The Power Of Love
A corpse lies at her feet, empty eyes forever open. Blood drips from her nails. She bites back a sob, and somehow it chokes her throat into a laugh as bitter as the taste of iron on her tongue.
She is forever damned, now. Damned so the one she loves will never have to be. This meager consolation couldn’t feel more hollow, but it will have to be enough. She lets the tears flow down her cheeks; there is no point in holding back, not now that they will never flow again.
Scarlet runes cover her chest, carved into once-pale skin. The dagger slips from her slackened fingers that have opened her veins. The blood loss makes her dizzy; the pain clouds her voice. Still, she chants.
“Sanguis ad sanguinem et os ad os
Cor immolatur, cor solvit
Cor mortuum redeat ad viventium passionem,
Metet quod seminat, ultio mea est!”
The sting of blood fills her throat. But she does not, will not stop.
“Do amica mea, misericordiam do,
Cor fecundam tolle et sterilem relinque,
Hanc potestatem amitto ad centesimum.”
Her voice falls to a whisper as black spots fill her eyes. Still, she does not stop.
“Hoc voveo largitate sanguinis et animae damnatae in aeternum.”
She does not stop, even for death itself.
2 Weeks Earlier
“But I haven’t got uncommon skill and power! I’m just a teenager, and he’s- he’s-”
“Yes, you have,” an old, bearded man said firmly. “You have a power that Voldemort has never had. “You can —”
“I know, I know!” the boy exclaimed. “I can love!”
“Yes, Harry, you can love… which, given everything that has happened to you, is a great and remarkable thing. You are still too young to understand how unusual you are, Harry.”
Unknown to either, the girl hidden in the corner of the room under a silencing spell scoffed. Too young to understand, yet never too young to fight and die in a war waged by men more than thrice their age.
“So, when the prophecy says that I’ll have ‘power the Dark Lord knows not,’ it just means — love?”
“Yes — just love,” said Albus Dumbledore.
When the two finally left, the girl runs as far as her feet can take her. And then some. Even Grimmauld Place, far away from the castle that is no longer her home, is not far enough.
“… So that’s how I just know Malfoy’s up to something! Come on, ’Starte!” Harry Potter, Chosen One Extraordinaire, yanked the book out of her hands. “You need to get out of this library! Did you even sleep last night?”
Astarte Potter blinked and blearily yawned. Her twin hit her with an exasperated look, glanced down at the cover of her book, and then did a double take. “Curses of the Blood Moste Foule? Why are you even reading this?”
All traces of exhaustion left her face as her bright green eyes turned cold. “You think a Dark Lord is going to fight fair? And we’re teenagers! Hell, even with me spending every moment of the last three years studying, I’ve barely graduated Hogwarts! How are we supposed to compete with the most feared dark wizard in the world, who has had decades to accumulate knowledge and power? What are we supposed to do, trust in the power of love?” Astarte laughed derisively. “I’m just evening the scales.”
“Well- We can’t just-“ Right when Harry was about to concede his point, his eyes darted to the shelf behind them, seemingly filled with books just as dark as the titles stacked before his sister. “That book, right there! I’m not exactly good at French, but one of the girls from Beauxbatons taught be a few words in fourth year, so even I know what l’amour means!” he exclaimed, gesturing at the tome in question.
“Le Pouvoir de L’Amour,” Astarte read off the cover. “The Power of- wait… love?”
“See! Maybe this book has the answer!” Harry didn’t know how much he would regret ever catching even a glimpse of the soon-to-be hated book.
Because his sister would flip though the crumbling yellow pages, and then she would translate a ritual that purportedly would forcibly inflict the capacity for love and remorse upon an enemy - at the cost of one’s own. And she would remember Merope Gaunt, the near-squib’s love potion, and Tom Riddle’s inability to love… all with Dumbledore’s words whispering into her phantom ears. “The power of love, the power of love, the power of love…”
She would wake up screaming from nightmares of the death of her brother, her twin, the one person she had and always would sacrifice everything for - as the Sorting Hat had known, as she begged not to be in Slytherin and became that loner Hufflepuff instead - all because she had refused to perform a ritual.
‘Too dark, too gruesome? Too great of a sacrifice?’ Astarte thought mockingly. (Would she let her brother die because she was a coward?)
So she slipped through the shadows of Knockturn alley, wand in hand, and did what was needed to obtain the necessary ingredients from the unwilling. She ignored the blood, cursed through the screams, and served her own heart on a platter for the ancient, eldritch powers she called upon with her sacrifices. And then she cut herself open because she knew what kind of a monster the ritual would make her become (for what would she be, who would she be, without the years of constant sacrifice in the name of the brother for whom she would always be overlooked?)
But Astarte had forgotten about the plans they’d made, months ago, for a meet-up on her brother’s trip to Hogsmeade. She didn’t account for his frantic search, nor his dash to Grimmauld Place… and certainly not his breathless collapse into the lobby of St. Mungo’s, half-dead sister in tow.
So, in a sterile, white hospital room, lay a girl with an empty space where her heart should’ve been.
Astarte Potter opened her eyes, and smiled.