It happened one year that Hogwarts began to house what may well have been the worst Ravenclaws to ever grace such halls. Four boys of violence and cruelty. Boys who kept the rest of their peers stamped firmly into the dirt, crushed deep beneath their heels.
Divan Amara. Though not an obvious bad boy, when pushed far enough over the edge he could become violent, aggressive and even deadly. Outwardly, he wasn't cruel or unkind to his peers, but he was fairly well known for almost mutilating another student. You could say he had a hidden darkness. A darkness he wasn't afraid to use when the time was right.
Hunt Clavell. Dangerous. It was a very good word to describe him. Selectively mute, rarely interacting with other students and occasionally even painting himself as a helpful person, Hunt was a manipulator, and an expert one at that. And a lot of the time, he could wrap someone around his little finger without ever saying a word. Most people only heard him speak after they'd already become his victim, after learning what kind of a person he really was, and yet he never ever got in trouble for it. Not with any form of authority, anyway. Because Hunt was a manipulator, and the threats he made could scare any of his victims into silence.
Eric Kessler. A bully, mostly for the fun of it. He and his friends enjoyed making others miserable. It made them feel better about themselves, and Eric loved anything that boosted him up in any way. What made him as bad as he was, what made him lash out so much at others, was undoubtedly his own insecurities, which also made him annoyingly good at singling out insecurities in others.
John St Crow. The smallest and weakest of the four and the ringleader of the bullies. He seemed to have some level of control or authority over Kessler and their third friend, Riordan Damek, and it was an authority they obeyed without question. John was someone who was unafraid of reprimand and who could proudly say he had taken life before. He didn't give a damn about the thoughts and feelings of others, and he didn't trust a soul.
And that was how they were for the first five years of their magical education. Nothing seemed to stop them. They were immortal demons ruling over a great castle. Unbeatable.
At the beginning of their sixth year at Hogwarts, things changed ever so slightly. At first glance, it seemed the same. Kessler, Clavell, Amara and the rest of the boys they were forced to share their dorm with settled in, the former already making things difficult for those around him, seven boys in one room. And an eighth bed between Clavell and Lewini, one of the comparatively normal boys. An empty, unladen bed.
St Crow hadn't come back.
At first, Eric thought it was okay. The idiot had probably missed the train, or maybe his family was on holiday. Or maybe he'd heard that Slytherin girl he'd been fucking before the end of last year had died, and he was off for the funeral or taking some time to grieve. And then he'd noticed John's sister was back, sat with the Hufflepuffs and laughing happily.
Time passed, and John didn't come back. Eric and Riordan continued their teasing and mocking of others without their lord and master, as Lewini had once mockingly called him, but Riordan stopped pretty quickly. He had mostly gotten into it so Eric would guard him from being bullied, and so he could guard John from physical harm. So it was just Eric, doing what he did best, but with his heart not really in it now his closest friend was missing in action. Riordan had managed to ask John's sister when he'd be coming back, but all she'd been able to say was that she wasn't sure if he would be coming back at all.
It was almost Christmas break when they next got any news. Three months, nearly four, had passed, and the boys were heading up from dinner. A bunch of them in a clump, discussing their plans for the holidays. Hunt opened the door to their dormitory
and froze. The boys behind him walked into his back and pushed him forward a little...and saw what made him freeze.
At the foot of the eighth bed was a suitcase and a backpack. Both baby blue in colour, matching the top worn by the skinny boy sat on the edge of the bed, back to the door.
"John!" Eric yelled, pushing past the others to go to his friend. He grabbed a skinny shoulder a little too roughly and greeted his friend in too loud a voice. "God, where have you been? Three months you've been gone, three bloody months! What's been going on?"
One golden eye shifted to meet two bright blue, but no other reaction came. And then Eric noticed a few things. That eye was a lot...duller than he remembered. Like John had seen some serious shit. He'd always had a bit of a haunted look to that eye, but...this was worse. And he'd always been skinny, but he'd obviously lost weight since they'd last met. He looked brittle and delicate and ill now. Very ill. And Eric could have sworn he used to be...was he paler now? He was ill. That had to be it. He'd been away because he'd been ill. And for some weird reason, he was wearing thick ski gloves. Eric sat on the bed John was facing.
"John? John, what's wrong? What...happened to you? Did...did you just get here?" He was somewhat aware that the other boys had come in now and that they were watching the exchange. "You must have just gotten here. You missed dinner. I bet you missed the food here, huh? Those house elves sure make the best gravy!" No reaction. John's single, disturbingly dull eye was watching him, following his head whenever he moved, but at the same time not really looking at him. "Are you sick? You look like shit. Are you going to talk? John. Stop being weird. Seriously, man, you're freaking me out." He heard what he thought was John's stomach growling, which made sense if he'd missed dinner, he must have been hungry, and the small boy tensed considerably at the sound. After a painfully long pause, he stood, walked past Eric, went to his suitcase and went to take something out of it, then seemed to change his mind. Instead, he continued walking round to the other side of the bed, got in and drew all the curtains.
"Well, that's a rejection if I've ever seen one." One of the other boys, Caleb, quipped.
Eric was honestly just confused. He'd thought for a moment John was going to do something. Go get something to eat or go start a fight with Clavell or find some way of telling Eric and only Eric why he came back so late and looked so god damn terrible. But no, he was just turning in. As if nobody was speaking to him. As if nobody was there and nothing had happened.
How...unnerving.
Hunt pushed lightly against Eric's back, a silent request for him to move off the bed. It was his bed, after all, and he wanted to lie down. Eric turned and slapped the offending hand away.
"Don't touch me, you mute freak!"
They stared at one another for a moment, each giving a silent challenge, and then Hunt smiled. And spoke. A surprisingly soft and sweet voice carrying a distinct Irish lilt that Eric didn't think he'd heard before, even through every fight the mute had had with John.
"I think St Crow is the mute freak now." He began, and for a moment, for a sweet, blissful moment, Eric thought he would stop there. Hunt walked round to John's bed, smile widening into a cruel smirk and voice rising in volume until everyone's attention was solely on him. "It looks to me, in fact, that St Crow's reign of terror is ending. The St Crow has fallen, his golden age is dead and gone, and I think it's time for revolution. An uprising. Revenge." He tore open the curtains John had closed moments prior, and the smaller boy was curled up in his bed. He looked so...vulnerable. And Eric had known that inside, John was very vulnerable, and he felt his insides go cold as Hunt tore those curtains right from the rails. Every single one. "St Crow has spent five years, five miserable years, tormenting the student body, our year and below! He has driven people to considering suicide, he has held his band of insecure and crazy demons around him like vicious pack dogs, ready to attack on signal. Obedient little hellhounds. He has been unyielding and unmerciful in his assault, and now look at him. Finally fallen silent. Showing us what he truly is. A scared little boy. Vulnerable. Weak. Bearing his weakness to the world. Which means now is our time to strike back. Every person who St Crow has wronged can pay him back tenfold! Show him how it feels to suffer the way he made us suffer! How do you feel about that, St Crow? Any objections?"
Hunt was on the bed now, stood over him. John spared him a glance, but otherwise said nothing and didn't move at all. He didn't even stir when Hunt began searching his pockets, and finally pulled out an old kitchen knife.
"The amount of times you've held this to my throat..." Hunt breathed before his hand lashed out. Suddenly, he had John held upright by the hair, dull grey blade against tan neck...and John didn't seem to care. "He doesn't mind, lads. He has no objection. Maybe letting him know how it feels would be a good lesson! It begins, the fall of St John Crow!" And with that, he pushed John back down onto the bed and went to start his uprising, doing his best to pull Amara, Docdocs, Haley, Lewini and Rust with him. One or two people spared the last two boys left in the room a sad glance before they left.
Eric was pretty sure John had only threatened Hunt with the knife once. It was in their fifth year, when John had confided in Eric that he believed the albino bastard to have been 'hurting' girls in the year below. Yet, he had to admit there had always been bad blood between them. It had been there since their very first night together, and John had started it. He'd taken one look at Hunt and decided he hated him. At first, Eric had thought he was just looking for someone to hate. Then, he'd figured it was an autism thing, because it didn't take long for him to figure out that John was obviously autistic. Finally, as Hunt took off to turn the entire school round in some sick experiment to see if he could drive the one-eyed Ravenclaw to suicide, Eric realised that this hatred was because John could tell from day one that there was something very, very off about Hunt Clavell. Somewhere inside him, John had known from the start that Hunt would be the kind to assault the girls and manipulate others to his whims, and only now was Eric seeing exactly what that meant for the others around him.
And that was the year things changed.
((1. I am not happy with this piece at all. But you get to see it anyway. 2. Divan Amara, Corey Docdocs and Dinesh Lewini belong to a friend of mine, but are all Ravenclaw males in the same year as John, Hunt and Eric...and Caleb and Cyrenaica, they're in here too. The description of Divan at the beginning is based entirely off of a single event that happened in a roleplay I did with his creator after someone attacked Eric and Divan attacked back (Eric and Divan were dating at the time). I'm pretty sure in the original roleplay Divan almost murdered or did murder the other student in question, which is probably why I don't have Kit listed as an OC right now, that or because I just don't remember Kit's last name, but my memory is terrible and I'm probably wrong...aaaanyway, this whole thing was just to play around with the relationship between Hunt and John, and how John ended up going from the bully to the victim in his 6th year...I figured Hunt the Manipulator could be a good catalyst. John's character file can be found on my OC files blog. The files of the others are still being done.))
