What Lies Within Us
What lies behind us and what lies before us
Are tiny matters to what lies within us.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
You stand, staring at him, disbelief written in your eyes. You wonder how, and why all this could have happened to you. You wonder why, after you just started believing, trusting and even a little loving him, he could go back and betray you like that. Betray not only you, but your feelings which had been rooting for him all that time.
They were the ones that made you tingle each time he spoke to you. Although you would never admit it, they were the ones that had made you toss and turn at night thinking about him.
He had come to you and spoken to you. You had hated it at first. But slowly over weeks, months, even years you took a liking to him and said yes.
He had worked hard at it, and it was that, that thought that had you worried. That he might think of you as a prize because you were so hard to get.
You had loved him as you went to Hogsmeade in the winter, and how you had almost frozen as you walked along the street. So he had given you his coat, and had frozen himself.
He had made you laugh, and relax around him, but then there was this, this stupid boy that you thought he had grown out of.
So you stand there and let him know how you feel. You meet his eyes for one last time and scribble your emotions all over your face. Hatred, anger and disappointment. Your feelings try to cry out, but you lock them away in a stony prison. You will not let them ruin you, just as they did before.
He reads your look, standing there with his friends behind him. And although you don't want to notice it, you see a flicker of hurt in his eyes. But as soon as it was there, it is gone. Because you have gone. You have shut him out of your life.
His friends laugh, and he does too after hesitation. And that's all you need. You never look back, so you don't see him waiting for you. You believe that looking forward is the only way to go. But he believes otherwise. He thinks that what lies behind us and what lies before us, are tiny matters compared to what lie within us. And those feeling you have locked away in their little prison are secretly screaming within you for you to listen.
But you are a little too stubborn, a little too proud to listen.
So you go on with life, pretending he isn't there. You ignore the looks of pain he gives you and you ignore your feelings. You see him as he rises higher and higher with his best friend by his side. You are the only one to notice that he actually leans on his friend to get through the night. You pretend to be glad that he needs this help, but inside you know that he is right.
That what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters to what lies within us.
So you find later, years later once you have returned from being so far away, that you are the reason that Sirius Black never loved. But when you do, it's already too late. Because he has slid out of sight just as you once did, but he can never return. Because he has gone behind the veil, never to be seen again.
