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“Avada Kedavra!”
“Expelliarmus!”
I know it even before the fatal words leave my lips. I know that something has gone wrong, that the boy’s words were more than bluff and bravado, that I have stumbled and have fallen “ somehow “ one step behind him. I feel the Elder Wand abandon my grasp like a fleeing bird, and I see the curse rebounding, returning to my heart, just as it did sixteen years ago “ a sickening green color, a rotten jade, contemptuous, nauseating, like something dead. I feel it strike me in the chest.
I am aware of myself as I die.
As I die...
There is no pain, at first. I do not know whether I expected there to be, but it was never the pain of death that repulsed me. Darkness enshrouds me as all of the images of the Great Hall “ the rapt and frozen crowd, the blinding light of sunrise, the little boy standing in his absurd, undeserved triumph “ vanish with an unearthly suddenness. I feel as though a cold and foreign ocean has sent a wave to swallow me up and carry me to its lightless depths.
And now the pain seizes me. I am torn apart, my flesh rent and shredded as though by teeth; I am struggling, suffering, unable to breathe. Now the dark ocean is tossing, crushing, suffocating me. I can see only a dark haze, a swarm of inchoate matter, before the pain forces me to close my eyes. The solid world itself has cast me out, destroyed and banished me, and I cannot do what all living things, however meek, can do “ I cannot draw a breath.
And yet I still exist. I force myself to concentrate, to resist whatever is threatening to strangle me. I have escaped death before. I shall do it again. Perhaps the boy was mistaken, and there is one Horcrux remaining…Perhaps I am still something faintly beyond mortal…Perhaps I can drag myself back into the world of the living, as I did before…
I force whatever is left of my eyes to open. Everything around me remains nebulous, like the interior of a dark cloud. I struggle to raise a hand in front of my face, to see whether I still possess a material body. What I see nauseates me. Gone are my long, slender, pale fingers. My hand is shrunken to the size of a child’s, twisted and disfigured, the skin raw and abraded as though some fanged beast has mangled it. The rest of my body must be in the same crippled state.
Now the dark engulfing mist is beginning slowly to clear. I can see a smooth surface “ a wall “ taking shape in the murkiness before me. I recognize it, somehow “ the off-white peeling paper, scorched where I burned it once in my fury; the rows of neatly-aligned tally-marks, each representing one of the endless summer days I spent imprisoned in that Muggle cesspit, wanting only to return to school, where I could cultivate my power, where people respected me. But I cannot be there again; I left that hated place behind, so many years ago…
To my left the wall meets another, forming a corner. I manage to lift my head weakly from the surface below me “ now I recognize it as a dusty wooden floor “ and strive to see the rest of the room. Like a spark, the bitter realization of where I am gives me the strength not to collapse again. It is as I suspected: Four bare walls and a ceiling like the lid of a coffin; a simple bed in the corner; a simpler desk; an old chest of drawers. A familiar cold and dank atmosphere pervades the room; I sense the faint smell of mold. This is a place for things “ and people “ that no one wants.
Even while I lived here it was like a sepulcher.
I vaguely wonder why I have been returned here. There was a time when I used to contemplate what happens to a soul after death. Later I pushed the question from my mind “ it was useless, as I was never going to die. I command myself to focus, to find a way to escape, to live, but my strength is gone and I collapse again, seized with pain.
I can see the too-familiar window with its shroud-white curtains set into the wall above me. The glass is dark, as though a starless night lurks outside. A distant memory returns to me as I lie on the cold floor and summon the strength to try to move again…
It is past bedtime but I do not want to sleep. I never want to sleep and no one can tell me to “ they have learned by now to stop trying. They cannot understand my resistance to unconsciousness; it does not disturb them that the myths call Sleep the brother of Death. They cannot understand that I despise with all my heart the thought of not existing, of becoming one more mote of dust that drifts between the cold stars of the universe, of being unrecognized, unacknowledged, unknown to anyone. The other children try to tell me of the pleasant dreams I will have if only I will go to sleep. My dreams are always the same though, never happy and never clear “ something about a pair of dark impassive eyes, and a feeling of horrible emptiness...
I stay awake instead and stare out the dust-occluded window. Above the street strewn with earthly debris I can see the ice-white, distant stars. I keep my door closed to shut out the murmurs of the other children in their rooms down the hall as they make wishes on those stars. Such babyish prattle: Requests for pretty dolls in lace-trimmed dresses, colorful storybooks about faraway places, model airplanes that really fly. Interspersed are saccharine pleas for mothers and fathers, always idealized, like queens and kings fated one day to reclaim their long-lost children…
If I had ever made a wish, it would have been for the power to break the stars like glass lanterns, to stifle them out, to show them that I matter, that I am not worthless, that I do not have to plead for anything…
A creaking sound interrupts my reflections. A door is opening behind me; there is a macabre sound in it, as though someone is prying open a grave. I muster all of my remaining strength and turn to face the intruders. A row of human figures stands before me, silent as the audience at a funeral, but they have not come here to mourn.
At the left is a young couple. The man’s hair is dark and disorderly; the woman’s red tresses fall over her shoulders. I recognize them. How backward this is: Before I murdered them, terror had turned their living faces ghostly pale; now they are dead, and yet there is color in their cheeks. They are happy “ could there be such things as happy ghosts? “ relieved, proud of their son who turned the world on its head and defeated me.
Beside the couple stand other figures, victims of me and of my servants: A werewolf holding tightly to the hand of his cherry-haired wife; a smiling, redheaded youth; a dark-haired animagus, his hand upon the shoulder of a younger brother; a teenage boy whose now-victorious eyes I once saw staring lifelessly into the sky above a graveyard.
From the far right the traitor gloats at me. Dark blood still stains his face and I can see the gashes that the fangs have left on his neck, and yet he is smiling, and his eyes glow with more triumph “ dare I admit it? “ than mine have even in my highest acmes of glory. He darts a glance at the redheaded woman, and she smiles at him.
How I yearn to curse them all, to punish them for seeing me in this wretched state, and for smiling in death…but I have no power. Now my curses are only words that reverberate in my mind.
The row of figures vanishes, and now a throng of nameless ghosts takes its place, drifting into the room in single file. Each face, distorted by contempt, mirrors the one before it. I can recognize some of them, but most are strangers, witches and wizards and Muggles who strayed into my path and impeded my rise to power. This one is a child “ he steps closer to me, repulsed but curious. In life he might have worn the same expression while examining a small decaying animal. His father grasps his ghostly hand and draws him protectively away.
The host of phantoms leave me, their vengeance won; they are dead, but must feel triumphant that they have not been reduced to what I am.
Still more figures take shape in the dark and still-lingering fog. This crowd is different: They wear black robes that cling to their skeletal forms like winding-sheets; the flesh of their faces is beginning to rot away; their eyes are shadowed vacancies. Some of them have wounds from which living blood no longer flows. Their appearance sickens me, and yet I feel, at last, an intimation of relief. I recognize Wormtail, Dolohov, Gibbon, Rosier, Wilkes, Quirrell. These are my allies, my own Death Eaters, my fallen soldiers who have awaited their commander in Hell…
But none of them move toward me.
Perhaps they do not recognize me, or perhaps their minds have decayed with their bodies. I am reminded of the legends of the shades in the Grecian Underworld, that senselessly and mechanically drift out their eternities, no longer conscious, all of their memories left behind in the stream of Lethe. But the eyes that consider me now are not empty of understanding. There is something in them. I peer closer, and I see that the Death Eaters too are looking at me with expressions of disgust, rendering their gaunt faces even more hideous. Anger seizes me and I try to speak to them, to call curses on them, to condemn their betrayal of me “ but I have no voice. My dead throat can produce only gasping, strangled sounds that repulse them even further. I see Wormtail clutch his hand “ no longer silver “ and turn away.
At last one of them maneuvers past the others and steps forward, and my relief returns. She will not forsake me; she has always been loyal to me, the first to offer help even when I have not needed it. She extends a ghostly hand, and though her moldering form repels me I welcome it; she will find a way to let me escape this crypt. But now she pauses, stares at me, withdraws the offered hand; confusion and disgust take turns contorting her sunken face. I am not what she expected to see. I gasp and try to speak again, but Bellatrix only cringes away and rejoins the other shadows “ dead and contemptible though they are, she thinks them less contemptible than me.
A moment later the corpselike forms dissolve away, and I am left alone.
The pain continues, gripping my entire enfeebled body. I concentrate on my anger, on my hatred for all of them who left me. If I keep that flame of hate alive, like an ember, if I make it the surrogate of my heart that no longer beats, it will mean I continue to exist, even in this wretched form. But it is becoming harder to concentrate…and harder to breathe…and there is finally nothing that I can do…I am going to vanish away…
…I am dead and there is no more hope…
But now a final shadow approaches -- a desolate young woman, her footfalls silent, her bloodless face concealed beneath a paler burial shroud. Something about her is different. As she draws nearer I can see her tear-galled cheeks, her lonely eyes framed by a halo of unkempt hair. Her thin lips tremble and she stares at me, and I see an unrecognizable expression in her eyes “ one that no one who has looked at me has ever worn.
Two cold but eager arms reach out to enfold me. A sigh of joy, a sob of guilt, of sorrow, of pity. A pale cheek against mine; a face so familiar, but one that I have not glimpsed in more than a lifetime. Soft whispered apologies; gentle absolutions. And her eyes, her dark hollowed eyes -- so somber but so sweet -- in which the still-moist tears are glittering like stars…
My mother wraps me in her arms, and together we join the chorus of the dead.