Letters to Mother

Oh great. Stan received a letter from his mother. Of course, she was a Muggle, but she still knew of the wizard world and its inhabitants. Along with that, she knew that wizards sent letters by owl. Well, this woman wasn't really his mother, rather his biological mother's sister. His aunt acted as his mother, and wasn't that far off. She was only a couple years off, and was very similar. His biological mother died a couple years ago, a heart attack took her at only 47. For Stan to lose his mother was torture to him; she actually tried to keep him on the straight and narrow path, and was his non-evil parent.

Today, he was dressed especially eccentric. He wore a sleeveless turtleneck sweater, canary yellow in color. A thin and sparkly purple scarf lay atop of that. He wore especially tight jeans which were green, had holes in the knees, and were full of Happy Bunny iron-ons. The jeans were tucked into two tawny synthetic-leather boots, which were adorned with rainbow fake fur at the top. His hair was gelled and sprayed with the hair dye stuff. Today, he chose green with goldenrod yellow tips. He put some metallic-sheen butterfly stickers on his cheeks, he thought they were cute.

He had the parchment in his hand, as well as a pen. He sat at a table near a corner and started writing:

Dear Aunt Adya,

Thank you for the crackers you sent. They were great, and went well with the Butterbeers I had last night. There are still some left, and I will share them with some lucky person. You make the best crackers, they are so delicious and it's ingenious how you don't use anything from an animal to make them. You'll have to teach me how to do this some day, they'd be the boast of any party. I'm especially happy that the recipe makes a lot of them at once. That will be useful at party situations or gatherings.

Things at school are going great, there are some very lovely people here. There's buzz going around of a competition of some sort, but I never pay attention to that stuff. It's nonsense. However, I did make a lot of friends with my unorthodox ways. It makes a great conversation starter. I'd better finish the letter, or I might bore you to death with pointless rambling.

Love,
Stanley

He hardly ever used the proper form of his name for anything. However, this was a letter to home. He had to. He attached the paper to the leg of his snowy owl, Kunal. Despite the male name, it was a female owl. Stan took a cracker from the small tin of them that he brought up to the Owlery to snack on. He offered it to Kunal, who snapped it right up as if it were some poor rodent. Stan only brought a small fraction of the crackers that his aunt made with him to the Owlery. He had a lot more in the Gryffindor dormitories. The small tin was about the size of a novel, and it was thicker than most that he read. Of course, he considered that small, the larger tin was the size of a couple laptops end to end, and as thick as a Muggle biology text book. As soon as Kunal took off, he took a cracker from the tin and popped it in his mouth. It was absolutely fantastic. It melted in his mouth like butter, and tasted like the best cracker in the world.

Naomi made her way up to the Owlery, a letter snugly settled into her gloved hands. She had seen the weather that morning had not looked particularly warm and had immediately decided to dress in some winter wear. A long cardigan that reached her knees, tight black jeans, tall grey boots that reached her midcalf. She had also pulled on a matching grey hat and scarf, topping the outfit with the gloves she had been lucky enough to find. Ah, the wonders of fashion.

Her face may have seen unperturbed, but her mind was miles away, thinking about her mother and stepfather. There was nothing wrong with her parents, but it seemed there was nothing right with them either. She received weekly bundles of money and necessities, but the letters were oddly loveless and formal, just as her return letters were. She would inform them of the status of her classes and social standing and ask for the news that she cared nothing of.

It was all a charade, but Naomi's life was a series of formal rituals, things that simply had to be done. Her friends were not needed, but were outwardly acceptable. Her grades were only cared for, for the concept of them, and she only pretended to be normal for the sake of it. Really, she had stopped caring long ago.

She strode in and faltered. A completely odd boy was simply pigging out over a cracker. She reeled back and regained her composure, a simple, "Oh," leaving her lips. She forced herself to expand. "Sorry, I did not expect anyone else." She quickly walked past, planning to do her business and leave. She found a school owl and set about tying the letter to his leg, carefully avoiding eye contact with the strange boy.

Stan was snapped out of his cracker-distraction when he heard a strange voice. This person, whom he did not know was a sister of his, had briefly spoke to him. Of course, she seemed cold, like the moon in outer space when in the shadow of the Earth. That was the best way to describe it. Well, for him, anyway.

"Hey, how are you?" He wanted to speak to this girl for some reason. She seemed...familiar for reasons unknown. However, he wouldn't bring that up. He'd never bring something like that up because he had no tact to sugar coat it. Sugar coating things seemed like the biggest challenge to him, he couldn't do it for some reason. Not that he'd need to most of the time. He had a few friends, and they all understood that he lacked tact. This was fortunate for him, certainly

He held out his tin of crackers, shaking them slightly. "Want a cracker? They're really good".

The strange, and awkwardly-existing, person asked her how she was. She turned to stare at him, pausing as she was strapping the letter to the owl. "Excuse me?" she said in a quiet, appalled voice, her eyes wide and her eyebrows high. She shook her head, remembering that she needed to keep her cool to keep her appearance up.

"I mean, I am... fine." She nodded. As vague an answer as possible was the answer that she preferred in any given situation. She felt a small nip and she turned back to the owl, running a light finger down its back, between its wings. She returned to tying the small scroll to the dainty little school owl, checking the twine to make sure it was secure.

She glanced uneasily at the boy and lowered her voice as she scooped up the owl, whispering the address of the recipient of the letter to the little owl. She purred a thank you and lightly threw the owl out of the window, watching as it fluttered away. The boy asked if she wanted a cracker. An incredulous look on her face, she shook her head and said quietly, "No thank you."

Stan shrugged, "That's okay. Not many people know me well enough to take snacks from me anyway. At least, that's what my friends say". Stan did not have many friends, and when he said he did, he was usually lying. He was a bad liar, though, at least he tried though. He ran a finger through his gelled hair, getting a smudge of the dye upon his entire hand. It was layered that thick on him. He always wanted to layer it on thickly, that way it wouldn't get so faded so quickly. Then again, it did damage his hair a bit.

"All within my hands, love to death. Smack you 'round and 'round and....ALL WITHIN MY HANDS! Beware!" Stan didn't realize that he was singing along to the Metallica song playing on his enchanted mp3 player. He often switched the songs on his mp3 player when he was really bored but right now he stuck to this one song. It just seemed so...good right about now. "Love is control, I'll die if I let go!" He always sang whilst listening to music, except during classes. Sometimes. Then again, he could always mute himself.

Several owls got startled during the part of the song where the word "kill" was repeated. Stan repeated it as he listened to it. He wasn't paying very close attention to much, really. Just his music, and the girl. For some reason, he felt a connection to her. Was it love? He didn't know for sure. He wouldn't know. Love was the one thing he wasn't open about. It was a weakness that didn't detriment him much. He wasn't social enough for that to happen. He never was, but never was it his fault. People just thought he was weird.

Naomi nodded slowly, uneasiness settling into her as she talked to the boy. She had never been overly perceptive to people's motives, and that worried her. She could read your face better than a picture book, but when it came to sensing things... well, she had got herself into some unfortunate situations, which she hoped to avoid.

One way would be to leave now for this boy was not normal, and society had trained Naomi to understand that that obviously meant danger. He ran a hand over his thickly gelled hair, which she thought made it look greasy, and she saw dye covering the boys hands. Her lip curled and her nose scrunched as she stared at him as though he was crazy. How could anyone be okay with that?

He began to sing violent, scary, loud, and, moreover, strange lyrics to a song she assumed accompanied the torrent of unrecognizable screeching sound from a device hanging out of his ear. Naomi was not sure how it worked; all electronics went haywire around Hogwarts. Nevertheless, it was freaking her out. She slowly began to back away, towards the door.

Stan stopped for a moment, turning down his music for the first time since he'd been up here. The girl seemed to be frightened of him. He hadn't realized he'd been singing. He would never realize involuntary acts. Ones that he had no control over. That'd make him too sane. He clearly wasn't the type to be sane. At least, not by society's standards. Society can suck it, he thought to himself, who needs it?

He cleared his throat, "Uhm...sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry for it". He didn't even know what he did wrong. Unless someone told him right flat out what he did. Even then, he'd need it explained why it was wrong. He peered down at his hand, which was still covered in the stuff from his hair. He grabbed a moist towlette from his pocket, which was still in its wrapper, and wiped off his hand. The green dye stained the wet napkin in the shape of a heart. He looked at it, then uttered "that's odd" before tossing it away in a trash bin in the corner. His butterfly stickers glimmered in the sun.

He apologized and Naomi felt the need to deny the need for an apology, since it was not normal for someone to be that weirded out by another student. She did not want to seem like an uptight jerk, but still... the kid sort of creeped out. She swore she must have seen him before but was not sure from where- though it was hard to believe she could forget meeting such a... different... character.

"No, no..." she said. "It's just... You were singing sort of loudly and your music was loud. I, uh-" she winced. "I have sensitive hearing I guess." She pointed at her ears, and nodded her head. He wiped the dye onto a towelette and she felt her face contract slightly but she tried to say politely, "You should probably let the die settle first..."

Stan seemed like an understanding, sweet guy. Friendly, though he lacked tact. "Oh, I apologize for the singing and making your ears hurt". For some reason, he felt really bad when he hurt this particular person. He usually didn't, and felt free to hurt others in the same manner. He had hardly any manners, so he'd just seemed atavistic compared to other people. Atavistic. Much like his favorite kind of stress relief music. Metal. It made him seem invincible when he listened to it. Impervious to mental strain, or even physical. It made some chemical reaction happen that wasn't likely to do so.

He focused on the dye-stained towlette, then back at the girl. "I don't think this dye really dries. Or, when it does it easily comes off regardless to make it easier to wash out. Inconvenient, really, unless you're a fan of changing your hair color every day. I always was, it's like choosing your outfit for today but cooler. You can make it so that the colors in your hair are all crazy, or make it uniform. It wouldn't matter, as long as you like it. The craziest I done was to stencil my name in the back of my hair, but that failed. I couldn't really reach, nor see to do it right". He laughed a little. "I think you'd look good with green and red, like an apple".

He apologized and she tried to keep herself from wincing at the apology, which seemed to hit her worse than the singing and the music. She did not need to seem like a fun-squashing stiff. Her reputation said that she was a partying, popular young woman, even though she really did not care for the people her reputation impressed. Nevertheless, a reputation had to be upheld.

She found it strange that for the second time in one week, she was discussing hair dye with a stranger, as she had done with another Slytherin girl earlier in the week at breakfast. She replied, "All hair dye dries... You have to let it set though... And not over use it." Her tone was almost condescending, but she quickly replied to his comment by saying, "Oh no, hair dying is not for me. I've considered it, but I don't want to damage my hair."