Consequences of War

by The Owl Whisperer

This is what they have done to you. They have robbed you of your compassion, of your awareness – it is their fault that you are no longer horrified, devastated, traumatised, sickened to the stomach by the crippling scene you are slumped in.

You stare blankly at the opposite wall. Blank expression. Almost blank brain.

This is what they have done to you. They have robbed you of your compassion, of your awareness – it is their fault that you are no longer horrified, devastated, traumatised, sickened to the stomach by the crippling scene you are slumped in. The opposite wall you are staring blankly at is caved in; it, as well as you, has yielded to the surreal power of them. Dead life is smeared around the blasted stone, dark red and encrusted – the black liquid trickles down the wall, seeping into the grit: leaving its stain forever embedded. Your eyes follow the deathly pattern. A dead girl is collapsed against the wrecked wall in a similar position to yourself. The difference between you, however, doesn't bare thinking about. Her body is flaccid, blood-soaked and burned – yet you keep looking vacuously, your eyes roving over her half naked frame, at the severed shirt, the singed hair. The face is deformed unbearably, the head forced back, the neck twisted and slashed.

This should repulse you. It doesn't.

You move rigidly, twisting your legs around so that you can crawl tautly across the corridor to the girl, ignoring the agonising hurt propelling around your body. She is not dead – she is destroyed. You pull her into your lap, and her blood, her demolished existence, joins the sapped life of countless others on your person.

Her head lolls back disgustingly, revealing the mutilated visage; you can't make out a nose, and the right cheek has been wrenched out, revealing shining teeth. But the eyes reveal her identity. Even in their state of stillness, the striking whitish green of her eyes, like sea mist on a leaden March day, reveal her. Primrose 'Rosie' Kettle; Ravenclaw. Your year. You remember her from Herbology; tall, fair-haired, beautiful.

You wait for the icy shudders to slink down your spine, chilling you, the biting shiver spreading all over you. The permanent stain of destructive memory that will never go away.

It doesn't come.

This should be horrific. You should be scarred for your entire life, you should never recover from this trauma, you should sit and howl and scream and shriek and cry until someone discovers you, wilting exhaustively among the dead –

You look round.

There is another. Your eyes flicker slightly, up the bedraggled corridor. There is another. And another.

And another.

The bodies are overlapping hideously, some wrapped around each other, twisted in a ghastly embrace. You stumble up, and stagger drunkenly to a doorway nearby, tripping on still limbs as you go. You catch your reflection in the fissured mirror hanging above the sink. The neck of your shirt is ripped open, bloody and burnt. You lurch closer, and blood is matted in your rosy hair, the scarlet vividness of it merging seamlessly. A long, open gash stretches grotesquely from your temple, down in front of your ear and onto your neck, seeping green fluid. You look an utter mess, and your legs give out from under you, kneecaps smashing on the hard, wet tiles. Your eyes don't see the spattered blood, the eyeball, the bent fingernails, the wedding ring on the floor.

You wouldn't care even if they did.

You let out a gaudy scream; it cracks in your throat, but you scream and scream and scream, until your gullet is scarlet and sore as if you had coughed up knives. You sob dryly, the enormity of what you have lost flaring in your heart, but it is not enough to ignite the extinguished light of compassion that had ones seared so fervently. You have lost all feeling, you are accustomed to the mangled corpses sharing your resting place – it is normal. You don't know what normal is, but this feels like it. You feel exhaustion, regret, wretchedness, fear – but that alert horror of death has gone.

This is what they have done to you. You will never be the same again.

The victory is nothing. The world might as well have ended and you would feel just like this.

Your eyes flicker back to the empty doorway. There is shuffling just outside it, heavy breathing getting closer. You look on plainly, and He comes into view, limping horribly, robe singed and soaking, nose bloody and glasses broken. He hitches closer, dragging his foot, and collapses in front of you. His right eye is clogged together with a sickly yellow substance, the eyelashes charred away, but the left is wide, the emerald colour sheening, the only light in this abode of doom.

He collects you up in his arms, enveloping you, grasping at your back in case you disappear. His hands catch in your ruby hair, the fingers entangled, marrying you together for the rest of eternity. His fingers slip on blood seeping through your tattered shirt and he pulls you impossibly closer. His shoulders jerk and you know he is crying.

You melt into him, revelling in the hot feel of him, looking dazedly over his back, not yet believing that he is here, alive, breathing, weeping. You stare at all the stained bodies collapsed in the corridor ahead, and your eyes stay dry. You clutch at his back to check he is real, just in case you have died to too, and this is heaven.

Your eyes wander back through the doorway. A disembodied head lies out in the hall; mangled, crushed, glaring. You snap shut your eyes, but the image is ingrained infinitely on your retina, the image that you desperately want to be horrifying.

This should be horrific. You should be scarred for your entire life, you should never recover from this trauma, you should sit and howl and scream and shriek and cry until someone discovers you, wilting exhaustively among the dead –

You stare blankly at the opposite wall. Blank expression. Almost blank brain.