(no subject)
Title: A Mistake
Author: Crimson
Rating: PG-13
Words: 676
Summary: Like His Father He Made
Blackness encompassed him. The darkness affected him. The faint light of candles held such an eerie grace that at first he thought he was dreaming but no, such was not his fate. Standing in front of him stood a woman of nightmarish features, with vacant eyes. A smile leaked insanity. She held out her hand. At that moment he thought her beautiful. She offered him a choice.
A choice he was afraid to make.
Now what stood before him was the monster. Pale like his lady, eyes blistering red and his smile somewhat mocking, somewhat deadly in the sharp arc of lips. The boy spoke one shrill word. He appealed for help because he hated this monster’s gaze.
“Father!”
It was Theodore’s attempt to forestall the inevitable. His father remained silent, hiding in the background where other cloaked bodies dwelled. The weakest of whimpers coming from his father told Theodore that his choice wasn’t really his choice at all.
Theodore already felt the soreness of his soon to be tender arm. He felt like a drifting ghost, separate from his own soul. If he was being honest with himself Theodore had to admit he feared. His clever mind couldn’t quite reach alternative possibilities to escape.
What was about to happen happened. The woman laughed girlish bells, alight with such joy. Theodore no longer thought her kind. She was mad! Evil! Even the monster’s smile could not compare to the horrible laughter coming from her mouth.
His father’s sins, his father’s mistakes all hemorrhaged into this. He had no choice but to step forward, the monster’s wand raised slightly to meet his almost immediately damaged arm.
If Theodore had any luck about him, he would break and break fast.
Voldemort.
The name sounded off in the boy’s head. Once he thought himself immune to the undercurrents of terror the title expressed. His father protected him from the whispers that shifted and glided all across the magical world. His father understood layers and layers of one lie after another and well Theodore and his father knew lies were easily enough broken.
Theodore had thought himself safe. How wrong was he!
He tried to tell himself it wouldn’t be so bad. He’d finally belong to a collection of people that bloody Sorting Hat said he belonged with.
His lies to himself held but only for the moment.
His father loved him in a sick but sympathetic way. Theodore had to believe that. His father groomed him the only way a dark wizard of his position knew how. Watched Theodore from afar and dared not give touch. Touching brought caring and if his father cared now, Theodore would happily take the woman’s hand and jump alongside her into rough, zany black waters.
The boy would rather not know. Would rather not carry the weakness his father held. Would rather believe his father the hero.
Just this once his father … his father would save him.
His father. Failed.
Theodore stared in disbelief as pieces of his skin stretched and rearranged to form the blackest of all marks and there, before his eyes, it grew. The pain that followed meant nothing. He was a ghost traveling to where few things fingered him, where few things kept him awake.
Like his father before him, he made a mistake.
He looked up.
The woman’s features blurred. The dullness of her hair twisted to a halo of wild thickness and her eyes, once uninteresting spheres now alive with absolute knowledge. He sucked in a breath. Oh, yes! His mistake cut into him with aggressive intent.
A couple of inches from him lingered Harry Potter’s favorite and she was laughing - laughing at him. The woman was no woman but a girl. Hermione!
Hermione the good … Hermione the laughing lunatic … Hermione laughing until his mark bled.
Theodore Nott prayed to break. Unfortunately for him his clever mind botched his will to succeed. The last thing he heard before the blackness took him was her voice.
“I had so wanted to hear him scream.”