Long, rambling A/N: I'm fully aware that Professor Digory went to Narnia as a child, and therefore his reaction when Peter and Lucy talk to him in the newest Chronicles of Narnia movies make perfect sense, but when C.S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Professor Kirke hadn't told Lewis that yet. I've always loved the Professor's reaction in the BBC version from 1988 (which most people dislike because the costumes are what we would see now on a stage, and the children are mostly the same age), which was taken almost word-for-word from the book. But he's much less surprised and more logical, and so my brain was playing around with why he wasn't so surprised by the tale of a little sister visiting a magical world through his much-loved wardrobe, and came up with this.
Disclaimer: Narnia does not, and could never, belong to me, for who could truly own a tale that's grown so large?
Professor Digory Kirke laid down his book and sighed, rubbing his forehead. Something had brought his attention back from A Study of Archetypes in Fictional Worlds, but he couldn't remember what.
Ah, there it was. A noise from the hallway. Made, he believed, by one of the four children who'd come to stay with him during the war. His housekeeper certainly wouldn't make such noise; she believed quiet was good for his studies. But he welcomed the distraction, rather; this author had no sense of imagination and no talent towards analyzing those who did. He listened for the voice.
He frowned. Perhaps it was two of the children who came to stay, he amended. They appeared to be having a discussion, and not a pleasant one at that. He rose and walked towards the door.
"Leave me alone, Edmund!"
That would be the youngest, Lucy, he believed she was called. He quickened his pace slightly; she sounded upset.
"Where you going? Running off to your imaginary world in a wardrobe?" The jeering voice grew louder as light footsteps pattered down the hall, the boy yelling after the girl.
"It's not like you'd find another-what'd you say? Narnia-again anyway! So go have tea with some invisible fauns!"
The professor froze, hand on the doorknob.
Narnia.
Memories flooded him; of Fledge, a cabman becoming a king, a mistake, a song that birthed a world, an apple that made his mother well. And memories of Him.
Aslan.
He'd found Aslan in his own world, but there he'd seen Him face-to-face, not through a mirror dimly, he liked to chuckle to Polly.
And somehow, someway, two of the children staying in his wandering old house had found the name. Found the world, if the older was to be believed.
What had he said? A world in a wardrobe. The wardrobe?
The professor turned the knob and opened the door, stepping out of his study-into an empty hall. The children were nowhere in sight. He started after the boy, then stopped.
From the sound of it, the boy hadn't been there. He hadn't believed the girl.
Well, there was a reason he'd never told anyone about his adventures. Not yet. He turned toward where the footsteps had been running; perhaps he should talk to the girl.
But something held him back. Something he'd learned to listen to through years of praying and waiting. So back into his study he went and sat down to think.
He could speak to the girl. He could reassure her of his belief, and listen to her tale of another world. Of the world he'd been to. The world he missed.
But doing that would draw her away from her siblings, not closer to them, and it was likely that at least one of them would end up in Narnia with her. God most often sent people on His tasks in pairs. Or larger groups.
He set his glasses on the desk and let his head sink into his hands, elbows on the desk.
Narnia was so close, so very, very close. And he had been waiting such a long time. Waiting for a world where he'd lived for two days, a world that became home.
But this wasn't his adventure. He'd had Charn, and the woods, and Narnia's beginning. This adventure was likely just beginning, and if it wasn't his, he couldn't involve himself in it. He could wait till the adventure had played out.
He could. He sighed and put his glasses back on. He should. But it would be nice if he didn't have to.
He went to the wardrobe, walking up the stairs, through the long halls, and coming forward to gently touch the carved wood. He couldn't help himself; he opened the doors and stepped through (leaving the door open, of course, because he was much too wise to shut himself in a wardrobe), till he could brush his fingers against the back. Nothing. No Narnia. No river and stars and talking animals. Just the wood of the tree grown from the apple that saved his mother. Wood that opened as a door would, but for another. He turned back towards the light, walked out, shut the door firmly behind him, and went back to his study to bury himself in his book.
It truly wasn't his adventure.
But, as two of the children came to him a few days later with worry on their faces and a sister's story to tell, he realised that the adventure did belong to his guests. And thank God for that. He settled in his chair to listen to the full story as they knew it so far.