Fade to Black
by: darke wulf
I.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw.
Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all--not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
~~~*~~~
There is a darkness in Him now; a shadow in His emerald eyes that wasn't there
before.
I seem to be the only one to notice, though.
I watch as the Holy Trinity approach the train; the Weasel and Mudblood
are chattering obliviously at each other, arguing over some irritatingly
pointless matter while He trails quietly after them. They haven't picked up on His reticence, or else are trying to
ignore it. I'm guessing it's the latter
option. Those two have always tried to
ignore what they weren't quite sure how to deal with. When confronted by troublesome situations they have always turned
to Him for leadership, letting Him take action while they stood back and
watched.
Griffindors, hah. It's easy to be brave when someone
else is doing all the work.
I study Him openly through the window of the compartment I have claimed on the
Hogwarts Express. None of my
compatriots have arrived as yet, which leaves me free to do as I will without
fear of word leaking back to my father.
His footsteps drag and He falls farther and farther behind his so-called friends;
He fears to board the train, He fears what the coming year will bring.
As well He should. For even if the
You-Know-Who decides to break with tradition and does not try to kill Him this year,
a prospect I do not find likely, this is going to be a
difficult year for the Golden One. Even
now it has started; a hushed silence precedes Him as our schoolmates stare with
suspicion, disappointment and, in some extreme cases, hatred as He passes them
with his head bowed, unwilling to meet their accusing glares. When He has safely passed the whispers
start, poorly hidden behind raised hands.
It's been over three months but the school, the entire Wizarding World for that
matter, is still reeling. The
unthinkable has happened: the Savior, the Chosen One, He who was to save us all
from Evil, has turned out to be nothing more than a mere mortal. He failed, and because of His failure a boy
died and the Dark Lord has fully returned.
Who else is there to blame? Who
else can we possibly hold responsible?
Certainly not the great Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry who, in spite of being the
most powerful wizard alive, repeatedly sent a pre-teen to fight
You-Know-Who. Nor let us blame the
Minister of Magic, even though he refuses to so much as admit that
He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named has returned; nor the many Aurors, so-called
defenders of the Light, who have done nothing to stop the Dark Lord's steady
rise.
~~~*~~~
II.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer--
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
~~~*~~~
No, instead let us blame a child who didn't know that magic was real until he was
eleven, who never protested when responsibility for the safety and well being
of the world was placed solely on his shoulders, who actually allowed himself
to be convinced that he should be held responsible.
Naturally, it is all His fault. It is His fault
that Diggory died; it is His fault that You-Know-Who has returned; and, even
worse, it is His fault that everyone is now left searching for answers to
questions they hoped to never ask.
He protected their little realms of make-believe for longer than I'd
anticipated. Time and again he defied
the odds, arising victorious when I would have wagered my soul that he wouldn't
survive. And each time He did, the
world began to rely upon Him a little bit more. Everyone surrendered themselves to the fantasy that a single
child would save them from evil and now that He has failed they've been forced
to realize just how wrong they were.
And yet, of anyone, His failure has hit Him the hardest. He is drowning in his guilt even as shadow-filled eyes implore
those whom He once called friends to understand that He tried His best. They do not need to accuse Him, though they
do anyway, for nothing they can say to Him can be worse than the insults that
are flying around inside His own head.
He believes the shit that has been whispered into his ear since his
first year. He genuinely thinks that it
is up to Him to defeat the Dark Lord, to protect the world from Evil and
harm. And He cannot bear the fact that
He was unable to do so. He hates
himself because He could not achieve the impossible, because alone He could not
do what an entire army had been unable to accomplish before him.
Cedric Diggory was not the only one who was mortally wounded that night. A piece of Hogwarts' Golden Boy suffered the
same fate, though it has taken it longer to die than it did Diggory. But it is dieing, none the less; His more
Griffindorish half, that part that made Him leap into battles He had no real
chance of winning, just because He thought it was the right thing to do, that
part that asked, "How high?" instead of "Why should I?" It is slowly withering away, while His other
half gradually takes control.
~~~*~~~
III.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
~~~*~~~
You can see the signs now, if you look closely enough. Every so often, even as He shrinks from the angry glares of His
fellow students, a dark sneer appears on His face, partially hidden by His
bowed head and black mop of hair. It is
a look that is far more natural to my own face than His, clearly demanding
to know what gives anyone the right to judge Him and His actions when they know
nothing of the horrors that He has had to face. It is the darker part of His soul; that which caused Him
to almost be placed in Slytherin House, coming to the front.
It is something I have been waiting for since He rejected my offer of friendship
in our first year.
I knew that this day would come. I knew
that His 'destiny' would eventually cause a rift between Him and His
friends. For you cannot battle evil and
hope to be successful without embracing it, at least to a certain extent. If you have no understanding of your enemy,
you cannot possibly hope to defeat it, a concept that is completely alien to
the members of the House of Griffindor.
All but one, that is. The Golden Boy
realized that truth, though nearly too late.
And so he began to learn the ways of his enemy and, in doing so,
tarnished his own image. He is deeper
in spirit now than any of them, he is no longer like they are, shallow in their
'goodness'. They can no longer
understand Him, He has become to complex, and that scares them.
Oh, sure, they flocked to Him when He was their apparent Heir, when they thought He
was pure and noble and perfect, the ideal leader to raise Griffindor House to
new heights of glory while they all settled back and rode His coattails. Now that he has changed, they have no more
use for Him. He can no longer be simply
classified as 'good', he is more than that and so, He is not to be
trusted. He is not the 'perfect' Griffindor
they thought Him to be.
You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters, my father included, have also altered their perceptions
of the Boy-Who-Lived since His failure, no longer fearing Him as they once
did. They have become far too
overconfident, mistaking one battle for the war.
It is these misconceptions that will eventually lead to the ruin of them all, for
I am not so easily fooled.
~~~*~~~
IV.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
and avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
~~~*~~~
Where the world sees a broken, useless child, I see a young man full of promise, willing to listen to reason for the first time in His life. He no longer blindly accepts the words of Dumbledore. He is questioning what He is told; He is demanding to be shown proof.
~~~*~~~
V.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
~~*~~
He has experienced first hand how little difference there truly is between the 'Light' and the 'Dark'. He is now looked upon with suspicion and hatred, just because in His attempt to do the impossible He had to change. He had to learn Unforgivable Curses, and He had to develop the will to use them. People recognize that in Him, and it frightens them. And, as people have done throughout history, what they fear, they soon come to hate.
~~~*~~~
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
~~~*~~~
He is finally beginning to realize how unreasonable the demands of the world are and that realization, coupled with the scorn of His former friends, is causing a storm of resentment to brew within Him. A storm which, while currently contained, will soon grow in strength and fury until it will be unleashed upon the world at large.
~~~*~~~
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
~~~*~~~
He is not broken, nor is He defeated; He has merely lost His way.
~~~*~~~
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
~~~*~~~
And it will be I who takes His hand and leads Him back to the path of His destiny. For, like any good Slytherin, I have my own ambitions, and a plan through which I intend to turn them into reality.
~~~*~~~
For Thine is
~~~*~~~
And step one in that plan is to bind Him to my cause.
~~~*~~~
Life is
~~~*~~~
Yes, now He will listen, now He will finally hear.
~~~*~~~
For Thine is the
~~~*~~~
This time, Harry Potter will not refuse the hand of Draco Malfoy and together, we will be unstoppable.
~~~*~~~
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
- 'The Hollow
Men', T.S. Eliott
~~~*~~~
~el fin~
Author's Notes: So there you go, my first Harry Potter piece. Drop me a review and let me know what you think.