Diventare

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D.i.v.e.n.t.a.r.e
Parte Una

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I was once a hero before now. Of course, you would never believe me, as I have blood on my hands and a dagger is now impaled through my best friend's heart. But once upon a time I was a hero.


I'm not a hero anymore. I've killed four people. I enjoyed the chaos the deaths caused. It feels surreal, thinking about it. The need to have havoc around me had been gnawing at my conscience for awhile before I murdered them. Well, three of them. The fourth, the latest, and not the last, was done out of anger, pity, and maybe love.


Yes, the blood is still on my hands from that last kill, save for the spots where my lover's tongue has washed it away. It will probably stain, the blood. It always does if I do not take care of it immediately. It has been around two hours, give or take a few meaningless minutes.


I've noticed there is a faint lingering lust for him, although I know he is dead. And I wanted him dead. After all, I spent well over a year of time in his company-in a sexual sense- several out of mere companionship. It may take a while for the pangs of hunger, the vague needing of him, to fade, this I realize. I knew that the moment I knew I would kill him.


I understand, at the last moment, he either took my actions as deceit or mercy. Of course, I will never have the chance to know… nor do I want that chance. To know his last thoughts as I pulled my dagger so precariously from my robes would be more of a torture than not knowing. I suffer enough as it is. I know he has always thought I loved him. I don't know if that's true or not. I may've loved him; I might have hated him with an intricately defined passion. I don't care anymore.


And even if I had loved him, I was never in love with him. I am, and always have been (although for most of my short life, I had never realized), in love with the pale, soft skinned angel currently sleeping by my side with his head resting on my chest. There is no other that I could share my love with, in such a way. I would die before I ever shared it.


Now, I want to contemplate the murder itself. How it came about, why I did it, and why I do not care. I'm sure you would like to know why a hero, a savior, found it right to kill four innocent seventeen year olds. I, myself, would like to know.

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For years we had been known as the Golden Trio. We three had always been together since our first year at Hogwarts. For much of our friendship, we shared a deep bond, I suppose. We all had our uses for each other, though, and at the time it felt like a normal friendship. But is friendship really being completely dependent on the others? Without Hermione, Ron would have failed most his classes horribly. Without her, I may have died long before now. I needed Ron the same way any guy needs other male companions (or, at first, that was how it was). Although I could've told Hermione almost anything, there were those few male-only things that I needed Ron to talk to about. Hermione needed Ron because I believe she was in love with him. There were no obvious signs, but I could feel it in the way she looked at him. She loved him in a deeper way than she loved me.


And Ron… I think Ron needed me as a reason to try harder. It sounds improbable now that I really think about it, but I think that's what it was. It'd always been obvious that he was blatantly jealous of me. He wanted the attention he had never been offered in his childhood. The attention his own parents had never been capable of giving. I assume when he found out how little I knew of the world in which I now live, he had thought he would get to feel a little more powerful. A little more superior. And even during my first year at this school, I blew that last chance of his away.


The tension after my fourth year, after the TriWizard Tournament, between Ron and I had grown steadily worse. I became more aware of the dejected looks and defeated expressions he wore around me. I noticed more accurately the slight lack of enthusiasm when we, all three of us, were together. I think maybe that Hermione noticed it too, eventually. Sometime in our sixth year, she began dragging him around with her more often. He told me once that many of those instances were spent just sitting in the library or by the lake.


As you can see, we were bound to grow apart sometime. That bond of friendship we had held was quickly waning. It had hurt at some points, to see the distinct distances between us. But sometimes… oh, sometimes it was absolute relief. When Hermione brought Ron to wherever as her personal tag-along, I had more time to myself. I could think more clearly, too. And I had the freedom to think what I wished.


I spent many evenings by the lake, or near the edge of the forest, thinking about everything I could comprehend. I mulled over my friendship with Hermione and Ron on numerous occasions. I always came to the same conclusions. Good things never last. The other (and now, it seems, more important) conclusion was that I was not, no matter how much they wished I were, Harry Potter: Gryffindor Golden Boy and World Savior. I was simply Harry Potter. Or, even more accurately, just Potter.


I think these revelations hit me harder than I had wanted to let them. Hermione and Ron were all I had. They were all I had ever had, except Sirius, and I had failed him miserably. I realized that without Ron, and without Hermione, I would be left to stand alone against evil itself. I found that if I really thought about it, I didn't want to 'defeat evil', either. And, although blunt as it seems, I discovered I would have rather gone with the flow. I always knew I should have been in Slytherin, after all.


With these thoughts weighing heavy on me, and they were a burden, I suppose I grew detached. Colder. I became who I was meant to be; Potter, who was calm, collected, easily angered, and living behind a warm, easy-going façade. I guess I was always the aforementioned. But it was easier to accept the façade, than who I really was.


If any of you has ever suffered an identity crisis, you know what it must've been like for me. I didn't know who I was, but while wondering about myself, I became myself. I feared what I would become (and obviously, as I now look at myself with my stained fingers and cool skin, I see I was right to be fearful), and I suddenly allowed myself to cling to Ron. I think it was because he was the other guy of our trio. It makes little sense, really, for I could have easily used Hermione for my purposes, but I preferred my only link to human emotion to be a guy. Call mean anti-feminist, I don't care much. I just know that I needed Ron.


Now that I think of it, he was infinitely more attractive than I or anyone else who knew him (Hermione included), gave him credit for. Maybe that swayed me towards him. Or maybe it was his sardonic humor, or stupidly adorable way of looking at things. The ironic cynicism he held. It could have been many, many things.


But I could never explain fully what any of that meant to me.


I don't remember ever having any sexual attraction towards him until that one night that broke down my few little walls. But we had our first sexual encounter that night, and it became one of many on which we would relieve ourselves of whatever bits of pain we could. Everyone had been dead asleep. Except for Ron and me. He was doing a last minute essay for Transfiguration and I had been staring. I'd been staring at the fire for well over an hour, watching as the flames danced up only to tumble back downwards again. I'd been watching it so long that I'd even begun to sense the magical energy that radiated it. At the time I'd thought it was ridiculously funny that such an ordinary fire was kept lit by magic. And then I'd realized the fire had been going since after dinner.


I'd never noticed such a normal, day-to-day thing like that before.


That's how long I had been staring at those orange and red flames.


I didn't hear Ron set down his quill. I didn't hear him close his book or roll up his five-foot essay. I didn't hear him get out of his chair and walk over to me. I didn't even see him sit beside me and watch me with nervous eyes. Didn't catch the jerky movements as he twisted his hands before him or even the way he sucked in a deep breath before speaking.


I should have noticed these things, and yet I hadn't. Things were funny again.


He had been calling my name. But I didn't turn until he took the courage to shake my arm gently. It felt like cold fire where he touched me.


"Harry," he had said, "Are…" He seemed to falter so I nudged him gently, indulging my curiosity as to what he wanted to say. He took another deep breath.


"Harry, are we still friends? I mean, best friends?"


I stared at him. Friends? For a moment, I couldn't remember when we had been friends. But that was ridiculous, I told myself, sure we'd been friends. At some point.


But when I looked at him, he looked weary and nervous. He'd really thought I'd say no, hadn't he? He'd thought I'd brush him off casually and say, 'You idiot, Ron, we haven't been friends since fourth year.' And maybe I would have had he not appeared so lost, almost lonely.


Instead I replied, "We'll always be friends, Ron." I knew he'd noticed I hadn't said 'best friends'. I'd left it simply at 'friends'. I don't know if that hurt him. It probably had. It seemed like the type of thing that would.


"Oh." He didn't look relieved. In fact, he looked more upset than he had before. "Oh."


I frowned and looked him in the eye, my curiosity (and maybe a small pang of worry) heightened. "Why are you asking? Do you… not want to be friends anymore?"


"No! No, I just feel like we aren't… very close anymore, y'know? You've been kind of distant lately." He looked at me like he thought I was going to explode. And I hated myself for wanting to laugh. But it was amusing that he was saying we weren't close now, in our sixth year, when for the past two I'd barely looked his way.


Why was he so worried now?


I watched him for a moment, studying his face closely. He looked pained. Like he was actually, physically, in pain.


I licked my lips, wetting them, barely noticing how I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, then top. But I did notice how Ron's eyes seemed to dart away right then, avoiding looking at me.


That was when I realized that maybe Ron didn't want to be friends.


"Ron," I'd asked quietly, "How close do you want to be?"

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-End Parte Una-
To be continued in Parte Due and Tre

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