Freefall

Freefall

All it took was half an hour. Thirty minutes. One thousand, eight hundred seconds. Which is no time at all, really.

My whole life had been leading up to that moment; that one day on which my path would be chosen, my destiny set, and my entire existence mapped out before me. My whole life, it seemed, was resting on one insignificant portion of time. Everything I was, am, and ever will be, decided in one fell swoop. It should have been a rush, a blind grasp for foothold during a freefall.

Of course, nothing's ever that simple; and with a choice like that one and a reputation like mine, there was no way any vengeful deity could let my heart travel light. Enter Potter.

Twisted love was what it was. The same kind I would hear about from Death Eaters' daughters who'd heard rumours about Bellatrix Lestrange; the same kind I would read about in the 'confessions' section of 'Teen Witch Weekly' when no one was around. The clichéd I-can't-believe-it's-not-love, as an issue once dubbed it: the kind where nothing's as it's supposed to be and instead of dying for the other you'd kill yourself so you never had to see him again.

With Potter, of all people.

Bloody gods.

And then, after hours and days and weeks and months of soul-searching and hard fucking, I was given only eighteen hundred measly seconds to pick either the broken boy chained against the cold stone wall or the silent host of dark-robed evildoers watching me with hard eyes.

It was hardly a choice, really.

I slowly picked up my wand and moved to Potter's side, the sinister gazes still following me, intrigued. I rested my palm against his cheek - how could he be burning up yet still manage to chill me? - and brushed my lips over his with a whispered reassurance that I'd save him; take him home and make sure the pain would end.

I hope the last thing he heard was not the curse but the litany of I love yous that burst out all around it.

He was mine to kill, I argued. You would have done it even more brutally if I had said no.

And the Lord smiled a menacing, Slytherin smile at me and beckoned me closer and I knelt before him, holding out my alabaster arm for his brand, but he just looked at me and then at my father, who was still standing, watching from the crowd.

The Lord muttered something about how one cannot live while the other survives and told me he would count to five before I followed Potter to the grave.

Before the darkness came, a wave of bitter relief crashed over me, and I wondered in my last moments whether I'd be watching from below as the hero danced among the angels.

I could have prayed, could have screamed, could have done anything to absolve me, but it was too late as blackness claimed my thoughts.

I would never be forgiven.

~fin~