The Snake Within

Chapter One: Remembrance

It's very rare when I find myself staring at a piece of parchment and feel compelled to write down every last bit of my feelings. I'm not a person who feels really, at least on the exterior. Most might say it's because of my past, then others imagine that it's just a poorly draped façade that I put on to keep my cover so darkly hidden. Perhaps both sides of Sickle are correct, but even I don't know why I'm not nearly as emotional in outward appearance as I'd like.

Perhaps, if I were a psychologist, I would subscribe that this reason is because I have an inert fear of showing my true self, and there I have a complex within myself, that self-loathing has filled in the gap where self-love should be. It is most fortunate that I am NOT a psychologist; many a client would be frightened away with a brandishing of a wand. The true reason why I can't show feelings to anyone but this parchment, is that I can't really be bother with feelings any longer in my life, period. End of diagnoses.

Of course there is the tragic story behind all this. I had loved once, but then again I can't quite call it that, as I have no idea what it truly is. So lets say, I felt very deeply for someone that felt very deeply for me, but destiny had other plans, of course. You could say we were too young to know, too young to realize the consequences, and I was too young to save the moment. So now I've become the shell, the exterior of some little bug that had once had a warm heart, and arms that longed to hold someone. The more I ruminate over the past, the more it aches deep down inside me.

Let me explain how this all evolved. We met in various occasions, never once was she completely alone. Her name was Lily Evans. She had gentle red hair, which hung just below her shoulder blades. Every year it was the same length; I admired the fact that she seemed to cling onto a semblance of normality at all times. Actually the first I had ever really noticed her was my fifth year at Hogwarts, I was fifteen, and I was content to just involve myself in my books and studies. Every time I would sit down to read in the library, I would smell the dainty fragrance of lilies waft slowly towards my senses. I couldn't help a dissatisfied fidget as I would try and escape this assault. I felt this was most definitely a personal attack upon me, which I was ill, prepared. She would always be reading something much heavier than even she was. She had also tried desperately to study on her own, but she always had that mischievous look upon her face, so it didn't surprise me that other times I would see her about the grounds she was with the four most aggravating and annoying bunch of gits imaginable.

Potter, Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin. None of which I could stomach being around let alone being partnered up with. Of course I had the constant insult of being paired up with Sirius Black in Potions. He was inept in everything, from humor to basic potion making. He was constantly grinning at me, and if I'd smelled a dung bomb once it was a million times. I'd tried to hold back any resemblance of anything I might have for the prat, but he'd pushed me too far that year.

One day, we were just doing preparations for a simple disinfectant potion (which I will NEVER let my students make, to this day, completely pointless) when Black felt it absolutely necessary to take his wand and dip it in the potion. I failed to stop him in time, as toads of shapes and sizes began to hop out of the cauldron. His wand came out half disintegrated; his smile on the other hand had the gleam of the brightest star. He turned to his best friend, "LOOK AT THAT, JAMES!" They both danced around it like two banshees in a deserted castle.

At first I was indifferent, but as I had two toads sitting on my head, and the laughing just became so infuriating, I could feel it in my toes, and it moved quickly to my stomach. The nausea turned into a burning in my chest, spreading outward to my fists as they balled tightly. The flippant hopping around of the two boys, the blank and confused look of Pettigrew (it was always apparent), the croaking of every last toad around me, it all made the burning so very hot in my system.

I'd forgotten about my wand tucked neatly in my school robes and I wheeled around, caught Black by the shoulder and punched him straight in the eye. The shock was heard all around the classroom. I had just hit the most popular and lovable kid in all of our year, maybe in all of the school. James didn't know what to do or say either. The professor certainly did. He was an old wizard of many years, and very little of him was still distinguishable. Probably too many disinfectant potions in his time, he smelled of old garlic cloves. He immediately stunned me and sent me flying out of the dungeon classroom. I landed on the stone floor outside the wooden door. As I stood up, there was the silent and still face of Headmaster Dumbledore. I knew that this was the end of my quiet and innocent existence in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.