Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments): Charms (Assignment 2)

Prompt: Write about someone who feels invisible.

Word Count: 610 (ish)

Warning: Mentions of suicide and self harm

People don't see me.

Their eyes slide past me, their brains unconsciously rendering me invisible.

No one knows what to say to me, how to look at me like I'm one of them.

It's too awkward, too shameful. When they are forced to acknowledge me they do so clumsily. I am taboo, to be avoided at all costs.

I know they still talk about me behind my back, but as soon as I'm in the same room as them it's like I don't exist. The few friends that I had before the incident never came to visit me in the hospital wing, and when I was let out they acted as if the last few years had never happened. Even the professors are awkward around me, as if they're scared to do anything that might upset me.

I have weekly check-ups with Madame Pomfrey, her trying every kind of revealing spell to make sure that no new scars decorate my wrist. Every month a healer at St Mungo's examines me, checking that I'm sane enough to carry on at school. None of them understand that that just makes it worse.

I don't hurt myself anymore. The memories of the thin streams of red running down my arms no longer brings pleasure. I don't need pain to tether me to this world. Instead I write about it. I fill page after page with scribblings; observations, thoughts, desires. Sometimes I destroy them straight away, burning them or releasing them into the wind so that no one else can ever read what I write. I learned a year ago that dying wouldn't solve anything, so I have to get rid of those feelings another way. Writing is like capturing those thoughts and then releasing them. They don't stay bottled up inside me, but they don't hurt anyone else either.

It hurts though, to know that even if I change, even if I get better, everyone else will still only remember me as the girl who tried to kill herself.

I know that when they look at me they don't see me, they see the girl who stood atop the astronomy tower and shakily stepped out into the storm. They remember me falling, hair whipped around by the wind, limbs flailing helplessly.

Afterwards they tried to convince themselves that I had been cursed. When they finally gave up on that theory they decided it must have been an accident. They told me how lucky I was that the Headmaster had been out for a walk and had been quick thinking enough to cast a cushioning charm. They didn't understand how I could do it, why I could do it.

If they can't see me they don't have to ask themselves those questions. They can pretend it never happened, so they just blot me out of their lives. They shun me, trying to convince themselves that I don't want to talk to them, that it will be easier for both of us if they ignore me. They're wrong. It might be easier for them but I crave human contact. I want desperately to stand up and announce to the world that I am alive. I want someone to look at me and see me, the real me. I want someone to talk to me and to listen, really listen to what I have to say.

But I can't have what I want, because I'm the invisible girl. I didn't die, but I ceased to exist to everyone around me.