All That Glitters Private

Jake was on his way to Charms class, and he REALLY hoped he wasn't gonna be late. It was a worry that Jake had a lot, and so he usually left early to make sure that it wouldn't happen. Being late would mean getting in trouble, but the most horriblest part wasn't even the threat of detention or the house points that might be taken away (though those were of course worries too). The worst part of it all would be having to walk in and have the whole class start staring at you when it happened. Even the thought of that was enough to make Jake shiver, and so he would be on his way on time, and he would get to class, and find a seat close enough to get a good view of the professor and the board, but far enough away from the other children's watching eyes.

There was a lot to be scared of in class, but there was a lot to be amazed at too. Every new charm filled Jake with wonder. Magic could do anything! Anything at all! And every single week he was seeing more and more of it. When it was time for demonstrations, Jake was as enthralled as any student, but when it came time for practice (the part his classmates seemed to love most), Jake's excitement would die and he would sink down into his chair. He had yet to make much headway with his wand. Deep down inside he would wonder if he really WAS a wizard, or if there'd been some kind of awful mistake, and then something would happen - his wand would spark, a feather would float for just a moment, and he'd realize there WAS magic inside him. What he didn't have was control of it, and he was too shy to ask anybody for help in class - especially not the teachers. Back in Hufflepuff common room, some of his friends had started to coach him...he was starting to finally learn, but whenever he was in class it was like his mind went blank, and all he could think of was the other kids watching him mess up and then his wand just no longer wanted to do anything at all.

As Jake muttered the incantation to the levitation charm in his head, he suddenly heard a voice that made him jump. It was hard not to get jumpy in the corridors because you never knew who was going to pop out at you. His heart beat quickly - was it Kyle?? But he realized soon that this voice wasn't a bully. It wasn't even a kid at all. Jake's head turned left and right with confusion, but there was nobody ELSE in the hallway, so 'boy' HAD to be him. He looked up hesitantly and took in the sight of the well-dressed man standing in the door way, and then slowly the little Hufflepuff approached.

Jake swallowed. He got shy around people that he didn't know...Grownups were easier than kids by a little, but he still wasn't very good at it...and it was much much harder without his Mum and Dad there to introduce him so all he had to do was wave. But Jake wasn't one to disobey either. At home, if somebody he didn't know had called out to him (like at the park or something), he would have been much more wary of strangers...but strangers were outside and there weren't any strangers at school - just teachers, mostly. He hadn't seen this teacher before, but there were lots that he didn't know yet - he probably taught the bigger kids.

Why was he calling him though...? Did the man need help...? Or...had Jake done something wrong...? He tried and tried to think of what it might have been - he wasn't late yet, and he couldn't think of any rules he had broken, but what if he'd broken one he hadn't even known about...?

"Yessir," Jake mumbled, entering the room and looking up at the man. Jake was a very small boy, and so he had to look very far up."A-am I in trouble...?" he asked nervously, squirming in place and fidgeting with robes that looked far too small for any Hogwarts student, though Jake fit perfectly within them.

Every single living being makes noise. From the shuffling of their feet and the rustling of their clothes to the sounds of their voice and their interaction with the environment around him. Many try to stifle their presence, make themselves invisible. As invisible as they sometimes feel. As invisible as they sometimes wished they were. Careful movements, a light foot on the floor and smooth purposeful motions of their arms and their legs. A sort of grace that obfuscates their presence but they could never truly hide. The grumble of their stomach, the incessant beat of their heart would pound with a maddening rhythm.

And this boy had no grace...

When he called out to him, the heart would hasten to the cadence of a gallop and perhaps that was the trembling flesh he heard beneath the child's garments. The boy would respond with concern but also compliance as he approached. Lazarus would assess the boy -- too small and timid, likely fragile and so very full of fear.

"Are you well child?" The man in a fine suit would ask as casually as one would ask about the weather. "Why in the world would you be in any sort of trouble?" He would further inquire as he knelt down on a single knee to get closer to the child's level. "You don't seem like the sort that would ever be in trouble... have I misapprehended you?" Not that it mattered if he had, only the boy's answer truly mattered. "You see, I am very much in need of assistance," he continued. 

It was likely he would defer to an adult, which was perfectly fine with Lazarus. "I fear I have gotten myself quite lost and I would love nothing more than to be brought to the place I must be before someone worries." He eyed the child's yellow adornments, House Hufflepuff. "My name is Lazarus Plott, oh what am I saying... you surely knew who I was," he ego was showing just a bit. "It is intended that I meet with your Head of House in..." he eyed the yellow once again "...Hufflepuff."

There was a strange, almost dangerous look in Lazarus' eyes. It was the sort of look a more worldly person would have possibly noted, but not a child. No, not a child at all. "There is still time," he was referring to the Charms class. After all, young Jake was the very first to amble down the hall. The smallest and the most fragile. Now also, the most vulnerable. "Before your class starts. I am certain that your Head of House would be most appreciative."

Why House Hufflepuff? Well, the reason was simple, it was not Hufflepuff in particular but rather a fact with every House. The way in was arduous and intended to prevent the intrusion of interlopers. Interlopers such as Lazarus Plott. "What is your name young man? I must know the name of the young person that is about to aid me in my time of need." 

Jake looked up uneasily as the man asked him questions and lowered himself down to one knee...the boy's body language defensive, though loosening slightly when the grown-up came closer to his level and didn't look quite so tall. The man spoke nicely to Jake. He told him that he wasn't in trouble. Even said he didn't think Jake would EVER be in trouble - before asking if he had misjudged. "Nn mm," the boy denied, shaking his head. "I don't think so..." It was true...he'd never been in trouble at school. Almost never at home either...sometimes he had gotten time-outs but it wasn't a lot, and usually his Mum had said it was ok when she saw that Jake felt even more bad from the deed alone than from the punishment. He did what he was supposed to...he was one of the only kids who always did...the man seemed like he could see that. Jake sighed with relief.

Actually...it wasn't about Jake being in trouble at all. It was the MAN who was in trouble...Big trouble. Jake knew what it was like to be lost. He had got lost a LOT when he had arrived at school...sometimes he still did. It was scary - to have no idea where you were going until you couldn't help but cry. It was even more scarier since the hallways and the stairs at school didn't always go to the same places. And Jake also knew very well about how not showing up when you were supposed to could really make somebody worry, and wasn't that one of the worst feelings of all? It sounded like the man was having a really bad day...he needed somebody's help...but how could Jake help him? Maybe he needed to find somebody who would know what to do.

"I...I don't know who you are Sir..." Jake admitted softly. "I'm a muggleborn, ya see..." he recited...used to explaining away his lack of knowledge. But when Lazarus mentioned Jake's head-of-house the boy's expression changed. "Oh Professor Browne!" Jake said, brightening up instantly at the mention of the friendly and kind man who Jake had already begun to think of like a father and visited quite often to talk about his day. Even the mention of him was a comfort to Jake, and it was the first time his features seemed relaxed.

But when the conversation returned to him, Jake felt the shyness returning and shrank in upon himself. "Um....I'm Jake..." the boy said in a little voice. Something in the man's questioning tone made Jake want to stare at the floor as he often did when people were looking at him too closely. It made him really wish once more that there was another grown-up here to help them both. But he didn't want to leave the man lost and alone...and if he could help him it sounded like the kind of thing Professor Browne would be proud of him about.

"Um, I...I-I can take ya there if ya want me to...I do know the way," Jake explained. He didn't know if he could help a grown-up, but a grown-up could help a grown-up and Professor Browne could help anybody. He would surely know what to do...and Jake would have helped them both. Shy and cautious as he was, Jake felt his hand drifting out without really meaning to offer it.

Like many purebloods, there was a level of dignity in knowing just how pure ones blood actually was. While the Sacred 28 flaunted their status, it was indeed boast-worthy. He inhaled sharply, the boy was muggle. Well, too much muggle to... ugh... touch. Rather than pat the youngster on the shoulder or the top of his head, the edges of his lips dipped downward into a slight frown as shifted back from the boy a few inches and stood to his full height. A hint of a floral scent, of wisteria would pass by Jake as the man stood. 

"It must be hard," he commented. "Being here," he added as he started to walk around Jake leaving plenty of space for Merlin. "With your... condition," he let out a small cough. It was something to be ashamed of, not that he was about to say that outright. He had come to Hogwarts with a herd of muggleborns, the lowest of magical society. "My students struggle to fit in at Ilvermorny," he admitted. "It is difficult to be trapped between two worlds and fitting into neither. Being so small..." his gloved hand rested on the door frame. "The world has a habit of being terribly unkind."

He walked past Jake into the hall. To the left was a row of suits of armor and great paned windows that overlooked the courtyard. The sun was shining, the ground was covered in a snowy sheen. It was too cold to go outsize. Thick frost clung to the window edges. Lazarus glanced outside. It was cold in New York this time of year also, miserable time for the most part but it had its advantages. 

"We should hurry, you would not want to be late for class now would we?" The question was of course rhetorical, this was the sort of boy that would show up to class on a day it was canceled just in case that truth had changed. "Your kindness should be rewarded and I do not want to award your efforts with being late to class," yes there was a 'reward' involved. Perhaps a commendation. Perhaps a sweet. Perhaps something else from the stranger that the young boy was now accompanying.

"It must be hard. Being here with your... condition,"

Jake stopped short.

"M-my c-condition...?" the young Puff stammered nervously. The words had taken him by surprise like a dose of cold water being thrown upon him. They had been delivered sharply - knowingly - and for one sickening moment Jake was sure that the man was referring to his deepest secret - the one that still afflicted him at night. He couldn't know that...he couldn't...! Had the house elves told? Jake's heart was racing again, as guilt and shame crept upon his face, but only a moment later he realized the truth of what condition the man meant - one which was not far separated in the boy's mind, but bore different implications.

"Oh..." Jake replied sadly. He understood now. The man hadn't been talking about anything he couldn't see. What he meant was something that he had known as soon as he'd seen Jake. What he was saying was that Jake was small.

Jake knew he was small. He had always known. Nobody had ever guessed his age right on the first try. He knew that kids at school asked him if he was old enough to be here, and only half of them were just doing it to make him feel bad. He knew it was the first thing anybody ever noticed...any time they ever looked at him. He knew he got laughed at...teased...called a shrimp or a baby...and he knew what it had felt like arriving at school and staring up up up at a sea of giant faces, hugging his luggage for dear life. It had been terrifying. He was never going to forget it.

Trapped between two worlds...fitting into neither. It was like the man could read his mind or something...but the things he was saying were sensitive ones...ones that made Jake blush, and lower his head to stare at the ground. They were words that cut deeply to his soul, and brought a pang of horrible familiarity. How many times had he lay in bed and thought the same?

A memory came back...one he thought of on many scary nights when he felt at his loneliest...when the world felt too hard to deal with. It hadn't even been a year ago. He had had on his favorite jammies - the warm footie jammies with the ducks on it. He'd been sleepy on the couch, until his Mum had picked him up and carried him to his bedroom. She'd lay him down...put him under the covers. He'd been hugging his stuffies...being tucked in for the night. Mum had sat down on the bed with him and he'd lay his head on her lap. She'd began to read to him...one of his favorite stories from when he was little. There had been no sounds that weren't supposed to be there, nothing to frighten him. Nothing could get him at all. She'd kissed him goodnight. Turned on his nightlight. He had been warm, and safe, and happy...and he'd known that anything he needed would be there.

But now the memory had been darkened by shame...because now he had met George, and Jack, and Ozzy. He had met Gem, and Saskia, and Lamik. He had met kids around his age, and he knew what world he was supposed to be living in...

He WASN'T a little kid - not anymore. He was a 'preteen' now. He was eleven. Or at least he was supposed to be...He was supposed to be, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't keep up. What was WRONG with him? Why could Jack and George do so much more than he could? Why did it take all he had just trying to keep up with the other boys, and even still...knowing that he never quite could? No matter how hard he tried? There wasn't an answer really...he was just made that way...and people told him. They always did.

He cried about it sometimes...when he lay in bed. Cried about it even though he knew that that wasn't what big kids were supposed to do....But he couldn't help himself...it always happened. Deep down he wanted desperately to fit in...who didn't...? But he couldn't. He didn't fit in with anybody...and he wasn't sure he ever would. And when it got really hard he would long for his parents and his room and the safety of little kid world, even though he knew that it wasn't where he belonged...but then where did he belong? If he didn't belong in big kid world either?

And what did it really mean to try to fit in a preteen world? Did it mean he had to do away with his nightlight? With Freddie and Patches - his favorite stuffed animals? Did it mean that he couldn't watch the shows he liked anymore because they weren't for bigger kids? And what if somebody found out that he still liked them?

It couldn't mean all that...it just couldn't...because even if it did Jake knew that he couldn't do it.

Jake sighed, looking down at his small robes, and standing by the window. They were on a mission but he'd forgotten all about that. He made a striking figure - a little boy dwarfed by an enormous window...staring out at a white expanse that seemed to go on forever. He wished once again, as he often did, that he was home in Wiltshire, with his parents, and snowmen, and hot cocoa. He wasn't there though, he was at Hogwarts...and at school there was no protection from an unkind world, as he had already learned all too well.

"I know..." he finally answered. "But it won't be forever..." the boy mumbled, more to himself than the man. He stood up a little taller as best he could, but his voice revealed what he tried to hide...that he wasn't sure he believed it. That was what he'd always been told, but it never ever felt like it. Every day he woke up and hoped that today was the day he'd grow bigger...but whenever he measured himself it was always the same. Day after day after day. HE was the same. He was always the same.

He thought again about that unkind place the world could be...he thought of staring up at a bully who seemed twice his size and was grinning that shark's grin...feeling so small and too terrified to move or do anything at all...shaking, powerless, scared....Jake sniffled, and in that horrifying moment he realized that he might cry. "U-um, it's this way..." the fair-haired boy mumbled, choking down that feeling as best he could, and shuffling past the man bashfully. He didn't want to be late to class and he wanted to help.

"But it won't be forever..."

"Nothing wrong with a bit of futile hope," Lazarus replied as he followed the youngster down the hall. "But sadly irremediable." There was almost a tenderness to those words. A hint of sadness. The best the boy could hope for, much like his low stratum teens that be brought with him, was to abandon their muggle ways and find a wizarding partner that was willing to take a chance on them. The divide between muggles, muggle borns, wizard borns and pure-bloods is more practical than most wish to admit. Yes, there is some classist elitism. A sense of superior caste. However, there is also the matter of biology. Every parent wishes the same thing for their child: that they would have happy and full lives. Knowing some can have and some do not have, nor can they ever have that spark is maddening. Terrifying.

Is it merely genetics or is it like a disease? Like when a child becomes a diabetic. A propensity, a possibility of becoming (or not) a wizard based on not only their blood but on their world. And for the unlucky few, the squibs, it is a hell that these children would never fully grasp. To know of the power, the possibility and the potential but to never be able to live it. It was the cruelest taunt.

It was fear that gave the mask the power to capture one's will as it had Lazarus'. Ben was far from fearless and it was that dread that gave the mask a foothold on his heart. It was no different for Lazarus. It was a tragic fear truly, this fear of muggles. He was less concerned with the creation of a squib, unlike his puppet master that whispered dark nothings into his ear. It was the duality of wizardkind and mugglekind. There was good reason to keep them both separate -- the second wizarding war, scourers and witch hunters being examples. Every time those kids returned home to their friends and their families, the wizarding world as they knew it was at risk. Nobody should have found those children and invited them to Ilvermorny, or in this case Hogwarts. It was too dangerous!

His hand wandered to the angle of his jaw, he felt the unseen seam restlessly with his fingertip.

Heading to Hufflepuff's Head of House Office. [Link]