Post by BEN SHAN-YUN SILVERA on Feb 3, 2024 0:13:10 GMT
It had been a few days since Ben had returned to Hogwarts after being taken back home with Lana so they could gather their things. Around his sister he put on a brave face and tried to reassure her that everything was going to be alright and whenever any of the staff asked him how he was doing he insisted that he was fine but other than that he hadn’t really talked to anyone. He had never told any of the other students that his dad had died when he was young, he had talked about his mum and sister so he wouldn’t be surprised if they had suspected that something was up but none of them had ever asked and Ben had never felt like telling them. He liked having his friends around him but the truth was that when it came to sharing anything personal, that was something that he had never been very good at. He had tried talking to his mum a few times after his dad died and she had shot him down so he had learned to keep his mouth shut. It was better to avoid drama and not rock the boat. Deep down he knew that bottling up what he was feeling wasn’t healthy but it was all he had ever known and he really wasn’t sure how to go about changing that now. He hadn’t talked to anyone after his dad died and he wasn’t sure that he could talk about it now that his mum was gone as well. More than anything he was angry with himself, he had tried talking his mum into letting them return home for Christmas but he had still done as she had asked and stayed at Hogwarts when she had refused. He knew that if he had gone back home then he probably would have seen how bad it was and how worried his mum was and he could have done something. The memory of his dad dying in front of him was forever burned in his memory even though he was only seven years old at the time but with his mum he hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye and he couldn’t even remember if he’d told her that he loved her before he boarded the train to Hogwarts at the start of the year. Lana was all he had left now and Ben was terrified of something happening to her but she was back at Hogwarts with him which meant that she was safe and that was what Ben wanted more than anything. At the end of the school year they didn’t have any family they could go and stay with and Ben knew that he couldn’t ask any of his friends to take them in so they were going to end up at the group home and that was something that he really wasn’t looking forward to.
Even though Ben hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with his mum, there were times when he caught sight of people looking in his direction and whispering but whenever he looked at them they always turned away. Hogwarts had always been a place where nothing stayed secret for too long and he knew that he wouldn’t be surprised if word had spread around the school somehow but he wasn’t ready to face it. He’d dealt with bullies in the past but now that he towered over all of them the other students knew better than to mess with him so at least they weren’t bothering him for the time being and that was something that he was definitely grateful for. Sooner or later he knew he was going to have to find a way to deal with it but right now wasn’t that time. Right now he was upset and he was angry and he knew that the last place he wanted to be was in class. It was an important year, soon enough he was going to be facing his OWLs and he knew that he was going to have to get his act together to make sure that he got good grades when they came around but for the time being he knew that he just needed to be alone and he needed to let his aggression out somehow. There was a part of him that wanted someone to give him a hard time so he would have an excuse to hit something but at the same time he knew he didn’t want to go down that dark path. It was one thing for him to get hurt and he’d ended up letting loose on a punching bag in the Room of Requirement a few times, only stopping when his knuckles were sore and bleeding, but he wasn’t the kind of person who liked causing others pain and he never had been. A part of him wanted to hurt but his knuckles were still healing from when he’d slipped out early that morning to go for a training session and he knew that he needed to do something else. This time he found himself heading down to the training ground with his beater’s bat in hand. The box containing the quidditch balls was always kept nearby and he pulled out a few of the training dummies before releasing one of the bludgers, not even caring about the tears that were rolling down his face as he swung the bat as hard as he could, aiming blow after blow at the dummies.
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