InsaneJournal

Chilled Wine

It wasn't easy being on the run. He felt seventeen again, and not in a randy or energetic way, in the way of complete surrender to utter naïveté—and to loneliness. It wasn't as if he were living off of rats, which he supposed he could have bore fairly well. He wasn't on the verge of society—in fact this location was more high-society than he thought he'd ever been around for such a long period of time.

He was a fugitive of the law again. Oh joy. And he had just been forced to off the only human solace he could find in redeeming himself the first time. Oh why did he have to make that promise?

He knew why, it was that someone had faith in him—trust that was personal, and not militaristically based. His weakness for women who were in tears, especially those he secretly admired, had gotten him in trouble again. It was how his friendship with a redhead had started, which had made him damned as a student when left to the bullying wiles of one James Potter and his trio of hangers-on—yes, even Black was a pathetic hangers-on in the "glorious light" of the swaggering and "oh-so talented" boy, just as he recently had been as well, he supposed, but to Potter junior. He was now damned once more, and this time because a blonde's tears had gotten to him.

But who didn't have a bit of a weakness for Narcissa Malfoy? Bellatrix Black had a weakness for her baby sister, did she not?

He felt so alone, so so alone. He'd did precisely what he was asked. He took a man's life, and not just any man. He had taken the life of a man who had told him to take his life. The man who had accepted him into the side of the light with very few questions asked, as Severus had told, he had just "spilled all," run off at the mouth like one of Moaning Myrtle's flooding toilets.

He had never been popular, and had not had a personal friend since his fifth year as a Hogwarts student, and she was now dead, thanks to the half of the mad seer's prophecy he'd heard and relayed to the Dark Lord. But now it was worse than not having friends, it was having enemies who had never trusted him, distrust which he knew he had been forced to prove correct.

No one, he knew it, no one from the Order would still have trust in him. It was a part of the plan, of course, to fool Harry, but Harry's hate he had always known. He could not remember ever feeling so alone in his lifetime, because the resident of his current abode knew not his secrets, knew not the true side he was on in this horrible, horrible war.

And along with the loneliness there was guilt, too, in the back of his throat. It sometimes caught late at night, making him want to cry out in the heaving sobs that he had repressed since his second night here—the first night he had let it out of his system quite enthusiastically, and quite alone. He felt so hollow, so hollow, because Albus Dumbledore was now a hole he carried around in his heart like a too-powerful bullet that had gone right through his organ without having cared to stop and chat.

He gripped at his chest with one hand, but he let the finest of wines float around his tongue in one very positive note, managing to calm himself. He at least had an exquisite shelter, interesting reading, wine with a taste that could make a man weak in the knees, indulgently silky clothing, a personal house elf, and the company of Narcissa Malfoy. Maybe someday he could share with her his true self. Maybe it would not end so horribly if she were in on his secrets. He sure hoped so, considering he thought he was in love.