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Well.
I could waste ten minutes of my life typing up about my childhood and where I as born and all that crap and you could waste five minutes of your life reading about my childhood and where I was born and all that crap. But I won’t and you … can’t. Because this account or story or whatever it is you want to call it isn’t about me. I am simply the recorder of what happened, not the star. Call me the story-teller if you will.
Where’s the story without the story-teller?
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Sixth year.
Great for some, not so great for others.
Not very different for me.
Got to school alright.
I won’t be telling you about the train journey and all that because it bores me to tell the truth.
Yes, the entrance to the platform is amazing. Yes, it’s a nice train. Yes, cauldron cakes and chocolate frogs are great. But the prolonged interest everyone has in the goddamn train journey scares me.
Nothing happened on the train journey with any relevance to me or the account. Well nothing ever happens on the train. To me at least.
The sorting ceremony went well. Food was great as ever. Prefects took us up to dormitory. The new password was ‘Diablo’. Interesting.
As always I went straight up to my dormitory, showered, brushed my teeth and got into my bed. As always I lay awake as an hour later a few girls came in laughing amongst themselves softly and one by one went to bed. As always I was woken up as a few more girls crashed into the dormitory a couple of hours later brazenly howling in drunken hysterics. As always I curled angrily into a tight ball in my bed wanting to scream at them to shut up, all the while knowing that I never would. And as always I lay awake with tears slowly forming and falling, the inevitable cycle, until sleep fuddled my wits.
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Time went on, as it always does, never disturbed by anyone’s troubles. Going on and on forever and ever. It's enchanting, don't you think?
Halloween came.
The joyous, celebratory spirit raced through the castle like a forest fire. Everywhere you looked there were floating pumpkins, theatrically spooky silhouettes and all kinds of magical decorations. People of all houses were planning parties. Many secretive trips were being made to the kitchens. Rumours of spectacular entertainment for the Halloween party were spreading.
But most importantly Halloween marked the beginning.
The beginning of it all.
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The Halloween party took place on Friday the twenty-ninth.
Nothing happened then.
It was later on.
On Halloween itself.
The castle was strangely empty on the thirty-first of October. People were either at Hogsmeade or at home. I didn’t go to Hogsmeade that night. I don’t to Hogsmeade much.
I wandered around the castle, my confidence growing in solitude. After hours of aimless wandering I found myself near the lake. I had somehow meandered to the west bank of the lake, the one furthest away from Hogwarts. As I stared into the murky depths of the Great Lake, an unexplainable sorrow washed over me. I kneeled by the bank, sitting there as the Sun began to sink and the students began to return from Hogsmeade. I watched as the horde of laughing figures made their way into the castle. Excitement buzzed in the air but left me unaffected. I felt disconnected. I don't know what brought on that sudden drop in my mood. After many years of speculation - trust me, I've had a long time to think about it- I’ve come up with two theories.
1) I realised that my life was so empty. Avoiding that simple fact had become the very core of my existence. I shrouded myself in my work and my belief that seclusion was happiness. The shroud had to crumble one day and that day had arrived.
2) Fate.
The second theory is somewhat more comforting and easier for me to accept.
Looking back, I’ve thought a lot about that day. If I had known what would happen would I have joined the crowd of students? No. If I had known of the intense pain that would burn me in the future? No. What happened there changed my life, it gave me something. Something that I would never be able to put into words.
I sat there, by the bottomless, shady lake.
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