Madame J.K. Rowling owns the masterpiece of fiction that I so shamelessly rip off. Not me. If I ever rip off my own work, I'll let you know.

By the by, this is in Harry's point of view. I wanted to branch off. Notice that Harry never outright says anyone's name except for one. He's spiraling, that he is.

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I stare at my hands.

They look perfectly normal to someone else, I know this. It doesn't stop the blood I can see all the time, the blood of innocents that my enemies have killed to get to me.

I can see the blood dripping from my fingertips; hear it ping against the floor, making a parody of the music that I can hear my wife playing on the radio downstairs.

Ah, yes, my wife.

I never wanted to marry her; most people thought that I loved her too much to put her in direct line of fire. That's such a lie that it makes me sick.

I hate her; hate her red hair, her kind eyes, her unshadowed smile. She has no right to be like that. She has a past just as horrible as mine, what right does she have to be so naïve, so innocent?

I sit on the leather chair, one that, I'm told, my grandfather sat in whilst conducting family business. I never knew him. Just like I never knew my parents.

But I can feel him sometimes. I leave off staring at my hands to whisper to him, "I did my duty, Grandfather. Not to the wizarding world, no. But to my family; I have an heir."

I return to staring at my hands, the blood staining them red.

I have the insane urge to make that blood real, to make the pain go away.

"Why not," I whisper. "I have nothing else to live for…"

I reach for my letter opening knife, perhaps not as sharp as it could be, but I deserve the pain.

I dig the knife deep into my wrist, enjoying the biting pain that travels throughout my body that will be among the last things I feel.

Then, too make sure that my wife will not be able to save me, I drive the knife into my other wrist.

This blood, my blood, doesn't ping against the wooden floor like the innocents'. It splatters with a wet drip. I take this as one more thing that separates me from the innocents.

A baby's cry distracts me from my reverie. Somehow, out of the trance, I find that my blood doesn't satisfy me.

Therefore, with an angry sigh, I swipe my wand across the wounds; healing them into ugly, twisted scars. To remember.

The baby continues to wail until I pick her up and rock her gently. My daughter glares at me with her pretty blue eyes before falling asleep.

I sit back down in Grandfather's chair, with my dearest daughter, Tisiphone, in my arms, and wonder if this was the beginning of a road to dementia similar to the one that my enemy follows.

Because if my blood does nothing, then I'll have to start with innocents blood.

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Ahaha, yeah, I shouldn't've started writing something. But at least it's a one-shot! And, I got another chapter done on Philomel's Lullaby, and the fifth chapter of Letters of Resignation is almost complete! Clap, or snap, for me, please.