Losers Like Us

Losers Like Us

Prologue

Why are these things never predictable? I find myself musing--rather randomly, all things considered. For example, as my eyes cross, trying to focus on the blunted end of the blonde youth's stick, pointed straight at my face from a bare yard away, all I can wonder is this: If I had known this was coming, would I have checked to make sure the flame under the kettle was off? The air around me flares with a sickly greenish blaze, and the boy's words still hang in it, suspended, as though they are deciding where to focus themselves inside the nauseating light: Avada Kedavra.

One assumes the words will locate me any second now. Maybe Fearless will catch on and turn the flame off, so the cottage doesn't burn down. That would be nice. I mean, this is going to be embarrassing enough, getting blown away by this little jerk, but to have the house destroyed too...

Funny, I thought Harry said this one worked fast. Really fast. Fast, as in Cedric was stone cold dead right next to Harry's tennies before either kid even knew what was happening. Maybe I'm in shock. Maybe time has slowed down because I am in shock. Yeah, okay. But now that jerk is jumping up and down, shrieking it, over and over: Avada Kedavra!

Avada Kedavra! Avadra Kedavra!

Really, isn't it about time I died already? This shimmer is hideously ugly, and it rather stinks, when you bother to try to breathe it. Maybe I just take longer than other people to die from this curse. After all, lots of Muggle medications don't work quite correctly on me either. Yeah, that would probably be it.

At least I am getting one last, amusing look at Draco Malfoy, in all his asinine glory, totally green through the putrid glare's filter. I mean, what a loser. Screaming, jumping, turning beet (greenish-)red, all because he can't be a good little homicidal maniac, like his daddy. Losers. The pair of them. Big, useless, stinking, ugly losers.

Avada Kedavra! Avadra Kedavra! Avada bloody Kedavra!

But who am I to talk? Here in the magical world, most people still think I am a Muggle, mainly because I spent so many years among them, thinking myself one. And many magical people, no matter what they try to tell you, have some pretty ugly prejudices against non-magical ones. Even most of the kids at Hogwarts, who know that I am magical, avoid me, because they fear that their friends will think they are my patients, if they are seen talking to me.

Patients? Why yes, because in both Muggle and magical worlds, I am a psychologist, and nobody wants to admit that they use a psychologist professionally. Even in the magical world, one does not openly admit to, heaven forbid, paying for professional help. And in the Muggle world, psychologists rarely get treated like real doctors--i.e. physicians. We don't prescribe meds or get blood on our hands (allegedly), and the fact that we tend the mentally devastated is not enough to most people to make us real docs.

But I left that and America behind me to join the Magical World, where I still see patients and also lead the occasional lecture in Advanced Muggle Studies. So I can reasonably be called "Professor" here--a title given to high school teachers at private schools in the U.K., heaven knows why--and consider myself adjunct faculty at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

So not a real doc, not a real professor, not a person to be talked to, not even a real magic-user to many people. Oh yeah, and the class I sometimes teach? It's universally considered among the students to be the second biggest joke in the entire school, right behind the addled Trelawney's Divination class.

And just now, the biggest twit in the entire school, possibly among the top ten Giant Twits in the magical world, is trying to gun me down, so to speak. As if I couldn't have seen this moment coming. Or should I say moments, since the kid still doesn't seem to have killed me successfully, at least as far as I can tell. Could I be any more of a loser right now?

Yes. If Fearless doesn't switch off that bloody stove, I could be not only the dead, sort-of-Muggle, phony doc, fake professor killed by a total git. I could be the moron who ignited the Great Hogsmeade Fire of 1996.

Now what's all that screaming about?