Longing from a subconscious
Part 10
The drawings had sold like hot cakes after the unexpected and quick departure of Mr Larue the younger. He had quietly disappeared during a tirade about the history of grass representation in gray scale, and good thing too because the press just missed him, and they had been so intent on asking juicy questions about his private life.
"What if the press will spy on me now?" Peter asked the following Sunday, slightly terror struck at the thought.
"All the drawings are sold, the name trade marketed" Page flick. "You probably won't have to pretend again"
"Is there really nothing that can be done about the blind thing?"
"There are plenty of things that can be done"
"So… Why hasn't anything been done?"
Remus wasn't sure. He had in all honesty simply forgot to ask, having gotten so distracted with the unexpected art work and the selling scheme it had inspired.
"Maybe he's on a waiting list" he shrugged. "Those can be long"
Although that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, nagging suspicion grew nonetheless.
Outside on the freshly aired grounds, cigarettes were being twirled in between fingers.
"Can you believe the time you have to wait?" James complained, inhaling.
"Yeah, well, that's public health care for you" said Sirius neutrally, wondering if there really were pipes from which you could blow smoke in the shape of dragons.
"St Mungos is private" James felt compelled to correct him, being more left-wing than Sirius as he was.
Public, state… Perhaps it didn't make any difference, considering it was Sirius who kept postponing the waiting time in favour of launching his career.
"It's not so bad, 'though, is it? I thought you got used to it pretty quickly"
"What choice do I have? It wasn't so bad because I knew it was temporary, but I was under the impression that I was only going to have to wait a month, but I've just been informed it's been postponed yet again!" James stomped a fag-end irritably.
"But what a great way to spend the wait! You'll come out of it rich and famous!"
"But it's kind of interfering with my studies. It's a little difficult to aim, you see"
"Think of it like this. You have a bunch of TV appearances scheduled and publications coming up. You will get rich so quickly you can pay your way ahead. So by the time you're sick of the fame and money, you can get fixed in a snap and won't have to wait a day!"
"I suppose you have a point"
"You know how useless class is most of the time anyway. You barely have any catching up to do"
Suddenly they heard a faint call for help.
"Did you hear that?" James asked.
"Hm, hear what?"
Help help!
"That just now"
"Nope, no I didn't hear anything"
"No? But you've always had such good hearing"
Heeeeelp!
"Your blindness must be playing tricks on you"
"It sounds like it's coming from here, we should probably look into it"
"Why? This is what the teachers get paid to do"
They rounded the corner and headed towards the green houses. The call got louder.
"We're getting close" said James, arms reached out. "Where are we?"
"No idea" Sirius sat down on the edge of the well and lit a new floo roll.
Please help!
"Come on, you must hear! Somewhere here…" Crash. "The well! Is there someone in the well?"
Sirius took a quick peak down the well.
"Hello?"
"Hi" said the well.
"You know, sometimes I think I hear something but it's really imagined"
"I heard that too" James poked his head in the well. "What's your name?"
"Timmy" the well replied.
"Timmy is trapped in a well! We have to do something!"
"Do we, 'though?" said Sirius. "He could be a Slytherin"
"Are you a Slytherin?" James asked Timmy.
There was a pause. A growing pause.
"No?"
"Liar" said Sirius.
"So what if he's a Slytherin? Having them do our bidding in gratitude is a good thing" said James.
"How many more do we really need? They're so grumpy about it…"
"They're grumpy about everything. Quit fussing and go"
Fine!
The entrance hall was empty. No professor in sight. Sirius leaned against the entrance to the library, thinking he had done what he could in this matter and that there was nothing more to be done, the important thing was that he had tried.
Suddenly Peter came out of the library, startling when he saw Sirius unfolding a half-finished Prophet crossword puzzle, because he was just generally jumpy by nature, especially around people who were taller (which were everybody) and temperamental. And impulsive and slightly malicious and sometimes said hurtful things or set up schemes to humiliate you and were self-proclaimed narcissists. Peter wasn't sure what that was, he thought they were kind of like sociopaths except they liked to admire their own reflections a lot. People thought Remus was Sirius' polar opposite, but they were wrong. Peter was as much of a polar opposite as was at all possible to be, both in nature and appearance, and he had been so relieved when Sirius had not turned out as a cat like he had so desperately wanted just because he thought cats had more dignity.
"You there" he pointed the tattered end of a crow feather at Peter's pointy nose. "Tell any staff there is a boy trapped in the well. Go!"
Peter hurried off, nearly tripping on his poorly tied shoe laces.
Luck in the Chinese bakery, 7 letters. Tap, tap, tap. Stupid Prophet and their lazy clue recycling. Fortune. He tossed the paper away and went inside the library, hopped up on a table, snagged Rock, Scissors & Paper: A guide to strategy from a stack of books beside him and looked through it for two seconds with miserable disinterest before he tossed it back on top of Hopscotch and other numerology rituals. Sigh.
"'I'm bored'" said Remus for him.
"Do you know what it's like?"
"No. Tell me all about it"
"Sarcasm?"
"How are you always bored when you're always doing something?"
"I'm not doing anything now"
Page flick. "You should try meditating"
"I'd rather die"
"Hang on, don't you have some eye-seeing to attend?"
"I'll get back to that. In a minute"
"Was it so boring you have to recharge from the boredom with more boredom?"
"I had to come in here anyway, so I thought I might as well stop by and tell you all about how bored I am because I know how much that fascinates the psychoanalyst in you"
Multiple page flicks. "Why did you have to come in here? And tell me about your childhood"
"Nothing. Someone is trapped in a well that's all. And so maybe I was regularly disciplined according to 200 unforgivable ways to punish your nasty little spawns by Morticia Poppins, but I don't think that affected me. Everyone in the neighbourhood had that book and only 2 out of 10 don't develop antisocial tendencies"
"Someone is trapped in a well?"
"Yeah"
"Did you tell a staff?"
Floo being inhaled and the blown out in a ring, through which attempts and blowing rings through the ring were made.
"I sent Wormtail to get someone, no worries"
"You came here to get him to get someone, although you're so very bored and so very desperate to do anything?"
"That boy has to learn to talk to people outside of us, you know. I did him a favour"
"Oh. That was very considerate of you, to take on such massive boredom, just to help him grow"
"A pair"
"As a person"
"With a pair"
"On the other hand, because of your noble sacrifice, the person in the well will have to wait longer"
"Not that much longer and it was a Slytherin anyway"
Book switch. Pause. Glance of suspicion.
"Did you push him in the well?"
"No!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes I'm sure, I've been way too busy acting as an agent and cane substitute"
"If you say so…"
"Why would I push anyone that doesn't owe me money in a well? Waste of time and no money in it"
"I can't keep up with all your projects, maybe you're giving swimming lessons now too"
Sirius pondered that between rings, wondering how much he could charge for pushing people in wells. He could see the sign post before him. The marketing plan was already forming.
"Brilliant…"
"You want something to do?" Rummage, rummage. "Here"
"A Rubik's' Cube? That's a doddle" Sirius tossed it back and forth, suddenly wishing he had a footbag on him.
"So solve it, then. It can be solved in as few as three turns and for every turn you're electro shocked, so try to make them as few as possible"
Deciding on a first turn with care, a shock of electricity shot through Sirius, making it look as if he had taken a bath with a toaster.
"I feel… strangely at peace. And humble" Tssst. "False alarm"
The swishy sound of arrival came to a hesitant stop.
"My flirting senses are tingling, you're both here aren't you?" said James, feeling his surroundings for people and things to avoid crashing into.
"How's Willy?" Sirius asked, dabbing his sooty face with wet wipes.
"Still in the well. Why didn't you get a staff like I told you to?"
"I sent Wormtail to get someone, no worries"
"Yeah, he's at the well too, now. The first professor he ran into did not have a moment to spare, and that was the end of that"
"Well…" Dab, dab "Prioritizing, you know"
"No I don't know. All I know is I did not have this much trouble with Newton, how I miss that son of a Bichon Frisé…"
"Anyway, you made it this far so why don't you get someone?" The hair didn't need any work, it knew how to work itself out into fabulousness.
"It would go so much faster if you did, you… seeing disobedient person you"
"You know what's time consuming? Fussing"
"You fussed first!"
"A boy is trapped in a well! This is not the time to point fingers!"
A squeaky chariot of books with a librarian attached to it passed them in no particular hurry.
"Well there's Pince now, why don't you tell her?" Remus suggested.
"Yeah, just go and tell her, she's not too far away for you!"
"Ok I will, since you would rather sit here and flirt!" James backed carefully and turned right, arms constantly looking out of obstacles.
"The other way" said Sirius.
There was a terrible clang of armours being knocked over like domino pieces. Hogwarts was simply packed with armours for some reason. Sirius got off the table with a heavy sigh to go and find Pince.
Madam Beathag (Beh-ak, not Beet Hag like everyone said even after correction) McFlaherty Pince was stuffing shelves with books somewhere deep inside the library. She wore thick glasses and her chestnut hair in a bun so tight it screamed silently to be let out in its glorious waves.
"Madam Pince" said Sirius, as if he had just drunk a mug of acid, and received her full attention. "There's a boy trapped in a well. There"
"What's that, laddie?"
Poisonous stare. Pince possessed a very odd quirk of slapping her knees when upbeat, something she had picked up growing up on a yard where cairn terriers had been bred.
"Billy or Willy or something. Yeah. You should probably do something"
"A wee lad fell down a well?"
"Must have, seeing as he is now in the well"
"Take me to him. Take me to him this instant!"
"It's the well by the greenhouse"
"What's that?" Pince adjusted her hearing aid. She wasn't old. Researching banshees had damaged her ears a few years back.
Sigh. "The well by the green house!" Sirius practically shouted into her one poorly working ear.
"Shhh! Eh, don't shout in the library!"
Fortunately there was a window behind them that faced the green houses. Sirius gestured towards them.
"The well by the green house?"
"Yes"
"Take me to it this instant!"
"It's right there!"
"What's that?"
"I said" Sirius lowered his voice. "That you remind me of a centerfold"
"Right there, you say?"
"Mhm"
"Well, let's go then!"
"What do you need me for, it's right there!"
"What's that?"
Timmy was successfully rescued, draped in a shock blanket and brought to the hospital wing for hot soup.
"You know" James tossed a floo roll stump in the well and unfolded the latest Blind Prophet. "There is something called paraquidditch"
"Does it involve parachutes?" Sirius scribbled estimated figures for that well-pushing business on an old, crumpled bit of receipt.
"No. You're thinking of Paraparashuteball"
"If it was a game for parrots it would be-"
"It's quidditch for disabled"
"People in wheelchairs"
"Among others. People without arms, legs, working eyes. Yeah, I thought that although I have mocked it in the past, I will give it a go"
"But how would that even work?"
"I don't know, sensors and… walls lined with mattresses. Anyway, you know how there are some blind painters that are genuinely good at painting?"
"Like you! That's what you should devote yourself to!"
"To my stick figures? Yeah, that won't suffer, they aren't exactly time consuming. No, I mean real professionals, that are good at visualizing everything. I was thinking-"
"Youwere?"
"-maybe that can work in other fields too! Like Beethoven, who composed although deaf!"
"Painters and composers don't have to worry too much about navigation, and dodging big and heavy skull shattering balls. That sounded like a title for soul song""
"If people can play blindfold walking chess, why not blindfold quidditch?"
"But in chess you walk, like, a couple of squares at a time and not very fast either, if you collide with anything you don't really risk breaking anything and nothing can hit you in the head as long as the board isn't jinxed for some reason"
"What is this I hear? You lecturing about safety?"
"Not lecturing… Pointing out flaws in ideas"
"It won't interfere with my fantastic artwork"
"If you break all your fingers it will"
"So I will paint with my feet, there are people who do that"
"It might collide with… appearing on talk shows and stuff"
"This art thing was just a bit of fun, I don't exactly want to do it for the rest of my life"
"But you have to go on A Magical Morning, you just have to!"
"Tell you what, I'll do whatever you want for the rest of this month. Then I'm done with this"
"Ok…" Sirius moped. Good thing he had that well project to keep him from getting bored again.