Part 1.
It was mid October. The trees surrounding the lake waved silently in the growing evening breeze, their golden orange leaves reflecting the light from the dying sun. The water on the surface of the lake lay completely still, like a sheet of glass, until it was disturbed by a single pebble flung from a figure sitting on the bank. The figure was dressed simply in old faded jeans and a black T shirt. From its narrow build and almost feminine way of holding itself, one might have easily mistaken the figure to be a girl. Unfortunately for him, Calirohe was certainly not a girl, no matter how hard he wished to be. Yes, Calirohe Grey was certainly not your average seventeen year old boy, and this was for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, he just so happened to be a wizard attending the famed Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Secondly, ever since he was a very small boy, Calirohe had never been happy with being a boy. It wasn't that he didn't like boys- on the contrary, he loved them. It was just he never felt that he was one himself. He could recall many times sitting alone in his room, gazing into the old hand-held mirror his mother had bought him for his thirteenth birthday, inspecting every inch of his almost feminine looking appearance. To be perfectly honest, he was fascinated with himself. The way his skin always seemed so pale, and how the slightest mark or cut would burn so vividly upon its surface, as if it had been branded there. How no matter how much he tried to grow, he always remained at that meagre height of five foot six, and how his eyes, no matter how much he tried to smile and change his facial expressions, remained dull and bored. He had a kind of haughty beauty about him which he both loathed and cherished with equal measure. On the one hand, he hated himself for his fragile body (his father made many comments about it to his mother when he believed Calirohe to be out the room, for his father, a rather imposing man by the name of Hunter Grey, wished his son to grow up to be a great athlete) for it made him feel weak and incompetent. On the other, his pale skin, thick black hair and haunting eyes often earned their bearer a lot of attention. "Isn't he looker, look at those eye lashes!" strangers would coo to him and his mother when he would accompany her into town to the market. There was no denying it, because of the attention he received, Calirohe became extremely vain. However, sometimes late at night, when he would creep up behind the door to the kitchen and listen to his father moan and complain that he wasn't 'boyish' enough, Calirohe could never suppress that sweeping sadness that afflicts all children when they believe their parents are disappointed in them. His mother, the more amiable and gentle creature that she was, had attempted to put his mind at rest. She had told him he ought to be happy about his looks, that it showed that he was like her, that he was her son. Whenever she would tell him this, he would smile a half-hearted smile, grip his mother's hand and say "I know mother, and I couldn't be happier to be your son."
But he wasn't like her. He wasn't ever going to be like her. No matter how hard his eyes bored into that mirror, it always reflected the same boy back at him. And this leads us nicely to the third unusual thing about Calirohe Grey- he'd never cried, not a day in his life. He didn't cry when he was a baby, he didn't cry when he was dragged out of the river by Grey Cottage after falling in at the age of five; he didn't even cry when his mother died. It's not that he didn't want to cry; when he found Tamara Grey (his mother) dead in her garden at the age of fifteen, he had been so overcome with grief that he locked himself in his room for a fortnight, only accepting meals left outside the door by his father.
Yes, the loss of his mother had a terrible impact on Calirohe Grey. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could not squeeze one tiny drop from his cold eyes. Instead, he took to other methods of expressing himself. For example, he liked to play instruments, mainly the piano. He wasn't exactly a good player, and his father often commented that his playing reminded him of a foreigner trying desperately to learn a new language, only to find they'd grasped a broken, weakened version of it. Though, for all his fumbling of keys and fractured melodies, Calirohe found a language that he could communicate perfectly in, one that suited him just fine. You see, Calirohe wasn't exactly fond of speaking either, preferring to spend his time either at his piano, or with his head buried in a book.
I fear I've drifted a bit of course by explaining some of Calirohe's background, so let's return to him on the banks of the Hogwarts lake shall we? As Calirohe sat quietly staring across the water, his long time friend Penny Woolfe had spotted in at the river bank, and was now charging down the hill at top speed.
"Calirohe? CALIROHE? OI! You were supposed to meet me in the library an hour ago! Did you not get my owl??"
Penny, who was now doubling over trying to get her breath back after almost tumbling down the hill shot Calirohe an annoyed glance. She was about the same height as he was, and still wearing her school robes. In one fluid motion, she straightened up, shoved Calirohe hard enough to make him roll a little further down the bank and plonked herself in the space he had once occupied. It would appear Calirohe was used to this kind of treatment, as when he sat up, he merely dusted himself off (though still looking slightly annoyed) and moved to sit beside her.
"I'm sorry Penny, I did. It's just... I've got a lot on my mind." he said to her.
Penny, raising a quizzical eyebrow at him, got up and placed her hands on her hips. She surveyed the landscape before her, letting the evening breeze ruffle her short dark hair. Slowly, she turned around to face him, crossing her arms behind her head as she did so.
"It's just you've been acting weird all day? When I came down to breakfast, Hélène had said you'd rushed off with some letter? Then you weren't in Defence against the Dark Arts or Herbology and you weren't in the hall for lunch? Can you blame me for being worried? What's up dude?"
As she said this, Penny closely surveyed Calirohe's face, noting the fact that he looked paler than usual (if that was humanly possible) and the way his brow furrowed is concentration .
"Come on dude, what's up?" she said again, chewing her bottom lip.
For a moment Calirohe sat very still, still gazing out across the lake. Then, slowly, he reached for his bag that lay discarded at his feet. He drew from within it an important looking letter, and handed it to Penny. Before she could open it, Calirohe spoke in a quiet voice.
"It's my dad. He's dead."
*