000. FIRST YEAR, 1987

       
IT HAPPENED SO QUICKLY nobody knew what to think. Not until the blood started running, staining where Frank Geller's skull had slammed against the marble statue, trickling down the nape of his neck in thick rivulets, slicking the ground where he lay, concussed and disoriented, in a crumpled heap at the foot of the gargoyle on its stone pedastal. Not until Frank let out an agonised groan, glossing a hand over the back of his head, fingers coming away slicked with crimson. Not until he started screaming that he couldn't see, that everything was redredred and he couldn't see and it hurts it hurts it hurts.

Then the fingers started pointing. Purgatory triggered. Someone always had to take the fall. One might imagine a squabble of tongues erupting between two sides on warring perspectives. All rapid-fire venom, volcanic debate: he started it, she started it. His fault, her fault. If he hadn't said this, maybe she wouldn't have shoved him. If she hadn't shoved him, maybe he wouldn't be half-dead in the middle of the corridor.

But that wasn't what had happened.

There were two sides to this story, but it was one against too many. One, being Sawyer barely holding her own, and too many, being everybody else standing in the corridor at the time of her offence. Students, professors, prefects, ghosts, everybody.

And not one of them had taken her side.

Nobody would've believed her then, even if she told the truth. That she hadn't meant to push him that hard. That he'd said something she didn't like. Everybody knows you don't return a snide comment with a broken skull and a throbbing concussion.

Looking back now, it still feels so surreal, like a fever dream she'd wake up from in a cold sweat and forget about later in the day. Now, even if someone asked, she couldn't tell them the catalyst, the trigger on her temper. All she could remember was the moment it all went south: something snapping inside, the static roar of her blood, the black tinging her vision, the cacoethes. A maniacal need to hit back. There were times she couldn't fathom whether the events that'd transpired were real or not. Some sickened part of her didn't want to try differentiating the two.

When the Sorting Ceremony had concluded, all the first years were escorted out by House prefects, herded out of the hall like dumb sheep pouring into the hallways. To the Common Rooms, someone had said, every House had their own personalised set of dorms in different areas of the castle. Hufflepuff's was located near the kitchen, so that was where Sawyer and the rest of the first years she'd been grouped with were heading.

Everyone else was already scurrying off to attend to other business, leaving the mystifying magic of Hogwarts to introduce itself to those who hadn't yet been acquainted. For a brief moment, Sawyer wondered if that meant the novelty of magic might've worn off. But the more rational side reasoned that the older students must've seen it all already, and were probably more occupied with other things than a bunch of first years who hadn't yet received any assignments. Some of the more naive and dazed first years squalled and gasped in wonder at the animated paintings, the torches lining the walls that seemed to flare to life as they trickled past, a river of wide-eyed freshmen, and the many stone and marble statues that may or may not be moving in periphery.

Hogwarts wasn't anything like she'd expected. From her mother's recounts of her old schooling days, of enchanted ceilings that looked like gateways to the stars, the poltergeist haunting the hallways, the maze of staircases, the archaic walls that might've seen the rise and fall of Rome, Sawyer had fabricated a mental image of the school. Of impossible miracles and a secret history written into the solemn brickwork. The real thing, however, had surpassed all preconceived notions.

With her blatant curiosity, one might've mistaken her for a witch born to muggle parents. That wasn't the case, though. On one hand, Sawyer and her brother had grown up amidst the muggles in humdrum Bristol, where their muggle father lived. On the other, their mother had attended and graduated Hogwarts to coach Little League Quidditch as Gryffindor alumni.

But even if the patchwork community of their grey neighbourhood had been stitched with muggles and the mundane, that wasn't to say she didn't have her supernatural slip-ups.

Like the time she got so mad at Wyatt, her twin, that she'd somehow set his shirt on fire without even touching him. She couldn't even remember what she'd been angry with him for. Angry enough to give him second degree burns.

There was also that one incident where she'd accidentally thrown Sally McCloud across a classroom like a rag doll back in preschool. The latter had said something snide, something Sawyer couldn't recall the details of. Possibly something condescending. And Sawyer absolutely loathed being talked down to.

All she remembered in that moment was a blinding, white-hot anger swallowing her insides. Something powerful snapped in her core, and suddenly, Sally McCloud's chair had been yanked from underneath her and the girl was violently flung against a metal cabinet, which toppled over from the impact. Afterwards, Sawyer had been called to the principal's office, where her mother had sat beside her, smiling with perfect diplomacy, but the enraged tremble in her hands, balled into blanch-knuckled fists under the desk, indicated the hurricane wrath Sawyer would face once they were alone. She'd been asked to leave the school and never come back. (In Sawyer's opinion, it hadn't been much of a loss. Children were disgusting.) Of course, her mother had been furious, even though Sawyer had explained she'd merely intended to kick Sally in the shin. A harmless warning turned loose canon. It wasn't entirely her fault, honestly. If Sally had kept her moronic mouth shut, none of this would've happened.

Just the same, if Frank Geller had held his idiot tongue, he wouldn't be bleeding out on the floor with an impending concussion.

That was just Sawyer's stance on the dire situation, though.

           Perhaps it was with that refractory mentality that'd landed her in the Headmaster's office, two hours later. That refractory mentality that had her standing trial before the council of Headmaster Dumbledore, and all four Heads of Houses. That refractory mentality that'd pushed her within firing range of her mother's spitting wrath after flinging Sally McCloud across the classroom and the time she set her brother on fire and was now serving penance for cracking open Frank Geller's skull. The fault lay on her shoulders, storm clouded over her head like a weight on a fraying rope. When asked why she'd done it, why she'd attacked another student, she'd almost screamed, he deserved it. Although, she knew it was a pyrrhic victory, locked her jaw and swallowed her argument that might've been more inclined towards the truth than any other version a spectating student might've stitched together.

         Why did you do it, Sawyer? Professor Sprout had asked, a touch of gentle sympathy to her softened gaze, a small mercy not granted by Professor Snape's disdainful sneer and Professor McGonagall, whose features were contorted in what Sawyer interpreted as unforgiving scrutiny. Professor Flitwick was more middle ground, albeit, he was too much of a dwarfed, seemingly inconsequential figure for Sawyer to take seriously.

           So she told them, He shoved me first, I reacted, because it's all they could ever comprehend.

          Here's the thing: none of them would never understand what it's like.

          To have that infinite rage sitting deep down at your core, simmering and festering, boiling and bubbling like magma in a volcano in preparation for a devastating eruption, restless and pacing angry grooves into the ground like a caged animal waiting to be unleashed. It's an uncomfortable feeling; uncontrollable and untamed. Like a ball of fire in the middle of your chest that blurts its way straight out of your mouth and burns the people around you. Anger is expressed in different ways by different people and manifested differently in varying degrees of circumstantial triggers. That's what the psychologists always say, anyway.

          Any normal person would swallow their anger, forgive and forget, maybe hold a grudge that might sit inside them like a benign tumour. They'd duke it out with the source. But for someone like Sawyer, who swallowed and swallowed her rage because there was no other way out than a volcanic lashing, that anger clung to her insides, sticky as tar, refusing to dissolve, sharpening themselves into knives at her core. And when the next trigger came along, that anger would erupt, and the knives would be sent hurtling into flesh. Sometimes that flesh belonged to herself, but most times it belonged to someone else. Someone else would have to endure the blunted force of her anger, like the butt-end of a rifle to the jaw.

         And afterward it's the silent scream that follows you the entire way, numb and poisoned with shame, echoing like gunshots in your footsteps as your feet pound the cobblestones, ricocheting against the walls standing in silent judgement, the archways frowning upon your mortal failings, chasing you into the garden where the wind whispering through the trees carries the news of your violent deed to the bugs and the leaves, where the trimmed hedge engulfs your cowering figure in a mother's embrace: what have you done?

         It was there that they'd found her, cowering under the hedge. Or someone had. The only person who could've convinced her to do anything under the sun. She'd seen herself to the office of her own accord, ready to face the music, bracing herself for her mother's reproach, possibly a comparison to her brother. (Wyatt, Sawyer thinks, perfect Wyatt with the perfect grades and perfect pleasant manners. Sometimes she dreads her mother's rage not because it's a beating or a lecture about her inability to react maturely, but because her mother's rage is always, always: why couldn't you be more like your brother why do you have to be so violent we did not raise you to be like this why do you hurt people all the time why is it that you can't show some restraint, and all Sawyer can think about in the aftermath is how sick she is of hearing about her emotional failings while perfect little Wyatt knows how to keep his temper in check which is why everyone likes him more and wishing she could combust on the spot because why else would her mother need her if she already had perfect little Wyatt and his perfect pleasant manners.)

           Perhaps she might explode this time round. The morbid part was that she could see it, could picture her own body swelling like a hot air balloon with every steaming mention of her brother, perfect Wyatt and perfect pleasant manners and sweet temper, could see her skin bloating, convulsing as her skin stretched taut, running out of space, a high-pitched whining, then bursting into a million pieces of ripped flesh confetti, blood everywhere, guts splattering against the walls, splintered bone powdering the tiles, grey matter splashing over Alabaster skin like a haphazard colouring book.

         Not even her mother could see from her angle, and the only other person who came close was Wyatt, but Sawyer didn't want to talk about her brother, much less to him, so why should a bunch of people who'd only ever had this first run-in with be able to see any different from the rest?

             That is not how you deal with disagreements, Miss Lee, Professor McGonagall had said, cool eyes regarding Sawyer with icy disapproval, and if it had been anything else the Head of Gryffindor might have said, Sawyer might have been surprised, but this was far from original and whatever they must have had to say now couldn't have deviated much from what Sawyer had been told in the past.

    "I would like a word in private with Sawyer, please, Professors," Dumbledore had said, with a voice as low as thunder and Sawyer might have bought into the solemnity had it not been for the glimmer in his eye from behind those half-moon spectacles that every old person seemed to possess that she still couldn't decipher. When all the adults had vacated the room save for the Headmaster, Sawyer slumped lower in her chair, whatever dignified bravado had inhibited her before now vanished into thin air, like the air in her withered lungs. Day one, and she was already facing possible expulsion. Day one, and she'd already made mess of everything. Sawyer wondered if her mother would sit in silent rage this time, building up the impenetrable wall of cold anger, or launch into the same song about how Wyatt wouldn't have handled the situation this poorly.

    "I didn't start it," Sawyer said, composing her features into a mask of cool indifference.

    "Perhaps not," Dumbledore said, appraising Sawyer with a hard look, "why don't you tell me what happened? I'd like to hear the story from your perspective."

          That sent a lightning bolt of shock down to her core. For a brief moment, the grip on her anger loosened and the weight had lifted off her shoulders. Nobody had bothered to ask about her side of the story before. They always maintained the image of her as a villain, immortalised in the hurt she'd inflicted, the aggression pumping through her veins like gasoline. There was an inferno inside her, flames licking at the walls of her charred guts, immolating the light so the ugliness outweighed the good.

         Sometimes, Sawyer imagined herself lying on an operating table with surgeons flurrying around her like chickens, a blur of hands and blood and the occasional flash of malicious blades in the light, conducting a prefrontal lobotomy on her corpse. She wondered what the insides of her head would look like. Rotten, probably; some doctor would saw off the crown of her skull, take a quick, curious peek inside and instantly recoil from the blackened grey matter of her decaying brain, something morbidly separate from the preconceived expectation. Blood-slicked fingers would reach in and unspool the knotted mesh of circular thought saturated in black-tar ectoplasm and lay it on the table for all to see. A mess of a life, a waste of space and a humanoid travesty with a conscience soaking in the perennial war between coldblooded apathy and overwhelming guilt.

(How does one define an ugly soul?)

          Folding her hands atop the table, Sawyer shot a furtive glance at Dumbledore before licking her chapped lips nervously and straightening her spine. "He shoved me first," she said, slowly, gauging Dumbledore's reaction, "and I... I didn't know what I did to deserve that, so I asked him why, and he—" it was then that realisation dawned upon her that she didn't even know his name, that he didn't even know hers— "he said that I was walking too slow, but I couldn't walk any faster because I was already stepping on the back of someone's shoes."

    "Did you tell him that?"

    "No..."

    "Why not?"

           Sawyer frowned. "I don't really know what happened, but he was just so condescending, looking at me like I was stupid, like I was beneath him... and I'm not. I'm not. A-And then he called me slow, and I just got so, so angry that I didn't even think before..."

     "You pushed back," Dumbledore said, finishing for her. "Were you angry because Frank called you slow?"

           The words dried up on her tongue. Sawyer pursed her lips. A dull ache throbbed at the base of her tailbone. Her spine had been pulled too taut, too rigid, but she didn't unwind herself from her uncomfortable sitting position.

   "I don't know," Sawyer admitted. "Maybe. Maybe it was part of it. Maybe I also didn't like the way he thought I was stupid—"

     "Did he call you that?"

    "What?"

     "Stupid," Dumbledore mused. A funny expression crossed his features. "Such an inelegant term."

           Sawyer didn't smile. "No, sir, he didn't call me that. But I know he was thinking it. I think."

           Regarding her with measurable scrutiny, Dumbledore hummed pensively. She tried not to squirm under his heated stare, tried not to flinch at the way his sparkling eyes seemed to bore a hole through her skull. The intensity of this cross-examination made her feel like a bug under a bell jar, to be studied and dissected by a scientist gathering qualitative observations. Ignoring the discomfort, Sawyer tapped her foot against the floor, skin crawling in irritation. Silence stretched between them, an electrostatic sting prickling her innards with unease. Was he going to expel her or was he going to drag this out for longer than necessary?

     "Did you come to my office willingly, Miss Lee?" Dumbledore asked, shattering the silence.

           Sawyer nodded stiffly. "Yes." Half a truth. It'd taken her two hours to get to the office. Right after she'd shoved Frank and the accusations started flying and the whispers started burning down the hallways, a Professor had squeezed her way to the front of the crowd surrounding Frank and Sawyer, fury thundering across her purple face, demanding Sawyer make the trip to the Headmaster's office immediately. In that flash of a moment, the realisation of what she had done had finally sank in and the Professor was saying something she couldn't hear over the estranged whining in her ears and she'd panicked and fled, body-checking the Professor on the way. Which, much to her dismay, only added to her distress. She'd spent the next hour and a half hiding in the courtyard under a hedge.

It was while Sawyer had been busy drowning in self-pity that he'd found her.

          "I can see your shoes. They're quite nice shoes, I like them. Where'd you get them from?"

          Panic bolted up Sawyer's spine. Someone had found her and she had nowhere else to run since the hedge was backed against a brick wall. Even if she could run, though, they'd managed to find her already. There might have been teachers surrounding the area, ready to catch her if she bolted. She glanced down. Sure enough, her dirty yellow sneakers were visibly peeking out from under the hedge. Cursing her own carelessness, Sawyer scowled at her shoes. That was when she'd caught sight of another pair of shoes, the tips of which stood just an inch shy of hers, no doubt belonging to the person speaking to her.

          "They've stopped looking for you." It was a boy's voice. Young. Hopeful. Perhaps a first year like herself. "You'll probably get a howler from your mum tomorrow, but everything else is fine."

          "How'd you know?" Sawyer snapped, glaring through hot tears. She didn't know if she was more angry at herself or at the world. "How are you so sure they won't just expel me now? And I'm not falling for your stupid trick. When I come out, you'll call for someone and I'll get into more trouble. Go away."

               There was a thoughtful silence, but the resentment in her acidic tone wasn't lost on the boy.

               "Tell you what," came the sunny reply. "Why don't you come out now, and if I do scream for someone, you get to...to punch me in the face. Twice. Deal?"

               Skeptical, Sawyer contemplated the boy's proposition.

              "Okay," she said, ludicrously.

               A beat passed. Then, slowly, tentatively, Sawyer crawled out of her hiding space. With a watchful stare, she eyed the boy—a Slytherin, jade green tie, fair hair and sparkling eyes—distrustfully as she straightened up and blatantly ignored his outstretched hand. He grinned at her, boyish and toothy, eyes shining. He was the same height as she was, if not just a little bit shorter. She brushed the dirt off her robes and crossed her arms over her chest in palpable indignation.

               "Anyway," he continued, "I told the professors that Frank was the one who provoked you. And because of your horrible, horrible anger management issues that make you sort of explosive so it wasn't an unnatural reaction. It was a lie, in that moment, of course, but I think it's sort of true, isn't it? My dad's got anger issues too, so I'd know. Plus, your brother backed me up, so that made it even more credible. Mind you, that Professor Mcgonagall wasn't very happy about it but at least it worked."

               "And they were persuaded? Just like that?" Sawyer arched a brow, more surprised that Wyatt had defended her actions rather than sold her out. She hadn't even seen him amongst the crowd, but she never would have counted on him to be supportive in situations like these.

               "I mean, I told them that I was your childhood friend, and I was supposed to be the one looking out for you here while your parents weren't with you to keep your anger under control. I wasn't there, so I couldn't stop you from hurting Frank. So it was all technically my fault, but also theirs because the Slytherin common room's too bloody far away from the Hufflepuff's. You still have to see the Headmaster, but I don't think they're going to expel you."

                 He finished with a satisfied smirk, a flourish of hands for theatric effect and Sawyer was neither crying nor was she drowning in self-pity anymore. She snorted, swiping her tears away with the back of her hand.

               "Why're you doing this for me?" Sawyer had asked, frowning. "You don't even know me and you've just saved my entire school career."

               They were slowly walking back towards the school now, and the boy threw a friendly arm around Sawyer's shoulders.

               "I want to be your friend."

               Arching a brow, Sawyer slanted him a cool look. From her mother's accounts, she'd heard too many questionable things about those Slytherin types, all tinged with disdain, all painting them as villains of the story. In those stories, cunning was synonymous with evil, but Sawyer had her doubts, even if she didn't voice them to her mother. Plus, this boy seemed harmless. What could a scrawny eleven year old boy do to her that she couldn't already do to herself? Although, the accompanying pinch of salt was this: all stereotypes came from somewhere and one couldn't be too careful when dealing with a snake.

               "You're a Slytherin," Sawyer said, jabbing an accusatory finger at him. "That can't be the only thing you want."

               He'd flinched violently like her words were acid to skin, arm jerking away from her shoulders as her skin went cold with guilt. Hurt pooled in his eyes and, in the moment, Sawyer desperately wanted to take it all back. Perhaps she was engineered for destruction after all. Everything fell apart under her toxic touch. Shame burning her face, she muttered a quick apology.

               "S' okay," he said, offering her a nonchalant shrug. It didn't make Sawyer feel any better.

               "I didn't mean it like that," Sawyer murmured, staring down at her feet. Stupid, stupid, stupid, why did you say that? They're right about you. All of them. You ruin everything. The only thing you know how to do is hurt people. How selfish can you get?

               He laughed it off and pushed her shoulder lightly. There was no malice behind the action, and Sawyer found herself tentatively smiling back. She didn't even know his name, but she was starting to like him. "If you really must know," he'd told her, "my friend, Rio, dared me to ask you out after we heard about what happened to Frank. I needed a sure way to get you to say yes, and saving you from being expelled was the only thing I could think of to get you to owe me a favour—if you catch my drift. He never said it was supposed to be a genuine date, and I'm just sort of playing with the loophole."

               "Oh." Sawyer's mouth drew into an O shape. So that was where the Slytherin apophthegm cunning to outwit their foes fit in.

               "So?"

               "Fine, I don't care," she said, giving a one-shouldered shrug. They came to a stop in front of an animated portrait of a knight attempting to stay in his saddle on a bucking stallion while gazing curiously down at the two first years.

               Rounding in on her with an exultant smirk, he stuck his hand out in a handshake. "Nice doing business with you, partner."

               Pulling a face, Sawyer took his hand and shook. "It's Sawyer. Sawyer Lee."

              "Knox. Jeremy Knox."

               (She supposed some things—like saving another from expulsion and helping another on a dare—just can't help but procreate the best of friendships.)

             So the other half of the lie was that Jeremy had coerced her into showing her face at the Headmaster's office. Though, technically, it had been of her own accord, still. So she stuck to her half-truth because it was better than painting an even worse impression of herself than the rotten one she'd already postulated. "Yes," she had told the Headmaster, because she had voluntarily come out of hiding and made the journey to the office of her own volition. Jeremy's role, she kept to herself. She had come clean about many things this evening, but this one thing she could leave out.

    "Fair enough," Dumbledore said, simply, and Sawyer thought this might be the end of their conversation, but she had no such luck. The Headmaster's pleased expression turned solemn then. "You understand that your actions must bear the appropriate consequences, don't you? Good. Your mother will be informed of your behaviour, and you will not be expelled for hurting another student, Miss Lee. Because from what I have gathered during our little chat, I understand that you have a problem with regulating your emotions. Untreated, your emotional fragility could manifest into something far more serious, and we can't have that for a potentially brilliant witch, can we?"

          A frown tugged at the corners of her lips.

    "Therefore, I would like to propose a deal," Dumbledore declared, leaning forward, arms braced against his desk. "In exchange for keeping your position at this school, you will attend weekly counselling sessions with me to work on your problem. I will be assigning you personal tasks on top of your homework, but it shouldn't take too much time out of your day. Your first task is this: by the end of the term, I want you to find yourself an extra-curricular activity that could work as an emotional outlet, something you can use to express yourself. It can be anything you want, I will only track the progress you make."

          Relief punctured the suffocating pressure in her chest.

    "I only ask that you try. Commit to that outlet." There was a glimmer in the Headmaster's eyes as he flashed her an encouraging grin. "Can you do that for me?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

sawyer: *shoves another student*
dumbledore: you are on thin fucking ice buddy