Hurt

Lustration

I hadn’t planned on continuing this, but the suggestion of Daintress woke up this character. She, her first name is Justine, by the way, demanded to be heard. These are two seriously disturbed characters, and I in no way forgive or excuse Sev’s actions based on McAdams’s motives. As always, none of tis tis truly mine, and ambiguity is the end of all answers.

Lustration: \\Lus*tra\"tion\\, n. [L. lustratio: cf. F. lustration.] 1. The act of lustrating or purifying.

2. (Antiq.) A sacrifice, or ceremony, by which cities, fields, armies, or people, defiled by crimes, pestilence, or other cause of uncleanness, were purified.

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The man sitting in front of me is a broken husk, hollowed by the abscess where his heart once resided. A figure that had probably always been lean is now skeletal, bones wrapped loosely in a thin layer of flesh. The thinning strands of his greasy hair, grey at the temples, barely frame the gargoyle mask of marble and shadow his face is set in.

This man has chosen his world to end in icor tor there is nothing left in him to burn.

The act itself is no great torture; I’ve had much worse forced upon me, and I do this by choice. Though he is far from attractive, I don’t find him as repulsive as most do. The greater part of Gryffindor would recoil in horror if they knew- fools all, for House loyalties mean naught in a world where family ties are severed with nothing more than the word of a madman or two. They pretend that all this is not self-destruction, and drown themselves in points, grades, gossip, quidditch. Sacrificial lamb that I am, I know this lesson well. Dumbledore preaches it often enough.

Touching him here is not as bad as I thought it would be, either. He is still just a man, no different from all the rest in this respect. This position signifies an imbalance of power older than civilization itself, but curiously, I feel neither inferior nor controlled. If anything, the physical necessity of my presence in his communion with the dead grants me a hold over him; this is a ritual which he cannot refuse, a cleansing he is unable to deny.

His voice tells the most change. Once, or so I’m told, he wielded it with barely checked power, a dark, rich, slithering weapon almost an entity unto itself. It is now dead; flat and rasping, still able to wound, but finding no pleasure in the action. Black ice resides where before flames blazed, and a deceptively placid surface hides pain in plain sight.

I’ve seen the way he looks at me, though, during class or dinner, that infinitesimal moment in which he sees something, someone through me. His thumb draws across his palm to caress the silver ring on his left hand, and in that half-breath of time, he rejoins humanity.

I want to see that in him again.

I feel him draw closer to completion, feel the flesh beneath my hands and mouth tremble and clench in a pattern that is far too familiar to me. He stares past me, to one long-buried; what he sees there melts the cold glazing his eyes, and all that was dead in him breathes for one short eternity. With one final shudder, he is finished. I see the mask slide back down even before I am done swallowing. He cleans himself and straightens his robes, then dismisses me with barely a glance.

He offers nothing in return for my services but that tiny spark, proof of the soul he tries to bury, and I am content.

For though it is but a pale reflection of what will be, I know now how he’ll look when I kill him.

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Ah- the conceit of author’s notes that are almost as long as the fic itself. I hope, kind reader, that though you probably didn’t enjoy this fic, it had some impact, good or ill. And Daintress, if you are the only one to read this, thanks for letting this character out; I shudder to think what she’d cook up in my head otherwise.