The Prince of Denial

Chapter 13 - Year 1

Raven felt tired as he slouched in his practice room, he had just done a shit ton of physical training, he didn't want to be so weak that he passed out after just having a god possess his body only partially. It was just straight-up embarrassing!

So he trained and trained once he was released from the hospital wing. He didn't stop, he kept going till his body was unable to. When his body gave out on a physical workout, he pushed himself to gain knowledge.

He wouldn't be weak again! He couldn't be! It would just disgrace his mother, and he couldn't let that happen.

Raven blinked when the door was slammed open and Professor McGonagall came into the room and she looked quite unhappy with him. Correction, she looked furious and worried.

—

Raven had been dragged to the nurse who said he was fine, but needed to stop stressing himself so much, it wasn't good for him.

'She doesn't understand, she can't understand me!' Raven thought with anger as he was made to follow the cat Amimagus through the halls to her office. It was a Saturday, so they didn't have classes.

She had him sit opposite her, she didn't say a thing and just stared him down for a straight 15 minutes before Raven finally broke and started ranting, but not before throwing up sound barriers.

"I feel useless! I can't do a single damn thing to protect my friend, and I can't even use one damn spell without fainting! Im fucking pathetic and don't even deserve to have the same name as my family! I can't even beat a pathetic person half-dead who's resorting to drinking unicorn blood!" Raven started ranting as he continued going through every error he could find in himself, while also going on a hate rant on himself.

McGonagall slowly got up and Raven was surprised when she hugged him.

"You are none of that. I doubt your mother, or anyone in your family would belittle you for what happened. You had a god possess you, and you managed to stay awake through pure willpower, I doubt even Albus is capable of that. And don't ever let me hear you saying those things about yourself again! You hear me, lad!? You are just a child! You don't need to act like an adult, that's the whole purpose of growing up and having a childhood." McGonagall said calmly.

She was going to move back, but felt something wet land on her shoulder, and realized that Raven was crying. She held onto him tightly as he did the same.

Raven realized he could fully let his guard down for once and just be normal and let his emotions out. To be himself fully. To allow all the suppressed emotions to be free of the hold he had on them.

—

Raven hummed a tune to himself as he walked through the hallway of Hogwarts feeling much lighter, metaphorically of course.

He was using structural analysis on everything he walked by and found some of the stuff he went by interesting. Of course, he was currently dipping from history, but he never attended that class anyway.

He probably knew more history than the Professor did, which made him laugh silently.

He wandered into the great hall and when he used structural analysis on the whole room, he was overcome with shock when he noticed four spots that had runes that focused on a single spot in the middle of the room that opened what looked like a hidden passage.

So he focused his energy on those spots. However, he noticed they seemed to only take a certain type of energy to open the passage. He tried to find a way around it, and after a little while he figured it out.

He found some residue of energy from the last users who did it, he used a spell to mimic the feel of the magic energy and smiled when it worked and the spot opened to reveal a giant staircase down somewhere.