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I saw it, and the temptation to touch it rushed through me, impossible to control.
Possessed.
By the craving to let my fingers run upon that cloth whose color was impossible to define, despite its silvery gleam.
“May I?”
My voice must have sounded tinged with greed, because James gazed at me with narrowed eyes, perplexed and unsure at the same time.
Nonetheless, he offered the cloak to me with delicacy. I couldn’t help but closing my eyes while I caressed this incredibly fluid object, yet gifted by its own consistency.
I laid it on my shoulders – I had to try it on – and not seeing my body, despite sensing it clearly, still shaken by the emotion, was simply inebriating.
Oh, it was really one of the three object I pursed so thoroughly in my youth.
Lily said something, but I didn’t even heard her.
“Could I borrow it?” I asked James.
“Since when you need a cloak to be invisible?” he said, half amused and half sceptic, and I wondered how could he be trivially amused in front of such tremendous piece of magic.
I smiled softly, and lied.
“Oh, I found it to be an extremely refined object. I’d like to study it, if you don’t mind.”
My tone was harsher than I meant, but he agreed, and that was what it mattered.
I tightened the grip around my wand.
I hadn’t even realised I’d grabbed it.
For how many years that invaluable treasure had been kept near me, without me knowing it… but finally, another Deathly Hallow had come in my possession.
I knew I shouldn’t be tempted, I knew I shouldn’t take it, but dominating Death…
I couldn’t even imagine what having a similar power could imply.
And so, I took that cloak away. I took the Cloak away. How naive was the young man in front of me… mistakenly certain that I was going to return it soon.
*
I couldn’t keep the tears from running upon my cheeks.
I recalled how sickened I’d felt accusing Severus Snape of selling Lily and James to Voldemort.
It was nothing compared to the disgust I was feeling toward myself.
I tried to restrain my thoughts, to contain them in small vials.
I tried to reject them with arguments that I dared defining rational, but before the fire of truth, objections were nothing but bellows.
The more I fought to disguise it, the more the truth, striking and indisputable, saturated my mind.
I clenched my fist on the stem of the red flower that Lily, the white daffodil, had sent me with her gratitude, I let the thorns piercing into my skin.
I enjoyed watching the blood leaking from my hand, but not even pain could shake me from the thought that my heart kept echoing.
May be, if they’d had the Cloak, Death wouldn’t have find them.
*
“Use it well.”
Use it well, unlike me.
I could have added it, but I didn’t have the courage.
Nurturing the certainty that I’d learnt the lesson was enough.
*
And now, hit by a deathly curse for wearing an ancient ring, I know I’ve never learnt the lesson at all.
At least, this time I’ll be responsible of my own death only.
{“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”}
May be, not only of my own.