I once again found my face wet from tears I hadn't known I was crying. I had been reading my schoolbooks, the ones I had bought early for my last year. I was alone, in my own house, well, the one I had inherited from my godfather. I was sitting in the room I had made my bedroom, just sitting on my bed, reading about the history of the Interseptation charm, when I found the pages wet and splotched from my tears. I can't say I was feeling sad at the moment, but nor was I surprised to find myself crying. I had found myself crying more and more often. Ever since I had become The Savior. Never, of course, when there were other people around, but once I was alone I lost all control. Not mentally, I never sobbed, I never got irrational, I didn't yell, or break things, I would just not be able to stop the tears from coming. I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering how it could be that I cried without really feeling it on the inside. I felt so normal at that moment that it seemed absurd that I would be crying. I mean, that's not to say I didn't have reason to cry; I did. All the people and friends I had lost, what happened to Ron, what that was doing to Hermione. The fact that I had already "peaked," so to speak. I was very depressed, I'll admit that…but I was depressed all the time, I wasn't any more depressed now, at this moment, than I had been a week ago when I went out with Ron and Hermione to buy our school stuff.

So that's where I found myself a week before the start of term, when I would have to go back to being around people all the time, deal with all the "normal" stuff of every day life at Hogwarts. Not the school work of course, that didn't bother me at all, since I had defeated Voldemort my grades had gone up, dramatically in fact. This, I admitted to myself, was because of the fact that it was the only thing to distract me from my sorrow when I was at school, the only thing to keep me from having to do the normal things I always did, that I just wasn't interested in anymore. That was the reason I was reading up the last of my schoolbooks before I had even set foot in the school, let alone a classroom.

So, needless to say the library had become a favorite place of mine. I dare say I was there more than any other student, though one would never know. I had made it a habit of going there in my invisibility cloak, even in the light of day when I was allowed to be there, though I was there just as often when I wasn't. Not only did I make it so no one could see me if they looked, but I had made the most desolate, deserted, and out of the way corner my special niche. And no one would know it, but sleep had become my most vile enemy, who I avoided as if my very life depended on it, so I was hardly ever in my bed, and even if I did sleep it was never in my bed. It was more likely that I would be found passed out it a deserted classroom or hallway in the dead of night hidden under my invisibility cloak.

This had been going on all last year as well, though no one had noticed. I mean I guess I couldn't blame them, what with what had happened in the war, Ron had become the center of all concern, and rightly so. He was lucky that Dumbledore was able to let him still go to school, but no one could really complain, as he helped to save everyone's lives. It was sad, he had been attacked by a number of magical creatures that were sent forth by Voldemort himself. The result of which had been horrid and incurable. Ron Weasley now suffered from a number of different symptoms that could not be treated because of the extent to which they were all mingled together. Every full moon he grew fur all over and suffered an agony, I assume is the likeness of being under the Crutatius curse, the whole night long. That is not to mention the fact that he could no longer go out into the sun without great protection, for fear of chronic sunburn, and that he now took his steak completely raw to satisfy his slight hunger for blood. He also dropped the temperature whereever he went, and people now had lost all desire to be around him. These were only some of his symptoms, the most obvious of them. That is not to say it was all bad, he had gained a fair amount of fame from his unique condition, as well as quite a bit of power. He's almost as powerful as I am, though he has no control over it. So with all the Ron stuff going on it was no wonder no one had noticed that I no longer slept in my own bed, or that they hardly ever saw me.

But this year, I know they will notice this year. By this time the worry over Ron will have dissipated enough for them to notice, and I've been getting worse, there is no way I'll be able to feign normalcy as well as I did last year. And those two things added up to a great and powerful sense of foreboding for the up coming school year. Two years earlier I would have thought that it had something to do with Voldemort, now, however, it only has everything to do with the eventual reveling of my sorrow, depression and failing mental emotional and physical health. I was not looking forward to it.

I was not looking forward to pretending I cared about things I couldn't care less about; the gossip, how cute that girl is, if this or that Quidditch team won, or if Malfoy was up to some evil plan. I wasn't looking forward to faking enthusiasm for winning the House cup or malice for Snape. I'll have to hide the fact that I avoid eating. I'll have to make chit chat with people, and pretend I feel fine. I wonder if my voice will even be able to take the constant use after lying dormant for so long?

The only thing I can see as a plus, this heading back to school business, is the fact that Malfoy will be there, and I'll be able to once again take out my frustrations with physical violence. That's the one thing I am actually looking forward to, the only silver lining in the days to come.