It happens like this.
She is dead, and then she is not.
(There is no great void or abyss. There is nothing at all.)
It is quick, like nearly falling asleep but snapping back to consciousness at the last moment, trying to recall the drowsiness as your head clears.
The first few years are a blur. She can't recall much of anything; a baby only starts developing memories later on, after all. The beginning feels like a dream - indistinct, indescribable, yet there. It's not like suddenly waking up one day. It's the slow and gradual process of remembering, until she can piece together a full experience.
She can't believe it, not really, at first. She's become a baby - once she's well developed enough to see herself, her little chubby hands with five stubs on each and her tiny blobs for feet, and understand what it means. It doesn't quite click for a few years, only this niggling in the back of her mind that something is out of place. This persistent feeling of wrongness, less knowledge and more instinct.
Her toddler brain isn't capable of taking in the flood of information, all at once. So it spares her a few drops here and then, in little thoughts that don't do much. Just this is english and these letters spell "newspaper". It isn't so disorienting that way.
So it is a slow awareness that she comes to. The reality that this isn't her first life, that this world exists as a children's fairytale in a parallel universe, that she's become a character. It is-
terrifying.
There is no joy. There is no feeling of a second chance, no rush of excitement, no awe or amazement at being reborn in a world where magic is a fundamental part of life. There is terror, there is horror, there is dread and fear.
There is This can't be real and I'm going grow up in a war and Why me and-
and then comes the existential dread.
This fleeting thought, dribbling down to her stomach and tainting the waters of her mind even more. This fleeting thought of I don't exist that acts as a ram, smashing into the floodgates that guard her sanity, leading to more and more trickling droplets that scream THIS WORLD ISN'T REAL and I'M JUST A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM and was my life just a made up tale to amuse children too-
nothing is ever the same again.
Are youreal?
Her parents are loving, Loving, but distant. She doesn't blame them. It's not their fault, she knows, that their one and only child was cursed.
She knows that they know something is strange about her. Wrong (She's starting to hate that word. Wrong. Everything about this is wrong, and she's the only one who knows).
She's not a world-class actor; she can't play the role of a stupid and foolish child all the time (she was one already, she can't bear to be one again). There are slip-ups, and they notice.
(What sort of parents would they be if they didn't notice?)
It's fine. She understands. They still take care of her and do everything they're supposed to. It doesn't matter.
(It makes her ache.
It makes her heart burn, makes her throat tear. Makes her want to sink her fingers into her brain and tear it out by the seams so she can tell it to shut up, shut up, stop thinking about them.
Makes her miss her family so much she thinks it would be less painful to rip out that beating organ in her chest with her own hands, so she can escape this-
This anguish that attacks her heart like a starving pack of wolves attacks a fresh carcass in winter, rabid and desperate, tearing off stringy chunks of skin and flesh and leaving behind nothing but a skinny skeleton half buried in the snow.)
They are both muggle. She is magic. A muggleborn.
(Muggle. The word is strange on her tongue, clumsy and unfamiliar. She was muggle once.
Weak and powerless and ignorant and all the happier for it.)
Once she's finished Hogwarts, she can cut off all contact with them. She is magic and they are muggle and those two don't mix. They are living in a different world and she is standing one foot in theirs and one foot in another, and she will have to choose when the time comes. Neither world will accept half a person (neither world will accept her as she is, either, but that's a problem she'll think about another day).
(Her decision is already made. She only likes to pretend that she ever had a choice.
Sometimes, she wonders if it would have been easier to be muggle.)
Then it is time to go to Hogwarts.
(The years don't fly by. They drag out, agonizingly slow, but so forgettable that it feels like it never happened at all the next day.)
She is afraid. So, so afraid. She knows what's going to come, this knowledge that's pressing down on her back and slipping a noose around her throat and setting a bear-trap on her tongue. This burden of knowing. She wonders if this is how Dumbledore feels.
(She wonders if it would be better to obliviate herself, sometimes. But she is a coward, too. And a curious one at that.
She's always hated mysteries, and a gaping hole in her memories would certainly be one.)
She'd considered running away, once. Thought about making off to Australia (where Hermione sent her parents, she remembers) or France or America. She'd gotten as far as packing a bag, when the logic (doubt) kicked in. She doesn't know how to survive on her own. She can't take care of herself, not when she's too young to work and too weak to defend herself on the streets.
(She's afraid of death, but she's so much more afraid of pain.)
So she stays. And she turns her mind to Hogwarts.
She doesn't think about friendships or a school experience. She thinks which house will let me live through the war? and decides.
(Seven years is nothing in comparison to the rest of her life.)
Do you think this is a Slytherin thought? You would be wrong. The desire to live is ingrained in everybody's instincts. It is a very human thought.
Not Gryffindor. She rules that one out immediately.
Not Ravenclaw. They learn for the sake of learning. She wants (must) learn for the sake of survival.
Not Slytherin. She has no desire to engage in politics, the slippery thing that it is, a grassy field buried in mines.
Hufflepuff seems like the best choice. The badgers, always overlooked, never taken seriously.
Yes, she thinks, I don't need to be happy here. I just need to live.
(The sorting hat is presented with a choice. Sort this not-really-child into where they belong, or where they will most likely survive?)
She is sorted into Hufflepuff.
(Not because she is loyal or hard-working. She is sorted into Hufflepuff, because she isn't brave enough for Gryffindor, smart enough for Ravenclaw, or clever enough for Slytherin.
Truly, the house of leftovers.)
She feel like imposter - she is an imposter. She doesn't belong, not in this house, not in this body, not in this universe.
She is simply a mistake.
(On good days, she wonders why the universe picked her.
On bad days, she knows she isn't important enough to be chosen.)
What sort of life has no purpose?
(sometimes-
and this doesn't happen as often anymore, but sometimes-
she wonders if it might be easier if she died
again.)
She doesn't know the one in the mirror. She tries not to look at reflective surfaces for that reason, because all it does is make her think this isn't my hair and this aren't my eyes and this isn't my face and-
She has the same problem with her name. She went by another name, a lifetime ago. It always takes her a moment to realize who's being called when she hears her name.
It makes the others whisper a strangechild, that one. Makes them think sometimes it's like she don't even know her own name.
(They don't know how right they are.)
(At night, she rehearses the names of the people she once knew over and over again. Until it becomes muscle memory, until their names are ingrained in her tongue and she will never, ever forget them, even if she loses her memory and mind and sanity. Her tongue will remember.)
Is this your first time, little butterfly?
Cedric is a fourth year Hufflepuff. He's a nice person, from the few times she's interacted with him.
(Cedric, who told Harry about the golden egg because it was fair. Cedric, who wanted Harry to take the cup because it wasn't fair. Cedric, who died for his virtue.)
She tries not to interact with him. Tries to avoid meeting his eyes and looking at his face and hearing his voice.
(Tries not to think about how he's a dead man walking.
Maybe if she pretends he isn't real it will hurt less.)
He will die. She knows this. She also know she can help.
(Sometimes, her veins are injected with an insane bravery, or recklessness. It makes her want to try. Makes her want to crawl out of this dirt hole she's dug herself and stand up and dust herself off. Makes her think do or die.
She can never take the first step.
It's such a slippery slope, isn't it? Whether it leads to heaven or hell, she doesn't know, and doesn't dare find out.)
She knows she should stop him from entering his name into the tournament.
She knows she could sabotage him - better a loser than a corpse (better a loser than someone who never tried at all).
She knows she should tell someone who can do something about this, Dumbledore or Amelia Bones.
She knows she could do all these things.
She stands and watches and does nothing.
(Dumbledore cares for the greater good. This is a fact. If she were to come to him for advice or protection, he will only use her in the name of good. And good she will be-
but alive she will not.
If she goes to Bones, they will want to know how she knows this. And that is something no one can know.
If anyone finds out, she will become a strange specimen to be strapped to a table and dissected. An abnormality to be locked up in a white room and observed by scientists. A threat to be killed before she can do any harm.)
She knows what will happen if she tell anyone.
So she keeps her lips shut, zipped and sewn for double measure.
(It is selfish, what she's doing. It is selfish, to consider her own life and happiness above countless others. How many could she save if she'd just be brave?
She suffocates in the guilt sometimes. Suffocates in selfish and coward and useless. It chokes her, flooding up her throat and dripping down her nose and spewing out her eyes. She vomits shame, stifles despair, and sops regret.
But all of that could never break the shackles of her fear.
So she does nothing, all while her mind goes what if and ponders possibilities that she knows she can't, won't take.)
She wants to be brave, she swears. She wants to be a hero, wants to do good and be good, even for a little. She does. It's just-
(This is a story already told. The plot has been mapped out, the characters on the great big chessboard of fate knocked over and removed from the game, and the white pawn will become a queen and hold a sword to the neck of the black king.
There is no fate, there is no destiny, there is no what if because this story has already been told. And it will have a happy ending. This she knows.)
So she will play along, a limp puppet pulled by the strings of fate and destiny (destiny. Ha. What destiny is there to be found in a world that's never existed?), hidden in the shadows. It will be worth it, she tells herself. It will be worth it, because otherwise she will tilt this train from its surefire course to a happily ever after, and she is no hero who can build her own rails for her path to her own happy ending.
So she will board this train, this train that's already reached its destination and is only making a mockery of its own journey, this train that will reach the station once more if she will just jump on and wait in one of its safe carriages, where all she has to do is look out the window at pretty landscapes with still hands.
High risk for high reward, they say.
She'd much rather have no risk and no reward.
(But this isn't a high risk for high reward, is it? The high reward is a happy ending, and that has already been offered to her on a silver platter. The high risk is for all the leftovers who were sacrificed as cannon fodder to push the plot along.)
There are blotches in her memory. Like when you stare straight at the sun, and when you look away there are strange, green-edged spots torn in your vision that dance away from sight.
She's forgetting.
(her world, her family, her friends, her life, her person)
It's a slow thing, this forgetting. This void that's slowly, so slowly she can't remember, gnawing away at the memories that make her her. This thing that's not even forgetting, rather the lack of knowing that's growing everyday.
(Her tongue remembers. Her brain does not. For all the names she whispers, only some have a face attached to them.)
We are made from
It's not a glaring flaw, a hole in the dam that's pouring water at such a considerable speed that it's noticeable. It's not even a trickle, not even a hole as small as the prick made from a needle point.
It's like-
evaporating.
She is dissolving into nothingness.
(And isn't that the scariest of all? This knowledge that's been digging grooves in her brain and tying up her tongue since day negative, and yet she can't bear to be parted from it. To be freed.
It is, like her cowardice, an integral part of her very being. A brave her is not
our memories.
(But it could be. It could be. It's as possible as it is implausible, and isn't that funny, isn't that sad, but she won't even try and that's the real crux of the matter.
You can't win a contest you never enter, but people forget-
To enter, you have to sacrifice something first, be it money, time, or effort.)
Change is such a terrifying thing. She wants to change, wants to be someone else, someone better, someone who will step up to the mantle and save all the ones who died for the necessary good,
her at all.)
but does not want to change anything at all. Does not want to save anyone for fear of altering the stream of this story's course (because it is a story, told by ink-dipped fingers, but it's so much more) in case she dooms them all with good intentions (trades a handful of lives for the world).
And isn't that sad in the pathetic kind of way, that the only reason she feels like a villain is be
She wants to survive (she knows this the way she knows she fears death) and she wants to do good. Not
If only she had plot armor and a stupidly courageous will, like all true heroes, but
She's glad she's not the main character, at the very least. she's
exclusively mutual things, but it might as well be to her. One or the other, it feels, and she's not brave or hopeless enough to
cause she wants to be a hero?
sign away her life
always hated sad endings (hopes her story
she's lacking the spiritual one and
so she'd rather sign away her
isn't a tragedy.)
the paper one hasn't got anything worth passing down anyway.
heart.