The Beginning of the End

I sit on my front porch step with the newspaper in my hands and I think. The article is one of many just like it, the only thing different are the names, sometimes the places are different too but not this time. Hogwarts again, too often that is the place. But the names are never the same.

I suspect that the articles don't just seem similar in my mind, instead I think it is more than likely that they are the same article, just with the names the places and the dates changed, it would certainly save time. And anyway there're only a few different ways to write about a disaster. Only so many different ways of phrasing death horror and destruction. And heart break. There's only so many times a person can be asked to write about torment and heart break and families being torn apart by either death or betrayal. Or more commonly, both. It would break someone's spirit having to write that everyday. So I believe they don't; they just change the names and the places and the dates, which must be soul crushing enough for anyone.

Because the articles are always the same I've stopped reading them, I trained my eyes to skim through for the names. Then I add them to the list. One day I am going to build a memorial and all the names will be on it, but I know I'll have to wait because there is no sense building it until this is all over.

The war hasn't really touched me personally yet, I've been living in the Muggle world since I left school, and I don't keep in contact with anyone. I wonder, hope even, that no one remembers me. I want to stay anonymous. There's no great mystery about me, I don't have a tragic story, I'm boring and mundane, and I just wanted to be an architect. I always wanted that, and Muggle architecture is an art form, building my magic just isn't the same, there's no great swell of pride in your chest when you do something right, because you know that if you hadn't it wouldn't matter because you could make adjustments. You can't adjust Muggle buildings.

So I'm out of the loop as it were, but everyday I sit and collect the names from the Daily Prophet, not wanting to know but feeling it is my duty to collect, and then I can remember. I'll build something great for them, something that doesn't just look pretty but that's useful too. And it's going to be my only magically built project. The names will be listed on it, but only for magical eyes to see. Something useful, practical and mundane, -a bus-shelter perhaps. I want to represent the fact that these people, the ones who've died, who are still dying, the names on my list; I want to show that they're all ordinary everyday people. They weren't soldiers; they just couldn't get out of the way. So something ordinary and everyday would be fitting, and it would be practical.

I read my Muggle newspaper in the evenings, I like to keep in touch with my news but it doesn't as important so it can wait 'til after I've been to work. Sometimes the events appear in both papers, but in the Muggle paper they're always reported as a gas explosion or a one off murder. Never even hinting as to the real scale of the horror.

Today's article is different though. It is written the same as them all just with the proper names and the place. But it stands out, and it makes me cry. Hogwarts. It has been Hogwarts before, too often in fact, but this is different. All the other times an outside person has got in, and students or teachers have been injured, a very few have been killed there, but it is still always horrible to read. This time though, it is too awful to contemplate. I feel sick to my stomach; an overwhelming sense of unfairness washes over me. It isn't right and it hurts me to think about it.

A student had been killed, by one of her own classmates. I didn't know the girl; she was just a name, as was her killer. I didn't know what their families were like. I knew nothing that could make it personal. I don't even have my own family so I can't say I know what a parent's grief is like when they hear that their child is dead. Or worse, that their child has murdered someone. From what the article said I came to believe that it was unexpected. The boy who murdered her was not known to support Voldemort; no one thought he was a threat, and yet there was no evidence to say he'd been under the effects of any sort of mind control or possession. He had chosen to kill a girl, because he believed it was right. In my mind that was worse than finding out your child was dead. I could imagine all too well the sense of betrayal, the never ending questioning; was it something you did wrong as a parent?

What hurts me most was the way it breaks the pattern. There seems to be some sort of accepted stereotype whenever there's a war, or a dispute, children always fix things. Or at least try to. Like in Romeo and Juliet, it took two children to overcome decades of feuding. I held true to this romantic ideal, the thought that children in all their innocence can see past a dispute and realise that there really is no need to fight. This morning sitting on my porch step I had that hope, that one last true belief, shattered into a hundred thousand tiny pieces. Too many to ever put back together. How can there be any hope left now? When the future generation don't hope for peace. If this generation won't solve it then we'll have to wait for the next, but how can they want peace if they've never known love, and how can they know love? Surely none can exist in a torn up world such as this.

And so I look back to the article my spirit shattered, it seems even more important to keep a list now. Carefully I print the name making sure to get the spelling right. This girl, Ginny Weasley, in theory is nothing but a name to me. Yet as I write her name I feel an eternal sense of loss, because she marks the end of hope. But I know I have to go on, these people need me to remember them, to teach the future generations what happens when there is no love any more. Picking up a pen again I write another name; the start of a new list. Those who should have been spared but whose lives were ruined. The ones who kill when there is no reason, the ones who break their parents' hearts. Those children for whom death would be better. Carefully I print this boy's name, I know in my heart that he will be the first of many and it feels like a crushing weight has been placed on my chest. There is nothing I can do to stop it, all I can do is remember, because there might be no one else left to do so. So there he is, Terry Boot. Just a name on a piece of paper. But who has such a powerful effect on my emotions. I want to scream, to shout and at the same time I want to crawl into my bed and hide and when I came out again I want for none of this to have happened, except in some terrible nightmare.

I hope with every new day, that the fighting will stop. I hope every time I see the owl with my paper swooping down the drive to my house that it'll be a different article. One filled with hope and a sense of a future. Not just more names to collect and more complete strangers to grieve for. But with every day that passes I know the chance of that happening gets smaller and smaller. Time is running out.