The Voice

She knows she has to do it.

She knows that she can't stay here any longer, that she has to go. Or else she'll hurt someone. Not just herself.

The sky is a dark purple velvet, with glittering diamonds in the sky. She stops and stares at it for a moment and glances at the crescent moon that has formed right over her dormitory.

She shakes her head, discerning that she must go, must leave this wretched place where nightmares have haunted her every moment of her existence.

She picks up her small feet over the grassy terrain, minding how with each step she is getting closer to her end. Her feet sink only a little into the wet, kelly green grass but before she knows it, dark mahogany mud is covering her once nicely polished, ebony boots.

She thinks she hears it again, right behind her, and swirls around quickly trying to see where it came from.

The speaker is too quick for her, she cannot find him. Her eyes dart about the grounds trying to see any figures moving, breathing, speaking...

The voice is back.

It moves too quickly to be seen, but she knows that it's there, somebody or something is there.

Sometimes it tells her to scream in class or to laugh hysterically at her Potions master's slimy hair or to chop off her own shining, reddish-orange locks that once surrounded her head like a halo. Sometimes it tells her that he's coming back for her because he wants her and he won't let go and other times it orders her to run a knife over her wrists just letting droplets of blood peep out from her pale ivory flesh.

Wherever that voice is hiding, she knows someday that she will find it. Maybe it is hiding behind that tree over there - it doesn't matter. She'll find it soon enough.

She runs her slender fingers through her chopped short hair as she ambles on. They are long and slim, but cracked from lack of cream and moisture. They often bleed when she cracks her knuckles or when she starts to write so she usually has a tissue in her robe pocket. The idea of smearing cream into them has never occurred to her. Her nails are extensive and shaped to the stylish squared off look. Tan nail polish is chipping off from the French manicure that Hermione Granger had done in an attempt to cheer her up. Nothing can cheer her up.

He will never go away.

She can never be happy again.

Her raven black robe, heavy with stone, drags on the ground, picking up mud and grass as she carefully moves closer to her destiny. She is wearing her favorite outfit, jeans faded from wear and a white shirt that reads in carefully scripted letters, "Life is beautiful."

She likes lying to herself about this, telling herself that life is beautiful and her life is wonderful. She tells herself that she is an only child and that her parents adore her and love her and that they would do anything for her. She persuades herself that her first year at Hogwarts was simply magnificent, that, instead of being a slave to a memory that later raped her, she was popular and had too many friends to count. In her fantasy world, she is as rich as the Queen, perhaps richer, and everybody adores her.

She doesn't like who she is.

She hates this shadow being that she has become ever since that dreadful first year. She is invisible to most, a thing that can be pushed and shoved about in the corridor, a statue in the classroom that can't move its arm, a being that is just always there.

She's been turned into ice.

She can no longer feel anything except a terrible pain as if she is slowly melting away. When people say, "Bitch! Get out of the way!" it is no longer a stab to her heart. It is like a blunt knife being thrown at a brick wall. It has no effect on her whatsoever. Her heart is ice and nothing can dent it or change it.

She is nearing the lake. The indigo water laps up against the sandy shore creating a clicking noise. Although it looks calm and gentle, she knows that there is a strong current and many creatures dwell in the fathoms deep basin.

She thinks of the elegantly scripted note that she left on the night- stand. It reads in her beautiful handwriting:

To Whomever Finds This.

I am so sorry but I must do this. I cannot keep bringing so much pain to my family and those who surround my life and to myself. I wish I could have somehow avoided this but it's too much. Nobody ever loved me. I wonder if God even loved me enough to watch out for me, for surely if He had, it would not have led to this. Tom has returned again. I do not know where he hides but where I am going ghosts cannot enter...

Please move on with your lives. I won't have any impact on you.

The night-stand that holds that blessed letter is next to the four poster bed that she has slept in for nearly six years. The soft, feather-filled mattress with the thick, crimson coverlet over it -

She shivers as sudden breeze blows by and scolds herself for remembering something so silly as a bed.

Now she has entered onto the shore. She slips off her shoes to feel the cool, smooth sand beneath her feet one last time when -

I'm here, my pretty.

She whirls around but no one is there. Crossing herself, she steps on the sand. It feels so good beneath her feet, a relief to the cramped shoes that she has had to wear over her delicate feet for years now.

The water looks dangerous and she wonders again if she should do this. It's the only thing left. You must. The voice tells her, but this time, instead of looking for its owner, she nods her head, suddenly reassured that what she is going to do is the right thing.

With each step towards the dark, menacing lake, thoughts flood her head. Memories of when she was young...young and so innocent, so naïve. And then as she had grown towards adulthood, the memories became a little more painful, a little more horrible.

Her right foot steps into the water. She gasps as the frigid liquid slides over her foot, and braces herself for the next foot. She wades in deeper and deeper, until the water is up to her neck, and then...

Suddenly she is under the water. She squeezes her eyes shut then opens them, realizing she is drifting towards some rocks - she does not want to die being smashed up against rough rocks, but the current is too strong. She struggles to make for the comfort of cool, moist sand beneath her dainty feet. Her attempt to turn around is extinguished by the raging urrents and numbing cold.

Cold, brackish water forces her mouth open and she discovers herself swallowing what seems like gallons of salty, slimy water, slamming down her throat and into her body, making it convulse with disgust.

She finds herself against the rocks and puts her now gray blue hand into what she thought was part of the rock but finds that it is a thin orifice.

She glances up towards the surface of the water and realizes suddenly that she does not want to die. Not in this freezing, suffocating tomb of water. A picture of her mother smiling at her and reaching out to hug her flashes through her mind and now, desperate to live, she tries to pull her hand out of the crack.

The slit won't let go.

She tugs and tugs but she only finds her hand becoming more stuck. Her lungs are screaming for oxygen. Her once pale crimson lips have turned to a frosty lavender blue. She grows weaker and weaker...

She gives up her last ounce of strength to pull one more time and silently screams in pain as her point finger rips from being wedged between the two stones. She stares up at the blurry moon, and stops tugging. Her milk white hand is stuck. It will always be stuck.

Her life playing out in her mind, she stops pulling and floats in the water. Her face is waxy, the stretched across her skull as she stares at the rocks. The voice calls to her again, Don't worry...you'll be fine...

A smile upon her lips on hearing these comforting words, her eyes glaze over and her heart beats one last time...