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The cold weight of the knife in my hand repulses me. The blood splatters on my fingers are warm, warmer than my skin. I always imagined myself akin to hellfire in my fits of rage, in those moments where I am blinded red and bile floods my throat like venom. I imagine my ribs blackened by the scorch marks of my heart’s temper.
But no. I am cold, and the bloodied knife is cold. I can no longer tell where my hand begins and where the knife ends. Perhaps I have always carried knives in my hands and this was always going to happen.
I should never have listened to his sweet, honeyed words. His promises that he was mine. Was he not the only man who could lie to my face without flinching? I should have known.
I breathe harshly through my nose and turn on my heel, away from the cooling corpse of my… paramour. I wish I felt even an ounce of triumph, but all I am is cold and empty.
“My lord?”
The voice stops me in my tracks and I blink through the semi-darkness of my bedroom.
Severus Snape watches me with a deep frown, and I can hear the way his heart skitters through a few beats when he notices the knife in my hand. My hand on the knife.
The blood.
My faithful servant is too clever and observant for me to attempt to hide what I’ve done. Not a moment later, his black eyes dart to the bed behind me. Even in the poor light, it’s easy to see the ample wetness covering the bedsheets. A veritable pool of blood — of our blood.
“My lord,” he repeats, and I can hear the shock and outrage and pain in his voice. It is as clear as a carillon pronouncing its judgement.
Oddly, I find myself urged to explain my actions. Severus, ever so faithful even when I thought him a traitor, deserves to know how deep the betrayal runs.
A personal betrayal, but a betrayal nonetheless.
“Your loyalty he did not possess,” I say, refusing to look at the result of my rage behind me. “His liaisons have come to light, and it was my prerogative to see him punished for his insolence.”
“His liaisons, my lord?” Severus shakes his head, and his unguarded eyes meet mine without fear. Something dawns on him, then, and he takes a step closer to me, heedless of the knife in my hand. My hand on the knife. “No, oh no, my lord. It was not Mr Potter who bewitched others to his side.”
“I saw him!” I snarl, my fists tightening and my shoulders raising. If I were a viper, surely I would be a rattlesnake — mouth full of venom and tail hissing in warning. “The emerald scarf I gave him, embroidered with…” Sharing such private details to my most faithful flusters me. Oh, how low I’ve fallen! “And he threw it aside, gave it to the Malfoy brat!”
“Draco?” Severus shakes his head again, and raises both hands in supplication. “Draco has been courting the Nott boy—”
“Speak not of the Nott boy to me!” Fire swims in my veins, and in my outburst I drop the bloodied knife to the ground. It hits the rug-covered floorboards with a dull thud, and I wish it had fallen on glass. The noise would have properly conveyed how shattered this mess has made me. “The Nott boy whose presence I’ve found in Harry’s study! Whose magic contaminates every surface of our rooms!”
“This is—” Severus stops before he can finish his thought, and inhales sharply. “It was her, my lord. She set it all up. I know she is your most loyal, my lord, but she is jealous of the rank you’ve given Narcissa. Ever since Narcissa has gained the popular vote in the Wizengamot.”
Ice rapidly quells the fire under my skin, but my hand is still wet and sticky from Harry’s blood. Our blood.
“Bella?” I whisper, hard-pressed to believe such folly. And yet…
Severus draws himself to his full height, and I can see his hand twitching. He would not arm himself against me, not here, but oh how he wishes to draw his wand. It pleases me greatly to see his restraint.
“Yes, my lord. I have questioned her more than once about her motives these past weeks, for her reasons to have the three boys together where you could…” He hesitates. “Where you could see them at inopportune times. Potter never betrayed you, my lord. Loyalty may be in my blood and on my skin, but Potter’s loyalty was deep in his heart and soul.”
Before I can begin to recount every event which has lead me down this forsaken path — one so painfully fertile with regret and shame and hopelessness and loneliness — a flash of green light illuminates the room. Severus, my most faithful, the cleverest wizard in my circle, my favourite — falls to the floor, next to the bloodied knife. I stare at him, at his still-open black eyes widened in pleading.
“No,” the word falls from my lips against my intentions, “no, Severus…”
“My lord!”
Bellatrix falls to her knees at my feet. Her own crazed grey eyes, electric stormclouds, beseech me.
“I had to, my lord! The Potter boy, he would have been our downfall! He bewitched you, my lord!”
“No,” I repeat, taking a step back.
Bellatrix continues her inane, convoluted explanations for her schemes. But I cannot follow, I cannot comprehend her words beyond the madness suffused in them. Everything comes together in my mind’s eye, and I see at last the vicious jealousy that drove Bellatrix and infected me. Like a wounded beast, I let her lead me to feast upon that which had wounded me. Her jealousy became mine as surely as my paranoia became hers. I stare at her now, kneeling next to Severus’s corpse, next to the bloodied knife.
My soul, made whole again by Harry’s tireless efforts and devotion, splinters. Grief and rage and regret sunder it as though it had never been whole to begin with. There is blood on my hands, and it is all Bellatrix’s fault. I raise my wand, and curse her without an ounce of remorse. I take her voice and her sight and her hearing and I blacken them. I make her black inside out, and I feel nothing.
Numb and cold, I finally turn back to face the gallows. The noose around my neck beckons me next to my lover, stiff and cold and laying upon the bloody altar of our love. For it was love, and it’s only with its absence that I can now name it so. Around Harry’s throat is the locket that once housed a part of my soul. Covered in our blood, it is only fitting that it be a harbour to me once more.
I ignore Bellatrix and now others staggering into the room — Narcissa and Lucius — and draw the ritual circle into the rug. Whether I use chalk or blood matters not, and I am loath to waste Harry’s precious blood. I do not weep.
Perhaps I have forgotten how, that part of me forever ashen from the first time I created a Horcrux.
I kneel inside the ritual circle, summon seven black candles, and light them with naught a thought. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. The air smells like ozone and blood. Both scents are so familiar that it almost feels like home. It almost eases that grievous wound in desperate need of lancing.
But, as the saying goes, home is where the heart is — and my heart lies dead by my hand.
“My lord, no!”
I hear Narcissa’s plea, but I pay her no heed. Lucius calls her back to his side, but she continues to throw supplications for me to step away from the ritual circle. But I cannot listen to her, I cannot look at her. Shame is a foreign companion, but currently it sits next to me as I extract the broken part of my soul. My regret over Harry’s death is nearly enough to ruin the ritual, but I am evermore determined to never die. I shall not again be undone as I nearly was by love, by this green-eyed monster that put the knife in my hand. That put my hand on the knife.
I exhale at last and feel nothing when I look down at my stained hands. The room is quiet but for someone’s soundless sobbing. I almost envy their tears. Almost. I blink and stand to my feet, ignoring the body on my bed.
“Your arm,” I demand of Lucius. He wordlessly extends his left arm to me. I press the tip of my wand on it, my lips curling at the hiss of pain that escapes Lucius’s own lips.
As we leave the room, I slip the locket around my neck and hide it under my robes. Magical Britain has known peace for a decade — but now they will be reminded of why the name Lord Voldemort strikes fear in the hearts of men.