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◆ year, six ◆ patronus, grizzly bear ◆ house, slytherin ◆ crush, elle ◆ location, great hall ◆ tagged, sarah
Oscar grinned at Sarah as she sat down next to him, his grogginess all but worn away. She was a good friend, and he loved her, he really did. After six years of constantly being with someone, you get to know them really well, and Oscar was one of those people who could get pretty attached. He had met Sarah their first year at Hogwarts, in the second week of school. It had taken him a little while to find the right group of people. First he tried a few Slytherin boys, but they kind of revolted him. He met a few Ravenclaws, and even tried to be friends with a Gryffindor (yeah, that didn't last long...), but he met Sarah, and they were fast friends. They were as close as siblings, now, and he felt lonely when she wasn't around for a long time.
Of course, that isn't saying much. Oscar felt lonely a lot, not just when his friends were off doing something. He felt lonely when he was in a crowd at a quidditch game, when he was eating in the Great Hall, when he was learning history from Prof. Binns, when he was talking to his friends, when he was going to sleep....since his fifth year at Hogwarts he'd started feeling pains of loneliness wherever he was. Especially at home. Hogwarts was fun, and interesting, and full of people he liked and enjoyed. His home...well, it made him tired. He felt like he was exerting so much energy around his family just to stay cool and not freak out and run away, or do something horrible to them. Kids are supposed to love their families, right? Oscar felt that was what was expected, anyway. And yeah, sure, sometimes he did truly love his parents and his siblings. But most of the time: well, most of the time he could do without them. He was tired of them. They'd shoved messages and ideas down his throat since he was born, only ever allowing him to live one way. Their way, or the high way. That was the rule. Sometimes Oscar had moments of clarity where he could see his flaws as clear as day, and he saw all of them at once. It ruined his self esteem when he saw them, but at least he wasn't blind, like most of the time. That's what he would tell himself, anyway, when he was moping around, by himself, feeling like a horrible human being.
Oscar knew he wasn't perfect, and though he was proud of his virtues, his vices were no mystery to him. He knew he hated muggle borns. That he knew for sure. He'd never talked to a muggle born he didn't have an immidiate dislike for. He tried to hide it sometimes, but other times, he had open disgust. He blamed his parents for that trait. He knew it was wrong; everyone said it was wrong (well, everyone outside Slytherin, anyway), but he couldn't help it. Every time he looked at a muggle born, and tried to like them, he just felt his parents bearing down upon him, cursing him as a traitor to their family and their kind, accepting weaklings and lessers into his society. He felt, somehow, like he was letting them down. There were days he wanted to be free, though. Days in the winter, when the ice made his even toned face ruddy and sanguine, when he got a letter from home that made him want to leave his family forever and just start afresh, when he just wanted to go up to any muggle born and love them. Just to spite his parents, and their antiquated values. He didn't want any part in them. Rebel, he kept saying to himself, I want to rebel. But every time he tried, chains thick and heavy weighed him down. They were silver and green, but rusted black as onyx. They went back generations and they kept him down. He was a prisoner to them. He couldn't get out. His own mind and heart were against him. Oscar was trapped. And he knew, in the recesses of his mind, that if he stayed trapped much longer, there would be no way out. He'd be like his parents, and their parents, and their parents, still. He'd be petrified if he stayed there much longer, with the same ideologies constantly around him.
If he was being honest with himself, Oscar knew there was never any hope for him, from the start. It was depressing, and isolating, to think that. But he couldn't help it. It's what he believed.
None of the former went through Oscar's mind, though, when Sarah sat down beside him. It is only an aside the narrater has been so bold as to present. He was too busy thinking about how good the oatmeal was, and how he was glad he didn't have to sit by himself anymore. The other Slytherins that had come to the table were all a year above him, and had clumped together on the edge of the table, while he sat towards the middle. Not that minded, it was just a bit awkward for him to have no one to talk to. After all, he was still a teenager, and hated feeling ostracized, as any teenager would.
"How'd you sleep?" He asked the girl beside him, leaning back and rubbing his stomach, full to the brim, smiling. "Did the mermaids wake you up, too? They got me up...must have been seven in the morning. It sucks because they come right next to my window and tap on it, screaming half the time like banshees, until basically everyone in the whole dorm is awake and miserable." The dark haired boy sighed, and gave a soft chuckle as a thought breached him, "actually, now that I say it aloud, they sound kind of like Gryffindors, huh, Sar?" He grinned at her, though his joke was kind of bad. He didn't really care, he just liked making conversation. Speaking of Gryffindors reminded him of the recently canceled match. He knew it was Gryffindor v. ....Hufflepuff? It may have been Ravenclaw. He didn't keep up with it as much as other guys, unless it was a game where his own house was involved. Of course, their being Slytherin's enemies in the sport, it was almost expected they knew what games the lions were playing. Sometimes Oscar would get letters from home saying that this building had been defaced, or that shoppe had been vandalized. Once they even told him one of their friends, a man by the name of Vladimir Vingorfimmple, had gone missing, and they suspected one of the radical groups of it. That had really startled Oscar; he hadn't realized things were so drastic. Vlad, if he remembered, was a simpleton, but in charge of an important company, and it was a big deal he had been stolen away, or killed, or....whatever happened to him. Death, Oscar had learned, was not the worst fate. An old man had told him that once, when he was small. His words exactly were, "Death is easy, little boy, compared to some destinies. It is a gift in black silk paper, most are afraid of opening it, but when you can choose between the black gift and the red one, people will always want the black." The boy didn't think he'd ever forget that lesson. Whether he knew which he would choose, if the time ever came, he knew not. He doubted he was strong enough for the red gift, and yet, to admit he was cowardly enough for the black would wound him too much. He went back and forth, but never knew for certain.
