Civil War

How do I explain?

How do I put words to something with no words?

How do I make you understand?

How do I show you war?

How can I ever show you death?

The end.

There was an invisible power, a wave it swept though all of us. Everyone felt it, and everyone can remember it. They can remember where they were and what they were doing, they can remember who they were with and most of all they can remember how they felt.

I saw nothing and I heard nothing, but I felt it, as though a wave had washed through me. Behind it was left total silence, nobody spoke, nobody moved; nobody could have even if they had wanted to.

My whole body was in shock. I felt a grief so deep my body didn't know how to react.

I have felt sorrow and grief before; but then it had always been accompanied by tears, by anger, by a lot of things. There had always been a reason, a person, a letter, a body. This was nothing like that; this was emptiness, as though that wave of silence had taken my heart and left nothing.

War is never fun, and it seldom makes sense. Civil war is even worst because you are fighting people you know. They are your neighbours. They are your friends. They are your family. It kills your soul; it takes your heart and all you're left with is a mind numbed with too much emotion.

They say you learn to live though war, that's not true, you learn to survive war. It's not the same thing, living needs to have a point, and merely staying alive isn't a point. You learn to survive with out hope, without joy, without safety. You can forget why you're fighting, you only know you don't want to die, you don't want those near you to die, if you forget that, if you lose that, then for you the war is over.

Civil war not a war were you go down and fight on a battle field, this war you fight in your own street outside your own front door because if you don't they will take your family. There are no battles, there are secrets and tactics. There are attacks and murder. You can live almost normally for days, months even, and then you come home and find it's gone and your family are prisoners. If you're lucky they're prisoners because otherwise you don't even want to think about it.

There is such a thing as the wrong place at the wrong time and in war you get there too many times, too many places. I have sat beside friends as they lived out the end of their lives. I have tried to ease the pain so they died in peace. I have arrived too late to save others, have sat by a dead body and wished over and over again that it could have been me. Some times it was always going to be too late. This is not a war of gentlemen and honour, this is murderer and victim and you don't know which you'll be next. If they want you dead you die, unless you get there first.

I have been told I was lucky; I am still alive. I don't always think I was lucky because being alive means you saw others die, friends you couldn't protect.

I am learning to live again, not just survive. The past is behind me. It's the only place for the past, the problem is you can turn around and see it all laid out behind you. It is all there, every memory, the colours fade but not much.

Every night I try to sleep but I can't, all I can do is turn around and see faces. People who were in the way; wrong place, wrong time.

They say your life isn't really over until all the things you set in motion have ended. So I live my life, but I try to live a little of theirs too so they will live as long as I do.

There was one; there was one who was known to everyone; friends, strangers and enemies.

Only to me he was a friend before everything else. In some ways he was more, a brother. We grow up together and we learnt to face the world together. He was just one of us and yet even then he was somehow apart, different in a way you couldn't put into words. Beyond what people saw, reactions and reasons I never understood. He saved my life, he saved us all. A debt I, at least, will never be able to repay.

We parted. In war it happens. Only I never made it to his side again. Not while he could still hear my voice. I had news of others, and them of me. I could contact them and know they were safe, that they had made it though the night, but not him.

My last friend, I never had news of, never spoke to, never had a chance to say good bye. With him it was always going to be too late.

I speak of him sometimes; there are other who remember him, as a friend. Friends from a time when we were all together, as we can never be again, too many have gone. They know how I feel, they feel the same. This makes us different but the grief at his death is remembered by all.

Though in their hearts I knew some grieve another, some remember another, in their hearts they are loyal and I can't fault them for that. They believed in what they did, you had to believe in what you were doing; somewhere deep down you had to believe you were on the right side. Otherwise it was all too much to cope with.

We all, every witch and wizard, young and old remembers that wave of silence, leaving grief and emptiness. Remembers that moment where no words, no messages, were needed, we knew.

That moment Harry Potter and Voldemort died, together, each at the hand of the other.

Can you see?

Can you understand?