At Any Moment

Ozratbag2

DISCLAIMER:   This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Many thanks to Niamh, my beta reader. Her own fic, To the Honour of the Mother is well worth reading.

Severus II

Diaries were never meant to fly. The more masculine journal, such as you, fares slightly better with a levitation potion applied to it.

I'm losing my mind!

I'm sitting here in my office debating the pros and cons of potions extending the flight of inanimate objects. You have a few more scuffmarks, dents in your fine edging and…I'm still losing my mind and quite pathetic really.

I tossed my last entry into the fire again. I feel you have a secret.

I will be wary of letting you know too much.

No one will ever keep my secrets, save myself. I am facing oblivion by day and irreparable darkness at night. I hate this cycle. I can see no positive end.

I had thought my melancholic mood lifted, but you seem to bring out reflections – the pen and ink version of that despicable mirror.

All I ever see is myself surrounded by light, nothing concrete, nothing interesting, just overwhelming light. Useless, completely useless…

If I thought that drowning myself in a vat of good cognac would answer my more pressing questions, I would already be damned. Perhaps it is that I have no true desires, nor any redeeming qualities and thus the mirror passes judgement in the only fashion it can.

So I sit here penning irrelevant musings, worrying my cigar and idly swirling my thick black coffee as I pause, considering my next move in the conundrum I call my life.

I'm lonely. I'm facing oblivion and all I can add to the debate with myself, is that I'm lonely. I have other considerations, but I'm not quite ready to join the dots to the links I'm faced with.

I don't trust myself and I certainly don't trust you.

Albus had the audacity to tell me that I had every quality necessary to find a path around any obstacle.

I was in his office, trying to escape the gentle cajoling to give him more than the usual spiel about the meetings I try to edge myself away from.

I cannot share that existence with anyone. The revulsion I elicit now, would increase a hundred fold in light of some of my more damning revelations.

I can feel the darkness overwhelming me, urging me to rejoin the fold, put away the obsolete notions of fairness and embrace the pleasure of pure power.

I drug myself on power and pain, and then purge myself with recriminations; nameless faces floating across my sleep deprived visions. They are not dreams; they are visions of the depravity that evil will command, if I fail in my task.

That I once fervently believed the propaganda irks and nauseates me. I had thought myself a more pragmatic man...a realist, not a fundamental idealist.

I was wrong.

The extremity of absolute belief is hard to ignore. I can see merits to both arguments. It scares me to see two sides to the same argument and the lengths that some will go to reinforce their ideas. I feel as though I'm clawing at air to try and maintain a position.

Am I right or wrong?

My scales and sense of balance is out of kilter and like a rodent trapped by the endless need to tread the wheel, my own attempts to fathom good and evil wage their own inner war for supremacy.

I hate trying to rationalise philosophy. Much ado about bloody nothing. Rambling arguments spiralling into more ever widening arguments.

I wonder if philosophers are just as confused as the rest of us?

The next morning…

Albus keeps looking at me oddly…well more oddly than usual, anyway. He knows something and I know that I want to know what it is. I'm just scared to ask and he can sense my fear too.

I hate being weak. I hate having to rely on others and I loathe the thought that at some stage I will have to try and be…social.

I like my solitude.

I am never so alone as I am amidst dithering conversations. Minerva had the urge to tell me a, 'few home truths', she called them. She is one of the insufferable meddlers. Just because she is impossibly optimistic doesn't mean I have to follow such an inane rule.

She goads me to retaliate.

I'd love to turn her into a dog…with a cat fetish. Mrs Norris would be well entertained. Mrs Norris, despite the name, is actually male.

I wonder if I threaten Minerva, she'll get the hint and leave well enough alone?

She had the temerity to tell me that my moods were interfering with my teaching and that my depression made her, 'want to slit her wrists to cheer herself up.'

I offered to help her…

I need a new wand and the back of my head still hurts. Gryffindors never could understand a subtle joke.

I'm avoiding the staff room for a while – the infirmary too, all of which leaves me writing drivel in an inanimate object that does not even provide the entertainment of flying by itself.

I wonder if I can enhance the levitation potion?

As always, comments and critiques are welcome. Just hit review and let me know.