It wasn't just some physical numbness, but a mental one. Anything that happened wasn't truly felt, and nothing that I pondered was really being thought about. It took away that feeling of being alive, true, but it also took away that feeling of wanting to be dead.
But now I don't want to be dead anymore, and here I am; dying...
The numbness felt good and erased a lot of things--images of an alcoholic father slipped away; easier it was to ignore a nerve-wracked mother; forgetting the years of being an outcast wizard, classified as a "bumbling dork," was easier. The only thing I was vulnerable to, aside from feeling anything again, was evil.
Yes, evil. It can find a weakness in anyone and bank on it, often getting the results it wanted.
Never should I have listened...
All the countries I could pay fare for, I went through. Miraculous things I saw. Beasts that were only written about in books were real, breathing creatures standing before me. Never were they easy to slip away from, if they were bad, but I managed. Until one came along, that is.
Such an intelligent snake it was! Never before had I understood the words a snake was speaking, but I most certainly could understand this one.
More power. More strength. More respect.
How could I refuse?
By saying no...
It was clear there was no choice, so I opened my mind to this creature. Let him feel what I had once felt and see what I had once seen.
The pain came flooding back that day, but there was the new promise of better days--not that the better days had ever truly come when they were supposed to, originally.
I should have known.
Anything he wanted to know, I told. By then, I was at a new job: Teaching students at my old school.
There still was no respect in sight; I heard the whispers behind my back.
And then, I slipped up. And he slipped in.
Moved in, uninvited...
Everything went downhill from there. Severus could see past me from the beginning, and was ever-more suspicious. And then Harry Potter came along.
And now, here I am, dying. Such searing pain it was to have his hands upon my face.
Once, I had watched a man die at my feet. I watched him writhe in pain, and I watched him die without moving once. At the time, I had thought to myself, "How I wish I was him!"
Now I am him.
Abandoned, as he was.
Un-cared for, just as he was when lying on the ground, screaming in agony.
Dying.
Novocain. Lidocain.
Oh, please make me numb... Oh, please make me feel... Feel anything except this sinking feeling of death.
A shimmer passes through my mind, flies around and falls to the center of my sight.
Is this it? Is this the end?
It starts to grow, like a train coming from within a tunnel it pushes forward at full-force.
I should have known.
