A/N: I don't own Harry Potter
This is for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Warning: underage witch/Wizard relationship, canon character death
Word Count: 843
Too late, too tired of waiting for things to get better.
Once upon a time things were perfect
She'd had everything she'd ever wanted.
Once upon time things made sense,
there wasn't an electrical current under her skin
a feeling like someone was always watching.
She knew he was gone, no one was watching her now.
She was safe now, the past was in the past, no matter
how much she wanted to pretend otherwise.
Once upon a time she was human.
Now, now that had been replaced with something else, something
worse
better,
she wasn't sure.
She was a shadow of her self,
a hollow shell that everyone filled with what
they wanted her to be.
Nothing made sense anymore.
She didn't feel like herself, she felt used
felt abused, like a child's puppet tossed aside when they were done with her.
Nothing had changed,
her life was still full of the same people,
the same places and things,
but yet everything had changed.
Some days she couldn't even feel the focus,
couldn't feel her own thoughts in her own head.
Other days they came rapid fire too fast to put on the page,
too fast to scribble even in the short hand she'd developed
the secret code she wrote in, just in case, just in case
he ever returned.
She thought if he couldn't understand her writing,
he couldn't use her again.
She knew he was gone, knew it was over, that she'd won
she couldn't let it go though.
There were details, things that still haunted her mind.
One by one
she wrote them down.
One by one crossing them off
scratching out the page in heavy ink until the
parchment tore, until she was sure those thoughts were gone
from her mind forever.
She knew they were never really gone, but just pushed to the side,
just forgotten for now.
Out of sight, out of mind.
She was as careful.
she was brilliant,
at least that's what they all said.
They talked about how brave she was
how she could fly, as if that was all that mattered
none of them knew her truth.
None of them knew how
much she'd sacrificed to just be alive.
She'd done things she couldn't remember.
She'd killed animals, she'd almost killed people.
Sometimes it felt like the blood never came off her
pale skin.
She could smell it every time she washed, but there
was no washing the scent from her mind.
None of them could ever understand the suffering.
They didn't see him their nightmares.
They didn't hear his voice whispering in her ears.
No one know about the dark days
No one knew about the sears,
about where they had really come from.
She longed to feel those blades pressed against her skin again.
She longed for the days when that made sense,
when that was enough calm her nerves, to make the voice disappear
for a moment.
She'd gotten better and now... now she was too numb
to feel it.
All she felt was empty.
Then, light a beacon, her heart started beating again
started throbbing, pounding in her chest.
Not a child anymore, new feelings developed.
New thoughts replaced the ones she'd had once upon a time
growing
growing up
She was a woman, a young woman who
had noticed a man,
he was everything she'd ever dreamed.
He was everything that could take the pain away
and then, then he was gone, taken from her
in one fell swoop.
She longed to have him hold her again
so wrong
so right
in love tonight
today, tomorrow, it was all uncertain and she'd done something
horrible.
Something beautiful. Something that made the pain disappear entirely.
Something she couldn't ever confess.
She knew what would happen if she did.
She knew what her mum would say
if she ever knew.
That was part of the reason she had to remain silent.
Now she was playing a part.
Now she was pretending she didn't miss him,
that he wasn't the one who had saved her from herself.
Pretending she was everything everyone wanted her to be.
She was the perfect daughter
the perfect teammate,
she was the girl next door.
She was his dream and she pretended she liked it
when he finally kissed her.
She pretended she wasn't still mourning her loss when
he took her hand and swept her around the dance floor.
She pretended it was someone else holding her,
that he wasn't dead and gone, that he was back just for her.
She still pretended from time to time.
She pretended she loved her husband, maybe if she tried hard enough
she finally would feel something for him.
Maybe it could become love
maybe
maybe
in her dreams she saw the face of her lover, the man she should
have never fallen for,
the man who should never had been
the one true love of her life
and yet there he was smiling
smiling and she woke
tears staining her cheeks and her
scarlet pillows.