Identity

Identity-

It's true what they say about Azkaban.

When I say true, I do not mean the powers of the Dementors as they feed on the souls of prisoners. Yes, they do suck out every last bit of happiness, leeching one's mind and memory of everything that they hold precious. Yes, they feast on the senses of a person, drowning them in their own misery as they take from them the spoils of any life a man might have once enjoyed. Yes, they force one to re-live what they have pushed away and forgotten, force out those old feelings of grief and despair and surround a person with nothing but everything he's ever hated until he goes mad.

These are feelings that I have to live with every day. It is like living in an everlasting nightmare, and with no one there to wake me up. I have vague recollections of someone, of a woman who would come running into my room when I was only a child and shake me awake, someone who would hold me as I recounted vivid details with tears running down my cheeks. She would smooth down my hair and whisper to me, but whatever she said is lost now, taken away by the Dementors, as are the details of the woman's face. All I can remember is her hair, how it tickled my skin as I clung to her, a terrified mass of nine-year old hysteria. And even that is going, like the lost details of the room that I stopped dreaming about years ago. I cannot understand why I yearn for the itch of thick wool against my skin every time I finger these tattered robes, or why I feel as if the rats I talk to in my cell understand what I am saying to them.

In the same way, I do not understand why I dream of this woman, why I wake up screaming when I see her face, her eyes wide open and glassy and her blood on my hands. I do not know who she is, I simply remember pointing my wand at her and the green light that burst from within it. But I cannot remember the whole scene, only parts, like her scream going silent, or the sound of her body hitting a hollow wooden floor, and maybe her hair, ticklish as I brush it away from her face.

She is only one of my ghosts, only one of the faces from the past that come to me in here, only one of the people whom I have no name for but some relation to. Nameless specters that flash before me, and not on one face is there a smile. They all look at me as if they are shocked, all pleading for something, spirits who wander in and out of my cell and my mind as they please. They all act out a gruesome play of sorts, grabbing at me, always the same script for their performance, always the same with me unable to stop anything until it is over.

It starts with a tall man, as tall as I am, huddling in the corner of my cell, his long hair straggling down his face. The red of his hair and the red of his blood mingle, dark splotches dotting his skin and the flesh of his earlobe torn roughly. He cradles the bloody stump of a wrist in his hand and as he turns to face me he mouths something, something that is so impossibly faint that I cannot hear his voice. When I reach out to him, to try and hear what he is saying, he simply dissolves into mist. The coldness swirls around me, almost as if it is passing through me, and in my head I can hear the voices of others, other people whom I can at barely place faces to because all that remains of them are whispers. A girl laughs and shouts, 'Charlie, put me down! Charlie!' and I wonder who this Charlie is. I suppose that it is his voice I hear next, the loud guffaw that fills me with an inexplicable longing for something. I am forced to watch as a hazy picture swims in front of me, but it is only a picture; even when I try to touch something I only find the cold, cold fog that has descended in my cell, blocking out everything else.

I see the bodies. The girl who must have been laughing lying face down in the field, the grass spattered with her blood and her body twisted oddly. There is another person lying far apart from her, a man who lies curled up on his side, but he is not asleep: he lies wide awake, gasping for breath as he holds a shirt to his torso to try and stop the blood that gushes from him.

And I, as I have always done, must have done, will always do in my memory, snatch it away, watch him convulse, a croak of a whisper falling from his lips with his last breath. I suppose this is Charlie, but I am not sure, because there are other names in my mind, other names that dance on the tip of my tongue but refuse to make themselves heard; there are other bodies in my vision.

One boy drops to the dirt on the threshold of a house that towers into the sky. I know he is younger than I am, but I do not know why I know this. I also know that there is another boy who is so much like him in looks, hiding. I grasp the hand of the dead brother and look for the living one; I fling the already cooling body out of my way and wait for the inevitable sounds of footsteps behind me before I turn and level a wand at him, before I say the words that force him down, identical faces frozen in an eternal expression of shock.

A creak sounds from the door. It is not the door to my little prison; the sound that fills my ears is from the door I cannot see, heavy footfalls stopping dead as I rise to meet the new person who had dared to invade my thoughts. The shadow in the doorway is huddled and I can see him shaking, and I once again feel a thrill because I think he might be afraid of me now, but he is not, he is simply bewildered as he looks around, as he steps over the bodies to come to me, embracing me even as I thrust my wand into his chest, lodging it there so that the tip rests against the point where I know his heart must beat. He looks at me with disappointment in his eyes. I can hear his voice in my head. He does not scream; he speaks quietly as he looks up at me, his expression one of simple resignation.

'Are you going to kill me, Percy? Are you going to kill me too, son?' he asks just before the green light explodes from my wand and he, too, falls, leaving me panting on the floor of my cell with my mind whirling dizzyingly.

I sit for hours trying to piece together the scene, trying to fathom the weight of the wand in my hands or the rush of energy that surely accompanies spells of such power, trying to remember anything of emotion, but I cannot. I can only remember sitting down then, sitting on the floor and waiting... and waiting... and waiting... for someone, someone to come, someone who should have been there but wasn't, someone who eternally screams at me, pointing a pale finger as he brushes his red hair out of his accusing eyes. A green-eyed boy and a brown-haired girl hold him back. 'How could you do this, Percy?' he shouts and then turns away, sobbing.

An itch on my left arm turns into a violent burning.

Again, the man's voice asks, Are you going to kill me, Percy? The boy screams, How could you do this, Percy? Their voices mingle, repeating the same name, Percy? Percy? Percy?

Is that who I am? This fellow called Percy? I do not know. They may have been speaking to someone else, but as always, I hold onto this name, wonder about the title of son that the man bestows upon me. I clutch at it, try to wrap myself up in it, try to remember more but the voice grows dimmer, drowned out by the by the screams of others, screams that are real now, screams that rush up from my lungs and take away from me the only identity I have left.

It's true what they say about Azkaban... that you forget everything, including who you are.

A Dementor gives a death rattle right outside my door as it greedily sucks up whatever I have left of myself.