Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the related characters, plots, places, or creatures.
Authors Note: This story does not have a pairing. The main character is Severus, but I could not find another character that I thought fit perfectly. Everyone I thought of just didn't seem to fit. You may, therefore, feel free to substitute in anyone you choose. I usually write slash, but I wrote this as a gender neutral story so my readers could use whatever character they wished. Have fun!
It started out young. When I first realized the pain that betrayal can bring. The pain that comes when someone you trust betrays you. It's not just a knife to the heart. It's a dull quill that has been plunged an inch deep with methodical precision, four times in every square foot of your body. Excruciating, all encompassing, and traumatic. There is no other pain quite like it and I believe it to be the worst kind that there is. Worse than the loss of love, worse than the loss of a loved one, worse than the crucio curse, because this was caused by someone you trusted. Someone you trusted with parts of who you are. And then they took their quill and tied you down and took extreme pleasure in measuring out and deliberating the place and intensity of each stab.
That's when it started. The first time I felt that pain, I told myself I would never subject myself to it again. I don't even remember what happened that first time, but after that I built a wall around my heart.
At first it was a typical wall. Half a mile tall, half a mile thick. Strong. Made of brick and mortar. Nigh unconquerable. Like the Great Wall of China I thought.
That wall didn't last me long. Just like the Great Wall of China, my wall got conquered. I was still too young. I still had hope. So slowly I let my wall come down. I unbuilt it a little at a time and let a few people in. Maybe I wouldn't feel that pain again. Maybe it was a one-time deal.
It wasn't of course. Inevitably the pain came again. All those quill holes ripped open, bigger than before, and this time someone dumped in a bunch of alcohol and salt.
Fiercely I built that wall back up. Higher and thicker than before. A mile in every direction. I swore I'd never let it down again. No one was getting at my heart again. However I made a mistake that many people make. Mostly because they don't know any better. Mostly because they don't have the ingenuity to fix the problem. While my wall was a mile thick, high, wide, long, built of brick, concrete and stone; it wasn't built next to my heart. There was a space between my heart and the wall. Not a lot of room, but some nonetheless. That's what everyone does. You build a wall to protect what's inside of it. To keep out invaders from spoiling the precious treasure that lays behind your walls.
However when you build a wall around something, you also build it away from what ever it's protecting so that if the invaders get inside the wall, you still have a while to go before you reach the treasure. With a wall around your heart however, it surrounds your heart on all sides. There is no way to get inside it except to knock it down. When I built the wall to surround my heart I left space in between the wall and my heart. Essentially it acted like a balloon with a marble in it. It works well to keep outside elements away from the marble until someone attacks it. Then it shatters spectacularly, leaving nothing of its previous splendor behind but scraps. Meanwhile the marble sits there, now with no protection whatsoever. Exposed to the world for all to take, see, examine, and destroy.
This is, of course, what happened to me. My wall was a fine strong thing until it was brutally attacked. And once it was attacked it didn't take long for the fine, strong, thick, intimidating wall that I had built, to go crashing to the ground. There was nothing left of it but a pile of dust that, after my third inevitable betrayal, clogged my arteries, filled my lungs, and ran through my blood. I became, no longer, a being of flesh, but a being made of dust and dirt and pain. The quills turned into razor spines coated with acid that pierced through my flesh and ate away at me from the inside.
I thought long and hard then and knew what I had to do. My wall this time was not built of brick or stone or concrete, but of rubber. Thick, plasticky, bendable rubber. Any attempts to charge in bounced off or just slid down the surface of the rubber to fall and become a pile of goo. I attached this rubber to my heart. There was no space in between the two. Where one ended, another began. It was continuous and thick. The rubber moved with my heart when it beat, but there was no room to wiggle in, no way to shatter it, no way to take the wall down again.
I became cool. The dust in my veins didn't heat my emotions the way blood does. It left me cold and unfeeling. My voice took on an ice like quality. And like ice that has been broken, it had a shape edge that would cut those that I came in contact with if they weren't careful. It made them unwilling to come closer. Unwilling to try to reach my heart, even if I believed it to be impossible.
How long I lasted like this I don't know. It's not really living to live like this. It's a sensation of floating along. You don't feel much. I rarely felt happy or excited. Anger, annoyance, bitterness, fear. These were my usual emotions. Nothing positive or uplifting. Time blends when you live like this. There is no differentiating between a day or a week or a year. They run together in a myriad of anger, hurt, and hatred. It's not really living. It's half living. You don't notice much, because there doesn't seem much to notice. That's why I'm not quite sure when you appeared.
I know how it must have started, even though I can't bring it to mind. You injected yourself into me. Like a drug. I'm still not sure if you're the strictly medicinal kind or the recreational kind. Maybe you're a bit of both.
You injected a bit of yourself into my veins. My dust bearing veins. And for a while, just a short while, I thought I felt blood in them again. I know now that the feeling of you in my veins is an incredible one. I can feel more than anger and hate. I can feel happy, content, sad. You make my dust turn to blood. I can imagine how just that little bit of you drew me in, like cocaine. You do it once and are forever changed. For just the little while that I had you in me I could feel again. Something I hadn't done in years. Oh all the things I'd missed. I may have blocked out pain with my wall, but I'd also blocked out a number of marvelous things too. The feel of rain on my face. The wind on a summer day. The smell of a hot cup of coffee. The joy in a young child's face. The taste of sugar.
I'd forgotten all of these things. Forgotten and gone without for years, and in one swift moment you brought them all back.
Then you were gone. The needle in my arm disappeared as you walked away and I was left with nothing but dust and memories. And a hollow feeling where my ball of rubber and muscle is.
This happened many more times. Each time, we talked a little longer. Each time I built up and extended my tolerance for the drug that is you. For the medicine that you are that makes me feel again. The you that injects yourself into me. The you that flows through my veins and makes my dust turn to blood again. The you that makes that same blood run hot and thaw the ice chips that had formed inside of me.
And then the inevitable happened. I remember this clearly. After all, a drug can only be injected so many times before it finally reaches your heart. For the first time in ages, my heart pumped, not dust, but blood. With every pump, the blood spread to more and more of my body, filling me with warmth and feeling. I knew then, that I was in trouble.
It had been years since my last betrayal, but the memory of the pain was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. I was conflicted. The ability to feel is one that most people take for granted, but one that, to me, was the equivalent of hand reaching out for a drowning man. Because, the truth is, although I was free from pain, I was drowning in nothingness. The remembrance of pain was not a pleasant one, but the lifeless way I'd lived till now, was just as bad. I had to make a choice. Did I allow your IV to become a permanent fixture on my arm and risk pain with no bounds, or did I return to my cold cocoon of dust and dull.
I skated around the issue for a while until you demanded an answer. You left me, saying you'd come back when I figured it out. I don't think you even made it to the sidewalk outside of my apartment before I rang your cell phone. Watching you walk out, knowing that your needle could be leaving my arm for the last time was more excruciating than any pain I'd received from any betrayal ever before and I knew then that I couldn't stand the withdrawal symptoms that loosing you would bring.
My rubber wall is still there, but your slowly melting it from the inside. The heat of feeling that you send through me has made the temperature of my heart rise to such a level that the rubber can't take it and is slowly growing thinner as it melts and disappears. Most people might think having a fire this hot inside of me would be uncomfortable, but I couldn't imagine a better feeling than warmth after years of ice.