Beyond
by: epiphanies
A random speech-let, the idea sort of inspired by the story "Danny" by Liebling. Go read it, it's absolutely amazing.
"Beyond everything, there is so much more. Most people don't understand.
Beyond the war, beyond the blood, beyond the pain, beyond the death, there is so much more. Beyond the tragedy and grief and tears and sadness, there is always so much more.
And yet, there isn't. Because war is simple. War is perfect in it's own world and war is the only answer.
And yet, it isn't.
Beyond the war, there are the faces fighting it. Not faces with plucked eyebrows and perfect hair and pursed lips. Not faces white from lack of sunlight. Not faces smiling with anticipation of victory. The faces are not plucked. The faces are not perfect. The faces are not pursed. The faces are not white, and the faces most certainly are not smiling. The faces are scared.
Beyond the blood, there are bodies. Bodies upon bodies upon bodies that the blood flows freely from with each new wound. Bodies that employ souls - or maybe not, not anymore.
Beyond pain, there is only more. Pain of wound. Pain of mind. Pain of loss. Always pain. Never ceasing pain that flows as blood does as one lays dying, alone, helpless.
Beyond death, there is everything. Nothing. All and yet none. Beauty and yet the most potent ugliness exposed to the human eye.
To those fighting a war, there is war. War is blood, pain, death, tragedy, grief, tears and sadness. And death. And to those fighting a war, they think of naught else, but war.
But in war lies so much. Those fighting the war think of war. Think of the blood. The pain. The death. The tragedy. The grief, tears, and sadness. And they fight still. Valiantly. Bravely, or so we think.
Terrified, more like.
You have all seen it. You have all heard it. You have all lived it. Or perhaps, you haven't. For all of those who are not showing themselves to us today, you have not only lived it. You have died of it. Died for it. And for what cause?
To stop an evil greater than the world. Greater than yourselves. Greater than the greatest wizard living. An evil that does not do bidding, but gives orders and takes people over. Evil is what took Tom Riddle over. And evil is the seed to every problem in this world. Suffering. Hunger. Blood. Pain. Death. Tragedy. Grief. Tears. Sadness. And evil will never go away as long as these problems live on. And yet, these problems will never go away as evil lives on.
Fighting wars is not the way to end the seed. It only sprouts more from evil, gives into it's lurking depths in our eyes. Evil is an abyss, and one is to remember that as long as one stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
I know that many of you sitting here today are murderers. I, myself, am a murderer. A killer. In our own twisted way, you could accuse me, and the majority of us, to be supporters of evil. And in our own twisted way, I suppose that we all are.
But it can be stopped. Through us, our generation. We can put a stop to it if we only try.
And why, you ask? Why put out the effort, why even try?
It is up to us. We know, we have freshly seen the faces of war. We know that we never again, in our lifetimes, want to see those hollowed, empty faces again.
So, instead of telling you all to follow your dreams and try your best at all you pursue, I want you all to stand and make a promise to me, Hermione Granger, your class Head Girl. I want you to promise me that you will finish growing into the beautiful young adults that you are, and that you will not promote evil. That you will not practise evil. That you will not indulge in the red hot satisfactions of evil.
I beg of you all to stand and make this promise to me. Make this promise in front of me. For your Headmaster, your teachers, your Head Boy, your parents, your sisters, your brothers, and your best friends.
For all lost in the war. Promise for them, if you will not for me, that you will stand up and refuse to tolerate evil.
Not as your Head Girl, but as a peer and a friend, I would like to thank each and every one of you. As we leave here today, many tears will drop. Many thoughts will zoom around in our brains, pulses will rapidly increase and decrease, and we will all move on to life after Hogwarts. As we all say a final goodbye to this school, I would like to extend to you a special congratulations, a last thank-you and a thought-provoking anecdote. Unfortunately, the latter, even in all of my hard work on this speech, was unattainable.
So, I'm just going to say what we've all been thinking.
I'm scared stiff to leave here.
Goodbye, Hogwarts."
~La Fin~