i am not jk rowling. this fact must be clear to you by now.

warnings: themes of suicide, depression, and possibly self harm run throughout this piece. please don't read this fic if it could be a trigger.

Queen of Hearts

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Life's too short to even care at all, oh

I'm losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control

-Cough Syrup; Young the Giant

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Deafening silence filled the house. It whirled around, searching for a victim, searching to someone who would succumb to the everlasting loneliness.

It happened that there was one—a frail girl. To call her a woman would be inaccurate. She wasn't a woman, because she'd never really grown up enough to have that word used to describe her. She never really did grow up, after all. She lay upon her bed, tracing her hand up and down the silken sheets. Being the niece of Harry Potter and daughter of famous Ministry Leader Percy Weasley had its advantages—the silken sheets and vast house were among them.

Lucy tried to blank out what she was feeling, because she didn't want those feelings, not any of them. The thing that hurt the most is that the feeling she was trying to block out was not feeling at all. She felt like she was alone in a wide space, stretching out for miles with no one there but her. She was alone, and she wasn't going to find anyone. She'd screwed up, big time, and there was nothing that could save her. More importantly, there was no one that could save her.

There were thoughts that she didn't want to think, thoughts that no one would ever want to think, but thoughts that she couldn't help thinking because of how she was feeling. She pushed the unwanted thoughts from her mind. No. She told herself. No, I won't. She wouldn't give in. She wouldn't destroy the only thing on earth she had left — her life.

Her emerald green dress was creased from her tossing herself down onto the bed. Some would say that she was showing off her house colour with pride, but Lucy had no pride left, none at all, and so she simply wore them to remind herself of who she was, and those that she'd hurt. Her mascara was smudged from hours upon hours of crying, but she'd stopped. She was simply lying there, her fingers tracing the creases in the silken sheets, trying to block out the feeling of not feeling anything at all.

Loneliness was not something Lucy was good at dealing with. She couldn't stop being lonely any more than she could stop being a Slytherin, any more than Dominique could stop being one of her best friends, any more than Lucy could stop hating Molly. Loneliness invaded her life, invaded her mind and made it so nowhere was safe for her, so that every time she looked around she knew that there was nothing there, and it hurt. It hurt more than she could bear think about.

The thoughts that she didn't want to think kept returning. The emptiness was filling her up, filling her up until she couldn't take it anymore. The loneliness engulfed her, the deafening silence pounded through the house, and she knew she had to do something—anything—to make it stop.

She strode through the house, grabbing her clutch bag off the kitchen table as she moved through to the living room. Throwing herself down onto the sofa, she opened her bag, searching for her wand, needing her wand. She opened her bag and rummaged through to the bottom, throwing out the junk in there—lipsticks, condoms, pills—searching through all of it for her wand. She drew it out and gasped. No. She briefly remembered the night before, when she'd decided to give up magic. She winced as she recounted herself snapping her wand in two, ignoring the looks from the paparazzi and ordinary witches and wizards, and then ran through the crowd, out of the nightclub and into a taxi. The tears only began to fall when she had fallen safely on her bed, and her only coherent thought was that she hadn't even found a guy to take home with her. She snapped back to the present, looking down at her wand, the phoenix feather poking out of the hawthorn wood, and she tried hard not to cry. She'd been attached to her hawthorn wand; it had really suited her, and as soon as she'd gotten used to using it had been perfect for her.

She remembered the reason she'd originally been searching for her wand. She leant back onto the sofa, exhaling and stopping thinking. Killing herself was rather redundant, she thought. She was only a shell, really, there was nothing left to erase. Yet, she thought there would be some kind of finality in it all, some comfort, knowing that she no longer had to live on, remembering what she'd done, whom she'd hurt and who'd hurt her. It struck her that it sounded selfish, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Besides, nobody else would care, would they?

Remembering hurt, thinking hurt, living hurt. She didn't care anymore; she'd given up.

All she really wanted was for the emptiness to end.

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Often, she wondered where she began to mess it up. Maybe it was messed up from the beginning, maybe for her whole life, Lucy was a time bomb, just ticking away until it was time to blow up. Lucy didn't like that metaphor, because it so heartlessly brushed aside all of the times that she was happy, and yet it made sense, in a way, to compare herself to a ticking time bomb. She couldn't begin to remember where it all went wrong, because so many damned things went wrong, and she could never, ever fix them.

The clock on the mantelpiece was broken, and maybe that was good, because it helped Lucy forget about the ticking time bomb metaphor, and concentrate on the more pressing matters, except she couldn't quite remember what they were, and so she contented herself with not thinking, except, no, it wasn't contentment, or anything of the sort.

Lucy hasn't been content in a long time.

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Seven envelopes lay in front of Lucy, each with a letter inside and a name marked on them. She'd written them hastily, so the handwriting was messy and almost unreadable. They were an apology, because she was sorry. She was sorry, okay? Was that enough for the world? Was that enough for the world to know that she was sorry?

She didn't know. To be quite frank, she didn't care what anyone thought anymore. It was her life, and she could do whatever the hell she wanted to do with it, including throwing it all away.

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She climbed up onto the chair she'd set up in her closet, her make up recently perfected, her hair smoothed out and brushed. She'd always loved her blonde hair, and she found herself admiring it in her mirror before she climbed up. There were no second thoughts lingering in her head, just a sense of cold, hard finality. This is it.

She tried to detach her mind from the task of tying the rope to the beam above her closet, and she closed her eyes for a minute, letting the darkness engulf her. For once, the darkness didn't scare her, and she felt safe in it, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn't be hurting soon. Soon, all the pain would go away, and nobody would have to think of Lucy Weasley anymore, because she would be gone.

Clumsily, she kicked the chair away, kicking away her last anchor to the fading earth. Her last thoughts were not of love, nor of life. She didn't really have any last thoughts, only that she was glad that there was an end.

She wondered if anyone would find her—probably not, she thought. Who would care enough to come to her flat and check on her? Nobody; nobody would.

(She didn't notice him running through the door, calling her name desperately. She was already unconscious as he tried to save her.)

This is my first Harry Potter multichap in a while, and I'm genuinely really excited about this! This is only a prologue, and there will be 7 chapters, considerably longer than this prologue.

This is for two challenge on HPFC: The Seven Kisses Challenge (run by SonyaWho) and the Sensitive/Controversial Topic Challenge (run by Lolaaaa). My character is Lucy Weasley, obviously, and my topics are suicide, depression & self harm, although I might not include the later.

Thanks to Lucy (WeasleySeeker) my flawless beta! :)

Credit deserves to go to the wonderful Listen (fabricated fantasies) as she has a similar story to this, a Dominique-centric that I suggest you all check out, although I did base this on the Seven Kisses challenge. Credit also deserves to go to Isha (neuers) for doing a Jamesii-centric one along the same lines, which you should also check out. :)

Please don't favourite without a review; I spent ages on this, and I'd love to know what you think! :)

-Middy (keep my issues drawn/ stars fall at midnight)