Disclaimer: Characters and world belong to J.K. Rowling.
A/N: Along with Of France and Other Things, I'm going to be doing something I'm much more comfortable with – a third person POV fic! No, seriously. This is mostly focused on seventh year, with plenty of flashbacks. Hope you can keep up as you learn how fatalistic I really am.
Summary: Good things never last. They knew that. They understood that. They lived by that. It felt as if every force in the universe was working against them – and, sadly, the universe tends to get what it wants.
Inevitabilities and the Zealous Bodies
(And How Inevitabilities Always Win)
Prologue
A Fight That Demands To Be Fought
Help me, I'm holding on for dear life, won't look down won't open my eyes
Keep my glass full until morning light, 'cause I'm just holding on for tonight
-Sia. "Chandelier."
Life was cruel.
No one possessed the stout courage to say what they knew was already true: life was cruel. Life was ruthless. Life was merciless. Life was pitiless. Life didn't stop until it got what it wanted. Life didn't leave any survivors because life was meant to end. Life was filled with truths that no one was willing to face.
Death was inevitable.
One day it would happen – it would creep on the most unsuspecting of victims (even those who had just dropped their only defense on the sofa) and draw them in. Death refused to wait for anyone (even lonely boys who needed the protection that had just fell behind the veil). Death didn't let anyone go when it really wanted them.
All good things will meet their end.
(Regardless of that fact that you were already at your low.) Most tried to escape this fact and make things last as long as possible – but life didn't like good things. Life liked giving bad things to good people. Life loved it when bad won out good (that's why it left an orphan with neglecting guardians).
Happy endings aren't real.
Things won't be alright until the end. It will never happen. Because, as life has already proved, bad won out good (always – that's why a man was left to rot in prison for a crime he didn't commit). Happy endings will never happen in real life because good is too weak to win. Power can win, though.
Life liked to give people the cold hard facts. We call them inevitabilities. We can run as fast as we can, but, as it turns out, inevitabilities love a chase. They'll always win – with their agile and unassuming lithe bodies.
We can try to survive, but no one is ever truly alive after an inevitability decided to ram into them with all its force, laughing maniacally as we crumple to the hard ground in pain.
We try to compensate for our lack of competence. We try to make up reasons for these things. But life and death and inevitabilities always win.
Why? Because they have the universe on their side. And the universe has a tendency to win.
A fight awaits them at the end of their tunnel of brightness, a fight that will be fought in the dark, because nothing good ever comes out of a fight. They can pretend to be happy, pretend that this was what they had wanted out of life – but it wouldn't be true.
Horribly short lives were chased down by inevitabilities they didn't have the courage to face. They were supposed to be of scarlet and gold – honored as they commanded the respect of everyone except the cunning geniuses hiding in green and silver.
As they ran and ran, bones fell across their feet, and blood flooded their field of view. They each knew they were going to die. They were trapped – locked into their lives that were destined to be unfortunate.
The first to come to terms with his fate was the first to die, the first to turn around and tell death to take him and let the others go. He was fearless. He ran straight into danger, every time. That was just the price of being a hero – or rather, a martyr.
He was the bravest – he was the protector of his inferiors, the tormentor of his equals. He was a bastard with a dirty past caked in the humiliation of his rivals. He knew he was a bastard. He loved attention and he loved being the center of attention – but there's more to a person than to how they seem. He just wanted to be the protector, the hero of everyone else's story.
His own hero – well, who do you think he was attempting to save?
The next to face the inevitable was as brave as her precedent. She was given mercy from the powerful and she stayed to save the one boy worth saving. She wasn't perfect. She was vindictive and unforgiving – unless you gave her a reason you believe you were a person worth her forgiveness. She judged too quickly and was unaware of what she needed.
The moment she died was a moment of rare clarity. She owed her life it to the boy in the crib, who was marked with a task he wasn't fit to deal with (he dealt with it anyway). She needed to get him out alive.
The remaining three continued to run, scarred.
One of them cowered in the face of power. He hadn't the marvelous strength and he sent the other two to their deaths. He defected because he wasn't brave (but he was smarter).
One of them tried to kill the other. He was too rash. He was too impulsive. He, of course, had felt murderous tendencies before. Inadvertently, he had killed the other two, as well. He was punished for his actions severely, as the traitor had snuck away. He was thrown into a cage, trapped once again, but this time by his own despair.
The last kept on running, completely alone. Life still wasn't finished with him. Life pushed him around and threw him in the dirt at every open opportunity. He wasn't given a break. He was strong and he was brave in a way that different from the others. He faced pain at the high of the tides, but he continued to go on in life, without a soul to confide in.
Grief, as luck would have it, was a terrible thing. It ate him alive, changing him into a bitter man who had the intellect to hide it well. He hated everything – everyone. Why hadn't they trusted him? Why did the other defect? Why was this happening to him?
He thought them all fools, stupid enough to get themselves betrayed and leave him in such a state.
Years later, he distanced himself from the boy who needed protection and love from a living person, though he loved the poor boy with everything he had left, from afar. Years later, he held the real traitor at the end of a wand. Years later, he would be reunited with one of his old friends, but it would a friendship made out of guilt. It wasn't real. Not anymore.
They ran together again, trying to be happy (but failing).
He would have to hold the boy to be protected as he watched the last of his past fall through a veil. He would be devastated, and a bit bitter than his friend would be back with them all, as he continued to live like this.
Years later, he would be killed, though his life had begun to pick up and though there was a boy with multi-colored hair that needed him, and therefore, couldn't have him.
Because good things never last. Life and its cruelness taught them that. They knew that. They understood that. They lived by that. They tried to make things last longer, but they couldn't stop it. They could run, but they would be caught. There was a war on, and they wouldn't survive. They knew that. They understood that. They lived by that. They couldn't make their lives last longer. It was inevitable. They were being chased relentlessly by the inevitabilities of life. It felt as if every force in the universe was working against them. Because they were – life and death and inevitabilities worked with universe. And the universe tends to get what it wants.