The Maze of Mirrors
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other copyrighted material and I am making no profit.
PROLOGUE:
It has been said that Gryffindors are brave, the ever courageous and loyal righteous side of light. It is also sneered in hushed tones that Slytherins are cowards; that we flock to the dark as moths do to the flame, they all seem to forget a certain rat, and the marauders...the ever righteous marauders...of course not all of them were bad. It was just the one: Pettigrew, his whole life spent as a rather dull and neglected boy. He found solace in the one thing all Gryffindors were supposed to hate. It was mildly amusing to me to see him shame his house without them ever knowing.
Gryffindors speak loudly of their everlasting loyalty. Even now as I watch from a far, I see the so-called 'loyalty' of Potter's friends. They are not so unlike Pettigrew the rat I have seen scurrying beneath destinies ever rotted feet. They sit so close and cant see the boy with unruly hair, all they see is 'Potter' as a god forsaken name, not a real boy but a hero, a martyr.
Now I look at the boy who is the same age as I and I am starting to see what he really his. He is powerless,. He is a wraith, a mere shadow of his supposed glory. It frightens me to see him this way, he is supposed to be my enemy, my great rival, and yet he is no more than a child. Then once this thought is firmly set in my mind he looks at me with those sad eyes pleading for something, possibly solace from this fate that has been set on his frail shoulders. He is much too thin, too short, too tired.
I too have a fate set from birth. I am to be no more to my father than a shell, than an heir and a tool. I know my fate and Potter knows his. Yet as I watch his friends seem completely oblivious to theirs. They are to be the support for our hero in his darkest hour. They are supposed to lift him upon their shoulders when he succeeds and let him cry on theirs when it gets to be too much. Now he has no hope because he has no friends. He is meant to have friends, is meant to have those who love him so he has something to fight for. I have nothing, and I know now that I was never supposed to have anything. Now that he has no friends we are on an even field of battle. Now that he is alone in this crowded room will he die in battle, will I prevail as I fear and hope, and pray and curse?
A curse would be most likely. I do not want to die, but if it means killing the only person ever to fight back, the only one who ever made me alive and challenged, could I do it? Could I kill Harry Potter? A boy my same age, my distorted reflection?
He is more than my bloody reflection he is the essence of me, he is the soul where that hole in my being resides, he is the same as I, and could I truly kill my self?
The question races at the forefront of both our minds I know. The time draws near and neither of us is more than a mere child, both of us placed in an impossible maze not unlike the third task, and just the same as then one or both of us wont come back out of this the same.
