The Beauty in the Aftermath

My name is Lysander Newt Scamander, and I want to kill myself.

You can call me selfish; you can call me weak, but I'm past caring now.

Years upon years of bullying and victimisation has worn me down until I'm nothing more than empty; you can laugh at me – please, go right ahead – but the fact still stands.

After this Charms class you big-headed morons will never see me again.

Of course, not all of you have made me feel this way. In fact, only a select few – a hard core of students that seem fit to make my life a misery – have led me to this decision. I could name all of my friends on less than one hand; the people who would dare saving me need only empty space.

I tried reaching out to somebody once.

I tried so bloody hard to give life another chance and to finally let someone in; give someone else the responsibility of saving me, and what did they do? They laughed and threw it back into my face.

Thank you, James. Are you surprised to read your name in my, for use of a better term, suicide note? You shouldn't be surprised at all, and I know you're not. You know perfectly well that despite your rank at the top of the social chain, you aren't as perfect as you make yourself out to be. You and your friends – the Weasley twins, Louis, my own brother Lorcan – have something wrong with you.

You think it's cool to pull pranks and blow things up for the amusement of others – okay, granted, your mayhem can be fairly amusing in the right doses. But when you go beyond the fooling around that the majority of the students who worship you see, you all turn vindictive and cruel and hateful.

You know you're doing it. Bystanders know you're doing it.

You know that when you taunt me, put fireworks in my bag or Puking Pastilles in my pumpkin juice, you're hurting me. You know I hate it. You know I would never dare tell on you, because then I'd become the victim once again – nobody likes a snitch.

So why the Hell did I ever think you, James Potter, could be trusted with something as big as the fact I want to die? Oh, yes. I remember.

You came up to me one dismal Monday lunchtime and promised me you had changed. You promised me you would stop all the insults and the bullying because you knew it was wrong.

You were so convincing, even I almost believed you. The look in your hazel eyes when you told me you had matured and weren't speaking to your idiotic mates anymore ... that was not deceit. There was honesty in your eyes, but maybe your glasses shielded the real truth from those who needed it the most.

So I let you in. We became, need I say it, almost friends. Gone was the hierarchy of freaks and cool kids; we were entering fifth-year and you swore things would get better for me then. We were, for the first time, equals.

I had the time of my life with you, Jay. You were my best friend, and I knew – just knew – that finally, I was also yours. I was not afraid anymore. I was able to speak my mind and flirt with girls without others calling me a wannabe, or a reject, or a loser.

And you were happy; I know you were happy with me. You joked even more than usual in fifth-year, throwing an arm around my shoulders at frequent intervals and including me in your Quidditch practises.

I couldn't play to save my life; there was no use in denying it. But I sat in the stands with your little sister Lily, a fearless, honest girl who saw the beauty in others when they could not themselves.

She and I became friends, too, and I was at the peak of happiness.

Finally where I was supposed to be, I decided to throw away my old belief that all Potter and Weasley kids were jerks and even start to talk to your cousins. That, admittedly, did not get the head start I desired, but I didn't care.

Screw Roxanne and Fred, I never liked them much anyway. Victoire and Dominique were too beautiful; Rose and Albus too smart. I had you, and to some extent Lily, and you two together were all I needed to fit in.

So why change that?

Stop whatever you're doing right now and just think about that simple question.

I trusted you as a friend. I was grateful for your support in my time of need. You, in turn, began confessing some of your own secrets too – you worried terribly for me and my old insecure tendencies, scared they might resurface; you thought Dominique was the prettiest girl alive, despite her own personal problems; and you were sick and tired of being a Potter. You wanted to stay away from the light – you'd had enough fame and glory to last both our lifetimes, what with your Captaincy of the Gryffindor Quidditch team and your old childish pranks.

We were, in short, perfect friends together. You wanted to be like me; I wanted to be like you.

Yet, like I said, you chose to change that.

I doubt it was a decision you made lightly. I doubt you fully foresaw the consequences of your actions, otherwise, if you did, maybe you wouldn't be reading this now.

Maybe I would still be alive; maybe I would pluck up the courage to ask Lily to go to Hogsmeade with me next month. Maybe I would finish my NEWT examinations; maybe I'd grow up and start a family and be happy once more.

Or maybe, just maybe, that won't happen. All thanks to you.

Because of what you did, because of your small alteration in our perfect friendship, I have written this. My little suicide note.

Are you happy? Are you proud of what you've done to me? Or do you merely think me an attention-seeking loser, because that's what you told Roxanne.

Don't even try to deny it. I saw you with her, I saw it with my own grey eyes; it didn't take a Ravenclaw to work out exactly what was going on.

You were bored with me. But that wasn't all of the matter – we all get bored in our lives, big deal. No, you chose to act on that feeling; you chose to include someone else into our harmony and destroy the peace we had built together.

I don't blame Roxanne, one half of the notorious Weasley twins, for how she reacted to you insulting me. We all bitch about people, granted, whether it's in our heads or out loud to those we think are our best friends. The point is, you all have no idea who can overhear your conversations when you moan to your friends about others. Had anybody else been sitting in the small alcove on the Defence Against the Dark Arts corridor that fateful day when my life crashed down around my feet, they may not have given a second thought to the pair of redheads gossiping around the corner. They probably would have dismissed it as meaningless, not knowing or caring that the words spoken were going to destroy the very foundation of my life.

As it were, no random stranger overheard your conversation with Roxanne Weasley. Count your blessings for that, James, the fact that our little twisted tale remains for ever more between you, me … and whomever else you decide to go ahead and include.

I was sitting in that constrictive alcove in the DADA corridor, and it was I who had to listen to your tirade of hatred towards me. It was clear that months in my close presence had led to you supressing annoyance, loathing … even blame?

Did you blame me for the way you had turned more compassionate, more human even, since I had become your friend? Did you blame me for the way your little sister Lily lit up when she saw us walking down the corridor together, conspicuously pleased that the bullying had stopped; or the way she flushed when I smiled at her, her normally pale cheeks glowing red, an effect that no other boy was able to produce? Or do you now blame me for my death?

Well, Potter? Do you blame me for my death?

Because that would be wrong. So, so wrong.

Some may argue that it isn't; that I'm selfish and narrow-minded and ignorant to the many wonders that life can bring. I, however, am at perfect liberty to contradict those statements with my own alternatives.

I have been failed, time and time again, by people I care for, or hope to care for. I sat for five and a half years waiting for a fellow student to notice my pain and save my life. I waited for someone to dare to invite me out to Hogsmeade or to sit with me at lunch. Even when I was happy on the outside, my heart still failed to resuscitate itself sometimes. The depression, the loneliness … it never went away. But I could supress it; when I was your friend I could laugh and joke and be, for the most part, cheerful.

Icould try and change myself, so why was change beyond your understanding? Why the fuck did you fail to change your ways and accept me for who I was?

Who I was. I've got to get used to that, referring to my life as being in the past tense.

Wait – I've got to get used to that? There will be no getting used to anything; I don't have the time or energy to live any longer.

What's happening now is going to stay on this paper and it won't change. I won't change.

You, certainly, will not change. You proved that weeks ago when you went back to your old ways and called me a freak and a loser once more.

You even went as far as to claim to Roxanne that I should just disappear, vanish off the face of the earth for ever.

Unfortunately for you, you were the only one I knew of who had an Invisibility Cloak, and I was not about to go and ask you for it there and then. A Disillusionment Charm would also be no good – I'd still be there, watching everything, unable to make myself seen or consequently heard by anyone.

You see now that I did consider all alternatives. I did ponder on leaving the matter and getting over it, moving on with my life, but I couldn't help but remind myself of the years of torture you all put me through, leading us both to this drastic verdict.

What was the point in moving on and getting over it? I would still be haunted; I would still be tainted by the harsh memories of my childhood.

So, provided you have any measure of rationality and logic (a tough call, but I know you, and I know your conniving mind would sort out any problem free of charge), we have now equally come to the same conclusion I reached 1859 words ago.

I am going to kill myself.

"Lysander?"

Go away.

"Lysander, I'm talking to you!"

I don't want to know. Whoever you are, whatever you want … I don't care anymore. I'm past caring. I think I made that clear in the sweet little suicide note I just deposited in the dormitory room I used to share with James.

See, I've got to grips with referring to me in the past tense now; funny how quickly I mastered that skill. I'm pretty sure, however, that I will not need it for any longer.

"Lysander Scamander, turn around right now!"

I give in. Maybe I should appreciate the last human contact I will ever have; or maybe I'll go as far to wish they're talking to me because they've read the note and want to save me.

Or maybe it's wrong to hope now. Maybe I'm too far gone to listen to what anybody else has to say to me; perhaps even if someone did want to save my life I may not let them.

Either way, I turn.

And there she is. Your dainty little sister, fierce to the core; the only person who has ever had the potential to appreciate my survival.

I consider speech. I consider a reply. Damn it, I'm frozen, I can't even breathe.

Speak, Lysander!

I now consider giving up with speaking to Lily Potter, too. I half turn away, hating myself for failing at this one more thing; another regret to pile on my desk …

I feel contact. I do not dare believe it. She's reached out a hand to stop me and her small fingers are grazing my arm.

I can't help it; I have to look at her.

Thick glasses that almost completely hide the hazel eyes that are so much like yours; messy red hair tied carelessly back, loose strands falling over her face, each and every one giving me the urge to reach out and push them back out of her face; a small smile playing with her blushing, freckled expression.

"Sorry," I whisper, and break the contact, moving backwards so she can't reach me again. Lily's eyebrows knit together as I watch her figure me out, hating myself for hoping she'd work out the truth.

But she doesn't, and I despise you for that. Maybe if you hadn't ruined my life I wouldn't have wanted to be saved. I wouldn't have felt let down by every little thing.

"See you," she then says shortly, noticeably annoyed by my lack of willing conversation. My heart pangs.

Is that it?

A see you?

Is that all I get?

As though she could read my mind she hesitates, fumbling in her thoughts for the right thing to say to me to correct her abruptness. Her eyes narrow and I inwardly shiver, praying that it isn't loathing that I recognise behind those all too familiar hazel eyes.

But it isn't. You see, she, unlike you, does not stoop low enough to make someone's life a misery. Lily accepts others for how they are, not what they can be measured against.

That, I think, was your fateful mistake.

"Lysander," she begins, opening up vast universes of possibilities with just that one word. My mind races as I end her sentence for myself, each answer becoming more and more absurd until finally I'm left with nothing more than grim defeat.

She's not going to save me. She's not going to stop me. I can tell.

She'll say goodbye. Does she realise that's the last thing she'll ever say to me?

I remember the last thing I ever said to you. I remember the last thing I ever said to all of you; and I knew right then that you wouldn't hear another word.

For Lily, it was sorry. For you, it was goodbye.

Just a simple, no-nonsense, goodbye. You thought it was because we were leaving a classroom; you probably still think it was meaningless.

Or at least, you did until now.

"Lysander," Lily repeats, her arms hugging her petite frame nervously. I pause, acutely aware of the dark face I am pulling; I hasten to correct it. "I was wondering …"

Does she realise I don't have all day to wait for her?

Maybe she does. Perhaps that's why she stammers and retraces her train of thought and repeats herself. She's trying to hurry herself up.

But why should she have to do that?

Oh yes, James. Because of you, because of the way you labelled me as a freak and decided that anybody who went near me deserved your wrath as well.

If you see her with me, if anyone sees her with me, there'll be Hell to pay.

"Lily, listen," I say, rubbing my temple with my fingers and frowning. "You have to go."

I don't mean it. I don't want her to go.

Perhaps she doesn't either, because she tosses her fiery red hair out of her face and glares at me. I supress a small smile, a twitch of the mouth, then become confused with the feelings of amusement that washed over me, which I haven't felt for so long.

I haven't laughed properly in months. I haven't smiled fully in years.

What gave Lily the right to change that?

"I am going to say this once," she says clearly, punctuating every word with a jab of her finger in my direction, "and only once."

The look on her face is too much. Her scowl seems almost comical, almost as though she's faking it all.

But she can't be – unlike you, who is, as we all now know, a very good actor, Lily never had to fake anything in her life. Then I remember that she's a Potter too, and despite your stark differences you would at least share some traits.

I can't help it anymore. I smile.

An actual smile, spreading warmly from ear to ear, shaping my mouth into a position it had grown a stranger to.

She beams too, and with a rush of relief I know that she was, indeed, acting.

However, this was not the plan; I was not supposed to stand around with Lily in the middle of the school for ages.

Instead, I was going to …

I can't even say it anymore.

"I was wondering whether you would like to go to Hogsmeade with me next week."

I stop.

What?

Lily Potter is asking me – this has got to be a joke; a sick, cruel joke. She is, after all, your sister.

Then I hate myself for doubting Lily, who has more integrity than most of her year put together. She would never lie to save face, or to hurt someone, or to stop them from never coming back. So why, then, would she ask me out?

I ask her exactly that, and she blushes. She actually blushes, at me, right in the middle of the Grand Staircase.

"I really like you, Ly," she whispers, looking up at me from behind those thick glasses and blinking as though it is that simple.

I fancy you, so bam, I shall ask you out.

It's not that easy; we all know it's much more complicated and difficult than that. Just because she supposedly likes me does not mean I should burden her with my life.

She would never, ever be able to cope with a suicidal friend; you certainly were not able to.

As soon as I think that I realise that she already has. She's always stuck by me, even when you didn't. I remember sitting beside her in the stands that outline the Quidditch pitch, watching you show off on a broom, laughing and talking with her until I don't feel so alone. I remember an old desire to ask her out to Hogsmeade, before I discarded that idea because I was too screwed up to think straight.

I remember her. I remember her reaching out to me moments before, her small fingers breaking the mountainous void that had grown between us all since I distanced myself from the world; I think of her smile, her eyes, and her cheery nature, all of which and none of which are exactly like yours.

I'm faced with the hardest decision of my life.

I can't make it on my own.

Someone help me. Someone save me.

Someone make it better; take away the pain and swear you'll never leave my side. Not you, James; you've done enough.

Has your sister?

Three bedside cabinets from the right in the Gryffindor sixth-year boys' dormitory you will find a folded, creased, and torn out note.

Take it.

Don't read it.

Just get rid of it.