"I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating." —Jean-Paul Sartre

You're fifteen when the depression hits high, like a tidal wave of sadness, and you have nothing to hold onto. You're a Fourth Year, and you're supposed to feel like you're on the top of the world, but instead you feel like the dirt on the underside of his shoe. It's complicated, maybe, kind of, sort of. I mean, you're just a teenager, but you've got the added pressure of being a fucking werewolf, and then there's keeping that a secret from your friends, and then there's the school work, and you just want to explode. You just want to write something, anything, that means something, but you're stuck in both a lunar cycle and a cycle of writing essays and doing research and answering hundreds of questions, not only on Defense Against the Dark Arts, but on your location the night before, why you look so pale, why you look so sick, why you look so disturbed.

And maybe you are disturbed, and if you are, then you must be posioning everyone else in the process, too. Well, everyone who cares about you. Which is about three people. James, Peter and him. And maybe Lily, too, but she's too nosey for her own good, and she probably already knows your secret. You feel like crawling under your bed and never coming out again; you want to find the darkest closet of the castle and lock yourself in there and throw away the key, so their voices can't reach you and the moonlight won't hit you. You want anything, any way, to escape from your situation. You're carrying the world, the moon, on your shoulders and you're not strong enough.

It's like that. You have people to talk to, sure; you could unload everything but your hairiness on anybody who'd listen, and maybe it'd get better. But you don't like to talk to just anyone, you don't trust just anyone. You want someone who would listen and care and understand and help. And sure, you could talk to him, but you stumble enough around him, limbs flailing, words caught in your throat, constantly wringing your hands. You could write awful poetry about him, pages upon pages of parchment, but you'd never show him, and you don't know how to form the words aloud to tell him.

He's hardened by years of being put down, being told he won't amount to anything. His walls are built up so high that you can't climb them without falling and getting hurt even more. He laughs, but he doesn't mean it; he talks, but nothing lasting comes out. Lily tells you he lights up when you're around, and he tells you things of value, like what it's like to have a family who doesn't care, to have a brother who gave up on you. His screaming mother and the father he never saw. Cousins who scoffed at him, and the only one who ever bothered to listen to him, Andromeda. You only have tales of your only family, your father, who never spoke out of disgust at the sight of you. You're alike, you know it, but you're not worthy. He's talented. He's going somewhere. He's going to get out of this hellhole you both call Scotland and make it. He'll find a lasting job that pays, one he enjoys nonetheless, and you're going to be some broke bookworm who can't find a job in either the Muggle or Wizarding world.

The only things you know, the only things you'e absolutely sure of, are words. Reading is the only thing that can keep your mind off the subjects that cripple you, reading words upon words. Madam Pince thinks you'll read all of the books in the library before you graduate, and you wouldn't mind if she were correct. And writing — writing, a skill, something that cannot be learned but perfected. It flows, and it can create the most beautiful things or the most terrible. You can build empires with words and destroy them in only a few more. And you hope one day to conjure sentences that connect magically to tell him not only how sad you feel but how strongly you feel about him and what you could be and what you want to be. But for right now you only have the words scrawled on the back of napkins, the sadness written on loose parchment, the thoughts never vocalized, and maybe it's too much now, but one day it'll be enough, and you'll be able to speak the words you were never able to.

a/n: HI, GUESS WHAT, I HAVEN'T DIED, BUT MY WRITING HAS SEEMINGLY GOTTEN WORSE.
This was something that came out of me when I was working on writing something for Jenny that I haven't been able to write for months.
So, this dedicated to Amy, FollowThisRhythm, whom I started talking to on this day, the fifth of February, two years ago. :) She's my favorite and she's the best and an A+ and I don't know what I'd do without her, seriously. We might not get to talk as often as I would like to, but I can tell her anything and I'd know she'd still be there to listen. I love you, Amy!I'm sorry I didn't have something good to dedicate you; you just get this pile of trash. But: You're as good as Commentarius to me.