Unforgettable

Pale feet padded on a dusty floor, dragging slightly with an apparent age. Calf muscles, once firm and tan, strained to move their owner. Dry knees creaked between each step, and atrophied thighs shook with the effort of bearing weight. An ash-haired man, stooped and stiff, walked slowly round an ancient corridor.

Wizards, unlike Muggles, grow to a great age, and do not die until even their magic can no longer support their failing bodies or minds. This wizard, though damaged, held on to life with the force of a young and virile man; he would not simply lie and let his bones rest.

He was very afraid of the dark.

Here, in this hospital, the everlasting Lumos hung high on the ceilings, and the gray hair that once was gold gleamed dimly in the light. Here, he did not feel so deeply the pull of death, the inexorable swing of the heavy pendulum - light, dark; warmth, frigidity; life, death.

Here, he could pretend that the echoing silence outside St. Mungo's was nothing more than a frightening, though forgettable, nightmare.

His teeth, still white and straight, were slowly eroded by a constant gnashing. He would walk the corridors, grimacing, pulling faces at minor pains, growling at the invisible creatures that, he was sure, coiled around his ankles and hissed. These night terrors were familiar to the wizened, gray figure who lived in the hospital and that familiarity was almost a comfort.

Almost.

Sometimes, the demi-demons would writhe pleasantly over the skin, soothing, calming fears, erasing doubts, and quelling unhappy memories. They served, then, as a security blanket for the damned. Most of the time they just bound, strangled, hissed, and subtly but oh so effectively silenced the residual magic of each victim.

Despite the noise of the terrors and the muttering of the old man, the building was quiet.

Out of the quiet madness came a voice, rusty and cracked, tainted by the effect of a decade - or two, or six - of isolation. It was a voice that struggled to be heard, an orator's voice, deep and smooth and like melted dark chocolate. It had been, at any rate. A few notes began to dance along the surfaces of the hard, sterile walls. And words began to flow from the dried lips of a man who had not spoken in fifty years.

Oddly enough, the tune was a Muggle one, and the words were nearly a century old. The singer must have heard the song once in passing - he had not lived in the Muggle world, this wizard. But somehow these pitches, these phrases had lodged themselves inside the scattered brain of this ruined man. And he could not control the music's desire to escape from its hundred years prison.

His voice warmed, mellowed, and found its proper key. St. Mungo's nearly rang with the first words heard since the great wars.

Unforgettable, that's what you are
Unforgettable though near or far

Life sometimes reveals little ironies, petty jokes that have been played on the mere mortals who stumble through its paths. This song was surely a jest, a mockery of this man and his lonely plight. He sang on.

Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before has someone been more

Fifty years past, this man had been held here - the fourth floor - so that he might recover his memory. Fifty years past, the war began.

He passed a window that had blackened with the dust of this place. Purposefully, though for no clear reason, he scrubbed the glass with the torn hem of his standard blue - now dark gray - robes. Having cleared a considerable amount of grime, he smiled a bit and stared at the glass.

Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay

He did not see, though it was hard to miss, the charred ruins of a city. He did not remember, due to the ever-present snakes burned into the skin around his ankles, the day that Voldemort broke into St. Mungo's and rent what remained of his mind. He did not even smell the remains of the many men, women, and children who had died and rotted around him.

As he stepped back from his shining reflection, he did not feel the shards of a recognizable pair of glasses cut into his feet. Instead, he sang.

That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too

Guilderoy Lockhart gazed at his reflection, and knew happiness.