you're so goth, kid

this kid showed up at the convenience store in the muggle village closest to hogwarts around 1980-81, always to get a carton of smokes. after several visits where he refused to make polite conversation, the shop owner drew him out a little...at least enough to discover he was a teacher at the fancy private school out in the country (which the shop owner was totally skeptical of at first, the boy was basically a child himself and dressed like he was in one of those bands where everyone pretended to be vampires).

but as the years went on, the kid grew up and was around most of the year and not around in the summers, which seemed to support his claim.

he was....never very nice...never one for conversation....but he grew on the shopkeeper. he was happy when the teacher would show up in the fall, sour-faced and muttering about how he hated kids and his boss and his job.

in the early 90s when Mayfairs came out the teacher switched brands, and the shopkeep liked him enough by that point that he made sure to have extra cartons set aside for him when he ordered. a special reserve for his misanthropic semi-regular.

sometime in the spring of ‘98 the teacher stopped coming in. the shopkeeper worried about him for ages, even to the point of thinking about trying to find the school...but eventually he figured the guy (no longer a kid but a man in his thirties) must have moved on.