Quote Me if I'm Wrong

Chapter One: What is Not Dark

I do not ask for any crown,

But that which all may win,

Nor try to conquer any world,

Except the one within,

Be thy my guide until I find,

Led by a tender hand,

Thy happy kingdom in myself,

And dare to take command.

-Louisa May Alcott, "My Kingdom"

I have walked through my life hidden behind first my older brothers, and then later behind a shield of confidence and normality.

I said it was a shield, my insides have been turmoil and I have traveled my entire life in what I always thought was darkness. I had no idea how obstructed that white light was.

I did not know darkness, but it has a nasty habit of finding me no matter where I hide. The night follows, and it floods, covering you, and driving breath away.

I thought my life was good, and only got better when I left home. Or it should have gotten better, and I thought it had. Until the ebony of night found me and consumed me. That was when I lost my innocence, and because my innocence went away I have gotten lost in the maze that is raven hood.

When Harry came along and saved me from that dark inner chamber he took my heart away with him. He had no idea of course, but you did. You were sympathetic and kind, petting me on the head, and saying how terribly sorry you were. I attempted to swat you away because when you come along my vision is clouded, my heart races, and that was not the way I was to be around you, it was the way I should have felt around Harry. But you made me loose it, and then you swallowed me whole, again.

They all told me I was going to be alright, I would be happy, healthy, and that I would be forgiven for falling prey to the acts of Fate.

Ha, said with sarcasm.

That sarcasm probably shouldn't be there, because I thought I was good too. I was wrong and I went through my first summer in that glaring bliss of ignorance. Then we returned and they brought us the memories of what was. I shook and I shed sweat, the cold racked my body and water escaped my eyes, but no one would pay attention to me. I was normal again, just a girl, an ordinary, boring, blasé, red headed girl. Dull. Harry was the boy who got the care. I guess he kind of deserved the extra thought, he was lying on the floor withering in pain, rambling on about a woman screaming in his skull, and he was to be our hero. God forbid our savior to suffer any injury. You know he was the only one who even noticed that I was messed up, but he just gazed over me and began to retaliate that he had heard voices, seen screaming, that he was damaged.

That year I walked on, quiet and silently blushing my way through class. Very few people gave e one jot of attention, and that was the way I liked it. I had my close friends, my acquaintances, and I had those people who I wanted nothing to do with. Those people, the ones I hated, were the ones that fascinated you Tom. Those evil people were the ones you urged me to get close to. God I wished that basilisk fang had gotten rid of you, if it had I wouldn't have been so terrified that some how I would fall prey to what I had once.

When summer rolled around again I found that I could control you and that if I didn't want to listen to you I didn't have to. It was nice to shut up the constant yowling in my head, you have a rather high pitched voice.

But, because I am a black a magnet, that year brought around the beginning of my, and with in all probability, the doom of most everybody else's. That year was to be the year the worlds of magic came together, if anything you drew it farther apart. Dumbdlore said that we were capable to draw close, but he was wrong and we became a people of ruin.

I was losing the control I had over you; you were creating the Hell you wanted and giving us a world wrought in ruin. The power that remained inside of my head was slowly slipping away through outspread fingers and as my outer appearance grew stronger my inner resolve fell away. My soul was wrapped in impure rags, though now I see that they were not really nasty wrapping papers, just merely graying fibers of will power.

You moved me around and those that I wanted nothing of grew into me and I to them. One in particular became unnaturally close, and I grew infatuated with who he was, and who I was becoming. You had morphed me from what I was to what you were, and any remaining Godric dripped along with crimson bile as the blood turned green and the serpent ate me alive.

My previous love of our Destined One fell apart and his arch nemesis took his place in me. But, of course, what we had could never be, that was not because of who we were. It was you Tom, you grew jealous and drew me back into my happy home of shadows. I had something, with someone I had come to adore, and when I fell back he went off, he found his one, and her name was not Virginia Weasly.

Tom, I have had enough. You have led me deeper and farther into a galaxy of ink and I started to realize how dependent I was on you. I will never be free of you, you have taken my hand and are the one who molded me to this...this stranger and I am not ever going to find a sanctuary in myself. Sanctuary requires a peace and serenity that you destroyed in a few swift swipes at my cerebellum.

I will never be able to fully claim this useless shell as my own, for you have invaded it and I cannot stake a claim on what will not be had as mine to hold, mine to carry, mine to cherish, and it will not be mine to furnish.

So now I find that since it will not be mine and my persona will walk this world free and grace it with another's presence I am making one last choice and Tom you cannot stop me.

Tom, you took my innocence, and because of that the angels in heaven will not greet me in song.

Then you stole my champion, and I will therefore have no knight.

You tore away with my identity, and I became...

Then you shoved me away from Draco, and I have the bruises to show for it.

Finally you hit home, you rendered me incapable of the power of choice, my will was smashed and I think I now know what true, pure, never ending darkness is like.

Darkness has no color, no black, and no white. It has no emotion, good or bad, evil or pacifist. Darkness is nothing more than the feeling of numbness.

In my life of once light and then the cold trickle of a self-inflicted darkness I have come to find myself when I thought you had taken me away from me.