A Dance Through Thyme (Harry Potter)

Schließlich Part 1

 Chapter 52: Schließlich

At last

PART 1

The night was wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe… and he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and righteousness in him that he always knew on these occasions…not anger… that was for weaker souls than he…but triumph, yes… he had waited for this, he had hoped for it…

 

“Nice costume, Mister!”

 

He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the dark cloud his painted face: then the child turned and ran away… beneath the robe he fingered he handle of his wand… one simple movement and the child would never reach his mother… but unnecessary, quite unnecessary…

 

And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, though they did not know it yet… and he made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, and stared over it…

 

They had not drawn the curtains, he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall, black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of coloured smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in the blue pyjamas. The child was laughing and trying the catch the smoke, to grab it in his small fist…

 

A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear, her long, dark red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning…

 

The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.

 

There was nothing.

The house was dark, and it looked as though it had not been lived in for several days.

Was it a hallucination?

The family was there; the boy was there. He needed to be destroyed. His weakness needed to be eliminated.

He had felt… something. An indefinable something. Bellatrix assured him that the Cup was safe, and Regulus had made it nigh impossible for the Locket to be breached. Only Dumbledore knew of his connection to Morfinn and Marvolo, so the ring would have to be safe. Inwardly, Voldemort cursed his mother’s sentimentality in naming him for Marvolo.

It made it all the more difficult to be inconspicuous.

He looked around. The children were gone.

Only a breeze filled the void.

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It first started out as a harmless prickle to his left forearm, however the burn soon began to spread.