As seasons changed, the beginning of a new year at Hogwarts arrived. With it, the seventh year students of the past graduated and went out into the real world while a fresh new set of wide eyed first years arrived at their sorting ceremony. Each professor and prefect watched with pride as each was sorted into their own houses, yet it wasn’t long before a name was announced that turned the smiling face of a Hufflepuff prefect into one that was filled with pain “Caoimhe O’Dwyer!”

He remembered her… of course he did, she had been raised in the same house as him and was every bit better than him. Her magic came naturally where his own came slow, their father held a gentle hand to her while a closed fist to him. He stared at the brown skinned girl as she happily bounced up onto the stool, the hat beginning its toilings and he didn’t hear a word of it. The world sounded like a muffled muted mess to him, his entire body grew cold as if nothing around him was actually real.

It took some time before he snapped back to reality, a firm hand grasping at his shoulder and shaking him a bit. He didn’t hear what was asked at first, coming too and looking at the girl who was trying to get his attention “You okay wolfman?” His head shook and he leaned to whisper to her, asking her to handle bringing the new Hufflepuffs back to the dorm for him. There was a quiet pain in his eyes that she had seen a few times before, his voice seemed like it struggled to escape his throat. With a quiet nod she patted his shoulder as he snuck from the great hall.

Escaping the castle walls was easy, getting far enough away that he felt he had escaped the choking grasp that held firmly to him. Everything spun as he just forced himself to run, he didn’t know where he was going nor did he care at the moment. It could have been moments or hours that he was sprinting for before his body finally gave out. The adrenaline no longer fueled him as he clung to a tree, panting and finally taking in where he was, where he had driven himself too.

He was somewhere familiar at least… the forbidden forest. Much deeper into it than he would normally travel but at the moment he didn’t care. His mind fixated on the image of his younger sibling, her robes were perfect… fitted for her, she was given jewelry that obviously cost quite the pretty penny, everything she carried was brand new and all he could think of was the tatters he had been forced to wear for his now six years there. How they sent her with everything and him with nothing.

The cold within his blood seemed to spark, filling him with nothing but rage. Was he that awful of a child? Denied everything because he was a late bloomer as a professor had called it? It must have been more than that right? His rage was not directed outward, but inward, screaming at every fault that he could find in himself. His scars, his piss poor ability to use charms when he first started, there was nothing about himself that he didn’t loathe in that moment. His body tensed as he screamed every insult he could think of for himself. Failure. Stupid. Unwanted. Unworthy. Less than nothing. Filthy Mutt.

No one would hear them save himself but he didn’t care. They were true, he wanted to lash out at himself for everything he had done wrong to make his family treat him this way. His fists swung into a nearby tree, striking again and again even if it served no real purpose. Each strike taking a small bit of bark but equally scraping the skin from his knuckles. In time the insults stopped and he let out little more than a guttural scream, something that sounded like a dying beast more than an actual person. Punching at that tree until his hands were broken and bleeding, that scream not stopping as he threw his own body against it over and over.

As fast as his strength came, it faded. Faolán stopped with one final impact against the tree, sliding down it and just resting on the ground, shoulder against the tree as he finally broke down and sobbed. Letting out all of the anguish he had locked away for years, never having been confronted until now. Yet he had no more strength to endure it, his body drifting into unconsciousness and not waking for some time. No longer in the forest but once again within hogwarts. His fellow prefect, having been smart enough to notice something was truly wrong and gathering a small group to find him.

None of them asked why he was out there, what had happened to him, or even what had caused it. They knew better than to bring it up to him. Each of those he considered close to him came to visit, sitting silently while potions and medical magics did their work upon his healing wounds. Another set of scars to join the many self-inflicted ones, another two years that he’d have to endure seeing everything he could have been…