The Raven's Sins

Chapter 2

I am walking. Swiftly and briskly, my hair whipping about my face, features set in adamant determination. I am on my way to Godric's Hollow. I don't know why just yet, but something tells me it's where I need to be.

Godric's Hollow. The name sounds familiar, but I know I've never heard it before. Not only that, but I know exactly where I'm going, every turn I make has already been carefully charted in my head. It's as if in a dream, or a dream of a dream, that I had been here. Walking down this dirt road, past rolling hills, green grass, and quaint little towns. But I don't stop walking. Scenery means nothing to me as the subliminal voice from the back of my head urges me on. My feet pound the sodden path, the rhythmic repetition seems to drone on and on in my head. No other sound mars the stillness of the early evening.

I haven't seen my father for over three years now, but I've heard much about him. He has big plans for the world, and some boy I've never heard of keeps getting in his way. Harry Potter or something obscure like that. Well, good for the Potter boy is all I can say. I wonder if I saw my father now, what he'd say to me. In all his evil grandeur and might, would he still be able to find the words to tell me what he feels, or would he just kill me on the spot? What would I say to him? Bastard. How could you do all those sick and twisted things to innocent people? How could you have been bringing me up to do the same thing? And hell, no! I'll never join you! Probably wouldn't be my best bet for survival, but I figure it's best to get things out in the open. I mean, shit, it's not like it isn't anyway.

Looking back, throwing a couple curses at him, burning the house down, swearing like a sailor and running away probably wasn't the best way to handle my situation, especially with a father who thinks killing should be the national pastime. But, honestly, what would you have done? Here is a man, who you know is quite violent and fairly convoluted in his thinking, but he's my father. I could always find it in my heart to forgive his oddities, and try to pretend we were a normal family. Who the hell was I trying to kid? Of course, that was before I learned that those gruesome murders he used to brag about weren't fictitious. Before I learned he was bent on world domination and destruction. And before I learned that the only reason I was alive was that he had raped my mom, killed the first child she had because he wasn't strong enough, then raped her again. The second after I was born, he killed her. He used my mom for my sole creation. He wanted an heir, and he got one. Sort of.

I knew now that my father had been the most feared person in the world, creating mayhem and destruction wherever he went. I knew that people dared not speak his name. I knew that his creepy friends who kept coming to our house were not his friends, but his followers. I had heard that after a failed murder attempt, he had died. Theories were, though, that he wasn't human enough to die, and that only a shell of his body and soul were left. At that point in my life I could reason it out, and that rumor was a load of crap. I had been born about a day after my father had supposedly lost his power, but all through my childhood he was there, human as was possible for a man like him.

My father was obsessed with creating Horcruxes, to put it plain and simple. He would go on and on about it, debating what to use, running ideas by me. But each time I would merely shrug and glare at him, making my sentiments on the matter known. It wasn't as though he cared. He would merely return my searing gaze and go back to his affairs, next plotting which person he would murder to split his soul yet again. It was only when I saw him in the process of creating such a device that I completely lost it.

I was fourteen. I had come down the wide, rickety staircase when I saw it. My father was standing there, wand in hand, his creepy snake at his side, towering over an old, fragile-looking muggle. The muggle wasn't just scared, he was petrified, eyes wide, trembling with fear. "Father!" I screamed. "What the hell are you doing?" He payed me no heed, and addressed the muggle instead.

"This won't hurt a bit," he whispered in the high, rasping voice that would send a chill up the spine of the bravest of wizards. I could see he was holding a locket with a strange inscription on it.

"P-please," the muggle stammered. My father seized the man by collar, and pointed his wand at the man.

"Father, damn it, what are you doing?" I ran forward and gripped my father firmly around the neck, and yanked him back from his victim. He whirled around, furious, and blasted me backward in a flash of blue light. In a shower of plaster, I crashed through the thin wall behind me. He turned his attention back to the man, believing me incapacitated. My head aching, I stumbled to my feet. Whipping out my own wand I hit him with a curse square between his shoulder blades. He swirled around, his face contorted in pain and fury.

"Get out!" he bellowed.

"Let go of the muggle first!" I sent a curse at him again, but he blocked it.

In a split second he turned to the muggle and, speaking words I'd never heard before, killed him. But it wasn't an ordinary murder, I had seen plenty of those. The flash of green light, the petrified look on the victim's face, as if they'd been killed by fear. But here, here there was no flash, and while with normal killing there was no pain, but now the muggle was screaming. Screaming so high, long, and loud, that I was sure his lungs would give out. The locket in my father's hand was glowing, rising into the air. I was rooted to the spot, my jaw clenched in horror.

This was a Horcrux in creation. I knew that from the moment it began. "What do you say now, damn girl? I am immortal!" he roared. I gasped, the muggle's flesh had begun to melt off his face. Taking pleasure in my expression, he turned again to the muggle. His skin was falling off in chunks, collecting in a disgusting pile on the floor, before traveling upward and into the locket. My mouth opened and closed several times as I tried to find the words to speak. "Yes, yes! Nearly finished!" my father grinned, eyes on the necklace that had now consumed every inch of the man's body, leaving nothing.

"You sick, twisted jackass! How the hell could you do that to an innocent, defenseless muggle?" I screamed.

"What do you care about it, bitch? I thought I raised you better than that!" he shouted, advancing towards me.

"Better than what? I have tried I to live with you! I mean, you're my father God damn it! I wanted to make this work! But you expect me to sit here while you murder and torture people? You don't want me for a daughter! You want me for someone to do the dirty work when you don't feel like it!"

"Be thankful! Without me you wouldn't be alive!"

"I'm beginning to wish I wasn't!" Tears rolled down my cheeks as I fought for breath.

My father seized me by the throat and pointed his wand at me. "You weren't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to have a heart. You will do as I say," he spat, his voice a low, grisly whisper.

"Death first!" I screamed, then, drawing my wand, "You can die too for all I care!" Flames shot from my wand, enveloping the room in a crimson blaze. My father turned his attention from me. He attempted to douse the flames, but I was spewing them just as fast.

He turned, hurling a killing curse after me. I ducked and bolted for the door, putting out the flames that had leapt up to my robes. Throwing open the thick, oaken doors, I sprinted into the night, across the lawn and into the forest. I stopped, looking back at the house, now engulfed in the fiery inferno. Now that house was hell in the most literal sense of the word. The heat seared my tear stained cheeks, even from where I stood. I could see my father's silhouette emerging from the smoldering wreckage. Lights were starting to come up from the town, and my father stood out on the front lawn. "Hope you're happy, bitch!" he screamed. "You're screwed now! You've got nowhere to go and no one will take a freak like you! Damn...you...Ebony!" and with that, he disapparated.

It's true, he was swearing at me, but something about it made me feel warm. It was the first time he had used my actual name in five years.

The lantern lights of the people were drawing nearer, and not wishing to be discovered, I sunk into the forest silently, then turned and ran. I didn't know where I was running to, but it just felt good to get away. In my world, hell was a place called "home," and it felt like I was being saved. After a while, I grew tired. I sat down and leaned against a tree, trying to figure out what to do.

That is why I am walking to Godric's Hollow. I'm going to find the Potter boy. And I'm going to help him kill my father. Maybe I'll get to do it myself.