Most of the Time

MOST OF THE TIME

Most of the time I don't think about it. About them. Or about him. Most of the time I go to sleep peacefully, I have no dreams, and I wake up at least fresh enough to face a day of study, teaching, and plants. Most of the time I can endure it.

I have a satisfying job - more than satisfying. I have the job I have wanted almost since I started school. I am useful and respected; children grow up thinking that my subject could be a wonderful thing to spend the rest of their lives pursuing. I have a bunch of eager young scholars around me now - one day we'll have to set up that Herbology Institute or College everyone is talking about. They are really too many and too advanced for Hogwarts.

So why not make a start? Merlin, that's it. Because every time I raise a hand to start working, the hand falls back. Because there is the thing that is eating away at me, the thing I don't confess to anyone. Because everything I achieved is dust and ashes in my mouth - yes, deep down, it is. What is wrong with a man who knows, as I do, that he was born for one job, who does it well and easily - and who still cannot bring himself to believe in it, cannot find the energy to go on; someone who leaves most of his work undone?

I can't believe in it. Every time I hear words of praise or creative criticism, there is something in me that answers with something nasty, cynical, destructive. I know that if I had fully committed myself to research, I would have achieved three times as much as I have (and still the ignorant world outside praises me!); most of what I could have done, what I should have done, what is actually quite clear in my mind, lies untouched in small unconnected notes on scraps of parchment. Great scholar indeed! Great Herbologist! And of course, the more I fail to achieve, the more I despise myself. The more that ugly little cynical voice has to say.

But that is not the heart of it. I know where the heart of it is - the thing that cannot be changed, cannot be appeased, cannot be silenced, cannot be forgotten. It is in front of me every day of the week; and there have been times when I wished old snake-face had got me; when I felt that even being burned alive by a blazing Sorting Hat would have been better. Physical fire can only burn flesh, after all; and it has an end, even when that end is death. But memories... Not often; not most of the time. But there was a time when it was almost every minute. And even now that I no longer feel it, it is still eating away at me in silence.

There must be a sense of humour, somewhere; and it must be a bitter, angry, vindictive humour. Rather like old Snape's, in fact. There was the one person in Hogwarts whom I hated and feared above all others; the person I could not feel like forgiving, even when I found that he had lived and died a hero. He had done too much to me. And there is the man I understand now... the man I sometimes fear I am becoming.

I know how he lived, now. How he lived and how he died. I know what drove him - why he threw himself into the darkness, to salve a pain that could never be assuaged; and where he found the strength to rebel against the darkness, and to survive that rebellion for decades, never letting his master have an inkling that his worst, his most dedicated enemy was right there at his feet.

I know, now, what he felt when he looked at me. Or at Harry. "She could be here. She could be here if this worthless lump had been taken instead. She could be here, instead of this carbon-copy of James Potter. They are here, and she is gone... gone because of them." How could he ever have forgiven Harry, or me? How could he forgive anything that was there instead of her?

There are times when I could scream; when all my self is clenched in one act of despair, of helplessness, of void, of rage - when there is nothing I can do except one howl, a disgustingly helpless, ludicrously inadequate scream - GINNY! GINNY! When I take things and smash them against the wall, when I hit my fists till they bleed, when I roar and storm and rage....

....and there I am again, and nothing has changed, and I stand there again, helpless and empty, with a need that cannot be filled, cannot be silenced.

Someone else? Suurrrrrre. All girls are the same, after all. It's not as though you would meet only once the one person who could make you happy for the rest of your life. It's not as though you, or you, or you, you funny people, you who think life is so easy - it's not as though you had to stand there with a grin on your face as you watched her marry your best friend, who is also everyone's hero including yours - and then go home to your cold and empty and lonesome flat, and lie down on your bed, and sleep - after a while.

Hating Harry? That is impossible. Anyone who knows Harry appreciates and admires him. He's a faithful friend, generous and kind, a brilliant colleague, the best DADA professor Hogwarts ever had. Hating Ginny? How could I possibly hate my reason to live? It is only since I have seen her in Harry's arms that I 've understood old Snape. How he could live all his life loving a woman who had rejected him - and knowing, what is more, that he had deserved to be rejected. How it would be worse than death to lose her; how the thought of vengeance for her would be enough to give him more strength than the Enemy could imagine - strength enough to fight a war of infiltration and subversion of which nobody else would have been capable.

I know what it is like to live, to be ready to die, for one woman. I know what it is like, to have lost... your reason to live... for ever.

As I said, most of the time I don't think about it. But sometimes I break things.