Dark Wizard Collector: A Hogwarts Fanfiction

Chapter 63

After hours of torturing the Auror, I sat down in the pool of blood dribbling from his weak body. "I am tired, and I wish to end this quarrel." I groaned, bored with my prey. I was always so easily bored. "You are at my mercy now, Sir. What do you have to say?" I calmly traced my fingernail across numerous, tiny cuts upon his face and he winced in pain.

"What a pair we would make if we were not enemies." Alduin gurgled a scoff.

Briefly, I felt as if I was conversing with myself as I stared at the hazel eyes. The black ropes restraining Alduin disappeared in small clouds of soot. "I destroyed your academy and you murdered my son. I think we are even." I paused and a pang of goodness suggested a wild thought as the man struggled to sit against the wall with me. "I know a way we can forget this all; you and I will no longer have to suffer from each other's hands." Training my eyes to the opposing wall, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and sighed. "People suffer enough without sadists like you and me." Fleetingly, I waved my wand over the man's body and his wounds began healing.

"What are you proposing we do?" Huskily laughing, Alduin rolled his head over to glance at me. Too weak to fight or argue, we sat calmly as friendly enemies.

"Something I will never regret." I lifted my wand and pointed it at my own head. "Obliviate." White light beamed brightly from the end of the leather handled wand I brandished.

"NO!" Alduin knocked the birch wand away from my head and the white light shot across the Room of Requirement.

Casting the man an unbelieving scan, I watched him reach out for my hand.

"Is that how you survive? Forgetting horrors you have committed?"

Heat overwhelmed my face and my throat closed, I was unable to respond.

Alduin turned my chin to face him, but I shut my eyes tightly against the hazel ones that probed me for answers I never intended to express. "Maven, how many untold things have happened to you that you have willingly forgotten?"

"I..." My voice croaked as tears swelled up inside of me and broke past my closed eyes.

Sobs quaked my body before strong hands lifted my face and an unexpected kiss pressed against my lips. Through my tears, I closed and opened my mouth to return the man's kisses. Opening my eyes when we stopped exchanging embraces, Alduin and I simply looked at one another in astonishment. An odd chuckle escaped us both. Hours before had we not wanted to kill each other? Torture broke everything apart and tacit forgiveness seemed to rebuild the damage into something new. "Is it strange that I believe we are kindred spirits?" I asked, as he pushed my dark hair over my shoulder.

"No, it is not strange. We are both injured creatures who know not what to do besides hurt others in order to make ourselves feel better. We are voids nothing can ever fill nor understand." The quiet baritone stated a truth I never posed as he examined his healed wounds. "Why did you cure me?"

"Why did you kiss me?"

Chuckling lightly, the professor looked around the empty room that began changing to a comfortable sitting parlor. Helping me to stand, he guided me to sit with him on a large sofa and sighed. "Because you have done and were about to do again something I have always contemplated doing and never had the courage to do."

"It is not courage that allows me to obliterate memories, it is cowardice." I countered and watched Alduin conjure two goblets of wine.

"Call it what you may, but it hurts me to see someone hurting themselves. I'd rather hurt them myself."

I rolled my eyes and took the goblet the Auror handed me. "Is that a common trait among sadists? Because, I feel the same way."

Alduin smirked, "Are you sure we weren't made for one another?"

I muffled a dark chuckle in my goblet and downed the wine instantly. Silence reigned for a few minutes until I spoke. "I can lead you to Voldemort tonight, but you have to trust me."

Refilling our goblets with a flick of his wand, Alduin deliberated. "Oddly enough, you have instilled within me a strange trust, but I am wary of your loyalty to your brother."

"He isn't my brother anymore." I muttered and drained my goblet again. "Tom Marvolo Riddle was murdered by that monster, Voldemort. I share nothing in common with him."

"Save for your house, bloodlust, and ancestry."

"Alduin, I can promise you, I want to see the filth that corrupted my brother dead."

Nodding in agreement the grey-haired man met my eyes again. "Then, we shall both get what we want." A sigh was expelled from the slowly breathing professor and he smiled lightly at me, "And you may call me Jeremy."