The gates of heaven keep flooding the world with animosities, a storm is raging – and that is hardly unusual around this time of year.
Yet a thunderstorm experienced in full possession of the soul, between the fourth and fifth ritual of splitting it, seems to be the last opportunity for me to grasp that majestic wrath with all my remaining senses.
I can't help but stare at the lighting shots. Like gunfire they sound, glowing as bright as death is dark in life.
I can't tell if I'll survive the next few nights. And what it will be like if I'm even able to marvel at weather like this again – but that makes it all the more intense now.
Maybe that's why I'm drawn to the astronomy tower on this match-free Saturday, where nobody else wishes to be exposed to the rain like this.
The heavens keep roaring over the Black Lake, it seems even deeper and more mysterious that way, and yet not one lightning ventures to strike me to finally relieve me of this miserable pain in my throbbing body.
Nature only steadily makes its way down from the sky through dense, dark clouds in blinding, bright lines.
Florence, Thomas Riddle's daughter, my half-sister, obsessed with nephology, could probably explain to me why the grey veils of mist are taking the very shapes that are now opening up before me.
But she is not part of my life.
Perhaps she could've been, under different circumstances, in another universe ...
But right now, nothing and no one is part of my life. There is no place in it.
Nonetheless not even the rain can wake me up. I'm basically here in vain. When I tilt my head upwards, I feel nothing. There is not a sense on my numb skin whenever the wind turns – neither the cold of the drops nor the humidity of the molecules.
When I sleep, I no longer dream. I rarely ever did, but there's even more emptiness within me now.
The darkness that has already replaced my soul light to significant parts prevents any spark of true life in me – and as much as it makes me doubt my purpose, I can't go back now.
It's all or nothing.
All in ashes. So be it ...
I try to catch my breath carefully, only to end up coughing again, as even the capacity of my lungs seems to be ripped apart. Blood in my palm again, which I immediately hold out for the rain to wash away.
The drops of above mix with those of my personal hell, and from there, they only fall into the abyss of the world.
How odd.
Our bodies are so largely made of water, and yet we already carry the colour of guilt and sin within us ...
"Tom?"
As if from another lifetime, I hear her bright voice and turn around, only to watch her at the entrance to the tower.
"What are you doing here?" she calls out to me. As though she didn't know … "Are you watching the storm?"
I don't answer, unsure whether I even want her around at this point. Whether she should see me half dead ...
But she's already getting closer. She always is.
"Get away from the balustrade," she rebukes me from underneath the roof of the tower – where, unlike me, the rain can't reach her even with gusts of wind. "You're already all drenched …"
"Did you follow me?" I ask and turn towards her to check for the truth of her answer by glaring at her facial expressions.
"No, I –"
"You're lying." I lean against the balustrade again because I'm feeling dizzy, as I just do these days, but I add in a huff, "You're not here by chance."
"I knew you'd be, too," she admits, inching closer with concern. "You like bad weather up close, everyone else would run from it. But you'll get sick standing in the rain like that and –"
My coarse laughter interrupts her. The idea of worrying about me catching a cold now, in light of my devastating general physical condition, seems like a tendentious joke.
She takes a deep breath and simply pulls me along. Courageously and without waiting for my consent, until we finally sit down at one of the observation benches on the inner tower.
I know it now.
Having her near feels like one last spark of hope. Looking at her is like peacefully bleeding to death, even while her eyes well up again and her heart must be breaking at the sight of me.
"Your skin is so pale, Tom, you must be in pain," she whispers and still makes it sound like regret, "and even though it's your own fault, I wish there was ... something I could do. You are condemning me to just stand by and watch. It's cruel."
Ever so gently, she lets her fingers hover over the dark circles underneath my eyes, then her hand sinks to the wet fabric of my chest.
"As long as it's still beating, it can choose the right thing, can't it?"
I don't feel her touch. Nevertheless, I breathe a weary sigh of relief as, quite unexpectedly, all the tension and pain seems to wash away for a brief moment in time.
It can't be a coincidence.
She's the reason for all my pain.
And therefore, she alone can alleviate the consequences of the sacrilege against my soul.
With this final realisation, I can't help but lift her chin up, and this supposedly harmless touch certainly confuses the both of us.
But probably for different reasons.
Because I simply feel nothing. My fingers are practically numb – shouldn't I feel her warmth on my skin now? Might that neurological decline really be unstoppable? Is it taking all earthly joy with it?
She closes her eyes, as if our hearts beating so near to each other is unbearable for her in the light of everything that has happened in the meantime.
Or maybe it's just too much distance still ...
When she looks up at me, more lost, more lethargic than ever, I have to admit to myself that I want her as near as possible, despite all the delirium.
I let my hand sink into her hair like in a dream, until, driven by my most intellectual and primitive impulses at the same time, I need to feel her soft lips on mine.
I want to feel them, but I can't. My mind is telling me what it's supposed to be like, but my senses can no longer process the stimulus in its entirety.
Still I'm intoxicated as I pull her into my arms and anchor her firmly on my lap, the way I've wanted to do for weeks.
And the very thought hits me. For weeks. I crave her presence, I wanted her in London, in Albania and even at world's end ...
Her scent of honey and cinnamon immediately surrounds me, soothing as always, and I realise I've missed her far too much. I draw her close and bury my nose in her neck, kissing even the hollow of her throat. My lips are wet with rain and cold with death, but her warm skin can take it. She wraps her arms around me, all her tears and love reserved for me alone – even now.
It's cruel indeed. To hold her like this after I recently pushed her away so fervently. We're going in circles, and yet I can't help it.
I gently lift her pretty face towards mine again – and she doesn't stop me. Until we fill our lungs with one last breath before another kiss that I need to feel on my lips.
Bloody hell.
It's sobering how much more intense this could be ...
Maybe I just need more of her while the sky keeps raging above us, like it did in Little Hangleton's forest back then.
In pure intuition I let my hands glide along the frame of her body. It's silent fascination and unexpected reverence that rushes through my veins because nobody else will ever get to touch her like I do and live, and we both know it.
Sacrilege and conciliation in purest synthesis – and I want so much more of it.
She softly sighs as I loosen her tie from her collar even more, until she whispers, "Someone could find us …"
She peeks at the stairs, but I just turn her head back to me.
"Tough luck that would be," I mumble without the slightest concern, just about to loosen the buttons on her shirt, too, when she cups my cheeks with her hands. The sadness in her smile finally makes me pause.
Tears run down her face as she says under her breath, "There ... Red irides again …"
As if my body were meters away from me, I feel her pain also pierce through me from a distance – but all too quickly it fades away between the groaning of my organs and my migraine, as if it had only been a brief flash far away.
"Why do we even mind the red?" I ask her genuinely unbothered, until her sniffling makes me recall that she must be completely taken by it all.
"Tom, because it's not you anymore. Don't you understand? You're changing ... With half a soul, you're no longer the same person. No longer the one I fell in love with …"
Love ...
That crude word that makes my guts churn.
"Harp," I sigh, "see, once the fifth ritual is complete, everything might probably level out again. I think we could just –"
"What? How?" She shakes her head in obvious bewilderment. "How's something that's been torn apart supposed to level out again? Tom, don't you realise it's killing you? And what it's doing to you? You're numb. You almost suffocated Black in your Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement the other day! It drops all your inhibitions. Until now, your head was superior to your magic. But now you can barely control your impulses – that's dangerous with someone as talented as you. You're dying, a little more each day, it's just madness ... When we could have had it all."
Time and time again, I've found myself impressed by her ability to feel compassion. It's very different from conventional pity. Because there's none of that in her eyes, at most anger because I'm acting the way I am. But compassion resonates in every word she says.
"Our life could have been wonderful," she whispers while I stoically close my eyes to swallow an unexpected wave of nerve pain. "We could have been happy ... Come on! At least look at me, Tom!"
It's a reflex, of course I comply with that request.
But once again she's using that for her ulterior motives, catching me off-guard.
"Legilimens!" she breathes, only to see more of all the things I'm trying so hard to keep away from her.
Once again, there are the images she already saw, compressed, flashing by quickly. The glow of the ring, deep red and menacing, Nagini and Vivian, too, and finally Queenie and the Rottweilers, and this time, also how I shed my face to meet none other than Gellert Grindelwald in the forests of Albania.
She sees him, I can't stop it.
And suddenly she knows whose dogs have bitten into the shape of her boggart ...
She sees how I'm ready to walk through fire – and how shocked her great-uncle is at the truth about my Inferius, awakened solely by the darkness of a lightless child.
"Get out of my head," I snap, literally shaking her off me to jump up and distance myself from her. "Harper, stop staring into the abyss! Trust me when I say it's staring back and you can't possibly be prepared for it!"
"Was that about …" She gulps and forms Grindelwald's name with her lips. "And the ring ... Where is it? Was the ring a – oh, no, forget about it!" She also jumps up and points at my wand. "Don't you dare! No Obliviate! You don't even have to try! I'm beginning to realise what's going on, Tom, and –"
"That's just it!" I shout. "I'm aware you can combine – that's why I wanted you to stay away from me! I could never forgive myself if something happened to you because of one of my decisions, don't you get that?"
I literally lose my mind.
What do I have to do or say to get rid of her?
I have to do just that as quickly and effectively as possible. Otherwise she'll sabotage my fifth and most important ritual.
Extreme rhetoric is obviously required here and now, and it will make her never want to talk to me again. Never follow me into the catacombs ...
"Maybe Black was right," I subsequently hear myself say. "What am I even supposed to do with a worthless, dirty mudblood? If the natural order of the magical world hadn't fallen victim to kind-hearted idealism, you wouldn't even be standing in front of me inside of Hogwarts' walls right now."
She actually freezes.
She's visibly hurt, and that's exactly the point. I can't protect her from the possible consequences of my oath if she's constantly standing in my way with her worries.
"Who do you think you are?" She inclines her head, her expression one of defiance and pride. "Slytherin's rightful heir? That's what it makes you?" With tears in her eyes, she whispers, "Fanaticism doesn't suit you at all, Tom Riddle. Don't forget that the mud of your own No-Maj father runs through your veins as well. That you have his common No-Maj name. And never forget what your mother – born into the same madness you are now in danger of losing yourself to – did for that same blood."
"Do you really think there's even the slightest chance that I could forget that?"
"Forgive me, but you obviously lost your intellectual brilliance a couple of weeks ago – and soon, my dear model student, there will be nothing left of your talent but an extremist mindset," she hushes. "And now you'll curse a Cruciatus faster than I can, or we'll simply never look at each other again and fate will take its course. But I will not tolerate half-hearted attempts, and they should be beneath you anyway."
"You are beneath me. That's all …"
She literally smiles through this nightmare of hers. "Then you'd better be ashamed of yourself," she acidly says, spitting at my feet before heading for the stairs already. "Awfully embarrassed, Riddle," she shouts, "because you were so damn glad to have me around – a worthless, dirty mudblood …"
For almost half a year I tried to stop her from using this pejorative because it doesn't fit her at all.
Today, however, since the end must justify the means, there is probably nothing more to say ...
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