in noctem lumen


God. My God, why hast thou forsaken me…?

He stared sightlessly across the bleak Hogwarts landscape, mind and heart pleading for an answer to a question he’d asked from the moment he could first form thoughts: why he had been born to—why he lived—a life that seemed no more than an endless carving away of his soul, regardless of his volition, indifferent to his penitence.

And now murder. Of neither stranger nor enemy, but of one he’d considered a trusted friend. And why? For what? Why adhere to ‘good’—to anything—when it only meant the agonisingly slow withering of his being?

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A flutter caught his eye, drawing his attention upwards to the Astronomy Tower. She was wrapped in something white, softly luminous in the moonlight and shifting slightly in the stronger winds. The hair, clouding behind her, was unmistakable. Blown back, it revealed her face, more sharply defined than that of the little girl with permanently upraised hand. More sad, more pensive, more lost than that over-eager child. More determined.

More beautiful.

Less innocent.

His eyes closed in pain. They opened in resigned determination. And with a final sigh to a god that might not even exist:

Thy will be done.

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AN: Inspired by the HBP deleted scene, 'in noctem', which immediately brought to my mind the initial quotation.