Freaks: Year Two

I Could Never Hate You

Referenced abuse and discussions of the foster care system.

Jasper on the other hand could not sleep.

He just kept thinking about Alice Bell.

A girl his age was murdered by Voldemort.

He could not fully understand what was happening. He tried to think about the information he had been given in the Great Hall, hoping that replaying it in his mind would help him actually grasp it. There was a war. Voldemort and his followers could not be stopped by the aurors. If Professor Dumbledore believed there was a war, then there was a war.

Jasper could not believe it – that a war was looming sometime in the future – oh who was he kidding, the present. It was in the Headmaster's speech.

It made him scared. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe, but a fellow student died. Granted she wasn't in school at the time of the murder, but her death was a slap in the face – it made everything real.

It made everyone at Hogwarts aware that there was a war.

And it made everyone aware of the lengths the Dark Lord would go to to achieve what he wanted.

It made Jasper feel sick. Alice Bell. Dead. She had been murdered at her parents' funeral. He had this sickening realisation that it must have been targeted. The deatheaters had killed her parents, had gotten word of the funeral and instead of leaving the family to mourn in peace, they took it as a vile opportunity to attack. They knew the children would be there. They knew Derek and Alice Bell would be there.

Voldemort and his deatheaters turned something that was supposed to be a peaceful mourning session and made it into another tragedy. It was evil, there was no other word for it.

How many people had been killed? He felt a chill go through him as he created violent images in his mind – spells being shot out, blood, screams, people falling to the ground, Derek witnessing the death of his little sister; the life leaving her eyes in a matter of seconds – he felt ill.

He could not imagine the pain Derek Bell was going through right now. Losing his parents and little sister in a matter of days, now all alone...

Jasper sat up in his bed, unknowingly pinching at the back of his hands trying to erase what he was seeing even with his eyes open. Why had he thought that? But it was true. He knew it was true. Alice Bell was dead. She was murdered. And now Derek Bell was all alone.

He took a shaky breath. There was no way he'd be able to sleep tonight.

I know that you are but children yourselves, but you are the generation that shall rise up from the current one's ashes – you are the ones who will defeat Voldemort.

Headmaster Dumbledore wanted them to fight, but how were they supposed to do that? As he had said, they were children.

Was he though?

Jasper's whole life revolved around being an adult – a parent to his younger brothers. He had never really got a chance to be a child. He had been too busy taking care of his siblings and even his own mother. His mum would go through these stages of getting better only to get worse and it left Jasper to care for everyone. Not just care for them, but to protect them.

Perhaps that was why he liked Hogwarts so much, he finally got the chance to be a normal kid. One that didn't have to be the primary caregiver, one that didn't have to take the blame so their father wouldn't hurt the others...