ꜱᴇʀᴘᴇɴᴛɪɴᴇ ꜱᴇʀɪᴇꜱ | ᴛᴏᴍɪᴏɴᴇ

Serpentine, ch. 33

PART NINE:

PASSIONS RISE

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

With only the two of them left in the room, Harmony tried to muster up the courage to meet Voldemort's hard blue eyes. She was tongue-tied. How could she explain herself? It would sound preposterous if she said, "Oh, didn't I mention that I'm Muggle-born? Nope? Silly me."

Instead, she tried to tell him with her eyes how desperate she was. That she wanted him to understand, or at least give her time to think of some explanation. However, she did not get the reaction she desired.

Voldemort glared and pursed his lips. He was too angry to utter a syllable.

Harmony tried to work out something to say—anything. When nothing else would come she just looked at him and whispered quietly, "Please."

It was as though the simple word had pulled his trigger. She watched, horrified, as Voldemort's grip on his wand tightened. Slowly, as if the wand weighed a thousand pounds, he pointed it straight at her heart.

Harmony gasped, staring at the tip of the murderous weapon. She searched his face but only saw cold distrust.

What suddenly occurred to her was that she did not fear death itself, but the thought that it would come from him, her Lord. She tried to think of how many times he had ever threatened to end her life, and realized the answer was…never.

Not once had he ever threatened to kill her, even when she had first come to him. It had all been her—her fear had told her that death was around every corner when it wasn't. The fact that she had ever feared Lord Voldemort almost made her laugh. All this time, she really had nothing to fear.

Not until now.

As Voldemort had said before, he made her into what she was. Today she was physically, mentally, and magically capable of so much more because of him. She was stronger...braver....

So she lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eyes. Brown to blue.

Though Harmony had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling, she flushed every thought of fear out of her mind. If she was going to die, she would do it knowing that she no longer had any fear of the man in front of her. For a fraction of a second, she wondered why the Serpentine did not react, until she remembered that he was the only one in the whole world that it was immune to.

Voldemort stared her down, but her gaze did not falter, and in that moment he realized the true strength inside her. Any other victim would've been cowering on the floor while he, the Dark Lord Voldemort, held a wand up to their heart. In that moment, he found yet another thing about the young woman to admire.

Voldemort's jaw clenched—something  he did whenever making a difficult decision. His wand hand began to tremble, but she did not look away. If he chose to kill her—his one and only heir—she would not stop him, and he was going to look her straight in the eye while doing it.

Voldemort took a sudden, deep breath, and Harmony knew death was coming soon. He held it until his face turned red. Frustrated tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

Right when Harmony thought he would end her life, Voldemort turned away with a swish of his cloak and was gone.

~

Master appeared in the foyer of the mansion after storming down the stairs. The large throng of Death Eaters had been anxiously waiting for him, but by the enraged expression he wore, no one dared to say a word except for a brave Severus Snape.