In the Pensieve's Keep

Chapter One: Dark Desire

He pushed his horse into a full gallop, desperate to put as many miles as possible between himself and home. Severus sighed bitterly, twisting his hands in the reins. Home was where everything was wrong. He felt guilty for running off on one hand, but what was he supposed to do? The bastard had turned on him again. His mother was huddled on the floor with the terrified house elves flocking to aid her. His father had followed him out to the stable, but was too drunk and too stupid to saddle his own mount. With any luck he was already passed out on the barn floor.
Go back, you coward, the voices hissed in his mind. Go back and face him like a man. Protect your mother. But his father was a larger man by far and had often proved his ability to thoroughly beat the scrawny fifteen year old. He wanted to weep; to scream. Anything to release the agony mirrored in the scars that marred his arms and thighs. Instead he just rode harder.
"Come on, Des," he urged his horse forward. Brambles and trees and fallen logs tore by at a miserable speed, but he cared for none of it. Instead he concentrated on the movements of the fine beast he rode. The horse was the only good thing Severus could remember ever getting from his father. Dark Desire, or Des for short, had been his Christmas present three years ago. His father always tried to make up for what he lacked in parenting with extravagant indulgences. She had been a fine race horse before she'd developed a nasty temper and habit of biting. Severus had related to the jet mare, though and she was docile and tame under his direction. Maybe it was the shared history of being kicked around and put on show. In a way, Dark Desire was just another way for his father to remind him of his inferiority. His father had four horses himself, all of them flashy and exotic stallions with excellent temperaments. Severus didn't care, though. He thought his horse was magnificent.
It had been, in fact, the only thing that made the thought of the summer holiday bearable. He had managed to come up with excuses to stay at school over Christmas most years, but during summer there was no where to go but home. Two weeks had passed without event, but it had given Severus no comfort. Rather, it made him constantly nervous, waiting for the moment that would bring it all crashing down in an implosion of blood and broken glass. There was always some stupid little thing that angered his father beyond reason or reconciliation. He struggled to remember what it had been this time. Dinner. That had to have been it. He didn't know exactly what it was, for he was not permitted to eat with his father. Something about, "That disgrace ruins my appetite." All Severus knew was that he had come downstairs to the sound of blows landing and dishes breaking. He had wanted to intervene, but had just stood frozen with fear, watching the assault. Although it had felt like a small eternity had passed, Severus now doubted it had been much more than a minute before his father had spotted him in the doorway and dropped his pleading mother.
His father had come at him with a terrifying venom in his eyes. Something told Severus that if the man was given the chance to catch him, he would not live to see the morning. He fled. Four long years of torture at the hand of the Marauders had granted him speed if nothing else. He had Des bridled and was cinching the girth before his father even reached the barn. He wished he could risk stunning his father, but an expulsion would send him right back here in disgrace. The Marauders seemed like his best mates next to his father. So he had rode on, looking back only once to see his father sway drunkenly under the weight of the saddle he had seized.
Darkness was closing in around Severus as the last golden bands of sunlight faded from the West. He knew he shouldn't have taken his horse out so late. He decided to take her a bit farther to where the path split to a more direct route back to the stable. From there, he thought, he could walk her back. Distracted by the planning, his reverie and the dawning night, Severus noticed the fallen tree a moment to late for a proper reaction. He should have tried to stop Des. Had he had a moment to think, he would have realized that the mammoth log was settled in a rut on a path already sloping uphill. However, he was flying by instinct now. Before any reason played through his mind, the mediocre rider had edged into an ill timed jump seat. Horse and rider weren't going to jump clear, he realized as they leapt right at the obstacle. In his last moment of clear thought, he yanked his feet free of the stirrups, preparing for whatever came next.
His sense of the accident would never quite be clear. He heard a sickening crunch. He had sailed backwards off his horse. Rolled across the sharp litter of the forest floor. Cracked his head on something hard. Darkness. He awoke to the taste of blood and earth ripe in his mouth. As he spat, he heard most horrible sound of his life; a wretched, pained keening.
"Des?" he trembled. "Des!" His voice howled as his memory reassembled itself. He pulled himself back up the hill on an ankle shooting with hot agony.
The sight of the broken beast was one that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. Des's front legs were undoubtedly crushed, pinned between her own weight and the log she had landed on. Her hind legs pawed frenzied and hopeless at the earth below them. Severus looked at her once and vomited. Fear and horror flooded him. He had no idea what to do and all the while his beloved horse as raising her head and bellowing in anguish. What could he do? What could he do? His mind raced. He could try to hobble back home on his bad ankle and lead them back to her in his own ill repair. But who would he lead back? His father wouldn't help him, and his mother wouldn't dare defy his father. The same went for the house elves. His little sister? Even more helpless.
Severus felt his mind reel. What did they do for horses with broken legs? Maybe he could go home, make a potion . . . But each theory lead him to the same sickening fact; any plan of action ended with him leaving Dark Desire all alone in agony. Every moment he left her would prolong her pain with no real hope of relief. Ever.
He felt in the front pocket of his robe. By some small miracle his wand remained unbroken. He fingered it, but no. No. He would be expelled, no question. There was no possible way to justify it. Unless . . . hadn't the book said that such profoundly dark magic was too difficult to trace and slipped by Ministry officials because it didn't draw from the same sources of regular magic? No! The voices railed again. That's not an option. But it was the only option. He looked into Des's eyes and they were wild with pain. No being should know such pain, he told himself. I have to end her suffering. He told himself these things until he believed them. He raised his wand with a calm and steady hand and said the words.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A flash of green and Des never moved again. Severus touched the still warm flesh tentatively at first and then buried his face her mane. He wept, cried for the poor horse, the wasted beauty. More than anything, he cried for the feel of the curse. The feel that all the darkness and torment within him had compounded and focused as sheer energy. He felt lightened of a bit of it, a coursing relief like the intentional spilling of his blood. But this was relief from spilling life from another. He buried the emotions under self-loathing and guilt, but found he could not hide the thrill of slaughter.