A/N: I fucked up on YingYangWhiteTiger's penname. So apologies to her. Assuming it is a her.
As for this chapter, I'm delving further into the person I've created in Draco. Derek.
As in any story, the beginning of this will be slow going but I'll get more into it myself.
Updates may be infrequent as I want to finish A Stranger's Life, Dreaming Into Walls, a new fic Razorblade Romance and a couple oneshots before the last books comes out.
So here it goes.
Chapt. 2"We are the Generation Raised Without Religion."
There are recreational activities one indulges in when they are bored.
Kathy's is to play her piano.
I've heard better. But she falls into it rather better than my mother did. I suppose it was something she was forced to do.
Other than the broomstick I had no hobbies.
I remember this girl standing outside this Muggle music store, she had purple dyed into her black hair. Clashing unbearably so. She wore the leather jacket collar rimmed around her neck. She wasn't thin, nor fat. The type of person who eats what she wants when she wants it. Her eyes were dark, I assume the colour was brown, but the frayed edges of the strands of hair in front of her face didn't allow me to see.
But it wasn't how shw looked, nor the girlish sing-sing voice that came from her— no, it was the words that her perfect stranger said—
"We are the Generation raised without Religion."
What is one to say to that?
Religion was never something the Wizarding World was interested in. All miracles are accepted as words of ancient or modern wizards. Angels are basic fucked up transfiguration— But the more I think of it…
Religion is Pureblood.
Pureblood had the same rites of tradition. The same principle of degenerates. The ones of lesser blood. Such as the half-breeds, half-bloods and non-humans.
What are the Religions? What have religious people believed to be their right based on their beliefs?
I can't help but think that girl was wrong.
For a generation raised without Religion, then why is everything based on it?
All I've heard are songs by bands denouncing God. Slogan's slandering Muslim, Christian and Jewish beliefs.
What of everyone's obsession with following the recently deceased Kurt Cobain? Or their blind following of his contemporaries?
How about the near satanic Marilyn Manson? Is he not the one people blame for kids going to schools with intent to do harm? Does he not overdo his religious beliefs in nearly all his songs?
The movies that are popular are based on the hatred for god.
People join the Buddhist belief or Hindu believing this will somehow help their hatred of Life after God…
Why is this?
To be honest I couldn't help but look at that girl in awe, for saying the words that connect both of my worlds.
Raised without Religion. With Reason and own free will. Unnoticed as it was.
--- -----
"Hello Derek." This is the smart, happy and friendly person whose name has left me.
I don't smile back. Their presence as well as group of uninteresting friends go past me.
The hallways are cluttered with students. Some of them walk past talking loudly into a black box by their ears. Some of them look at their feet and quake when eyes connect with other eyes.
Yet there are those who stare straight ahead and notice nothing.
I'm like that now. Lost in thoughts that do not linger in the paradox of thinking about nothing.
I remember being loud walking through stonewalls both talking loudly, taking up the whole hallways because I owned it all…
Was it better?
No.
People notice your ever shortcoming. They take sick delight in anything that is not your rightful ownership.
Being unnoticed is when you are not the person everyone created you to be. You are allowed to be whoever the hell you want to be.
I can drop my papers and leave them. Someone will throw them in the recycle. The papers will be replaced.
Perhaps bettered.
The only people who bother to talk to you are those whose entire life is based on approval.
Approval was what I once wanted. From my father, which disappointment arose at every turn.
Nothing could make me want approval anymore.
I don't believe I've not met one person who did not care about approval. Not in Hogwarts anyway.
In the Muggle World, people are vastly varied.
I think of that girl. The girl who paid no attention to the unstylish rips in her clothes. She didn't wear ripped jeans so stylish in our age groups. Black dress pants with bleach blotches. A sweater with a broken zipper supplemented with a rubber band.
She was the type of person who wasn't desperately unclean, judging by her genetically perfect teeth or her ungreased hair. She didn't brush it. Tangled all over the place with uneven ends. Black glasses sat on her face. Only making it seems rounder.
Unhappy. But at the same time not desperately so, not cranky or emotional.
She's not the only one of this persona. There are more I've seen. Though she's been my only interaction.
Am I like her?
No.
I am happy. Though sad.
Lonely.
I have no one. Not a single soul. No one to talk to for years but a dead girl in a washroom.
My only friend. Without a name I can remember.
I don't want friends, I want to be alone.
But I want people to surround me. To stop this terrible feeling that comes to me.
Maybe that girl goes to this school.
"Heeeeyy, Derek my man!" There's a slap on my back from my locker mate.
Yes It's Jack Hellbrows.
--- ----
How do I explain the next bit?
Jack Hellbrows is a handsome athletic and popular guy.
Purely Gryffindor.
He is the type of person everyone wants to be around. Everyone wants his approval of 'that's cool.'
Except for the people who could care less.
Just that same, you'll laugh at his stupidity, sigh and clench fists at his pigheadedness and wonder when he says something that he shouldn't have been able to say.
"So how many birds this weekend?" He's rummaging through his locker for whatever it is he needs.
I never reply to him. Today's no exception.
My fingers wrap around my Biology textbooks when a sudden pain shoots in my arm. I am uncomfortable with pain so I let out a hiss.
Jack Hellbrows is at attention staring at me.
"Why do you smell funky?" he snaps his fingers "Like burnt rubber or something?"
I roll my eyes close my locker and stand up. Shorter than him by 3". I just about walk away when the muscles in my arm seize up and I see white for a second. I've fallen into a locker, my books scattered and pain burning.
People are staring. Jack Hellbrows is pushing my hand away from my left arm and is staring at the product of Draco Malfoy.
"Holy Shit! That thing's like burning your arm!" He sounds amazed, impressed yet the same time there is a catch in his voice.
I ignore him, waiting for the pain to leave. To numb, I don't like to look at it.
There are several pairs of legs in front of me that I stay transfixed on.
--- -----
I'm in the sick room. The pain became so bad that I screamed and fainted.
I'm not strong. Never was.
There is no strength in stubbornness.
Sometimes I think I was born to be weak.
Rick's outside talking with the nurse to bring me home.
My arm hurts.
I haven't had this happen in awhile.
Even then, I was living on the streets so no one cared. Here, everyone cares.
I have a past. One they know nothing about. Other than that I lived as a homeless kid before Rick and Kathy.
In this school no one cared. Maybe I was that kid they had once played with…
But now the repercussions are going to be great. After all not only do I have a tattoo that eats the skin, none of them have ever seen me. None of them went to school with me. I wasn't in the yearbook, and maybe one of them gave money to a homeless kid- drug addict gang person on the streets…
If I know anything about being human is that people can talk and will.
I have a headache. But I won't sleep.
For some reason I thought the woman was going to give me Healing Potions, and that my arm was broken from that fuckin' Hippogriff.
I can feel the side of my lip curl funny but fade at the memory of voices wondering where the scars came from.
----- -----
Rick and Kathy leave me alone about my story. They never mention it.
Sometimes, I think they know how scars can bleed and you suddenly find yourself haemophiliac.
Other times I think they're afraid of the answers to the scars, the lack of knowledge I've had with Muggle things.
I don't talk to them. I stay to myself.
They probably wonder when they'll wake up to find everything gone and me with it.
I would like to say that won't happen…
Nothing's Impossible.
--- ------
Maybe if I tell myself people are not staring I'll believe it.
I'm not at school, instead shopping with Kathy for some clothes. I think she wants me to find a way to be comfortable with myself around her.
But everyone here knows. Knows the kid who looks albino has deep scars all over his body and a skull with a snake through it burning in his skin. The kid who showed up from nowhere and nothing to say about it.
The counter-girl is trying to flirt with me. She's super thin and tall, make-up placed to show all of her nice features and clothes appropriate for a workplace but still revealing.
In robes, things are left to the imagination.
I ignore her.
The clothes are stylish. But I don't want them. I pick the shirt with no logo, the jeans with no rips. The jacket with no secret to life posted on it.
Kathy looks disappointed. But I wanted nothing.
"Have a nice day." The girl is running her eyes over me.
Once I would have thought my lucky day.
Now I'm thinking how tired I am.
---- -----
Sometimes I can hear the sounds of calmness that I've never heard before.
Sounds of calmness is something I've never known to exist before.
Like a low humming at the base of loud noises or silence.
Once, two or three weeks ago, I dreamt I caught calmness like it was a snitch.
Only it turned out to be a ball of water. Still liquid. I woke up with the thought of a smile on my face.
----