Wish You Could Be Me, a harry potter fanfic

Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters, places, and concepts copyright to JK Rowling. Lyrics to Sarah McLachlan's "Witness" belong to her, obviously. And the title is from a Korn song, too, so no harm or infringement meant there, either.

Spoilers: ~ and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Archive: Email me (veggiesfrompluto at hotmail) or leave a review asking and giving me the site address.

Notes: Written largely to see if I could pull off a songfic and because my sister wanted to see if stories could be written in the second person. Therefore: style exercise more than artistic feat. Do not get your hopes up.

Wish You Could Be Me

Make me a witness.

Take me out—out of darkness, out of doubt.

Okay. Try it. Take my place.

Where you are is as close to hell as people can build on solid Earth ground. Everything is bare cement, an uncolor like beige or gray but neither, really, someplace outside or in between. The cells are big to emphasize their emptiness, just a cot in the corner with a ratty snatch of cloth that was woven threadbare to make you feel like trash and that some uncolor because Azkaban does that. The color drains from all the building material and the cloth and from skin and hair and eyes.

I won't weigh you down with good intentions.

Won't make fire out of clay or out of inventions.

Listen: What do you hear? The never-ending screaming of the people you tortured and killed, or the closed loop of what you imagine Lily's sweet voice sounded like in a tormented wail, what you imagine James' confident baritone sounded like in high-pitched panic, and what you imagine your godson's baby screams sounded like during his first seconds as an orphan?

Which would you rather—to be guilty or innocent? To deserve your punishment or self-righteously know you belong in the sun?

Or do you? Is it your fault they died, whether you told Voldemort or not? Do you deserve to be here?

You're serving time for bad judgment. You spend most of your day wondering whether that's right or not.

Most of the time you decide it is.

Will we burn in heaven like we do down here?

Will the change come while we're waiting?

Everyone is waiting.

But the point isn't whether you belong here; the point is that he does. And he's somewhere else, somewhere free. This is God, laughing in your face. This is your angelic host, Lily and James exacting punishment upon you from above. This is Peter Pettigrew, worming his way out of everything like always.

You have found religion in prison, are now a card-carrying zealot in the Our Lady of Bad Luck Church, because there isn't anyone in the world with worse luck than you.

Is that what it comes down to? Luck? Bad karma? Are you being punished for something else you did

(or maybe for this, it was your fault they died you should have known and it's your fault you killed them!)

or can something this horrible really just be rotten luck?

And then you see the paper. You see his little rat-face. You see he's at Hogwarts.

With Harry.

And when we're done soul searching,

And we carry the weight and die for a cross,

Is misery made beautiful right before our eyes?

Will mercy be revealed or blind us where we stand?

So then you get out. And you run and hide and steal and starve and then you find him. You've got him. You're walking towards the castle with him and it's just up there, a few hundred yards to freedom and piecing together something like a family with your godson and your newfound freedom.

But then, this is you we're talking about.

Will we burn in heaven like we do down here?

Will the change come while we're waiting?

Everyone is waiting.

Will we burn in heaven like we do down here?

Will the change come while we're waiting?

Everyone is waiting.

END.