Love Lies Bleeding Chapter 2: Good Guys, a harry potter fanfic

Author's Note : More thanks to Thalia and her helpful words of encouragement and plotting when needed. Thanks to Thalia, Sarah, Love In Vein, and Sky for reviewing my last chapter. And thanks to all those super-cool people who fangirled me after reading this.

Disclaimer: I am poor and own nothing, save the evil, sinister Mikel Dobbs, which I am not quick to confess to owning. All characters, situations, places, etc. therein belong to J. K. Rowling unless otherwise noted. Lyrics cited in italics belong to Aqua. No copyright is being infringed and no money is being made. Etc. Etc. Etc.

And a scene, so oddly familiar to the one that came before it - a scene that never tarnished with age or rusted with wear - a scene so predictable that people wanted to scream out in the agony of the monotony of it all, existed once more. Only this time, this time unlike the one that came four years before, there was no sullen faced first-year walking in amongst the new, shiny faces. There was only a shell, cold and heartless, bent over a plate at the Slytherin table.

She sat, hunched over, eyes darting to and fro but really seeing the endless dance of the ages that played out before her. Her mind, her mind was reeling, rewinding and fast forwarding through her life - through faces and memories she would have rather forgotten, but couldn't. Things that even devils cower before and cause men fall to the ground in shame. Things that she herself had experienced.

"You dream a dream
But you never wake up
You're so afraid
That the dream is over"

A child - herself not so long ago - sitting in a chair…the room dark and bare. The ropes that bound her tight - boring into her skin with so much pain that it took her very breath to keep her from dying. And her brother, the nasty and sadistic thing that paced before her dropping insults as though they were grapes on wining day. She flinched as his hand collided with her cheek and she spit blood. "Tell me the names of the mudbloods," he was demanding, but his voice….evil and growing fainter with the second and the Headmaster's voice seem to replace his very own.

"Open your eyes and you'll see
Daydreaming won't conquer me
Won't conquer me, no it won't conquer me"

Her head flew up from her plate and she stared at the ancient wizard who stood so solemnly at the head of the room. A new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is what she took from his mindless droning. Warrington. Cassius Warrington. The name rang with familiarity in her bloodstream and her eyes stared at the smug-faced professor at the High Table. It was he who had called the hungry-eyes Quidditch team off her so many years ago, it was he who had silently taken care of a rather nasty Howler of hers…and it was he who had betrayed her brother.

He was responsible for the death of Marcus Flint. And he was responsible for Mikel's anger. The anger he took out on his sister. The punishments he rendered in the dungeons of her soul.

Yet there he was, so arrogant and self-assured, sitting amongst a table of gods and goddess, drinking the sweet ambrosia of heaven. He lifted his glass to the mention of his name and she felt like wretching. How was that he - he who had done so many right things and so many wrong things - he had been so close to her world, yet showed no sign that he would ever knowledge it's existence?

"Cause only the good guys can get, what they're coming for
And all of the dreamers must take, what's apart
Only the good guys receive, what they came here for
And all of you dreamers, will leave with a broken heart"

She hardly had time, to conspire and plot against the bastard's life at this place - this mockery of a school before the sham of a Head Girl had stepped up before the audience of young people and opened her mouth to speak. And speak she did, of the death of a Gryffindor Mudblood…murdered only a week prior to the beginning of the term.

And no muscle in her body willed the corners of her mouth to pinch upwards slightly in a mockery of a proud expression, but it did, nonetheless. It was her brother, not Malfoy's blasted father or Zabini himself who had been responsible - her flesh and blood had muttered the two words that closed Dean Thomas's eyes forever.

"Reality
You better face it
Your blood is red
One bite, you'll taste it"

A clash of metals and worlds and ages and people resounded in her ears as her wondering eyes planted themselves on the face…the remains of a face on the other side of the room. The green of his eyes were clouded by pain unequalled by an uttered Cruciatus Curse that came from the magic of a dead and decaying skeleton six foot under. He…this manchild…dared to mourn openly, dared to wear his emotions on his sleeve and dared to remember? Remember the dead after they were gone?

It was unspoken in her world - pain and fear and death - lives went on turning round even after their very wheels were broken and lying forgotten in the dust. Yet in this world, the world of light and life, pain was shared, pain was…pain was tolerable. So much pain, immeasurable, painted the once-smiling face of the sandy-haired boy and she wondered how many times she'd overlooked that face before, because of the impure blood that pulsed through it. There was a time, one small moment of weakness, when she did not overlook that face, because she was lost and forlorn, needing directions to Tranfiguration class, but she hardly remembered that now.

It was unfair. It was bloody injustice, when someone her brother actively hunted could sit up at a High table and smirk in pretense that nothing was wrong, as self-assured and whole as if he had nothing to worry about outside the possibility of unruly students. It was unfair that Gryffindork mudbloods and halfbloods could cry and be comforted, wallow in their misery, weep and wail openly... when she had gone through what she had... silent. It was unfair that she was the only one who had to wear a mask, and hide her troubles from the world. And those pompous, narcissistic mudbloods, so wrapped up in their little pityfests that they...

"Open your eyes and you'll see
Daydreaming won't conquer me
Won't conquer me, no it won't conquer me"

And then the voice, menacing and low at first, but growing with power as it vibrated through her very subsistence, pulled her eyes out of their very sockets and away from Seamus Finnigan. Her brother's voice, as though he knew when her thoughts disobeyed the code of her life, rang sharply, commanding her to know nothing, fee nothing be nothing. It commanded that she, the little lifeless bint, play the role that kept her alive to see the next day though she cursed it with her own existence.

Her body screamed that she obey what her mind, brainwashed from the pain and agony of her life, told her to do. And she turned, sharply, to the newcomer seated next to her and remarked as loudly as her tongue dared, "Thomas got what he deserved. And did you see how nervous Granger was? She's a damnable Mudblood and if any of us her lucky she'll be next. And the 'Memorial Service' for the bastard that was offed? You better not be at it. No self-respecting Slytherin will."

And she, so well shaped and formed from years of a hard moulding process was able to ignore the indignant cries that leapt up from the Ravenclaw table and spread like a virus to the very roots of the student body. They swelled in anger against the pompous outcry of some slimy Slytherin girl who dared say such mean and nasty things regarding an innocent victim of the wrath of the War between Good and Evil. But her mouth smirked, nonetheless, proud of the job which it had accomplished - proud of her strength born from weakness.

Emma didn't care. Let them scorn and hate. Let them glare and shout and curse her. She cared not for their empty words. They were empty, after all, not full like Mikel's, not invading into her soul. She had to survive somehow, she reflected in a solemn sort of triumph, and among her kind, this was the only way.

"Only the good guys can get, what they're coming for
And all of the dreamers must take, what's apart
Only the good guys receive, what they came here for
And all of you dreamers, will leave with a broken heart"