Harmony Summers (summersongs) wrote in changedrpg, @ 2011-11-01 04:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | !date: 1997 - october, harmony summers, poppy caxton, terry boot |
Who: Harmony Summers, Poppy Caxton, Terry Boot & OPEN (Michael Corner(for which he'll have to vacate or ask them in)/other 'Puffs)
When: During the Halloween party
Where: Hufflepuff Common Room
What: Alterna-party
Rating: R? 'Drug' use (does this apply if the drug doesn't actually exist?)
It might have surprised some people to know that Harmony was so easily influenced by peer pressure, but the truth of the matter was that he'd do anything to make people look favourably on him. Being told that he was a freak for no discernable reason had hurt because he had no idea what he'd done wrong that time. Likewise, he hadn't really understood why wanting to dress as a bellydancer for Halloween was anymore insulting to the Middle East than dressing as a flamenco dancer would have been to the Spanish, but the final comments had hurt as well. They'd made him feel a shame about himself that he hadn't really experienced at Hogwarts, something that he'd been well aware of back in Lewisham, both because of his sexuality (which no one knew, although enough people called him a fag) but also because he was too friendly, too nice, too seemingly happy when he had just as crap a life as the rest of the council kids he hung out with.
He'd done anything for the approval of the kids he hung out with, who claimed they were his friends but didn't hang around when he was caught shoplifting for them or when he was roughed up by an older, larger drug gang. They told him they were only messing around when they smacked him around and put him in embarassing situations because it was 'only a laugh'. He'd dodged trains, smashed shop windows, trashed stolen cars, burned down kiddyparks, stolen and run drugs, all so that they'd approve of and accept him. He barely knew he was doing it when he did, but that feeling of panic, of clinging to something that you didn't really have had slipped away when he'd come to Hogwarts. No one in his dorm asked him to steal from other kids or write obscene graffiti in the classrooms; they had involved him in the 'wolf pack' with no hazing, no cruel initiation and no mockery. Sure, he'd still do anything they'd want if they'd tell him to, but the part of it that was different, the part that worked, was that they wouldn't.
It might have been that which made the spiteful comments from a few kids he barely knew impact on him so - although Parvati was one that had completely blindsided him, he'd always thought she looked kind when he'd seen her around - but they had pretty much broken his spirit for the whole thing. Some part of him knew that he shouldn't care what a couple of mean-spirited kids thought but that part of him was tiny and unsure and completely drowned out by everything else in him that said that they were right and what was he doing, he was going to make everyone hate him, he had to conform to survive damnit!
He'd listened to that bit and while he had fully intended to attend with his boyfriend and Michael and Ant as a Musketeer it felt like a cheat. He'd so wanted to go as a bellydancer. It had just looked like fun. For someone usually so exuberant he was secretly deeply self-conscious when things like this were brought to his attention, so he'd let himself be bullied into not showing up at all.
He'd said he'd wait for Michael and Terry and had asked them to let him know when they were out, but he hadn't counted on finding that last little winged drug in his coat pocket. He hadn't thought he'd feel bored or sorry for himself enough to take it, but he was finding he was glad he had. He'd dressed up in the bellydancer outfit anyway, initially just looking at himself in the mirror, until something in his drug-addled mind had coaxed him out into public. He lay down on the floor in the Common Room and amused himself by combing his hair back with his fingers, singing the best tracks by Bush softly to himself and watching the lights that weren't really there dance over the ceiling.