Thy noble self doth not own. Thou shall not sue-eth.
He sat in his cabin. Alone. Always alone. He couldn't face people. People who laughed at his baggy clothes, people who looked at him in fake sympathy, people whose eyes swept over him as if he wasn't there. Of course, he was used to it.
His grandmother, for one. She couldn't even look at him without flinching. Not just her; all his so called 'family'. He laughed humourlessly at the thought, the word, the invisible, the unreachable, the impossible. Family. He had relatives of course, plenty of them. But none loved him. He could see it in their eyes.
They saw his mother and father in his face; it scared them. His sturdy, brave father; his laughing, sweet mother. Both always happy, always smiling. At least in the photo's they were always smiling. In his memories, there was green light, cruel and cold laughter, screaming, tears, fearful faces……But they were just memories. Mere memories. He had been having nightmares about that night for as long as he could remember. Those nightmares plagued him, and he never figured how to stop them. His grandmother knew about them, yes. But she never tried to comfort him about them.
That was when, at age four, he was sent to the wizard orphanage. His grandmother visited often, and occasionally took him to see the rest of his relatives. But that had stopped this year. He had Hogwarts now. He had looked forward to it when he was younger, but now it seemed so fake.
Teenage girls pretending to be happy to see each other when they really wanted to pull each other's hair out. Quidditch Captains acting as if thy welcomed healthy competition, while their handshakes consisted of each trying to break the other's fingers. Prefects trying to look sweet and kind to the first years, then after they dealt with them they laughed at them with their friends.
Now, he dreaded arriving at the castle. Horrible Hogwarts. It seemed fitting. He could hear voices all around him, just outside his compartment. A song. The school song. Uuuugh. He didn't want Hogwarts- he would rather stay at the orphanage. No matter how bad the orphanage had been, Hogwarts seemed worse- so bleak, so desolate.
He heard people walk past his compartment, and he looked out the window, desperate for a distraction. He saw a boy with his mother and father; a boy who seemed to be a first year. His mother had dark, cherry red hair, and brilliant green eyes that seemed like a pool of jade, undisturbed; no pebbles skimming her depths, no pain, no tremors. He let his eyes wander the platform, taking in the sights that would be familiar to him eventually, still painful, but recognisable.
He sat, alone, deep in his own dark secrets. He sat, alone, wishing he was any place but there. He sat, alone, wondering what life would be like if he had his parents. He sat, alone, dreading what Hogwarts would bring. He sat, alone, as Neville Longbottom, the Boy Who Lived.
