The Greatest Is Love

"Though I may speak with the tongues of mortals and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong; a clanging cymbal. Though I have strong faith and can prophesy and understand all mystery but have not love I am nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, conceited, or proud. Love rejoices not in wrong, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears and believes, hopes and endures all things. And now abide these three: faith, hope and love. But of these three the greatest is love."

His breath is cold and heavy in the still twilight air. Every time he inhales his lungs seem to crush under the weight of the burning oxygen, tearing like fire through his breast. He loved her. He loved her. He--the moonlight smouldered across his vision--he exalted her.

His step stumbles and he catches himself just in time. Don't panic. Don't fear. Don't feel. He set his jaw against the world and strode across the grounds as usual. This was how it was supposed to be. His power, his confidence. He was all and all was him. Nothing could defeat him now. Nothing could daunt him.

Except this.

He swore under his breath and a few passing first years started, faces gaunt and freakishly white. An insane, mad laughter rose up inside of him; an earth-shattering scream. He fought it down and cursed himself. God, he wanted to die. He wanted to delve a blade into his flesh and carve out whatever was left of his soul. To plead with it deliriously and shriek like some wild thing until he dissolved into hopeless hilarity. Don't regret. Don't deny.

He remembered the touch of her fingertips--playful, teasing. How her dark curls bounced on her slender shoulders as she ran down Hogsmeade Road toward him. Her hair was like midnight itself: soft and tumbling down her back in a rainfall of the blackest water. He had hated her glasses--the thick lenses obscured her eyes, which were so often lit with tears. They were the color of purest sapphire.

He was her protector, the only one standing between her and the storm. "I will always be here for you," he had said. "You are stronger than they are, because you have faced evil and overcome it."

He was her evil.

He remembered her eyes. Her body had been sprawled on the floor, her blood leaking into warm puddles beneath his feet. Her glasses were shattered by her side, and he saw her eyes. They were pale and glazed, staring straight ahead at some unseen horror. They had reminded him of the cat he had killed one night. He had been consumed by fury, and his only advisor was the knife. When he had awoken, the blood on his hands had already dried and there was no turning back.

She had helped him form his name that night. Tom Marvolo Riddle. I am Lord Voldemort. She had laughed and said it was fitting. Vol de mort--flight of death.

Don't breathe. Don't move. Kill yourself slowly until her death is avenged.

He stands late at night in the rain. The cold crystal droplets are like the tears he never shed. They bathe him, cleansing him. They beat a rhythm on the ground. Steady. He, like the rain, must be steady. He breathes in slowly, and this time there is no pain. He is numb now. He releases the air and watches as it condenses in front of him before fading into the night. He must not look back. He must not regret the decisions he has made. Some things are more important than love.

He loved her. He killed her. It is finished.

Lord Voldemort arises, and there is no looking back.

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature....It was your heart that saved you."

Fin