Freaks: Year Two

The Place Of Peace...Or The Cool Cousin Hangout

Descriptions of torture, referenced child abuse.

Alabaster looked at the part in the ceiling where there was a little hatchet. He got a stool, stood up on his tippy toes as high as he could (something Adelaide had taught him during their ballet classes), and climbed through a little flap in the ceiling.

It was quite an easy attic to get into. He had to go into Theodore's room and closet (as the attic was in the closet) and he had seen how much his cousin's room had changed, but he didn't bother to think about it too much. He knew that Theodore only seemed to care about the Dark Lord now, but he hoped that would change. He really hoped.

Alabaster wished he could have been at Hogwarts when Theodore had been eleven, maybe then he would have seen what made him change and why, but Alabaster knew it was all the Slytherins and the Dark Lord's fault. He had ruined their family.

He wanted to fix it. He was going to fix it, maybe it would take longer then he would want it to, but he was going to fix it. He was a Slytherin after all, he was determined and he was not going to stop until they were out of Lord Voldemort's clutches.

He made his way up, pushing his body into the room and slid away from the opening, now sitting up. Alabaster took out his wand and whispered, "Lumos," making the small area lit up. The room was now incredibly dusty, like it had not been touched in years (and it probably hadn't), but thankfully with no one being in the attic for so long it was the exact same as it was a few years ago.

Thanks to the wandlight, Alabaster could see the old pillows and blankets making a circular enclosure around the small space. There was a small circular window that let in the tiniest bit of light and there was an old small plank of wood that he supposed was a type of desk that was fitted small enough for the room. The ceiling wasn't very tall, but it was tall enough that he could sit up. He even spotted some of the old drawings they had both done on the wall. There wasn't too much to this room. Just blankets and pillows and scattered papers and quills and the odd book, but Alabaster had always loved the place.

Everything that was in it was just perfect in his eyes because he and Theodore would play and talk and he wished he could just go back to that. He would do anything to go back to those days. Before he knew how much hold the Dark Lord had on his family, before the hatred, before the anxiety, before the outside world, when it was just him and his curiosity. When it was just him and his own little pictures of the world and what it would be like.

Alabaster crawled through the little alcove and approached the wall and saw one of the drawings pinned up there. His fingers brushed the now old parchment. It now had tores at the edges and it was slightly more brown then it had been, but it still held the same drawing with spots of discoloration.

It was a drawing of him and Theodore. They both had contributed to it. The idea was that Theodore would draw him and that he would draw Theodore and once it was complete they had two very different art styles and interpretations of each other. Even when Alabaster had been younger, his drawings had a little bit of an artistic touch to them. Alabaster had attempted to draw his cousin's actual face shape, and when he had gotten to the eyes attempted to draw the actual eye shape too along with the mouth and nose. Theodore's depiction on him was a skinny looking thing that was made out of only lines but he was smiling (the mouth in the shape of a "U") and Alabaster still thought it was the most incredible drawing in the whole world.

"You're six and can draw better than me!"

"I like yours better."

"Oh no...I definitely think you won this one."