I fought in the old revolution on the side of the ghost and the King. Of course I was very young and

I fought in the old revolution on the side of the ghost and the King. Of course I was very young and I thought that we were winning; I can’t pretend I still feel very much like singing as they carry the bodies away.Leonard Cohen, The Old Revolution (1969)She is beautiful, he thinks, as her hair fans out around her. Black, rippling waves, dark and mesmerizing, beckoning him to join her as she drifts down the river. (Home. Home is here. Slytherin, children of the water gods.)She is beautiful in the same way all dead people are beautiful. So calm and peaceful. Her features carefully softened by the dark water gently rippling over her face, tenderly smoothed into a kind of beauty he is sure she did not possess in life. And everything, smoothed out and tinged by that sickly but uncannily beautiful shade of green. Shades of death, he calls it, complimenting his cousin on her fine dress in precisely that colour and his cousin laughs nervously and tells him not to be morbid. His cousin deals enough with it where her eldest sister is concerned; she does not need a younger cousin following in those footsteps.So he stays quiet and keeps his thoughts to himself and nobody misses his gentle voice. Drowning, he muses, is the way to go. None of the violence of ordinary death. None of the mess; the gore and blood. Salazar knows he’s seen enough of it to last him a lifetime. No. Drowning is the death of the pure and innocent of heart. It is silent and beautiful, ghoulish poetry of the reaper. If they must die, then they must drown. It is the only aesthetically pleasing form of death they can have.Then Rodolphus spits in the water and hisses mudblood before stalking away and the poignant stillness of the scene is shattered. Not beautiful, he thinks. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Dead and ugly. Cold and clammy and slowly rotting even as the five of them look on.He wants to throw up.She is a child. Not more than nine, younger even. She ought to be playing. Discovering the magic which runs within her veins. A doting father soon tucking her into bed and kissing her goodnight as she settles in to sleep.Instead she is dead; no, murdered. Not yet quite old enough to understand why she had to die.He looks to his companions. Lucius at least has the grace to express some form of distaste - Regulus sees it in the way he crinkles it slightly, though his face is an unreadable blank mask for the most part. Bella; Bella rejoices in death in all its hideous forms as long as she is allowed to bestow it. In this, at least, he sympathizes with Lucius. If they are to be butchers, they might at least be allowed the satisfaction of being artistic ones. Bella, like her husband, revels in the mess, in blood spattered over her dress and Regulus supposes that that is all right for them; unto each his own.(They never did mention people would have to die for it.)And as he watches her float on to her final, watery grave, he wonders where the fire that once burned within him has gone. This was meant to be revolution; fire, passion, ideals, all of them stars burning brightly with a fierce beauty, a swift unstoppable force crushing those who opposed them. This was meant to be freedom and liberation and the beginning of a new world.Instead he wishes he could join her and paint his face green: shades of death. She has peace and eternal silence. She has the joy of a watery grave.(and beauty. such beauty. dark, drowning beauty. White and green and rotting in peace. Slytherin, the sign of water. Home calls.) He has the comfort of knowing he is the good son. He has chains of his choosing, a heavy heart and the knowledge that he is ugly. Marred. Marred like the world they live in. Twisted out of shape through his own choice.Some day he will join her; he will be the lion he is named for and return home where all the children of Slytherin go. He too will be beautiful. No longer a shadow lurking in corners of dark alleyways. No longer a vulture, a creature of prey. The water will wash the filth away. (Salazar purify me.) He will be clean again; clean and at peace. His hair will unfurl in lovely long black waves; his face will be tinged with shades of death. Someone else will look upon him and wish to join him in his watery death.But not today. Today he will trudge home along with the rest of them. Today he is No One in Particular: the wearer of many masks. Tonight, he will set this ivory mask he holds aside and put on another one. Perfect son, precious child. He will smile and make merry and laugh and his parents will be content, for their son is all that he should be. And tomorrow he will look on yet another drowned soul and wish he had the courage to join them. Some day he will be brave. Just not today.(Written and submitted by thepostmodernpottercompendium. This is absolutely gorgeous. The prose is beautiful, the piece itself insightful, the story imbued with decay, and death, and beauty in death, and hope only as it comes through morbidity. The line between horror and wonder is thin here, so thin, and this seems especially fitting for a character like Regulus, whose fate is woven into the main narrative in the smallest but most terrible of ways. thepostmodernpottercompendium gives him the spotlight here, and it’s amazing. Author’s note: Inspired by tumblr user pica-scribit’s headcanon song for Regulus Black.) -- source link
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