Freaks: Year Two

The Lost Baby Brother

Anxiety attack, emetophobia, death of an infant, panic attack, suicidal thoughts.

Alabaster woke up in the dark.

He blinked, his head hurting, but it was nowhere near as bad like a couple hours before where it felt like something sharp was banging on it, so that was always a plus. When he tried to move, his hand touched something squishy and he felt around to feel some sort of shapes he couldn't see well enough to know what they were.

He felt around to try to figure out where he was and he reached a wall. He was immediately confused because the last he remembered he was in a room, a good sized room at that, so he slowly travelled to the other side and not even a couple of seconds later he felt the other wall.

Where am I, he thought, getting nervous.

Again, he was in a strange dark place and unlike the Hospital Wing, he had no idea where he was. He seemed to be in something. But what? And where? Before he knew it, he was enveloped in a wave of panic.

"Oh no...oh no, where am I?" he started to ask himself, feeling around the walls (were they walls?), but all he felt was the weird shapes around him he couldn't see. Was he alone? It seemed like it. It was so quiet and where was Hoo? He had been with him before, he was sure of it! He wouldn't have just left him. "Hoo?" Alabaster called, panicked. "Are you here? Where are you? Where did you go?!"

"Hoo!"

Alabaster breathed a sigh of relief when he heard him, but he still felt anxious. He always felt anxious, but now it was all amplified. Anyone would panic if they were trapped in the middle of nowhere! He was trapped and he needed to figure out a way to get out, but through his panic, he couldn't even focus that well on the surrounding area.

"I just...I just need to figure out where I am," Alabaster whispered. "Easy..." He started to feel around the area again, his hand curving up a wall. His breaths were short and uneven and he was doing everything in his power to distract himself from the panic. You need to stay calm, please stay calm.

Hoo was still searching for something to help Alabaster get out of the cauldron. Parts of him just wanted to somehow tell Alabaster to stand up as if he jumped high enough, he may be able to get out of the situation he was in, but with Alabaster in a panic and it being quite dark, Hoo was sure that was not going to go over well.

Hoo continued to look for something to help Alabaster. He started to peck around the plant infested areas to see if there was something Hoo could carry and drop down that would help Alabaster climb out of the cauldron. Rope, a box, a ladder, something. There had to be something!

Once again, Hoo wondered why a cauldron that big existed. Who even lived here?

All the while, Alabaster was getting more and more panicked, his breaths becoming more shaky and less controlled, and he found himself laying down in the cauldron.

Not again. Alabaster had grown to hate the way he functioned even more throughout the first term when he had discovered what the meaning of an anxiety attack was. Exactly what happened at Diagon Alley with his aunt, what happened at that History Of Magic class before Benjy Fenwick had helped him, that horrible night in the Hospital Wing, and now this.

It would just never stop. Even if he didn't have these horrible attacks all the time where his breathing got all out of control and where he felt like his life was going to end, he still felt unwell all the time.

It's never going to go away, Alabaster thought. I'm just going to continue to suffer.

Stop thinking you're suffering, people have it worse than you, stop being a weak little baby. Imagine if your parents saw you now, they'd crucio until you stopped crying. So stop it Alabaster. Stop it right now!