Losers Like Us

Chapter Six--A Brief Interlude with Draco Malfoy (3)

Excerpt from Personal Journal, June 24, 1995:

As always when I am troubled, I cannot linger inside the house. And I am deeply troubled, so I am writing this in the garden. Besides, out here I may be able to spot the return of any one of a number of people about whom I am on the verge of panic. Or I may get early warning of the approach of one of the Nasty People, who seem to be overpopulating this region lately.

But them I can handle, I hope. It's the missing ones who I am worried sick over right now. Let's do the count: Hagrid since last night, Dumbledore since a few weeks ago (?), Harry and his buddies Hermione, Neville, Ron, Ginny, and Lunar(?). I have no idea who Lunar is, but he, she, or it was mentioned by Malfoy before things got REALLY ugly earlier this evening.

Urg, I can't even settle down enough to get the story straight. Try again. Chronologically, Dumbledore left first, but I still don't know exactly when. With him went Hagrid, Minerva and sort of Poppy too, as they have taken to holing up at the school as much as possible with the Headmaster gone. Sure, they weren't really even a mile from here, but they had to stick close to the school to keep an eye on things since the Umbridge Cow began running the place (allegedly). Poppy came down to help when I got blitzed by the Toxic Toad, but once I knew what was going on at Hogwarts, I had to shoo her back up the hill to support Minerva. Fearless understood; apparently her elf buddies from the school are telling horrible tales of mistreatment at the woman's hands. My food actually stayed good and the house stayed clean, with the odd attack on me by household goods imported from the States, but I am working on those objects--all 2 million of them that I must have brought with me.

But now, poor Minerva--"poor", an epithet that never was meant to be applied to the woman, I am just sick over this--is down at St. Mungo's, by Hagrid's account. Wait, I am getting out of order again. It's hard to concentrate. I keep jumping at every sound and peering up the road, hoping to see a friendly face approaching.

Okay, so last night, Hagrid shows up at my door waaayyy after dark. For once, the big guy did not nearly unhinge my door with his knocks. In fact, I would not have realized he was there, except Fearless began to stare hard at the back door. As those big ears of hers are much more sensitive than mine, I went over and heard Hagrid hissing my name from outside. Of course, I opened the door to him. And got the shock of my life.

Hagrid was hunched over out there, trying to stay below the upper line of the tall hedge, and he was carrying a huge, lumpy, furry pack over his shoulders. Without a word, he elbowed me aside, strode in, and gently laid the "pack" on my sitting room's floor. It turned out to be poor, chicken-hearted Fang, whimpering softly. "Oh my go--" I had gotten out, when the Man-Mountain turned to glare at me. "Food!" he snarled. "Hurry! Whatever ye've got!"

You know, I had never realized just how big Hagrid really is. Even crouched over his dog on my rug, he was still as tall as me, standing over them both. And I had never imagined him as being angry. Ever. But he certainly was now. Shaking with fury, in fact. The small part of his face that I could see was flushed dark red, and the sheer invisibility of him behind all that hair now seemed somehow sinister. My bowels turned to ice water, to misquote Shakespeare.

"Din't ye hear me? MOVE!" he growled. My feet felt glued to the floor. His coat was covered in scorch marks. His hair and beard were singed. Fang was hurting, crying softly. I thought this alone would drive Hagrid mad. "Fearless," I croaked. She was crouching behind the doorframe that leads into the kitchen, her eyes like round platters. "Everything," I whispered. "Bring everything that can be eaten. Fast." Her head whipped out of sight, around the door's edge.

Twisting, I saw my checkered table cloth on the front table. Somehow I got to it, dragged it onto the floor, and then gestured to my house elf to start piling her load onto its center. Breathlessly silent, Fearless lurched over from the kitchen, arms laden with packages, and simply opened her scrawny limbs, letting the items fall onto the fabric. "Can opener," I muttered. "Bottle opener." I raced into the kitchen after Fearless, trying to imagine all the odds and ends that go with food--forks, no; knife, good idea, if sharp (don't think about other uses for that); spoon, maybe; can opener... First aid gear. My stomach lurched painfully. No, no, no... Hwat on airth? I heard Minerva's voice enunciate clearly inside my head. I grabbed my medical supplies and hauled them back in, along with the various utensils. "Everything, Fearless," I called back over my shoulder into the kitchen, where the lower shelves of the pantry were already almost bare. "Everything for our Hagrid." My teeth were trying to chatter, but I stopped them.

From my cheery red rag-rug, the giant turned to look at me. "Don't be daft, Doc. It's not about you. But we have to hide..." His voice cracked, and my fear ratcheted up several more impossibly high notches. "Fang," I whispered. "He'll be awright," my companion said gruffly, and the dark eyes were filling. "What, Hagrid?" I murmured, and he scowled in a way that made me want to hide for my own sake, like a small, frightened animal. Blinking back the tears, Hagrid visibly tried to control himself, to calm himself.

"That bloody--pardon me, Doc--Umbridge set the Aurors on me after dark, when she thought nobody would see... Ye have to know, Doc..."

Appalled, I gasped, "Hagrid!--" Then I lost my voice again at the look he gave me. "They got Perfessor McGona--" his voice strangled. "Whattaya mean, 'got'"? I choked, overcome by the vision of a Minerva-less Hogwarts. "I dunnaw," he murmured. "Stunners. Lot of 'em."

I was on my knees on the floor next to Fang, staring up at the giant in horror. Behind me, the sound of Fearless dropping her latest load of supplies made us both jump. She was staring as hard as I was. But Fang, thank all that's holy, turned his great head at the smell of my leftover roast beef on the tablecloth. Hagrid nodded, and I handed the beast the whole chuck of meat. It went down in one great doggy swallow, and Hagrid leaned over and wrapped the great head in his arms and hid his face against it. I couldn't tell which one of us sobbed. I'm willing to bet we both did.

"I gotta go, Doc. You stay here. Doan go up t' the school. Stay outta her way. Lie low. Doan tell I was here. Sorry about all the food...You hide, Doc. Yeah, ye best hide. She hates anyone not like her. It's gotta end soon. Dumbledore... If ye see Harry and that, help him any way ye can."

And then he was up, in an easy, strong movement, and Fang was hoisted back onto his shoulders. Fearless had tied a huge knot in the tablecloth, bundling up all our food. I choked out, "Don't worry about the groceries, Hagrid. And there're more where they came from, if you need me."

Both our eyes were filling. "Naw," he replied. "We gotta get far from here. Far. Stay safe, Doc. No chances. No risks. Ye can't help this time. Ye've awreddy helped enough. Stay here and doan go up there." And he was gone, him and his great hound. The emptiness was stifling when I closed the door behind them.

I think neither Fearless nor I slept last night. I have no idea what I was expecting, but it never came. For once, my house elf has not attacked me all day long, although the garden hose made a game effort. No matter how many times I tell it to stop, the hose continues to jump me, so to speak, every time I go outside. Frankly, I think it likes the "game", as it really seems to draw the line at strangling me outright. But it seemed to lay off a bit when I reacted with disinterest. Can the hose understand "upset and frightened"?

At any rate, Fearless has made it through brekkers, lunch, and an early tea with only some slamming of crockery as she laid it before me at the little, white, carved, metal table in the garden. And the food was acceptable, even if the cook appears to be very distracted today. I think she may be worrying about the fates of her house elf buddies up at the school. All I can think to tell her is not to worry because that Umbridge is too damned greedy, apparently, to drive off perfectly willing servants who can cook and who charge nothing. Except for Harry's little friend Dobby. I hope he's hiding somewhere safe. I think Fearles hopes so too.

So here I sat all day, getting up occasionally to weed or tend the roses, reading or writing on my laptop the rest of the time. And then, just when I thought the day might draw to a more peaceful close than its predecessor, along came Malfoy.

I must say, he did not look good. Welts covered his face, although what could have made them baffled me, even when I saw the thing clamped onto the back of his head. He was striding angrily along, a scowl engraved on his face, heedless of his surroundings, until his glance strayed onto me. And stopped. Not today, I thought, but no such luck.

"You!" he called imperiously. "You're supposed to be some kind of doctor. Get it off!" Stomping up to my gate, he grabbed its post and turned his head. I got a clearer look at the object attached to him. "Malfoy, "I gasped, in spite of my wish to ignore him, "What is that?"

"Are you really that stupid?' he roared back, but no response of his could take away the feeling of disgust creeping over me. Disgust and hilarity. I was just exhausted from the day's emotions, I suppose. The thing on his head looked like...well, I guess anything is possible in this magical world, but still... "Malfoy," I sputtered, trying not to give way to hysterical laughter. "It looks like a...a...a giant booger! With wings!" I had to rush to get those last words out.

He positively shrieked, nearly as shrilly as Fearless at her highest elven pitch. "You great. Stupid. Yank. Idiot! It's called a bogie! A..a..a..bat bogie! It's a hex, you fool! I can't reach it! Get it OFF!"

"Are you serious? I'm not touching bat snot!"

"I'll kill you!" he screamed. "You and Potter and that Granger filth..."

Wait a minute. Now I had to know what he was talking about. "Okay, okay," I answered, stifling my own shrill giggles. "Let me get my first aid kit." The one I gave Hagrid last night, perhaps? Damnitude. I went inside and settled for a screwdriver. Any port in a storm, as they say. He couldn't see it anyway, as I went behind him as quickly as I could.

"Now you want to tell me why you have this thing stuck on you?" I saw that "Stuff it, Muggle" look coming over the side of his arrogant, pointed face that I could see, but then the joy of gloating over me changed his mind. "You're history, Muggle," he said instead. "If Professor Umbridge doesn't destroy you, the Dark Lord will. You better help me. You better crawl to me, if you know what's good for you."

"Uh-huh," I intoned flatly. Narcissistic git, I was thinking. But teenagers with antisocial fantasies are nothing new in my work. "And you are after Potter and Granger this evening because..?" Gently, I was wrenching at the monster on his head with the flat of the screwdriver, to no avail. Slipping it under one edge, I prepared to try again, but best to let the kid answer first.

The side of his face smirked. "Not them tonight. Umbridge will take care of them. In the Forest." His nasty little mind apparently went somewhere unpleasant for Harry. I resisted the urge to whack his peaked head with the butt of the tool. "But when I get those others..." Then a thought occurred to him, and Malfoy asked peremptorily, "Walker. Did you see them go by here?"

"Who do you mean?" I asked with admirable self-control. I hoped that winged booger was really hurting him. Maybe even sucking out his rotten little brain. All my resolve to try to make it up with him, after my own bad behavior at our first meeting, was disappearing faster than an ice cube on an August sidewalk in Florida. I was getting frantic with fears for Harry et al., but I could not let Malfoy see or use that against me.

"Longbottom. Weasley and his ugly little sister. Lunar Lovegood." Or was that Lunah? Damned accents. And you never knew what Magicals would name their kids. "When I catch them, they're dead. Especially that Weasley bi-"

I did smack him with the screwdriver at that point. As hard as I could, glancing off the side of his head. Professionalism only goes so far. "Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, Boy!" I roared, stepping away from the gate. So little Ginny Weasley had scored the grotesque hex, had she? Good for her!

Malfoy was shoving his way through my gate. Not so good for me. Luckily, he seems to have an even more arrogant attitude towards house elves than he has towards even Muggles such as me, as he just ignored Fearless. My house elf quietly hovered on the front door's sill, looking purely thunderous, as only someone with eyes like deranged ping-pong balls can look. But Malfoy could have cared less. His mistake. I knew without looking that the rocks were gently lifting off the ground all around me, hanging at knee level. But the boy never looked down; he stared fiercely into my eyes, which I guess was supposed to intimidate me. Actually, I was busy being grateful that I had laid that stone-edged walkway last spring.

"You are dead," he hissed, sotto voce. "You are just bloody dead!"

"Oh, bloody AS IF, you spoiled whelp," I snarled back. And got a wand in my face for my witty Southern Californian rejoinder. At its other end, Malfoy's sneering mouth opened for the inevitable spell.

You know, as unlikely as it may seem, there really are advantages to not being raised Magical when you are only a second-rate witch anyway. I didn't see a wand aimed at me at point-blank range. I saw only a spoiled kid, poking a stick at my nose. So I grabbed the stick.

"Oh knock it off!" I snapped. Malfoy's mouth snapped shut in disbelief. His eyes went wide. Off to my right side, I heard Fearless gasp. Well, what did they expect? I was just doing what comes naturally for a woman from my world facing down an obnoxious teenager. But, to my inexpressible shock, I saw the garden hose rising like a hoodless green cobra behind Draco Malfoy. It began looping itself into a noose. Sonuvagun. It really does like me.

I screeched frantically. "You! Stop it! Down!" The hose dropped dispiritedly into the grass. But Draco's wand seemed to think I was addressing it. In my hand, I felt a weird tingling, like water draining out of a thin pipe. I glanced down at it, clenched in my reddening fingers. "You!" I spat at it, with the voice that had intimidated years of students back in my teaching days. "You do NOT have any power here! So you just stop it. You are completely helpless! So just be still! And don't think you're going to do anything once you leave here either! No matter what he says! I have had ENOUGH of you! You have NO power!" Inside my tight fingers, the rest of the "water" spilled out the open end of the wand. It made sense at the time.

Malfoy simply did not know where to look. Even the bat booger on the back of his head seemed confused, flapping rather limply back there. I dropped his wand and screamed at the teen. "YOU! Get LOST!" Now, Bucko!" Really, the last 24 hours had just been too much for me.

I know he aimed the wand at me. I know he squealed nasty thing after nasty thing towards me. I just didn't bother. Pushing past Fearless, I muttered "Sic 'im". I saw her grim satisfaction before I stumbled my way into my front room, deeply unsettled. Vaguely, in some background space that tracks my world when my brain is distracted, I registered the sound of the rocks doing their thing on Malfoy. Goodie for them. Arrogant snot. Literally just now, in fact.

After a few minutes, I called, "Fearless! Clean that mess out of our yard!" I have no idea if she actually obeyed me, but Snot-Head was gone when I came out again, into the late twilight of British summer.

And so I wait.