Always Purée

Part 4: Cartographers' Guild

Reggie and Petunia met again at Petunias' house the next day after school to discuss their revenge plan. Watching her cross entire rooms to get things was the oddest thing to Reggie, he kept wanting to ask why she didn't accio them. He felt slightly uncomfortable sitting at her desk. Last night Petunia had been somebody that shared his inferiority complex and she had made him really excited to come up with a scheme to extract revenge, but now she was just a girl he didn't know well and he just wasn't good at socializing.

"Do you play anything?" she asked, sitting on her bed and strumming on a ukulele.

"The cello" Reggie replied.

"That's classy"

"Why do you ask?"

"It could be useful when we participate in the Song for Europe Contest!" Petunia grinned.

"The what?"

"The Song for Europe Contest! It's a pan-European contest where every European nation sends a performer and then you vote for a winner and the winner gets… A trophy or something, possibly also money but I'm not sure"

"I thought we were going to plot revenge"

"Yes, but hear me out. If we participate in this thing we will become famous. And then we will slander your brother and my sister in the press! People will listen and take us seriously!"

"Slander?"

"It's not even slandering because we will tell the truth about everything they ever did to make us feel like crap. Or do you have a better idea?"

"I looked up some available towers where we could lock them up and have beasts guard them and then we could make them do demeaning things"

"Aha…" Petunia patted her ukulele. "But what would we really get out of that? My way we will also become famous and we won't have to get day jobs ever"

Although that was a good point, Reggie had always nurtured a fantasy to lock Sirius inside a tower guarded by beasts and was a little disappointed at Petunias' lack of interest. Perhaps he could arrange that some other time.

"How do you win, then?" he asked.

"First we record a song and send it in, and once it's been accepted the rest will work itself out"

"Ok that sounds easy enough"

"So let's just start writing a song now!"

"Ok"
Then they just sat there quietly, simply waiting for that hit to write itself.

Hogwarts had a music room where bands like to jam, a room Reggie always passed on his way to the dungeons. He had left the unfruitful songwriting session in Swansea sometime after six without having come up with as much as a first line or title because he wanted to be back before curfew, promising Petunia he'd try to get some drafts written before their next meeting. He didn't normally stop and listen at the door to the music room when a jamming session was in progress, but hearing the upbeat tune that was currently playing, a tune that was clearly heavily influenced by The Who's My Generation, it suddenly struck him how easy song writing seemed although it wasn't remotely easy. He put his ear to the door to catch the lyrics.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, because I'm beautiful baby. Why don't you just walk away? Buy a soap and don't hate me because I'm beautiful"

And so forth. Everybody was familiar with the shallow lyrics of the Cartographers' Guild because they always performed at ceremonies that preceded the holidays. Even the band name was stupid because what did cartography have to do with music? But shallow lyrics aside, it was still catchy as hell. Wondering why it was so much easier for some to come up with songs than others, an idea crossed Reggie's mind: what if he stole it? He would have a song that would appeal to the shallow minds of the masses for that contest and Sirius would just hate him for it. But then he thought that he could write deeper songs for sure and didn't need a dumb rip-off of My Generation. Then he thought that just possessing depth wasn't enough to make you skillful at songwriting. Reggie was simply too brooding to come up with something happy-sounding.

"Do it!" His bad shoulder angel popped up at his left with a cracking sound. "Just imagine his reaction when you get all the fame and glory!"

"Don't" The sound of a heavenly chorus accompanied the arrival of his good shoulder angel. "You will only feel guilt afterwards and you know it"

"Why should you feel guilty for it?" argued the bad angel. "He already has enough fortune and success! You deserve some too, damn it!"

"Don't" said the good angel serenely. "Win on your own merits"

"Don't forget that this is about revenge" the bad angel reminded him. "Remember when he fed your parakeets to his cats just because you accidentally stepped on Satellite's tail? Or the time he threatened to drop your house elf from the roof unless you finished an entire tub of blancmange? Or the time he replaced your shampoo with mayonnaise?"

Of course Reggie remembered all the abuse he had ever been put through and how proud his parents had been over their budding villain, and how they had reprimanded Reggie for crying about it.

"Forgive and forget" said the good angel. "He's not so bad now"

"Meaning he couldn't care less about you" said the bad angel.

"Stop fueling the negative thoughts, Bad Angel!" reproached the good angel.

"It's my job!"

"Stealing is wrong. Don't steal"

"It's not wrong. Did you know the Indians don't have words for 'yours' and 'mine'?"

"It's immoral"

"You're immoral"

"You can both go away now" said Reggie, brushing the angels from his shoulders and wondering if there'd ever come a day when they wouldn't meddle in his decision making.