I can't take it anymore.

All the voices, all the lies, I can hear them all, and they echo through me like nothing else.

No one else gets it. No one else has been through it.

I thought I was insane. Maybe I am. I have no way of proving one way or the other, but it's real to me, and I guess that's enough.

I hear them.

The first was Malfoy. I heard what his voice said, snarling and sneering, but that wasn't what I knew. I heard something else at the same time, completely clear and utterly absorbing.

Wanna fuck you, want to crush your spirit, want to feel you in my bed, around my cock.

I had stuttered and bolted and he had no idea what I had really heard.

It started to happen more often. Anyone who talked to me, at me, I heard them speak but I heard that irritating second voice, telling me something else so often.

I started to look at people differently.

Professor Lupin can smell emotions. Pheromones and such. He can smell Professor Snape, lusting for him when he sees Lupin sucking his spoon at dinner.

McGonagall sits in her bedroom at night and cries for all the students who will die before this war is over. She cries for her baby, her daughter who died in the first war.

Crabbe and Goyle at least have no such thoughts. What they say is what they think, and it isn't much.

Ginny was thinking about Harry. I guess she really does have quite a crush on him after the stunt at the Ministry.

Neville was thinking about Hermione. He adores her, in his own odd way. More disturbingly, he was also thinking about Professor Lupin.

Potions has become my favourite class. Snape is refreshingly silent, like he can say no more with his mind than he does with his face. I know he and Lupin are... but he doesn't show it. He makes the voices silent for a while.

I hate him, but I'm so grateful at once. I hate feeling indebted to him.

All of this I could have taken. But then...

I heard them. Hermione and Harry. They were talking about me, worried. It was touching until I started to hear the thoughts again.

He's always been odd, Lupin said that Wormtail was like him, but he wouldn't... no, not Ron. But he has, ever since the Ministry, it was... his eyes are so green in the firelight. I wonder if he'd let me kiss him? I shouldn't, Ron would have a hissy fit... oh stuff Ron.

She's been rambling for ten minutes, I get that she thinks that Ron's being odd but it's been stressful. I'm glad that Dumbledore decided the stress of being Prefect would have been too much for me, it would have, Ron's been doing fine. He was messed up for a while... don't think about it, don't think about Sirius, think about something else, nod, she looks expectant. oh God, she tastes so... her breasts are so soft...

I stopped listening and I ran out again, past the Pink Lady, down here.

The Prefect's Bathroom.

At least it's quiet.

Everything has been a lie. Their concern, my badge, I guess I only got on the Quidditch team because they were short and I'm the friend of the Seeker.

I don't deserve to be Prefect.

And they think I'm like Wormtail. A traitor. A rat.

They have each other. I'm the third wheel.

I step into the bath, still dressed.

It's finally silent down here.

I pick up a razor from the emergency shaving kit.

I can't stand the voices.

I didn't want to know the truth.