title: Still/Life
author: Sirikit
rating: K
summary: A series of small likenesses. Hufflepuff gen (Susan, Ernie, Zacharias, Hannah, Justin, not necessarily in that order).
a/n: These are basically sketches that I've been doing to try to figure out the characters. Figured I could corral some together into something resembling a fic. Lyrics from The Knife.
We share our mothers' health
It is what we've been dealt?
What's in it for me?
Fine; then I'll agree
IV. Justin
Justin still has his days when he feels like a trespasser, like a changeling that they'd swapped for some other kid who had the right to cook up potions and fly on brooms. He has to think to himself: no, it isn't just a stick I'm carrying about in my sleeve, and yes, it's perfectly normal for people to wear pointy hats, and of course, many of his friends don't know that a microwave is not, in fact, a weapon of mass destruction.
He doesn't mean to sound flippant; Justin is aware of how serious it can get, aware to an extent that he still hears the papery hiss of the basilisk in his dreams. But sometimes it rings like a great farce, this whole obsession about blood, prophecies, and Dark Lords. He remembers being eight years old and watching cartoons about this exact sort of thing, remembers stories about heroes and villains and impossible odds. Did he even like those stories? Of course he did, but he's not sure he ever wanted to live in one.
He doesn't want to tell this to anyone for fear of sounding ungrateful, because as a son of privilege he knows that game: the descendants of dukes and the sons of MPs aren't allowed to complain because people just don't want to hear it -- and anyway, neither does Justin, not even from himself. He couldn't bear it if his friends found out that, sometimes, he misses living in a more ordinary world.