Beyond Dark

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

The process itself is painless - I of all should know. You feel the tears burning slowly upon your tortured skin: they bathe the feature and drain the soul. Each is a nightmare you have spawned to own misery, one in which you may always sink but never deny.

The eyes hurt as they flicker in an acknowledged futility. The bluish orbs never reach the light, never again to be caressed by its gentle yet at the meantime scolding flash.

Tom, forgive me.

To you I am in a debt I shall never repay - I witnessed your agony, your silent plea to help, and instead of a warm compassionate smile or a kindred spirited glance, I bestowed upon you the iciest of rejections: indifference. It would have been so easy to hate you, Tom. It would have been so simple to close my eyes and center upon you the ensemble of dire events to which I became parched. It was for your pain which I hungered - I would repeat to myself again and again until, sickened of the many lies underneath my shattered dignity sheltered, I renounced the abject veil of excuses and forsook the little dilemma of black and white. It's never as easy, Tom. Sometimes, life is just a gigantic patch of gray in which it is so unproblematic for the mind to loose itself completely.

How could I blame you when you alone were a product to the sin that a whole world persisted in unfolding, in amplifying hastily? How could I call you evil, when from he who had abandoned you came the true seed of darkness?

When you fell into the abyss, I should have been there, should have yield to it, should have let you heave me within so that, in the end, for the both or neither to be spared.

Forgive me lord Voldemort - Tom Riddle. Because even now as you utter that which shall release me form this cursed world, set me at an eternal peace, the slow "Aveda Kadevra", I still crave to hate you.

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

Sensations linger as they dissipate. For a one last time, they rebirth in their greatest reign so that to then fade heartlessly because of the feeble body, no longer capable of supporting their blissful heaviness.

Blood hangs to the inert body coldly. Its repulsive color now appears energetic - its smell, as it hardens disgustingly around the form, as a second pagan yet more natural skin.

Harry, I'm sorry. I always told you that if we never said good-bye, we would never truly part, that we would live to meet once more.

It was raining as I left - do you remember? The rain cleansed on a fierce rhythm, it stripped the skies of their untainted beauty, and my own soul of the sudden urge to abandon the struggle and indulge in a feigned ignorance.

But I didn't - I couldn't.

You told me to stay, Harry.

Your voice and thoughts begged me to, allured the one who laid already tempted...I pictured myself walking aside you, seeing you grow, I imagined myself smiling to you and directing you upon a path I would have prepared as certain...it would have been beautiful, Harry. But it wasn't meant to be - just as you brought me to a stop, you unwarily fastened my departure.

Your eyes, Harry.

So perfectly jaded, as if emeralds had been reflected upon a small porcelain sculpture. They blazed me harder than all the threats I had been set towards, perhaps even more than the swift demise of your parents...though the latter haunted me still to each breath I dared take with no solace other than that I was destined to tend for you, so to, one day, make up for my own lack of caution. I killed them. I saw the signs in Pettigrew, and said but not a thing, I felt him close to strike, like the animal which, when cornered, reacts only in despair. I little but saw him say the words to Voldemort, and, because of my silence, I felt as if I whispered the murmurs myself. I should have done something. Anything. Frustration is not a weapon, Harry. Nor is it a tool. It is, however, a painful tormentor. One to which I was quick to fall prey.

How could I ever look into those eyes again, Harry, and not feel I gradually betrayed all oaths to virtues I would then also give up for a false sense of certainty? How could I gaze to you and not see Lily and James's death once more, this time even closer?

You saw me leaving, and you believed me strong.

But you're the powerful one, Harry. It is your light to have centered upon our lives - it guided, conditioned, ascended. It is you to have taken the curse for which you were not to blame, you who are prophesized to carry the burden of our fates and know what depends upon your every action. It was you who had to face the shadows....and I who had to observe their creation.

You only carry the scar on your face Harry. I have it on my soul.

The "Boy-Who-Lived"....I wanted to ask you that day, how it felt. I wanted to reach down and cradle you softly, to comprehend the turmoil and share the distress. You were alone, no longer within the warm circle of the friends I was content in having earned. I believe you had just come from Quidditch practice...a divine player you are, my boy. A pity that unlike our vigor, our troubles may not as easily be lost in the wind. I neared you and glanced down, and the same pair of piercing eyes flickered back questioningly.

And I knew, even then, that you had reason enough to hate us. You had no blame for what had occurred years ago. You had no choice in how you were born, and still you were confronted to the suspicious gazes thrown cruelly sometimes even by those you cherished. You had the doubts of a legacy you knew not whether to embrace, the talents of a child ordained to prevail, but who had succumbed to sufferance at the hand of an enemy over which he had no control...

Forgive me, Harry. Because upon leaving that day, I said good-bye.

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

Falling into unawareness is how one would have expected - with the one difference of lacking its habitual liberation because now know you shall never be free of its wretched tentacles and awaken. The words echo in my mind and while I acknowledge their presence there is still that irrational side no longer to my submission which squirms within oblivion's embrace, struggles to fight a fate that cannot be upheld, does no accept that which should come as obvious.

The limbs hang lifelessly aside the body. Their stiffened weight adds to that which keeps me down whereas the true source of unbeatable weakness feeds upon my every last strength - it consumes from within.

Sirius, don't worry.

All is forgotten, Sirius, all has been explained. And I have been left as a cripple cat to lick my conscience's deepened wounds in hopes that one day, the shouts and cries shall not revive and hence no more be imbued to me.

Of all, you wept the most, my friend.

Like a second divine benefactor, you set upon your shoulders a doomed cross you did not deserve to bear and carried it with no reluctance. You bled without a word just as you degraded into little but the shadow of a man...

Do you know, Sirius, I still hear them?

When during your detention to Azkaban, I came to see you. I wanted to look into your eyes and detest you, to see in you the demon, to corner you callously in a trap of unaltered hatred from which in turn you would never escape.

But upon entering those cells, I backed away. And under the scrutinizing blank stares of those cursed sentients, which fire and darkness have birthed alike, I failed you. The screams...I can still discern them. The haunted glances fixed upon me, the Dementors' cold binds onto my soul, draining it mercilessly, until I laid not as that which I truly was, but a simple material container, a shell to be seen but not regretted. The turmoil maddened me slowly - so quick it had engulfed me that I grew to accept it unquestioningly.

Until the silence you emanated, ominous, incessant, stirred within me a hurricane of unrivalled emotions, all slid aside by the one presumption that speeded my retrieval, the one that horrified me greatly - Sirius, that's when I knew you were innocent.

They clutched to you heartily and sunk you in their despair, but they could not melt your vital spirit. Among all which had become little but toys for the devil's children, those fiend creatures untamed by the night, you had not changed. You remained Sirius Black. And to have sentenced a man to such chaos, then hold out a hand to raise him from the mud in which we had thrown him...I could not take it upon me. I was too weak to admit my flaw, to take the responsibility of having destroyed another man's life.

So I reached the to facts and held them as precious, I crushed my conscious side and fell victim to ration, I asked for proof of your innocence, I questioned myself and the rest and concluded in that if not for evidence no issue could be stated and that where you were, without having once defended yourself, was where you belonged.

Forgive me, Sirius. Because deep down I knew and said not a thing.

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

Moments before, it had hurt. The sweet misery had plunged upon me as a lethargy, teasing in those few moments in which it did not "bless" me with its presence so that to then reduce me to even humbler forces as I had to defend myself against a new, much stronger, wave. But no longer. It simply ceased to affect me by that it had overwhelmed me as a whole.

The body is stretched immobile upon the ground as if falling through a deep rest from which it would arouse. Only it shall not, and I comprehend it slowly. I could not at first, but I can now.

Old and new, forgive me.

I left the beloved Hogwarts and those I had long now sworn to protect without as much as a word. It pained me greatly to see their faces all livid and frightened, to feel their dread and acknowledge it as my own.

I could not look back, because I would not have found in me the might to carry on, step by step on the straight untouched path to annihilation. So I did not and left the one place I had dared call home, the memories of a life I had adored and whose further expansion would have cost me my mere status as human.

You all shall not at first understand, but I had to. Voldemort's reign had to be put to an end or at least decline - a sacrifice was to be made, so it had been prophesized: let no life go to waste without the expense of another. I have so paved the way, the price has been paid: to all I ask to unite aside the one who has for long now protected you, even if unknowingly...prove the said spirit I know you have all developed - tend for Harry. He is powerful as much as he is weak. He needs you. Needs you all.

Forgive me...I must leave you to a world of malice I have not purified for you.

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

The soul is weary. It has reached an extent of infinite beauty and shall therefore be of me no longer. The body is now not even an instrument, for it is no longer for me to control. And so I leave you, all of you - overwhelmed by a tranquility I may at last contain, whilst aside me, my previous Fawkes' blissful melody echoes weaker still. But at least now I may decipher its murmur...

Have you ever wondered why it hurts to cry?

Maybe because, deep down, you still hoped it would not end like this.