Out of the Books

Chapter 3 - Different worlds - same feelings

It was still early in the morning and the rising sun coloured the clouds in the eastern sky over Little Whinging deeply red. In front of Number Four, Privet Drive, there was a dark blue Volkswagen Beetle. A young woman with red hair had her head resting on her arms, which were lying over the steering wheel. Her slim body was shaking as sobs ran through her.

After Liz had realized that she really was dead for the world that she had known for more than 21 years and that she was forced to live on as a different person in a different world, a huge wave of countless different emotions had rolled over her and overwhelmed her.

On the one hand, she felt a huge relief that Harry had obviously survived Voldemort's attack and would be able to grow up as a wizard, but on the other hand, she - his mother - would not be there for him. He would grow up on himself, and right now he was with her sister, who hated and feared magic. She was also worried that Voldemort would try to kill him again, after he had not succeeded the first time. And this time she was not there to protect him, to sacrifice herself for him.

Then she breathed in deeply several times and tried to pull herself together. Others were looking after her son now. Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall and Hagrid were caring for him, and she trusted all of them. She did not like that Harry was staying with her horrible sister, but she was sure that was only temporary, as his godfather and legal guardian was James's best friend, Sirius Black. Certainly, Harry only had to stay with Petunia until arrangements were made that Sirius could take him.

With the realization that Harry was cared for, even if she could not be a mother for him, her thoughts strayed away from her son. If she really was dead, after-life was certainly different than she had expected it to be. It seemed so totally normal and ordinary. It was so similar to her previous life that it had taken her more than a day to figure out that the world as she knew it did not exist any longer for her!

Liz sighed and shook her head. She felt the big loss of all the people she knew. Sure, Liz Hamrick knew a lot of people in her own world, co-workers, family and old friends from school, but for Lily Potter, all those people seemed so unreal. I guess that is fine for people like James, who don't remember anything of their old life. But to remember and not being able to be there...

Thinking about James, she remembered that she wanted to meet Jack in the evening and still had not called him about it. Oh well, at least he seems like a real person, she thought, even though his personality seemed slightly different. It would surely be interesting to get to know Jack Pearson better. She just had to make sure that she did not compare him with her James all the time.

Finally she sighed, wiped her eyes dry of tears and started the car again to drive home.

***

Jack was feeling restless. He was sitting at his desk, staring at his physics books and his schedule without really seeing them. Tomorrow morning, he would be going to teach his first class ever. He had not done a good job preparing for that so far and had actually hoped to get his lesson ready today, but he just could not concentrate. During the last two hours, when he had been trying to read the text about mechanics over again, the best he could do was reading five sentences in a row until her face popped into his mind, crushing his concentration again.

It was now eleven a.m. and Liz had said that she would call him about dinner tonight. So far the phone had stayed silent. James shook his head. What's wrong with you, boy? he scolded himself. Sure, she is beautiful, but that's no reason for forgetting everything else around.

It was all he could do not to start pacing in his own flat. Get a grip, Jack! Even if she doesn't call, it shouldn't matter so much. You hardly know her; you only met her the day before yesterday!

But as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, it did matter to him and he caught himself sneaking glances at the silent phone every few minutes.

When it finally rang, about half past eleven, Jack jumped in his seat. His heart was beating very loudly and rapidly as he picked up the receiver.

"Jack -," he croaked into it, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Jack Pearson."

"Er, hi Jack. This is Liz. You remember me? You let me spend the night at your flat yesterday," he heard her voice from the other end of the line.

He was so glad that she could not see him as he felt himself grow very warm and he was sure that his face was pretty pink right now. "Oh, er, hi Liz. Of course, I remember you. Do you still need help dining tonight?"

He could almost hear her smiling as she answered. "Yes, that's why I'm calling. If you want to, we could meet at this Italian place in -"

But Jack interrupted her. "Don't tell me. Why don't I pick you up and then you can show me the way?"

"Sounds good to me. So let's say, you are at my place at about seven?" Liz asked.

"Okay, see you at seven o'clock tonight then," Jack confirmed, smiling happily. The last second before the end of the conversation, he suddenly remembered something. "Wait!" he cried into the receiver.

"I don't know where you live." Again he was very glad that she could not see him blush.

"Oh right," came the slightly embarrassed answer and then Liz told him her address.

When they finally hung up, Jack sighed and leaned back in his armchair, his eyes closed and a wide grin across his face. He was really looking forward to this night. After a few minutes, though, he got up, clapped in his hands enthusiastically and returned to his work. He was feeling like he could do anything now. And for almost an hour he worked effectively and got done quite a lot. But finally, his concentration decreased again. Although while earlier on, the reason had been his nervousness and anxiety, it now was all the energy bubbling inside him.

He pushed his books away from him determinedly, packed his dobok and training gear and left his flat, a spring in his step as he descended the stairs.

Jack was glad that he had a key to the gym now. So he could train, even though it was a Sunday, without having to call one of the three other masters. Only two weeks ago, he had passed his black-belt exam. He was a master of Tae Kwon Do himself now, even though he had not yet received the official document from Kukkiwon, the Tae Kwon Doheadquarters in Korea.

The way to the gym was a ten-minute bike ride, but Jack got there in only seven minutes. He got dressed in no time, even though the new belt was still a little stiff and did not co-operate well when he tried to put the traditional knot in it.

Jack started his work-out with his warm-up routine. First jogging twenty laps around the gym, then doing some stretching and finally going through some easy basic techniques, such as different blocks, kicks and punches. When he was done with the warm-up and had moved on to the large punching bag in the corner of the gym, the door opened and Derek Matthews, a twenty-four year-old, athletic man, joined Jack. Derek also had the 1^st Dan (the first of the nine master grades at Tae Kwon Do), just like Jack, but he had it for more than one year already.

Jack interrupted his exercise to greet Derek with a handshake and a slight bow. While Derek was moving through his warm-up routine, Jack was doing some poomsae, patterns of movements which symbolize a fight against an imaginary opponent.

Jack was quite glad that Derek had decided to get in for some extra training as well. After all, Tae Kwon Do was a martial art. And to fight one usually needed at least two persons. So after Derek had finished his stretching exercises, they both put on their protective gear and stood face to face on the blue and red line in the large square with the yellow border, which was used as fighting area. They bowed to each other and then, with a loud yell, they moved into their fighting positions.

What followed was a blur of their bodies moving forwards, sideways, twisting around, legs and arms flying and both of them yelling loudly with almost every kick. Every five minutes, they took a one-minute break to catch their breath and get some water and then they resumed their fight, just as fierce as before.

The two young men were well matched, even though their styles were quite different. While Jack was whirling around, and kicking as though his energy resources were endless, Derek was a bit more on the defensive side, blocking Jacks assaults more or less successfully and scoring for the most part through counter attacks.

Finally, after more than an hour of intensive fighting, they shook hands and slapped each other on the back, before they sunk on the bleachers on the side of the gym, totally exhausted. For a few minutes both of them were just happy to sit there, their heads leaned back against the wall of the gym, trying to slow down their breathing, while sweat was running down their faces in streams.

Finally Jack grinned at Derek. "I really needed that."

Derek grinned back at him. "My pleasure. If you ever again need to be beaten up, just tell me."

"You beat me up? Have I missed anything?" He narrowly ducked a half-hearted swat from Derek, then took his water bottle and emptied it in his mouth.

Slowly, with almost automatic movement, he took off his protection, which was clung to his skin with sweat.

When he had finally packed up his gear, he nodded tiredly at Derek. "Training? Tuesday night?" he asked, as if he was too exhausted now to build whole sentences.

Derek nodded back at him and so Jack left the gym and went down the flight of stairs to the changing rooms, were he peeled off his wet dobok, folded it neatly and put on his everyday clothes. He was really looking forward to a nice shower when he came home.

After Jack had stepped out of the shower, feeling refreshed and relaxed he still had more than an hour to pass, until he had to leave again to pick up Liz. So he fixed himself a sandwich and returned to his books. But of course, an hour was not nearly enough to finish his lesson planning. So when he finally abandoned his work at half past six, he tried not to care about the nervous feeling in his stomach concerning his lesson in the morning, but tried to be cheerful about his meeting with Liz. That was actually not very difficult for him, when he pictured her beautiful and kind face before his inner eye.

He threw himself in the early-evening London traffic willingly with his ancient maroon Ford. And only when he noticed a slight cramping ache in his cheeks, he realized that he was smiling madly all the time.

As he had gone on his way quite early, he reached Liz's house with some minutes to spare, even though he had been stuck in some traffic jam.

Liz, who was dressed in a casual light blue blouse and black jeans, greeted Jack with a quick kiss on the cheek and he found himself blushing like a schoolboy.

"Hi, Liz. You look great," he told her. As he did not know what else to say, he asked her a little awkwardly, whether she was ready to go and soon they were on their way to Liz's favourite Italian restaurant. Fortunately Jack, eased up after a while, so they were chatting along happily about all kinds of stuff during the car ride.

The restaurant was in a small and comfortable basement room. The walls were made of bricks and dark polished wood, which glinted red in the light of the oil lamps and candles which lighted the room. Several dried flowers and spices hung on the walls for decoration. Liz and Jack found a table in the corner of the room and sat down. They did not have to wait long for the waiter to light the candle on their table and take their orders.

Jack ordered an extra large pizza with tuna and Liz had lasagne.

While they ate, they talked about everything that came up but again and again the topic of conversation returned to sports. Of course that was not surprising, as Liz was working for the sports section of her newspaper and Jack was going to become a P.E. teacher.

"So are you doing any sports yourself?" Jack asked, while he fought with some especially gooey cheese from his pizza.

"Yes, I go swimming - at least I try to go regularly. But with the job, it is sometimes a bit hard to squeeze it into my day. But I try to go to the pool at least two times a week," she smiled. "The times when I took part in competitions are long gone," she added a bit wistfully.

Jack nodded. "Yes, I know how it feels to never have enough time."

Liz cocked her head. "So what about you? Do you do any sports?" she asked curiously.

"Yes, Tae Kwon Do," he nodded. "I do quite a lot of it. And between that and my studies it's sometimes hard to find time for anything else."

"Tae Kwon Do?" Liz frowned. "Isn't that something like Karate?" she asked.

Jack smiled. "Well Tae Kwon Do and Karate are both Asian martial arts, so they do have things in common, but there are significant differences as well. First of all, Tae Kwon Do comes from Korea, whereas Karate is from Japan. The main difference in the sports itself is that in Tae Kwon Do, you work much more with your feet and legs than in Karate," he explained patiently. But Liz could tell that he had told the same thing to others many times before.

"So in Tae Kwon Do there are more kicks and in Karate there are more punches, right?" she asked. Jack chuckled. "Well, I suppose you could say it like that."

When they both had finished their meals, they leaned back contentedly. Jack stroked his belly and sighed. "I'm so full; I feel like I probably can't eat at all next week."

Liz just nodded, smiling and they sat in comfortable silence for a while, each in their own thoughts. After a few minutes, Liz looked up and saw a slightly worried and nervous expression on Jack's face. She had only seen this particular expression once in her "first" life on the face of James Potter and that was on the day before the try-outs for the English National Quidditch team.

Instinctively, she reached out for his hand. "What is troubling you, Jack?" she asked in a warm and concerned voice.

Jack sighed and looked in her bright green eyes. Then he shook his head. "It's just about my first physics lesson that I'm going to teach tomorrow," he said softly. "I don't feel properly prepared at all...you know...well, I know exactly what I want to teach them, but I don't know how."

He looked up again and saw her frowning. "Well, that sounds silly, doesn't it?" he admitted with half a smile, half a grimace.

"What I mean is; when I was at school, lessons were only interesting when I had a nice conversation with my neighbour or someone was pranking the teacher. So now when I'm a teacher myself, how can I make the lessons be interesting for my students? I can't exactly let them prank me now, can I?"

Liz grinned mischievously at him. "Why don't you prank them?"

Jack stared at her. "What? You do realize that my lesson will be supervised, don't you?"

Liz smiled appeasingly at him. "Oh, I don't mean really pranking them. Just make your lesson interesting and fun enough so that they forget pranking you. And isn't physics just the right subject for that with all its possibilities for experiments?"

Jack leaned back and frowned, while he thought about that. Then, quite suddenly, he sat up, his eyes widened excitedly and a wide smile spread across his face. "You know, Liz Hamrick, I could just kiss you right now!" he exclaimed.

Liz smiled back at him and there was a sly glint in her bright green eyes as she leaned towards him and said in a low, seductive voice, "Well, Jack Pearson, why don't you?"

***

November 3^rd 1981

"Good morning, everyone," Jack greeted his students much more cheerfully than he felt.

Some of them replied murmuring, while others just nodded tiredly. When Jack looked in the faces of his twentythree fourteenyear-old charges, he mostly saw boredom, disinterest and tiredness.

But the one face that was unsettling him most with its serious and attentive look was the one of his mentor, Mr. Kenimer. The old Irish teacher would have reminded him of Professor McGonagall, if he could have remembered his life as James Potter at all.

Jack swallowed, plastered a smile on his face and asked, "Who of you would like to earn ten pounds in this lesson?"

Obviously, his words had an effect on some students, as a few heads, which formerly had rested on the tables, came up and looked at him curiously. Then after a while several students tentively raised their hands, much to Jack's relief.

He nodded. "Well, why don't all of you come up front here?" he told the class.

The classroom was suddenly filled with the noises of chairs scratching on the floor, footsteps coming to the front of the room and the curious murmuring of around two dozens of voices.

On the floor between the teacher's desk and the first row of the students' tables, they could all see a board, which was two feet long and one foot wide and which stood on four little wheels, so it looked almost like a very large and very plump skate-board.

Jack now put a ten-pound note about a meter away from the board and turned to the class. "Okay, the one who can jump with legs closed, from the board over the money, can keep it, alright? Who wants to try first?"

As this task seemed quite easy, and all of them would like to earn a little money with almost no effort, more than half of the students' hands shot up in the air. Now Jack smiled earnestly.

He picked out a scrawny boy with dark blond hair and freckles. "Okay, er what is your name?"

"Dennis," the boy told him, delighted that he could try first.

"Okay, Dennis," Jack said. "Stand on the board and then try to jump over the money, and it will be yours."

Smiling, the boys stood on it, bend his knees and then jumped forward with all his might, but to his surprise, he did not get forward at all, but the board shot out under his feet and crashed straight into the wall behind him, while he landed exactly on the same spot, he stood before - a meter away from the money.

Dennis looked around in astonishment. His classmates were looking at him and whispering, some laughing out loud, some of them boasting about how they could do it better and some wondering why Dennis could not do it.

On two or three faces, Jack could see an understanding smirk, and he smiled back at them conspirationally.

He let five more students try to jump, but when nobody could earn the money, he let them all take their seats again. Now of course the students were quite eager to know the reason for their failure to get the money and listened attentively, when Jack told them about the actio-equals-reactioprinciple and the two others of Newton's axioms.

Jack had so much fun teaching this lesson that he was almost sad when the bell told him that it was over. The students filed out of the classroom, smiling and waving at him, and Mr. Kenimer came forward, while Jack packed his stuff away.

He gave Jack one of his rare smiles and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good job, Mr. Pearson," he told him. "That was the most attentive I have ever seen this class."

Jack smiled at him, savouring the feeling of pride and success that was flooding him.

When he walked through the halls of the school, humming a tune, he felt like the happiest man on earth. His work was fun and successful and most of all, the most beautiful and lovely woman he had ever met had said yes when he had invited her for another date at the movies this evening and he just felt like he might have chances with this girl.