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Harry dropped his scribbling quill gently on the desk and heaved a sigh. He heaved a heavy, haggard sigh, precisely the sort of sigh one might expect out of a young man who had been cursed at a young age with a burning forehead tattoo signifying the inadvertent but temporary death of the darkest and most foul wizard to ever blight the land, a wizard who then returned rather bumblingly and with frequent interruptions from sprightly young things (of which our Harry was one) but, nonetheless, returned, and, drenching the land in murderous pitch, offed one or two of our favorite minor characters before offing himself once again as he tended to do, leaving Harry to pursue some lightly-attended-to career that, without explanation, has landed him (now in his twenties) as a bored professor at his former boarding school, Hogwarts, ripe with ennui but without so much as a single rough hand to pluck him from his pedagogical branch. It was just such a sigh, and it was just such a day, that the breeze that from yonder window belched seemed somehow sympathetic. "I am so bored," Harry exposited generally. He could barely hear himself mutter over the din of departing students, clear-eyed and dustless children that seemed somehow like ghosts to Harry. So he repeated more loudly, “I am so bored,” and now, hearing himself well enough, settled backward into his unreasonably stiff wooden chair. Architecture, aesthetic, and ergonomics were somehow less reasonable concerns in the world of wizardry. Little wonder, then, that anybody who had been there long enough might feel at least a bit uncomfortable. It wasn’t just boredom, though. Harry knew that. It was a much deeper feeling. It was something that tugged at Harry from deep within, pushed at the pit of his gut, pulled on his epiglottis, and scraped along the walls of his esophagus like some radioactively-enhanced gastrointestinal cockroach. It was as though an endless and frankly quite boring game of Quidditch were being played in his guts. “Except,” said Harry to himself, “I’m not that fat.” And then he looked around quickly to make certain that nobody had heard him. Indeed, all the students had shuffled out of the class. Harry stood up slowly, scooted in his absurdly constructed chair, and quietly strode over to the belching window to squint out at the mid-day grounds. Below, like elegantly adorned ticks, hundreds of impudent neophytes scuttled to and fro. Harry heard their lilting chirps and boorish laughter and sighed once more. Look there: young Edwin, just the spitting image of his father (who also often spat). And over there: a pack of gangly, pimpled Slytherin, bending and swaying with the crudity of their breeding. Ah, and… oh. A slack-jawed, glassy-eyed ginger, tagging alongside a frowning little bespectacled bitch of a girl. They, hurrying to class, still in the bright ignorance of youth, headlong running into certain adventure… Do not stare too long into the lake, thought Harry. Just then, he noticed a pick-up game of Quidditch had gone awry outside. Several disgusting children were barking at a snitch that had proven particularly elusive and had no intention of returning to its confinement. Well, thought Harry, at least I’m still good for something. “Accio snitch,” he explained, wondering why nobody had ever tried that during an actual Quidditch game. But when the snitch arrived, he saw that it was no ordinary snitch. It did not have wings, and seemed to propel itself through the air by sheer force of rotational inertia. Moreover: although it was round, it was adorned only by a single fat lightning bolt that wrapped itself around the ball, extruded outward. Without knowing why, he pressed his finger gently on the lightning bolt. There was a brilliant flash, a plume of smoke, and then the ball had disappeared - in its place - and here Harry coughed as though he were not used to sudden plumes of smoke by now - there lay a note. Harry, I need your help. The Space Pirates have got me cornered because they know I’m onto something. Something bad, Harry - there are worse things in this world than Voldemorts. Still a bitch, Hermione "They who must not be named," corrected Harry, gritting his teeth. He removed his wand from its holster. "Looks like this old warhorse... is going for one last ride." END OF CHAPTER 1
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Aug 19, 2010 06:16
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:25 |
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