Disclaimer: The ideas are mine, the characters are not.

"That devil in the details And he is fixing up to take a bite"

Devil in the Details, Placebo

Prompts: Mistake; Children

What are little boys made of?

"And this is the playing area. The infants come here after class, almost every day" Miss Lucy explained, at the end of the tour she was conducting to Miss Mary, the new teacher at Little Hangleton's grammar school. "Of course, here, in the north, sunny days such as these are somewhat rare, but when we have them, the pupils prefer to play outside."

"Who is he?" Miss Mary pointed at a small boy, sitting by himself in the corner of the playing area, staring at the wall. "Why is he not playing with the others?"

"Well, that's Morfin." Miss Lucy said, nervously, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her. "We don't know much about him. He appeared one day, a few weeks ago, and we couldn't simply leave the boy in the streets, now, could we? But he is... strange..."

"Surely he can't be more than three or four, he's so small." Miss Mary, suggested, surprised.

"We honestly don't know. None of the teachers was able to make him talk. He just sits in silence, staring at empty space like you saw. It was lucky he even told us his first name."

"But surely there's somebody trying to reach this boy?"

Miss Lucy seemed unease.

"Morfin is not a normal boy, Miss Mary. Like I told you, he is- different. Things, all sorts of bad things happen around him."

"Bad things?"

"Yes. You will think I'm crazy, but- When he first arrived, little Kathy was around him all the time, he never talked to her, any more than he did to anybody else, but she fell ill with a fever, and she has not recover yet-"

"That's unfortunate," the newcomer said, feeling sorry for the little girl, and then she understood what the other woman was implying, "Miss Lucy, surely you're not suggesting - A small boy couldn't possibly have caused a fever. Miss Lucy, you can't possibly believe that!"

"Little Olga used to give Morfin a hard time, calling him names, bothering him because he didn't talk to anybody, till one day, her favourite doll was found in the roof of the mess hall, hanging from one of the rafters. And there was no way for it to get there, specially,- Specially in such a dramatic way. Later that day Annie came to me crying saying Morfin had threatened her. All of the children are afraid of him, and to be honest, most of the teachers are afraid of him too."

"He's just a little boy," Miss Mary glanced at Morfin one more time, full of pity in her eyes. "I worked with special children in a hospital in London before, perhaps I will have better luck trying to talk to him."

"Perhaps you will" Miss Lucy said. "But if you ask me, it's a mistake to get too close to that boy." She remarked, just before walking away.

Miss Mary dismissed those sentences bitting her lower lip, and watched Morfin for a few more minutes before walking in the playing area. She had worked with children with all sorts of disabilities, in London. It did not make her a doctor but she was quite sure the child in that room suffered from some form of autism. He didn't even look back when the sound of her steps broke the silence in the room.

"Hello, Morfin." She greeted the boy. "My name is Mary, I'm your new teacher."

He said nothing. A nearly constant thin whistle came out of his lips, almost as if he was answering her greetings, in a strange, almost inhuman language. He was obviously too short for his age, and he rocked his tiny body to the front and back, a behavioral pattern she had observed in many deranged children before. He also had small, black eyes, which stared in opposite directions.

She leaned in to touch his back.

"They told me the children like to play in the sun during days like these. Wouldn't you want to play with the other kids, Morfin?"

More whistles. But this time he seemed to be making an effort to say somethig. It was almost as if he'd never learnt to talk.

"Tommy- has- train."

"Yes, I believe I saw a boy playing with a little red train in the gardens. Would you like to play with him? I can take you to the gardens. You don't have to be afraid, I promise I will be with you the whole time." She offered her hand kindly, and the little boy accepted, standing up and accompanying her out of the room. She crossed several corridors, holding Morfin by his hand, till they reached a large group of children, playing under a willow tree.

"Children, do you remember me? I'm you new teacher, Miss Mary."

"Hello, Miss Mary", they answered as if they were one."

"Children, Morfin wants to play with you. I want you to give him a chance to play along, is that okay?"

There was no answer this time. One of the girls ran to hide behind one of the older teachers' legs, and Miss Mary squeezed Morfin's shoulder tight, and kneeled down to tell him to just be calm and play with the others. He took a few steps in the direction of Tommy, the boy with the red train. Miss Mary watched.

"So, you managed to get young Morfin to leave his corner." Another young teacher approached her, Miss Jane, if she remembered correctly.

"Well, he's a just a special little boy, he just needs a little more attention than the others." Mary smiled, and soon, she and Jane, who was also a London girl were immerse in conversation about the life in such a big city in comparison to a small village like Little Hangleton. Jane, as it turned out had grown up in that area, she had attended that same grammar school, when she was younger. She was in the middle of a rather amusing anecdote about her years as a school girl, when somebody yelled.

Soon all of the children were yelling and running in every direction. One of he girls hugged Miss Jane's legs tight, closing her eyes, and repeating frenetically, "He talked to her, he talked to her!". Miss Carmen was holding one little boy in her arms, a large red bite mark on his leg, and Miss Lucy had gone completely out of her mind.

"It's that devilish boy, I told you!" She branded a finger at Miss Mary's face. "He made that snake go after Billy, he talked to it"

"He's a devil child!" Another of the teachers yelled, and some of the kids started to cry.

"Oh, Morfin!" Miss Mary realised what must have happened, and searched for Morfin with her eyes, deathly worried.

"I saw that boy talking to the snake!" Miss Lucy yelled with everything she had.

"Somebody call the doctor!" Another voice screamed.

Morfin was nowhere to be found. He must have been so scared, everybody yelling at him like that. That place was a house of lunatics, Mary thought, angrily. To think that a four year old child could talk to snakes, an animal, that was nowhere to be seen now, by the way. No, that place was filled of unenlightened small-town livers, something like that would never happen in London! In London a sick boy got treatment, and people didn't shout those foolishness about the devil at the smallest provocation. This was not the place for her.

In the midst of that tumult, nobody had cared to go after Morfin, but as little as Miss Mary knew the boy, she had a good idea where he was right now. She marched to the play room, and indeed, she found his there, in a corner, by himself, playing with a tiny toy train.

"Morfin, are you okay?" She walked in quietly, careful not to startle him. "Tommy lent you his train, did he?" She asked. There was no answer, but she wasn't expecting any.

She stood there, watching him roll the train in the floor for a while, wondering what those strange whistling sounds actually were, when she noticed something was different. There was an open door in the opposite corner of the room, a door she had not noticed before.

A loud, sharp, terrifyed, cut-throat scream ripped the air when Mary saw what was inside that room. She fainted at the sight of the six years old boy, Tommy, hanging from one of the rafters, his neck broken, his swollen tongue out of his mouth, a sickened bluish tone to his skin. It was unbelievable. Only a few minutes earlier, he was playing in the gardens, with a tiny train... It was a horrific scene and he couldn't begin to make sense of it... She turned back to find Morfin, cover his eyes so he wouldn't see his little classmate so brutalized, but before she could find the boy the young woman felt something, a snake, climbing up her leg... She screamed.

(...)

"Where have you been?" Marvolo hissed at his son, in parseltongue, as soon as he saw the kid sitting by the window, playing with some sort of toy. It seemed as though he hadn't seen the boy for days.

"Away" Morfin hissed back, and it was enough. He didn't even lift his eyes from the tiny iron train in his hands.

Author's Note: I wrote this a long time ago. Long before I lived in Britain, and actually understood the passage of the seasons, for instance. Back then, l thought that sunny days surely would be very rare up north. One summer was enough for me to get rid of that misconception...

I have included this story in my Minor Characters Boot Camp (prompt 16: mistake). I have also included in the If I dare Challenge (Prompt 316: Children), and the All those characters challenge (prompt 245: Morfin Gaunt). I think I am getting a better understanding of working with word prompts... They seemed kinda pointless to me before... It's so easy to include a word in a story, how can a simple word be used as an inspiration, or a challenge? Now I understand that the word prompt can't just be in the story... The concept behind that word must have some importance in the story as well,... I think I managed this here. This is different from what i usually write but i think it may actually turn out to be interesting. I rely on your reviews to let me know if that is so...

LLAP