Rising

He was shaking. He couldn't stop shaking. He was back home now--he was sitting in his own living room and he couldn't stop shaking. He had to get control of himself. He had to.

How could this be happening again? It had been so long, it had been thirteen--

Thirteen long years. . .

--thirteen years and there hadn't been any sign, not all that time, any warning.

I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. . .

This couldn't happen again. Not now, not to him, not now. Not when--

Kenneth Avery stood up abruptly. He couldn't stay there sitting; he had to get on his feet, he had to walk, he had to--

--to do something. Something.

He crossed over to the hutch--nice looking piece of furniture, carved and varnished--and opened one tall door and took out the bottle which had almost been thrown away but finally had not, and also took out a fat short glass.

The amber liquid whorled up against the brim, too fast.

It was a pity to stain such a nice piece of furniture, carved and varnished. New, too.

He had gotten it just in the last two years. It, and the house--and a nice house--two years before that. And the job, seven years ago last month. No one even whispered anymore.

Things hadn't been going too badly, the last several years. Not badly at all, considering.

He had thought it was over.

He took the glass with him, and walked to the window. He looked out--he tried to look out. But it was night, and he could see nothing there but his own reflection, a shadow lying lightly over the black pane. So he looked at that instead.

He had thought that it was over--thought that it was finished with him. He'd thought it was all over--following him. He'd thought that his life was his now, finally; his to live, and succeed or fail (or possibly even enjoy?)--but anyway his own; not. . .

That shadow looked so faint against the blackness. He looked down then into his brandy, swirled it a little around and around in the fat short glass.

It wasn't. . .

it wasn't that he had forgotten it all--

I do not forgive. I do not forget.

--it was not one of the things that you could forgot. (Even if there hadn't been those years in Azkaban.) It was one of the things that waits; rises in your mind at nights when you are careless enough to turn towards it. But. . .

It had at least been over. It had been.

Why now? Why did it all have to start again now, when he had started to finally. . . come free from it?

*

He had been alone when the Thing started burning. No one had seen, no one knew, not yet anyway. Maybe they would never have to, if he did things right. There was that much, at least.

The Thing had been growing darker for months. He'd tried to ignore it, at first, tried to tell himself he was imagining it. But he should have known, from the first summer morning he woke to notice the faint black lines rising towards him on his arm, that he was not merely imagining it. It was there. It was returning.

And what else could that mean? What else could that possibly mean?

Another was returning also.

And tonight, when it had started burning, when he had pulled up his sleeve, there it was. Black again, shining and black, lines pulsing as they emerged, breaking from--

where?

It must have been under his skin then, all this time, all those years. He simply hadn't been able to see it.

He had waited. He had knelt there on the floor, bent double over his arm--it had never burnt like this before--and he had waited. But then he had realized that he had nothing to wait for. Nothing had changed since the last time; nothing was going to change. Nothing was going to suddenly save him. He would not stop the calling.

And he could not resist it all night.

He never could.

*

He had gone, of course.

Had gone, and had seen him, seen the Dark--dear heaven, it was as though no time had passed at all, as though the Dark Lord had never gone, as though it had just been a night since he had last knelt before his Master and kissed his robes, and begged for forgiveness for his failures.

I do not forgive. I do not forget.

How could he have come back? How could that have been done? It was amazing. . .

His hands were shaking, so he set the glass down on the windowsill. It didn't seem to be doing any good anyway.

He set the glass down, carefully, and then took his sleeve, rolled it up till he could see the Mark again.

How could such a thing stay out of sight for so long?

But maybe that was wrong.

How had he managed not to see such a thing for so long?

Because it had never gone. Not really. It had always been there, somewhere. Even if it had--had seemed to wait for a while, and left him to his life, not too badly, considering; it hadn't ever really gone.

It had seemed to, though. . .

His mistake.

No. He hadn't been imagining the Mark.

He had been imagining everything else.