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Chapter 3

The night was alive with its icy winds whipping across the misshapen stone streets. Crystalline snowflakes fell from endless grey clouds, dusting the ground white. The ivory moon hid its face behind a great overcast sky castle and the black infinity above stretched across the world.

All had long since gone home to sit beside the fire and drink warm mugs of hot chocolate. The usual nocturnal movement ceased and silence grew. An alternate universe came into existence. Yet still you purposefully trudged forward on a mission unhindered by the external factors. The chill grew but something within me could not leave. Instead I followed you through the frosted air, while all other life hid beneath their quilted down blankets.

Our footsteps echoed, creating a soft concerto with the wind. It was beautiful in a way that Mozart could never fathom. You heard it as well, knowing that it was my steps that accompanied yours. Maybe that was why you never turned to see my face. I always wondered why you didn't check to make sure I wasn't some homicidal manic, but I suppose that something deep down sensed me.

Then, as quietly as our masterpiece had started, it finished, leaving the last notes hanging in the air. You stood upon a delicate bridge, covered in frozen vines, which overlooked a lonesome creak. Its current no longer flowed freely. It was trapped beneath a great block of ice, doomed to a watery cage of isolation.

Time stopped as the silence of thought encompassed our minds.

"Have you ever been in love?" you asked faintly, still gazing over the bridge.

Taken aback, I stopped to ponder. You were the only person I could ever imagine loving, but at the same time I can't stop myself from hating you. What does that mean? Don't normal people just look at someone and know that their bound to spend the rest of their lives together? They hold hands and whisper softly under the stars. They dance in a ballroom of brilliance, never to despise one another.

You waited patiently as your eyes drifted upwards into the dark sky searching for moonlight.

"No," I answered quietly, truthfully.

Then your face turned to meet mine. Powered snowflakes adorned your auburn hair like precious pearls. Your cheeks were rosy red from the cold and stained by your tears, which feel from hazel wood eyes. They gleamed, shinning with sorrow as I glared into them. In your eyes I saw a million memories of laughter, joy, love, anger, misery, hatred, depression. I saw thousands of stories that I cannot begin to tell, but hundreds of themes that I understand.

"I'm sorry," you replied hoarsely.

"Are you really?"

A great silence hung in the air.

Pausing, you looked directly into my eyes and whispered, "Yes."

For the first time in my life someone seemed to see that my world was a pitiful waste. It was like walking into a deep empty cavern where my voice bounced back and forth screaming in self-hatred. The deep brown walls would crumble and collapse each time coming closer to burying me beneath my fate.

"What are you looking for?" you asked.

I shrugged, suddenly not wanting to know what my paradoxical quest was. So I turned and walked away from you, from what my mind desperately needed to understand.

"Goodnight," a soft voice whispered on the wind, following me home and into my dreams.

Sleep became a paradise that night. It was everything that I ever could imagine wanting. But in a way it was reminder of what I was incapable of possessing. I see you in every fantasy, every false moment. For you embody the life I wish I had.

In you I find everything I've ever wanted. A family. True love. Beauty. Childhood. Freedom. Passion. Each time my eyes follow your soft footsteps I hear a faint echo of my youth. It reminds me of how distant our lives really were, are. Unlike you I was never loved. Instead I was needed, born and bred to be the heir of the Dark Lord's closest accomplice. It was written to be my fate, and nothing I could do could change the course of the past.

Strange how life assigns us roles even before we come into existence, how it offers some a heaven and others a hell. Life was never supposed to be fair. Those bumbling idiots who preach about equality can't begin to comprehend the injustice of it all. I never chose to be evil, but I here I find myself as Satan.

Even from the beginning life was a nightmare. My first word had been mudblood, my second being hate. It seems like such a small thing, but I mourn my first precious ideas of spirit. Most children first enter their minds with words like mum or dad. But my thoughts mimicked the life I was destined to lead, already I was a robot controlled by my father. I wandered through the cold manor of my parents discovering all the evil hidden beneath the stone walls. I ran through the misty grounds, in an attempt to escape the blackened world, but I always found myself back on the damp steps empty of love.

And then the Great War came in a hurried daze. It seems that I never got the chance to grow up let alone find my soul before it was damned. But I suppose it too late now; I wish for once I had been early.

Once again I find life has passed me by. Love has forsaken me, punished me for destroying it. Yes, I assume that's fair, but oh how ironic that the good of this world is balanced out on scales now when before my eternity was never given a second's glance.

What do these greater powers expect from me? They never gave me the chance to be innocent, to be whole. They shoved me down into a harsh cold reality and thought I just might turn out to be the hero. I don't know why they bothered, shouldn't they know it was Harry.

Often times I find myself wishing to be him, to have my parents dead. For I'd rather live without ever knowing them, then be assured that they hated me. The only people in life that love you through thick and thin dismissed me as a shadow of something more powerful. They never fit into the conventional mold of a guardian.

Mothers are supposed to nurture and care for you with an unmeasured compassion. They help you stand when life has knocked you off your feet. They teach you to swim against the great current of misfortune. Mothers are beautiful, radiating love. Then fathers are there to guide you through your first steps up until their death bed. They teach you the hard lessons, and then show you the amazing rarities of the world. Fathers build you a great glory and then allow you to live it.

Mine never bothered. No one ever bothered, except for money. I had everything anyone would have ever wanted. But, clichéd as it is, I think it you to be the richest in the world.

Maybe one day you'll show me the emerald of hope, the amethyst of dreams, the sapphire of strength, the ruby of love, or the diamond of innocence. You'll chisel the beauty out of the dulled rock, ugly on the surface, but secretly glowing.

Or maybe I'm fooling myself. You'll never be able to step out of the box that life has neatly etched into your mind. You might never see that love and hatred are not day and night. You'll never glimpse at the blur of afternoon in between, being a neither one nor the another, yet strangely combined. Could you possibly understand?

This last attempt at love is the only thing I feel living inside of me. The rest has died. It perished a long time ago, before it ever really came alive, like a flower that never came to a full bloom.

Please, I do not ask for forgiveness for the heinous crimes I have committed. Rather I plead that you may comprehend why I killed who I did, because I never wanted to. I wish that within me I could have found some of your courage and died, but life whispered to me. It wove, before me, a beautiful web of enchantments, wishes, hope. I'm still waiting, still dreaming, still stranded.

Will you show me?