Word from the Author: No name is mentioned here, so review and feel free to give your opinions on whose perspective you guys think this is, because I actually started off with someone specific in mind, who as I continued to write just so happened to morph into someone else...
Disclaimer: The only word you need know 'JKRowling' - see, no spaces, one word, and all HP goodness belongs to her...!
Introspective
It happened so quickly. One slip and the cauldron's contents exploded. His first reaction had been to jump back, out of its line of fire. He saved himself the boils and burns that would've come with being doused in a liquid of that heat. What he didn't foresee, however, was the preparation set he'd left supposedly out of harms way, and with it the lone knife that nicked the bare skin of his hand as he leant heavily against the table behind him.
Shocked at the flash of pain that burned, in a completely different way than he'd escaped, sharp and searing as flesh was rent apart, he stared, eyes alight as blood poured from the wound. It hadn't felt deep. It didn't even look that deep, but still, it bled like it would never close, as if torn skin could never mend, as if it mourned for itself, weeping metallic tears as it did so.
It was in that moment that he came to a sudden realization. It was then that he thought to the fragility of humans, how soft their exteriors, how unprepared to deal with the sharp edges of a hard world they were, how easily they broke. But he wasn't like the rest of them.
It was said that pain was the means by which your body told you to stop whatever was causing it harm; a biological safety mechanism.
Brows furrowed, he stared at his hand.
Pain, he mused, would it not thus be the most powerful tool to teach with? Is it not, therefore, the most instinctual, the most logical, the most effective path to take such that weak, pathetic humans could be taught what they needed to know? What they needed to understand.
He laughed, and languidly licked at the tangy freshness of his essence. It was through pain that the best lessons were learnt.
And soon, he knew, he would be the greatest teacher this world has ever known.
Finis.
Another Word from the Author: Originally I named who this was when I wrote "//Insert name// laughed, and..." but thought perhaps ambiguity would be nice, just so you guys could go off on your own little tangents... Do review though, cos I'd love to know who everyone thought this was...!
Kamikumai.