Restless

I'm not really all that I've been made out to be.

There's a reason for everything.

And everything has a reason.

I wish they'd give me a chance to explain. Yet as I wish it, I know that it wouldn't make a difference. I'd never explain anything to them. It's an issue of pride.

I was raised to believe I was better than everyone. That I was special. That I had a destiny I must fulfill.

I went to Hogwarts. It was a changing moment in my life, and not just because I was going to learn magic.

I met Harry Potter there. I acted exactly as I'd been taught to act, as the children I played with acted, and expected him to act the same way. It was all I knew, after all.

He shunned me.

The Boy Who Lived shunned me.

I would go into the history books as Harry Potter's school rival. That thought ate me up inside.

Worse than that, he shunned me in favor of a Weasley and a Mudblood. The two groups of people I'd been told were beneath me since I was old enough to understand the words. It was shameful.

So I determined not to be the boy who was just a nemesis for the hero. I played Quidditch.

Potter beat me at that.

I did my best in school, and made top grades throughout my seven years.

Granger beat me at that. The Mudblood. Shameful.

I was jealous. I admit it. No matter what I did, it would never measure up to what Potter had done. From the time he was a year old, he'd overshadowed me as the savior of wizard kind.

I felt that I was born in dark days. Not because of the war, but because I was the same age as Potter and his two unbearably Gryffindor sidekicks. They made an unbeatable team, and I faded into the background.

I didn't want to fade into the background. I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to do something. I could have gotten into Slytherin solely on my ambition.

Even now it still holds true. I'm ambitious to a fault. People are generally either smart or good-looking or neither, but rarely both. I was both. I was destined for great things. I was going to be somebody.

I was restless. I just wanted to get out of Malfoy Manor, out of Hogwarts. I wanted to go somewhere where I'd never have to be compared to Potter, I wanted to go somewhere where no one had ever heard of me.

I just wanted to live.

I just wanted to be.

I lived in a shadow. At school I lived in Potter's shadow, and at home I lived in my father's shadow. I didn't want to live that way.

Whatever my destiny was, I came to see that it didn't belong in anyone's shadow. And it sure didn't belong with the Death Eaters.

About the time my restlessness became almost unbearable, I realized something.

All those Muggles and Muggle-born wizards just wanted to live.

And my father and those like him were taking that away from them.

I didn't want to do that. I told my father so. He disowned me. I was alone in the world, except it turns out I wasn't.

Dumbledore called me into his office the first day of my seventh year at Hogwarts. He'd heard about the blowup with my father. He smiled and said I reminded him of another rebellious student of his.

He said Sirius Black had been just as ambitious and restless as I was.

I wish I could take it all back now. The insults and the bickering, the constant showing off and being an all around prat. But it's a part of my past, something that shaped who I am now.

For the first time in my life, I like who I am.

Pansy doesn't understand. Half the Slytherins aren't allowed to speak to me, as their Death Eater parents have forbidden them.

Theodore Nott understands. His father is a Death Eater, but he's always been as rebellious as me. Other people, upon finding someone with similar wishes to their own, would propose that they should do it together. Whatever it was.

But Theodore understands. He knows that, to satisfy this thirst to live, I have to do it alone. No ties, no bonds, nothing keeping me anywhere. No commitments.

Dumbledore wants me to join the Order of the Phoenix. He thinks I'd make an excellent operative, which is the modern, nice way of saying he wants me to be an assassin.

But I can't take away their lives.

Anyone's lives.

Because I know what it's like to want to live.

To just be.

They say there's no hope for me. That I'm incurably evil. I've done that to myself, I suppose, with my insults and my jibing.

But they don't look behind the mask. And no one ever will. But that's okay, because I know. And I'm happy with me.

After graduation, I took off to Ireland. I've been traveling around the entire island for the past three months, just going wherever the wind takes me.

I take a few part-time jobs. Just until I have enough money to get to the next place I'm going. I'm never anywhere for very long. I see the world, and determine that there's nothing in it worth giving up this freedom.

The freedom to just be. The freedom to put forth whatever I want the world to see, and have a fresh point of view on things. The freedom that comes from having no place to go, no commitments, no ties.

I don't know if I'll ever go back home. When I've seen all of Ireland, maybe I'll travel Europe. I just want to go, to be, and to be free.

To be whomever I want to be.

To take on every day like it means something.

There's always the horizon, and it beckons to me.