Tronnor One-Shots

Lowly (Lovely) Boy

A/N: In the spirit of the infamous Harry Potter AU, here's a little Q&A: what's your House and/or Patronus? (Mine's Slytherin/fennec fox.)

Troye Mellet secretly loved Muggle things. Muggle clothes, Muggle music, Muggle aesthetics: the works. It really started when he saw some of his half blood peers wearing these sneakers. What were they called? Converse? All he knew at that point was that they were so simple and comfy looking. Nothing like the dress shoes he was used to. He was ten when he first saw them, and it gave him such a general, fashion-savvy pleasure that he thought it would be okay to ask his mother for a pair.

It wasn't.

When it came to status in the wizarding world, Troye had the highest quality blood. It was pure, glittering along through his bloodstream with an endless ancestry of magic. His father was a pureblood, as was his mother and all the relatives tying the unsullied white web of their family tree. They lived in mansions dubbed manors, wore robes with silk stitching, and left their beds unmade for the hands of house elves. Troye grew up privileged to say the least, but that doesn't mean it was a life where he could do as he pleased. His true person was stifled.

The shoes were only the start of it. There was a grocery list of things he was too "good" to like, wear, engage in, be. "You must get at least a 96% in every subject." His mother would demand.

"You can't thank the house elves." His auntie would scoff condescendingly. "You're practically royalty, know your place."

His grandfather liked to hit him in the spine with his cane. "Stand up straight, boy."

"And I don't want to see you wearing nail polish ever again." His father scolded more than thrice. "I don't care if it is your house colours or no, real Slytherin men aren't womanly."

Real Slytherins. Real men. Real purebloods. Real Mellets.

Those lines were so overused in his home environment, as if even Troye's most arbitrary deviancies made him fake or unworthy. Standards were drilled into him from the day he was born, and if he were to be honest, he could put up with it. He could put up with the pressures and expectations and suppressions of individuality, only because he didn't like being reprimanded. He liked being left alone, so he tolerated pretending to be precisely what his parent's wanted.

Troye was a straight A student, but frequently sacrificed sleep to get that A+. He didn't like bullying those who were already suffering in slavery, but he was only kind when he could have heart-to-hearts with the house elves behind closed doors. He felt confident with his nails painted dark green, but kept it in the confines of his Hogwarts dorm room. He stood up straight, wore elegant slacks and button-downs; he closed himself within a stoic prince's bodily cage. And no one in the castle should hear of that prince associating himself with the lowliest ones of all.

"I refuse to let you be friends..." Mother always shuddered for effect during this particular lecture, "...with a filthy mudblood boy."

Mudbloods. The scum of the earth, the insects of the wizarding world, a race of contaminants; people that make his family's noses turn up so much that they could crack their necks backwards. And though he tried to hide how he yearned to coat his hands in what his family regarded as dirt, even Prince Troye could not plaster every crack in his façade. He grew up with suppressing everything, but what he hated more than anything was how his parents turned up their noses about this 'mudblood boy.' 

"He has a name, you know." Troye growled through his teeth; it was the only argument he would ever let himself participate in. It was the ten thousandth time they had had that conversation and, at this certain time, they were standing at platform nine and three-quarters. Troye was on his toes to fly away, and this being the hold-up only fuelled his frustration.