enshrouded in shadows, watched Potter finally step up to the lonely marble monstrosity.
He stroked the inscription upon the stately marble and whispered tenderly into the night. "Checkmate Headmaster. Your pawns are free." And then he placed a box of sherbet lemons and a packet of Albus' favorite tea before the gravestone and strolled off into the night to lose himself in muggle crowds and anonymity, tears falling slowly down his face and a content smile curling his lips.
Severus resigned himself to owing Potter twice fold now for shattering his metaphorical shackles and graciously applauded the Boy Who Lived on the first true streak of ingenuity he had ever seen from the boy.
Murder really was an art form.
Checkmate –
1) to arrest, thwart, or counter completely
2) to check (a chess opponent's king) so that escape is impossible