Pity the Child

When I was nine I learned survival
Taught myself not to care
I was my single good companion
Taking my comfort there
Up in my room I planned my conquests
On my own
Never asked for a helping hand
No one would understand
I never asked the pair who fought below
Just in case they said no.

I had only been with Margot and Rodney Fielding for a few short weeks, but I already wished I were somewhere else.

My foster parents were downstairs, but I might as well have been alone in the house.

I hated them. I didn't want to, but every time I saw my new foster father, I remembered my father. I wanted to believe Margot, but I was in their house because she couldn't stand what I was.

My foster parents were yelling at each other, and it was the same matter of distress it always was. Me. I didn't need to hear it. I had heard it before, but that wasn't the main reason I did everything I could to ignore them. If truth were told, I agreed with my foster mother by the light of day, and in the sleepless night, I agreed with my foster father in the blackest corner of my heart.

"He's different, Rodney," my new foster-mother was shouting. "If we put away everyone who was different, there wouldn't be enough space in the asylums."

I wanted to believe her because she was one of the few people who ever believed in me. But I couldn't.

"He's not different, Margot, he's a monster," my new foster-father retorted at the top of his lungs.

I didn't want to believe Rodney Fielding, but the truth of the matter was that I did. I am different. I am a monster. But I'm no more of a monster than he ever was. I'm better than him. I'm better than all of them. I'm better than them because now I'm in control of the game, and they aren't.

But in those days, I was not the one in command. In those days, my new room was my battlefield, my playground, my prison.

"He just needs some time!"

"Monsters like that," my new foster father replied, "don't need time. They need sedation."

It was always a verbal tango of discord, and I was the constant theme. Occasionally, I would hear the sound of skin contacting skin and bone, or glass breaking. But despite her husband's protests, she wouldn't return me from whence I came.

I didn't need a Mirror of Erised to see my deepest desires. I knew what I wanted. In my head, men would respect me. Women would love me. I'd keep everyone at arm's reach, and no one would be able to touch me. Maybe then...but I wouldn't allow that hope to taint my strategy.

The door was shut, but I could still hear every word. The noises of the fighting invaded my kingdom like a plague, but I still conquered empires in my head. The evils were vanquished. I escaped just in the knick of time. In my head, I managed to flatten entire kingdoms. I would do it all while twirling the king's wand in my own hand.

King by king I remained the victor, all within the confines of the cold, black tiles of my bedroom floor.

That summer I got my Hogwarts Letter.

The tiles were no longer black but white. I was still confined. I still had to play by the rules. More rules. But it was a different game.

I thought it was going to fix things, but it seemed to only make things worse. I thought that maybe this would make them proud of me; that perhaps this would be a license for us to be a family. I was wrong, but I wouldn't admit defeat.

So I went to Hogwarts, leaving my foster parents to their arguing. No longer did I hear them screaming in the room across the hall nor through the floor below me. I heard them screaming inside my head now whenever I tried to close my eyes. The days progressed and I proved to everyone except the ones who mattered that I was a stellar pupil. The year marched onward, and I was king; I could only move on the white spaces one space at a time. I knew that soon the conquests in my head would take shape in reality--like the way water takes the shape of ice when the air freezes.

I would make my foster father stay. I never knew my father. My foster father was the closest thing I had, even if he did know the truth. I would prove to him that my foster mother was worth loving--that we were both worth loving. I'd make them see. He was stupid. He should've seen it my way. They all should've.

Pity the child who has ambition
Knows what he wants to do
Knows that he'll never fit the system
Others expect him to

I thought that by being good enough, they'd realize that something about the both of them was good, and they'd try and make amends.

So I was a good pupil. I was too good to be taught anything that those Hogwarts Professors could teach me. The professors hated me because I was smarter than them, because I knew what I wanted and they still didn't know. I didn't want to succeed anymore. I needed it. I didn't dream of success anymore. It was my obsession.

My father was a bastard. My foster father was pure evil. I was right about that. It would be another year before I realized if I were to fix my foster-father, I'd have to fix them all.

When I was twelve my father moved out
Left with a whimper not with a shout
I didn't miss him - he made it perfectly clear
I was a fool and probably queer
Fool that I was I thought this would bring
Those he had left closer together
She made her move the moment he crawled away

I tried to forget the day Rodney Fielding left, but the bastard won't let me. I kept replaying it, wondering what I could've done differently. I wanted to take the time-turner home one of the Professors afforded me to take extra classes so that maybe I could fix it all, so that maybe we could be a family.

But it was too late for that.

My foster father had given Margot a bloody, swollen lip. Margot had taken a kitchen-knife and stabbed him in the heart. I remember the dull squish-crunch of the knife as she plunged it into her chest. I couldn't see anything but his limp body on the floor and blood on ever inch of the black and white tiles of the kitchen.

The smell...the sight...the unreality of it all seemed to eat right through me.

To protect herself, she would explain later.

I had never been so sure of a lie in my life, and for the first time in my life, I hated her.

The putrid, metallic smell of his blood remained in my nostrils and absorbed my entire sense of being. When I returned to Hogwarts for my second year, there were certain ones--polluted ones--like him. I could smell it in them, I could see Rodney Fielding in their eyes, and they already knew the truth about me before I knew it about myself.

They needed to be conquered.

The pieces needed to be set into place.

That's all I wanted then.

I wanted it gone forever.

I took the road of least resistance
I had my game to play
I had the skill, and more the hunger
Easy to get away
Pity the child with no such weapons
No defense
No escape from the ties that bind
Always a step behind

I didn't see Margot anymore.

She was my only defense against myself, and she was ripped from me when she murdered her husband.

I was returned to the orphanage until September first, and remained there for the rest of my summers.

If I was good enough, I almost convinced myself, then maybe...just maybe...I'd be good enough to get her out. I would be famous enough that my own mother would hear my name in passing, and acknowledge that I am her son.

My mother...

I hated her.

She left me.

To rot.

And rot I did.

No, that wasn't why I hated her--still hate her.

I hate her because she is everything I am.

I hate her because I am everything she is.

Perhaps, then, I should be good enough so that when the time comes--when she does acknowledge that I am her son--I shall be prepared.

I owe her that much.

Pity the child but not forever
Not if he stays that way
He can get all he ever wanted
If he's prepared to pay

Darkness had long ago consumed me. The people I had both loved and hated made sure of that, but as soon as I had tapped into it, the power absorbed my soul like a sponge. I retreated to a German dungeon and I absorbed the very thing I tried to fight for so long. It was only a matter of time.

Soon, I'd be prepared for her.

Soon, it would be checkmate.

Pity instead the careless mother
What she missed
What she lost when she let me go
And I wonder does she know

When I was a child, I wondered why my mother did what she did.

Now, as I aim my wand at a wailing toddler with messy black hair, I think I finally have the answer.

But all the pieces are in place. I have control of the board. This is checkmate.