A short foray into the psyche of a broken Harry J. Potter
The mind is like a frozen lake, in some places, the ice is thick, sturdy, dependable. It protects the memories housed within, the carefree recesses of a childhood, the wonderful moments that make life worth living. In other places, over the horrors of the world, the casual cruelty of everyday life …a much thinner sort of ice is found.
The more you have the less ice between you and the deep water.
Or you could say that the psyche is like a looking glass, hand blown and complex in its own unique, intricate design.
Every design has a flaw.
A small crack, a weak point in the glass, an imperfection in the creation, a small push send the whole thing crashing down with the soft tinkle of broken glass.
Sometimes minds shouldn't be messed with, sometimes you wonder why magic would be warped and used to invade the private sanctuaries, the fragile glass houses and frozen lakes that make up the mind.
Sometimes you wonder about the point of it all, the wars the fighting, if in the end, everyone is insane.
Then again, you think to yourself, as you do often these days. If everyone is insane, who's to keep you here, trapped in the wreckage of an Occlumency lesson gone wrong?
Your mind skips a bit, it seems to be doing that a lot more often than usual, then comes back to your musings.
If your mind is a fragile thing, it stands on even frailer supports. Thin tooth picks, your personality, keep you above the primal instincts of your forebears, the 'uncivilized' ways that fell out of practice millennia ago.
Your mind frolics like an excitable puppy, off doing whatever an insane mind did these days.
Surely, you think, thinking off yourself in two senses is a sure sign of madness!
Who are you to say, a nastier, hidden part of his shattered personality whispered. You failed; you failed everyone by being too weak, for not standing up to Snape and defending yourself while you could. This part of his head had a strong resemblance to the seventeen year old Tom Riddle from the Diary. Now you pay.
You shake your head, ignoring that dark presence that floats around your conscience.
The tall skyscrapers of your mindscape reflect the faux sunset's light onto your face, little black particles, pockets of dark memory, float around you, taunting you with their screams. You shudder. You know to escape you would have to face them, to escape the never ending city your mind constructed to shield you from yourself.
Your mind has effectively held your soul hostage.
But even being here is better than touching those memories, the dark memories that seep through the crack in the pavement far, far below his lofty place at the top of the world.
He'd take whatever choice he had, even if, in the long run, it was the wrong one.
Harry Potter didn't get a lot of choices that ended in happiness anyway.