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The snow tumbled outside Tom's window like a cluster of stardust. It flowed through the wind like soft waves of perfect white, such delicate snowflakes, so small, so weak. Destined to liquefy, evaporate and then rain down again. A tedious process, destiny was. Death, for example, was a promise, a part of life destined for all. Something we cannot run from or cheat. The date was set, you just had to live to see it.
Apart from Tom, of course. A God cannot be weakened by death, a God determined them.
Tom liked to set the date. Marking calendars with the tip of a dagger, using the victim's blood as the ink. It was red, usually. Some anomalous beings may be thrown into his tally, however, he remembered every one of his victims.
His first was his Father. He remembered seeing the fear in the eyes of that muggle. Filled with mercy, brimming with sorrow. The shaking tone of his voice, the salvia drooling from his wrinkled lip. The 'Please, I will do anything! Just...please,' was a sweet melody that soothed Tom's ears like rain beating onto a window. He remembered his fathers hand clutching a blunt dinner knife, the silver swirling with intricate patterns that had no particular meaning. The way he heald it out like it had any strength against a wand.
Moronic, deluded muggles.
Tom memorised the clank of the metal when it hit the floor, the confusion in his father's eyes, the way his mouth gaped open and shook. It shook. The way he backed away, the five quick steps, the thud of each one on the wooden floor. So soft but so eerie. The quiver in his voice when he hit the wall, the realisation embedding within his eyes.
The same eyes as Tom's.
But Tom didn't see himself in his father. Yes, they perhaps resembled each other. And yes, his father's muddy blood would still run through his veins, dead or alive. But killing his father was a way of letting go. Cutting a cord with your weaker self, burning it like the blisters that formed on his father's skin when he sent a curse to his arms. Or snipping it with golden scissors so clean and beautiful, like the slices that tore slowly into his father's abdomen when another curse sawed through. Or maybe just leave the cord to rot like his father's flesh decaying lazily with great excruciation.
His father's body was a perfect skeleton once Tom was done, no ounce of blood had stained the carpet. A perfect white, similar to the snow that twisted and turned in the wind with the determinism to melt as his father did. They whisked in the wind, flying through the air far, far away just like anything weak that tied itself to Tom.
But the process never goes away. The snow will always come back in whichever form it chose to. Liquid, solid or gas. It will be in your chalice of water waiting for you to drink. It will freeze your windows shut and turn your skin blue. It's lingering in the air, through your nose, infiltrating your body with its essence. It will always stick to you, for as long as you live.
