Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I do not profit from them.
16: Horrible, Horrible Man
There is warmth in the air, a dry comfortable warmth, like some cozy fur pocket. A distinct scent in the air reaches my nose, it's not natural, and it's strong but pleasant. It almost smells like a nice cup of coffee, dark and well roasted. The sheets about me coil about like soft waves of a warm bath. I feel comfortable, and rested, and full of pleasant relaxation. I dreamed no dream and the peeking light behind the heavy drapes that dance in the gentle breeze tells me it's late in the afternoon.
Where am I?
I perch myself up on my elbows, as the silken sheets fall away, revealing that I've been stripped down to my skivvies. Dried off cotton bandages are loosely plastered to my neck, chest and arms, and all of a sudden I am thrown back into the memory of that frightful night where I sat paralyzed, bleeding.
Where am I!
I scamper up and out of a soft feather bed. The room is well decorated, lavish, and decorated with care to the most minuscule detail. The walls are carpeted with small pictures, and where the pictures end are dainty little shelves that hold a treasure hove of assorted sentimental rubbish, like a collection of Christmas cards. A thick woolen robe is stacked at the foot of my bed, and I cover myself hastily. My body is clean, and my wounds seem mended, and even my hair seems as though it's been washed and dried.
Am I dead?
This is not exactly how I imagined death. It would have been a lot whiter, with singing cherubs flying about with harps, or something. The disturbing thought that someone took me and stripped me down to my underwear, washed me and put me in a silk bed cried pervert, and it would have jolted me into a fit of panic, but the slow dawn of realization that I wasn't dead but rather abducted by a sexual predator was somehow relieving enough to put me into an inquisitive calmness about my situation. The pictures that adorned the walls were dainty and small, each barely the size of my palm. The pictures were all of some round old fellow, shaking hands with someone different in each picture, and the fact that the pictures were all moving should have disturbed me as well, except, it didn't. Somehow, my mind told me that pictures were supposed to move.
There was something unpleasant about the round old man in the picture. He looked dignified and somewhat noble, with a haughty look of disgust about his mouth, as though he was scolding the person taking the photograph. But beyond the unpleasantness of his noble mien, he just disagreed with me to an extreme extent, threatening to call up memories that I felt best left undisturbed.
The little trinkets on the shelves, were all a tasteless collection of trophies and souvenirs.
'In honor of your distinguished contributions... to Hon. Horace Slughorn. From the Slytherin Fellowship of Arts.' said one jade plaque adorned with silver snakes with emerald eyes.
'To commemorate your dedication to the blossoming relationship between muggles and Wizards... to Prof. Horace Slughorn. Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass Charity for Squibs.' said another, a golden plate with a crest of green and silver with two dragons holding up the letter M.
'Celebrating the victory over Darkness. To Horace Slughorn. Order of the Phoenix, Secretary Neville Longbottom.' said a brass plate with the crest of a phoenix in the flame.
Horace Slughorn, I chewed the name over and over in my head. And the more I chewed, I tasted bile.
Finally my eyes danced over to a small crystal ball set atop a tripod, a wire held a decorated card to one of the tripod's legs, reading 'Happy Birthday, Professor. - Parvati.'
"You took your damned time to sleep it off," came the sudden voice from behind me. Whirling around, I see the man from the pictures. But unlike the pictures, when I see him, my mind suddenly fills with a torrent of emotions, mostly bad. I involuntarily wince. He is dressed impeccably, and deep within me something tells me, he always does. He is in a three piece suit, despite being at home, his white hair combed over, manicured and trimmed without any stray strands. He is like a museum.
"Professor," I frown.
Professor Slughorn eyes me over a set of half moon glasses with a look of derision that surfaced more trace memories of bad feelings.
"You're welcome," he sneers. He sets down a tray with a pot of tea, and a single tea cup, at a beautiful mahogany table. I am not the least surprised that he pours the tea for himself, settling down comfortably in a large recliner.
"I suppose I should thank you," I cross my arms. "for picking me up and tending to my wounds."
He shrugs, his eyes do not settle on me for even the briefest moment, as he opens up a news paper, as though finding me bleeding to death in a tea house had caused some minor inconvenience to him, irritable but nevertheless ignored.
"You were making such a ruckus," he complained. He stares at me pointedly, admonishing, as though I had done something as simple as failed to turn off the lights before going home. "I thought I told you that Mrs. Haley, Cho Chang, was supposed to be our loose cannon."
"Okay," I shrug. "I'll have to take your word for it, since I can't seem to remember anything."
He ignores me and returns to his paper.
"And I suppose I should ask you ... um," I felt annoyed, almost angry, though normally I suppose I should have been gushing with gratitude. ".. where my clothes are."
Finally, he folds his newspaper with a flourish, setting it down beside him, as though I had intruded a hallowed ritual.
"If you are implying, young lady, that I took some sort of perverse pleasure while mending your wounds, you have not only lost your memories, but quite a bit of decency and manners, as well. But since you seem so intent on pestering me from my daily routine, I suppose I will have to gratify your appetite to illuminate the obvious."
He indicates a stool by his recliner.
"I'm sorry, Professor," I feel uncomfortably warm, as I seat myself by his side. "I was just confused. I don't remember much of anything, not even my family."
Slughorn's face didn't even register a flinch, no pity, no regret. My life as a bum seemed to fly past his head.
"Besides, Miss Patil," he sneered, "you weren't much to look at, anyway. And your smell, by Merlin, I fumigated your disgusting rags lest it burned a hole through my floor."
I think I hated him. A lot.
"The woman you had encountered in the tea house in the muggle world was, as I gather, once called Eloise Midgen," he ponders a moment, his finger pulsing his lips, as though he was trying to test if this opening line was appropriately eloquent. "she, as I gather, was a Gryffindor, a few years your junior."
"Gryffindor?" I'm trying to place close attention, but I'm faltering every step.
He scowls. "It's a House at Hogwarts, one of four. Now stop interrupting me."
Gratefully, at the mention of Hogwarts a giant castle looms over in my mind. A rush of memories flood in, though not entirely comprehensible. "I used to teach at Hogwarts!" I involuntarily interrupt him.
"Briefly," he nods, annoyed, "I assure you. In any case, I have uncovered a few names that seem to have been slowly evaporating from the collective wizarding consciousness. Eloise Midgen, Katie Bell, Orla Quirke. Beyond that, I'm not sure."
"There were far more than that, Professor," I try to help. "At least a dozen."
He pauses, with a flicker of surprise, and I am certain that my information was helpful, yet he suppresses any indication.
"Yes, yes," he pats my words away. "The more recent, I hypothesize, their memories still linger, and are prone to crop up from time to time in random conversations. I have cast a wide net of acoustic detection over Hogsmeade, to count whether these names crop up should anyone mention them. Their frequency is rapidly decreasing."
"I think Eloise Midgen killed Lavender Brown, Professor," I offer. At least, that's what she had told me.
For the first time, he stares at me with something akin to pity, despite my interruption. His eyes are large and sad.
"You don't remember Lavender, do you?" he asks, solemnly.
I shrug. He fishes his pocket to pull out a small notebook. It's filled with newspaper scraps and memos hastily jotted down in his shorthand. He finds a page and cautiously present it to me.
The page opens up to a moving picture of a woman, much like the woman I had met the night I bled. She looks uncommonly beautiful, trendy, suave, but despite all those superficial impressions, her movements, little nuances, catch my eyes. And all of a sudden, a torrent of memories flood open. I almost stagger backwards, as though I had been slapped in the face. If all my previous memories had been only brief scattering snippets of a fragmented mind, this one makes me reel.
"Lavender!" I gasp, clutching my heart, as a rush of pain, sorrow, terrible loss, as though a part of me was suddenly ripped away. "Lavender!"
Slughorn's hand reaches out, cautiously, tentatively, and then it pats my own. I feel his heartfelt sympathy, for the first time in my life.
"I found that.." he pauses, "some memories need something more tangible. Some memories are cued, not to mere appearances or names, but something as fleeting as a batting of the eyelash."
It takes a while for my head to clear. I feel like I had awakened, again. The reality of life suddenly slamming into me like a drop of desperation.
"But at least we know the enemy," I look up at Slughorn.
He looks somber. Without words, he seems to tell me something. Memories flood back faster, now, more readily. And in an instant, I understand why he was so dismissive of my amnesia. Not only did he also experience it, no it was beyond that.
"We lost someone," I cautiously speak... and an image of a friend comes to mind. "Cho?"
"Don't be ridiculous, girl," he sputters. "Frankly, I have no idea what happened to Mrs. Haley."
My eyebrows pique up with utter disbelief, as my mind slowly orients me to what seems to have flown beneath my mental radar. The endless souvenirs, the trophies, and something in his attitude actually screamed an underlying defense mechanism.
"You don't remember much, either, do you?" I remark quietly. "These little trinkets, they keep your memory alive. They've got to you, as well."
Slughorn's silence is an answer enough as it is. He looks away.
I can only imagine what sort of horror it must have been to someone like Slughorn. A man, who obviously values what people remember of him. If what he is experiencing is similar to mine, then his sense of loss of self worth must have been immense. Every picture that decorated the room was a representation of how the world appreciated him. While he may have gleaned some memory from those trophies, the flip side of the coin was that none of those who had awarded him with those souvenirs of life now remembered him.
"Are you alright?" I don't know what's come over me, but there is a deep sense of pity that wells up within me, overcoming this ingrained hatred for the man. I touch his shoulder, and he flinches horribly, as though my touch had been burning.
He looks less intimidating. An old man, wearing clothes of finery, trying to grasp at his sense of self worth. I can almost imagine his relief when he must have found me. I can almost imagine his immense loneliness.