1. Is This What They Call Life?

So the war is over. We each have won and lost. Yet in some ways, how can there be an end when salvation is still to come? How is it that every day I see rejoicing, yet I feel as though there is nothing that is worth my happiness? I am released, but in some ways I am forever trapped. Redemption is something only the foolish speak of.

How I have wished for that – so long has it been since the only battles in my head were which hex I should use on Potter. But to be redeemed is to be forgiven, and how can one begin to forgive evil if it has affected their lives so much that it has left a permanent scar – forever marred by a coward. For that is what I am.

And the cowardly can never be redeemed.

*

I turn the corner into a small, run-down road. It is quiet and just the sight of this familiar street brings an unsettling warmth to my restless mind. This is my place of solace, my sanctuary. It is what makes me go on living during the fruitless search for renewal. It is an odd place to find inner calm, but I feel an unexplainable connection to it. I reach the house I know will still be unlocked, and walk into a small room consisting of all basic necessities.

It is now that I realize how long it has been since I had thought about the time of year. I notice a torn and grubby calendar tacked to the opposite wall, and amble over to examine it.

Squinting at the tiny handwriting on particular days, I remember with a certain fondness the summer I spent devising this calendar of Hermione’s life. I laugh as I recall watching her every move at Hogwarts, trying to keep a cold indifferent expression on my face when all I had wanted to do was run and kiss her.

I flick through the calendar, stopping here and there to decipher my illegible scribbles and check dates against the yellowing copies of the Daily Prophet sprawled across the bed in the middle of the room.

Finally I work out that it must be December 29th – four days after Christmas. A year. A whole year of pain, deceit and cowardice. Why is it that I have so many memories of this year gone by? I barely remember what came before, for none of it had seemed useful or important before, yet now I realise that the memories of simple times are often the sweetest.

Flopping dejectedly on my bed, I force my mind back to the Hogwarts years, the years of innocence. Only one scene fills my head, and it replays endlessly, the pain of it more excruciating every time.

“Severus…please…�
Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.
“Avada Kedavra!�

Timeless. The thought of my contemplating Dumbledore’s murder makes me sick. I may have been destroyed at that point that I was too ‘weak’ to do my master’s bidding, but I have come to see it as a blessing. One less crime to my name. One less life taken.

I lie on my bed until it grows dark. The wet patches on my face glisten in the moonlight and reflect off the window. I can see a thousand seconds I want to change, a thousand words I should have said, a thousands lives I should have saved.

It kills me so.

*

Night is only just turning itself into day when I wake. There is no draught around me, yet I feel so cold, drained. I feel as though it is only my guilt that separates me from destruction, only these thin sheets that protect me from retribution. What if I were to rip them away, and discover nothing but air? Cold, cruel air. The kind that whips your cheeks when you are scared, that blows dust into your eyes when you’re anxious, that separates two pulsating hearts as they desperately search for each other.

I stumble towards the kitchen area and summon a bottle of Firewhiskey. Without thinking, I take a long draught. I look desperately at it in my hand. Is this what I have been reduced to? Mere Muggle ways?

I lift my arm with difficulty, and use the greatest force possible to smash it against the wall. I collapse once more onto my dilapidated bed, contemplating my life.

What can be done now? How to I proceed from here? Always the same questions, yet I can never find the answers. Do I pick up the pieces of my life and attempt to live again? Once more I could venture out; I could walk among ordinary folk with a fixed smile, living a lie. But in the end I would drive myself into madness – the name we give to blissful oblivion. I know that ultimately it will achieve nothing.

I have done nothing worthy of praise, I will achieve nothing in life. So what exactly am I now?

And so finally, I arrive at a question I can answer.

I am nothing.