Disclaimer: I don't own the magical world or magical items but I heartily own most of this. Oh, and I don't own 'The Star People' either.
Note: This is a little one shot anecdote on Lycaon Saer's life (Lycaon being from 'Love is Misery's Mask) to help you understand her, and, let's face it; there's a lot of explaining to be done about Lycaon.
A five year old Lycaon Saer stood nervously on her first day at her wizarding grammar school. Though she didn't grasp the concept, this school was different from a muggle school only in that it was made for children of magical background where the young ones were free to talk about chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts, and quidditch as much as they liked without confusing muggle children, and the focus was on math and reading and writing skills.
She had on a pretty pink dress and two ponytails, tied up high with silky pink ribbons; pink was her favorite color. She held a regular brown paper bag on which her mother had very artfully drawn a teddy bear.
"Hi, my name's Tara. What's yours?" Said a pink little girl in blue jumper.
Lycaon stared at her with wide green eyes, the innocence of which only a child could truly posses.
"I'm Lycaon. Call me Ly. It's not so hard to say." She replied in the simple speech of one who has yet to learn the value of words.
"You're funny." The little girl giggled. "You look funny, too. 'Specially your dress."
"It's my favorite." She said lamely, her smooth little mind confused, her expression hurt.
That was the first and most innocent of many events in which the hurt welled inside of her, her eyes wide and soon brimming with tears each time. A pattern of ostracization and verbal abuse began. It began with little comments. Requests she not sit with them in class. Refusals to work with her for assignments. She was invited to birthday parties just to be picked on. When there was no one else, however, one of the other girls might ask her come over and play on the weekend. In time even that tiny kindness came to a halt. If they spoke to her it was to torment her.
"Hey Ly-y." That same little girl taunted in later years, whiningly elongating the vowel. "Tell me Ly," Tara had leered at Lycaon at the age of eight, when children learn things there parents would rather they didn't, "What'd you have to do to get that 'A' on that test? Huh, you little suck- up? You're such a teacher's pet." She spat, twirling one sandy-blonde braid.
As the whole group of girls behind her laughed a horrible malicious laugh Lycaon felt the tears well up in her eyes and her throat hurting from holding back a wail. Why can't they just leave me alone? She thought bitterly. I've never done anything to them. Never. Her lip trembled.
"You're just jealous!" She told them, not believing it for an instant.
The tears and wails broke through as she ran away from them and their horrible, now shrieking, laughter. She tripped and lay there for a moment, her palms and knees scraped badly. She crawled over to a nearby tree and huddled up under it, her knees drawn to her as her small frame racked with sob after sob. But unlike in the story books she liked so much, no one came to comfort her. She had walked home, her eyes red and head aching from crying. Mummy popped some allergy medicine into her mouth and scolded her for taking so long to come home.
In ensuing days she would think back on the occasion with a kind of nostalgia because one day something changed. Perhaps Ly had been particularly bothersome that day or perhaps it had been a long time coming...but one day Tara had followed her after school. With a group of girls. That day the girls didn't stop with mere words and from that day forward they never did.
At home she felt she was only a burden.
"Mummy, Mummy, can you read to me?" Ly crawled over the couch to her mother, holding Professor Zeus's' book of Pixies.
"I'm reading this book right now." Her mother replied, eyes glued to the page of a paper-back Sci-Fi novel titled 'The Star People.'
"Plea-ease Mummy . . . you haven't read to me in gazillions of years." Lycaon nuzzled her mother's shoulder.
"Don't be silly," her mother flipped the page, "I read to you just last month, besides you can read. It'll be good for you."
Elizabeth could be heard crying loudly in her room. Mrs. Saer jumped up, book in hand and ran to the other room. Ly sat on the couch.
"What's wrong, Deary?" She could hear her mother coo.
"I wanna play wid someone. I can't pway dollies awone."
"I'll play with you, Elizabeth."
Of course, it's Elizabeth . . . I guess Elizabeth needs Mummy more . . . she is youngest.
The following year of school it turned out that someone finally saw Lycaon being bullied. When all of the girls were brought into the dean's office and told that their parents were being called, it didn't make things better. It just gave Ly a lot more work.
"Saer! I can't believe you told! Who would have thought you'd have the guts? I'll show you who's who! I'm going to be grounded for weeks! It's all your fault!" Tara slammed Lycaon down in the falsely wooded area behind the school, kept only for the nature trail, where no one would see them.
Lycaon lay there, staring up at the other girl owlishly, knowing what was coming¸ even though she didn't deserve it. She never did. They'd danced this dance before, but for different reasons. She could do no more than clamp her jaw shut tight and wait for it with all the strength she had. At least it was only one girl this time. Sure enough, the other girl's scuffed, worn shoe slammed into her side. She winced and doubled over. No matter how many times this happened . . . it still hurt.
"Look at you, you're so stupid . . . I can't believe you got me in trouble."
Another kick was landed, but this time on her thin back and she sealed her lips against a scream that would only make it worse. How could one little girl hurt me so much . . . what did I ever do? Why me? A blow was landed to her gut and her mind popped in an explosion of white.
"Get up, stupid!" Tara grabbed hold of Ly's hair, hair that always stayed down and screened her eyes from the world. She yanked the girl up. "If I get in trouble again, you're going to pay. If you tell anyone, you're going to regret being born. Do you hear me?" Of course I do . . . "DON'T IGNORE ME!" Tara twisted Lycaon's hair, causing her to wince, and then back handed her.
Lycaon didn't make eye contact, just like with an animal, she didn't dare make eye contact.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" Tara screamed and pushed her down again.
Lycaon had to spit out a little blood to speak. "I understand." Her voice was barely a whisper. She was screaming inside, and, oddly, as much as Tara hurt her, she wouldn't quite call this fear.
"What was that?" Tara kneeled, pulling two handfuls of hair this time.
"I understand." Ly said more firmly, closing her eyes as they watered.
"Don't talk to me like that!" She back-handed Ly again, and, again, Ly didn't make eye contact. Instead she stared at the ground. "You really are pathetic aren't you?"
No response.
"Aren't you?" She pulled Ly's hair again.
"Yes." Lycaon gritted her teeth against the not so pleasant sensation in her scalp and the hateful affirmation.
"You disgust me." Tara sneered, throwing Ly down and walking away.
Lycaon lay there for some time, waiting for her aches to ebb enough so that she could walk home. At least there would be no visible bruises . . . the teacher had suspected that her parents abused her last time . . .
There was no abuse at home. Far from it.
"Dad? Dad, are you in here?" Lycaon called into the garage.
"Over here, Ly! Talk to me."
"I need you to sign this. It's my Report." She stood on the steps, not wanting to get any closer to stench of oil that came from a muggle car her father had been tinkering with since before she was born.
"What'd you get this time?"
"Nothing bad." She watched the cement floor do nothing particularly interesting.
"What does your teacher say?" He made a disgusting noise and spat a combination of mucus and saliva onto the floor.
"She says I need to work on my people skills and be more active in class." Ly stared at her father, who was now standing beside the car, staring at her with his fists set to his hips.
"You really need to do better than that, Ly." He shook his head. "You can be as smart as you want, but nobody is going to hire you if you don't have people skills." He turned to the car and began messing with the engine again. "Even Hitler had people skills." He told her loudly.
"Who's Hitler?"
--
But nothing gold lasts forever and so, in theory, neither can anything black. As a person grows ever more into who she's meant to be she stops bowing so low. She stops shifting the blam. Sometimes, she stops taking other people's crap. For Ly, it was as though she had put down one book and picked up the next. She no longer wondered why the girls didn't just leave her alone; she wondered why she didn't make them. Clearly, they didn't get it, and never would...on their own.
One day, she had had far too much of their constant torment.
"Lycaon, you have no fashion sense." Tara had informed her tartly that day when they were half-way through the final year at grammar school. "You always wear that dreadful hand-me-down sweater that looks like your grandmother bought it, and your repulsive boots are always scuffed."
"Is that what you think, Tara?" She replied.
Lycaon had asked this in that dangerously quiet voice which,later in life, became one of her most valuable assets. She slowly turned to the other girl, her expression calm but her green eyes glinting with a barely contained rage. The other girl had blinked and stepped back, never once expecting such a reaction from her normally meek victim.
"Because, personally, I rather like my sweater and," she continued, stepping nearer, eyes flashing, voice precarious "my boots are nowhere as repulsive as those Mary Janes your mum forces you to wear. Nor are they any less pristine than your mum herself."
Tara's muddy brown eyes were wide with shock, betraying her horror. Her hands were drawn up to her chest in that terrible position frightened people pull them. It gave Lycaon a perverse pleasure to turn the tables, but she had to add one last thing.
"You disgust me." She said with, and an evil sneer dawned over her face just before she walked away. She had the power.
That had been the day when she rebelled, moved on to this bold, new personality.
She discovered quickly that, as well as the ability to intimidate people, she could lie with shocking conviction. Of course she'd been doing that all along hadn't she? It was just that she could finally put two and two together. She had a great many persuasive qualities and a great many talents. She had never seen before just how capable she was.
She found a cynicism and sarcasm that lived inside her and learned to use them as a weapon. She found however, that she became, like a coin, two sided. Part of her was confident and invincible but inside her was the innocence and frailty. She had not abandoned that sad, tormented child. How could she leave behind the dear little thing? She'd merely wrapped her up and reinforced her spine a little. That girl slept inside the new Ly, always experiencing the world second-hand.
Event the knew Ly wasn't impregnable. She was a hopeless romantic, her strength tainted by the all too human desire to love and be loved. She knew that it was literature which had done this to her; softened her, drawn her in and made her sympathize with the love-struck heroine. But she resolved to remain always on gaurd, never to hurt or be hurt . . . or at least until that day on the Hogwarts express where she meet, quite frankly, her first friends.
Because, from there it's all history . . . She let them in and gave them the power to hurt her because, lacking that , there was no chance to be loved.
NOTE: For those of you who read this but haven't read my story - Love is Misery's Mask...you might want to consider it. My story is of the marauders and this OC named Lycaon Saer. You can check it all out. Highly amusing, I assure you. So go ahead, check out my other stories if you please. This isn't my usual style. This is a lot more narrative, but I thought it turned out acceptably.
The interaction with her parents was taken, with alterations, from my own life. That's what a conversation with my father is like, and that's what my mom's like when she gets in a mood. While Ly does have a thing or two in common with me—hell, all every character I write does to some extent—I can't say I was ever bullied. Picked on, yes. Definitely. But, no, I was never bullied, and, no, I would never have allowed another girl to slap me around like that. Nah . . . it wouldn't have worked out well for anyone who tried . . . So, on a silver platter, this is why Ly is so harsh. This is why Ly is so conflicted. Most importantly, this is why Ly is so twisted. She got the crap beat out of her regularly for things she hadn't caused. You'd be a little twisted, too.