Pirates and Lullabies

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How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad

To make you make the call, that havin' no life at all

Is better than the life that you had

How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go

How do you get that lonely... and nobody know

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All his life, his father had muttered that there was something not right about his son. "It's unnatural the way that boy behaves," he would complain loudly to all of his friends. "He's a freak! There's no possible way that that whelp could be my child!"

What? Just because I don't want to follow in your footsteps, Father dear? Theodore wondered, trying to ignore the raging arguments between his parents.

Really, he thought that the whole idea of pureblood supremacy was a bit of a farce. Being pureblooded hadn't helped his parents' marriage--they'd divorced bitterly when he was six. They'd divorced because of him, in fact; his father simply couldn't reconcile his son's reality with the fantasy child he'd held in his mind.

You'd think the courts would have had the sense to leave me with Mother--at least she wanted me. But no. "A boy needs his father," they decided. "He's a young child who needs his father's influence." He snorted. And here I thought the Ministry wanted to eliminate Death Eaters, not encourage recruitment.

He hadn't thought it possible that it would actually be worse at Hogwarts. After all, living in a house with a man who hated him would certainly be the worst thing he'd experience. Theodore hadn't quite reckoned on being sorted into Slytherin, though. As the Sorting Hat announced its decision, the one thought in the eleven-year-old's mind was, Terrific. I've gone from a house where I'm hated into a House where I'm hated. It was at that moment that he lost any faith in any Gods. No one, he reasoned, was actually that cruel.

Fortunately, most of his Housemates left him alone. Slytherin House loyalty was all that united his year group. He knew that Draco Malfoy and his cronies would likely become Death Eaters--they embraced their fathers' philosophies enthusiastically, and enjoyed inflicting pain on others. His other Housemates--Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Millicent Bulstrode, and Blaise Zabini--might or might not dance to the Dark Lord's tune. None of the Slytherins were to be trusted, in any case.

As a result of his mistrust, Theodore found himself constantly on the outside looking into the lives of others. A true Slytherin at last, he assimilated the information he'd gathered on his fellows: Zabini was desperately attempting to not love Hermione Granger, Greengrass planned on running away to France after 7th year with Parkinson, and Bulstrode was actually a halfblood--she was in Slytherin because really, she just wanted to prove herself to be better than her parents claimed. Her home made his father's house seem like paradise, really.

What his outsider status amounted to was that he was now a 7th year student at Hogwarts, who had made not a single friend in his time here. He was surprised to find that he was lonely. Since he had thus far put so much time and effort into remaining apart from people who constantly wanted things from him, he had no idea how to go about telling another person that he needed something from them.