Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. And I never will own Harry Potter. I make no money off this, it merely allows me to retain my sanity but giving me something to do during class.
A/N: I have had this story in my files for ever. I'm pretty sure I remember writing this at some point during Junior Laboratory which was one of the worst classes I've ever taken. So it's really really outdated now that HPDH is out but I found it and I decided to post it anyway. So there.
There's this crazy little thing all of us have. A thing that many of us take for granted. Assume that we'll always have. But we don't. It's only ours for a while and then its gone, to never exist again on this earth. People celebrate it's beginning and they mourn it's end but few acknowledge it in between. It's mainly accepted and people go from there.
I bet you think I'm talking about love, but I'm not. I'm talking about something much more fundamental, something much more precious. I'm talking about life itself.
Without life we have nothing. No love, no laughter, no nothing. Life is first and foremost essential to who we are. And it's also the thing that we make the most assumptions about, the thing we never really appreciate the way we should.
Even when we see death, that most terrible absence of life, we don't really appreciate that we still have our life, instead we kick and scream because some poor sod got to escape. But, of course, we hide that as kicking and screaming because they are gone. And, within days, we are back to assuming nothing will ever happen to us. Disaster may make us take a second look, but only for a month or two at most and then we're back to our selfish lives.
Life is the one gift we have that we cannot exist without, literally, and it's also the one gift we never give thanks for. We ought to be content with this great gift but we're always looking for something more, something "greater," something "higher." And once we get that something "better" we want something better then that. We're never content with who we are and what we have.
And then we die and we realize that we wasted our entire life attempting to attain "better" things and spent not enough time just enjoying life. And then it's much to late to do anything at all except think of what might have been. If you can even think after death, if there is some sort of afterlife.
I was dead for a time. I went beyond the veil of death and returned. The how of that is a mystery. The why of it even more so. But it remains an indisputable fact that I was dead, or damn close to it anyway, and now I live again. This is not a particularly ordinary or everyday occurrence, even among wizards. My time beyond the veil has granted me a newfound appreciation for the life I never thought I'd have again. I take no part of it for granted anymore, not even the smallest of things.
Albus Dumbledore once said that death is nothing but the next great adventure. Well, actually, he said it more then once, but nonetheless he did say it. And I think this is true, but only if you've actually lived your first life. If you haven't then death is naught but an eternity of regrets for not doing son. That's how I spent my first years behind the veil. And I refuse to live that way the next time I die. When I die again I will do so having lived this life to the utmost extent.
I do so solemnly swear.
And with it I solemnly swear I am up to no good. Life had better watch out.
Sirius Orion Black