Untitled Document

Flat Earthists

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Silence.

At last, I can relax. No chatter, no tunes, none of the perilous humming that some of the students do. Just the emptiness... and me. I'm still, perfectly still, only hearing myself breathe and my heart beat. I'm annoyed, at myself, for some strange reason.

I used to be terrified of the silence. When I was young, I filled myself with any music I could find. I mastered the piano, guitar, flute... the list streches everonwards. I could not go without having a tune in my mind, running over and over again.

Music was wonderful to me, sacred. My mother was a singer, I suppose it was in my blood. The music.

And then, I was sorted into Slytherin, and everything fell apart.

Slytherins did not hum, they did not have guitars or fifes, they did not sing unless one forced them to. I began dying, soul slowly choking as I was lost... in the Silence of the Snake. Then I would look to the Griffindors, and pine - they sang, they strummed lutes and played flutes, they were full of life.

Why couldn't I be brave?

The Slytherin-Griffindor line was rigid. If you stepped over it, you got hurt, it was the unspoken rule. So, nervously, I became used to the silence, accepting of it...

And then it was the usual. Silence.

I missed music badly... but I could not do anything for it. When older, I fell in love with a certain Lily Evans. It, to me, did not matter that the romance was impossible, or that she hated me. I had wild dreams. Maybe, I kept dreaming. Maybe if I play my fife... Music would solve everything...

Needless to say it did not.

I was bitter with any and all music. I turned, I let the silence envelop me, corrupt me. And it did, too terribly much.

I switched back to the light, as a spy, in hopes of regaining most of my sanity. I was a stranger to myself in those dark times. Then, when I was acting and passing information along to the 'other side', I tried to find where I had gone. I had died - the old me, the one that had at least some illusion of kindness.

To convince myself that deep down I just might be sane, I found my old fife. I played, and it kept me barely hanging on, through the torture and blind pain. I stumbled through the day to hear the thin, reedy tunes I fumbled at night.

And the more I hated myself, the more I loathed the music...

Now I'm here.

Silence, I only want sweet silence. Slytherin is strict, quiet. Griffindor... is rowdy... and the way some talk, it is almost a song. Some of my students hum, tap their toes, snap their fingers... Then it's too many memories at one moment, and I snap at the pain - a wounded animal biting blindly.

I want to defeat Griffindor. I want to fell the music into silence.

So I sit in my office, letting the absence of sound wash over me. I realize then that I am a flat earthist... The world has music, sound, rythm. But I sit, with my silence.

Truly a flat earthist...

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AN: That was very strange... and it's Snape talking, if you can't tell.

Very strange. Very. Inspired by the end of The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox, which is a nicely written but an extremely sad and often horrifying book.

Usual disclaimer, I'm tired of typing it...

If you've read this so far it's really kind of pointless not to review.