A/N: Okay- I haven't worked out all the little details yet- like the title's meaning for instance- but I know that main plot. Ron, deatheater, yadda yadda yadda cliché I suppose. Anyway- please review.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, all related characters and settings belong to J. K. Rowling. Anything that ends up original belongs to me.
Chapter One: Burning In A Lake Full Of Ice
Silently. Watching. Waiting. Brain and body too tired to move anymore, I await my death.
It's like watching your own body burning in a lake full of ice.
Unbelievable yet, still happening. Still being real.
Still correct.
In times gone by I would have been set upon by Dementors. Not killed.
They switched though, the Dementors. They swapped sides. Went after their true yearnings.
I have been offered a choice. I can die a 'horrible and gruesome death' or I can give up the current location of my master's whereabouts.
I don't move. Don't speak. Can't move. Can't speak more like. I'm exhausted. The poison is swimming through me. It will destroy me before I can tell anyone anything.
When a person is scared they can not be trusted to do the just and loyal thing everytime. I do not want to go to my death labelled a traitor.
That thought is compleatly incomprehensible.
Actually- most thoughts are now.
The poison is working fine. It should not be much longer until I am available to be interrogated no more.
I know how it works.
I made it.
I drank it.
Of my own free will of course. You couldn't make me do something as foolhardy as that without having a good reason to.
I do not want to tell.
That is my good reason. I can not tell where my master is currently hidden.
Despite planning my own death in this way- to protect my honour- I find myself wishing that it had turned out differently. That I could cuddle up to my mother by a fire, my family all around me, that I could say goodbye to them. That I could say goodbye to all my old friends. That I could die around the people I used to love, and the ones who used to love me. Not die in a corner of the ministry of magic head office. Being questioned by blundering idiots.
Blind fools to what would soon happen.
Even if I was not alive to see that be.
My mind is slowing, my breathing becoming irregular and fast, my blood surging as fast as it could, my lungs gasping like a fish out of water. My muscles seizing up one by one.
The final stages of the poison. This is exactly how it was supposed to work.
Everything going according to plan.
It was like watching my body burning in a lake of ice.
Despite what I was now, who I was, part of me was longing to be what I had been, who I had been.
A ripple of pain spreads through my body. Not sharp searing pain that made me want to scream but like pins and needles I think is the stupid Muggle expression. It made my body go numb where it hit.
Tears flow out of my battered eye now. That brings physical pain but from far away. Like I'm not really feeling it.
My body and my mind are working separately now. The body is panicking, trying to keep me alive. Trying to help me, save me.
The mind has excepted it's fate.
Then... it is nearly over now. Then... I can feel the pain turn to fire- if I had a voice left I would scream now. Then... Then...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I open my eyes.
I scream.
An ear splitting scream, a terrified, pure adrenaline effused scream that racks every muscle in my body. Making my whole body jolt in a mixture of fear, confusion and blind terror.
I try to open my mouth, ask where I am but it will not work. I cannot speak as I am still screaming.
Still screaming. I amy never stop. I have no power over my own voice.
I stop screaming.
No, I am still screaming but very quietly, tears streaming down my face. I feel a hand clamped over my mouth blocking most sound.
"Keep quiet you idiot." A voice hisses at me. I try to focus my vision- find out who it was. Slowly the dizziness clears a bit and I'm able to blink away some of my tears.
A hear a voice laugh at me. The same one. Peter Pettigrew. "Tears? Well what else could you expect from a weak little baby?" He laughed again. "Aren't you even going to say anything in your defence?"
His silver hand was removed from my mouth. I realised that I wasn't screaming. I was furious again. I felt angry, I didn't like people laughing at me.
I sat up to let him know that people never laughed at Ronald Weasly but I never managed. I fell down again. My back hitting wood and my head spinning quicker than ever.
"Get up." Pettigrew snapped at me.
"I... Ca... Can't." I managed to choke out the words. It felt like my throat had shrunken to less then a quarter of it's usual size. It even hurt to breathe, let alone speak.
"Our master wants to talk to you. I suggest you find a way to get up." The voice was full of contempt as it dragged me upwards, through two corridors and pushed me inside a room before slamming the door behind me.
I raise my face off the floor and try to look around me. The screaming and the tears have stopped but violent tremors still rake my body in almost every passing second.
"Nice to meet you again." I heard a voice say. I recognised that voice.
"Mas...Mast...Master." I manage to mutter.
"Yes?" He enquires, moving his head slightly to the side looking slightly confused.
"Where am I?" I say quietly. My throat is healing but my head still hasn't stopped spinning.
"You are in my personal chamber Weasly. Now, if you are done with the stupid questions I have a few sensible questions to ask you," he didn't wait for me to give any type of indication and just carried on talking, "I am disappointed in you. You tried to take the easy way out, give yourself death. You didn't think that I would let you do that did you? Your death would have been a disappointment of mine. The death of those stupid Ministry fools of which you let capture you however, was more of a slight joy. You have a choice now, as you seem possible unworthy of being a Deatheater after this long year in my service. Therefore you may return to your old life, live how you used to live, with who you used to live. Go back to being an dim-witted shadow beneath the shadows. The failure."
"You know I can't go back." I say, the tears threatening to build up again as the memories assaulted my brain.
"I know that but I don't think that you do. Your mind knows that they turned their backs on you the second they found out what, who you really are but your heart refuses to believe it. It wishes to return to more simple days. Maybe it needs a bit of convincing. Crucio." He muttered calmly and then a familiar sensation tore through my every one, muscle and vein. I pain so intense I couldn't even scream. Headaches and poison and past memories felt like nothing. Just insignificant, pathetic, worthless things like myself.
When the pain finishes it feels strange. I feel like I always do after the curse, numb all over my body and my mind.
"Now, let your heart speak. Not your brain or your body. Your heart. Which do you choose. Are you going back?"
I searched then. Searched as hard and as deep inside me as I could. I wanted to say that I was going back. I wanted to. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere. I had to still want to go back.
I told my master the truth. What my heart felt.
"I never want to go back."
A/N: Please review. Chapter two should be up soon.