A Second Life

18. I Pity The Sorting Hat

Silena walked in, effortlessly beautiful. Her brightly coloured hair elicited many gasps, but she was still too beautiful for people to even consider making a comment on its eccentric look. The others had decided to peek their heads in and slowly inch inside, their footsteps feather-light. Silena's cheeks had a rosiness to them, but she remained poised. She wouldn't let them see through her mask. They wouldn't think she was weak. They wouldn't see through her mask. She wasn't nervous, she wasn't nervous, she wasn't-

'Calm down, Aphrodite! This is not what a goddess acts like. Be perfect, because that's what the world needs. Smile, be confident. You can do this. It's just a school.' She mentally chided herself. She could do this.

As she reached the front of the Great Hall, and turned around to face the students and teachers, the room erupted into whispers. Her atypical hair colour, her perfect smile, her pretty face, her straight back, her flawless skin, her hourglass figure. Everything about her screamed royalty and perfection. Perfection. For the world, she had to be perfect to receive love. For anyone to care about her, she had to be rich and pretty. Her heart broke every time someone complimented her, because, yes, she was pretty, but was it a crime to not be perfect? To not care about every single strand of hair? To not worry about her smile being slightly asymmetrical? To not be the living manifestation of beauty? To not be a paragon of perfection? She was the Goddess of beauty, and that didn't mean she wanted to make everyone beautiful, on the contrary, it meant that she saw beauty in what others thought were ugly. She could find beauty where only darkness lay.

But, for the world, she had to be perfect. So she smiled, and listened to Dumbledore introducing the "5 exchange students from Ilvermorny."

5? There's me, Nico, Apollo, Percy, who's the fifth? He probably misspoke. C'mon now, you can do this Aphro- Silena. You can do this.

She walked towards the stool, her footsteps resounding throughout the now-silent room. She placed herself on the stool, waiting for what she had been told. As promised, a voice jumped into her head, old, slightly grumpy, but dangerously knowing. She wasn't prepared for the voice, the presence, in her head to look through her memories.
(Italics is the hat, underlined italics is Silena)

Let's see what we have here. Ooh, you're an interesting one, aren't you.

Stop.

Being a Goddess, Silena easily pushed the Sorting Hats presence out of her mind, she wasn't prepared for this. She couldn't look back at those memories again. Not again. She wasn't sure if she could survive the trauma to that level.

Don't worry. Shut your eyes and breathe. Relax your mind. I won't cause any flashbacks, I'll just quickly skim through your mind.

But the words didn't reassure her enough. Her breath caught in her throat as she mentally revisited everything she had been through, not by the hat, but fuelled by her own fear. Some memories made her smile, like when she and Ares went to Hawaii and he tried to maim the hotelier for hitting on Aphrodite. Times where the two were just best friends, not alleged lovers. She saw a memory when all the Gods and Goddesses were young. They had all gone out for a night, and Hades chose to do a late night hike and made a campfire. They were all happy, and she remembered the way Hephaestus had looked when he tried his first marshmallow. Her eyes started to water, the memories hitting her with full force. Times where she could be happy without consequence. But everything else that happened after that filled her with dread. Dark memories of dark voices in dark places rang out darkly in her mind. Times where bad things had happened to her, times when she had abused her powers- pushed it to the limits, and almost lost them. Times where she got hurt, and hurt others in return. Times where her fear was so strong she had no control over her actions. Times where she had begged, she had cried, she had screamed and no one helped.