The past few days had been a struggle for Jonah as he tried to figure out how he was going to go through his second year at Hogwarts. The first had been difficult enough. It didn't help that there had been quite the uproar at home. His mum had just given birth to a set of twins. Kai and Jeremiah. Jonah had known his mother was pregnant. Had even seen her pregnant when he was home during the holidays. And yet, seeing the new babies - it was... Jonah didn't know how to feel about it. Perhaps he should be excited like how Hinata was. He should be. Right? He had new siblings. That was something to be happy about. Or maybe he shouldn't? He knows Sayuri isn't. He knew she thought there were already too many of them. And that was when there were only ten of them. There were twelve of them now. He could remember being happy when he first found out. Why wasn't he happy now? And then there was Jericah. It was a surprise to come home, not only to his baby siblings but also to his older sister being pregnant. And now he was an Uncle. He didn't know how to feel about that either. He shouldn't be an uncle. He wouldn't make a very good one. He wasn't even a good anything. Nothing made sense anymore. Being back at Hogwarts didn't feel like a relief. Or anything, really. Jonah hadn't really felt much of anything recently. And it was tiring to pretend otherwise, so he'd taken to spending most of the time alone - avoiding anyone and everyone. He knew he couldn't do it for very long. Elijah would soon be on his case about his studies - who even cared about studies? Jonah was just so tired. It was hard trying to look for a place to hide when he had so many relatives in the castle - but he'd finally found a tiny little nook in the North Tower, just big enough for him to crouch and sit in. Just like playing hide and seek. Except no one was seeking.
It was strange to be back, or at least it was strange to be back to think about how different it was this time around. Felix was no longer living in his sisters shadow and instead had real friends of his own, a girlfriend, and his younger cousin following suit behind him. He wasn't exactly sure when it had all happened but at some point during the last twelve months, Felix thought his life had been turned upside down for the better. How were things meant to get any better than this? Well, perhaps if he was accepted onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team as their new seeker, that would have been pretty good.
There was a small period of time before lessons started up again, which meant that now was the perfect time to do things Felix usually didn't have time for. He had no reason to ever come up to the towers unless it was at night during their Astronomy classes, so he'd chosen this area to scout out properly. For all he knew he could discover a secret passage that would mean he didn't have to climb the gazillion stairs to get up here when all he wanted to do was sleep. The fact the school hadn't installed any elevators yet was perplexing. What was he supposed to do if he couldn't climb stairs? He was debating the implications of this when he saw a single sole student, almost tucked out of the way of the corridor. They would have been easy to miss if Felix wasn't specifically looking for small openings. It was Jonah, although it did look as though he was trying to keep himself hidden on purpose. He had to remember that just because he no longer had Ten on his tail, not everyone was as lucky. "Are you hiding from Eli?" he asked, careful to talk quietly in case his brother was nearby and hunting him down again.
Jonah hadn't really been expecting to be found. He didn't know how long he'd been crouched there, just... staring and quiet. It was almost nice. To just... he doesn't know. So it was a surprise when someone finally noticed him, and he looked to find Felix. His best friend. Right. Jonah had been an awful best friend recently, hadn't he? He'd been hiding from Felix too, he thinks. It wasn't anything he was doing consciously, but he thinks he might have. And that was not right. But Jonah just couldn't... he didn't know what he couldn't but that was that. It took a few moments to figure out what Felix was asking. "Not really," he said unsurely. He wasn't hiding from Elijah specifically, though it would be nice to avoid him. Elijah was... complicated. Jonah didn't know how to deal with his... twin. Elijah was trying and helping him with his studies and getting him to go on study sessions and Jonah felt like fire ants were crawling under his skin. Elijah was trying and cheering him on in Quidditch and all Jonah could hear was the voices in his head saying he wasn't good enough. Elijah was trying and Jonah just can't. "I... I just... I don't know," he said rather helplessly because he really didn't.
For as long as Felix had known him, Jonah had always been a little more withdrawn than others. Of course that had been even more the case after he found out he'd had an argument with his Ravenclaw brother but it wasn't a huge surprise to see him on his own. It was however a little weird that Jonah didn't really know why he was here either though. In Felix's book that usually meant someone was hiding the real reason because they couldn't come up with an excuse, and Felix half wondered whether Jonah was trying to keep something a secret from him.
They were supposed to be best friends weren't they? Why wouldn't Jonah tell him what he was doing then? The second year approached the small boy crouching down in the nook of the towers, and leaned against the wall as he considered what he must have been up to. Maybe Jonah really didn't know why he was here and didn't want to be found by anyone. Felix wasn't sure what he could ask to get a specific answer, especially if Jonah didn't know what Jonah was doing. "Do you.. want me to go away?" he asked. Perhaps he was the problem after all.
Jonah wished he didn't have to think about the answer to Felix's question. But, he thinks Felix would appreciate the honesty more than he would an automatic answer that Jonah thinks would be socially acceptable or would diffuse a situation. Sometimes, Jonah would think that he wanted everyone to leave him alone, but that didn't sound entirely right. Just partly right. Everything just felt overwhelming nowadays. He shook his head because while he wanted to be left alone, Felix... Felix was okay. And Jonah didn't want to make him go away. It felt like it's been forever since he'd spent time with his best friend, and while that was Jonah's fault, he still kind of missed his friend. So he shook his head and grabbed Felix's sleeve. "No... I mean, no. You can stay," he cursed himself a little for slipping into Nihongo. He'd been trying to get out of that habit.
The blonde observed as Jonah took his sleeve and told him he could stay - that was more than nothing he supposed. Felix shifted and took a seat on the floor beside Jonah instead, figuring his quest for a new passage could wait. He hadn't really spoken to Jonah properly yet this year nor had he heard much from him over the holidays although that had partly been his own fault. The Gryffindor wasn't one for writing letters and even though he'd tried to write to Jonah on a few occasions, he'd never actually gotten a letter out the door. His eyes fixed on his best friend's face, trying to read the thoughts that Jonah was doing so well to keep hidden to himself. Felix never really knew what was going on with the Hufflepuff although he did wish he could have helped him more because Jonah never really seemed to be comfortable. "I know what it's like to always be looking over your shoulder," Felix had already told Jonah the stories about his older sister, and the trouble he'd had with her choosing him as the target of her amusement. Before he'd met Jonah and William, Felix had considered himself to be completely invisible by choice because it was the easier way. Felix leaned his head against the wall behind him, blonde curls mashed into the stone. "But I'm not going to make you come out," he knew from experience it wouldn't help anyone if he tried to convince Jonah to just get involved with other things to take his mind off it, not if the real problem wasn't solved first. "We can just stay here if you want to."
It didn't feel fair in Jonah's head to put his siblings in the same group as Felix's sister. Jonah knew what went on between Felix and his sister, and that wasn't even remotely close to what was happening with his own family. There was no reason for him to avoid Hinata, or Rose, or Sayuri. Or even Elijah. He and Elijah had already fixed things between them during the Yule holidays. They weren't fighting. And none of his siblings bully him. And he thought it was important Felix knew that Jonah's siblings weren't the problem. The problem was Jonah. The problem has always been Jonah. "It's not like that. You needed to do that because your sister she was kind of... well... awful sometimes, wasn't she?" he said. He didn't want to completely talk badly about Felix's sister because, well, Felix was still his friend, and she was family to him. But she was awful to Felix and Jonah didn't like that. "They're not awful. I... I just... It's hard to..." he simply didn't know how to explain to Felix how he just wasn'tgood enough. He gave a small smile that didn't feel quite right on his face when the Gryffindor told him that he wasn't going to be forced to come out and they could just stay. That was good. It wasn't like Jonah wanted to stay here, really. But he supposed staying here was a lot better than just... leaving. He'd thought about it in his first year. Running away. Leaving. Aunt Ai had done it. His parents had pretty much dashed the idea before he could even voice it out, though. But sometimes, he still thought about it. Maybe he should tell Felix. "Sometimes... I think about leaving," he whispers to his best friend.
"She certainly didn't think so," at least she didn't until Uncle Mervyn had put her back in her place. Ten never explicitly tried to hurt Felix or make him feel small, so much as she just thought putting him in certain situations was funny without realising how it made him feel. It had gotten even worse when he'd been sorted in Gryffindor, never quite sure whether he was going to find her round the corner and he would be the butt of her next joke. "Ten never meant to hurt me though," even if he wasn't particularly close to his sister, he supposed he still loved her like siblings were meant to. It was hard to listen to Jonah tell him that his siblings weren't awful, because in his mind from the things he had heard, some of them at least had gone out of their way to make Jonah's like worse on purpose, which was so much worse than what Amortentia had ever done. "Eli broke your wrist Jo," Felix reminded him, because whether or not that had been intentional, the shove he'd received certainly had been. "You can't just say that they've never done anything wrong and brush it under the carpet." he added, "and you don't have to keep defending people just because they're family," heck if his own grandmother was anything to go by, sometimes distancing yourself from family members was the best thing for everyone. Felix almost didn't hear what Jonah said next, although maybe it was because of the shock of hearing the words leave his lips. The Gryffindor wasn't surprised to hear that Jonah had thought about leaving, but it was as though saying it loud was making it more likely to become a reality. "What would you do instead?" he asked, trying to keep any judgement out of his voice.
Jonah somehow doubts that Ten never really meant to hurt Felix. That one time Jonah had seen it happen in the Great Hall didn't really look like it was meant to not hurt. Jonah didn't think for one second that any of his siblings could do that to him. They all fought and bickered because they were siblings, and it just happened sometimes. But they would never hex him. He did stiffen though, at the reminder that he'd been injured in that fight with Elijah. He'd never really told Elijah that. He didn't know either if Elijah knew of it. There didn't seem to be the need to ask. Besides, he didn't mean for Jonah to get injured. He probably didn't even mean for Jonah to fall. It was Jonah's fault, surely - he was just too weak, and he'd let himself fall wrong. "I know. I just... I don't think they're doing anything wrong. It's just me," because clearly everything should be fine. It was just Jonah that was out of sorts with everything that was happening, so obviously, none of his siblings had done anything wrong. He tried to think about Felix's question in response to his admission. And Jonah realized he hadn't really thought about it past just... leaving. "I... don't know," it was such a weak response. "I just think it'd be nice you know... to not be... just a dumb version of Elijah somewhere," he said with a rueful smile. Last year, right after that fight with Elijah, he'd come to find Felix and William and he asked them for help to change his face so he wouldn't have to keep being just a failed copy. They hadn't succeeded obviously, and since Elijah had obviously had trouble because he kept being mistaken for Jonah, he made sure to always wear his Hufflepuff robes or tie everywhere in school. He still thought about changing his face, or at least his hair sometimes. So Elijah would never have to be mistaken for Jonah ever again.
Felix thought about what Jonah was saying, how he didn't think Eli or his siblings were doing anything wrong. "If the same thing had happened to me as happened to you, would you still think that?" he asked. What if it was Ten that had argued with him, pushed him and he'd been the one to fall and break his wrist? Would Jonah still think Ten hadn't done anything wrong? Felix didn't like seeing Jonah put so much of the blame on himself. It wasn't even as though he was saying it had been an accident, but specifically he believed it was his fault somehow. The Gryffindor frowned, not really sure what to could say next or suggest to someone who seemed so adamant they were in the wrong. Felix had only really come up against the opposite problem before.
The blond lowered his eyes a little when Jonah told him he didn't want to be a dumb version of Eli. "You know, Ravenclaw's really aren't that smart. There's a reason they didn't win the house cup," Felix mused, although it would have been nice too if it had been Gryffindor or Hufflepuff that had won last year. "Would you.. feel like this if you didn't have any siblings?" Felix asked. To him, it looked as though Jonah was so busy comparing himself to a standard he was never going to live up to (because quite frankly trying to be like anyone else rarely worked out in their favour) that it meant he couldn't see past it toward anything else. "Imagine it's just you. That Eli and Rose or Sayuri, they're all just other students. Would you still think you weren't good enough?"
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