Pure

Past and Future

It was just like last time, as if nothing had changed. The inky blackness around me felt all consuming, except that Fawkes was there to light and lead the way. I felt safe, but the depth of darkness around me could have destroyed me without Fawkes taking me through it.

I tried to make sense of everything. Dumbledore said that my heart could never change what was to come. How then, had he been so sure that this plan would work before? Dumbledore was smart. He would have known... should have seen this coming. When did he learn that this was all for nothing?

Why did he put me through this?

Fantastical sprinkles of light glowed around me now like stars, and I saw a gray mist. Everything seemed the same when Fawkes pulled me closer to it... was it a pensieve? Or was this all my imagination? It came from nowhere and I was not bound to anything. My spirit or my body or both fell into the voided mist.

Fawkes and I sifted into a live portrait of mine and Riddle's Room of Requirement. It wasn't calm like the licking flames in the fireplace suggested.

Riddle laughed. Clive grunted, almost a scream when Riddle shot another curse his way.

"Come on Weasley! Show me all that bravery. Show me your rage. Let me see you as something else from the weak and pathetic creature you are proving to be."

An evil glint shone in Riddle's eyes. Red fire coming over him. Cool, calm, collected rage.

It took me for a pause. I hadn't seen this version of Riddle for a long time. It was difficult to even remember that he had this inside of him, simmering to come to the top. I wanted to look away, but my face wouldn't turn, and my eyes wouldn't shut.

"Are you blind Riddle!?" Clive had failed to countercurse Riddle's last spell, so now he was almost laying on the ground, waiting for the final blow from Riddle, who stood over him. Riddle pulled down his wand to see Clive.

"Wh-What?" Riddle half laughed in surprise.

"You're right, okay? I'm weaker than you. I don't know why I'm here if you want bravery. But I do know one thing that you don't."

Oh Clive, you were brave. Your family is of the bravest I've had the pleasure to know. You are a Gryffindor.

"And that is?" Riddle asked testily twisting his wand in his right hand.

"That you have a weakness. Two actually," Clive panted. Riddle sneered. "You are so full of hate that it blinds you. You clearly aren't as clever as you seem when I see bravery in front of me and you don't, or maybe you can't because you don't know what it is yourself."

"What do you mean by that Weasley, and I would answer before your eyes are ripped out by this wand!" Riddle gripped Clive's shirt and pulled him forward, wand cutting off a vein in Clive's neck. Clive kept on.

"Second... Just because you cast some sort of hearing loss charm on me the other night didn't mean I didn't see you."

Riddle stiffened. Clive was the one smiling now.

"Yes, I saw you while she was asleep. How sweet of you to sit with her like that. I saw you talking too. I didn't know what you said, thanks to you, but it must have been full of dark confessions," Clive held out the 's' a little too long.

What?

"Fawkes," I croaked, "Can you take me to that night? I want to know what he said to me."

Fawkes ignored me, which I took as a 'maybe some things are left better in the past' expression.

"Get out," Riddle said calmly. But I knew that he wasn't calm. His posture held a slight tensity that I knew meant he was the exact opposite of calm.