Summary: One-shot drabble. After being Sorted, Albus Severus Potter stops for moment, atop the stool before the Four Houses. And he looks. And he thinks to himself, 'I need to be strong.'
—
There's a certain current in the air, he thinks, that he can't quite put his finger on the origin of, but knows instinctively isn't good.
It was there whenever his father opened the newspapers. It was there when his aunts and uncles and grandparents visited. It was there during the few and far occasions when his father would allow he and his siblings to contact wizarding Britain at large. It was there on Platform 9¾ as he was sent off and the adults would exchange looks and nods, smells intermingling and presences pushing against each other like too many balls on a billiard table. It was there whenever he talked with his siblings and cousins.
It was there whenever James cackled that he would be placed in Slytherin.
And here it was, drowning the Great Hall like a sea of blood. Disgusting, stifling, overpowering with its stench, filling his head with pulsating images of his older brother's laughing face and disappointed caricatures of his family's faces like poison. As obvious as the stark unpopularity of the table in green and silver and generous bulk of the one in red and gold.
He didn't want it.
Even after years and years of looking forward to his time in Hogwarts, he realised that this wasn't what he wanted. He didn't want to herded under a single label. He didn't want to be looked at and judged. He didn't want to be Harry Potter's son. He didn't want his name. He wanted to be himself, the boy who'd never been forced to live by labels or symbols or the imprisoning shell of the one he saw in the mirror. The boy who had never had to think of these kinds of things. He didn't want his parents. He didn't want his brother or sister.
They had all been tainted by the blood in the air, the current of roiling, stale, terrifying shadows. And no matter how much he tried to clean himself, scratching at his skin until he bled all over, he knew that it would never come off.
His shoulders hitched as the voice from the Hat screamed his—fate, label, shackles, marked to be lowered into the pit of whirling screams—comeintousAlbusSeverusPotter—
Taking off the Hat with numb hands, for a moment, he stops, perched over the stool looking over the Four Houses evenly—cleanly, and he realises that this is the point of no return. This would be the last sight devoid of the frames that he would be forced through.
And so, he looks.
And he thinks, swallowing the bile that threatens to rise up his throat and reluctantly, glumly plodding off to his future, for better or for worse—he thinks—
I need to be strong.