It was him

I've been wanting to translate this short story to English for quite a long time. English isn't my main language, although I'm practically fluent, so sorry if there are any translation mistakes!

SPOILER ALERT: don't read unless you know the plot of the first three Harry Potter books...

Her husband's screams echo through the house, panicked, but determined. She crosses the living room at a run, rushes up the stairs, opens the door with such brutality she nearly pulls it out, slams it behind her.

There he is, her son, sitting in his baby's bed, staring, terrorized, at his mother, who feels tears menacing to flow. She freezes before the bed to watch him through the bars, and he seems to hold on with all his baby's strength to his mother's love.

Downstairs, two words are pronounced, shrill, cold. A flash of green lights up the whole house then, almost at once, footsteps can be heard.

The child starts crying. He surely hasn't yet understood that he's now fatherless, but he can feel that some evil, terrible thing is happening.

The footsteps are coming up the stairs, getting dangerously close.

She moves closer to the child, holds him in her arms, cuddles him gently. His head resting gently against his mother's chest, he calms down, stops crying. For a few seconds, some sort of peace seems to take possession of the two people in the small room.

Then the door opens wide and a shrill laugh echoes in the cool air of this autumn night, probably audible from the other end of the village. It's a spine-tingling sound, cold, evil, so emotionless it can't be human.

It's him indeed.

Oh, of course, she knew it, she expected it, but it's different to see him by her own eyes.

Besides, they thought they were safe. Their friends would never have betrayed them.

Unless...

Dumbledore knew it. He warned them. There was a traitor amongst them. That's why the change of Keeper had been done in the greatest secret. It was their best chance, no one could suspect him. And the spell was far too powerful...

Suddenly she understands. The spell hasn't been broken. It's Sirius who was wrong. The traitor wasn't the one he thought it was.

Shock overflows her. She instinctively lays the child back in his bed and throws herself in front of him, arms open, determined to protect him until death. In front of her, the thing (you can't possibly call it a human) speaks a few words. She barely hears them. She seems to be crying something but she's barely aware of it. Only one thought fills her head, the betrayal of the one she considered a friend, who grew up with her husband...

The green light blinds her and everything is over. In only a second, a being full of life, of happiness, of love, is nothing more than a liveless corpse.

She will never know that her son, for whom she just sacrificed herself, will become famous. She will never know that this sacrifice will several times save the child's life. She will never know that before that, he will spend ten years suffering between the hands of the woman who accompanied her through the first years of her life.

No, the last thing she will know is the thought that obsessed her during the last seconds of her life.

The traitor was him.

It was him.