Cry

Cry

They always wore black. It was the colour of their souls, the bleak darkness that sucked them all into an oblivion of pain and malice. She knew this, and that was why she always wore it. It was the colour of her life too, and of the man she was meant to mourn. The very man who had clouded her world in a haze of shadows before finally, ultimately, pulling her into the web of evil to which he had been born.

We are sorry, they said, so sorry that he died. He was a good man and he served our Lord faithfully. They wiped away their crocodile tears as they watched her with cool calculating eyes. We offer our condolences.

She wanted to scream, to shout. She wanted to tell them that he was their Lord not hers, but she had to keep her family safe. She could not tell them that their Lord had destroyed the man she loved, broken his soul. She could not tell them how much she hated their world and their twisted power plays. She could only smile a sad yet vacant smile as she told them what a great man she had known him to be.

He had been a great man. Once. That was before the Dark Mark had branded his flesh, condemning him to a life of service beneath the monster known as He Who Must Not Be Named. He had loved her and she had loved him. But that time of happiness was a now a mere memory.

"Avada Kedavra."

Two words. Two simple words with the power to wash life away in a flash of blinding green light. He had told her that the curse was a beautiful and chilling thing to cast. He should have known--he had cast it many times himself. She had only cast it once, and there had been no joy in using the Unforgivable. For her there had only been a sense of overwhelming relief.

He was dead now and she was glad of that. In the end he had been nothing but a painful reminder of what she had lost to the darkness. She still remembered the mad broken look that had been in his eyes on the night of his death. It was a look that haunted her darkest dreams.

Her son had been only sixteen on the night of his father's death. She feared for him. Soon he would be old enough to take the Dark Mark. She didn't want him to suffer his father's fate, but she knew that it was already too late to save him. He was born, like his father, to walk the path to hell. He was too much like her husband. Too much like Lucius.

"Avada Kedavra."

She remembered the way her wand had felt so heavy in her hands. She remembered the deadly words which had rolled off her tongue, like the hiss of a snake readying to strike. She had watched as the green radiance filled the room. And she had seen him fall to the floor; his eyes finally empty of their madness.

She had killed her husband. Narcissa had set him free. There would be no more pain for him to suffer, no more people for him to hurt. He was gone, but she had remained. The rest of her life would be lived in guilt for the man she had killed, and mourning for his soul, which had died so long ago.

Death. Darkness. Voldemort. Lucius.

"Avada Kedavra."

In that flash of green light, Lucius had died. In some ways, so had Narcissa Malfoy.