December by Verity

It was almost December.

December, January, February, one-two-three, free. That's how long they had said that it would take, to erase that part of him, if he were willing. If he wanted.

"Desire," he assures them, "Was never the manner of the problem."

He studies the Mark now, turning and bending his arm in the dim light of the lamp above his desk. His skin is black where the brand is burnt into his skin - his master has returned. But he has not gone back. Not this time.

"Never go back, never-" Lily's words on the night he turned. She had come to Hogwarts on broom when Albus told her. He had listened to her, heard in her lovely voice a second chance.

And refused it. In the name of duty.

Not that it could have mattered. She was married, pregnant, in love with someone else. She would never have gone back either.

He applies the salve that St. Mungo's has spent months working on - an intended palliative for the suffering of the branded and wounded. What irony that the salve's test subject is one who caused the pain of those the salve is intended to heal.

The Mark stays the same, beneath the slick and faintly lime-scented salve. But he can feel the white skin beneath the darkened scar tissue, awakened for the first time in years, and it itches and burns, ready to return to the light.