Author: Gabriel Frosner
E-mail: Gabriel_Frosner@yahoo.co.uk
Title: Cliched
Character: Neville Longbottom
Author's Notes: Stress-induced writing (finals are this month and I've been studying way too hard). Also, I'm sorry that I can't do the accent over the e for cliched; my computer won't let me do it. Please forgive me.
It's almost comical how something can be repeated so often that it loses all meaning, like a cliche. Even cliches once were witty and profound, so shockingly original that they were remembered and repeated until they lost all meaning.
Avoid a squib like the plague.
Even jokes suffer the same fate as cliches, being repeated so often that the semblance of humour they once possessed slowly drips out, leaving the joke stale, old, rotten, almost sickening in its tediousness.
Why did the squib cross the road?
And yet they stay with you, coming out when you stop thinking and just need to say anything; when you're trying to add some spice or power to your words, and your mind just spews it out dogmatically.
Being a squib is a fate worse than death.
And, no matter how boring or tedious it is, it always seems to contain some element of truth--somehow truer than truth--repeated until anything contradicting it is just wrong, incomprehensible, so utterly false that it would be silly to even consider its truth.
A squib is a skeleton in a wizarding family's closet.
And so, when you're hung by your ankle out of the window, swaying, watching the ground sway opposite to you, closing your eyes and still feeling the ground sway, feeling your hair reaching for it, straining for the release that gravity promises, hearing the scream for magic overwhelming the soft whisper of the wind, bashing it away with the force of repetition and desperation.
What would your father say if he knew he had a squib for a son? You stick out like a sore thumb in the Longbottom's bloodline.
And you're praying for some kind of divine intervention, anything at all to take you away from the yelling, just solid ground under your feet and maybe a book to read, new and fresh words replacing the old axioms, even if just for a second, but you can't focus the pleas into any kind of coherent prayer, just mumbled words, desperate hopes, carried away by the tsunami of words washing over you, then dragging you out to the middle of the ocean with the undercurrent, leaving you alone--a final kindness--to drown.
Squib is a word better left unsaid.
The tears drip down from your eyes and into your hair, mixing with the sweat already there into a melange of frigid salt water--a homogenous solution of fear and frantic prayers.
For a squib, magic is easier said than done.
Suddenly there's a gasp, and the tsunami receds into the ocean, becoming nothing more than a memory, the hand around your ankle loosening with its absence, the sound of the sharp domineering voice screaming for answers, receiving only hesitation and uncertainty until the voice becomes reality, everything else falling away with gravity as the hand finally lets go of your ankle, and you fall with it, the wind claiming its place in your ears, screaming like the voices did before.
The falling is almost peaceful, like the calm before the storm.
And, though your eyes are closed you can still feel the ground, sense it coming closer, coming towards you even though you know you're falling towards it, and there is a moment of tranquility just before you hit; you know that this is it, the end, and there's nothing you can do about it--your head will hit the ground, smash, and no more, nothing more until you hit the ground and bounce once, twice, then to your feet before you lose your balance from your confusion, landing on your tailbone hard--the first pain that you've felt since you started falling.
It's the exception that proves the rule.
Suddenly your uncle is there, whispering "you're not a squib; not a squib," and crying because of the joy that thought brings, but you know the entire idea is silly; you're a squib: you always have been. Even considering anything else is just silly, because you know you're a squib; it's true, somehow truer than truth, always there, inescapable, like a bad joke you keep hearing because each new person you meet thinks you've never heard it.
Why did the squib cross the road?
So you know you're a squib; you know you don't belong here in the same dorm as Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas: wizards all. Brandishing a wand to rid themselves of trouble, maybe even catching a snitch or beating a bludger as they walk from class to class, day to day and year to year, wand always with them, always ready, always there, just like the knowledge is always there for you, between thoughts, between words, between anything tangible or intangible: inescapably there.
A squib should never see the light of day.
And you see the way Seamus and Dean touch each other gently, perhaps even platonically as they grab each other's attention to say "look at that," or maybe just to give friendly encouragement, friendly banter, friendly grazes and touches as they meet and depart with handshakes and hugs for either exultation or exhaustion. And you want more than anything to be held in those arms, Seamus's strong arms, head on his shoulder, lips against his, safe and protected, warmth oozing from the caress even as the more intense heat forms in specific areas of each of your bodies, but you know this is a joke, a bad joke, an old joke, repeated so often that it's become more sickening than funny.
Why did the squib cross the road, Neville?
The squib crossed the road because he couldn't apparate to the other side.