I Alone

"Go on, do it," says the voice over my shoulder, creeping inside the most private part of my mind. It tells me what I want to hear, but then again what I don't. It is like a game of angel-devil, my conscience battling my evil side. Only this time there is no angel. No conscience. No reassuring voice to help me, to talk me out of my ridiculous notions and fatalistic plans. Evil has taken over, it fought and it has won. Occasionally I wonder why, but I know I'm kidding myself. I know why evil won. I let it. I opened the now-withered organ that was once my heart to evil and embraced it fully and totally. I let it enter my soul, to rot me from the inside.

I remember once, when I was very young, someone said to me ' No matter what you say or do, you are never truly alone. Goodness and kindness will help you even in the darkest depths of despair.' Bullshit. I am impervious to good now. I have wasted my past, tormented my present, and in a few moments I will destroy my future.

I stare at the face in the mirror, and then look to photographs of my former self. Six years old, promise and radiance shine from my face. Eleven, prouder and colder, but still smiling in my new Hogwarts robes. Sixteen. A scowling adolescent glares back at me, still battling with the boy he was. Then, I reach to my pocket and retrieve a more crumpled picture. A pale, tired and washed-out young man of eighteen, looking desperately ill. That last picture had been my salvation for so long. That was me then, in the same place as I am now. Since that dreadful time I have used the picture as a reminder of how awful it can be. It didn't work for long. Here, after four years, I feel little difference. I am in the same place, only the situation changed. Everyone has to let go, they told me at the time, when they found my blood and I lying on the cold stone floor. Sever the ties that bind you to darkness and self-destruction. Two ways. Realistic or Fatalistic. And thanks to them, last time I 'chose' the former. This time I alone am in control. I alone. Those words fill my twisted mind and warped emotions with a giddy sense of power. Control over myself. It is more than I had the last time, when I took a knife to my veins. No more. Now it is I alone.

Why trust my blood? It is not quick enough. Not even they know the horror that it is to stand, sit or lie. To feel your life drain away by the second. Waiting for death. They know not of the sickening sensations of weakness, of light-headedness. They have no idea of the few seconds before you faint, in agony and anger. They found me and made me explain. This time I haven't given anyone a chance.

I hear him pound at the door that separates us, but he will not get in. Not this time. Four years I have waited in denial, for my final wish to be granted. Today I will grant it unto myself. The wards surrounding my chambers are so strong that not even Dumbledore would stand a chance.

I hold the vial up to the light of the window. It pours in in rays, great yellow beams illuminating my pain. Nothing is worth a life like mine. I uncork it, stopping only to sniff at the poison before I gulp it down. I can feel it work instantly, burning my throat and hitting my stomach. I double over in pain, as it dissolves my innards. I begin to bleed from my facial orifices. My nose, eyes and mouth are all burning, leaving raw flesh stinging. I turn to the pictures in my dying agony. The beautiful, blond, elegantly featured boy of six is reduced to a bitter, twisted piece of nothingness.

The wards on my door begin to break as my powers fade. Nothing can save me now. It is too late. I see him hurl through the door. Then he stops suddenly. His mouth forms my name. "Draco?" he says. But it is too late. I am already dead.