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Everybody thinks their mother is crazy. Hawke's is [i]actually[/i] crazy -- hearing voices, hallucinations, forgetting who the people around her are -- this is what Hawke grew up with for much of his childhood. He would stay with his mother when she was lucid enough and staying with her muggle parents when she was not. When he was fourteen it all came to a boil. His mother attacked and almost killed him while she was in a fugue state and she was taken away St. Mungo's mental ward where she has been ever since. After that Hawke went to live with his elderly grandparents who were retired and living on a modest pension who try to be kind but don't really understand him or the wizarding world.
When Hawke first attended JWA, he didn't make many friends until he was approached by a rather obnoxious boy named Clellan who in a private moment between the two announced he was Hawke's half-brother, thus began their strange relationship. It certainly was always pleasant. Clellan and his pureblood friends tended to treat Hawke like a servant, always making sure he knew he was part of 'the gang' only because of their generosity and not his worthiness. But on the other hand, given his childhood, he Clellan was still family and falling in with that group was better than being the victim of it. Clellan knew also to prime the pump a bit, talking his own grandfather into helping with Hawke's school expenses.
And so it was a basically introverted, confused kid became part of a gang of bullies. He had misgivings all along and tried to be a moderate voice when he could but going along with them was the price to be paid for belonging. Still the weight of it kept building up and it was getting harder and harder to justify being a part of it when deep down he was beginning to understand just how awful his brother and the rest of them were. He had already begun trying to mitigate some of their antics when Serena Shalamane and the death of a student at her hands was the last straw. He could see the potential in Clellan to explode in the same way in the future and brother or no, Hawke decided he couldn't be a part of it anymore and made the fact he was splitting from them known. This has not been well-received by his former friends and now off on his own, he realizes he doesn't have any friends elsewhere and a reputation that isn't likely to win him any.
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