Secrets Only Trouble Knows - George Weasley

50 - A Burden

{ A/N:

* TW for the chapter*
- Mention of mental health/anxiety/implied depression

I told you this year might be a little bit of a rollercoaster. Nova's kind of... going through it, and is under a lot of pressure right now because of her dad's situation. But stick around, because things always play out and I promise they (and she) will get better again with time. }

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The next few days of school went by much like the first. Everywhere I went, the gossiping and nasty comments seemed to follow me.

For the most part, these comments simply incited anger in me. In the moment I'd feel my blood boil under my skin and I'd want nothing more than to just yell and snap back at people for the awful things they were saying. And I certainly did that on multiple occasions.

Sometimes, depending on who specifically had made a particularly nasty comment, I'd feel the overwhelming urge to punch them. Like, for instance, Graham Montague.

Ever since our little encounter on the first night of being back at school, Montague was telling all of his friends and anyone else who'd listen to him that I had "gone completely mental on him." He was saying that he'd come up to me and was being a nice guy, just trying to flirt with me a little and chat me up, and that I had apparently flipped out on him for it, threatened to hex him, and slapped him for no reason at all.

In reality, Montague had been harassing me (as he's done for a year) and degrading me to being nothing more than a pretty face—in front of George, mind you—but obviously people couldn't know that, could they? Obviously people couldn't know that everything I had said to him about being a terrible person was completely justified, could they? Obviously I had hurt his feelings so badly and stomped on his fragile ego so much that the only thing he could think to do to make himself feel better was slandering my name to the mud and furthering the stigma around me. Which is exactly what he did.

Another person I thought about punching at least three times a day was Professor Snape. Snape had already spent the past five years of knowing Jasper and me by making snide remarks about our father and our family's situation, but now that Dad was on the loose and quite literally the only thing people could talk about, he figured berating us was even more justified.

It also didn't help that I wasn't the best at Potions in the first place. Generally, I was pretty well-rounded when it came to my academics, doing nicely in all of my subjects, but not when it came to Potions. It was just a class that was so easy to get things wrong, and I got things wrong a lot, apparently.

Because of that, Snape made me a target of his cruelty even more. He picked on me for the littlest things, like when I dropped something on the floor or when I turned to ask someone a question. It was like he was hellbent on ensuring I failed since I apparently already seemed to be a lost cause to him anyways.

—

Now it was Thursday morning and I was heading off with my Gryffindor and Hufflepuff friends to our first class which also happened to be our first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson of the year.

We clambered into the familiar classroom which, thankfully, was no longer home to Gimderoy Lockhart or his self-portraits and fake achievement plaques. Professor Lupin was waiting for us instead, leaned up against his desk.

"Good morning." he smiled as we arrived.

We all gave head nods and a few hello's and were just about to begin finding open seats when he quickly stopped us.