Odd

[Arden Patricks]

I smile very slightly to myself, shaking my head with amusement as I round the corner of the Shrieking Shack and sit down against the wall. It’s a surprisingly nice day out for this time of year, not too hot yet not cold or rainy or any such thing. And the amusement, of course, stems from coming to a place that I spent a lot of my time when I was a kid. It feels like I was absolutely tiny back then, even though technically I haven’t changed in appearance at all. But maturity-wise, I was little, and it’s funny now to think of spending so much of my time in places like this.

I no longer spend much time in places like Hogsmeade, of course, but today Lilith enlisted me with picking up her monthly order of chocolate from Honeydukes, because she had too many other errands to run and had to take the kids with her. So, while I was in the area I thought I’d stop by a few of my old haunts… or one of my old haunts, anyway, since the forest holds little appeal and I can’t go up to the castle, really. Even if I could, I'd feel far too out of place. So instead, I'm laughing silently to myself behind the shrieking shack. Because that won't look odd to anyone who passes by.

[Finley Andrews]

Finley had been in a very strange mood recently. For about two months.
He thought the word 'about' in that context to inject a casual indifference that he didn't possess into his thought process and then wandered why on earth he would bother because it wasn't as if anyone could hear his thoughts besides him anyway.
Unless there was a reader about...his head snapped up from where he'd had his eyes fixed on the path under his feet to check around furtively just in case. No, no strange readers lurking around the fences by the shrieking shack.
Thank God.
He was digressing, and again he wasn't sure why that bothered him. If you were allowed to digress anywhere surely it'd be inside his own head? No one else could hear it, he'd just done the paranoid double check to make sure no one was lurking about, staring at him as if they could see his inner most thoughts...
Stop it.
He was digressing again.

He couldn't even remember where the thought train had started.
Oh yes...For about two months...back on track...
He knew it wasn't about two months because he'd been counting down the days. He knew with excruciating accuracy that it'd been 56 days since then, which is admittedly about two months...but why be vague when you can be precise?
It'd been 56 days since he'd been called up to his head of house's offices and informed in a very blunt Slytherin manner, that he had the utmost sympathies of the staff here at Hogwarts, but his father had been put under arrest, taken into Azkaban for life without trial. He'd managed to stay sombre and blank faced for the whole time he sat there, glancing around at the stone walls and curious floating things in jars, waiting patiently to be excused, and then he'd gone back to his common room and sat in the corner, and he'd laughed. He'd laughed so hard that he'd cried until he felt sick, and then he'd laughed even harder.
No one really paid him any attention because no one really did that anyway.
He was a nut job. No one ever called him that, because no one ever noticed that he was, but he knew it and that was damn well enough.
He'd been laughing on and off for 56 days now, but he wasn't laughing right now. It was an 'off' spell in the on and off cheeriness.

It was hard to imagine this point in his life. It was a turning point, moment of transition, whatever he thought of it as. It was the end of subservience, the end of abuse and neglect, the beginning of freedom.
He was not an 'it' anymore. He was Finley Dean Andrews and-...and what?
Maybe he'd start by losing the Andrews bit, because he wasn't one. And the Dean bit, he didn't even know who'd given him that part of his name. And Finley could go too, it really was a ridiculous name.
Shit.
Now he was an 'it' again.
Bollocks.

Shaking his head, he squinted slightly at the glare of the sun as he glanced around at the trees for those elusive readers again, then shrugged off his jacket and tied it around his waist, starting to trudge up towards the shack again.
It was pretty warm, and there was only a couple of months until the school broke up for summer. He was a little worried about that, because he didn't know what he was going to do then. His mother was out of the question, as she always was. So it looked like he was going back to Adalia and his cousins.
Joy.
He'd rather stay at school.
He'd quite like to be at school now, but he didn't really feel like being there. He'd gone out on a Hogsmeade trip. He'd started off hanging around with Poppy for a little while, but then she'd met up with her other friends, the ones he didn't like. And he decided to keep up the pretense that the Hunt and Andrews animosity was still very much alive and gone off on his own.
And he decided he'd quite like to be cliched and do as loners are supposed to do and come up here. If this was one of those horror books he liked to read, then he'd probably be murdered in a brutal way very very soon.
He laughed softly under his breath at the thought, reaching the building and running his hand along the side of it as he circled it idly for lack of anything better to do.
It was only as he rounded the corner and saw a woman sitting up against the wall - laughing if he wasn't mistaken - that he thought maybe there was an essence of truth to his thought process. Just his luck to come across the laughing psychopath that would kill him brutally with a smile on her face behind the shrieking shack.
Just his luck.

[Arden Patricks]

As soon as I think about this, about the fact that I’m sort of out in public even if hardly anybody comes around here, I try to swallow back my silent laughter and manage to reduce it to just a smile as I continue shaking my head.

If I decide to be honest with myself, I really haven’t changed that much since school, though I don’t hang out in dangerous places anymore when I’m upset. Instead I just magically seal all the entrances to my house and go curl up in a corner. I can’t really say whether that’s an improvement. And I also can’t say that I don’t still like it here, ‘cause I do. It’s quiet, and isolated. Nobody comes here, really, but a handful of daredevils and the loner sorts of kids like I was.

I’m going to take a stab at it and say that the tiny sort of pale boy who’s just arrived here is one of the latter, and I swallow back the smile with a startled sort of look followed by a weak attempt at another smile. “Sorry,” I say quietly. “Did you want to be alone here?”

Not that I’m necessarily planning to leave if he did, because in that case he’s probably upset. But I do have to apologize, I think because this is Hogwarts student territory and I shouldn’t really be here.

[Finley Andrews]

"No," he spoke very abruptly when he came to think of it.
He didn't speak to people very often, but when he did his voice usually sounded choked, with some sort of strained force behind it. As if he was resisting the urge to shout.
You really are weird, It.

"I-...didn't figure anyone would be here," After the initial barked word, this sentence sort of flowed better after the initial stammering. Almost as if he spoke every day. Ha.
As if.
You're old, He swallowed back this statement with a small laugh, so quiet he could be exhaling with a nervous undercurrent to it.
He didn't want to say it out loud, but it was true. She was old, too old to be up here. This is where the suicidal kids go, or the kids like him go, or the sexually active kids looking for new thrills go...she was too old to be here.

[Arden Patricks]

"Neither did I whenever I came out here," I say, shaking my head and then glancing upward at the shrieking shack. "But... you don't mind that I am?" I add, double-checking even though I kind of do want to leave now that there's some kid here, must be a first or second year. I can handle kids up until they're about six or seven, when they're just plain small and don't really understand you. Then when they get to be fifteen or sixteen or so they're almost adults and capable of having real conversations with. But those in between are just kids, the weird kind, and I tend to shy away from them a bit. I don't know how to strike the right balance between condescending and treating them like they're too old.

But if this is still the loners' spot, the suicidal spot - and I imagine it is - then I can't just walk away without seeing if the kid is all right.

[Finley Andrews]

"No," He shook his head perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
It wasn't that he wanted her to be here, or that he didn't want her to be here, he was just perhaps a little too eager to show that he didn't mind and made it look like he did.
So far...he'd lost himself a few points of social interaction skill, and he could tell he was just going to keep losing them.

Keeping his hand on the side of the building as if he was fully prepared to push off from it and run if he needed to and she did turn out to be a serial killer, he kept a wary eye on her for perhaps too long before glancing away again at an attempt at casual.
"You're too old to be a student," He stated the obvious in the hopes that he could avoid straight out asking her what the hell she was doing here in the first place.

[Arden Patricks]

I raise my eyebrows at the weird way he shakes his head, but shrug it off. He seems a little twitchy, but that's expected. If he wasn't a little bit odd he wouldn't be here. Then I laugh slightly at his next statement, shaking my head. "No, just a bit. I graduated nine years ago. But I always liked it here and I was in Hogsmeade...." I shrug slightly. "What's your excuse?"
Maybe I really can just talk to him like he's an actual person rather than a kid. He doesn't seem that bad.

[Finley Andrews]

"I've always liked it here and I was in Hogsmeade," He repeated, shaking his head wryly. What more to it was than that?
He could hardly explain to a complete stranger that he hated his peers and his peers rarely noticed his existence. That his father had been put in Azkaban and his mother had serious abandonment issues so he needed somewhere to clear his head and totally be at peace.
Can't really say that to a complete stranger.

"Nine years ago? Really?" He raised a cynical eyebrow as if she might be lying to him, "You don't look that old."
He only realised after he said it that this might be offensive, and a few seconds later it occured to him that late twenties really isn't that old. It's only old if you're a twelve year old.

[Arden Patricks]

I smile again slightly, tilting my head, as he repeats my own words back at me, and then laughing slightly. I was actually a little bit surprised, and pleased, that he said right off I looked too old to be a student. Maybe I'm slowly catching up to my own age - just not there yet.
"Yes, so I've been told," I nod. "And what are you, nine?" I raise my eyebrows at him in challenge.

[Finley Andrews]

He shook his head, quickly stifling a grin at that before it could properly take root, "Do I look nine?"
He decided after this that maybe he didn't really want an answer to this. He was usually treated younger than he was on the few occasions he was treated like anything at all, and he wasn't sure what this meant exactly. He'd never thought he looked particularly young for his age.

[Arden Patricks]

"You might." I shrug, honestly not really sure. I'm a pretty poor guesser of ages, really. "Or maybe that was just payback. But yes, I really did graduate almost nine years ago, but before that I really liked it here." I shrug slightly.

[Finley Andrews]

"That'd mean you're like...pushing thirty," He shook his head.
His parents were pushing thirty. His mother looked it, his father looked older, his aunt looked older still. She didn't.
Although, he really had no reason to believe anyone would lie about their age to him anyway, and he really didn't have much reason to care whether she lied to him or not.
So he just shrugged, "Whatever."

Then raised an eyebrow, "You really liked it here? Why? If you graduated nine years ago...that would be in the first war," He wrinkled his nose in disgust without really thinking about it, "And wouldn't this be the ideal place to come across...you know...one of the others?"
He didn't know what made him assume she hadn't been one, except that she didn't look like any Death Eater he'd ever seen before. And he'd seen a fair few.

[Arden Patricks]

Smart kid, I think first, then wonder if I was underestimating his intelligence to begin with to think that. I shrug slightly. "Forest was a worse place, but I liked it there too. And, really, you could run across a Death Eater pretty much anywhere. Friend of my brother's was murdered in the Potions room... I was tortured on the Quidditch pitch once... and my sister got attacked in the greenhouses." I shrug again. "So, really... the bad guys don't always lurk where you expect. They can be anywhere. Not to make you paranoid."

Upon further reflection, I don't think I should have told him all that. I probably should just stop talking to kids altogether. I shake my head slowly. "But on the other hand, there aren't as many bad guys anymore... and how old are you, anyway?"

[Finley Andrews]

Finley's eyes widened surruptiously at that.
Okay, maybe she was a psycho. It wouldn't be the first time he misudged someone.
Honestly, who can really speak about murders and torture that casually?
Although, he was probably just being naive again, it was his own inability to understand probably.
He did doubt that she could make him any more paranoid if she tried though, he was already neurotic enough.

"Uh-huh," He replied slowly, "I'm twelve anyway."
This would probably be the point where he introduced himself, but then he remembered he didn't have a name because he'd just got rid of it and that also he'd just decided she was a psycho anyway.
He was strangely at ease with that.

[Arden Patricks]

"Right." I nod, biting the edge of my lip. I probably should not have told a twelve-year-old that someone was murdered in the Potions room. I've probably given him nightmares or something. Though, unless he's a muggleborn his parents probably were around here during the war. So, since they apparently didn't see fit to tell him that people died at Hogwarts, I suppose I probably shouldn't have.

And it's at this point I realize we haven't introduced ourselves, so for all I know I actually know his parents. "Um... I'm Arden by the way, Arden Patricks. And I hope I haven't scared you or anything, whoever you are."

[Finley Andrews]

"I'm not scared that easily," He muttered. He probably should be, but he wasn't. It was just things like that would surprise him. He hadn't realised quite how bad the war was when it was everywhere.
He wasn't scared, the war had still been going on for him, located primarily in the flat that he existed in.

A brief frown flickered across his brow at her name though. He was pretty sure that he'd heard that name before. Or at least her first name, and it wasn't a common first name anyway.
"Finley," He replied with a small grimace at the unfortunate choice of name, "Andrews."

[Arden Patricks]

"Right," I nod again, not having time to determine if that's just bravado or if he's really insulted and whether that's unusual and such before his name makes me forget to breathe a moment. I really should stop having that reaction to shocking announcements, because one of these days I won't remember again in time.

I cough slightly, shaking my head, and look at him more closely. "Andrews... Finley Andrews. Well. I do know your parents." And no bloody wonder you're not easily scared.

[Finley Andrews]

Psycho.
His face hardened slightly as he came to the conclusion that this is definitely what she was. How could she honestly be anything else?
He should have known when he came across her laughing like that on her own, or when she spoke about murders in classrooms and torture and everything so casually...he should have known then that she was a psycho.

Everyone that knew his parents were psycho's. In varying degrees at least. Of course he'd never met his mum's friends or her other family, but all of his dad's friends and acquaintances...all psychos. Even Adalia, in that weird quiet 'kill you while you sleep' sort of way.
And now he'd had the fortune to run into another one.
"Well, that explains a lot. Thanks for clearing that up," He nodded, "And I think I'm going to leave now. Um...bye."
He half-turned slightly to indicate he was going back the way he came, moving slightly cautiously as if he was expecting her to hex him for moving too suddenly.

[Arden Patricks]

Dammit. I wince slightly, straightening up. By rights I should probably just let the kid go now, it's not like it matters... but I still despise the thought of someone thinking wrongly of me. I don't care if they think badly just as long as it's not wrong, and from the way he's acting I'd guess that I've given the wrong impression somehow and he thinks I was a bloody deatheater or something.

"Hey - kid, small one... Finley," I say quickly, shaking my head. "Look, if you're thinking... well, look. I thought you weren't easily scared. So why are you acting like I'm going to eat you all of a sudden?"

[Finley Andrews]

"Why do you think?" He scowled slightly.
He had every right to be scared of people like her. He'd had enough of people like her and Logan to last him a lifetime already.
"You know my parents, you can understand that right?" He muttered, not even bothering to try and hide the contempt in his tone.

[Arden Patricks]

"Not entirely," I say, raising my eyebrows at him. "There's nothing wrong with your mother, for example, and I know her a lot better than Logan - who, incidentally, I haven't really spoken to in a good four or five years and even then not because we get along. So whatever conclusions you're jumping to...." I shake my head, as it suddenly really sinks in that he's practically fleeing from me just because I said I know his parents. I've never given much thought to the idea that Logan has a kid stashed away someplace, but now I wish I had. I really should have realized that he would hardly make a good parent.

[Finley Andrews]

He stopped short at this, folding his arms loosely across his chest.
There was something seriously wrong with his mother. He hated her too. He'd much prefer it if she kept up the disappearing act, and it was irritating him to no end that she left him to suffer for most of his life and then suddenly tried to reappear again and pretend that everything was okay between them because that's how it's supposed to be. But she wasn't really bad.
"So you're not...?" He left the question hanging, not even sure how he was supposed to finish it.
Like him? Psychotic? Particularly violent or generally aggressive? Planning on hexing me?

[Arden Patricks]

"An... evil psychotic murderer or even particularly close?" I suggest, then shake my head. "We kind of... grew up together, me and your dad, and he was my best friend when I was about your age and younger, but no, I'm not like him and when I found out what he was like we... stopped getting along so very well." I shrug slightly, feeling like I should say something else but quite uncertain what.

[Finley Andrews]

He relaxed again slightly at that, stopping his gradual retreat and just standing lamely in the path with his arms at his sides.
He wasn't fool enough to believe her completely, but maybe a little. If she was...that way, then he doubted she would have denied it. People...that way tended to be proud of it in his experience.
"I suppose...alright then."

[Arden Patricks]

I nod, satisfied now that at least he hasn't got the wrong impression of me. I think maybe what I was thinking about asking was something involving how scared he was just hearing I know Logan. That seems like not a goo sign, really. But I'm not quite sure I can. I do want to know if he's all right though, because if Logan's kid is somehow screwed up it must be partly my fault because I knew he had a kid and... well, that's about where the logic stops.
"So... at a guess, you're not too upset with him gone now, are you?" I ask cautiously after a moment.

[Finley Andrews]

"It's the best thing that's graced my existence so far," He replied with a small tight nod as he spoke to emphasise the detatched nature he had with the whole event.
He didn't really want to discuss this. He'd made sure to steer clear of discussing it with anyone at all. Every friend, acquaintance, every teacher that offered him advice or the opportunity to talk things through or ask them questions about what would happen now, the very few family members that contacted him - i.e. the two family members that contacted him, neither of whom he wanted to speak to. So he definitely didn't want to discuss this with a childhood friend of his father's who he'd only just met, no.
"Why? You can honestly say that you are or something?"

[Arden Patricks]

"I can honestly say that I am what?" I ask, possibly deliberately not getting it. I'm pretty sure he's asking if I'm upset by his dad's incarceration, and I don't really want to answer that. It's not as if I know the answer anyway, not really. I can't make up my mind.

But I'm definitely bothered by this, by him, by the fact that Logan being out of his life is the best thing in it. That's the sort of thing that Fitzy and I used to say about our parents when we each first got disowned. And I really don't like the idea of Logan being the sort of father to this kid that Samuel Patricks was to Fitzy, but I suppose there's no denying that it's to be expected.

[Finley Andrews]

He shook his head, "Never mind. I don't want to know."
He didn't want to know that anyone cared, because no one should. No one in their right mind would. He was nothing to anyone.
Finley was nothing at all, but Logan was nothing but a nuisance, an antagonist, a problem.

Now he felt that he really should say something else though...but unfortunately, he found nothing to say. Socialising had never been a strong point of his, but especially now.
What on earth was he supposed to say to a stranger who he knew was directly linked to...him, anyway?

[Arden Patricks]

"No, you can ask," I shrug, shaking my head - though I suppose if he doesn't want to know then he doesn't want to ask. But I still don't know what to say to him. I'm no good at talking to children, obviously, but I still feel that someone ought to talk to him. If he's up here and had a Fitzy-like childhood then he probably needs it.
"But never mind, you don't have to." I shrug again. "What year and house re you anyway?"

[Finley Andrews]

"Second, Slytherin," He admitted the last word a lot quieter than the first.
It felt like a cliche to be put in Slytherin now. As if he was going to get the 'oh, of course' look again.
Madeline had given him the 'just like your father' look that he got whenever he scowled or told her to leave him alone or something.

"You were a snake?" He guessed. He couldn't really see an alternative, even knowing the very little that he did know about her.