Tell Me Why

Tell me why

Some time ago, you read a poem titled ‚Whispers of Heavenly Death'. Although you´ve already forgotten what it was about, you now finally understand what these whispers are like.

They are the sound of falling snow.

You spend hours, whole afternoons and evenings in the library, sitting near the window, looking through the mirrored yellowish lamp light, watching the snow fall. There´s plenty of snow these days - Hogwarts is almost drowning in the white nothingness this year. The little flocks make their way to the ground without haste. Slowly spinning, drifting from left to right, even a short leap upwards sometimes. They go on their trip without a map, and why would they need any: their destination is inevitably always the same. They are safe.

You have been missing the feeling of safety. Watching the snow fall is soothing, like wrapping a freezing child into a blanket. But for you there are no blankets and no covers, for you there is only drifting.

The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload

When you were hit by that spell, something inside you has changed. At first you didn´t notice and even now nobody else suspects that something is wrong. The last few days in school, or rather, in the hospital wing, you were hurting but improving greatly and soon annoyed that there was nothing to do but lying around and occasionally talking to Harry or Ron or some of the other DA members who turned up and asked questions about ... well, about the fight.

You didn´t answer any of them.

They had no right to ask. They weren´t there. And they didn´t die ... almost die.

It sure has taken you some time to realize what could have happend that night in the Ministry. However, since the truth began to dawn on you, you can´t let go of the pictures that unfold in your dreams and follow you into your days, silent reminders of hope and desperation.

And nobody´s gonna go to school today, she´s gonna make them stay at home

Around Christmas you feared you were going crazy. Of course, a gnawing urge to leave the classroom and start screaming is not entirely unknown among the pupils, especially shortly before the holidays when the amount of homework is increasing seemingly without end in sight. Such urges pass as your own urge has passed when you have finally given up and taken to drifting. But oh how you´ve been afraid of yourself at that time, that day when you were walking down the corridor and saw the girls.

She sees them strolling towards her, three girls whose faces she knows but not their names, talking and smiling at each other, giggling at some shared joke, checking for a few last facts before encountering the dreaded questions of a teacher. They are younger than her and probably Hufflepuffs, she doesn´t remember. One of them is wearing a really stupid marybird-shaped hair-clip, but other than that, they are nice. Pretty.

She hates them for their smiles and their shining eyes and the lipstick on their mouths, for their casual indifference, for everything they have and she doesn´t.

When the girls have reached her, she makes a sudden move towards them. They skitter to a halt, one of them almost stumbles over her and opens her strawberry mouth to ask a question but she has no time. A swift stroke with her knife stops her, stops her stops her throat grinning wide open sputtering blood beautiful red on white and the other two scream as she reaches them and stabs their eyes a brown pair and a blue one each staring in disbelief ignorance stupidity fear she wants to make them fear scream scream - and their pain is not enough, it is never enough and she hates them all the more for the fact that their humilation doesn´t change anything. It´s just blood sparkling on skin, down on your knees down down there they go.

None of this ever happened. They passed you without giving you so much as a glance. And you walked on, couldn´t see where to because your eyes wouldn´t focus, wouldn´t leave the pictures in your mind.

And Daddy doesn´t understand it, he always said she was good as gold

And he can see no reasons ´cos there are no reasons, what reasons do you need to be shown...

The summer holidays, that was the time you began seeing things.You had been restless, some anger always lurking underneath. Your parents simply assumed it was one of those teenager problems - something their clever daughter would be able to overcome, given some time. Your parents are nice people. Really. It´s just that with parents who see you once a year for a few weeks, you can´t expect them to know you anymore. Especially when they refuse to talk about what you´re doing the rest of the year, and honestly, how can you blame them for it? The ‚wizarding world' has so few things in common with their everyday life. As long as everything is all right on the school front - i.e., as long as you deliver the outstanding grades as you always have done - there is nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong.

You were reaching for your book on the floor when you saw it. Your arm was very white, the veins decorating the skin like carefully drawn rivers in blue and green. You couldn´t take your eyes off your wrist. So small and ...fragile. Thin. The kitchen knife was strangely heavy when you lifted it. The cool blade touched your skin. And it was sharp; you knew it would cut any time now. Cut your wrist any time...any time...

... sweet sixteen ain´t that peachy keen, no it ain´t so neat to admit defeat

They can see no reasons ´cos there are no reasons, what reasons do you need?

At first you were shocked and disgusted. Who would imagine such a scene? Who would...?

Then again it seemed to be the solution to everything. After all it would be merely like completing what that Death Eater had begun. It was a chance to walk out.

Oh Tell Me Why...

I wanna shoot the whole world down.

No, you don´t hate the world. When you hate the world, you are raging against all the insults and injustice ever done to you; when you hate the world, you cling to life just to prove you´ve got the right to triumph; in other words, when you hate the world, you behave like Professor Snape.

There has been a time when you were wondering about the dark and complicated thoughts in the potion master´s mind, and you almost passed on to a level of higher concern than the common pupil´s interest in the most basic questions (like, ‚Did he really quit serving Voldemort' or ‚Why doesn´t he wash his hair'). You imagined being a teacher and finally came to the conclusion that a) Snape was far too intelligent to be wholly satisfied with teaching uninterested children, b) his acid sarcasm was wasted on most of the pupils, c) you´d like to touch his delicate, elegant hands.

But that had been before you had gone drifting. Now it feels like too much an effort thinking about him or anyone else. You have done all your thinking during the summer holidays.

And all the playing´s stopped in the playground now she wants to play with her toys a while

The image of your white wrist covered in pulsing red blood had haunted your dreams ... and your waking life as well. You couldn´t help watching your mother handle the kitchen knives with weird fascination and imagined trying it for real; you even knew how to do it properly, a short slash across the wrist and a long one up the arm as if writing a large T. It´s just that with something like suicide there is no such thing as a try. Either you do it succesfully or you fail; and if you fail it is likely that you won´t summon up enough courage for a repeat, and in the end even your parents will take notice - they are nice, not stupid.

After a while you had abandoned the idea, or at least locked it away into the deeper regions of your mind where you could still visit it if you wanted to.

And there were many occasions.

And school´s out early and soon we´ll be learning and the lesson we learn is how to die -

Looking back you can see how naive you have been ... all of you have been. We are going into the battle! We will free Sirius! After all, Harry had survived so many attacks by then that it seemed unlikely anything fatal would happen. Dangerous it might be ... but not fatal, oh no! Even you, despite all your intelligence, all the books you had read, had really believed that you could get away without anyone being seriously hurt. And then your rescue mission had turned out to be rather a hunting game.

Something in you had changed when you were hit by that spell, and even more so when they told you about Sirius´ death. Luna can talk day and night to Harry about how the people beyond the veil are still here, you won´t be fooled twice into wishful thinking. Dead is dead - and that´s exactly what could have happened to you. It is unfair! your mind was screaming over and over during the days and weeks after you realized the danger. It is unfair because you are still children and powerless in the end. Because you believed Death to enjoy a long holiday in the Future Land and instead he was waiting just around the corner.

It is unfair and should not happen, but it does, and it will, again and again until it really is your turn and even the adults won´t be able to protect you.

So you wanted to walk out of the game that had become real, or at least hurt someone, make someone pay for your own ignorance and fear. This anger didn´t subside fast...but eventually it did .

It is covered under coolness - under snow, one could say, since you started to drift. Drifting is a relief. Little by little you let go of your pain, your anger, your care for anything around you. You don´t talk much, don´t listen, and don´t watch anything except the falling snow.

You are walking through your days as if in sleep, keeping up a facade for the others but feeling comfortably numb inside. You know this won´t last forever, it is not safe, for nothing in your world is safe anymore.

Maybe the snow will melt. Or maybe you will simply drown in it one day and go down into the white nothingness ... Who knows?

...The whole world

down

down

down

shoot it all down.