Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter , nor do I own any Nightwish songs or lyrics.
A/N: At first I really wasn't pleased with this piece at all. It wasn't anything like what I envisioned. But it's grown on me, and now I think it fits the song quite nicely. In any case, I love this song, especially the refrain. Hope you enjoy.
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10th Man Down
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It's best not to think, I tell myself as I feel their lives slip away. Many of them are only children, people who were in school while I was, in younger years. Some of them were even in my classes. I know them all, have seen their faces before. No killing of strangers for me, never. But does it truly make a difference? In those last moments, when you see the life fade from a person's eyes, you know them more intimately than anyone else ever could.
I used to think of them as people. Once I would have cried for their deaths, felt pain for their loved ones' loss. But now, now I like to think I'm doing them a favor. Better to die now, at my hands, than to live to see all their friends and family fall around them, to have their hearts stained by the deaths of those they love. We are all dying, in this wretched war. Better sooner than later, that's what I say.
I don't feel responsible for them anymore, for anyone anymore. But still I keep going, as if on autopilot, because I don't know what else to do. And through all this, miraculously, I still maintain some semblance of survival instinct. When they come at me with their wands draw, I still find it in me to kill them all, to save my own sorry skin. Yet, with each of their deaths, I feel a part of myself die too. Their broken souls pave my pathway to Hell.
I know the other Order members worry about me. But I know, too, that they will never fail to turn away and pretend that I'm alright. Because that's what they need to believe. We all believe what we need to, and shield our eyes from the truth. It's ironic, really, because, despite the tragedy and suffering around me, I'm happier than I've ever been. Happiness is the absence of sorrow, and when you feel no pain, you cannot be sad. So I keep going, unfeelingly, without complaint, until I simply stop. Not because I've committed some foolish act of suicide, no. I'm as good as dead already, why bother to make it official? But one day I'm bound to fall.
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