Darkness closed in on every side.  He was shackled to his bed, bound in a kneeling position with no light, no food, and no water.  The only sensation he knew was pain. And pain. And pain.

He could feel his emotional landscape dwindling as his existence got more and more bleak.  Colors were things of the past. Magic was a thing of the past. Normal passage of time was gone.  

There was only his uncle and the pain that came from his uncle.  

. . .

And then he would be relatively free.  Outside trying to do chores as time wiggled past him in chunks of varying sizes.  He forgot where he was, he zoned out, he did things without remembering and he remembered without being able to do things.

Every breath was pain.  Every dream was a nightmare.  Every moment was agony.

Except when he was sent on a chore that caused him to leave the confines of the street.  Then Hedwig would find him, and he found that the pain of her talons didn’t really hurt, because she wasn’t trying to hurt him.  She carried mail from someone who didn’t want to hurt him.  Someone who knew what it was like to be hurt by someone who should have been a trusted adult.  

And the bleakness of his emotional landscape would shift, and the tears would come and he remembered how to crack his mouth in a smile.

Blaise wrote him to ask how he was, and to say that his mother’s current boyfriend wasn’t interested in him, and that he was safe.  

Safety called to him.  He longed for it so much that he could taste it.  

‘Why not write your head-of-house?’ Blase wrote.

Because I am a freak.  Why should she listen to me?

He thought back to first year, when he and Hermione and a much reluctant Ron had gone to McGonagall only to be rebutted.  They were children and thus didn’t understand.

Children.

He had never been a child.  

Never.

He had always been hated.  Beaten for his existence, beaten for his lack of death, beaten for his differences, his magic, his heritage, his parentage.

He envied Ron for his family, his ability to fit in without trying.  He envied Ron, even though the other boy said that his parents never paid him much attention, even though his mate wished he were someone else.  

He wished he could be forgotten.  He wished that the swirling sands of his consciousness would scour him down to the basic elements, ripping and burning off the weak emotional parts, and leaving nothing but a hardened shell that was still functional enough to exist and attain revenge.

Only then would he be able to die.  Only then, after vengeance was acquired, could he stand to kill himself and make the agony stop.

. . .

Blaise was persistent with him.

If not McGonagall, what about another head-of-house?  What about his own?

‘Snape hates me,’ He had written back in one letter.

‘Only because your father and his mates were a bunch of bullies.  My mother was at school toward the end of their years there, and she has a lot of sources that confirm it.  They treated Snape like he was scum. They had protection from the prefects and McGonagall and Dumbledore. They treated him like he was shite they scraped off the bottom of their expensive boots, and never let up on him and others like him.  They preyed on the weak, but hey, you don’t know anything about that, so don’t bother having any contact with him,’ Was Blaise’s emotionally charged response.

‘Then he probably thinks I’m a bully too.  Since Dumbledore and McGonagall like to think they’re doing me favours by letting me get away with stupidity.’

And he had been stupid.  

Cedric.

He smacked the side of his head and then did it again and again and again, and he was on his knees, bleeding from the nose and finally the thought dislodged from his mind.  

Blood was pretty, but then again, so was fire.

His mindscape was burnt, red and copper staining the edges of what should have been a pristine landscape.  

Every movement hurt.  Every breath hurt. Every moment was agony.  

But he could still have vengeance.  He could still find allies to wreak havoc on his life.  He just had to make it another day, and he’d be that much closer to going back to Hogwarts.

Hogwarts.

Hogwarts.

Hogwarts.

Cedric, his mind cried out.