Disclaimer: I own nothing. The Harry Potter world belongs to the amazing J K Rowling.
A/N: Written for lumos maximum's Tragic Challenge. The inspiring lyrics were as follows:
And I've given up hope
On the days I have left
But I cling to the hope
Of my life in the next
This is my second fic and I've tried to make it as tragic as possible. It was written at nearly one o'clock in the morning so there may be a few grammatical and spelling errors. Please R&R- I'm going to need feedback if I want to improve my writing. Thanks!
He'd always been a coward.
And standing on the edge of that cliff, looking down at the furious waves below, his black cloak billowing in the wind, he sees his life flashing by him in a series of blinding failures. The only successes he had, it seemed, were those passed down to him through his coward father from his coward father, and his coward father and so on. Money, looks, and prestige. If only, he thinks bitterly, honour were hereditary too.
He hadn't succeeded in adding one more friend to his meagre collection in his first year- Harry would have been the Golden figurine, dusted every day, prized above all others- if he had won him. Instead, he had failed, and Harry had been awarded to that blood traitor Weasel and that Mudblood Granger- three Golden figurines shining together on the good shelf of Godric Gryffindor, were he could only watch from behind glass windows; look, but don't touch, the sign read.
Failure began to seep into disappointment, their two colours blending together to form an unsightly green for envy not many months later- what was so wrong with me, he wondered, that I was not Salazar's heir? It would have been an honour, a dream come true- my blood on the walls, my life feeding parchment, my name in hushed parlours. After all the hubbub had died down he knew- It must have been, he deduced, my shortcomings- they seemed to be growing in number lately and he had no way of reigning them in. They were too wild and too restless for him to grab a hold on and tame them, so he just sat himself down by his inadequacy to read the latest of his defeats and wonder.
The one thing worse than failure, he found out, was ignorance. He discovered this soon enough, when wolfsbane passed him by and the shrieking shack remained a wailing mystery. What were a few knocks, he thought, if a willow contained such adventure and excitement? He would have been overjoyed to be dragged by a black ball of teeth and claws (-his first cousin once removed, wouldn't you know) in a screaming mass down the rabbit hole to a howling confrontation. Yes, his bat winged god-relative had been present too, but where had he himself been? Well, he considered missing out on a moonlit chase to serve a Charms detentions a far bigger failure than any other one that year. I should have been more forthright, he thought, braver- (and possibly a complete different person). That could have been me.
An even greater failure, he knows, was his inability to protect his parents when the time came for him to do so. By that time he had lost count of his shortcomings and was just cowering in wait of another loss to buffet him. Even with his father being preyed on by faceless kissers and his life being wrung out by two snakelike orbs- I had no choice, he'd said at the hearing- but he had. But by then, after safely and appropriately missing the Goblet and Inquisitoriaing the wrong side, he'd needed to do something new and enticing- brave. Brave. B-R-A-V-E. Such a strange word, he mused, to desert it's user so high in the stars and leave him tumbling to the ground in a floury of Half-Blood and Sectumsempra. The green light hadn't been his and the deed was done, but then again, Astronomy had never been his forte. No one would be the wiser, and he would never reveal his very real hope to have been the one to cast that light. He hated Severus after that.
The next year, when the snakelike orbs had risen to power in a second- imperio, he'd been told- he began to hope again. Foolishly, he sees know, and in vain- but the only reason hindsight is twenty-twenty is because eyesight fades over time. He'd been clear-headed and clear-faced when the Carrow reign begun. Red light flowed from his wand in an endless stream and terror was bountiful. It was a beautiful time, but for the screams and tears and Dark lessons. He discovered that victory could only taste so sweet before the bitter tang of failure kicked in. And kick in it did, long with Undesirable Number One and the Elder Wand (the wand that turned out to be his, after all). When his reptilian master fell he fell too -Fell in a simple unguarded moment, he thought, disarming was underrated- he failed, needless to say. (Again.)
His largest, almost disproportionate failure, was, perhaps, his only success. He loved Astoria, the Pixie-like Greek Star Maiden who waltzed into his life one day, only to fade out. He failed once more, standing at the bedside, holding her cold blue hand in his in the empty ward. Too empty, too quiet, and all too late he realised he had failed twice that day. They were buried by the sea, little Astoria, and even littler Scorpius, and he spent every living moment with them, a lone mourner dressed in black. But living was still too far for him, separating them by six feet of heavy, writhing soil and a stone-cold grave. Joining them would be his final success. Just like his father, no doubt meeting them at this very moment, after he too wasted away in that perverted hell they called Azkaban. And his mother, the closest yet furthest one of all- the drips to her brain contained firewhiskey, not sense. How could you let this life pass you by, he berated, when your ancestors had mapped it out so smoothly for you?
Standing there on that cliff, edging closer and closer to the edge, he knew the freefall could never come. The sour rush of adrenaline he felt on solid ground was the closest he would get to glory, but sometimes, with his eyes closed and his head held high, he pretended he was Golden. Just for a second- not long enough to unknowingly slip off his shaky foothold and hurtle down the stormy slope. He failed, turning away from the promise of a successful rest and walking back to the marble grave. What would he give to succeed, just this once- just this final, far off once.
He's always been a coward.