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Trigger Warning
This thread will outline themes of severe child abuse, grooming, drug and alcohol abuse, neglect and sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.

Wednesday, January 8, 1922
7:00 PM
A Private Room at the Old Headmaster
vibes

"Do you know why you're here, Benji?"

The boy didn't answer, his eyes cast out the side window, watching as the evening crowd of Hogsmeade congregated below. Coming and going. Shopping, eating, enjoying the company of their friends and family.

Beneath the room he was sat in, the sounds of the pub filtered through the vents. Cheers, shouts, clinkings of glass and silverware. Somewhere down there, his mother waited, likely hoping for a breakthrough on the very first day.

Benji knew better. It was a long road for him. One he wasn't keen to get started on.

The counselor was an older man, somewhere in his fifties, Benji assumed. A bit stout, but impeccably dressed and propriety that went far with his family. The 'best of the best' his mother had said. A man that had written books on child development, teen mental health and something about shell-shock in war veterans. None of which interested the boy who'd rather be anywhere but in this room.

An old clock, ornate and intricately carved in patterns and nature imagery ticked, filling the silence that hung over the two occupants, counting each tense section that passed.

Hazel eyes went fuzzy as his focus splintered, the world outside the window thinning into smears of movement and light. Benji’s jaw flexed, stiffening at his fierce desire to leave and knowing he was beholden to stay. His hands rested on his knees, fingers loose, but the tendons in his wrists stood out pale and tight beneath the skin. He could feel the pulse there, thundering and visible as the veins throbbed blue.

He'd promised hadn't he? That he'd try? That he'd do it for Julia? For Kathryn? For Rae.

He supposed he was meant to do it for himself, but how could he, when he didn't want it?

"Benji."

From the corner of his eye he saw the counselor - Roscoe Weir, he'd introduced himself as - shift slightly in his chair. The boy's name sounded foreign between them, uttered from the lips of a stranger who couldn't possibly understand what his life had been and why he was the way he was.

The teenager's gaze dropped from the window at last, landing not on the man across from him but on the carpet between them. A woven pattern of roses and thorns curling into themselves, over and over, looping with no discernible beginning or end. He traced one of the shapes with his eyes and imagined stepping into it. Getting lost in it. Folding inwards until there was nothing left to excavate.

It was how it was, wasn't it? Figuratively. The fifteen year old wasn't even sure of who he was or was meant to be anymore. Who he would have been had he been born to different people. Raised in a different area. Not subjected to the mechanisms of a psychopathic man touting his 'best interest'. Not scooped up by a family that felt more like an institution at times, layering their expectations on a boy who was woefully ill-equipped.

Finally, the boy looked up, steadying his gaze on the man that was meant to help. Did he know why he was here?

"Because I'm broken."

---

May 19th, 1908
Mid-Morning
The Cuddrun Home
Hackney Borough, London, England

The front door had been left open again.

Tiny, dirty hands clung to the doorframe, as round hazel eyes blinked curiously at the outside world. The front garden, enormous with unexplored edges, beckoned the toddler out, tempting him with curiosities and adventure. A bright smile crossed cherubic lips, pudgy cheeks raising up to the eyes that soaked in all of the wonder.

A happy squeal burst forth from the two-year-old boy, short little legs carrying his tubby body across the threshold and out into the great beyond. With no fence or gate to restrain him, the toddler's tiny feet pattered across the walkway, until they reached the curb of the road.

A mop of soft sandy-blonde hair swayed and curled in the late morning breeze, and just there, beyond the cobblestones, a gentle stream of water where the neighbor girl sometimes took the boy to feed ducks. The toddler loved the ducks. Their quacks, the way they waddled, the way their little tails wiggled back and forth. It brought a laughter out of him that sounded like a thousand little bubbles floating through the air.

A squeal and the boy bounded off the curb, wandered across the road, devoid of horse-drawn cabs or pedestrians, and found himself in the grass, nearing the stone wall that dropped off into the Old River Lea. Curious, excited eyes searched the water for the birds that he loved so much, and seeing one, just a little ways off, his little arm went up for an excited wave. The duck began to swim off, and the toddler, eager to get closer and make friends, took an unsteady step toward the edge of the wall.

A carriage drove by suddenly, its driver shouting erratically, attempting to get the attention of an adult - any adult - and the boy, startled, lost his balance. The baby fell forward, head first, narrowly missing the stone wall, into the river with a great splash.

It was two minutes before the driver of the carriage was able to get to the child. By that time, the baby's lips were blue, his face pale and devoid of life.

Benji Cuddrun's parents were nowhere to be found.

---

Friday, February 3, 1922
7:15 PM
A Private Room at the Old Headmaster

"We've talked about your first memory," Roscoe said quietly, the quill and parchment on the table beside him taking fervent notes. "What about the first memory you have of your sister?"

Benji's lips parted slightly and he shook his head. "I don't want to talk about her." Kate was someone he was obligated to protect and care for. His sister was the one thing that had kept him hanging on all those years, making it impossible for him to run away or escape the home that beat him black and blue. She was the reason he'd learned to cook, to wash. To care for someone and something other than himself.

Kathryn, in many ways, had made Benji into the protector and loyalist he was. She'd taught him what family meant. What love meant. And given him a place to call home when they'd never had one.

Talking about her was difficult. In many ways, the boy knew he'd failed her. He didn't want confirmation that he had.

"It's necessary, don't you think?"

No.

The boy merely shrugged.

He knew better by now. Roscoe wasn't the type to let Benji just move on and brush past hard topics. They'd talked about his parents in depth now. The abuse, the isolation, the times where he went hungry for days on end until he'd wandered outside and made some friends who taught him how to steal.

Kate wasn't going to be a subject they could brush over.

"I remember her crying," Benji said softly, staring out the window as he usually did. "She was in her cradle and my mum was ignoring her. She was little, maybe a few months." His fingers twisted around themselves as he spoke, almost robotically through the memory. "I tried to ignore it at first. I was little too and didn't know what to do. But her crying made me cry."

"You were worried about her."

Benji nodded, almost absently. He bit his lip, remembering the way he'd peeked over the side of her cradle and saw Kate, too thin for a baby, red-faced and screaming with hunger. "I picked her up and held her. I had some water so I dipped my finger in it and let her drink from it. I just didn't want her to cry anymore."

"And you learned how to take care of her after that?"

"I started stealing from the corner store. Milk mostly. She couldn't eat anything else. So I fed her from my finger until she could drink a little from a cup. I got caught a lot back then because I wasn't very good at stealing yet. They'd take me to my mum."

He grew quiet again, his eyes fixating on the light that illuminated in Verse and Vellum across the way.

"And your mum? What would she do when you were caught stealing?"

The boy's expression didn't change. "What she always did. Beat me until I was in too much pain to move. Not because she was mad about the stealing, but because I'd brought people to her door."

Roscoe was quiet a moment as his quill jotted down a few more notes.

"Did you feel it was worth it? The pain and beatings in exchange for the milk?"

Hazel eyes returned to the counselor, studying him quietly. Could he have told someone that his baby sister was starving? Could he have chosen to protect himself instead?

Easy questions to answer now that he was fifteen and not five years old.

"Kate's always been worth it. All of it."