Recognition

Recognition.

*

"You know I think I recognize your face
But I've never seen you before." Oasis

*

The breeze formed wafted over grass and crops (freshly sown earth and fields and unglamorous tubers: turnips, potatoes, carrots) before blowing through the high, vividly green hedges of Smeltings School and up into the orange trees in the orchard, carrying the spiced smell into the classrooms on the second floor. It mingled with the sweet scent of the flowers arranged meticulously in a cut-glass vase on the desk and the hard, old, stone odour that rose from the walls.

The wind billowed out the peach silk shirt of the Professor scrawling Latin verbs on the chalkboard and died out in its folds.

He shivered, and his hand shook-

(cold. And a memory of the smell of oranges on skin.)

He set his chalk down and turned, long, graceful fingers grasping the back of the oak chair. "That will be all for today. You may leave."

At his words, the class of boater-hatted schoolboys closed up their books, and a collective exhalation of relief (mumblings, mutterings, spontaneous prayers of thanks) rose up as they scraped their chairs against the ground.

The professor shook out his smooth blond hair and sighed at them as they passed. Noisy, inconsiderate, gawky creatures with foul mouths and fouler minds. But in their pressed white shirts and black trousers and starched collars lurked something familiar.

( You were a teacher, Albus said.

A familiar voice, at that.
Back in the time you don't remember. An accident-- maybe you remember that? A flash of light and the sound of splintering, not like metal but wood. Strange. A sense of loss. An accident, yes. You'll find you have-- an affinity, Gilderoy.
For what?
Teaching. A hesitation. And-- children. A knife-edged smile.
Could the familiar be trusted? )

He looked up as they began to filter out.

"Stampley, three hundred times-- 'I will not look out of the window while the professor is teaching.' In Latin, if you please." He smiled at the put-out look on the boy's face. "Yes, Stampley, I did notice. Rogers, I hope you intend to scrub the desk you were scribbling on clean tomorrow morning at 6 am. You were? How fortunate."

There was a momentary pause before both Stampley and Rogers nodded their heads and muttered 'yes, sir' meekly.

They didn't try much with him any more. When he appeared with his simpering good looks, silk shirts, and elaborate cufflinks ('the fucking queer git'), they had pounced on him ravenously, his lively expansiveness a direct contrast to the sere formidability of their other professors. Why they had hired someone so young and full of airs was a complete mystery.

( Why am I here?
A new beginning, Gilderoy. A laugh. Another chance for you.
How did you convince them?
A twinkle in bright blue eyes. Oh, I have my ways.

Who are you?

Just someone from your memory.)

A fanciful name that wasn't quite right, too, that rolled off the tongue. Gilderoy Lockhart: like a heroic character from one of the semi-pornographic bodice-rippers that the boys shoved under their pillows at night.

They pounced ravenously and sucked his blood, the little boater-hatted vampires.

He had dried up a bit then, his fingers curling and his smiles retracting. Then he found the Smeltings stick. Some professors used the belt, some rulers, and some simply smacked the boys, the bony ridges of their hands raising red welts on young skin. This professor used the stick. He cradled it and held it like a sceptre sometimes, unconsciously running his fingers along the length of it. Polished to a sheen, the hard, cold piece of wood felt so familiar in his hands.

(mixed with the urge to cry out strange Latin terms and swivel his stick in the air. He dismissed it: a Latin tutor's fantasy. All it did was hit, and it felt right in his hands )

Rogers and Stampley slunk out of the classroom then, and he sank into his chair.

Another scrape, and he looked up suddenly. One of the boys had just stood up and was walking over to his desk. Dursley: a lumbering, perpetually red-faced blot whose flesh pressed out against his school uniform and stretched the fabric in all the wrong ways. He smiled and ran his fingers through his own gold hair. Nature was cruel.

"Petunias, sir."

He raised one eyebrow. "What, Dursley?"

The boy leaned over the table slightly and gestured to the vase. "These flowers," Dursley said, gruffly, looking even more red-faced than usual. "The ones you put on your desk every day. They're petunias. My mother's name is Petunia."

"Really, Dursley?" he muttered, caught off-balance. "I grew these ones in the school gardens. Perfect specimens, if I do say so myself."

"Yes. Um. Perfect specimens, sir." Dursley shoved his hands into his pockets, a trickle of sweat forming at the back of his neck and tracing a cold line down to his collar. "I'm really enjoying your classes, Professor."

There was a lilt to the way he said 'Professor' that made him look up.

( Familiar. )

"I'm glad to hear that," he shrugged. "Though I'm hardly surprised-- compared to me, your last teacher was a disaster."

"A disaster, yes, of course, sir," Dursley echoed, shifting uncomfortably.

He waited for the silence to force the boy into leaving, strangely disinclined to draw him into a conversation about himself. The way Dursley stood there and watched him was just unnerving.

( Familiar, too. Looks that were too intent when Dursley thought his back was turned. Flushed cheeks and fumbling whenever he called on Dursley to answer a question. )

"Are you waiting for something?" he asked at length, once the waiting had tired him.

The boy started and then looked down. "I--" He lapsed into silence, and then removed his hands from his pockets before trying again. "I was wondering-- if I could have one." His fleshy hands were already reaching out. "A petunia."

He reached out to help Dursley, their hands knocking in the midst of stems and petals. Dursley jerked backwards suddenly, knocking over the vase and standing horrified as it shattered on the desk, spilling water over the heap of assignments and spewing flowers onto the floor underneath him.

"Must you behave like a--" (squib?) "An oaf, Dursley? Don't just stand there. Grab those papers before they get wet."

Dursley stared at him for a few moments, his school shirt wet and clinging to him, wondering why the professor was, against all natural laws, absolutely dry before complying. "I'm sorry, sir."

He looked up into that heavy-jowled face with ruddy cheeks, pausing to take in Dursley's eyes, wide open in surprise. He had never realised that they were a bright, slicing green between pink, rounded lids.

( Familiar. )

His own beautiful clear blue eyes traced the line of nose and the way Dursley's lip curved and the chin that was barely visible, and he remembered the way Dursley said 'Professor.'

( Familiar.
Green, green eyes, just before the flash of light and the feeling of loss. )

His breath caught in his throat slightly.

"That just won't do, Dursley. Lean over on the desk-- I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Dursley's eyes widened further just before he turned, an expression that was satisfied rather than surprised on an ugly face with a line of nose and a curve of lip that were familiar, familiar.

Could the familiar be trusted?

(You'll find you have-- an affinity, Gilderoy.
For what?
Teaching. And-- children.
Surely that couldn't mean...?
Green, green eyes, the smell of oranges and lips that he wanted to-- oh God.

Were the memories of sins sins in themselves?)

His fingers closed around the hard, cold wood of the Smeltings stick, and he raised it, feeling his own breath quicken in a feeling that was, above all, familiar.

*