I am not J.K. Rowling... I don't make any money off this... I don't own anything...

When did it start? Did it start the moment he was born? Or was it when his parents were tortured to insanity, never to be better again? Did it even matter?

No, it didn't. Because in the end, he was doomed from the start.

Funny words they were, beginning, middle, and end. Everyone always said to start a story from the beginning, but they never really cared for the beginning. The reasons and causes were pushed aside, just a means to remove confusion, because all anyone could remember were the effects and consequences. They cared about the middle; those were the stories that were told over campfires — though he'd truly tried to put a stop to those. They cared about the end; that was what stayed at the forefront of everyone's minds and created lasting impacts. But did they realize that if they'd paid attention to the beginning, everything could change?

He was the disappointment, and he knew it. They loved his mother and they loved his father. The great Gryffindors who navigated an extremely dangerous war with courage and skill yet suffered a fate worse than death. Did anyone visit them besides him? They probably weren't as affected as he. But that was his beginning. No effects, no care. It didn't matter that that was the reason he was nearly drowned and dropped out of a window and nearly died of hypothermia as a child. He believed that everyone was a mixture of bad traits with a conscience. His own blood cared more for the family image he would create and in the end, caused it. But even he couldn't see it until now.

He couldn't see it until everyone shrugged aside his torment and humiliation that he had suffered for years, since he wasn't even a year-and-half years old. They shrugged it aside to accept and cherish the one moment where he matched their expectations. They shouldn't have had those expectations in the first place. His grandmother had berated him the entire year for attempting, just as he had before, attempting to be what she wanted him to. And then he just had to help kill one of the evilest guys that the living knew of, and suddenly she finally told him that she was proud. McGonagall told him that his parents would've loved the man he'd become. Dumbledore acted all grandfatherly when — despite all his favoritism for the Boy-Who-Didn't-Die — he never even asked if he was alright, if classes were fine, if he was functioning moderately okay despite his lack of parental figures. Neville didn't bother to ask Snape what he thought.

But was his grandmother never proud of him before that? Not even when he managed a patronus and had even sent a coded letter to her describing his excitement? And she'd scolded him again when after the Department of Mysteries debacle, he'd broken his father's wand.

But in McGonagall's eyes, did he never live up to what his parents might've loved before he just killed some snake so it wouldn't kill him? Not when he aced all his Herbology exams? She'd just given him a disapproving look when she saw the rest of his scores. It didn't matter that he was sensitive to rudely-given criticism from a childhood of it killing all his hopes. It didn't matter his wand wasn't right for him so he couldn't do the magic that was the utter core of everything.

But did Dumbledore never care that he was just as scarred as Harry was? Did Snape never look at him and feel guilt for what he'd reduced an eleven-year-old to?

No. The answer to all of those questions was no. Everyone was selfish. They all cared about themselves until he became someone he really wasn't, and then they flocked to him to make themselves feel better. What did it matter when it came to his own thoughts and his own feelings.

He'd talked to a therapist about all his feelings over his childhood and of now. Apparently hating yourself for even existing, because you were a failure and anything you did right wasn't even you wasn't normal. It wasn't normal to go into situations that involved even one other person sweating profusely and with a racing heart because no one ever failed to say what they thought, without giving a single damn about how it affected him. It wasn't normal or healthy to think himself stupid and a coward and worthless. It wasn't normal for the bad days to outweigh the moderately decent ones and it wasn't normal that things he once loved because they made him feel happy only served to make him numb. And then he couldn't tell whether it was worse to be hysterical over how everything was wrong and he was wrong and the world was wrong, or if it was worse to be empty and hollow and dead inside. He had felt a good deal of both over the course of his life.

He was given labels before he could even talk. He was given more before he could do any magic with even a sense of control. He didn't get to control the labels and the stereotypes, and so he couldn't control the circumstances. Everything moved too fast and he couldn't comprehend a fourth of it.

He was a mess and he couldn't deal with it. It was complete turmoil under the surface of a stuttering, chubby boy who did everything wrong and nothing right except unintentionally swing a sword. And it all made him too afraid that he would rub off on someone and become even worse, so he took the fund from "being a critical part of ending the war" that the Ministry had awarded him (not that he was there to receive it) and left everything that had permanently messed him up to the point of no return.

And while thinking all of this, he wasn't even hysterical like he usually was. He was numb and tired as he sat alone in a little cottage on a lonely hill in America, nursing a glass of whiskey in his hand to drown his sorrows.

It never worked.

Why did this hit so deep as I wrote it?