Disclaimer: Unfortunately, all of the Harry Potter universe belongs to JK Rowling, not me.
The Irony of It All
I've led a miserable life, I think to myself; valiant but miserable. Not even valiant in some eyes. They see me as a horrible smear on a beautiful and inalienable world, betraying those that they hold upon the highest pedestal and thinking that I do it out of spite, not for the greater good; never the greater good. But they don't realize the strength I have, what I've come from, what I've become; least of all what I've been through.
Wizardry was my escape. No, not even wizardry, for even at Hogwarts I was constantly berated and hassled by people that had no idea that they were slowly driving a bent and broken teenage--nay, a boy forced too quickly to become a man--to commit the very deeds that I lament daily. But for me, Hogwarts was the so-called haven I had longed for as a child. Although it wasn't much of an asylum, it was better than what I'd previously been subjected to; a place that should've been home and a place that I should've held some sort of veneration for.
Even at the young and influential age of ten I was already nothing. I was easily over-looked and at times eager to keep it that way. It was as if some meticulous and age old artist intent on achieving perfection had carefully blended me into the backdrop of his masterpiece, in fear that I would ruin it, to be purposefully ignored and disregarded. As my ten-year-old self, I often mulled over whether I would lead this same drab and fearful life forever, in its entirety, hoping for a deus ex machina of sorts . . . but not a hero. I didn't—don't, believe in heroes. They don't exist. They are merely embellished figments of stories to which people cling for hope, another thing that doesn't exist because I have never experienced it. No, I take that back. I felt hope once, a fleeting sensation that left faster than it came.
I was not yet eleven though I felt older than I was, having been forced to grow up quicker than was normal. I held a letter in my hand, a letter that for a second gave me such a fleeting glimpse of hope that I was unsure it had even appeared. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe I had misconstrued that brief familiarity for that ever ephemeral hope. For that letter held the name of a place I had heard about in the few civil conversations my parents held, usually musing about whether I would ever receive the very piece of parchment I held in my hands at the moment. But then I would hear pots clang and words muttered and then shouts following with a door slam and more shouting--in fact that's all I ever heard.
I had spent millions of frustrating moments worrying over whether I would ever be in possession of this very letter. This was the invitation I needed to get out of this hell, a place that I couldn't even bring myself to call home. This was my chance to fully immerse myself in the world that I longed to be a part of; anything to get away from my muggle father. But I had never felt belonging. I didn't know what belonging fully was.
All I knew was the aged and wizened hat in front of me on the spindly stool that declared me a Slytherin and had seen, and would see, so many young boys and girls pass through these intimidating gilded halls. So many young boys and girls a fright with the threat of the treachery of the unknown…oh, they had no idea. I lived the unknown, it has become my life.
Oh how dare he call me a coward? He doesn't know the half of it. He doesn't know that I have been forced to go through life surrounded by talk of the repulsion of mudbloods and how our precious sphere of wizard perfection was being penetrated by lesser peoples. I am a halfblood…mudblood in their terms, and I vowed to keep that part of me secret from my peers. I clung to the part of me that was my mother, the magical part of me. I engrossed myself in the small comfort that was my mother's heritage though I could not fully claim it as my own. In my mind I am a full wizard and I will never look upon that other part of me again. I have more than proved myself on many occasions, if only I could've left out the one act that I will forever abhor myself for.
He has absolutely no idea. He, who stands there with a face just like his father's and eyes that it pains me to look upon, that I inadvertently condemned to death, everyday of my valiant but miserable existence. He points his wand at me and throws that deplorable word in my face over and over again. He has no idea, that that letter gave me a chance at a life, just like him, that I thought never existed; a way out of misery and torment. He has no idea that the very hat that rested itself on his head that fateful September 1st when I gazed upon him in the same gilded halls I had passed under so long ago, that the same hat debated whether my bravery or my cunning would win out, that I asked for Slytherin because it was the one shred of hope I still possessed. I almost laugh at the irony of it. Me? A coward? Oh he could not be more wrong. Again, he has no idea. I am the farthest from coward he could ever know.
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