Longing from a subconscious

Part 7

Evening fell. Quidditch practice was on. James was directing everyone through the cunning use of wild gestures and shouting.

"You go there, you go there!" he pointed. There was a sound of glass shattering. "How are they doing?" he asked Sirius, to whom he was still clinging because he hadn't gotten his cane back.

Sirius paused in his crossword solving and tried to judge. It all looked like a chaotic mess, but then, when didn't it?

"That's a bit soon for them to be in a pile on the ground, isn't it? Or is there a point to that?"

"All of them?"

"No, not all of them" Thud. Thudthudthud. "Ok, now it's all of them. Is it normal for the hoops to catch on fire?"

"I bet you think this is a very good opportunity to make things up. Way to take advantage of my disability"

Rol appeared to be having a shouting discussion with Professor McGonagall, whose window had been shattered. All dark from soot in the face, she made her way towards the two spectators after Professor McGonagall had shut the window.

"I don't know if you heard any of that" she said.

"Who said that?!" James demanded.

"McGonagall says you're off. Sorry" Rolf returned to the team.

"Can you believe it?" said James, devastated.

"Yes" Sirius replied.

"You know what that is called?"

"A safety precaution?"

"That's right! Discrimination! Way to treat the disabled! The press will hear of this!" he yelled in much anger.

"You once kicked Mort for an infected nail"

"An infected nail hurts a lot! Very difficult to hold on to things when you're fingers are in pain"

"And it's difficult to direct people when you're facing away from them"

For the first time in his life was James just a little more than just annoyed at Sirius' ironic (or determined?) tendency to make a mockery out of everything. Quidditch wasn't just a hobby, it was a major part of his identity and it gave him a great sense of importance. Without it, he felt kind of stripped and at loss. So he let go of Sirius, gave him a demonstrative shove and stomped off on his own.

"Oh, come on" said Sirius, like some people do when they think that somebody is overreacting, and followed, because it wasn't as if he had any business hanging around.

"As long as you're having fun!" James yelled back, suddenly heading right.

"Do you have something to do in the forest?"

James stopped. "Maybe!" Ok, so he didn't. He turned left, now heading towards the entrance. Then he tripped on a rock and fell down on his knees on wet grass. This was as mopy as he had ever felt. Or quite possibly the first time he had felt mopy at all.

"So maybe I can't see the appeal of that stupid game with the weird rules" said Sirius, when he had caught up. "But you must have some other hobby or interest"

"What difference would it make if I did? I used to be someone, and now… I'm nobody… I wish I could just reject organizations like you do and just pick up whatever my current whim bid for the day, but I guess I don't have that in me. And now, it's like I don't even know who I am anymore"

"You'd rather be bored all the time…?" Sirius threw the stump that remained from his floo roll on the ground and pressed it with his sole against the wet grass. "Anyway, I seem to recall a story…"

"What story?"

"Involving a certain Mr O'Hare and hair extensions and glue-laced hoop polish. When his neck cracked and his thumbs got paralyzed due to damaged nerve endings, did he sit and mope?"

"He did for an entire autobiography"

"Which brings me to my point. When life gives you lemons, you write a song about it. Or paint one"

"I don't know, I've never been artistic"
"You don't have a choice. It is the destiny of anybody who feels like a nobody to become an artist. That's just how it works. Great way to feed your ego. So go! Go and learn to play the piano!"

James could only be bothered to learn Don't you worry 'bout a thing on piano before he lost interest and walked away from the grand piano in the drama room.

"I honestly don't see what's so fun about playing the piano" he said and went to sit down on the edge of the stage to doodle on the back of some test results.

"Wow you're a nay sayer" said Sirius, racing to take the piano next but Remus beat him to it because he had been closer.

"I know… I feel so empty inside and I have the strangest urge to fill that void with meaningless physical intimacy, as if that would validate me somehow… Does that make sense?"

Having just noticed a smudge of lipstick on his collar, Sirius was a bit too distracted with trying to remove it to pay any close attention. "Take a nap. You're rambling"

"You seem to be very in tune with your feelings all of a sudden" Remus paused in his playing to scribble some notes on an empty notes sheet.

"I know, and it sucks!" James crumpled some old test results and threw it behind him so it landed on the piano. Remus uncrumpled it out of curiosity and turned it over, too look at the doodles. His jaw dropped a little. This was not simple doodles, this was a very detailed monochromic ink illustration of the quidditch field at sunrise. Drops of dew sparkled in the grass, a pair of magpies sat on a glistening iron hoops in the foreground, just slightly lit up by the distant sunlight breaking through the clouds… This wasn't just an illustration. This was art. And on an entirely different level of skill than the indecent stick figure drawings that James normally doodled when he had a little bit of time to kill. Sirius was also looking, already plotting how to make money out of this.