this is my entry for the underdoggos one shot contest for december. i love writing these asdfghjkl.
┋┊prompt: made friends and lost them through the years┊┋
^^i love depression
┋┊fight or flight┊┋
┊peter pettigrew┊
┊word count: about 2300┊
┊no tags cause no friends lol┊
┋┊i b r e a k things—
things i can't r e p a i r.
i c a u s e myself this life—
a life of d e s p a i r.┊┋
┋┊☼┊┋
Redemption. Wouldn't that be something? You know, people usually don't think they need redemption. After doing something despicable, they can't seem to understand why the world around them is crumbling. They don't even see it crumble. Eventually they get the clear picture, but eventually is too late.
I can see the destruction I caused clearly now. I can see the pain on my friend's faces—pain I caused them. Years ago, I broke a promise, told a secret. I never thought it would hurt this much, but it did and continues to do. They all resent me now; they're right to resent me. I lost them a long time ago.
Fight or flight. People say this all the time in conversation, and the words roll so easily off their tongues. "When danger strikes, the fight or flight response kicks in," they say while sipping their tea with friends and family. "Only cowards choose flight." Everyone agrees, and before now, I agreed too. Heroes fly, and I thought of myself as a hero.
But they don't know anything; I didn't know anything. We say "fight or flight" like it's a choice—like we can sit back and assess our options before acting. When danger strikes, you don't have time to think or evaluate—you just do. There is no choice. Fight or flight is programmed in you since birth, and running at the signs of danger doesn't make a person a coward—it makes him a person.
When I ran, I was called a coward and a traitor. I chose to push the words behind me in an attempt to save my pride. "I'm a Gryffindor," I thought. "I can't be a coward." So I kept on hiding, the flight response telling me it was the only way. I was being brave.
Oh, how wrong I was. Your Hogwarts House doesn't dictate whether or not you're a hero—your actions do. Brave is a word that most people associate with heroes, so that's what we thought we were. Cunning and sly are words people associate with villains, so that's what we thought Slytherins were.
There are more adjectives to describe heroes and villains other then brave and sly. A villain can be brave; a hero can be sly. The thing with us Gryffindors was we were told of our bravery, so we branded ourselves heroes. We didn't dig deep enough within ourselves to see our weaknesses because our strengths were so immense. We let our egos block out any other traits.
Everyone else was beneath us—beneath me. I didn't have that mindset until I met the three boys I would later betray. They taught me how to be a Gryffindor. They helped mold me into someone I wasn't. It wasn't any fault of theirs that I took this path; the blame is all on me. They gave me the tools to do good, but I twisted their words into something different.
I didn't think I was worth much until one day in school when I met David. He was a Ravenclaw, and we hadn't spoken at all, but I saw something in the way he presented himself that was unspeakably different from the boys I spent my time with. He covered his eyes with his sandy brown bangs and usually kept himself hidden behind the pages of a book. He was the opposite of the Gryffindors, and a change was good for me.
