A/N don't own them, yada yada yada
Ignorance is bliss -Anonymous
It was cold and dark, and he sat huddled under the only light provided, under a tall rigidly standing floor lamp, nose-deep in a book. He wanted to forget about what was going on around him, what was happening. He wanted to block out the laughter ringing in the hallways, pinging off of the old, damp stone. He didn't deserve to be part of such a happy place. He didn't even know why he ran here of all places, there were so many others he could have gone to. He could have left the world entirely if he was so disgusted with himself.
But he had fallen in love with the world. He had invested so much time, so much learning into this world, that he wasn't sure he could function without magic. He was sure he could get by, if he needed to, but he had no proof of education, he hadn't had maths, he hadn't had history, not in the sense that any sort of muggle school would like, not since he was ten years old. He needed this world, he needed to cling to it, no matter how painful it was.
No matter how much it hurt him. It had been his choice after all, he had no one to blame but himself. He wanted to, he wanted to blame Lucius for dragging him there, but really, his friend had done nothing of the sort. He wanted to blame his father, for the all-consuming hatred that had pressed him into learning how to remove his father. He wanted to blame his mother, for being a part of this world, for introducing it to him. He wanted to blame Black, and Pettigrew, and most of all, he wanted to blame Potter for why he was here.
But he couldn't to think of blaming Potter caused his stomach to churn. He wasn't so entirely vile of a man that he could think ill of the dead, especially not the recently dead. Especially not those that he had helped to kill, even if he hadn't said the words himself, he was still responsible for the death of James and Lily Potter. And the thought sickened him.
It was, perhaps, why he had ran here, to this last bastion of hope in his life. It represented everything that he had wanted in such an untainted way. It was unadulterated learning, unadulterated knowledge. The opposite of the corrupted knowledge he had learned. He had been so greedy to learn, so eager to gain knowledge, no matter how dark, he had allowed himself to be blinded to all the awful things he was doing.
It wouldn't have been so bad had his conscience not suddenly awoken while he stood to the side, watching as Godric's Hollow was destroyed. It was the last straw. He had contemplated it before, he had gotten as far as Dumbledore's door before hearing the prophecy, before that bitch Trewlawny had ruined it for him. He wanted to blame her, for causing him to be responsible for a death. Until then, he had not had to worry about blood on his hands. Until then he had functioned in a purely advisory fashion, learning everything he could, and manipulating that knowledge to the use of he who had provided it to him.
He had enjoyed the knowledge, he had loved being in control of everything. He loved being able to hold it over his father's head, that he could kill him in a split second, and bring him back to torture him over and over again, had he wanted to. And somehow, that had been more gratifying than actually killing, actually torturing the man, watching the man who had made his childhood a living hell quake in fear of him had been all the gratification he had needed.
But now, he had learned the price of that knowledge. He had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and he had been exiled from the garden. He'd allowed the serpent to lead him astray, rather literally. He'd never been a religious man, but his father's forcing him through Sunday School for the formative years of his life had drilled at least a few of the stories into his head. He'd been cast out from the garden, and had this sin hanging over his head now.
He blamed knowledge, it was the only thing he could. It had lured him in, ensnared him, wrapped him up in it, and hurt him, destroyed him. It was knowledge that had brought him here, grovelling, hurt, destroyed, a broken shell of what he had been. And Dumbledore pitied him, he knew that was what the emotion was, pity. He had learned it well enough. He was the poor boy who'd made a bad decision because of a bad life, and he should be pitied.
The only thing he had to blame the pain that he had found himself in was knowledge. That was the only reason he was here. He had gone questing for knowledge, to learn everything he had, and he had let this quest for knowledge go too far, he'd let it consume him until there was nothing left of him but a hollow, broken shell.
He'd been offered the job out of pity, Slughorn had been looking to retire, and this gave him the excuse to. And it gave him the chance to be pitied, and taken under Dumbledore's wing, to be coddled and nursed back to health. All because he wanted knowledge.
He tossed the book he was reading aside, it disgusted him. It was the reason he was here. It was the reason why he had the damn mark on his arm, it was the reason why he was in this castle paying his penance for what he had done instead of doing something useful in life. All he had wanted was knowledge, but he had learned that knowledge comes with a price, that nothing in life, not even learning comes without a price.
He would have been better off in the muggle world, with only an elementary education of how that world works. After all, the ignorant are too dumb to see how horrible their lives are. The intelligent are those that can see their lives in all the misery and realize how horrible of a person they have become. The stupid live happily in their mediocre jobs, not knowing any better. Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is pain.