SnitchSeeker.com - Remember Me: A One-Shot

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Remember: A one shot

She walked slowly down the hallway, her thoughts tailing in her midst like heavy drops of dew on the path she wore on the cold stone floor. One hand caressed her full belly. The other, the one on which she wore her wedding ring, and his, was limp by her side. Hear tears had long since hardened behind her cold grey eyes, and her stance was always proud these days. Her strength was not measured in the frail frame she embodied, nor in her erect spine, but in her mind. Her heart had none of it. She felt that it had long since become the echo of her home, with its high walls and tapestries fading with age. Stone. Ice, For the longest time, no fire had come to thaw her out.

The wan sun tried valiantly to poke its way through the heavy brocade curtains along the hallway, but she did not let it caress her pale, cold skin. Instead, she let her feet take her to the back door, and out into the garden, where the clouds were quickly obscuring the sky. They gathered like angry eyebrows against disfavour.

Oh, how she had failed! She gasped as she felt tears, real tears, start to burn paths down her cheeks. She remembered it all so well, the cruel passing of years...

He had been beautiful once, with eyes that shone with not only intelligence, but love. Yes. At one point, there had been love. That particular memory had almost escaped her forever. There had been love. There had been passion, and little caresses and nonsensical promises, and soft words. There had been linked fingers and white roses by her bed every morning he had had to leave early. There had been candles and dinners and white linen bedsheets. And there had been the scent of him, an icy fragrance.

Then his eyes had turned to ice, and the love was replaced with obsession. It beget fear. His passion had become a feverish fervour, and the little caresses had hardened into rough touches. The soft words had monstrosed into loud yells. His fingers had become ghost-like memories where her own would reach for them. The candles had blown out, the white linen bedsheets became cold with waiting, and the roses...the roses were simply gone.

And then there had been the child. Her son. In this, was her failure. She had loved a man, once. She would have given everything for her son to be like him. But her wishes had been dealt with a cruel, ironic hand. Her son did indeed become just like him, like the man she had loved. But the man she had loved was someone who had changed. She watched as her child grew up, bore his father's name with pride and an unseemly arrogance. She listened as his words were of nothing, and his head became filled with nonsense. Her heart beat her near to death when he was called upon to take a task too big for him. Although she did not think she could love him, the tears that had fallen as she begged another to take her son's life in his hands disproved the theory.

But none of it helped. She had not seen him in so long. He had gone. She did not blame him.

Her feet took her to a lone oak tree that grew in the very center of the vast garden. She set herself carefully against it, one hand on the small of her back. She wondered what had become of her son, the son of a man she had once loved. She touched her belly again, and took a deep breath. She could wait. But she feared so much that it would happen all over again...

She closed her eyes, and drew out a small dagger from the folds of her cloak...

That night

A messenger visited him. He was sitting with his wrists and ankles shackled to the stone wall behind him. He wouldn't have tried to escape, even if he knew he could. he dreaded facing that wrath, those eyes. Yes, he was afeared of his own death, which would be swift in following him out of this place.

He looked up as the man entered. He was wearing a black Muggle suit, and his white-gloved hands held a black top hat between them. He looked closely; for a moment, he thought...

'You look so much like me,' he said quietly. His voice was devoid of emotion, which he had sacrificed so long ago. The young man twitched slightly, but said nothing. Rumours had reached him, of course, but he had not known they were true. Now, he was sure. He saw, behind the young man, a tall, young woman, with brown curls and a slightly bulging belly. She wore black, and her eyes were a deep brown, but there was no warmth in them as they stared down at the man in the forgotten cell.

'I had never thought...' he tried again, his voice raspy with unuse, but it petered awway under the fury of the young man's gaze.

'Hello, Father,' the young man said. He did not introduce the woman at his side; he had no need to. His grey eyes were cold as he gazed down at the wasting man before him. 'I have come to impart some news. Narcissa is dead.'

With this rather abrupt statement, he turned to go, his wife's hand in his. He paused, his face turned away. 'As is your daughter.'