Author: gwenstarr
Story: Vulnerable Veracity
Rating: Everyone
Setting: Pre-OotP
Status: Completed
Reviews: 2
Words: 630
I
Sometimes you wish you could change the world.
Sometimes you wish you could change the past.
Sometimes you can’t control your own life.
Sometimes you can’t help the people you love most.
Sometimes you can’t even help yourself.
You wish you had the power… the magic… to fix things…
Sometimes the world isn’t what you want it to be.
Sometimes the world is just too hard to understand.
Sometimes you want to scream in frustration.
Sometimes you want to cry.
Why does the world pick on those too weak, or too meek, to understand, to help themselves?
Why does fate pick on people who can’t help who they are, or what they are?
Sometimes people don’t understand.
Sometimes they just don’t care.
II
But sometimes you try to understand.
You try to believe that things will get better;
That good will triumph over evil.
That the underdog will be revenged.
That those whom fate decided to curse will be allowed to rest.
They will be allowed some peace.
We go through life hoping that we will be fortunate.
That fate will be kind to us.
We go through life wishing that we could help in some way…
That we had some power, some sort of magic, against those bigger than us, with more influence than us, more money, more power than us.
We go through life just hoping that we can get through unscathed.
III
Sometimes war happens.
It shocks us. Surprises us. Frightens us. Disgusts us.
And we can’t do anything about it.
War happens in the most terrible ways.
And both sides suffer.
No matter what, innocents suffer
The good side or the bad. It makes no difference.
They both destroy innocent lifes.
The Good fights to protect.
But who protects the children—the innocent children—on the other side?
They still die, they still suffer.
Everybody suffers.
There is no Good in war.
Just those who fight for what they believe in.
Good or Evil, Light or Dark, innocents still die and war is pointless and cruel.
Sometimes you wish you could change the world, but can’t.
IV
Sirius Black was murdered in a war that’s just begun. A war where the Light is desperately trying to defend themselves from the Dark. Cedric Diggory and Sirius Black were among the very first killed in this war.
People on both sides will die.
The Dark will kill the Light.
The innocents.
The Light will kill the Dark.
The not-so-innocents.
But who are we to decide who deserves to die?
Not everything is black or white;
Sometimes everything is blurred into grey.
V
Evil things have been done, and will be done, by the Dark. They deserve punishment, sometimes more severe than many can imagine.
But Death?
Will you be the one to tell a little girl that her mommy or daddy was killed?
“Well,” you say, “sorry we killed your parents, but it was okay for us to do so, because they were Death Eaters/Bad Guys and had done bad things—they were fighting for the wrong side.”
Or maybe it will be:
“We took your family away from you because they were fighting for something they believed in. We took your family away because they were fighting for all the wrong reasons—for evil, for greed, for whatever.”
Could you look a child—an innocent child—in the eyes and tell her that it was all right for you to steal her family because they stole yours?
That two wrongs make a right?
That she deserves the fate that you’ve been served?
That you have the right to kill them because they’ve killed others?
That that Death Eater’s, or war criminal’s, child, that innocent child, should suffer at the hands of the Light, to so-called Good side?
Could you make that choice?