Heartless //The story of Ominis Gaunt

Chapter One

I never believed in happy endings.

My mother used to read me these stories - fairy tales, as she called them - every night to help me fall asleep, as the screams of innocent people echoed through our house like an agonizing symphony of strings. Every single note slightly out of tune.

All those happy endings fading, feeling painfully bittersweet while accompanied by the undying melancholic tune..

My eyes always stayed wide open long after my mother left my room, quietly extinguishing the candle light that was illuminating the space. Sometimes - the blissful nothingness of sleep never even came, particularly when her own screams joined the composition.

During these sleepless nights I learned something important.

Life was cruel.

No matter how much kindness one bore in their heart, how much they tried. The cruelty of the world would always catch up with them, adjusting its pace to walk side by side.

If the cruelty marked a person, it never went away. Being drawn back by the scars it left behind, like a moth being drawn to a flame. Except the flame came to the moth, burning it in the process.

My own scars were a living reminder of such a fact, molded into my flesh for the rest of my life, marking me like an ill horse, needing to be separated and disposed of, no matter how much it resisted.

What was even the point in resitsing, when it only inched you closer to the inevitable demise? Life itself closing its eyes, averting its gaze, loosening the grip, only to let you slip and fall.

I had no tears left to cry, when my mother left me. I've already cried them all. In her embrace.. behind those closed doors.. into my pillow - alone. They dressed me up like a doll, forcing me to watch as the damp soil closed over her kind soul for good. Buried. Forever. The only true burning love I ever felt died in mere seconds.

As I said.. there were no happy endings.

Not for me.

......................

When I came to Hogwarts, with a pit of emptiness occupying my heart, I was for some inexplicable reason blessed with the first flickering light I felt in years.

Those freckled twins.

For some reason I felt drawn to their warmth, my heart desperately aching to relive the feeling I held dearly in my memory. The comfort I felt in my mothers embrace all those years ago.

Initially.. I didn't plan to become close with them at all. I enjoyed the comfort of my solitude I've grown to cherish, shielding myself from the cruel hands of those above me.

That was until the freckled boy offered me his hand after he bested me in a duel. I found myself on the ground for the first time after all those years of strict training, baffled, how someone of such modest upbringing bested a Gaunt. He towered over me, the messy chestnut hair poking in all directions, a cheezy mischievous grin radiating from him.

He lowered himself, crouching, his head leaning slightly to the right side.

"Well that was something, ey? I must say... You are good - you almost had me." He chuckled, and I heard him extending his hand towards me.

He was offering me a hand.

Something shook inside of me, the sudden gush of emotions rendering me speechless. A single tear entered my eye. And as quickly it appeared, it dissolved like a morning dew in the sunlight. I felt warm, as if the blazing summer sun was caressing my awfully pale skin.