Despair

I never though it would come to this.

Never believed it could.

Never believed Dumbledore would let it.

But the Headmaster - no, the late Headmaster, today - isn't here to stop it, now, yet another casualty of this horrible war. Too many deaths, too many friends and loved ones gone.

I hate Voldemort, hate what he has done to our world.

I never really knew how much I hated him until today. I never really knew what it was to hate, until today.

I always thought I hated him, but it is nothing compared to what I feel now. That is all I have left, my hate. What more is there than hate in a dying, bloodstained field that is the mirror of my soul? A shattered mirror of a shattered soul.

He was our obsession, you know.

There are many sorts of obsessions, for many sorts of purposes. Some are bright, and beautiful, and essentially good, and some only bring destruction and death.

Ours was both sorts.

It consumed us, our desire to bring down Voldemort. It consumed us, and now he is gone, and that hate is all I have left.

I am the only one left.

Our Order is gone, and I am alone.

Our Order. Dumbledore's Order. Dumbledore's Army.

They came to mean the same thing, towards the end, you know. Devoted, well-trained troops to fight the dark. No one bothered to remember which among us had been a member of that army in Hogwarts. The Order of the Phoenix was Dumbledore's Army, for even those among us who had been long gone from Hogwarts when the Army was begun. It didn't matter, in those times of war. We were comrades in arms, and that was all that counted.

And now they are gone, all of them.

They were just children, and now they are dead.

My friends and colleagues, dead.

Who is left to rebuild this wrecked world?

Is there any hope left for our world?

Any magic left at all?

Hogwarts is gone, collapsed in heaps of rubble. Azkaban is gone, torn apart from within. The Ministry buildings are gutted, St. Mungo's still smolders. Grimmauld Place is savaged; Number 4 Privet Drive and its inhabitants are no more. Diagon Alley is piles of brick and burnt wood, and Hogsmeade is still aflame. I can see the fires from the bloody desolation of this final battlefield. The Department of Mysteries - I was there when it was destroyed, when all its secrets were lost.

What an odd place - what an appropriate place for those sorts of battles. I was not there often or long, and was always preoccupied, but everything I saw of it was odd and nonsensical. That is just how the place was, I suppose. Mysterious to its core. No longer, though. Now it is exposed, laid bare to the world, but there is nothing left to be discovered, and no world to discover it.

There is nothing left anywhere, and everyone is dead.

My friends, my allies, my enemies - all dead.

And I have nothing left, nothing to live for. It consumed me, that obsession, consumed us all.

And there is nothing left, nothing to die for. They gave their lives to rid the world of Voldemort's terror, died so he would. And he has died, for good, we hoped, but they are gone and I have no hope. It seems impossible for all of them to be gone, all of them who were so full of hope.

And I am left, stuck between two separate, equal hells.

I cannot bring myself to kill myself, to cheapen their sacrifice.

I cannot bring myself to live, to face this hopeless world.

There is nothing left for me here. Anyone I knew, anyone I ever talked to, ever loved, is gone, dead.

If luck is with me, if there is any mercy left in this world, I will die here, too; leave this world that has no future in it for me.

I do not fear death; I faced death incarnate and lived.

It is tomorrow I fear, the tomorrow that comes with no hope, only desolation. I am tired of tomorrows, waiting, always waiting.

But the waiting is over, and there is nothing left to wait for.

There is no one here, no one to give me hope, a reason to live. I am alone, so alone.

I never believed in love, not until it was too late, not until there was no love left for me. There is no love, no feeling, nothing but hate.

And you cannot live forever on hate alone. Hate will sustain, but it will corrupt, wither, consume. There is no sort of true existence to be found in hate. Look at Voldemort, look at what hate did to him.

I refuse that fate for myself. Give me death, but I refuse to cling to life, to become a wraith like Voldemort became.

I do not want this world. I refuse for myself continued existence here.

This world is ruined, and so am I. I am black, twisted, corrupted by hate, down to my soul, and I refuse to keep holding on.

War is not glorious, or honorable. War is death, and killing, and destruction, and crushing innocent dreams and lives. War is terrible, and fearful, and I hate it, and I hate him for forcing it upon us. I hate myself as well, for being apart of the pain, for ending so many existences, guiltless or not.

So many died today, so many will never see the sun rise again. And for what? Is there any purpose great enough to justify the deaths of so many?

This last battlefield - blooming with the bloody flowers of death. I am covered in their perfume, blood dripping down my arm, down my face, from cuts I didn't even realize I had.

Am I dying? I am not sure.

Whose blood is this that I swim in? Another's or mine?

No one is coming for me, I know.

If I am to bleed to death, no one will come save me.

Who is left that has the time to search this reddened field for survivors? Who has space to spare for someone who does not want to live, when there are so many who wish for life so strongly? Who has the time to care for the wretched, useless soul I have become?

I cannot change, not anymore. I am stripped down to the essence of who I am, eaten by that overwhelming obsession.

Look at me now. See me for who I truly am. You who accused me of hiding myself, deceiving the world, come see now. Come if you dare, dare to look at this accursed field, this accursed soul.

Is there anyone brave enough?

Is there anyone left who would look at me and understand what it all means?

With absolute certainty, I know there is not, and perhaps there never was.

Not among my friends, or my peers, or the members of the Order. Not among my family, not ever. Not among my enemies.

I am a wild card, and no one is ever sure what to expect.

It is a family trait, I suppose, though it manifests itself in very different ways in each of us.

Not that it matters, now.

They are all dead, existing only as bloody, burnt corpses and vivid shadows of memories in my mind. Some not even that. I remember them all, of course, but not all are so recently dead as to have their bodies still lying around. Some did not die so as to leave much of a body.

I miss them all, strange as it may seem, miss the insanity that was my family. Not just my parents, my immediate family, but my cousins, aunts, uncles. Some of them I never met, but I miss them and remember them all the same.

Am I going crazy?

If there was only one person left it the world, it would be impossible for that person to be anything but sane.

I am the only one left, you know. I cannot be insane. It just doesn't work that way.

It can't.

I refuse to let the hatred consume me. I refuse to become any darker than I already have become. I refuse.