Angels Deserve To Die

I have been called many names during my long life.

Hurtful names- shameful names- affectionate names- and I remember them all. Not one of them is not being displayed there, in the gallery of my memory- not one is lacking in the innumerable shelves of my heart.

My life has been a full one.

I have been called a teacher many times- I have been called a mother, an angel. I have been called a lover- I have been called a spinster. I am all of those. I am a mother to many people, I am a teacher to more- I have been a lover to many people… but a spinster to more.

I have been called an angel by many people- but a whore by more.

I smile at the irony. I do not smile often, but I do smile at this irony- the irony of my life. I know what I am regarded as, I know what is my most valuable name of all, nowadays. Teacher. Deputy Headmistress.

Respectable.

They don't know what they are talking about. If I was not being suffocated, always- always!- by that façade of respectability that I created for myself, I would spit on them. They have elevated me, they have given me what I wanted the most- and they've ripped me apart in the process.

Don't they remember, then?

Don't they remember the girl I once was? The girl, nicknamed Beauty, with her thick, black hair, with her porcelain blue eyes- the girl with the translucent skin and the smile which could melt icebergs- or so the tale said?

I don't know.

But I do remember. Everything- everything of what I was and of what I could have been- everything, up to the very day I accepted the task which ended my beauty, my life- which ended that girl I once knew with a brusque, black dot- a full stop after that sentence.

I smile.

I was the only female Auror in those days. Twenty-two years old, beautiful, intelligent- and brave. My courage has always been both my curse and my blessing- both my luck and my doom. They sent me to Grindelwald- I consented.

I was not ignorant, just the way I still am not. I knew what they sent me to- I knew what they expected me to do, they knew what I would have to do. I was pretty- they simply must have known. Just the way I did.

When I returned, they deemed me a whore.

They turned their backs on me. I had defeated him, not Albus- who, undeniably the good man that he is, offered me a job in order to soothe his own conscience- but I, I was the heroine. I still am- it has been my virginity which saved them all.

I was not too proud to accept the job offered to me. I was poor- broken, desperate- courage finally having failed me. I was twenty-six when it all ended- I had nothing.

So I created my mask. I created my façade. I pulled my once thick, shiny hair back into a colourless bun- my skin turned pale and wrinkled- my eyes lost their spark.

It was my beauty which saved them all.

It was my life which was sacrificed.

I have learnt to live with it. I have learnt to live with my task, with my life, with the names.

I am a mother- I am a lover- I am a teacher, an angel- but most of all, primarily, I raise my chin, I nod, I say yes. Yes, I am a whore. Most of all, I am the whore you, World, made me. Despite everything.

And yet sometimes I wonder- if angels deserve to die-

Do whores too?