A/N: Important - The cursive text that looks…

…like this

Is a quote from my one-shot "Running Away"!

Disclaimer: The HP characters belong to god herself – J.K Rowling. And the cursive text under the chapter title is from the lyrics to an Evanescence song.

Chapter two – Falling Apart.

I tried to kill my pain, but I only got more. Am I too lost to be saved?

I did not visit the River Café for a week because I didn't want to risk bumping in to Ginny again. Meeting her, talking to her, it all made my already rotten life worse. She killed my pleasure of feeling pain. Now nothing can cease the pain in my broken soul. And like if that wasn't enough, I can't get that stupid Weasley girl out of my mind! Ever since we met one week ago, ever since she so carefully bandaged my hand I haven't been able to stop thinking about her… and about my past which she reminded me off. Meeting her made me wonder whether Lord Voldemort still was alive and about that treacherous git Severus Snape, was he still alive?

These questions and many, many more has bothered me too much this week.

That's why I decided to meet her again, so I leave my apartment earlier then usual this cold Friday morning and I walk towards the River Café. I need answers to my questions. That's all I need, then I never have to see her again. Then I never have to go back to the River Café, which is not the light of my life anymore. See, Ginny destroyed that for me as well. Now this café which almost have been like a second home to me is nothing but a black hole that reminds me of my past.

"Good morning Daniel", Rose says to me with a bright smile on her lips as I enter the door. "I've been worried about you", she says. "Can I get you anything?"

"Yes", I reply quietly and look around in the almost empty room, there's no sign of Ginny. "Can I ask you something- Rose?" It's the first time I ever say her name, she looks curious. Her small green eyes study me closely.

"No Dan, Emily is not working today", she says and gives me wink.

So she thinks she's funny now? I don't care about Emily! I slept with her twice and I don't even know her last name or how old she is, and everybody here seems to think I am so in love with her. I want to tell Rose and everybody else who works here that I have no feelings for Emily and that we only slept together because she practically raped me after we had way too much to drink.

"I was just kidding", she giggles. "Dan, for the year I've known you I don't think I've ever seen you smile, why?" She asks.

"None of your bloody business", I tell her and I feel the anger rise inside of me. I don't want to smile, I have no reason to smile, I don't even remember how to smile. I wonder if she would be smiling if she had witnessed her father kill her mother. I wonder if she'd be smiling if she had heard her fathers' painful screams as someone killed him as well. I bet she wouldn't be smiling if she for five years had heard her fathers voice echo in her mind, Run for your life! Don't disappoint me Dragon!

"No need to be rude", Rose says and then she does something that I'm not prepared for. She reaches out her hand and put it on my shoulder. "I know that something's troubling you… If you want I can help you, talk to you"

Her touch is not soft and tender; it feels like someone's placed a stone on my shoulder. I can't handle another stone. I'm carrying too many already. Something's boiling inside of me, anger, I know this feeling to well… I feel the urgent need inside of me to scream, to break something, to hurt myself and to bleed. But still I try to keep my cool. "Actually, I need your help; do you remember that red haired woman that bandaged my hand last week?"

"Yes, of course, she's been here every day since that day", Rose replies.

"Give this note to her the next time you see her", I say and hand over a piece of paper with my indistinct handwriting on. It says that I want to meet her this Friday, at 9AM. I sound desperate but I need answers for my questions.

"Alright, do you want to ask her out?" Rose asks and gives me a wink.

"No", I mutter angrily. I'm about to explode, I know I need to get out of there very soon before things goes bad. I turn away from Rose and start walking towards the door.

"Daniel, I was just joking, sorry!" She calls after me. "Aren't you going to eat something?"

I don't turn around. I'm not hungry. I go where my legs are taking me and it's not to my job, it's to my apartment. I get inside and I lock the door behind me. I want to break something but I can't find anything to break. The mirror in the bathroom is broken; I don't own any vases so I can't break any. One of the chairs in the kitchen has already been abused by me and it wouldn't be very wise to break the other one because then I'd have nowhere to sit.

The only thing to break that I can think of is myself.

I step into the kitchen and automatically my hands open the top drawer and takes out the sharpest knife there is to find. I put the knife on the table while I take my shirt off. I can see my reflection in the kitchen window. I look like a ghost. Pale and thin, so thin that my ribs are almost visible. The blackness under my eyes resembles to the black hole in my heart and soul. I take the knife in my hand again and I touch the blade with one of my fingers. It's so sharp that it start dripping blood from my finger just seconds later.

It's amazing that something so beautiful can come from my body.

The blood forms a nice little pool on the floor and it gives me the inspiration that I've been looking for.

I picture a child swimming in a sea of blood in front of me. It's a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes, he was fishing with his father on their boat but he fell in. He's drowning and his father can't see him. I need to paint. It's burning in my fingers as I badly long to grab hold of one my brushes. I put the knife on the table my need to hurt myself faded away when I was reminded of the only passion I have.

I pull my shirt over my head and I start walking towards the door. Three floors up is the attic where all the tenants have their own little store. In my store there's two easels and a loads of paintings that I've drawn during the years I've been living here. There's a shelf where I keep my paint. I never use any happy colors when I paint, because I don't have any. The only colors I've got are black and white and from those I can get many shades of my favorite color, grey.

I lock the door behind me and I walk slowly up the stairs. The walls are thin I can here everything that my neighbors are talking about when I walk past their doors. The young couple that lives in the flat above mine is fighting with each other, as usual, and a baby is screaming in the next apartment.

As I walk up the stairs I remember when I first came to New York City. It was a rainy night in the beginning of October I had never been here before so I really had no idea where to go so I checked in at the first hostel I saw. I stayed there for about four nights then I couldn't afford staying another night. I wandered around in New York for more then twenty-four hours until I was so tired that my legs couldn't carry me any longer. I stayed that night in the staircase of this apartment building that I'm now living in.

When I woke up an old woman was sitting next to me…

"Good morning son", she said and smiled at me.

"Err, good morning ma'am", I replied and stood up.

"Why are you sleeping out here?" The old lady asked me.

"I didn't have money enough to stay at the hostel for another night", I told the woman. "But I better go now; I have to find some place to stay"

"Don't be silly my son, you and stay with me", she said and she was still smiling brightly at me. "What surprises me the most is that you didn't come up to me when you got here", she continued. "Maybe you didn't remember that this is the house where I live?"

"I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"Of course you do, don't you recognize your own mother?"

"Um… sure…" I mumbled and suddenly I felt the tears burn under my eyelids. This crazy old lady in front of me who thought she was my mother had made me remember my real mother who just a week before this day had been killed by my father right in front of my eyes.

"Daniel, I've got some spaghetti bolognese ready upstairs", she said and took my hand. "You can stay with me for as long as you like", she said and there was something with her voice that made me calm inside, that made me feel safe.

Her name was Diana Matthews; she was an 85 year old widow who suffered from Alzheimer Disease. She died a week after I had moved in to her apartment and she wanted me, her only 'son' Daniel Matthews, to inherit everything she owned. This was her apartment and everything that was in it, an old bicycle and all the stuff that was in her store in the attic.

Diana was a little weird but during those seven days that I lived with her I learned to like her and when she died I was sad. I lost a friend, my only friend in New York.

I unlock the door to my store at the attic and I step inside the small room. I turn on the lights and walk over to the easel that is place by the small and only window. I grab one of my few brushes that is not worn out or broken and I dip it in a small jar of black paint.

There's an unfinished painting placed on the easel, it's been unfinished for almost a year now because I have never had the inspiration to complete it. Now I have it thought and now nothing can stop me from painting. It still feeling like my fingers are burning as the brush touches the painting and I draw the first line. Next to the mountain I've already drawn my lines form a lake in different shades of grey.

The hours seem to fly away as I stand there completely in my own world watching how my brushstrokes form the picture of a father standing in his boat looking desperately after his son who's drowning in the cold water. At the time that I finish my painting I realize what time it is and I realize that I am five hours late for work but a day like this I don't care.

I'm glad that I found some inspiration to draw again.

I hang up my brand new painting on the wall next to the other paintings I've drawn. There's one that depicts a young boy standing at a rooftop, getting ready to jump. The wind is blowing in his hair and the rain is pouring down. He's got tears falling down his cheeks. Another portrays the same boy but now he's lying on the ground covered in his own black blood.

Next I draw a face. The face of a woman. I draw her eyes, her nose, her mouth and her chin and I add some shadows here and there to make it look more realistic. I give her some freckles at and around her nose. I have no clue why but I make her smile, I give her perfect teeth and cute dimples in her cheeks. Then I give her wavy long hair and a beautiful long neck.

I don't even know why I'm drawing this woman; she's so happy and so beautiful. I've never drawn anything like that before. The more I look at her I notice that she reminds me of some one I have seen before…

Ginny.

Out of all the women on earth I'm drawing her, this isn't happening. She's staring at me and she's smiling at me. I want to rip her happy face in to small pieces. Who does she think she is? She can't just smile at me and think that everything will be alright. How can she believe that I will forget about everything that's ever happened to me by just smiling at me?

I hate her.

I rip the paper away from the easel and I crumple it in my hands. I open the window but I can't throw it away… I can't throw her away. I close the window again and I drop the crumpled paper on the floor.

She's once again managed to destroy something for me. First it was the only light of my life, the River Café; I can't ever go there again without being reminded of my past. And now she's destroyed my one true passion, now I will never be able to paint again without being reminded of her and my past.

I hate her so much that it hurts inside of me.

Something starts boiling inside of me. Hate. Anger. Rage.

I clench my fists and I have to bite my tongue so that I won't scream. I bite hard and soon I taste the familiar taste of blood in my mouth. I spit out some at the floor. The rage is growing inside of me, it grows huge and very soon I am shaking out of anger. I scream out loud in a desperate way to make myself less angry, but it causes me to shake even more. I kick down the easel by the window; I kick it down to the floor and stamp on it until it breaks.

I move on to the next easel that's standing close to the door. I demolish it completely.

I sweep of all the small jars of paint down from the shelf they all break as they hit the floor. Then I move on to all my drawings on the walls, I rip them down, I rip them apart and I scream to unleash all the rage inside of me. I kick, I scream, I break until there's nothing left to break anymore.

I fall down to my knees in the middle of the room; I grab a piece of the shattered glass from one of my many broken paint jars. The anger is still boiling inside of me as I look around in the small room that resembles a refuse dump. All my drawings ripped in pieces, my easels are broken and all the paint is forms a big pool on the floor. I sit in the middle of it.

Everything is falling apart. My life. My one true passion. My soul. Everything.

I pull up the sleeve of my shirt and I cut myself deep in the arm. It hurts like hell but at the same time it feels so damn good. The blood seeps out from my wound and the anger inside of me slowly turns into pain.

Pure and unbearable pain.

I feel the tears burn under my eyelids as the blood drips down from my arm and gets mixed up with the paint on the floor. Beautiful. It's so beautiful. I still enjoy bleeding, at least the Weasley girl hasn't changed that and I will never let her change that.

I'm surrounded by nothing but the hard walls I wasted so much time on building up. They were supposed to keep all the pain and sorrow away from me, but mostly I built them because I didn't want people to look at me and think 'he's weak'…

Oh how I hate that word.

Weak.

I refuse to be weak, I refuse to feel weak or act weak. Weakness doesn't exist in me.

I can't believe that I've let a woman become my weakness. If I'm not careful this woman will be my downfall.

"I'm just going to get my answers on Friday then I never, ever have to see her again", I tell myself.