Through the Dark

There's pain. There is always pain. I cannot escape it, it is everywhere. It follows me, it seeks me out. Sometimes I feel as though it is watching me, it finds me – no matter where I hide. A moment of happiness is all it takes, then CRASH! I find myself back in this festering hole of hurt, nauseating fear, and self-hatred. On the outside I try not to let them know; the others. I do not want them to see me weak. But whenever I close my eyes I can see flashes of light. I can hear screams. I feel the heat of the fire on my skin as the air is sucked from my lungs. I often find myself waking in a flurry of sheets, with sweat dripping from every pore. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take, how much more before I break forever.

I am not sure why they care. It's not like I was on their side. In fact, I tried very hard to kill some of them; yet they still show me compassion, claiming that we're all going through the same things. But how can they know.

I cannot move. It's holding me down, it's gripping my arms – pressing on my chest, pulling me further into this pit of insanity and I cannot see the way out anymore. I see his face, I try to remember what it looked like in the moment before he was gone forever. He was triumphant, he thought he had finally done his father proud. The fire started too quickly, and the flames moved too fast. He fell to his death because I did not save him. I couldn't.

I can't.

For the life of me, I cannot remember why we were there.

Harry tells me that talking about it will help. But it's been two years and talking has done little more than keep the wounds open. It has gotten bad; bad enough that I can't leave my house without the fear that people will be able to see the husk of a person I have become – with bits chipped away, and gaping holes through him.

Harry and I were never friends. Yet he still perceives me as his responsibility. I have spent my life making his miserable. Or, at least, I gave it my best effort. Now he tells me that I can come to him whenever I need 'anything'.

I am afraid to admit that I need help. I am afraid that all they will see is weakness. I'm afraid when I walk out of my house. When I hear the sounds on the street I jump, when I think too hard about what happened my stomach starts to hurt. I cannot explain why, and I'm not sure I really want to know myself.

My father is in Azkaban, and my mother seems to have lost a part of herself. She needs me to be strong, for our family – but I'm not sure how to anymore.

I hurt. Every day I feel the pain a little more. But they say that you have to accept it, to move on. So maybe, when the pain finally becomes too much to handle, it might start to get better.

A/N: Words – 543

DADA - "someone going through PTSD.." Draco.