Decision

You have made your decision.

The bright light you loved so much is still shining in her eyes, but now she turns away. Her adoration for you has dimmed through neglect all these years and you know you are to blame. Beauty such as hers does not wait forever. And she waited four long years for you, but you never noticed. Too absorbed with other matters.

You keep walking.

People pass you in the corridors. A brief smile. An even briefer nod. You realise that you are nothing to all these people but a figurehead. The Boy Who Lived. Just a name, a face, but never a person.

Where have all your friends gone? Ron and Hermione, they had promised to stay by you always, but their promises shattered with the war. And now they are safe, warm and cosy in their graves, whilst you are still here. Still waiting to prove yourself worthy of your parents' names.

You keep walking.

The corners of this school are as familiar to you as the back of your hand. Left at this one, right at the next, watch the broken step, walk around the statue. You could navigate these halls in your sleep.

But they still hold surprises for you.

She comes around the next corner. A bright flame in a dark castle. Arm around a Slytherin sixth-year. Her boyfriend.

Apparently, that inter-house congeniality that Dumbledore had always tried to foster now worked. Too bad it is in the broken rubble that now remained of the wizarding world.

You keep walking.

She throws you a pitying look over her shoulder. Even though she has lost all her family, you realise that she is still fortunate. Compared to you. You never had a family. Just a name that you had to live up to. And you could never prove yourself worthy. Never worthy enough.

Fame was not enough for you; it never was. The Sorting Hat was right when it wanted to put you in Slytherin, but you disagreed. For five long years you quashed your ambitions, quashed your desires and quashed your dreams, but that wasn't enough.

You keep walking.

You are still a hero to everybody. Still the valiant, noble Gryffindor.

To everybody except yourself.

You have realised the bitter truth and love the taste. That small mark on your left arm proves it.

You can feel the power course through you when it burns. When your master beckons. But he is no longer your master, is he? You have become one. Him and you. There is no longer any difference.

But nobody knows this yet. Nobody yet knows that when they pass you in the corridors (shiver as they pass) that they are passing your nemesis.

You keep walking.

When had that line between good and evil blurred for you? The question haunts you, but you already know the answer. Evil had always been so tantalisingly close, the cloying smell just dangling before your nose. And you had taken the bait.

Just like the Sorting Hat predicted, Slytherin helped you on your way to power.

You have made your decision. Now you must live with it.

~

Author Notes: Thank you to my beta reader Pandora Culpa, I appreciate her help greatly. I wrote this story a long time ago, and if my memory is not failing me, I believe I had another beta reader. If I did, then thank you to him or her as well (yes, I am an idiot!).

Anyway, all comments and criticisms are very welcome. Feel free to rip apart the story as per your own wishes.