CHAPTER 17: THE CABBAGE PATCH KID
A week had passed since James and Sirius had asked Pomfrey about seeing Remus in the hospital wing. Today they had gone to the little room where he was currently staying. In there he had seemed feverish and all around frail.
The late night stroll through the various halls and galleries seemed to do him some good.
The wand gallery contained the wands of former headmasters, the founders and the original household. Some were real and some were replicas, or useless reconstructions. The further back in time they came from the bigger they got. Walking staffs had been the big trend right up until the turn of the century, after which they had shrunk to the size of cigarette holders only to grow again while remaining a pocket-friendly size (incidentally wizard pockets were pretty deep.)
"Oh!" James began to run along the display cases. "It's here!"
A long hazel branch, dry as time, rested on red and gold cloth on one of the centre pedestals.
"It's the hazel staff that belonged to lord Godric. They say that it shall sprout a hazel leaf for as long as there is chivalry in the world."
Indeed the tip of the staff Valiant sprouted a bright green little hazel leaf.
Next to it was lord Salazar's hawthorn staff Cunning. Beside it was lady Rowena's walnut staff Wit and next to hers was lady Helga's willow matchstick Badger.
"I want to name my wand something!" James pulled out his wand and gave it a hard look. "I shall call it... Naming wands is hard!"
"My wand shall be named after my great feats," said Sirius.
"Smelly?" Cheeky grin.
"Is it nice not having to work very hard for your jokes?"
"You'll think of one sometime, you'll see."
The headmaster wands lined the walls, beginning with the very first bladdernut staff of headmaster Baldrash and ending with headmaster Nigelle's long and slender ash wand.
"Looks pretty," said James. "Looks a bit like your wand doesn't it?"
Sirius whipped it out. It did look a lot like his wand because his wand was the real thing.
"Nice. So you didn't get to do the," Mime exploding wands.
"No."
"Was it his will that you got that?"
"It was his will that it went to the family. It was my mum's will that I took it."
"Oh, by the way, how did she handle the sorting results? Did you send that letter I saw you write, where you went: 'Oh and guess what you stupid drunk tart? I'm not a Slytherin. How about you suck on it? Ner ner ner ner ner!' I'll be honest, I would NEVER talk to my mum like that! "
"Yeah I sent it," Sirius replied, after remaining quiet for a moment.
"Did she reply? What did she say!"
"Like, 'boo-hoo, I am so disappointed' or whatever? But I just replied and told her to stick it where the sun don't shine. To think, only Ash knows what really went down, when Dumbledore killed my granddad."
"So does Dumbledore, if he killed him, which he didn't."
"Oh right and of course he didn't kill that kid we saw either. Nothing weird about that at all."
Remus came rolling closer in his wheelchair.
"What's this kid you saw, that Dumbledore didn't kill?"
"The Slim Shadow," said Sirius.
"Just ignore him," said James. "He's just trying to be provocative. You see, he has to work so very hard for his jokes."
"We saw Dumbledore kill a little kid. Ha ha ha ha ha."
"You saw Dumbledore kill a little kid?" Remus asked.
"There's a perfectly good explanation for what we saw, we just don't know it," said James, who felt more sure now because Remus saw Dumbledore more than anybody and if he couldn't believe bad things about him then it just couldn't be true.
"One word!" said Sirius. "Occam's razor! You are in such hopeless denial not even the plainest evidence will make you accept the truth. You saw Dumbledore kill some kid and you even heard him confess it!"
"Maybe I saw all that. But what if it was all a dream? It all sort of feels like a dream to me now. I dreamt it, told you about my dream and now you think we both saw Dumbledore kill this kid. The brain can play tricks on you like that."
"Where did you see Dumbledore kill this kid?" Remus asked.
"In the dungeon garden. Possibly in this dream I had."
"And then," said Sirius, "in this dream you had, Dumbledore rolled this dead kid in a carpet and buried it while bemoaning his crime. And then when we dug it up again it had become a cabbage."
"Well there's the explanation then! In the dark we saw the cabbage to be something else than a cabbage. The brain can play tricks on you like that."
Sirius shook his head.
"And you I'm the crazy one."
"Yes. Yes we do."
Remus suggested they'd go down to the dungeon garden and so that's what they did. The wheelchair had to stay in the Great Hall.
"The kid was buried here," said Sirius when they arrived at the scene of crime, pointing out the place. "Do you want us to dig up the body`"
"Didn't you say you found a cabbage?" Remus asked.
"Yeah but it was no ordinary cabbage. It was a kid, and through very dark magic, he became a cabbage."
"Look. It wasn't a kid."
"Yes it was."
"It wasn't."
"It was."
"It wasn't."
"It was, and look, you weren't even there and don't think I'm going to agree with everything you say just because you look like the slightest puff could blow you all the way to Kansas."
"Do you mean Oz?"
"No I mean Kansas, where the yellow brick toad is."
"It's not what you think."
"It is."
"It's not."
"It is."
"What you saw was nothing more than a cabbage patch kid."
"It wasn't."
"It was. You saw a cabbage patch kid."
"Didn't. A what?"
"What's a cabbage patch kid?" James asked.
It sounded like a kid with a very serious illness. He could think of one kid that smelled of cabbage. Had Dumbledore killed Olaf? Impossible, he had seen Olaf since. There had been no reports of any kid missing since but Sirius only called it proof of the media having been bought.
(By communists.)
"You know the cabbage patch lamb?" said Remus.
"The cook's special, that she makes in a jelly mold?" James asked.
"The cabbage patch lamb or Tartarus."
"Isn't that Beau Marceau's cat?"
"Beau Marceau's cat is called Béchamel," said Sirius. "Have you seen the funny pictures he sends to the school paper, with the captions? It has a cat page now."
"You mean text?"
"It's called captions if it is funny and on a cat."
"I thought his cat's name was Surly Moggy."
"Follow me," said Remus and went inside the shed and then through a plastic curtain inside the shed, beyond which was a greenhouse with a couple of cabbage patches.
White butterflies flapped frantically around a piece of white cloth that covered a few fairly large cabbages. Remus removed the cloth, exposing the full beauty of the lace-patterned cabbages and many baby butterflies.
"Cabbage white..," he mumbled and began to remove caterpillars tiredly.
"Cabbage green," said James.
"This is a cabbage patch lamb." Remus opened some leaves to expose something fuzzy and lamb-like that was snoozing under. "It grows inside a cabbage. It is connected to the core of the earth by an umbilical cord. If you cut the cord it dies. They are grown from the bones of other cabbage patch lambs."
"Huh! Vegan food sure has come a long way!"
"Some people have tried to cross-pollinate the cabbage patch lamb with the jinmenju. This is one such attempt."
They watched the cabbages breathe under the white cloth. The dead quiet of the night made it seem more creepy and alien.
"We saw Dumbledore kill some kid," said James. "And then we found a cabbage. Here are some cabbages... with strange baby-faced lamb things in them..."
"The way I recall it we didn't see some sheep boy with hoofs," said Sirius.
"I don't either but it was dark and maybe we were too distracted to notice that. Also, now who's trying to dispute plain evidence?"
Sirius didn't dispute it any further. There was a much larger cabbage beyond the covering. It was swarming with white butterflies. The leaves began to open up. A weak and shaky cabbage patch kid stepped out. A child's face on a lamb's body, crawling with pests and infections. It had runny eyes and patches in the fur and could hardly stand.
Baaa.
It tried to wave off the butterflies but was too weak.
Baaa.
It was simply too pitiful to watch so the chaps left the shed greenhouse.
In the early midnight hours James and Sirius were walking back to their dorm.
"I'm becoming a vegetarian," said James. "No more lamb boys for me, only lamb."
It was so quiet and serene everywhere. The sleepiness started to get to them.
"But the carpet thing is still weird."
"Maybe it had blood stains on it," said Sirius. "Dumbledore should have burned it. Maybe it wouldn't burn, for some reason."
"Or maybe it was just full of fleas. The more I think about it, like, a carpet should be compostable? Maybe he thought it was good compost. Either way I am glad that nobody was actually killed that night. All he did was bury a carpet with a pest infested plant in it. What happened to your granddad I don't know but I'm afraid the incident with the sheep boy was just a dead herring. Sorry. Time to search for clues elsewhere."
They were walking by a stairwell when a voice went:
It is time I did...
They froze on the spot. Further up the stairwell shadows played on the walls.
...What I should have done a long time ago!
Dumbledore's voice!
Professor Dumbledore- Mr Hagrid!- Where did you get that heavy axe? Please don't do anything rash!
I'm sorry, said Dumbledore, but you know too much! It is time I put an end to you!
Dumbledore's pointy shadow raised a heavy axe and began to bash at Mr Hagrid, his large body cowering as he screamed for mercy while blood splattered all over.
Then the screams were...
...no more.
Dumbledore lowered the axe, panting heavily.
What have I done? WHAT HAVE I DONE! OH NO NOT AGAIN!
James's toffee penny fell out of his mouth and hit the floor with an echoing click. Dumbledore froze, clearly having just heard it. When it looked like he was about to come down the stairs, James and Sirius took their shoes off and ran.