Jacob Wrathorne

(Fall of 1996)

-The large manor that the Wrathorne family called home was built of pale gray stone, some of which Jacob's father had repeatedly told him were taken from the foundations of the castle that had once stood here at the base of the coastal cliffs. The story of it's destruction, a casualty of the battle in which their noble wizarding ancestors had risen up to take their proper place above the unworthy muggles who had ruled before, was something of a family legend. Personally Jacob thought it seemed a strategically unwise place to situate a castle, and had his doubts about the tale's authenticity.-

-Still, it was an imposing and somber place, worthy of any family who took pride in their generations of Slytherin children. Who were really nothing more than another pureblood clan who would never quite be the Malfoys, but were trying so hard at it.-

-Then again, Jacob never tried very hard at anything, the subject of this weekend's lecture, like so many others. He could not a remember a trip home which had not gone as such, and hence the reason he loathed long "holidays". The young Wrathorne heir stood in the room called his own, but decorated to his father's tastes. It was too large to be truly homey with vast amounts of cold stone floor separating one piece of tritely fine ash furniture from the next. Thick curtains hung on the four poster bed too much like the one in the Slytherin dormitories back at school, and tapestries depicting various events as likely to be false or exaggerated as the tale from which his family crest had been designed hung on the walls. Everything here, so much what one would expect.. except the dark haired boy himself.-

-The blood in his veins would have him with wavy auburn, like the well kept locks of his father, who's exiting door slam still echoed. But only the slightest line of that color was visible at what passed for the part in Jacob's hair. The rest of his deliberately untamed style was the highlight-lacking too-black color of hair dye. He wore no robes in mimicry of his grand lineage, but faded and fraying blue jeans topped by a white T-shirt, and the ensemble only accentuated by the spiked leather bracelet round one wrist. He looked like some muggle that had wandered in off the streets which didn't exist nearby, looking for a VCR the home didn't have to rip off.-

If the test scores are so important to you, take them your bloody self! -He snarled at the already closed oak door. His own words were the sound of defeat, as Jacob had never really come away from an argument with the his father which felt that he had "won."-

-He stood there a moment, teeth gnashed together as he seethed with a temper that seemed all his own, and not at all inherited like he had so much else from the stoic man that was Craven Wrathorne. The helpless rage for which he had no outlet made the muscular shoulders beneath the thin T-shirt heave visibly as narrowed black eyes darted around the finery which imprisoned him, but found nothing he would have the courage to destroy, any more than he would ever be able to actually shake his father by those broad shoulders and demand to be unlocked from that chain of ancestors linking him back through the centuries.-

-With a final wordless cry of frustration his heavy work boots spun on the grainy cobbled floor and he just balled his fists, stalking his way to the window to stare sullenly out towards the ocean that could be heard but not seen from here. The salty air which drifted in through the open arch did little to freshen how stifling it all was. He screamed a muggle profanity loudly through the opening, and found himself grinning with a little satisfaction as the word echoed through the cliffs, challenging their dignity with its crassness.-

-Jacob only knew that he enjoyed the sound of the word, and was hoping down in his equally stuffy common room that his father had a window open to hear it too. He hoped he was wondering what the neighbors would think.. not that they really had any. But despite not realizing it, the sound was the very metaphor for Jacob, standing there in his cheap muggle clothing because it was different. Because it embarrassed his father and distinguished him from the other boys all trying so hard to be the next Salazar Slytherin.-

-Oh.. Jacob lusted for that level of power and acclaim as much as any housemate back at Hogwarts. He wanted sway, he wanted respect and followers, but most of all he wanted for his father to keel over and die, to impale himself on the spikes which he seemed to think made a good decorating theme, or to fall off one of the high balconies. He wanted to be all the things his father had never achieved in his pathetic accordance to the masses. Like so many others Craven Wrathorne thought that by becoming one of a herd of faithful sheep, their glorious shepherd would somehow pick him out though he was indistinguishable from the next body in the flock. Jacob was convinced to be seen.. he must be the blackest sheep.-

-He had never been really mistreated, one might even say his father would have loved him.. if Jacob had let him. But instead he threw every attempt at guidance in the man's face. If Craven said walk softly he stomped, and if his father thought a situation called for loudness then Jacob would do his best not to show up at all. He despised what he saw as attempts to control him. By his father, his teachers, his peers. So if the old wizarding blood said he should spurn muggle culture then he'd embrace it, not because he loved the crawling little things, but because he had no problem taking what was theirs. Someday the world would right itself and the weak would fall back beneath the heel of the strong again. Those who could harness the power of magic would plunder all that the muggles thought to be theirs: cities, land, and whatever pieces of their culture it pleased Jacob's kind to claim. Jacob did not affront his peers with leather and rock, slang and denim because he had any love for their creators. Jacob would show them he had seen the future, a pureblood future; and most of all, he would show the world no one could tell Jacob Wrathorne what to do.-

~*Melody Lestrange*~ | ~Gabriel Archer~ | ~Lucius Malfoy~ | *Kimmy Knightdale* | -Jacob Wrathorne- | #Professor Meridian#