For the Dramatic Monologue challenge and also the 34 stories challenge. Enjoy
Fighting
Lily, I know that you would have never listened to this while you were – here – so isn't it ironic that here I am, now, when it doesn't matter anymore? I always was here; you just didn't notice me, the lonely Slytherin, lurking in the background. Or maybe you saw me, and just didn't love me that way. Like I loved you. Like I still do, even now. Like I still will the day I die.
I tried to fight for you. I tried to protect you, until one day, it all came tumbling down, and no amount of friendship could mend the break. Nothing could take back the words I detested every day after.
I always was sorry. I wished I could take the words back, the arguments, the hate. I never hated you. You were always different. You were – more. You weren't defined by your blood status. You were smart, so much smarter than I'll ever be, and pretty, but you were more than that, too. You were the smell of crushed up flower petals and the feel of the warm sunshine on the back of my neck for the first time in weeks, with my feet dangling in the lake, laughing. You were laughter; you were everything that made me smile, everything that made me even remotely happy. But you were sadness, too. You made me feel like a weight was tethered to a rock somewhere inside of me, and when we fought that rope would snap, and the rock would fall, down past my heart, knocking the air out of my lungs, punching a gaping hole in my stomach. I would gasp for breath; inside, I would struggle for balance as the world tilted, as my world was thrown into chaos. You were chaos, too, I suppose.
You knew me, knew what I wanted before I had the sense to. You knew which side to fight for, the side that I couldn't see through the haze of blood status. Through the haze of anger, hurt, betrayal. I forgave you long ago, but I don't think I will ever forgive myself. I don't want to forgive myself. That fool Dumbledore keeps telling me that you wouldn't want this, but he knows nothing. He couldn't know how this feels, this permanence. This emptiness.
It's funny, sometimes I wonder about the things I teach, how it would feel to be drowned by an Inferi, or have my soul sucked out by a dementor. I wonder if I would feel anything, if the absence of a soul would be anything new, or if it would just blend in, if I would continue to live, exist, endure, despite not hoping, not feeling, not caring, about anything. I wonder if I still have a soul to lose, or if it, too, fled from my living corpse long ago, if this numbness is but a shell. If I will ever feel again.
Standing here is dangerously close to feeling. It is remembering feeling. It is remembering that I once had a reason to care. You continue to inspire me, Lily, shape me, mold me, even after – I never deserved you, but perhaps I can, someday, hope to come close to worthiness. Redemption is beyond me, but I can still strive to have something I can point to and say, "Look, Lily, look what I did. It was for you." Maybe that's what Dumbledore is getting at.
He's charged me with looking after Harry, making sure that his father's thick-headedness didn't rub off too much and get him killed before he learns how to defend himself. I will teach him how to fight too, you have my word. I will protect your son. I will keep what little of you I can alive. I will honor your sacrifice.
I will fight.