Freaks: Year Two

I Need To Go Home!

Panic attack.

Come home. We need you.

Jasper stared at it.

It was like everything around him, all the conversations, all the owls hoots, all the clatter from the moving of forks and spoons and bowls and plates, it all came to an immediate stop. All the people, gone. It was just him, staring at the letter from his mother, staring at the five words...

He had been terrified and scared out of his mind many times before, before Hogwarts living in fear was a regular occurrence at his home but this, those five words on that piece of paper, scared him more than anything in his whole entire life.

His mother never wrote him and the words...the words, something had happened, he knew it immediately. No one would have to be told but what? What had happened? That's what made it so scary. He didn't know what happened and he had not been there to see it happen or be there for any of it. He was used to being in terrible situations with his father, he had comforted and helped his siblings after situations with him too but this time, he knew nothing. All he knew was something horrible had happened, something so bad that his mother had written to him.

And he had not been there. He hadn't been there for his brothers, he hadn't. What happened? Why did he have to be here? He should have been at home with them. What if he could have stopped it? What if...

What happened, what happened, what happened...

He knew he needed to go home.

Right now.

"Jasper...?" Maryrose had noticed how his expression had changed from happy to panicked while reading the piece of paper. It was like all the happiness had drained out of him in a blink of an eye and it was replaced with sheer panic. "Are you alright...?"

"I need to go home," he breathed out.

"What happened?" Harry asked and before he could even catch sight of what was in the letter, Jasper crumbled it in his fist and he stumbled out of his seat. "Jasper, what happened?" He had never seen him so panicked before.

"I need to go home," he repeated.

"Do you think one of his–" a Hufflepuff student started but they were quickly shushed by Cara who said, "Jasper, do we need to get a professor?"

"I need to go home," Jasper said. "I need to go home," and he started to walk out of the Great Hall but Harry and Maryrose both stopped him because like Felix, it looked like he was about to faint. He turned to them, shoving their hands off. "I need to go home! I need to go home!"

"Okay, but what's going on–" Maryrose started.

"I need to go home," Jasper said and he ran out of the Great Hall.

Both Maryrose and Harry exchanged worried looks. They had never seen Jasper like this before. Whatever news he had gotten must have been awful. He was just repeating the same thing over and over and he looked so terrified. They had never seen someone so horrified before. "We should follow him," Harry said.

Maryrose nodded. "Definitely."

They started to rush out of the Great Hall but as they both looked each way down each corridor, Jasper had disappeared out of their sight. They were both left with the question of what had made him so panicked and where would he have gone?

"I need to go home!"

Jasper ran out of the Great Hall.