You Look Forward

by Envinyatar

Disclaimer: Nothing from the Potterverse belongs to me, it’s all JKR’s.

A/N: This is ever so slightly influenced by “The Very Air” by DistinctVagueness – credit where credit is due.

The lyrics are from the song “All That You’re Giving” by Vito, an Emo band from Berlin with whom I personally acquainted.

Above all – many thanks, hugs and kisses to my beta, maggie3990! Her remarks are unbelievably valuable, and without her, my writing would be so much worse.

Please review!?

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There’s just a smile on your face
I can’t recognize
There’s just a lie that you’re selling
Before we die
Another step has taken me down again
So this is the end

You look forward in sheer anticipation. You are what I once was: naïve. Intelligent, abnormally so, and perceptive, yes. You certainly show wisdom beyond your years. Yet you display an amount of innocence I would not have imagined coming from you. I simply would not have thought you capable of it, and had someone told me of your ignorance, I would have laughed him – or her – in the face. It is beyond my comprehension, and since you will never tell me what is going on in your head, your mind, I must make up reasons as to what has made you so ignorant.

You look forward, and I wonder – have you not seen enough? Have the repeated confrontations between Potter and the Dark Lord not taught you anything? Do you not realise the suffering of those you claim to love? Do you not understand that the longer this war draws on, the more people die?

You look forward to the future that is to come – the future you are trying to save with all your heart, and perhaps with giving your soul and body. You feel confident – or is it only a façade? I have seen it crack today, at breakfast, when you looked me in the eye. If it is, then, indeed a façade, I know how you feel. It made me see – you are not ignorant, but insecure, tense. You try to appear powerful, determined, as if you believed in this war, in its righteousness, its certain outcome. At one time, I showed this brave face to the world, as well. A question forms in my head – is this war ripping you apart, like it is ripping me? Is it perhaps demanding too much from you? You have cast Unforgivables – the war is escalating, and nobody is there anymore to call the “side of the light” back with orders. We all have become darker persons, survivors – fighting darkness with darkness. Can you stand this? Will you break under the weight of your deeds?

You look forward, and I wonder – what makes you maintain that façade? What is it that gives you the strength to play your part, to not break down, and to build up a future you most likely will never get the chance to see?

You look forward to fighting. You need an outlet for your frustrations. In battle, you are able to concentrate on but one thing – survival. You have become a killer, and you know it. It is not how you have ever pictured yourself, but here you are. You have no choice, and I can now see how it slowly tears your mind to pieces. Your eyes have become hollow. Nobody else sees this, I think – only those who were in your position. And still are. I have once looked forward, you may not believe this. Why, do you think, I am the person I am? I looked forward, and lost everything.

You look forward, and I wonder – what is it you try to gain by coming to me at night? Am I also only an outlet? Or do you recognise how our souls are wounded in the same way? How similar we are? How much we have in common? Or do you simply seek the danger? Do you need the feel of adrenaline coursing through your body? Do you need to feel alive?

You look forward, but I now recognise as to why you do this. You maintain this façade simply for the others – you give yourself up, for the greater good, as the old fool has called it. You follow Dumbledore’s footsteps so thoroughly that nobody sees your real self. You seem to be confident in us winning the Final Battle – yet you are not convinced of it. You see how others fall, your friends, your family. You let us think you were indifferent – that you moan about their losses, but move on afterwards. You are what keeps them going, Potter, the Weasleys, Longbottom, and all the others. But I realise now, from the way you clutch at my back when the night draws to a close, that you are not indifferent. You feel the losses every day, every hour, every minute of your being alive, that you lose yourself in sorrow. But you do not see this, the self-destruction you put yourself under. You cannot allow yourself to see this, for if you did, all would be lost.

You look forward, and I still live in the past, as I always have.

You look forward, and I, still following you with my eyes, cannot help but lose all my belief in winning this war.

You look forward, and I have lost the only thing I love at this point in time.

You look forward, always forward, until you crumble under the weight of the very future you try to build up. And then, only then, you will realise what exactly this means:

To look forward.