Stitches

Dumbledore sighed as he looked over the note Snape had sent him. Usually when Snape sent him a note it was about a Gryffindor who "did not meet his standards of intelligence", but this time his letter was slightly unnerving, scratch that, really unnerving.

Dumbledore had prepared to allay any complaints from Snape after his first class with her, but this letter made his heart skip a beat. The letter included a rather disturbing explanation of how Starla had refrained from showing any emotion in her tone of voice, stance, or even how she said her words.

Due to his training in Occlumency and Legilimency, Snape had the concentration skills to depict different emotions from the way people talked or acted, something he could do with ease when it came to most students, especially first years.

That was why it was so unnerving that Snape was unable to form a conclusion on which emotions Starla was feeling during class. Even during Snape's heavy-handed antagonistic comments, Starla never reacted negatively or positively, she only gave respectful answers that were void of any real respect and, more importantly, any feelings.

Snape expressed his concern over how either Starla was going to great lengths in veiling any emotions or she was incapable of showing any of her emotion at all. This news was greatly disconcerting to the old headmaster. During the times in which all the students came to the Grand Hall to eat, Dumbledore had never seen any interaction between Starla and her housemates.

During the first of the year he had seen many people at the Ravenclaw table try to make contact to the girl, but now it seemed all social activity or attempts to be the girl's friend had ceased to exist. However, it seemed the girl-who-lived had unknowingly made her mark on the students in her year at least.

Sometimes as he took a stroll through Hogwarts, he could hear whispers from the Ravenclaws that spoke of a "Doll" icon. At first, the whispers hadn't made any sense, but over the past few weeks he had finally realized that Starla was the one on the receiving end of this and other titles.

Where most kids would fraternize with their peers, he had started to notice that Starla was more interested in the doll she worked on then the people around her. Actually, he had seen her sometimes shirk eating from the feast at all so that she could continue with her doll projects.

It actually made him a bit nervous at how similar her dolls were to some of the people around her. When she didn't make dolls of people, Starla also made dolls of magical creatures she had probably seen in one of the books in the library. She had to be in Ravenclaw for some reason.

With all these different weird traits, Dumbledore wondered if he had made a mistake with placing Starla's welfare into the hands of her aunt Petunia. He had hoped that the incredible hate for the magical world would be lessened by Starla's age, but he might have been to dependent on that idea.

He had hoped that keeping Starla with her relatives and away from the eyes of the Magical Community would help her in the long run, yet, from what he had seen, he might have had a better time with just taking his chances with secretly giving her to Remus.

The werewolf had offered to take her in, but they both knew that Remus wouldn't be able to take care of a baby with the shaky income that came with a Werewolves attempts at taking jobs. That's not even including the amount of conflict that would come up if people found out the girl-who-lived was being taken care of by someone who most people in the Magical Community thought were a lower species

Dumbledore reached for a bowl of lemon-drops at his side and grabbed two of the hard yellow candies in an attempt to get his mind off the subject temporarily. He smiled a bit as the hard candy started to secrete it's sweet, but sour nectar, enriching his mouth with welcome distraction and relief. It was a shame that no one ever agreed to his offers of candy.

He always made sure to buy the very finest of the batch when he was down in Diagon Alley during his off-hours. Apparently, from what he had compiled together from overhearing gossiping witches and wizards on the streets and bars, there was a little rumor that he soaked his sweets with potions that made things work in his favor.

He had never heard a more ridiculous rumor! Why would he ruin such good candy with terrible tasting potion!

The thought of making candy taste WORSE made his stomach toss and turn, no, if Dumbledore were to put potion on his candy it would most likely be something that made it taste better!

The headmaster turned his head towards his familiar Fawkes and reached his hand towards the Phoenix. The legendary bird looked down inquisitively at the candy, before looking back up at Dumbledore with a face he could only assume was confusion.

He sighed, before asking hopefully, "Would you like some lemon-drops Fawkes?"

The bird looked back down at the candy before returning his gaze towards his partner and shaking his head. Dumbledore sat back in his chair, looking his age, and tossed the candy back into his filled to the brim bowl. Would anyone ever take up his offer of candy!?

Starla stared avidly at the book of Voodoo she had gotten from Eldra all those years ago, her eyes rapidly roaming sheets of the book as it lay in her hand. After much search she had finally found the perfect curse for that red-haired buffoon. He would pay for his blatant blasphemy against her creations.

The black stone of rage that had occupied her stomach for the past few months would now be released as she put together the particulars of the curse. Over the past months her resentment of the red fool had only grown and it was now at a peaking point.

She had wanted to do this the night she had been insulted, but she had gotten side tracked by the bushy-haired girl's problem, then the lack of space to do any kind of curse to the level she desired, and that blasted cat. Now, however, she had the perfect spot to go through with any number of her curses and the cat was dead, even if it was by accident.

Yet in that accursed time, Starla had to resort to torturing the boy with the misuse of his doll if she didn't want to suddenly break her outwardly emotionless mask and jumping him with her scissors. She was glad she had waited though, for this new curse would be one of her best yet! It was pretty complex curse, which was kind of fair since the curse had very terrible effects.

Yet, the effect being terrible wasn't the best part. Over the years she had gotten slightly exhausted from all the regular curses she had made use of that involved infected sores and suicidal compulsions. They still gave her satisfaction, but this one would be amazing in its results.

Yes, no matter how much they amused her, this most recent curse was going to top all the others and have her smiling internally all night out of amusement. The only thing that bothered her was that it would take some time for the complete effects of the curse to come into being.

"Hey, Starla, what you got there?"

Starla lifted her eyes away from the book on Voodoo and focused on the curious visage of Marie. Her ever-present self was comfortably situated in her painting overlooking the Voodoo Room. Since she had found it, Starla had taken to calling it the Voodoo Room to keep it simple, but more specific and less irritating then "the room that hides behind the picture of the Voodoo Queen Marie".

The name was slightly drab, but it was the only thing she could think of, other than "The Practitioner's Cave" or the "The Room of Solitude", thought, those sounded way to much like references to the shows she was able to watch during her rather bleak childhood.

That being said, she wasn't able to watch much of either due to her living arrangements at the time and even after her aunt's suicide, her uncle made attempts at keeping her presence suppressed in the house.

With a her trademark monotone expression and voice, Starla replied, "I just found the perfect curse to get back at that red-haired boy." From her way of talking, a normal person wouldn't be able to see what Starla was feeling, but with Marie could pick out the glint of sadistic excitement hiding in Starla's emerald eyes.

Her friend from all those years ago was also a bit like Starla, but it seemed Starla took the whole pragmatic role father then what was probably safe.

"Wow, how did he get this far in to your bad side?"

"He insulted my dolls."

"Did he say that dolls are for little girls and that you should grow up?"

Starla's eyes widened the tiniest a bit and asked, "Yeah. That is what he implied basically. How did you come to that conclusion?"

"My friend and I started learning Voodoo when we were around, what, around ten years old? Well, after my friend got interested in Voodoo Dolls she got insulted the same way you did by one of the children near her house. The next day the boy who insulted her got attacked by the dogs and cats that lived around his village. The boy didn't even know what hit him, or more appropriately, bit him. What I'm trying to say here is that you have an expression similar to the one my friend had the day before that happened."

Starla looked at Marie with her emotionless face and Marie excitedly continued while pointing at Starla's face, "Yeah! That one!"

Starla looked unamused at the comment, but took it in stride. She looked back down to the book, before standing up and began to gather up the needed materials for the curse while saying, "That was a great story Marie. Now, please be silent, I would like some peace and quiet while I perform this."

Marie pouted as Starla turned her around to get the ingredients. Ever since that little glimpse of a smile during their first meeting, Marie had been hoping that Starla would eventually become more open with her feelings, but it seemed that burst of emotion was a rare thing and not something Marie would see often.

It seemed that even the shakiness in Starla's mask from being near the Voodoo Queen had dulled over as she got used to Marie being her "friend". Though, Starla's personality wasn't all that bad with how she constantly kept bringing up new memories of her old friend.

If only she could remember her name, it had been so long since she had even thought about her, but Starla's recent introduction into her life had really unearthed some of her happiest times.

If only she could remember her friend's name! The only thing she could remember was that her friend had a daughter whose name started with an E. E-something or whatever, darn she really needed to put more thought into that.

It really wasn't her fault though. As a picture, Marie didn't have ALL of the memories the original had, which was kind of a bummer because it only served to remind her that she wasn't really her own person, just a portrait on the wall of someone else.

Marie's thoughts were interrupted by Starla's sudden chanting that seemed to grow in volume as it went along. Marie watched in interest as Starla held a doll with red-hair in her arms softly and motherly as she chanted in the middle of a large chalk circle and scattered ingredients that were lined up in different ingredients.

It was really kind of creepy even to Marie, the acclaimed Voodoo Queen, how Starla treated her dolls, even the ones of her most hated individuals. Her friend hadn't been this into her dolls and definitely didn't have a mental state as disturbed as Starla's.

That was probably the biggest difference between Starla and her unnamed friend. Whereas her friend, from what she could remember, had a visible line between her and her dolls, Starla didn't seem to have that line at all. More than once over the past week or two, Marie had noticed Starla go into some sort of trance that involved her holding one of her dolls and stroking it lovingly while also staring at it with a deep and most likely obsessive longing.

When she got like that Marie just went back to the painting outside of the Voodoo Room. The whole process was just to creepy to watch for any prolonged amount of time.

Starla stood up as she finished the chanting needed for the curse she had planned to use and gently lifted the doll in her hands, returning it to the shelves above the desk in her room. She liked to keep her more recently used dolls in the shelves while the others were kept in a chest that she had found in one of the other unused classrooms.

It was one of her favorite pass times to just open it up and gaze at all of her creations. They were just so beautiful and superior to everything around them, oh how she wished she could be one of them. Being one with the dolls would be so much better than a pathetic human.

"Starla, um, it's getting late, I think you should start heading to the Great Hall for that party you were talking about."

Starla wanted to mentally curse Marie for breaking her euphoric trace, but refrained from actually doing so, her respect for the Voodoo Queen only barely beating her religious love for dolls. Though, Marie was right in that Starla needed to get down to the Great Hall for the Halloween celebration they were having.

Starla looked at the old clock, which she had also found in an abandoned classroom, on the desk and saw that she was cutting it close. She thought she had an hour or two before she had to leave, or at least, that was how much time she had the last time she checked, but it seemed that she had wasted a but more time than she had originally thought while looking at her dolls.

She nodded a goodbye to Marie before walking to the opening portrait-door and hurrying out, anxious to get to the feast as to not raise any suspicion among the teachers. Even if they were most likely dense and stupid like all the other adults in her life, Starla knew that she shouldn't underestimate the teachers of this school.

Severus Snape wasn't a positive man, and nobody would disagree with him, but it wasn't his lack of positive emotion that he felt weary of the acclaimed girl-who-lived. He hoped his letter had planted some sort of suspicion in Dumbledore's mind, because otherwise, Snape was sure that the coming years would not be pretty in any way you look at them.

He was sure during his first class with Starla that he had felt something touch him spiritually, and what he had felt from that touch wasn't pretty. It was like a void of substance that had given Snape a thorough shake down.

He had refrained from dipping into Starla's mind at all in fear of what he would find in the twisted mind the girl possessed. As he looked down at the girl eating her food, he had to force himself from frowning at the emerald eyes that reminded him so much of Lily.

The green eyes the girl possessed was like a cruel mockery of the cheerful emerald eyes Lilly had possessed. As it were, Snape wondered if he wasn't being tortured by the universe specifically for something he had done in his past.

Starla looked at the food in front of her in displeasure, unhappy that the meal was reminding herself of her humanity. As she resentfully shoveled some of the, admittedly delicious, chicken into her mouth, Starla looked around the enormous room that was used for eating and tried to find some of the more interesting students.

Bushy-Hair was no where in sight, Nervous-Boy seemed to be indecision between what to eat first, the chicken or the pork, and Red-Hair was talking to his house mates while sometimes trying to encourage the indecisive boy on what to eat. Although, those three weren't the only ones Starla had kept her eyes on the past few month.

Sitting at the Slytherin Table was another set of her targets, Tracey and Daphne, both of whom had continued with their avid dislike for Starla, however, since Tracey's "accident" in the hallways, both of them had refrained from becoming physical, a suspicion that she was behind it holding them back. That was the reason she found them so interesting.

They were probably the only one in the entire school who suspected her of some sort of foul play, kind of like a discount Sherlock and Watson. If they ever really got close to finding out anything than she would just get rid of them. Apart from the 'regular' people she kept her eyes on, a new person had recently appeared on her radar.

It was a seventh year girl who Starla hadn't paid any attention to until she had shown her metamorphmagus abilities while in Starla's vicinity. Since then Starla had thought about how her Voodoo would affect the girl. Would Starla be able to activate the girl's abilities forcefully? And would the girl be affected by curses in a different manner than regular people?

Sadly, these questions would most likely go unanswered due the seventh year graduating soon, along with the abnormality surrounding her soul that Starla could only assume came from her rare ability.

This abnormality stopped Starla from being able to sew her soul in any way, and it didn't look like she would be able to figure out the way to get herself passed it any time soon, the problem to complex for her to even begin to understand.

She might need to ask Marie for tips when it came to metamorphmagus.

The Great Hall's happy ambiance was suddenly thrown back into reality as the Hall's doors opened to reveal a scared and nervous Quirrell, more so than usual.

Starla stared in indifference as ran up to where he was sure Dumbledore would hear him and yelled, "Troll! Troll in the dungeon! Thought you would like to know..." Anything else the teacher had planned on shouting in the middle of the Great Hall went unsaid as he fainted forward.

The Hall had went silent as all the students mentally registered what the DDA teacher had just tactlessly revealed to the entire student body.

Then the screams started.

The situation would be considered chaos in anyone's perspective. All of the lower kids, who were inexperienced with the creatures of magic personally, were shouting and some even made a run for it towards their respective houses.

The upper students were trying to rally their younger counterparts to keep a semblance of order, but it was clear that their efforts were in vain.

Starla was one of the only first years students in the Hall that wasn't freaking out, finding her current task of begrudgingly filling her stomach with food much more important than freaking out about some stupid berserker that had somehow gotten into the "safest" areas of the Magical Community. Daphne Greengrass was probably the only first year that could come anywhere near the levels of calm, or indifference, that Starla was showing in this situation.

As it started to seem that the students would start trying to get out of the Hall and risk their lives to get into their respective houses, fearing that otherwise they would become the Troll's next meal, a loud voice stopped all activity, "Silence! Due to the interruption of this danger, may all Prefects take their housemates to their respective Common Rooms. The teachers and I will deal with the troll, but until then, please remain calm and walk on."

Starla was about to stand up to follow her housemates, having finished with her chosen meal during Dumbledore's speech, when she noticed out of the corner of her peripheral vision Red-Hair and Nervous-Boy sneaking away from their fellow first years.

With her lip twitching up, Starla needed no extra motivation to follow them other than the chance she would get the chance to see the troll kill them both, though killing the Red-Hair was more likely. Evading the notice of any of the other students, Starla followed the dim-witted duo down the hallway, the two boys none the wiser.

Keeping her footsteps light and her breathing low and slow, Starla followed the boys until she turned the corner and watched them run into the girl's bathroom. At first, Starla was confused at why the two boys would enter the girl's bathroom, but then she recognized the terrible recently produced smell of the troll.

Well, she hoped it was a troll, because otherwise Starla did not want to know what those two boys were ridding themselves of in the bathroom she might have to use at some point. Wanting to see some of the action, Starla entered the boy's bathroom that was situated opposite of the girl's and hid inside, wanting to be their when the troll came out and she was given the chance to see how bad he had crushed their bodies.

She was not disappointed as a second later, the girl's bathroom door was destroyed as an unconscious Red-Hair was sent through it, followed by a victorious roar emanating from the bathroom. Red-Hair's body stopped as it hit the wall and fell to the ground with an audible thud only making it that much sweeter.

The troll exited the bathroom, obviously checking on his recent victory, before disregarding the two other people in the bathroom and walking away.

Starla felt the vendetta she had held against Red-Hair for the last few months disappear almost completely as she gazed at the crumpled form on the floor. Her curse had worked faster than she had expected it to.

The curse, which was probably one of the most useful she had ever used, was simply called Interesting Times, which really didn't do the full effect of the curse justice. Anybody afflicted with the curse were destined to attract different types of attention. The variation she had used of Red-Hair was the Causality Times, a variation of Interesting Times that brought upon a lot of pain upon the afflicted, which was accompanied by death in most cases.

Starla was kind of conflicted on whether she should let Red-Hair lay their to die from his injuries, which she would find some amusement in, or if she should save him or at least give him a push towards living, which would lead to him constantly getting injured over the next few years, which would give Starla even MORE amusement.

However, as she looked the Red-Hair's body over with a more defined once-over, Starla could make out the smallest hint of movement that came with the body's weak breathing. She nodded her head to herself as she came to a decision, concluding that if he were to live then she would be able to get more opportunities.

However, before Starla could exit the bathroom, she heard the teachers coming down the hallway, most likely following the noise the troll had made when he took the door down with Red-Hair. She closed the door completely, not wanting anyone of the teachers noticing her, but put her ear to the door and tried to make out the voices on the other side.

It was slightly difficult as the wooden door was unusually thick, well unusually thick for anywhere except Hogwarts, but she managed to make out the discussion between the teachers and the distraught Nervous-Boy.

"Hagrid, could you please take Mister Weasley to the nurse! Please make haste!" Wow, she had never heard Twinkle-Eyes raise his voice that much, even if it was still burdened by age.

"Yes Mister Dumbledore! I'll get right with it!" She could hear the heavy steps near where she assumed Red-Hair's unconscious body lay, before they stopped for a second, and then started once again heading down the hallway in a hurry.

"Leave it to a Gryffindor to get in the way of a raging troll." Starla's happy mood lessened as she heard the cold voice of her potion teacher, who had continued making Starla a target, most likely to get her mad somehow, which never worked.

"Severus! This is not a time for your dislike of the Gryffindors to get in the way of the severity of Mister Weasley's causalities!" That sounded like the Transfiguration Teacher who had been the one to lead all the first years in the beginning of the year.

"Now, Miss Granger, Mister Longbottom, I hope you can fill me in on what conspired here tonight at a later date, please go to your Common Rooms tonight." Twinkle-Eye's voice had lowered to its regular pitch, but it still held a stern tone that it was usually lacking. From the boy's bathroom, Starla could hear the small thumps outside that Starla assumed was Bushy-Hair's and Nervous-Boy's frantic steps, both of which were more frantic than the Giant steps earlier.

"Now, let us resume our search. We didn't see or smell the troll when we were coming here so it must have went down this way."

After Starla was sure that the teachers had moved on, she opened the door and peaked out, still cautious of any remaining observers. At the sight of an empty hallway, excluding the wooden scraps from the broken door, Starla made her way out of the bathroom completely and started walking to the Ravenclaw Commons Room. If anyone had seen the Voodoo Practitioner going down the hallway, they would have seen an uncharacteristic skip in her step.

Hermione gasped as she laid down in her bed, only barely keeping the tears out of her eyes. It seemed that the world had it out for her and her friends today, as it seemed everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Hermione had began the day in a really happy mood, looking forward to the special Halloween feast they were having, but it had all started to take a turn for the worse during Charms.

Over the past week, ever since she had seen the three-headed dog along with Ron, Neville, and the uninvited Starla, she had been under the impression that she had made friends with the two boys. Due to this, after seeing Ron mess up his charm because of a tiny mistake, Hermione had tried to tell him how it was done. It was only after the class that she heard Ron insult her by saying that she was a "Know-it-all".

The only consolation was that she had been able to see the disproving expression on Neville's face. However, Hermione had still lost her appetite at the mention of the insult she had dealt with since the first grade, and had ran to the nearest bathroom. That was when the day had gotten even worse. During her sulking episode in the bathroom, a troll of all things had opened the door and started to attack her!

She would have died if Ron and Neville hadn't showed up, the usually skittish boy actually being pretty confident for once. At first, Hermione's hope for their survival had risen with the introduction of both boys, but the positive emotion was quickly dashed as all of their efforts in doing something to the Troll were dashed.

The only reason she was even alive was because Ron had grabbed onto the troll's club in a stupid act of courage and was then slung from it into the door. After throwing Ron out of the bathroom, the troll seemed to forget all about Hermione and Neville due to it celebrating it's victory.

She had made plans with Neville to go see Ron at the first chance they could, it was the least she could do for him. He was a friend.

Starla smiled at her Familiar Object in her hands as she laid in her bed, thinking over the next order of business. Due to the need to get Ron back being gone, Starla was now able to really concentrate on the thing that had bugged her.

In a very secure magical castle, that she had heard was one of the safest places you could be, what kind of object would need a three-headed dog for protection? As of now, Starla didn't even have a clue about what it might be, but she knew that it was just a matter time she did, because whatever they were protecting, it was important and, even better, powerful.

A/N: Thank you for reading this chapter of Stitches! I hope that you enjoyed it! Feel free to leave me lots of nice long reviews!

Also, a thank you to yorushihe for the title of this chapter. If anybody would like to provide some Puns that are related to sewing and dolls then be my guest. If I use yours, you will get full credits in the chapter I use it!

The current poll votes for the Voodoo Art for Starla's future apprentice is as goes-

Art of Dream Catchers- 14

Art of Song and Dance- 11

Art of Instrumental Music- 11

Art of Voodoo Dolls- 9

Art of Powder Making- 6

Dream Catchers are winning right now, but Song/Dance and Instruments are catching up quickly. Personally, out of all of them, I think Dream Catchers would be the easiest to write, but Song/Dance is also something I could get into. I have a friend who is really into instruments, so I'm sure if that is picked I'll be able to give some credible information. I want to thank all the people who have taken the time to vote on the poll as well...so, thank you.

Well, goodbye.