How Like an Angel

Of Angels

"What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

I'm kind of surprised they gave me this journal to write in--they seem to be rather happy with me safely tucked away in a straight jacket and in the corner of my room, huddled up like a little child. They call it therapy for me to work through my "issues" this way, as I'm not exactly willing to talk in our group sessions. And why would I? It's a bunch of maniac kids drooling and twitching, getting shot up with medicinal potions if they start even looking like they might be happy or excited, after which they go back to staring off into space, feeling absolutely nothing. They all have these creepy, blank eyes. It scares the hell out of me.

I have a pretty strong feeling they're going to read this--the nurses seem real keen to get into my head and figure out a concrete way to call me insane and keep me here. It's what the Ministry wants, I know that. Fudge probably reckons I'll switch sides on him--being connected to Voldemort and all that. I'm a danger to everything they're working for, and what better way of keeping themselves safe but to lock me in a padded room in the basement of St. Mungo's with all the other psychotic wizarding children, tied up in a straight jacket and incapacitated by potions? That's right, ladies. Just in case you're reading this, I'm on to you.

I don't really know what else to write about. Oh, cripes, there go the nurses again. I hate the group room. There's this little brown-eyed girl that keeps staring at me, and I really want to stare back--her eyes are very pretty, and I can't quite figure out why. If they were more alive they'd be gorgeous. Why I think that I don't know. She sits in one position all day, and if she gets upset, blocks and things start getting up and levitating in circles around her. She's downright spooky. There's another girl who'll be calm for hours at a time, then, out of nowhere, she'll toss her head back and start screaming curses in Swedish. They say she's been possessed by some overly persistent Viking demon since birth. She's really good at chess when she doesn't go round the twist on you in the middle of a game. Probably the scariest of the whole lot is a boy named Mika. Every few minutes or so, about a thousand slash marks will just appear all over his body, spraying blood everywhere--then a second later, the blood will disappear and the wounds heal up again, like nothing ever happened. Nevertheless, he's a bit pale and stutters a lot. The walls are magical, so people outside the ward can watch us without our seeing them--I can hear them talking sometimes, about the other patients, about me. I bloody hate this place. I hope Lupin never reads this, he'd kill me for using that word. My hand hurts, and now Cindy wants to play chess again. She's got that look in her eye, too. Maybe I can use my sleeves as earplugs?

Another day of interrogation. Oh, excuse me; they're still calling it group therapy. I don't see what was therapeutic about being prodded and poked on my childhood and sexual desires and watching Jonathan (another of the shaky ones) throwing up his sedative draft all over the floor. No matter--the tiles are even more disgusting when they aren't moist with electric green vomit. They're a kind of warped, sickly yellow and white, and look like some monster came in here a long time ago and sucked nearly all the color out of them. Come to think of it, everything here is like that, even the patients.

I wish there was a window here in my room. The light is so bright it makes my head spin and my hands look blue, so that I can see each and every vein running into them. It's glinting off the buckles of the leather straps on my bed. I've tried taking them off during the night, but they're magically enforced. Besides, the moment I fidget, a nurse swoops in with her pouch of bottles clinking in the darkness. Her eyes are just like Cindy's Viking demon when those horrible lamps are off--and, mind you, sometimes at night they aren't off, which is even worse. She forces a weirdly sweet potion down my throat and sweeps off again, in the same ill tempered, twitchy way that Snape does. But I'd give anything to see him and not her, just for a moment.

The air never moves here--it stays the same, smells the same, and hardly anyone ever disturbs it. I've begun to notice the subtle differences--the sterile stench of the morning just after the orderlies have finished their disinfectant spells, the strengthening of the underlying scent of a thousand potion ingredients at midday, when we are all brought up for our medicine--pickled frog eyes and bat's feet, the sour primary foundations of the sedatives, the cold, grainy, earthy odor of moonstone, used in befuddling drafts. There is the fatty smell of antibacterial chicken-skin gloves, the abrasive chemical rank of the fluid that sterilizes the needles and other tools. There is the ever-constant, metallic smell of human blood, the pungency of defecation, and the acidic, almost sweetish odors of vomit and stale, icy sweat, always to be found on the air. Sometimes I'll spend an hour, maybe more, figuring them all out, dissecting each breath, when they leave me here like this in my room to be observed. Sometimes I'll count the stitches in the padding on the wall, staring at the harsh white until I think I can see a castle on a lake, where clouds drift lazily by, teased by spring breezes. And when I gaze long enough at that hideous tile for a good thirty minutes, I can see, in the nasty yellow swirls, a glimpse of the pitch, green as emeralds, the stands empty, at peace. Ron is flying in circles around the goal posts, and Ginny is throwing the quaffle, trying her hardest to score, bright red hair flying like a fiery mane, and her brother is laughing when she misses again. Down on the soft grass, Neville is stroking one of his new plants that would attack any other person who would try that with them, and Luna, wand behind her ear, has the Quibbler open, upside down of course, her dreamy eyes studying it intently, oblivious to the rest of the world. And finally, somewhere in the empty stands, sits Hermione, reading a book on Wizarding Law as it concerns declaring individuals insane, trying to find a way to get me out. The wind is tugging slightly at her curly hair, and her eyes are alive, like two dots filled with flame, cool and collected and utterly powerful--the cogs in her mind are turning furiously, and a thousand ideas are firing at once, being collected, sorted, and re-fired at an incredible rate.

Then I blink, and all I see are sickly yellow tiles in dizzying blue light.

Mika keeps asking me if I want to watch him make himself bleed--hard to do, as it just happens anyway. I keep telling the bugger no, but all he does is explode a minute later, covering me with blood, before it's all gone again. A part of me knows it will always disappear, but I can't help seeing it drenching my hands, warm and the texture of velvet, the soft scent hovering below my nose. It's Cedric's blood, Sirius's blood, my parents' blood, a splatter of hot, brilliant red in the cold of a London Christmas carol, staining the dirty snow with a splash of new color in the drab grey light. And just like that, he takes it back again. I wish he'd just stop.

That tile is really disgusting. But I can't help staring at it. Hermione has taken to waving at me from the pitch, and Neville has a weird new cactus that glows purple at dusk. Sometimes, just after they feed me my medicine, I'll get that soaring sensation in my stomach, like I'm flying my Firebolt, and I can hear Ron laughing somewhere behind me, Ginny calling, and the rush of wind roaring and rushing past by my ears.

Maybe I can cover it up with a sheet from off my bed. No, they'd notice and think it's some lunatic episode I'm having. I just don't like the way it looks, because whenever I stop seeing the pitch, that tile is there again, ugly as ever. Why would anyplace in the Wizarding world have tile like that? It's something Muggles put in their hospital wings, all flecked and horrible. Maybe if I think hard enough, it'll transfigure into wood flooring or something.

Since when was defending yourself from getting sprayed with blood called a psychotic outburst? I pushed Mika away--why shouldn't I have, when those slashes just kept appearing all over him, trying to drench me again? He does it on purpose--I just know it. So he hit his head; it's not as though he had any sane brain cells to be killed in any case. He needed someone to knock some sense into him. Stupid psycho. I want to feel sorry for him, I really do, but I'm tired of people being miserable. Everyone has a sob story--it makes me want to throw up and pull their hair out of their heads -that's when I'd like to watch Mika bleed. When his hair is matted with sticky black and he's screaming shrilly like a prepubescent girl. Of course I'd like to watch you bleed, Mika.

Oh, and Isolation is really funny. That was my "punishment" for attacking Mika, after the sedatives wore off. They said it was for my own--and the other patients'--psychological well-being. Bullshit. As though I want to be battered by levitating number blocks and shouted at in Swedish and have to listen to the nonsensical stuttering ramblings from dusty corners. I'd rather be alone in the soundless dark, where I can't see my fingers covered in blood or that disgusting yellow tile or Hermione waving to me, a smile alighting on her beautiful, ageless face, shining in the sunset light, a straight jacket wrapped tightly around me like comforting arms--cold, lightless peace, like the crypt. I saw odd things there--a red double-decker bus--Christmas wreaths--a little girl dancing with her father--Hermione turning to me, framed by light, eyes sparkling--there in the dark, like fireflies, behind my eyelids when I tried to escape them. But it doesn't matter--it was probably just my head trying to entertain itself--like when you dream about flying oysters and bagpipes--none of it makes any sense, it's just amusement while your seratonin levels go up. It's nothing. In any case, when they put me back in my room, I guess the potions had got to me a bit, because I was babbling like an idiot. So they left the straight jacket on for a while after that. Can't imagine why.

I'm so tired of that group room, I want to scream, oh god Cindy is so annoying, those psycho freaks need to know what it's like in Iso. I hate that fucking tile.

I that hermine was blood bus. want out they potion in my head where don't

smell like fried chicken i'm hungry. hate tile hate place tile tile tile Hermione laughing at me my brain is revolving tingle hot cold tile tile It hurts, I want to go home sleep.

Disregard that last entry. Stupid journal, it won't let me erase or cross anything out. Just in case anyone's wondering, the Head Nurse can go fuck herself with that "electric therapy" thing of hers. It certainly didn't do me any good. Great idea, woman, make the patients even more psychotic by pumping electricity into their brains. Where's the bloody logic in that? Certainly explains why everyone drools liters by the hour. And guess what, I've another appointment with electrocution in the morning. Watch me dance around this irritating little cell of mine. This fucking place is insane. I swear Hermione's making fun of me from that hideous tile, I'm going to rip every single one of them out--there's forty-five in this room, I counted. I could do it.

Maybe none of it was real. I mean, think about it--maybe after my parents died in a car crash after getting completely smashed at a party, I went absolutely batty and they stuffed me in this place, and the Dursleys, the magical world, were all a big dream I came up with in my insane stupor to be able to stand all of it, to feel like some tragic hero, so I wouldn't have to face reality. Wouldn't that be a mind-fuck? And then something happened in my little dream world to make me start waking up, and all my dream friends aren't really there, so they can't very well love me or care about me or die, I just imagine that they do. If I tried, I could change anything that happened. Hermione didn't really...

All right, this bus of thought is going nowhere. Train, I mean. I don't like buses. They're just these huge clunking hunks of metal that go round corners too fast and don't watch where they're going. Maybe I made those up too. Perhaps she just got too close, and I couldn't handle the fact that she wasn't real even when it felt so good, so had the bus come rocketing around, and when she turned to me gorgeous in my made-up winter sunshine, irresistible and wonderful, I just made her disappear. That's kind of how it was. But I don't care--she wasn't real, none of it was real, not magic or Ron or Luna or Dumbledore or Sirius or my parents being heroes or Neville or the Ministry or Lupin or the Weasleys and how they always looked after me, none of it was real, not even her, so it doesn't matter.

If she was real, she wouldn't have kissed you then had the stupid idea to walk out into the street like an idiot and turn to you, smiling so brightly you thought nothing in the world could ever look ugly again--and now look, she's nothing but a face in that hideous tile, jeering you from imaginary Quidditch stands while you're sitting here alone. It's almost funny. So that's my capacity. I managed to create and keep perfect love until it just reached its maximum point, the brim of the water glass, the place just below the highest existence of actually moving from the conception into the action, and, like a light, I put it out with a blink of the eye, faces in the tile that are gone before you even look away, and they were never there to begin with--so why does it hurt so bloody much?

She hates me. Hermione, please please stop telling me it's real, it's not, you're not, I got rid of you, it's my choice, everyone who loves me dies, that's how it is in that world, the only way it works. She keeps looking at me--the others are gone, it's just her sitting out late into the night, like she's waiting for me to come back--but I won't, I won't let you disappear again--stop looking at me, you sadistic bitch--go back to your book, I got rid of you, fuck fuck fuck, go away, your blood's all over my hands, all over me, like it was when I blinked and you'd disappeared, why'd you leave--I made you gone, I could bring you back anytime I wanted to so stop laughing at me like I can't change a thing, you aren't real! You can't laugh at me if you aren't there anymore--I'll get rid of you once and for all, then we'll see who's laughing, that's what you get, that's what you get, I'll make you ugly, I'll make you nothing again, just what you always were before, before I stared and saw you in the tile and made you real, made you mine, made you dead, and I'll make you NOTHING!

It was just before midday when Remus Lupin stepped lightly from the lift, a whisper on the tiled floor, and slipped quietly into the Children's Psychiatric Ward of St. Mungo's; the expression on his face was somber and heavy with a thousand thoughts and worries, each etching a line irrevocably into his young flesh. His shabby robes swished about his feet, a deep black that time had not yet faded to grey, much the same as the suit beneath, and even the thread that darned various rips. He reached the nurses' station, lifted a soft hand and rang the tinny bell once, listening to its shrill echo as it filled the little waiting room, which ended in heavily reinforced doors, locked from the outside with a large metal switch. He repressed a shudder at the sterile cold of the ward--to think that Harry was tied up in this terrible place--but no, Dumbledore had said that it would be in his best interest to be committed for a couple months, to receive professional help instead of their feeble hands, and rather than being forced to engage in normal social interaction at school. Yet Remus could not entirely fight off the slight tightening of his stomach, which foreboded darkly to his conscious mind--he knew Harry and his escapist tendencies all too well. He needed to be surrounded by familiar people and places, not merely stuffed out of the way where he would no longer be a burden.

An elderly nurse, her hair bleached a silvery platinum blonde, approached the counter and smiled rather unconvincingly--a smile full to overflowing with rotting, blackening and mossy teeth which magic had not dared to cure--holding the clipboard defensively before her chest like a battle-worn shield.

"Visitor?" she asked unnecessarily in a crone-like, croaking voice.

"Yes," Remus responded through the glass, as politely as possible, despite his shock at the grotesque caretaker before him. Harry must have had good laugh about this one. "My name is Remus Lupin. I'm here to see Harry Potter, in Ward B."

The nurse lost her smile. "I'm sorry, but Mister Potter is quite incapable of receiving visitors at the moment. I'm afraid you'll have to come back an--"

"Why?" Remus asked hurriedly, both hands coming down on the counter with a sharp crack, disrupting the little bell. His calm eyes had become wild. "What's happened to him?!"

The nurse took a step back from the glass, looking sternly at him, as though reprimanding an impertinent child. "Sir, please calm yourself before I call an orderly. Mister Potter has had a number of psychotic episodes in recent days. He has lashed out at fellow patients--putting them in need of emergency medical attention in many cases. The Head Nurse saw fit to place him into shock therapy, since which he has been kept in solitary confinement. He is violent and unresponsive to most forms of psychological treatment."

Remus closed his eyes and took a very deep breath. One, two, three...

"Please, it was me that had him committed at the first. I'm his guardian--I need to see him. I've just come from one of his best friends' funeral--"

"Hermione, perhaps?" the nurse interjected, a keen, clever look coming into her eyes. At Remus's evident shock, she smirked. "We've allowed him a journal to record his thoughts--at the moment, it's the only treatment that seems to be working. He mentions her quite a bit, particularly as of late." She considered him for a moment. "Very well. It's often the parents and caretakers that need the most convincing. It's just about time for him to be receiving his medicine in any case. Come along."

The nurse hitched out her clunking ring of keys and exited the nurses' station; she strode briskly towards the enforced, heavy doors and opened a pattern of locks in a particular order, until at last the doors swung slowly inward. Remus frowned as he followed along in her curiously joyful wake, past cell after cell, from which came sounds both intriguing and terrifying, whimpers, mumbles, snarls, screams...

"Tell me, ma'am, just what is 'shock treatment'?" he asked cautiously, his voice nearly catching--it didn't sound good, whatever it was.

"A therapeutic technique for our most troublesome and violent patients, which sends an electric shock, coupled with a ribbon of magic, directly into the brain. Done numerous times, it works to eliminate aggressiveness. Potter's next treatment is scheduled for tomorrow morning--he's already had several thus far."

He'll be long gone by that time, Remus found himself thinking. A wave of cold overtook him again as a stream of shouted cursing reached him from behind a door.

"Cindy Baker," the nurse mused, shaking her head, making the repulsive silvery-blonde curls swing stiffly. "Her outbursts have become ever so much worse since the incident. Potter overturned a table on her; bruised her diaphragm rather badly."

"You can't mean Harry," Remus said, disbelieving, and looking from Cindy's door to the nurse. "He's angry, certainly, but he has been in the past. It takes quite a bit to make him want to hurt people, and he always goes for those he finds at fault. He's just not like that."

The nurse snorted derisively, not facing him and continuing her brisk tread. "The boy you knew, Mister Lupin, is no longer with us. You have obviously overestimated his mental capacity for stress and grief."

"I told you, ma'am, he's not like that," Remus responded, his voice low and dangerous.

The nurse placed her gnarled hand on the shining, sliver knob of a door at the end of a corridor; she turned at last to face him, a sneer playing about her thin, lemon-juice lips.

"You think so, Mister Lupin? You seem so very sure that no matter the event, your little ward, at least, can pull through--even if no one else can. Do you think he's celestial, Mister Lupin? Divine? I can very much assure you that you will find quite a different person than what you've come to see. He feels nothing but anger, expresses nothing but an astonishing amorality; he is a danger to everyone around him. That is the truth of the situation, and neither you nor I can deny it, or cure it."

She set to work on the many locks, ignoring the quietly seething eyes of Remus Lupin, watching her every movement, silently willing her to burst into flames. He felt a failing disappointment when she did not.

The door creaked slowly open, and Remus heard both himself and his companion gasp aloud in evident horror and slight awe.

The nurse spun on her heels and went clicking down the hall in her shining black Mary-Jane shoes, shrieking for an orderly; Remus, however, remained frozen in the doorway, taking in the sight before him in a surprised but somewhat gentle fashion, as though he had seen the sight before.

The austere, bluish light that flooded the rest of the ward was dimmer here--one of the two lamps which emitted the glow swung down over the room, broken into several pieces, hanging like a severed body, limp and impotent. The bed leaned at a forty-five angle, one of its legs bodily disassembled, and it shook as though readying itself to collapse. But the singularly most terrible part of it all was the sound.

Clink, clink. Clink, clink.

It was a hard, gravely sound, and came from behind a high pile of dull yellow flooring tiles, flung helter-skelter into a tottering heap beside the bed. The top-most tiles had been sprinkled over with an ominous amount of darkening blood, and, even as he watched, another leapt up to join the fray, clattering and causing the upper portions to fall away and reveal the cause of their disturbance.

Remus began walking forward, into the mangled room.

He was crouching low on a foundation of rough wood and concrete, working fervently on yet another tile, chipping madly away at it as though each blow, each fragment torn away, caused him insurmountable pain, his feet and hands cut and bleeding over his metallic instruments stolen from the bed--tears leaking unbidden from his eyes even as he chuckled lowly, emitting the occasional isolated, inaudible word. Remus found tears falling over his own cheeks. There was shouting in the corridor, but he shut it out, heard the door click behind him and did not remember closing it.

"Harry?" he asked the still air and the eerie, flickering light, fearing those intent, savage eyes so wide and beautiful in their single-minded madness. After a moment, during which the terrible clink-clinking finally subsided, the eyes found him. It seemed an eternity, before Harry's shaky, unsteady young voice filled the room, tearing Remus's heart to shreds.

"Sh--she wouldn't... wouldn't stop... laughing at me. Because I couldn't do anything this time. I couldn't do anything!"

Remus smiled gently, trying with all his might to stop the tears. He failed. "Not even the angels could stop themselves from falling."