STEP FORWARD

Chapter IV: Black Pity

"Twisted every way, what answer can I give? Am I to risk my life to win the chance to live?"

(Christine, ALW)

Lovely.

A quaint little French-style chateau, innocuously out of place in Britain, but nonetheless contentedly sprawled over the hills of Wales; a stone manor house, wooden outbuildings, a neat row of gardens carefully kept by no doubt meticulous staff—all of it spoke of a well-to-do Ministry official, high in the department of National Culture, with a passing care about a house that had been in his family for generations.

Darkness.

The grounds were utterly deserted, as they would have to be for any sane person. It was an ungodly three o'clock in the morning local time, and only six where he had Apparated from. However he hadn't gotten the time difference backwards; when the soft crack of his Apparation snapped the night, he appeared fully expecting the dreadful silence. It was a new moon, so the night was exceptionally dark, though the sky was clear. Stars winked down, far less than he was used to, blocked out from the light pollution of nearby urban areas. In Russia the sky was wide open, and you could see a billion stars if you could see one. Here…

Well, there was enough light to see by, though that wasn't saying much. It had never taken much light at all for him to find his way, and he was quietly pleased that anyone looking out one of the manor's windows (but there were none) would not even be able to make him out as an indistinct black shape framed against the starry sky.

Black cloak swirling about his heels, he walked up to the door and hesitated, staring down at the ornate silver handle cast in the shape of a roaring lion. He sneered faintly; a flash of white teeth against the black of his robes, of his cloak, of his mask. His wand tip hovered an inch above the door handle. "Alohomora," he hissed, and the lock clicked and came free. A lock, a muggle defense, as if that would stop anyone of real import from walking in. It was about as useful as the security guards down at the gate at the foot of the hill, and not even a single Disapparation Ward about the entire building.

He hesitated on the threshold; the dark interior beckoned him on. After some internal struggle he spun to face back out into the night, grey eyes gleaming with suppressed emotion. "MORSMORDRE!", and then he was running, down the hall and up the first flight of stairs on the left, a fleet black shadow in ephemeral form. Someone was yelling something; on his way past the second landing he glanced out the tall glass casements and caught a glimpse of the grinning skull and coiling snake framed against the starry sky. He had only moments before the Ministry and their Aurors would be all over the building, but it was better than waiting till afterwards, not putting the Mark up at all…

The indiscriminate muffled sounds became decipherable as he leveled off at the fourth landing, slowing slightly to catch his breath and quiet the sound of his breathing at the same time. "For the love of… no! I will not let you come with me on this, it's far too dangerous!" Then a quiet reply that he could not hear in another voice. His breathing became so shallow it was impossible to hear, his footsteps less than a whisper of leather on wood, the ripple of air disturbed in his passing louder than any other sound but the voices. He could distinctly make out both of them, now.

"I don't care, Raoul, I am not…" he couldn't quite hear that "...here alone." Her voice was so quiet he could barely distinguish it, and parts of it were obscured entirely. His movements became softer, if at all possible. Not even the Dark Lord had been able to fault him on his silence.

"…God help me if it's otherwise than one of them," he heard the other—Raoul—say in what he thought might have been an attempt at a comforting tone. The sound came from just down the hallway, behind a magnificently stained oak door. "But it's likely one of the Farlength boys again… Seventh years, you would think they know better, but now that they can do magic on their own they're up to all kinds of trouble…"

"Please, be careful… in case…" By this time he was right outside their door, fingertips brushing the wooden surface lightly, leaning forward.

"I will. Shh, be back in a mome-"

He cut off as the door swung back slowly, framing a tall, thin figure in immaculate black. The visitor's hard cold gaze strafed the room, pinning it flat, immobile in time. Luxurious red velvet drapes swept gracefully over the corners of a four-post ash bed. A thick carpet of the same hue blanketed the floor, looking like nothing so much as a calm, heavy pool of blood. Ornate gilding framed the cornices and the window, gleaming in the light of a single lit candle on an equally well-crafted bedside stand. Seated on the floor was a young girl, eighteen if she was a day, her long brown hair tousled and cascading over her shoulders, a white dressing gown pulled close about her frame. Crouched over her, half-kneeling with a hand on her slender shoulder, was the man he had come for.

Raoul. Raoul de Chagny, Minister for the Department of British Culture. Raoul, even now somehow angelically perfect-looking despite the rather rude awakening when he had yelled the Dark Mark summons on his front doorstep. Raoul with his shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes and perfect smile.

"You have an overdue appointment with the Dark Lord," the black figure said with the smooth melodic tone usually reserved for particularly enticing offers. "He so wants to meet you, I hear…"

"Impedimenta!" the young Minister cried, jabbing his wand at the dark figure in the doorway. The red jet of light blasted through the open space and took out part of the wall in the hallway beyond; stone chips and dust sprayed through the air. It took him a moment to realize he had already missed, that the dark figure was moving. He said a few choice words, tracking about, wishing he had been better at Defense Against the Dark Arts—there: "Stupe-"

"Expelliarimus," the man said before the word left his mouth, then spoke something else he had never heard before, a charm that flattened him against the ground, writhing but unable to rise. "Pity that you would not just come along," the dark intruder said, almost as if he meant it. "Ah well, I suppose dear Voldemort would not have found the conversation terribly interesting. Avada K-"

"Erik?"

He froze.

Stone, tinder, and discord, he had forgotten about the girl.

"Saints… is that really you? Erik?"

He turned his head, fractionally, just enough that he could glance at her. Condemnation, how could he not have recognized her voice even through the muffling walls and door? Or, when he saw her—granted just in profile—the instant the door slid open, where had been the recognition, his prized memory kicking in for him? The desperate thought crossed his mind that this, of all times, was not the time for this kind of revelation after all… but to see his former student there, staring up with him with doe-frightened brown eyes…

"So you did go with the wealthy young suitor after all?" he ground out in a voice that was not his own. The toe of his boot nudged the Chagny boy, who was still glaring up at him in utter immobile hate. "Pity that. A waste of perfectly good talent, even for a simple little muggle girl like yourself. I might have made something of you." His grin was forced, and was all daggers and ice. Whatever she saw in his eyes made her flinch away.

"You're one of… them… aren't you?" she mumbled.

How many nights had he stayed awake remembering the look on her face when he nodded his head, one single time? It hadn't been horror or revulsion, though she was more than entitled to them. It hadn't been hate. God help him, he could have dealt with hate; Voldemort made sure they knew what hate was. He made sure they felt it coursing through their veins, eating up their bones, an acid they couldn't spit out no matter how hard they tried. He had taught them fear, and anger. But the Dark Lord had never spoken a word on pity.

Pity. It was that which twisted her face as she looked up at him. It made him want to sick up, to vanish into a quiet corner in shame for the rest of his worthless existence. And inexplicably he felt himself burn with anger, anger at her for thinking of him that way, anger at the Dark Lord, anger at himself—everything—this world, cruel and bitter. Didn't she see that he had had no choice? That he had never had any choice whatsoever? Endlessly hounded, pushed in circles, and even she had betrayed him for this boy, this… this fop! It boiled over in his mind, and she was backing away from him, and now there was horror painted on her features: good, he could deal with horror, he knew how…

"Try the upstairs!"

"There is a light in that window—a candle maybe!"

His head snapped around. The Aurors were already converging on the scene. His time was fast slipping away, sand in the hourglass, water between his fingers. "Such a pathetic existence," he sneered, his wand snapping up. She froze, staring down the length of it. Muggle or not, she had been around the Chagny boy long enough to know what he could do, and had heard enough horror stories from the others to know what to expect. "You should have gone the other way, and maybe all of this would have been different, wouldn't it?" the masked Death Eater said in that sibilant, melodious voice. She stared at him, transfixed, a snake before the charmer. "It was all harmless at first… you really thought I was an angel, didn't you, naive girl? An angel of God… more like an angel in Hell." He laughed, shortly. There were footsteps, people running up the stairs. "You have half a moment left to consider how you might have made things different… saved innocent lives… I would make you remember for eternity the kinds of things you broke that night, but unfortunately that is beyond even magic's ability…"

The Aurors were in the hall. He had a few seconds, at the most. "Erik," the girl choked at him. She was crying. Fool girl, why was she crying? That would not get her anywhere.

"You uncaged a demon; tears won't put him behind bars again. I'm sorry Christine." He smiled at her, and for some reason that did not make her shrink back as her eyes looked up through her tears at the masked killer who stood over her and her husband.

"For what?" she said, or at least her lips moved if her mouth didn't actually give voice to the words.

His returning smile was cruel. "For being pitiable." His arm straightened; the ministry wizards burst through the door, hesitating half an instant in surprise, the words to spells already forming in their minds and lips—

"Avada Kedavra," and the world exploded in a rush of green light.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He exploded into consciousness, jerking upright, to the unpleasant sensation of sweat dripping down his face. Without thinking he raised his arm and wiped it away, his fingers trailing along the edge of the mask he wore even in sleep. He was shivering, despite how much warmer it was here than at Durmstrang, and everything seemed to be unnaturally cold.

For a moment his vision swam with after-images of his dream, turning hazily before his eyes. It was only when he blinked to scatter them and focus on the actual, corporeal world around him that he realized his left arm was burning with a dull, insistent ache. Forcibly he pried his fingers from their deathgrip on his forearm, seeing the skin redden with the ferocity of his grip.

The ship was completely still around him; it could not be past five in the morning, if that, which meant he had slept for perhaps four hours. It was more than he was used to, if he had indeed slept that long. Most nights he did not sleep at all, burning up within with a kind of restless fire, the same thing that made it impossible for him to be more than skin over bones, almost skeletal.

That last comparison made him laugh softly.

Eventually he disentangled himself from the sheets and padded over to the window, his bare feet even more silent on the decking than when he was shod (which was saying something in itself). The small window, above waterline, gave a silent view of the Black Lake, and, at the far end, the fringes of the Forest. He leaned forward, studying, thinking perhaps to catch a glimpse of the thestrals, but they were long gone into darker regions, or so it seemed.

Thestrals, seen only by those who had witnessed death. His dream was more a memory than a nightmare, and that had not been the first time he cast the Killing Curse. Nor the last. Absentmindedly he rubbed his left forearm, then looked down, tilting his arm in the meager light, a frown playing about his features.

There came the sound of someone moving elsewhere in the ship, waking from sleep. It must be nearly five then after all, he thought, his earlier estimates vindicated; a second, less intensive glance out the window showed faint lightening eastwards, further proving the point. Karkaroff would have the Durmstrang students up and entering their names for the Goblet before breakfast at the Great Hall. Erik knew he should be stirring, to shadow behind them at the very least, but for some reason he was finding it difficult to pull himself away from the window.

"You're one of… them… aren't you?" He hadn't even been able to answer. A simple "yes". Nevermind his usual flippant tone, or one of those ready sarcastic remarks. He hadn't even been able to admit to it aloud. He had nodded. That's all.

He slammed his fist into the windowsill, and then stared at it. It took the sound of several people shuffling by his cabin, talking in low voices, to make him realize he had been standing there for a good fifteen minutes staring at nothing. He started, and moved away, reaching for the black robes neatly hung on a peg by the door, glancing once over his cabin, almost austere in how little there was in it.

Once again he found his fingers touching his left arm and snatched them away. It was the dream, that was all, he told himself firmly. The memories of his days in the mask… the Death Eater's mask, he corrected himself firmly… well, they were not entirely pleasant, not even now, fourteen years later. Time didn't touch some things. He looked down at his fingers curled around his left arm, and frowned, slowly moving them away. It must be the poor light… though he had always been perfectly able to see in the dark. Maybe his imagination then, combining with the dream.

He laughed softly to himself. As if either was a plausible reason he was certain that the outline of the Dark Mark was—maybe—just a little bit darker than it had been last night. He might have believed that it was, except that, of course, was totally impossible.

He swung the door open abruptly to see Dastrovsky standing there, one hand tentatively raised to knock. Erik cocked an eyebrow at him, and the seventh-year stepped back hastily, allowing the Dark Arts Professor to sweep by in a flourish of black robes, hissing "Colloportus" as he went. The door slammed shut behind him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Notes:

For Christine, I took the description of the Movieverse, and for Raoul that of the book. RC shippers… doesn't look like this will be your story. Of course that doesn't mean it will be EC either. But I'm still having fun with it ;)

Disclaimer: All characters, settings, and cannon events told within this story are the property of J.K. Rowling, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Leroux, Kay, and the other geniuses behind the writing and scripting of both Harry Potter and The Phantom of the Opera. I have no claim to them whatsoever, nor do I intend to pursue such. This is for the pure enjoyment of (ph/f)ans and authoress alike.