John Umland
September 22, 2015 9:16 PM
I am the very model of a modern magical fellow. by John Umland
When one looked around and realized what had looked like a straight path had in fact gradually drifted to the right, both Baden-Powell and John’s own former scoutmasters agreed that the worst thing one could do was panic and run off into the wilds. The correct course was to sit, force oneself to calm down, think, and then, depending on conditions, decide whether to try to make a camp, try to signal one's location, or try to trace back one's steps to get out. His mother, for her part, knew nothing of woodcraft, but she had contributed to John’s knowledge of how to deal with any crisis by always saying that there was no trouble so great that it could not be substantially reduced by a good cup of tea. When John had finally heard a pretty clear version of the latest gossip, then, the first thing he had done was practice some deep-breathing exercises and the next had been to obtain some tea, the better to focus while he tried to figure out where he was and how he had arrived at such an undesirable location and – more importantly – how he was going to get back on course.These measures had helped steady his nerves and clear his head, but all his questions were still unanswered when he finished his supper, forcing down every bite in order to look normal. Because he could not panic. If he panicked, people would wonder why he had done so, and the one thing he had gotten out of his deep-breathing exercises was the realization, once his initial burst of adrenaline subsided and his pulse slowed to something like its normal rate, that while he might be as guilty as the blackest denizen of Hell, he was actually one of the students currently rather unlikely to be suspected of the crime.
Never had he expected to quite sincerely pray thank you, God, that I am the son of the politically moderate voice of the Lethbridge Gryphons, or at least not quite the way he currently meant it. He was, of course, grateful every day to have any sort of father and particularly to have a rather decent one, but he had never thought Dad's extreme ordinariness might combine with him being relatively well-known in western Canadian Quodpot circles as That Announcer For Those Guys Who Never Win in a way that was actually useful in the broader world. It was an interesting twist.
Even after it, though, he wanted to go straight to his room and hide with his books after his dessert. Instead, he only went up to his room long enough to make more tea (a process that took longer than usual when, after a good two minutes on top of the jar full of manipulable fire, the tap water in his beaker suddenly froze solid while he paced and fretted at the other end of the room. He had always found ice very easy to make) and collect a book, rejecting several of his favorites as too on-point and several more as volumes he didn’t know well enough to discuss them even if he couldn’t focus enough to actually read a word tonight. A few more, on second thought, were dismissed for being by non-magical authors; he picked them back up on third, wondering if deviating from his usual course too far would actually draw more attention, then went back to the books of magical origin, finally settling on Poulites of Argos’ enthusiastic accounts of his interactions with the magical creatures of ancient Greece. Even that wasn’t a totally safe text – Poulites’ reputation had suffered after some unkind critics had suggested he’d given Herpo the Foul the idea to use chicken eggs in the production of basilisks, and there was a certain school which still held that the poor, earnest fellow had really been quite as bad as Herpo himself, just less successful – but the author was a wizard and John thought he could find any point in the book in less than a minute, so it would have to do.
In the common room, though, his tea in one hand and his book in the other, he realized he had underestimated just how awful sitting still was going to be. He stared at his book without seeing it, his ears straining to hear if people were unknowingly talking about him while he tried to think rationally and remember to periodically turn a page. His hands felt like they were shaking no matter how often his eyes told him they were not and beneath his green robes his shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He tried to retrace his steps, to figure out what natural means could end in someone else knowing his secrets, but his brain kept trying to run away, scurrying toward the almost practical (counter-measures – could he effectively distribute fake new rumors, breeding confusion about the original’s reliability? And what happened if he did finally find out who was doing this? Before he had planned to triumphantly hand a no more than slightly bruised culprit over to justice, but that plan had just run straight into the problem of mutually assured destruction) to the frankly bizarre (somehow, he didn’t think inviting the older Quidditch boys over, Cheering Charming the lot of them until everyone was basically drunk, and seeing who could most coherently debate magical theory all night in that state would actually help anything even if the other guys agreed that it sounded like fun). This was not working. He needed something else to do.
There was, he thought, a wizard’s chess set in the common room. General use and so thoroughly paranoid, which made it just about perfect for something he had had at the back of his mind for some time, and luck was still enough with him that it was not currently in use. He set it up and it immediately began to complain.
“Who’s playing us?” demanded a white knight, on the unoccupied side of the board.
“I’m playing myself,” said John. “I know you can all argue with me,” he added, “but can you actually disobey me? What happens if I order you to perform an illegal move?”
The pieces buzzed. He took out his notebook and little pen to take notes over what he could hear of their argument. Maybe this would work, if nobody interrupted him demanding to know what he was doing or the use of the chess set or anything reasonable like that….
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