Ice

"One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields..."

Her ring glittered in the cold sunlight--she looked at it contemplatively for a moment. The light reflected off the faultless diamond and shone brilliantly in a million different directions; she moved her long, graceful fingers slightly and watched the prisms of light dance...

The ring looked wrong on her alabaster hands. It was somehow incongruous, almost bizarre, like a child trying on costume jewelry. It was too sparkling, too dramatically gorgeous, too blatantly striking. She had at one point thought it perfect, but now she realized she had hated it the whole time. It was nothing like her pale, faint beauty; her gentle, colorless exquisiteness--

And so with a sudden jolt, she slid the ring off her finger--and held it in her fingertips--

It was the first time she had ever taken her wedding ring off, and with a faint tremor of fear came a strong feeling of freedom--

This is over, she realized suddenly--

And with slightly trembling hands, before she could let heself stop herself, she tossed the ring gently, but hard enough--

And with a faint splash, it was gone--

I just threw my life away, she thought suddenly. Shouldn't that upset me? But she wasn't upset at all--on the contrary, extremely relaxed and content--she hadn't enjoyed this feeling of serenity in years--

Because now this leaves me with no choice... but to end it all... here...

She had always known this would be the place to die; here, her childhood hideout, her teenage retreat, her adult secret. She had been coming here her entire life, and no one had ever known. She had almost told one person, she had almost told him, but something inside her had stopped her... only l had she realized how close she had come to losing everything.

For certainly, he would have destroyed this sanctuary; this haven that was the closest she would ever come to heaven. He would have "put it to use", without doubt. It would be teeming and swarming with Death Eaters and training camps and torture chambers--

She was indisputably lucky that she had the instinct not to tell him. For she wanted to die, and she wanted to die alone. If she could not live a life of joy and happiness, she could at least find tranquility in her death--

For she would not be disturbed here, wherever she was. She never was sure--she had just discovered it one day, by accident, and fell in love with its emptiness, its aloneness, its perfect solitude... Just sky, and ice, and water. Flawlessly hard and cold and unfeeling. Maybe it was in the Arctic, or possibly near Antarctica. She had never had to learn geography, but regardless, it didn't matter...

Perhaps this place was only in her mind. But what was the difference? She was here and she would never leave...

I'll never have to go back, she thought, the idea almost making her smile. And it had been years since she had smiled.

God, she was finally through with this--it was finally over--she was done with the pain and the loneliness and the ache and the unfairness. She could let go of her regrets and her mistakes, of her painful memories, they were meaningless--they were not necessary--they were over. She did not have to act any longer, she did not have to lie any longer, she did not have to live any longer--

She was free to let it all go, to forget the past, to slide out of the present, to kill the future. She was free let herself become numb... to let herself become nothing...

She was laying on her front now, at the tip of the iceberg she was on. Her eyes faded in and out of focus as she watched the still water in front of her--it was gorgeous, light and shiny, gently reflecting the rays of the setting sun. She thought briefly of life, of the glow of morning sunlight, of the glory of a hard thunderstorm, of the beauty of thick sheets of rain, of the pretty innocence of the dew on a flower--

No, she knew, she would much prefer this--the soft sunset, the hard, flawless expanse of ice--the smooth, unbroken surface of the water. Everything even and calm and unfeeling. No pain.

Yes, she would prefer this...

And this is what she would have, not the mess of the pain and emotions of life, but this cold, steely, perfect eternity of death...

Her body barely made a splash as it slid into the water...