A/N: I own nothing, except for this AU. Warning, this is a dark fic. This particular AU contains a character that has been tortured into insanity. Please let me know how I did, this is much darker than anything else that I have written. The line, "time to go…" comes from the short story, Silver Water, by Amy Bloom. This was Betaed by Maddymadmad29 and HiddenValor, thank you for your help editing this fic! ~Tris
This fic was written for the following prompts in the Interesting Words Challenge:
44. Apanthropinization - the resignation from human concerns; withdrawal from the world and its problems.
36. Wanderlust - the irresistible, incurable desire to travel or wander
It was also written for the prompt, Sam I Am in the OH THE THINKS YOU CAN THINK! challenge: A stubborn man who won't try something new. Write about someone who's set in their ways. Alternatively, write about Hermione.
No More than a Memory
It came back to me slowly, like a half remembered melody. I had been the person they remembered, once. Before that time, before I had withdrawn into myself to escape the pain, the sheer torture of being mentally present. The Healers, the therapists, the physiologists, they all called it "my condition." There was some long word for it, I used to want to know words like these, to stretch my knowledge of the world. Now, I just don't care enough to know.
The Healers thought I couldn't hear them whispering in the doorway, both the physical and the the metaphysical doorway; The doorway between my room and the hallway, between sanity and the delightful nothingness of oblivion. I wanted to travel into that beyond, to forget what I have seen and experienced, but the Healers' spells held me here, in this reality. Here, I was broken. My desires to travel, to see the world, they were all gone, gone with the winds of time. Erased with one torture curse held too long. I was much too young for my mind to be so broken. My mind hadn't been able to stand the pain of the woman's knife and her gleeful "crucio."
One of the few things I remembered before that fateful day was a library. I had always felt so safe there, and I think that I might have never left that place, if not for that wanderlust that I used to feel. That too was no longer a part of who I am. There used to be friends and family. I thought, no, I knew that there was one named Harry, and another, Ron. I roll the names around in my head, they sound so familiar, like a baby blanket that one refuses to part with for many years. I did not know what happened, there in that place that I cannot remember. I only knew that they had been taken away from me. It was the beginning of the end.
I no longer have the ability to feel, the world is a cold, hard, unforgiving place, and I no longer wish to try to fit in with a place that will always shun me. From the moment that fateful letter came, I was doomed to a sort of a half life, caught between worlds, my sanity fraying at the edges. I had always been shunned for who I am, what I am, and I am tired of it. I'm so, so weary. Perhaps it had always been this way, I can't remember now, memories forgotten, lost in the dusty recesses of a mind that would be horrified with what had become of it.
Some names that used to be applied to me drift mockingly before my eyes, long-forgotten voices drift through my mind. "Mudblood" is spoken with an aristocratic drawl; "bushy-haired bookworm" is said in the same voice. There was something familiar about that voice, an echo of a happier past. Other names, kinder names drift through my mind. One of them seems to describe me, or at least who I used to be, "Hermione," a teenage boy's voice whispers. His voice brings images of unruly black hair and wire-rimmed glasses to mind. I think that he might have been the one named Harry. I roll the word around in my mouth, speaking no louder than an exhale, "Harry." A girl, younger than the boy says, "'Mione." She makes me think of hand-me-downs, bright, red hair, and being overlooked in favor of her family. She makes me think of the one who I think was named Ron. That means that she was Ginny, this to I whisper, this name comforts me, she was like a sister that I never had. They were gone now, whether dead or alive, I do not know, do not care.
There is nothing more for me now, at least not here. Unthinkingly, I let a sentence slip from between lips long fallen into disuse, "Time to go..." The words trailed off as the world begins to darken. Dimly, I wondered where I was, who I was, why I lived this life of pain, why I deserved it. Then, all was darkness, I knew no more.
It had been too much, too young. It was time to go, time to leave this cruel, twisted reality behind. The people I had known and lost were calling to me from the darkness of beyond. Slowly, their names began to return as the bad memories of my life, the memories I wished to forget, faded with the world around me. I remember them now, Sirius, Alastor, Albus, and many others. I faintly heard the Healers' calling for someone, and then I was gone. No more than a memory.