Notes: Suicide warning. Song lyrics from "Alive After Suicide" by Madd Maxxx.
You killed my happiness with every chance that you had, made me so mad I had to stab myself, screaming for help
Stop. You want off this carousel, this blur of voices and faces and colours, the panic shrieking across your nerves like salt sprinkled in scrapes. Like the tip of your wand pressing into your skin, drawing delicate corkscrews of blood with each cutting hex until your hand doesn't want to work anymore, until you collapse into a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor, the tiles stained scarlet. Moaning Myrtle watches you from across the way, but she doesn't raise the alarm. She wants you dead. She wants someone to stay with her. A new friend. You understand, even as consciousness bleeds away.
But still-still they find you, still the clamour around your fading self. "Get-Pomfrey-bleeding out-hurry!" the words flash across your mind but you can't comprehend them. Someone cradles your head in their lap, a salt-slick trace across your lips. They are crying. Why are they crying? You don't understand as your head lolls, as they comb through your straggly blonde hair, now dip-dyed red.
"Why?" the word slips into your ears, but you can't answer. Don't they know why? What is there for you? Another year of ridicule, of being hit and slapped and cursed and mocked constantly, loony loony loony, loony lovegood do you love good, the hands on you, the shoes hanging in the rafters, you wish you could hang in the rafters, a pretty pinata, don't you agree?
The world keeps blurring, but you know you aren't on the floor anymore, you don't have your head in some person's lap while they cry over you and whisper "why" like the word will make it all make sense. The stretcher is cold beneath you, everything is cold, but the warmth that still dries on your arms.
"Hurry" but you don't want them to, you just want everything to stop, why won't they leave you alone, you fall unceremoniously into a bed, and diagnostic spells tingle over you like the expectant air during a thunderstorm. The pain dies away, and you can feel the stitches lacing themselves up your arms, pulling the tattered edges of skin together like they think it will do to your soul.
"You nearly died, Miss Lovegood," but the censure makes you laugh. That was the point, don't they get it? That was the bloody point, forged in the tip of your wand, or the rusted edge of a safety razor's blade. They pour Blood Replenishing Draughts down your throat and you wish you could spit them back up. The liquid is bitter, foul, like bloody sewer water, but it trickles obediently into your stomach, because you're too weak to stop it. Like you've always been, you can't stop anything, can you? Not the taunts, not the shoves, not the whispers in the early hours of the morning and the slide of your coverlet, not the bruises that form on your elbows. Now even this is stolen from you, and the taste of it is more bitter in your mind than you could have ever fathomed.
I've been dead for quite a while but I'm still walking and breathing, wondering when I'll be leaving, there's nothing I still believe in
They keep you in the Hospital Wing for two weeks, though your wounds heal in a few days. You don't mind. It's better here, being left to your thoughts, than wandering around school, going to classes. Like there's any point when you're a ghost in living form. Madam Pomfrey brings in a Mind Healer, but the man is worse than useless. You stare through him and murmur airily about Nargles, and ask if he's noticed them in the mistletoe at Yule-time, and he stammers and wipes his chin with a handkerchief. He doesn't come again, and if you cared, you'd snort in contempt at his lack of competence.
Tic tac toe, three coming across the floor, and then the condemnation starts again, the syrupy words of false commiseration, the "it gets better," and "don't hurt yourself, you're too lovely," as if being fair of face erases emotional agony. You want to scream, but you don't dare, so you just smile emptily at them and nod your head like a doll.
You pretend you feel better, and it fools them, but you can't fool yourself. There's a hollow in the middle of you, too deep for pretty words and a pat on the shoulder, and it gets bigger every time you breathe. When you're excused from the Hospital Wing, it's in Flitwick's nervous, chattering company, and you long to hex your Head of House until he can never speak again. Your bed's the same as always, sheets crumpled on the end, and a spare pair of shoes tucked inside your pillowcase. No one will leave you alone, but you put on a smile and you eat your breakfast same as always, and you talk about the Wrackspurts with a dreamy look, and soon enough, everyone's going "same old Luna," and the focus slides back off, like you want, like you've always wanted.
"Do you want a friend," you whisper to Moaning Myrtle, and the pimply-faced ghost nods, her eyes shining with something more than longing. It's the same glimmer in your own eyes.
"Take me away," and she does, and you don't know where you are, but the best part is, nobody else does either, and as the days pass, and the emptiness spreads, you realise you can almost take Myrtle's hand now. It won't be long.