Losers Like Us

Chapter Four--A Brief Interlude with Draco Malfoy (2)

Excerpt from Personal Journal, December 14, 1995: Perhaps it is simply folly to ignore a Hogsmeade's Day for the students, but I am trying my best. For one thing, I stayed too late down at London last night, long past the end of my tutor's demands, so that I could play drinking games with Gus and his evil little pals, who were doing after-shift Christmas parties all over the Healer's quarters at Saint Mungo's. After all, I knew I could sleep in on this fine Saturday morning.

HA! As if the pestiferous little kiddies would be all the more silent for me, just because there's snow outside to muffle their steps and the village is doing its best Yule card imitation. As if all those rotten Healers weren't lying in wait for this moment: teach the used-to-be-Muggle the differences between her ex-world's booze and the sauce of the Magical Realms. Everything is stronger in this world than in the Muggle counterpart--kids play potentially lethal games like Quidditch, Voldemort makes Adolph Hitler look like Little Orphan Annie, and 3 brands of firewhiskey currently are tearing my brains and guts apart.

Could it be worse? Well, yes, actually, it is worse. I think I've offered up every meal I've ingested for the last 2 weeks to the compost heap in the garden since 2 AM, and I am not even able to lie in bed, peacefully dying, as I am supposed to offer tea to Poppy Pomfey and maybe Minerva this afternoon, before they head back up to the school.

Getting out of bed certainly is easy enough--all I need to do is think of food, and I'm off to the heap again. (I refuse to barf in my pretty little cottage. And it goes to good use in the heap.) But the foul, stinking, dark smoke in the gardens, back and front, has me confused. Dimly, I recognize that these fumes, whatever they are, must be increasing my physical misery, as I usually feel better after unloading my guts this way, but not today, for some reason. I know that I am not smelling smoke; I know that nothing is turned on in the cottage. I know that I am going for Week 3's meals, as I lurch towards the compost.

But there is truly no rest for the wicked, as the Muggles say, for just as I stagger towards the back door, I hear the front door's brackets squealing in protest under the only set of knuckles capable of making the pins jump in their hinges as the door resounds under those forceful knocks. I stick my head into the sink resignedly as Hagrid, bellowing, "Doc? Y'ere?", lets himself in the unlocked front door.

"Y'okay? Ye doan look so good," he says, pushing about 3 pounds of beard into the sink next to my heaving head. Pulling back abruptly, Hagrid observes, "Bet it's abou' those stink bombs, eh? Yer shouln' let those lil beggars do this to you. Howserbout I make some nice, hot tea fer ye?" He takes whatever I do for a nod, and I hear the sounds of crockery being sorted out on the table.

Now let me tell you about me and Hagrid. I adore the man-mountain; I really do. But he's another living proof of how lousy my adaptation to his world has been. Right after I moved over here to test the waters, as it were, for practicing here, Hagrid shows up and turns into my Worst Therapeutic Nightmare. Therapeutic relationship? As if. He follows me everywhere around the school and village, introduces me in public as "me good friend the Doc", and constantly says to our mutual companions on various social occasions: "Guess wha' the Doc tole me las' week in session?" Despite his legitimate need for therapy at the time, Hagrid is completely unable to maintain the required confidentiality, to the point where he wants me to tell people about what I've said to him in private, as if he is showing off a new toy to his envious friends.

I've never quite seen anything like it. Did I mention that he pays in dead animals and hunks of raw meat? Well, he is a gamekeeper, and he says that they all make wonderful stews and such. Unfortunately, I have not yet regressed or progressed to the place where I can gut and skin my own meals; unfortunately, he is horribly hurt if I don't act thrilled at every offering.

In the end, we had to agree just to be friends, and I give him an awful lot of free therapy. Besides, it was really only a dental phobia, and that's a whole other story, best told elsewhere.

In the meantime, the kettle begins to sing, and I feel myself affectionately yanked from the sink and spun towards my own table in the front room, under the main window. Alas, the glass displays woefully little, except more pollution. As I sink into a chair, my companion cheerfully says, "Yup--they're right abou'..THERE!" He points with an enormous finger towards one corner of the front hedge.

"How can you tell?" I ask weakly.

"Smoke's thickest there. Yep, they're right outside yer hedge, right there, throwin' 'em."

"Throwing what?" I whisper, swallowing against yet more pressure.

The great, hairy eyebrows shoot upwards and disappear amid the tangle of Hagrid's boundless mane. "Why, dungbombs, a' course! Doan you know about' dungbombs?"

I shake my head, and he grunts sympathetically at me. "Well, I suppose yer do now, eh, Doc?" A great pat of sympathy on my back nearly drives my aching head into the steaming cup he has set before me. "Well, no probs, as the kids say, righ'? I'll jus' handle it." He rises, nearly overturning my small table as he goes, opens the window, which floods the room with the choking fumes, and hollers, "You there! Stop throwin' those bombs, y'ear? Oh, tha' might notta been the best idear..." A cluster of small, round, pungently smoking objects comes rapidly over the low hedge.

To my exhausted ears, the entire population of Hogsmeade seems to be out there, hooting with laughter. I can't see anything through the fumes, but I feel like it is a judgment on me, as if everyone is enjoying the spectacle of what a rotten witch I am, that I am prey to a barrage such as this one, with only a befuddled gamekeeper, relatively untrained in magic, to help me. This, after a night of being plied by alleged Healers with the most noxious drinkable poisons known to the Magical World. Everyone seems to love exposing me for the fake magic-user that I am, exploiting my ignorance in every form of practical joke. And they're right--I can never remember a darned spell I am taught, although I seem to use them just fine when I am learning one. They just don't stick.

Anyway, I am thinking fond thoughts of escaping to the compost heap and Hagrid is telling me "what YOU need is an 'ouse elf to look after yer," when a small explosion sounds in the room, and suddenly there is a cacophony of shrill feminine voices clanging in my aching head.

"HAGRID! What on earth?" Except it sounds more to my American ears like "Hwat on airth?" Minerva, thank all the deities, as cool hands slip around my forehead and Poppy's deep, Welsh-accented alto intones, "Gemma, whatever have you done to yourself? You look terrible!"

I wait as Madame Pomfrey searches her ever-present bag of tricks, then an open vial is pushed into my right hand. "Breathe it for ten seconds first," she mutters tightly, "then drink it down as fast as you can. We need you to get it in there before you can bring it back up."

In the background, a rapid exchange of shrill and rumbled remarks passes back and forth around us. I mumble with as much embarrassment as I can summon at this point, here at the edge of my strength, "Poppy, I'm hungover. I'm so sorry; I didn't realize how late it was..."

I think the loud snort belonged to Minerva McGonagall, and it might not even have been part of my conversational thread, but it fit perfectly, so I accepted it as meant for me. Above me, the Hogwarts' school nurse snapped sarcastically, "Oh, is that why it stinks like a distillery in here? Drink!" I do, as fast as I can, and it stays down, and my entire self, body and mind, seems to pop back into clarity.

When I can lift my tired head, I see that the entire pall of noxious fumes has been collected into a large, foul ball which hangs above the rhododendrons beneath the front window, outside, thankfully. Minerva is commanding Hagrid, "Now fetch the mess from the back garden as well, and put it in there." Looking embarrassed, Hagrid does as bid, and the stinking blob doubles in volume before our eyes.

"Now we just make the container unbreakable...how long do you think, Poppy?"

Madame Pomfrey has me sipping some sort of aromatic tea that is helping me pull my weary wits together; she looks up from her stance next to my chair, one hand still resting lightly on my shoulder, and asks, "Who is it, Minerva? Do we know?"

In her refined Edinburgh accent, McGonagall can express disgust in at least 100 ways, I am sure; now she selects an impressively contemptuous noise to direct towards the hedge with a jerk of her head, and snarls, "Oh, who else, really, Poppy? The students are still talking about what the Slytherins did to their own team-mate for those 50 points!" As my glasses are off and lying on the bedside table, I cannot see across the now-cleared hedge, but Pomfrey and Hagrid apparently can.

"Ah," murmurs Poppy, "I'd say about 40 hours, then. That should endear them to their dorm-mates and ensure that the rest of their weekend is...memorable."

"I'll do it, so we know they'll be truly trapped tightly in there, but you'll have to say something to them, Gemma, so they think it's from you." Minerva's voice is more than usually stern. "They need to remember that they cannot harass you this way, especially off the school grounds, when we might not be there to help you like this."

"If they saw you coming in--" I begin, but both women snort this time, and Minerva says, "We apparated in here from the back lane, of course. You didn't think we walked through that!" with a peremptory gesture towards the stinking globe of contained fumes.

I breathe in deeply, as all the aspects of Minerva's scheme filter through my reviving brain. "Isn't there always Quidditch practice on Sundays? For all the Houses?"

It is utterly surprising to me how much Minerva McGonagall can still resemble her cat self when in human form. Just now, she looks like a feline with a mouse helpless in her paws. It is a little frightening, really. "Yes, and I am certain that the Slytherin team will be interested in this latest encounter of their Seeker with the redoubtable Professor Walker. Especially since that group out there will have to stay in a group until the globe dissolves Monday morning." I find myself waiting to hear the purr, while Minerva throws the front window open as far as it will go and hisses something lengthy at the ball of dungbomb fumes. Obediently, the globe thickens into a sort of putrid soap bubble and bobs over towards the hedge, obscuring everyone's view of the cluster of teenagers crouching there, giggling audibly.

"Now, Doctor," orders McGonagall briskly.

I rise and go to the window. "I've saved all your dungbombs for you, Mudfoy! Have them back!" I bellow, and before they can answer, we all hear the screams of confusion and then dawning horror as Minerva's spell takes hold. "It won't hurt them, will it, Poppy?" I breathe softly, to the staccato accompaniment of coughs and sputters from the other side of the hedge. Now that the air is cleared, we can all see three, maybe four, figures struggling inside the solidified but clear globe of dungbomb fumes. "Hmmm," rumbles Hagrid, "I make it Malfoy, Nott, Goyle..."

"Oh, Crabbe's in there too," interjects Minerva caustically. I saw him with them earlier today."

"No, Gemma," replied Poppy with her patented I am a nurse, and I disapprove sniff. "It may be disgusting, but it only tends to make people vomit when they have already given themselves a hangover." This with a disapproving glance at me, but something in Minerva's rigid features tells me that she, at least, is trying not to laugh. "They will simply find it embarrassing and unpleasant. It should be gone by about 8 AM on Monday," Pomfrey finishes. "Will you be staying to tea, Hagrid?"

Having closed the window, Minerva is already in the kitchen, while Poppy has me back in my chair and is doing something that I take to be the magical equivalent of checking my vital signs. Suddenly, I am feeling marvelous and quite ravenous.

"Naw," answers Hagrid. "I'd best make sure that lot get up to the school awright." From the kitchen comes a quite unexpected titter. "Do give them a push and a roll from all of us, Hagrid," calls McGonagall. "But remember not to tell them who was here, besides Dr. Walker."

The enormous, hairy face splits into a wide grin, displaying white teeth that are the size of paperbacks. "I'll remember, Professor," Hagrid chuckles, as he goes out the front door.

Even though I have no idea what is in the tiny tea sandwiches that someone brought, I eat them energetically. I really must get over to the Quidditch practices tomorrow. Or maybe not, as I cannot tell who will be holding a grudge at me over Malfoy-BubbleBoy.