SPNL/HP: Athena (1/1)
This is the strangest thing I have ever written. And that's saying something.
TITLE: Athena (1/1)
FANDOM: Supernatural, vague Harry Potter
SUMMARY: For two weeks, the letters kept coming.
WARNING: Here I kind of went crazy
CHARACTERS: An owl named Athena; A cat named Dionysus, DIon for short; and a Winchester
DISCLAIMER: I don't own supernautral. I am not Kripke. I do not own Hogwarts. I am not JK Rowling.
NOTES: I totally own this idea. It's freaking awesome. Big Awe, little some. :)
Totally unbeta'd. Totally spardic, took four hours to get the whole thing done story here. Enjoy!
He was sitting on the roof outside his room, looking up at the stars and junk like that when he realized he wasn’t alone. Slowly, he turned his head away from the constellations to see two large blue eyes staring at him.
He jumped slightly, startled by the intrusion, but he didn’t yell out. And he didn’t fall off of the roof either, which would probably have been the most problematic of the two options. The first would likely mean trouble, the second could likely lead the death.
It was another whole second and a half before he realized that the eyes were attached to none other than an owl.
“What’s a freaking owl doing in Indiana?” he asked it, his voice scratchy from its lack of use. When had he last spoken with someone, anyhow? Two days ago, maybe more. He had stopped counting. Those days weren’t the ones that mattered.
It was five years, two months, and nineteen days since he had become an orphan and five years to the day that he had last seen his brother.
“There aren’t any trees around here,” he told the owl looking amongst the barren farmland around the house. That was a lie. There was one tree. The kids all called it The Tree, but it was pretty much just a huge stick from the ground that had stopped producing leaves or any kind of years before he ever set foot there. Some of the older children said years even before that. “Are you lost?”
The owl’s head moved then, and its eyes searched their surroundings as if looking for something out of place. Then it hooted softly. He decided the owl was pretty classy, so it must be a girl. And she didn’t seem to worried about being lost.
“Okay, so not lost? Then what the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your family?”
She hooted again. A bit louder this time.
He knew he should be freaking out. Seriously, he had never seen a real life owl before, because those were supposed to be in woods and things like that. But then again, he had seen a lot of things that weren’t supposed to be real in his ten years. At least an owl was real.
And she didn’t seem freaked out by him.
He didn’t know why, but for the last year that he had been in the damn group home, he had been avoided like a plague. All the friends that he had managed to make were gone, either in a foster house or adopted, but not him. People thought that he was weird, and he wasn’t going to disagree with them. He was an abandoned orphan boy, who would want someone like him?
He decided to just enjoy the comfortable silence and once again looked up at the stars.
“You ever look at the stars?” he asked her, and just then decided to name her Athena, who he thought was pretty cool, for a legend.
Athena hooted again and he looked over at her. She looked a bit closer now, her head twisting towards him, her eyes staring intently at him.
“That’s kind of pretty freaken creepy, you know? You just can’t go staring at me like that, people don’t like that. They’ll think you’re a freak or something.” She wasn’t a freak, she was just about awesome. But she had to know these things, because this was the kind of useful stuff a kid learned the hard way and he wished that someone had told him. It wasn’t his fault that he tended to focus on things that got his interest, but it was what it was.
Athena bit him on the arm.
“Yeow!” he slid slightly down the roof before getting squared off again. “What the hell! I never bit you!”
Athena started walking towards him and he had the sense of mind to slide a bit away from her.
“You totally lost your cool points!” Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to care. “What do you want then? I have no food! I have no money, not that you could use it anyway. I’ve got nothing, and its your own damn fault. Who told you to come to Indiana, huh? There ain’t but shit here!”
She stopped right in front of him again. He kind of wanted to bit her, just for revenge, but the only biter in the house these days was a three year old girl named Amanda. She was freaking weird, but people still talked to her because she was still so little and cute.
Athena started a staring contest then, but that was no big deal. He could win those hands down. Sometimes it was even as if he could read the person’s mind while he was doing that, but that was impossible. And not the kind of impossible like werewolves or zombies, because he knew those existed. He meant like unicorns and happy endings, the kind of bullshit people told you about to try and make you feel better. Like maybe he could read minds and be special and someone might want to take him out of this stinking hell hole.
It was a full five minutes before one of them blinked.
“Haha!” he cheered. “I win!”
He blinked then too, and tried to ignore the headache he was getting from it. And he was anxious all of the sudden too.
“You’re not perhaps in a hurry, are you?” he asked the owl.
Athena hooted.
He frowned. Did she understand him? Maybe it was conditional responses or something. Maybe she was a trained owl and had somehow escaped and landed for all the crap of luck on the roof of an Indiana government group house for misfortunate children next to him off all people.
“Well, better be off then. It’s getting pretty late.” He really didn’t want her to leave, but she had no use to be there. “I already told you I don’t have food,” he reminded her. “The only rat I can get my hands on is Karl Zimmerman, and I don’t think he’ll taste all that good. I don’t know for sure, you’d have to ask Amanda.”
Athena hooted long this time, and louder.
He looked back towards the opened bedroom window. There were four other boys in there with him, and while Wayne and Norman were little and would likely sleep through anything, Karl and Jeffery would tattle on him in a second, faster if they could.
“Shh! Just go will you! Geesh, you’re going to get me in trouble.”
This time, when Athena reached out to touch him, she didn’t bit him, just nudged him with her head twice. She looked up at him then and seemed to be giving him her leg.
Apparently she did tricks too.
He smiled at her. He had once seen a great trick dog that was a friend of his father’s. It was named Rocco and it rolled over and played dead and followed him and his brother around the whole time that they were there.
He reached out to shake Athena’s ‘hand’ when he felt something against her foot. Startled, he gently twisted her, thinking that she was somehow being held captive. That sounded about par for him too.
Instead, he found a scroll of paper.
Looking back at Athena, startled again by the wild animal allowing him to touch her, he asked her about the paper she hooted again. He took that as an affirmative and pulled the paper free from her leg. She seemed a bit excited, but it might have been a manifestation of his own excitement.
Curiosity had him pulling the paper open slightly. It was rolled up envelope. He was looking at the back of it, which had a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H that read:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
He frowned, quickly looking at the front of the letter. The words frightened him, and he dropped the letter. It fluttered from his hand and down off the roof.
He looked at the owl. The traitor. He felt like crying or throwing up or maybe seeing if the damn thing could actually fly.
“Get away from me!” he yelled at it, leaping to his feet and making a dash off the roof. He slammed the window shut behind him and was lucky that it seemed to wake up no one. Sometimes, it was as if he was seeing and hearing things that no one else could. His parents had taught him to be aware of his senses and his surroundings.
He walked over to his bed and lay down. He wasn’t going to sleep tonight either.
For two weeks, the letters kept coming.
One was under his breakfast plate the following morning. The next day, it arrived with the regular mail and was handed to him by one of the new ladies that worked there and should have known better than him ever receiving any kind of mail.
Another attacked him as he made his way out of the shower.
Twice, one of the younger kids came running to him with it, and once it was within his dresser drawer. Twice it came with a cat, which was particularly creepy.
The rest of the time, it was Athena. She would peck at the windows, wherever he was, but no one else seemed to notice her. He started wondering if he was imaging things, like when he became an orphan and abandoned and brotherless. He started seeing and hearing things then too. That’s why no one wanted him. They all just figured he’d be a lifetime of expensive therapy and medication.
He wasn’t nuts though.
So he ignored Athena and tried to make it through his day, days, and week into weeks. He was sure that she would get the point and leave him alone. He hadn’t even fed her, for chrissakes. Three days before September, the letters finally got to him.
Somehow, he had managed to fall asleep. The good thing was, he needed the rest, the bad thing was, sleeping always brought the dreams. And the dreams always ended in the nightmare. And the nightmare was real.
He was an orphan and they had taken his brother away from him. No one wanted him. No one but this goddamn owl who should be dead by now with the two weeks that it seemed so focused on disturbing his crappy excuse of normal and peace.
He woke up with two big, blue eyes staring down at him. He didn’t scream or freak out, but he did shove the damn bird off his chest.
“You better not have peed on me!” he checked himself over quickly, but it seemed as if Athena’s training consisted of going to appropriate bathroom locations and not crapping on smart mouthed little boys.
“Alright, you win! Happy! You got me, okay? You got in here and I don’t even know how the hell you did it, but I don’t care! You win! Is this payback for the staring contest? Because you started that first! I wasn’t bothering anyone, you’re the one that started bothering me, okay? But I didn’t go around stalking you!”
Again, it had been two days since he had last spoken with someone. And even then, it had been a ‘Sorry’ for bumping into someone. Maybe that was the catalyst of Athena’s arrival. Maybe after two days of no communication, she got to him.
But he had certainly gone longer than that.
Athena hooted softly. She was standing now in the middle of the room, looking back at him. The moonlight was streaming in from the window above Jeffery’s bed, and he could clearly see that she was once again laden with a twisted paper tied securely against her leg.
“Is that another blasted letter? Because I don’t want them! What, are they finally apologizing? Well, it’s five years too late!” He told the owl. Five years, three months, four days.
He took his pillow and threw it towards Athena. She didn’t even duck. Stupid owl. A few feathers went flying and he wasn’t sure if they came from the owl or the pillow. Athena proved she could fly, though, flying up to the middle of the room before landing on the now still pillow.
Damnit she probably thought that he had been giving her a bed or something.
He sighed and looked away from her.
This time, when he laid down, he had no pillow. Which means he landed right on top of the old picture of him and his family.
He was too old to cry. And wasn’t as if he had been abandoned days ago, it had been five years. Nothing to cry about now or the other hundreds of times that he had.
Then there was a weight on his leg and he knew that Athena was standing there. Maybe looking out for him, maybe trying to find another way to piss him off.
He just ignored the stupid owl and closed his eyes. He’d fall asleep eventually.
He had punched Karl in the face and broken his nose. Penalty? A lifetime of water and bread confined to the boys room.
Karl had called him a bastard and a goddamn Nazi. He wasn’t even sure if he was German, but Karl figured he was at least half Jewish, and was going to make his life a living hell. As if the last five years hadn’t been enough. Five years, three months, five days. And it was two days before September.
He totally wasn’t crying when he noticed Athena waiting for him on his bed. The damn note was already off her leg, and how did she even do that?, and in front of her, front side up. Also, the same cat that had come by twice before was sitting in front of his bed, a similar envelope beside him, who he figured he’d call Dionysus. Dion for short. The cat looked kind of cool, but it was liking its paw and totally unaware of him. Athena looked up as he walked into the room and he kind of like the thought that she was happy to see him.
Even if he had been treating her like crap lately.
“Hi, Athena,” he said, coming up to the side of his bed. He reached out tentatively and patted her soft brown fur. “I see you got another envelope here, huh?”
Dion perked up at that.
He fingered the envelope with his left hand, his right still passing through Athena’s fur. He sighed and Dion leaped onto the bed with his own envelope in mouth.
“You too huh?” Well, fair was fair, he figured. Athena first though, and then Dion’s letter. Who would want to write to him, who even knew where he was living was a mystery. But that was the thing with witches they liked to meddle with the mysterious.
He picked up the small envelope, flipped it around to the seal in the back. It was the same as the one that he had seen just weeks before. He broke the seal this time, ignoring his desire to light the witch-mail up and watch it burn. Inside were two slips of papers. The first a letter, the second, a list of supplies and books.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL
of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Winchester,
On your maternal British heritage, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31. An official guardian of academia will be made
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress
The enclosed list of supplies mentioned a uniform. He looked down at his clothes and frowned. He didn’t have any money to get a uniform, and he certainly had no time to respond to the message. Athena hooted again.
“My maternal British heritage?” he scoffed. It wasn’t even an apology from the damned witches convention or what-have you. They wanted him to go to school there. In England.
Clearly, they were insane.
“And you Dion?” He reached over at the letter that was now underneath the seemingly asleep cat. It opened one eye at its name. Well, that was probably not its name, but he didn’t care.
The front of the letter was much like the one he had just opened.
Jonathan D. Winchester
Third Bed, Bottom Bunk
Boys’ Room, Second Floor
Singleton Home for Boys & Girls
Indianapolis, Indiana
The English letter mentioned that it was being sent to the United States, but that was the only difference. It was creepy, how they knew exactly where he was. A similar letter greeted him inside.
LOUISIANA INSTITUTE
Of the GIFTED
and MASTERY of WIZARDRY and WITCHCRAFT
Headmaster: Gregory Gibson
Dear Mr. J. D. Winchester,
In behalf of the Louisiana Branch of Wizardry Training, we would like to extend to you our invitation to the Louisiana Institute of the Gifted and Mastery of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Following your father’s, Frederick J. Winchester, time with our school we can only hope that your time with us is as joyful and educational.
Term begins on the First Monday of September. We await your respond, be it by owl, cat, or mail by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Candace Marie Jones
Candace M. Jones,
Enrollment Supervisor
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Louisiana Institute of the Gifted
104 Unicorn Circle
Layfayette, Louisiana 70504
The books list was slightly different, but all in all, the thought of going to a wizard school angered him.
But then again, he thought looking at his crappy surroundings and thinking back to the last five years, three months, and five days had been 1,980 days too many.
He looked at Dion and then at Athena. He decided to keep petting Athena, because she was a calm and beautiful creature while Dion wouldn’t stop licking himself clean. Cats kind of creep John out. But he could take the chance. Be it as it may, and such and such.
England or Louisiana? British or Cajun? Or stuck here, in Indianapolis?
“Anybody have a coin?”
End?