Stepping over the Edge

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" - George Bernard Shaw

Stepping over the edge - Prologue

All my life I've been pushed around. It started when I was only one year old, when Voldemort killed my parents and then tried to kill me. It didn't get better when I had to spend all those years with the Dursleys or when I found out that I was a wizard and had to face my parents' murderer over and over again. I have been pushed around for so many years now, and it's kind of strange that I didn't snap before.

But it was that summer that I was finally pushed over the edge. That summer when I had to watch my godfather, the closest thing to a father I ever had, get killed and then find out that I was destined to either end as a murderer or murdered. Kill or be killed, the law of the jungle. That was the last straw. I had barely turned sixteen, and still I had faced more then anyone should be allowed to. If it had been someone else, maybe they had been pushed over the edge earlier, but that doesn't matter. The fact is that this was my last push, the last thing that was needed to block me from the world.

The Dursleys didn't exactly help me with my grief, not that I had expected them to, they just made sure I wouldn't come back, and that I would stay on the other side of the barrier. As soon as we got "home" from Kings Cross station, my uncle killed the last thing that would have kept me going that summer, my beloved Hedwig. He slammed her into the wall before I even had the chance to react. It was cold-blooded murder, and he did it without regret.

I don't remember much about what happened after that, but I think I might have attacked him. Not with a wand or anything, just with my fist. You can probably understand that I didn't have much chance against my whale of an uncle. The next thing I can remember is lying on the floor in my small bedroom, blood dripping from my mouth and bruises starting to show on my stomach. But I didn't complain about that. My uncle had destroyed my last piece of hope, my last wish that there was something good in this world.

So I gave up. I didn't care anymore. There was nothing to live for, nothing to keep me going. I didn't cry. I wasn't able to share even one tear for my friend, not one tear for my Hedwig. You could probably say that I died with her. My soul didn't have much to hang on to any longer, and it slowly slipped away from me.

I hardly left my room all summer. I stayed there, in my private shelter, where I was blocked from the world, blocked from all that was bad. I lay on my bed thinking about my life, what had gone wrong, what I could have done differently, but most of all, about what could have been. I dreamed about a future that would never happen, a future with a clean past and me standing there happily with everyone I had ever loved. I know that it wasn't good to dwell on it, but I couldn't stop myself. I wished for it so badly.

One night I went down to the kitchen, not to find anything to eat, but to find a knife. I found a nice sharp one that I brought back to my room. The Dursleys probably noticed that it was missing the next day, and they probably figured out that it was me that had taken it. But they didn't say anything. I think they were quite freaked out over the way I was behaving and didn't want to push the matter. So they left me with the knife.

I don't know why I stole it in the first place. For days I just watched it, watched how the light reflected in the blank metal. I thought it was so beautiful. As the days past I found myself wanting to destroy the cleanness of the metal, wanted to make it dirty, to show that life couldn't be that beautiful.

One night I pressed it into my thigh. It hurt like hell. I watched as the blood ran down the knife and my leg, but only for a second. The pain was so strong that it made me forget about everything else, made me focus on that alone. I didn't even have any nightmares that night. I could sleep in peace.

So that's how it started. I don't now how many scars I have, but I can tell you that there are quite a lot. It felt so good to just press the knife into the flesh and feel how everything else just disappeared. I didn't have any worries; there was only the pain.

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