As soon as Harper is out in the open, my cold hatred locks the doors and windows. Then Morfin groans in pain, rolling over the dirty floor.

"What did you have in mind, huh?" I murmur as I bend over him. "The usual? Wait for the poison to spread through her body so you'd face as little protest as possible? Were you going to carry her to the riverside like the others, where her screams would've been swallowed by the water?"

He shakes his head plenty of times, but I can tell it's just a white lie.

"Would you've threatened and paralysed her with more snake bites?" I continue, inching even closer to his face as well.

"Morfin just wanted to teach her a lesson," he whimpers with narrowed eyes. "Just a little lesson …"

"Is that so?"

He looks at me as though I was his worst nightmare, and I am, so he gulps and nods.

"You're lying," I whisper back before I let the magic within me finally unleash its destructive fury. It sweeps everything loose in the main room, off the shelves and surfaces. A simple Expulso, and it all comes down thundering to pieces beneath us.

Outside, a storm is raging, but this one on the inside of the shack makes me breathe a sigh of relief – as if everything I'm made for could flow without inhibitions once again, finally my darkest colours are back to shine.

Amidst the ringing chaos, a wand is rolling towards me on the floor. Morfin seems to recognise it as his own, but he doesn't venture to take it – unlike me.
Like a tormented animal, he crouches underneath his chair and stares at the floor while holding his hands to his ears in an attempt to protect himself from the noise. And from me.

But I'm just beginning to play.

"Look at me." I order, repeating myself much louder and sharper so he actually complies. "No one can help you – and now I'm going to teach you a lesson. Serpensortia trina!"

Three in number, out of nothing – Morfin finds himself facing those angry snakes, and I watch him closely as I lean towards him and the animals. They're only waiting for my command. And why waste time? "Oppugno!"

He tries to brush them off him during their attacks, but it's no use. "Stop it!" he wants to curse the snakes away, but he hisses and squirms in vain.

"Parseltongue won't save you now," I advise him. "They only obey me."

Soon he acknowledges the bites with a mere whimpering at a loss of power, and only then I turn the snakes to ashes and lift Morfin up with magic so that he has to look at me.

"Do you feel it? Do you feel what she felt?"

He bleakly nods and I shake my head.

"You still don't," I correct him, looking him over. "What you had in mind, as with so many others, makes you nothing but scum." He stops his whining at once, it's quite strange. "An outright disgrace to your name," I add nevertheless as he begins to growl.

"Scum?" His look is unexpectedly grim, and – against all odds and my paralysis spell – with his last ounce of willpower he pulls out the ring he's retrieved from the hiding place in the floor. He glares at it as best as he can and then raises his chin at me. "That's what they used to say to Morfin in Azkaban … Scum … But Father gave him the ring, he appreciated Morfin!" There's a flash of mad defiance in his eyes before he succumbs to an uncontrollable fit of laughter and follows up, "Now that he's dead, what else has Morfin got to lose? Why not have fun with mudbloods?"

"Why the hell would you get to judge whose blood is pure?" I hiss.

"You're just like her, like the traitor – she was your mother, wasn't she?" He laughs, shaking his head. "Wanted a filthy Muggle, too! Both of you be the same! Both put up with unworthy dirt and still think you're better than me!"

"Shut up," I urge him.

"That girl," he whispers, gesturing to the front of the house with a nod of his head, "are you at least having fun with her?"

He promptly squirms in agony, and I mutter to the universe as he does so, "Stop talking …" It's basically like a plea – on his behalf, because I'm about to forget myself.

"Maybe you think you can escape the madness," Morfin mumbles in agony, yet manages to laugh through it. "It's within us! Your blood is stained by filthy Muggles – but you still can't escape the madness! You are more like Morfin than you think!"

"I'm nothing like you." I frown in utmost disgust – basically trying to convince myself of it more than him.

"She should have choked on the snake venom!"

The wind I conjure up bursts the milky windows with its force, resulting in a clanging noise as I close my eyes to keep from imploding myself. As I do so, the flight of splinters slows unexpectedly, like a spitting image of my forced concentration, and I hear Harper's shouts muffled and far away, but she can't overcome my silent defensive spells.

"You will not escape your nature," Morfin hisses, despite the reflective glass all around us, and his giggling makes me insane indeed. "Your blood is your destiny!"

Before he even realises what's happening, I push him against the opposite wall with rough magic, mainly in efforts to finally make him stop laughing.

And that he does. He gasps, actually. And then he stares at me with wide eyes.

"You know, maybe you're right," I say, lost in thought, and work up a dark smile before walking towards him to raise his own wand. "Maybe it was your destiny to remind me of just that … But your destiny ends here – as I vowed. You shouldn't have touched her. Not her."

But his eyes already light up without me cursing him to death, and in an exceedingly strange way at that. He stares past me into blank space and opens his mouth to gurgle one last time – choking blood right into my face.

Perplexed, I glare at him until he all but topples towards me – and hence makes me recognise the huge, rusty nail in the wall that must have pierced through his heart and lungs.

This is where Merope's peppermint bundle hung in her memory.

How strange that Morfin, of all people, meets the reaper like this …

All at once there's blood everywhere, on my body, on my hands, the floor. And more of it with every passing second.

I'm numb again, I feel nothing as I throw him off me and take a few steps back from his motionless body as if I had nothing to do with it.

I imagine hearing blood dripping from my hands onto the ground, but it's certainly not real. No, nothing is louder than the shrill ringing in my head right now …

The red colour that is spreading on the floor seems entirely grey, like everything else around me.

Crazy as he was, surely he was right.
Perhaps I can't escape my fate. And perhaps Superbia – pride – does indeed come before the fall.

I let go of his wand, with a clattering sound it goes down to the rotten floor.

Wood to wood.
Earth to earth.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

I stagger towards the door after seconds that feel like days, but after another glance at my uncle's body, I feel the urgent need to get the bloodstains off me. I could just walk out into the rain and let it wash all over me, but then Harper would have to see this mess …

"Aguamenti!" I murmur until my stiff, cupped hands fill with water. Again and again.

Clear and cool on my face, on my clothes – but in my delusion the water only mixes with the guilty red, and so I repeat the process all over until I finally give up.

I can't seem to wash my hands from this, neither with a spell nor willpower. Possibly because they were always destined to be soaked in blood one day.

So, like in a trance, I let wind push the door open for me. To see the light outside feels like drowning and trying to reach the surface of the water.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Harper rushing towards me, calling my name, but I only catch her hand in front of the hut and refuse to let her pass me.

"Tom!" she shouts as if I was deaf – and maybe I am right now? I can still hear a shrill, piercing sound in my head. But I don't feel my body, beside myself.

And as though she could also see all the bright red I supposedly washed off me, she urges, "What happened?" She cups my face with her hands to wake me up. "Riddle! What did just happen?"

"Are you all right?" I wanly ask.

"I had a question first!"

"I need to know whether you're alright, Harper."

In midst of the very forest that swallowed my sanity, I look at her for a very long moment, just to find the benefit of the doubt in her gaze for one last time – instead of the blame I deserve.

But when I glance at her hands, I notice the contrast more blatantly than ever.

She is light, I am darkness.
She's innocence, I'm sin.
Her hands are flawless, and mine are blood-stained.

I concentrate to let cold air fill my lungs, several times, because in the pouring rain but little oxygen seems to reach my system.
As if there was a rusty nail in my organs, too, forcing all life to leave me.
As if my soul was collapsing and my earthly shell wanted to take revenge on my head.

This must be what Slughorn was talking about.
The sacrilege against nature.
Taking a life is supposedly unthinkable for any sane mind. And I admit, though the thought of it could never shock me, the reality of my act, its finality, does confuse me more than I would have guessed.

Crime and Punishment.
Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov found himself in the same situation. And the consequence of our actions is truly a rupture of the soul.

"Tom, come on – what happened?" Harper whispers by now, and she just takes them – my hands, as I imagine them dripping with blood. And she looks at me with the very kindness that my soul just had to get rid of inside the Gaunts' shack.

"He's dead," I state, "I just couldn't …" I pause and look up at her worried face, "I couldn't listen to him any longer."

Her eyes immediately well up, her gaze even drifts to the shack, and I can't help but wonder why I'm so insanely quiet.

She wants to break away and look for Morfin, but to what point and purpose?

"Stay away from him."

"Riddle," she whines, "please don't tell me you –" She falls silent and ruffles her wet hair as she paces back and forth without much coordination.

Then suddenly she stops to look at me. Only the rain between us.

"Did you kill him?"

I simply nod.

"He's … just dead?" she asks.

I nod, again. The blowing sound of wind in the trees between the heavy rain swallows her nervous whimper.

Until she shakes her head. "But Tom, there … there was no green lightning!"

"No, but a long nail. On the wall."

She gulps. "You wanted to use a nail?"

"No," I sigh, "I'd rather have cursed him out of miserable existence, but that … that wasn't quite how I envisioned it to be …"

She hesitates until she nods. First she's desperate, then thoughtful, then determined.

Shouldn't she run? Never look at me again? Be afraid, hate me? The mere thought of it feels like the purest darkness, but she already takes my hands again. As if she simply can't acknowledge the guilt they've incurred either way – and I sense how much I need her in my life to not lose myself. And how bad I am for her as a consequence.

"You were only angry because of me," she mumbles in a haste, "I should have just seen the snakes earlier, I –"

"Stop it!" I demand. "Look at your hands. Like snow. You had nothing to do with it. But mine … We can't deny it."

"Are you talking about yourself in the plural form now, too?"

"No, we means you and me. Especially you. Open your eyes and realise that I'm a –"

"It was an accident!" she shouts, and more than ever I can hear her panic.

"Harper," I say under my breath, "what difference does it make?"

"Whether it was murder or an accident? Tom, you didn't mean it!"

"Yes I did, just in a different way and timing – face it," I try to correct her. She's so caught up in her image of me, and it's all my fault. I brush a wet strand of hair from her face and almost plead, "See what I am, Harper. Let your illusions go, here and now."

"I'm not letting go!" Indignant tears in her eyes, but still all that determination in her voice. "Nowhere in the world, never. And certainly not here and now! However dark the night may seem, the stars always show us the way!"

"Illustrent Stellae Viam Meam," I quote, staring up at the sky that still tries to drown us in its rage. "How strange that you say this now …"

"What?" She shakes her head, clearly overwhelmed.

"My soul is long since carried into the darkest night," I think aloud, "the stars can no longer light my way."

"Tom, what are you talking about? You're completely out of your mind!"

"Have you been listening at all?"

"Yes!"

She simply confuses me. "I just killed someone, Harper."

"But not on purpose!" she yells, even as her lips quiver. "He would have had his way with me at the slightest hint of opportunity, just like with all the others – you only lost your temper in the face of it. Like anyone else would have!"

"Is that what you really think?"

"Yes!"

"You know what I think?"

She pauses, her gaze literally begging me not to verbalise my shuddering opinion of myself any longer. But I have to. She needs to hear it.

"If you weren't standing before me right now, in shock and sympathy for the mess I am, I would go on with Morfin's wand in my hand in a murderous frenzy, heading directly for Little Hangleton, and I would kill that curse of a father –"

"Subjunctive!" she shouts. "You're obviously not doing it right now!"

"I would, though, without any guilty conscience –"

"Shut up!" She presses her index finger onto my lips and swallows hard. "Pull yourself together, Tom, I mean it! It was an unfortunate accident – nothing more, nothing less!"

"If it hadn't been for that nail, I'd have tortured him to –"

"But you didn't!"

Silence, just for a moment. We literally implode just glaring at each other.
Who's right? Is she naive or am I just consumed by self-hatred?

In a heartbeat, it doesn't even matter anymore.

"Do you hear that?" I ask.

"Yeah." She immediately turns around. "Are those hooves on wet mud?"

We focus on the sound in the distance and I'm quite a bit in a trance, as before, but Harper soon nods as she listens into the forest.

"That's so typical," she groans. "Seriously, why's someone coming by now of all times? Of all the days and hours and even places in the world, we're getting company right here and now? Come on. Tom! Come on!"

She tries to push me towards the shack, but I can't move. And I question her motives as well.

"Do you intend us to hide next to my uncle's dead body?"

"Yes, actually," she hisses, "so move!"

"Too late." We already see a lone rider galloping towards us as if in a hurry.

That face, yet again.
His, mine …

"Speaking of the devil," I moan.

I'm still beside myself, but our undeniable family bond is vexing me once more.

Harper, on the other hand, reacts completely startled. "Tom, his face – what kind of magic is that?"

I stare at her until I understand her words and shake my head. "Guess he's my father …"