Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.
AN: An ancient drabble.
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Stars. Wheeling overhead the abyss. The ground throbs and the sky twirls above. I ache.
They follow me. Their thoughts haunting my actions. I killed them and now they prevent me from living. It was a mistake… an impossibly stupid mistake… and heaven knows I'm paying for it now. With their blood. With my sanity.
Some people hate me. For what I've done. For what they think I've done. They hate me for what I say, and how I look and act and fight.
Escapism. Yes, that is what you would call it, Frequent trips from reality… Forgetting who you are, what's going on… it frees the soul. From early childhood, a moment alone and I would let my mind wander. At first it was a place I could exist in peace, while mother and father would scream and bawl I would retreat and avoid the issues of their failing marriage…
It's all very well, but as you grow you realise it's not that easy. As my mind wandered within itself I discovered so much about me. About my capabilities and the future I could create in utilising them. I dreamt.
Sickness and death writing before me in spasms of magic fuelled pain. Red light fragmented in wide rolling eyes.
I read books, I learnt spells, I made potions and I met people. The darkness called and who was I to reject it?
You do not need hate for the spell; it just helps. The hate can stop the screams; stop them searing your mind in needlepoints of blinding white heat. The hate can stop you feeling their pain, splintered and tripled threefold and injected directly into your skull. The hate prevents their pain taking residence within your soul where, no longer merely physical, it can tear your world apart.
Their screams echoing as the sky falls in.
Blood rushing: your blood, their blood. It is all the same and one as the light pours from your wand. A directed beam, but it is light, it is magic. Who could truly trap it? It leaks and you do not only see but also feel it. It is darkness and it is power and with all the strength in the world, without hate you would not survive.
The hate only puts to rest the guilt that would otherwise break you.
No. You needn't hate. The spell bubbles up like bile long before any such thoughts are registered. An emotional reflex far quicker than hate's chemical slog whipcracks the power onto the tip of your tongue, metallic and dark.
Crucio.
Red lightning and white eyes in sockets. No liquid blood, only a great mirage of black waterfalls and puddles and raging torrents and screams and screams and screams.
Anger feeds it.
Rashness and a power that was never meant to be controlled. Red flame in the darkness. And the stars wink down like the eyes of old men and the grass is cold and I ache.
AN: Snape.