First Aid (angst): Mandatory: Write a fic using the following prompts: 1. tremble 2. in the shadows 3. fragile. Optional Prompts: "He battered his tiny fists to feel something."-Meg and Dia, "Monster"

A/N:

Disclaimer: still don't own HP.

References my other fic The Incident That Changed Generations, but that doesn't have to be read for you to understand this fic.

Rated for implied violence and there's one bad word that's not a swear.

No one could have ever called him ordinary. Not even before The Incident. Not even before Hogwarts (and hidden Princes and Slytherin politics and fragile Blacks).

Because not only was Xenophilus some sort of Half-Breed (his, relatively unknown, father's son) but he couldn't be physically hurt. He wasn't sure if the two were related.

He could remember a time when he was five. He'd been climbing the stairs up to his mother's wing in Malfoy Manor. The sudden crack of a house elf's appearance had cut the air, and he remembered tipping back. A momentary feeling of weightlessness. A strange flipping sensation in his stomach.

Then he fell.

Later, Uncle Abraxas (his mum's benefactor first cousin) said accidental magic had saved his sorry Half-Breed life. But it had only made the bruises disappear. He couldn't remember feeling pain. The lasting burn of terror perhaps, but not pain.

And so it went all through his formative years.

It got to the point where he would have battered his tiny fits against the cold, bare walls just to feel something. But Lucius battered him enough for the both of them (for no good reason except that he could - pompous tosser).

Minor scrapes and cuts that appeared after being shoved into walls and cupboards by Lucius didn't physically hurt (to his second cousin's astonishment, then later amusement).

But magical curses - those were a whole world of different. It made him tremble just thinking about the new sensation of (hot, cold, fire, ice; can't breathe) pain.

He took to ghosting around the halls of Hogwarts in the shadows, just to avoid it, avoid them (he couldn't fight back, not by himself). But it caught up with him in the end. They caught up with him. It got him sent to St Mungos, broken in more ways than one.

It was a terrible price to pay for freedom. But it was the price nonetheless.