Dying Inside

Dying Inside

This is how the world ends

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

How many times have those lines been quoted, I wonder. It's become a cliché by now, I suppose. But then, all clichés have a deep, cold, hard nugget of truth within them. That's how they become clichés in the first place, I suppose. I sit and ponder this. After all, I have little else to do these days.

I moved away from Hogsmeade some months ago now. Now, I have a small bungalow in a seaside town, an anonymous bungalow just like hundreds of thousands of others, amongst all the other retired folk. The ones who spend their days walking with their dogs along the sea front, or sitting in tea shops, and, as they say, waiting for death. They walk round with the aimlessness of the retired, with neither jobs nor hobbies, killing time, before time kills them.

It's not a particularly attractive town, I must admit, but it serves for me. I rarely go out these days. Books are a solace, as is some of the Muggle technology that would not have worked in Hogsmeade. I am coming up to speed with things like DVDs and the Internet, things would that baffle my magical friends. For, unlike me, they have little need of them.

Sometimes I think that I should perhaps offer myself up for study. There must be some department in the Ministry or at St Mungo's that would be interested in a case such as mine. But, to be honest, I don't relish being poked at and prodded around. And the unspoken sympathy. I think that would the most irritating of all.

My self imposed banishment is not such a trial as it might have been for some of my friends. After all, I did live as a Muggle for the first eleven years of my life. And even at Hogwarts, I'd go home for the holidays and live in a Muggle household. Not that I saw many of my old friends after starting at Hogwarts – it's a little difficult to explain your absences when they are all at local schools. Yes, I knew the cover stories – scholarships, boarding school and the rest of it – but I had no real talents that would explain such a scholarship. I wasn't artistic, I wasn't musical – at least, not in the sense of being a great performer. I wasn't that bright that a school would snatch me up for my brains. Oh, I was bright enough, but not that bright. But I was good at magic. Difficult to explain to one's Muggle contemporaries, though.

When I go out these days, it's either for a late night walk, or to the supermarket. I drive there (another skill I've had to acquire recently), pick up a basket, wander round, browse the shelves, go to the checkout, then drive back again, hoping I don't knock anyone down on the way. Perhaps I should get a dog, to give me more of an excuse for a walk. For companionship, perhaps. But I don't even feel the need for that these days. I can imagine some of my wizarding friends smiling tolerantly. Driving, for heaven's sake. Surely you don't have to do that. But I do.

More and more, I find myself retreating into memories of childhood. Not for the innocence, or nostalgia, or for all the other sorts of reasons that people are supposed to regress, but because those were my Muggle days. And my wizarding days are fading fast.

We lived in a town very far from here. Or Hogsmeade. I suppose it was a normal enough childhood. What was a normal childhood? Was it any different for my Muggle contemporaries? I've no idea. I know now that people like me could do 'accidental' magic, as we called it. Only two incidents stick in my mind, though there may have been others. And they may not have been magic at all – but they seemed like it at the time.

One was in the playground when I was very young. It's odd, but now I can't even remember exactly what it was I did. But whatever it was, it made everyone else back off very fast. I do remember being surrounded by a sea of faces, and wondering what it was all about, until a teacher noticed the gathering and came to investigate. Whatever it had been, I insisted over and over that it was nothing to do with me, with everyone else insisting it was – until I burst into tears, and the teacher took me away.

The other time was very different. I was older. I had been given a bicycle as a Christmas present. In those days, there was a lot less traffic on the roads, and I used to cycle quite happily around the town without my parents objecting. And no cycle helmets or anything else like that in those days.

I was coming down a road which led into town, a road which was really quite a steep hill. I had thought it'd be fun to see how fast I could go. But now I was out of control. I was going too fast, and with the slope of the hill, couldn't slow down. I knew from bitter experience that using the front brakes could send me over the handlebars. If I locked the back wheel while turning, the bike would skid away from underneath me. I'd done that too. And the road had too many bends. I kept jabbing at the back brake when I could, feeling the bike judder, then pick up speed again as I released the brake.

The road was becoming built up now, with houses either side, and parked cars in the road. I had to dodge these as I came round corners ... until on this one corner, there was a car coming the other way, and there wasn't enough room, and I slammed on the brakes, felt the back wheel sliding, knew that I was going down, right in front of the car.

And then everything went ... funny. I can't describe it. But the next thing I knew I was lying on the road, the bike a little way off, its back wheel ticking round gently, and I was looking up at the shiny chrome bumper of the car. Yes, in those days, cars did indeed have shiny chrome bumpers. And this one was a few inches from my face. I could hear voices yelling, and the footsteps of running people.

Okay. I hadn't ended up under the car. I must have come a nasty cropper, though. But I had no aches or pains. I knew all too well how you could get cuts and grazes coming off a bike. I had the scars to prove it. Still have, come to that. And I didn't feel sore anywhere. Last time I'd come off the bike, I'd been a mass of bruises. I rolled clear of the car bumper. No pain. No broken bones, or I'd have felt them.

Someone loomed over me, and I saw the face of the driver. He was – I don't know how old really. He was grownup, and at that age grownups are, well, grownup. But he wasn't that old. I mean, he wasn't bald, or had grey hair or anything.

His face – I could see a mixture of anger, fright and fear. He stared at me for a minute or so as I began struggling upright.

'You're not hurt?'

There was a wealth of disbelief in his voice.

'Don't think so.'

I was sitting up by now.

'But ... but ...' He spluttered off into incoherence.

I could hear someone else yelling, 'I've phoned for an ambulance.'

I got to my feet. 'No, really, I'm fine.'

I looked round - a knot of people surrounded me, drawn from their houses by the squeal of brakes. Everyone gazed at me, disbelieving.

'But ...' the driver began. 'But – you came off. Right in front of me. I know I was only doing thirty, but even so ...'

I had a sudden flashback to that moment in the playground. A circle of faces, all looking at me with stunned disbelief. But this was worse: they were all looking at me as if it was my fault I wasn't hurt, as if ... as if I were some kind of freak.

I wanted to get out there.

'Look, I'm fine. Honestly.'

I bent down and picked up my bike.

'Not even a scratch,' I heard someone whisper.

The way they were behaving was even more frightening than coming off my bike.

'No harm done,' I gabbled. 'I've got to get home.'

None of them moved. I pushed my bike forward, and, reluctantly, the small circle opened.

'Look,' said the driver, 'you can't go without someone looking at you.'

'I'm fine. Honest.' I pushed my bike a little bit further forward. 'Sorry to have worried you like that,' I said to the man.

'But ...'

I seized my chance, and pushed my way through, and jumped on the bike. I didn't look back.

Well, now I know why I wasn't hurt. But it was a scary moment. Not because of the accident, but because of the way they'd all reacted. Still, it taught me not to ride my bike like that again.

I never did tell anyone about that morning. Not Mum and Dad. Not people at Hogwarts, either. But it always stayed with me. And I knew, after I'd got my letter and all the rest of it, how careful I'd have to be in future. It wasn't the lack of cuts and grazes and broken bones that worried me – quite the contrary. It had been the expression on people's faces. No one had actually said, 'As if by magic ...', but it wasn't far beneath the surface. And they had been scared. So, I thought, when I eventually found out that it actually had been magic, what if they had guessed? And what would they have done to me? I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out.

Not that it matters any more now.

I think of my childhood as I reach for light switches on the wall, as I turn knobs and press buttons, just as I did all those years ago. I took electricity for granted, as I later took magic for granted, and now I'm taking electricity for granted once more. I have gone full circle. Occasionally I imagine that the remote control is a wand, but then the illusion is broken as I stare down at it in the semi-darkness, trying to remember which button I should be pressing. But the car was the main problem to begin with. I was too young to have learned to drive when I left the Muggle world, and learning for the first time at my age was not easy. I think there were times when I had the instructor quite baffled as I struggled with traffic lights or pedestrian crossings.

I watch television in the evenings - well, some evenings. I don't watch it as much as I used to. I'm old fashioned enough still to get my news from a newspaper. Some of the programmes I watched to get the feel of the world I was re-entering. Some made no sense to me at all. Then I suspect that they may have made no sense even if I hadn't left the Muggle world.

I've found I've reverted to old films on DVD – the films of my childhood. These do make sense, even if they speak of a world long since gone. When I was young, we went as a family to the cinema once a week, whatever the film – although, back then, the town had three cinemas, so you did at least have some choice of what you saw. I shall watch a DVD tonight, I think. It's raining too much for an evening stroll. But then, it rains a lot here.

I've also started remembering my early days at Hogwarts. In the past, it was the last two years that stood out in my mind, when I'd become confident in what I was doing, when Dumbledore first became Headmaster. Those were the days after Grindelwald, and before He Who Must Not Be Named. Silly, still calling him that, but I can't break the habit of a lifetime. Now he's been got rid of for once and for all, people refer to him as Tom Riddle. Potter started that, and it caught on.

But my early days – they had been submerged in my mind for many a year. For imagine a frightened eleven year old, away from home for the first time, thrust into a place like Hogwarts. The train, with all those other oddballs. The trip across the lake. The Sorting. The Hat talking to me. 'Hm. Quiet one here, hey?' I wasn't sure whether I should say anything back or not. 'Quite bright, but idle at times, aren't you?' Yes, I agreed mentally. 'Well, not Hufflepuff, and definitely not Slytherin – Ravenclaw!'

I hadn't realised he'd finished, and it wasn't until Dumbledore took the Hat off my head and pointed me to the right table that I realised that it was all over. The Hat, of course, was quite right. And I wasn't Gryffindor material either. But I sat there among the other new Ravenclaws, pondering how it could read my mind. A mystery I gave up on a long time ago.

I hadn't realised why Slytherin was out of the question either – at least, not for a few days. Not until Jenny Wakefield came into the Common Room in tears. She too was Muggle-born - although the Slytherin in question had put it rather more bluntly. And it was then that we realised the great divide in the wizarding world. I'll say this for Dumbledore – he did more for the Muggle-borns than anyone. In fact, it was because of Dumbledore that I got my first job. He had wanted to set up some sort of induction programme for Muggle-borns – well, both for the children, and the parents. I was involved from the outset. I could tell the families exactly what was involved, how the system worked, and so on. As a recent graduate myself, I could relate to them. The programme turned out to be a great success. So much so I found myself going overseas, setting up similar schemes there.

Then He Who Must Not Be Named began to appear on the scene. I was still abroad a lot of the time then, but that didn't stop him wrecking my life, along with those of hundreds of others.

You see, I married another Ravenclaw. Only difference was, she was a Pureblood. Her parents didn't mind – or if they did, they hid it well. Alison had been involved with the programme too. She had stayed back in England whilst I went to Australia for three months. Of course, to Riddle and his mob, she was a blood traitor. Not only marrying a Mudblood, but helping them get into Hogwarts too! So one night, they broke in.

I never did see the body, and from what I've been told, that was just as well. I came back for the funeral, then went straight back out to Australia. The three months became three years, before it seemed that You Know Who had finally met his nemesis in little Harry Potter.

Enough of the brooding! Find a film. One that will take me out of all this for an hour or two.

So. Tom Riddle has gone for good now, thanks to Potter and his band of friends. Why then, do you ask yourselves, have I taken up residence in an anonymous bungalow in a Muggle seaside resort? Well, that's a very different story.

I moved out of the induction programme into educational publishing. New teachers would come along at Hogwarts who would write a new syllabus, and we'd find a book to suit. Or have one written. We began expanding abroad, into relatively small countries without many publishing facilities of their own. New Zealand, for example, was just starting to set up its own wizarding school. Before that, they'd had to go to Australia for an education. They came to us for advice on the setting up of courses, what syllabus to use, textbooks they would need. And our textbooks would have to be adapted for their particular curriculum. It was almost like a holiday, going out there, asking as consultant, and escaping Britain and its memories. Even after they had the school up and running, I would go out there once a year to talk to them, bring some sample books, that sort of thing. Enjoyable whilst it lasted, but then, one night, my life changed for good. Dramatic, I know, put like that, but true.

I suppose I must have been vaguely aware of it for some time, before the night that started off the whole business. I'd been clearing out some old drawers and cupboards of papers and parchments, and a great heap lay in the fireplace. I flicked my wand at them with a mutter of 'Incendio'. Nothing happened. I looked down to see that it really was my wand in my hand, and yes, it was that slim piece of wood that Ollivander had sold me all those years ago. 'Incendio'. Still nothing. Puzzled, I looked at the wand and muttered 'Lumos'. The faintest of glimmers.

My world suddenly shifted. I'd been half-aware over the past few months of having to repeat spells which hadn't worked the first time, but hadn't thought a great deal to it. Now it all fell into place, and the old insecurities which I had thought were long since buried rose up once more.

My magic was failing.

Perhaps, I thought, it's too late at night. Perhaps those two glasses of wine had affected me. But, deep down, I knew the truth. I was dying inside – or, at least, my magic was.

In the end, I went to bed, thinking: it'll be all right in the morning. And it was. The next morning I flicked my wand at the fireplace, and the parchments went up: whoosh! No problem then. But I knew it wasn't as simple as that.

My old insecurities. Jenny Wakefield wasn't the only one to have run ins with Slytherins. One morning I was late to Transfiguration. There was only the one seat left in the room, and that was next to a Slytherin boy. I knew vaguely who he was – I'd seen him about in the corridors, but didn't know his name.

I can't remember now what our task was – changing something to something else, but what exactly, I've no idea. But it became an unspoken challenge between the two of us, to see who would get there first. And to my mortification, he did.

'Ha! Just shows how useless Mudbloods really are.'

I had a sudden surge of anger combined with my annoyance. Whatever it was that was in front of me went up in a cloud of smoke, and his smirk grew wider.

'Professor,' he called, 'I think someone's just had an accident here.'

And there was no riposte worth making. He had beaten me to it. I had not only failed in the Transfiguration, I had then set fire to whatever it was. When he, as a Pureblood, made a mistake, he had the self confidence to cover it up, to move on, to try again. If you're a Muggle-born, you don't have that kind of confidence – not unless you're very confident in the first place, or unless you're very very good. And I was neither.

It was my brother-in-law who first noticed. We weren't friends, but we did meet from time to time. I think he missed his sister nearly as much as I missed my wife. We would meet, not in our homes – as I said, we weren't really friends, merely held together by some sense of mutual loss - but at some neutral place. I'm not quite sure why I kept the connection going – guilt, perhaps? If she had married someone else, she wouldn't have been a target. But then, she was Pureblood, like him, and it was the Purebloods who did the killing.

We had been in a bar in Diagon Alley that night – it was convenient both of us. At the end of the evening, we started to make our way out. Our usual way of getting home was to Apparate, but I'd given that up some months before. I knew I was losing it, and things can turn nasty if you make a mistake when you Apparate. I made some excuse, said I'd had too much to drink, and that I'd Floo home. That was still okay – Floo powder still worked for me.

He didn't believe me. He'd always been sharp, and not much passed him by.

'No,' he said, 'that's not why, is it?' looking at me sideways. I made some blustering response, which he ignored. 'I've been noticing. You don't seem to use your wand much these days.'

I knew it was time to give up pretending.

'You're right,' I said quietly. 'It's been going now for about a year.'

What was more galling at the time was that my brother in law was that selfsame Slytherin who had taunted me all those years ago. Yet I didn't get the reaction I expected.

'You used to be good,' he remarked.

Had I? Even though we were now related – well, only by marriage, and a defunct one at that – I could still remember those taunts.

'Maybe,' I said wearily. 'But not any more.'

'What happened?'

'I wish I knew. It comes and goes – some days I'm back on form. Others ...' I shrugged.

He stared at me a little longer, obviously curious. 'What are you going to do?'

Another shrug. 'Not sure yet. Still thinking about it.' That was a lie – I'd thought about it for a long time now, and I knew what I'd have to do. 'Anyway, we'll meet again soon?'

He nodded. 'Soon.' I think he was curious to follow my decline.

I forced a smile. 'I'll be in touch.'

I wasn't being honest there. My plans were made, and I'd be dropping out of the wizarding community very soon now. But I didn't want to tell him that.

He nodded again. I thought he was going to come over to the fireplace as well, out of sympathy, but he gave a final smile, and turned away.

And so here I am. My parents died quite some time ago – natural causes. They had a good innings. I would visit them from time to time, but things were always a bit awkward. Their only child – the one who disappeared off, and came back as a changeling, someone different, and who now lived in a world that was beyond their understanding. Father had a heart attack in his late sixties, which these days was no great age. Mother died in a nastier way – cancer is never an easy way to go. As I stood by her graveside, I realised that now it was just me. No parents any more, no wife, no children. They left a decent sum of money, which I had invested. My earnings in the wizard community had supported me quite adequately, for I lived modestly enough. Now that Muggle money had come in useful. My inheritance helped pay for this bungalow, one of the many occupied by retired folk who have decided to come and live down by the sea. As had I.

And now I was as much a Muggle as I had been as a boy. My wand lay in a drawer. Every so often, I used to take it out and whisper, 'Lumos!'. Each time the flicker of light appeared, it was feebler and briefer, until the days came when no light shone at all. It's several weeks since I bothered trying. Who knows – one day, I might pick it up and see the light shining again. But I rather doubt that.

Time for my evening walk, I think. If it's not raining, that is.