Title:
Am I Blue?Disclaimer:
I don't own HP, obviously. I also don't own any part of this story as it was altered to fit my needs. The original author, I believe, is Bruce Coville. The only things I altered were the places and characters in it.Notes:
We had to read this story today in my Lit class, and instead of turning in the packet, I kept it. And I'm glad I did. I knew when we finished reading this that I wanted to write my version of it. The ending's my favorite, but that doesn't mean you can skip the whole story, just to read the ending. For shame if you thought of doing that. Anyway, I present to you, my version of "Am I Blue?" — Hey, that rhymes.***
It started the day Draco Malfoy thought I was interested in jumping his bones. His henchmen, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle stood behind him, cracking their knuckles and flexing their muscles.
"You little fruit," he snarled. "This'll teach you not to look at me like that!"
A moment or two later, he had given me my lesson.
I was still lying facedown in the puddle into which Malfoy had slammed me, my glasses resting a few feet away, when I heard a clear voice exclaim, "Oh, my heavens! That was nasty. Are you all right, Harry?"
Turning my head left, I saw a pair of brown docksiders, topped by a pair of dark khaki pants. Given the muddy conditions of the Hogwarts grounds, his pants and shoes were both ridiculously clean.
I rolled onto my side, propped up on one bruised elbow, and looked up. The loafers belonged to a tall, slender man. He had long, dark hair and a good-sized mole above the right side of his mouth. He wore a comfortable-looking black sweater, the dark khaki pants, and neatly ironed black robes. He was kind of handsome — almost pretty. He wore a silver ring in his left ear. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties.
"Who are you?" I asked suspiciously.
"Your fairy godfather. My name is Mark. Come on, stand up and let's see if we can't do something with you."
"Are you making fun of me?" I asked. After Malfoy and his henchmen's last attack, I had had about enough of people calling me a fruit for one day.
"Moi?" cried the man, arching his eyebrows and laying a hand on his chest. "Listen, honey, I have nothing but sympathy for you. I had to deal with my share of hooligans when I was your age, and I know it's no fun. I'm here to help."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I told you, I'm your fairy godfather."
He waited for me to day something, but I just sat in the puddle, glaring at him. (It was uncomfortable, but the mud had already soaked right through my boxers, so it didn't make that much difference.)
"You know," he said encouragingly. "Like in Cinderella?"
"Go away and let me suffer in peace," I growled, splashing muddy water at him.
He flinched and frowned, but it was a reflex action; the water that struck his pants vanished without a trace.
I blinked, and splashed at him again, this time spattering a double handful of murky water across his legs.
"Are you angry or just making a fashion statement?" he asked.
I felt a little chill crawl up my spine. No spot or mark of moisture could be seen on the perfectly pressed khakis. "How did you do that?" I asked.
He just smiled and said, "Do you want your three wishes or not, Harry?"
I climbed out of the puddle. "What's going on here?" I asked.
He made a clicking sound with his tongue. "I think it's pretty obvious," he said, rolling his large, light brown eyes. "Come on, let's go get a mug of butterbeer and talk. All your questions will be answered in good time."
The first question I though of was "How much trouble am I going to get into being seen with this strange man?" With Malfoy and his goons already calling me "faggot" and "fruit," walking around with a guy who moved the way Mark did, wasn't going to do anything to improve the situation.
The first question I actually asked was, "Do you have to walk like that?"
"Like what?"
"You know," I said, blushing a little. "So swish-y."
Mark stopped. "Honey, I gave my life to be able to walk like this. Don't you dare try to stop me now." He snapped his fingers three times, bringing his hand around in a funky "Z" shape, and moving his neck in odd positions.
"Don't call me honey!" I snapped.
He sighed and rolled his eyes towards the sky. "I can't say you didn't warn me," he said, clearly not speaking to me.
We went trekking up High Street and into the Three Broomsticks. It's a large, cozy pub that is mostly haunted by the inhabitants of Hogsmeade; but on days that Hogwarts' students are allowed up, it's packed with people, especially the ones interested in theater. Hogwarts isn't well known for its theater productions, but they do actually have a Drama Club.
"Not bad," said Mark as we entered. "Brings back memories."
Things were slow, and we found a corner table where we could talk in private. Madame Rosmerta sauntered over in her blue sparkly shoes to take our orders. Mark smiled at her and requested two butterbeers. She came back a few moments later with two foaming tankards.
"Okay," I said, "what's going on?"
I won't relate the first part of the conversation, because you've probably read a lot of things like it before. I couldn't believe what he was saying was real, so I kept trying to figure out what this was really about — the Confundus Charm, an elaborate practical joke, that kind of thing. But after he instantly dried my puddle-soaked pants by snapping his fingers, I had to accept it. Whether or not he was my fairy godfather, this guy was doing really powerful wand-less magic left and right.
"Okay, if you're real," I said, lifting my butterbeer (which had changed from regular butterbeer to a butterbeer float while I was drinking it), "then tell me how come I never heard of fairy godfathers before?"
"Because I'm the first."
"Care to explain that?"
"Certainly. Once you kick the bucket, you get some choices on the other side. What kind of choices depends on the usual stuff — how good you've been and so on. Well, I was going up, not down, and it was pretty much expected that I would just opt to be an angel; what with the tracking system, you know? But I said I didn't want to be anyone's guardian angel, I wanted to be a fairy godfather." He took a sip of his butterbeer and sighed. "Let me tell you, that caused one hell of a hullabaloo! But I said people had been calling me a fairy all my life, and now that I was dead, that was what I wanted to be. Then I told them that if they didn't let me be a fairy godfather, I was going to bring charges of sexism against them. So they let me in. You're my first case."
"Does that have any significance?" I asked nervously.
"What do you mean?"
"Me being your first case. Does that mean I'm gay?"
I didn't mention that I had been trying to figure out the same thing myself for about a year now.
He got that look in his eye that meant he was about to make another wisecrack. But suddenly his face got serious. Voice soft, he said, "You may be, you may not. The point is, you're getting picked on because people think you are — which is why I've been sent to work with you. Gay-bashing is a special issue for me."
"Why? What happened?"
"It's how I met my maker, so to speak. I was walking down the street one day about two years ago, minding my own business, when three bruisers dragged me into an alley, shouting, 'We'll teach you, faggot!' They never did explain exactly what it was they were going to teach me. Last thing I remember from life on Earth was coming face to face with a tire iron. Next thing I knew, I was knocking at the Pearly Gates."
We were both silent for a moment. The he shrugged and took another sip of his butterbeer.
"You're taking this awfully casually," I said, still stunned by the horror of what he had told me.
"Sugar, I did a lot of screaming and shouting while it was happening. Afterwards, too, for that matter. Didn't do me a bit of good. I was still dead. Once you've been on the other side for a while, you get a little more Zen about this kind of thing."
"But you never thought about getting revenge on one of those guys or something?"
He shook his head. "I prefer reform over vengeance. Besides, it's against the rules. Why don't we just concentrate on your case for the time being?"
"Okay, do I really get three wishes?"
"Oui, oui. Well, two, now."
"What do you mean?"
"You used up the first one on that butterbeer float."
"I didn't tell you to change it!" I yelped.
"You didn't have to. You wished for it."
"I'm glad I didn't wish I was dead!" I muttered.
"Oh!" he cried. "Getting personal, are we? Don't you think that remark was a little tasteless under the circumstances?"
"Are you here to help me or to drive me crazy?"
"It hurts me that you could even ask. Anyway, the three wishes are only part of the service, even though that's what people always focus on. I'm really here to watch over you, advise you, guide you, till we get things on track."
He leaned back in his chair, glanced across the room, then winked at a nice-looking seventh year sitting about five tables away from us, whose name I thought to be Justin Dawson.
"Will you stop that!" I hissed.
"What's the matter, afraid of guilt by association?"
"No, I'm afraid he'll come over here and beat us up. Only he probably can't bet you up, so he'll have to settle for me."
Mark waved his hand. "I guarantee you he wasn't offended. He's one of the gang."
"What gang?"
Mark pursed his plump lips and raised his eyebrows, as if he couldn't believe I could be so dense.
I blinked. "How can you tell something like that just from looking at him?"
"Gaydar," said Mark, sloshing around the remainder of his drink, attempting to get the foam on the sides of the mug. "Automatic sensing systems that lets you spot people of a similar persuasion. A lot of gay guys have it to some degree or another. If it were more reliable, it would make life easier on us —"
I interrupted, "Speak for yourself."
Mark sighed. "I wasn't necessarily including you in that particular 'us.' I was just pointing out that it's harder spotting potential partners when you're gay. If a guy asks a girl out for a date, about the worst that could happen is that she laughs at him. If he asks out another guy, he might just get punched in the face."
That thought had crossed my mind more than once as I was trying to figure myself out over the last year — and not only with regard to dating. I would have been happy just to have someone I felt safe talking to about this.
"Is this gaydar something you can learn?" I asked.
He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment, then said, "I don't think so."
"It must be lonely," I muttered, more to myself than to him.
"It doesn't have to be," he replied sharply. "If gay people hadn't been forced to hide for so long, if we could just openly identify ourselves, there would be plenty of people you knew that you could ask for advice. Everybody knows gay people; they just think they don't."
"What do you mean?"
"Listen, love, the world is crawling with faggots. But most of them are in hiding because they're afraid they'll get treated the way you did about an hour ago."
I took in my breath sharply. Mark must have seen the look of shock on my face, because he looked puzzled for a moment. Then he laughed, "That word bother you?"
"I was taught that it was impolite."
"It is. But if you live in a world that keeps trying to grind you down, you either start thumbing your nose at it or end up very, very shot. Taking back the language is one way to jam the grinder. My mates and I called each other 'faggot' and 'queer' for the same reason so many back folks call each other 'nigger' — to take the words away from the people who want to use them to hurt us."
His eyes went dreamy for a moment, as if he was looking at something far away, or deep inside. "I walk and talk the way I do because I'm not going to let anyone else define me. I can turn it off whenever I want, you know."
He moved in his seat. I couldn't begin to tell you exactly what changed, but he suddenly looked more masculine, less… swish-y.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"Protective coloration," he said with a smile. "You learn to use it to get along in the world if you want. Only I got sick of living in the box the world prescribed; it was far too small to hold me. So I knocked down a few walls."
"Yeah, and look what happened. You ended up dead."
"They do like to keep us down," he said, swallowing the last of his butterbeer. Suddenly he smiled and looked more like himself again. "Do you know the three great gay fantasies?" he asked.
"I don't think so," I said nervously.
He looked at me. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Skip the first two. You're too young. It was number three that I wanted to tell you about anyway. We used to imagine what it would be like if every gay person in the whole entire country turned blue for a day."
My eyes went wide, "Why?"
"So all the straights would have to stop imagining that they didn't know any gay people. They would find out that they had been surrounded by gays all the time, and survived the experience just fine. They'd have to face the fact that there are gay cops and gay farmers, gay teachers and gay soldiers, gay parents and gay kids. The hiding would finally have to stop."
He looked at me for a moment. "How would you like to have the sight?" he asked.
"What?"
"How would you like to have gaydar for a while? You might find it interesting."
"Does this count as a wish?" I asked suspiciously.
"No, it's education. Comes under a different category."
"All right," I said, feeling a little nervous.
"Close your eyes," said Mark.
After I did as he requested, I felt him touch each of my eyelids lightly. My cheeks began to burn as I wondered if anyone was watching.
"Okay," he said. "Open up, big boy, and see what the world is really like."
I opened my eyes and gasped loudly.
About one third of the people in the café — including the guy Mark had winked at — were blue. Some were bright blue, some were deep blue, some just had a bluish tint to them.
"Are you telling me all those people are gay?" I whispered.
"To some degree or another."
"But so many of them?"
"Well, this isn't a typical place," said Mark. "You told me the theater crowd hangs around in here." He waved his hand grandly. "Groups like that tend to have a higher percentage of gay people because we're so naturally artistic." He frowned. "Of course, some bozos take a fact like that and decide that everyone doing theater is gay. Remember, two thirds of the people you're seeing aren't blue."
"What about all of the different shades?" I asked.
"It's an indicator of extent. The dark blues are pretty much not including queers, while the lighter ones are less committed — or maybe like you, trying to make up their minds. I set it up so that you'll see at least a hint of blue on anyone who has had a gay experience. Come on, let's go for a walk."
It was like seeing the world through new eyes. Most of the people looked just the same as always, of course. But Mr. Edison, the fat wizard who owned half of the bookstore, Flourish and Blotts, looked like a giant blueberry — which surprised me, because he was married and had three kids. On the other hand, Madame Pince, the hawk-like librarian, and who everyone knew was a lesbian didn't have a trace of blue on her.
"Can't tell without the spell," said Mark. "Straights are helpless at it. They're always assuming someone is or isn't for all the wrong reasons."
We had exited the Three Broomsticks and made our way back down High Street and across the wet, muddy grounds back to Hogwarts. Luckily, it was a Saturday, so no one was especially missing me. We were now in the library because Mark wanted to show me some books. "Here, flip through this," he said, handing me a one-volume history of the world.
My blue-vision worked on pictures, too!
"Julius Caesar?" I asked in astonishment.
"Every woman's husband, and every man's wife," said Mark, amused. "I met him at a party on the other side once. Nice guy." Flipping some more pages, he said, "Here, check this one out."
"Alexander the Great was a fairy!" I cried.
"Shhhh!" Mark hissed, pressing his finger to his lips. "We're in the library."
We both glanced around us for any signs of Madame Pince. She appeared to be no where near us.
Now, I suppose you're wondering about me — as in, was I blue? The answer is…
Slightly.
When I asked Mark to explain, he said, "The Magic Eight Ball says, 'Signs are mixed.' In other words, you are one confused puppy. That's the way it is sometimes. You'll figure it out after a while."
Watching the news last night was a riot. My favorite network anchor was about the shade of a spring sky — pale blue, but very definite. So was the man he interviewed, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, who also happened to be a notorious homophobe.
"Hypocrite," I spat at the television.
"What brought that on?" asked my real godfather, Sirius. I often stayed at his flat in Hogsmeade on weekends.
"Oh, nothing," I said, trying to figure out whether I was relieved or appalled by the slight tint of blue that covered his features.
Don't get the idea that everyone I saw was blue. On the contrary, it broke down pretty much the way the studies indicate — about one in every ten people is solid blue, and one out of every four has some level of shading.
I did get a kick out of the three blue guys I spotted in the sports feature on the team favored to win the next Quidditch World Cup. Their names were written across the bottom: Terrence Higgs, Ernie MacMillan, and oddly enough, Oliver Wood.
But it was Fudge who stayed no my mind. I couldn't forget his hypocritical words about "the great crime of homosexuality" and "the gay threat to British youth." I was brushing my teeth when I figured out what I wanted to do.
"No," I whispered, staring at my bluish face in the mirror. "I couldn't."
For one thing, it would probably mean another beating from Malfoy and his cronies. And for another, nothing would ever be the same.
Rinsing away the toothpaste foam, I whispered Mark's name.
"At your service!" he said, shimmering into existence behind me. "Ooh, what a tacky bathroom. Where was your mother brought up, in a K-Mart?"
"Leave my mother out of this," I snapped. "I want to make my second wish."
"And it is?"
"Gay fantasy number three, coast to coast."
He looked at me for a second, then began to smile. "How's midnight for a starting point?"
"Twenty-four hours should do the trick, don't you think?" I replied.
He rubbed his hands together in an evil genius fashion, chuckled, and disappeared.
I went to bed, but not to sleep. I kept thinking about what it would mean when the rest of the world would see what I had seen today.
I turned on the wireless, planning to listen to the Daily Prophet Special Report every hour. I had figured the first reports would come on in the one o'clock news, but I was wrong. It was about twelve thirty when special bulletins started announcing a strange phenomenon. By one o'clock, every station I could pick up was on full alert. Thanks to the wonders of modern communication, it had become obvious in a matter of minutes that people were turning blue all over England.
It didn't take much longer for people to start figuring out what the blue stood for. The reaction ranged form panic to hysterical denial to dancing in the streets. National Public Radio quickly summoned a panel of experts to discuss what was going to happen when people had to go to work on Monday.
"Or school," I muttered to myself. Which was when I got my next idea.
"Mark!" I shouted.
"You rang?" he asked, glittering into sight at the foot of my bed.
"I just figured out my third wish." I took a deep breath. "I want you to turn Draco Malfoy blue."
He looked at me for a moment. Then his light brown eyes went wide. "Harry," he said, "I love the way you think. I'll be back in a flash."
When he returned, he was grinning like the Cheshire cat.
"You've still got one wish left, kiddo," he said with a chuckle. "Draco Malfoy was already as blue as a summer sky when I got there."
If I caused you any trouble with Blueday, I'm sorry. But not much. Because things are never going to be the same now that it happened. Never.
And my third wish?
I've decided to save it for when I really need it — may be when I meet the girl of my dreams.
Or Prince Charming.
Whichever.
***
I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did. But I have to go as it's 1:25 a.m. and I have to take a shower, not to mention, sleep.
Night!
Love,
~^-^~
Puntang Jones