One of the good days. on Quidditch Pitch

A Memory

November 27, 2020 10:56 AM

One of the good days. by A Memory

The phenomenon unfolding on the Quidditch Pitch might have gone unnoticed – at least, at first. It began as a mere strand of silvery matter, somehow neither liquid nor gas, but with characteristics of both, as though it could not decide what to be. Still undecided on its form of matter, it swirled, condensed into a small pool of this same indeterminate stuff – and then began to rise into something much more noticeable, specifically, the figure out of a woman.

She was not, it had to be said, a particularly striking woman to look at, or would not have been in any context (unlike the context of a Quidditch pitch, while in an indeterminate state of matter) in which she belonged. Her heart-shaped face could have been pretty enough, when animated, but she was rarely animated. Her hair was thick and curling, enough that it could have been to her advantage, but it was mostly caught back with a net at the back of her head; a few strands had worked their way loose, but rather than looking as though they were deliberately arranged about her face to be charming, they instead sat there awkwardly, as though they did not belong but she could not be bothered to put them back. Anyone who followed fashion would have also noticed immediately that besides being plain almost to the point of austerity, with very little embroidery, her robes were also almost a decade out of fashion. They had not been a decade out of style on the day she echoed now, but they had already been unfashionable for a few years; it would not do, after all, for widows to be too finely dressed, and while this woman had never truly been a widow, widowhood was the role her very stratified society had granted her, the best compromise it could devise between the extremes of allowing her to retain the status of a married socialite when she had no husband or pushing her into the company of the old maids when she had children.

Acknowledging the truth, of course, had never been an option. No-one ever spoke truthfully about what had really happened to her, a few years before, after all – at least not to her face. What was said behind her back had already begun to become another matter, and might have accounted for some of her perpetually anxious, slightly distracted air – one which hinted at a sad history, one shot through with traces of the fretfulness of the chronically ill. She made the effort, though, to form her mouth into the shape of a smile when she glanced at the place beside her in the stands.

“Isn’t it nice to get out of the house?” she said to someone invisible, her voice echoing slightly, as though it were coming from a well. “And to see your brother! I know he must appreciate how much you’ve been practicing with him.” She reached out to chuck an invisible person under the chin, looking at the spot with pride. “And – oh, there they go – he flies so well! If you two keep it up, we’ll have him in the National Quidditch League!” A slight pause and then she laughed, the faint echo making the sound lonelier than it had been at the time. “Oh, fiddlesticks to what your uncle thinks! He was never good at anything but being a sourpuss, and that’s no reason for Baby not to do what he’s good at! Oh – no – now, don’t get upset,” she interrupted herself, clearly torn between contrition and annoyance. “Really – don’t – I’m sorry. Of course your uncle is – good at…being your uncle,” she concluded helplessly, wringing her pearly hands. “And he’ll take good care of us, of course,” she continued, in the manner of one reciting a catechism, and not one she was deeply committed to at that. “But your brother could fly circles around him and that’s a fact!” she added, warmly again, changing the subject and looking up to the sky, beaming, proud again. “And look – is that – it is! I think he’s got it!” she squealed with excitement, bouncing in place in her seat, clapping her hands and exclaiming over whatever she alone saw before reaching the part in her day where someone had stopped actively thinking about her.

OOC: OOC: New rule: instead of having two sub-threads, this post is set up in a class-style format. There should be a max of two responses, either separate (two people posting directly to the memory) or interactive (one thread with two characters in it).

16 A Memory One of the good days. 0 A Memory 1 5

Jeremy Mordue

December 08, 2020 6:10 AM

Is that what you call this? by Jeremy Mordue

Jeremy had drilled the same techniques again and again. The same obstacles. The same dexterity drills with their pinpoint precision mid-air changes. It was time for a challenge. The peril of a close dive just wasn’t cutting it any more, given how well he’d been able to pull of neck-breaking (for the other guy) feints for a couple of years. It was purely his own innate desire to excel, because excellence mattered, and nothing at all to do with the fact that, at least in dives, Anya was real competition to him. Anyway, why he was doing it was less important than what he was doing, which was aiming not only a dive with perfect millimetre clearance on the ground but also all the way down the raked seating of the stands. Of course, in a real game, he probably wouldn’t dare get so close to the crowd, but it was a convenient obstacle to throw into his own path for the sake of exploring the limits of what he could do.

As this was a new challenge, he was taking it slow. He was currently starting from standing on the top row of bleachers, and jumping off from there, angling himself as close as he dared. He was pleased with his progress, and was lining up for another try when he heard a voice. It surged through him, by-passing logic and association, so that he had felt the voice and its concurrent emotions – warmth, safety, relief - before he properly realised what he had heard. Or had thought he had heard.

He turned, the bottom of his stomach dropping out as he saw who was sitting in the stands. The fact that she was too young, the fact that he hadn’t seen her in that old thing for years, those were minor details that hit him later. The first thing that did was that his mother was there. But not there.

“Mama?” he asked, sitting down next to her. “No- what- Nathaniel’s not here right now,” he shook his head as she talked about his brother. “What happened?” he asked, trying to look at her, trying to pretend he wasn’t having to look through her.

“Mama, what are you talking about?” he asked, as she babbled about National Quidditch Leagues. It sounded like she was talking about him. Except he was right here. She was the one who wasn’t.

“I’m not a baby,” he glared, as she used the less than appealing nickname she’d always referred to him by. “I’m fifteen years old!” he glared, as she told him not to be angry. “Not that you’d know. Not that you care. Because you left!” And now- now she’d gone and died, and come back, and wouldn’t make any sense and- and- it was just all very ridiculous and unfair of her! What kind of mother died, both for pretend and then for real? How was he meant to feel about this when they’d already played her off as dead for years? “And you think you can just come back here and-

“HEY!” he yelled, as she dissolved. As she disappeared again. “I DIDN’T SAY YOU COULD GO,” he yelled at the empty air.

His emotion did not do a very rapid job of subsiding. His heart still hammered in his chest, a combination of shock and pain. But her absence was making room for some reason. The details of her outfit. The behaviour. She had acted more like a spectator than a ghost. Was someone making some Mother Illusion to mess with him? That made more sense. Had someone seen photos of his mother though? How would they know how to get her so life like but the wrong age? He might have had a family photo, he supposed, during first year. He wasn’t sentimental, but Nathaniel did take so many, and it was sort of proper to show off your family, just a bit. He definitely had photo albums. Right. So, someone who wanted to screw up his life and had access to his personal possessions. Who, oh who could that be?

“I KNOW YOU’RE JUST MESSING WITH ME,” he yelled into the empty space around him. “SCREW YOU, DE MATTEO. IT’S NOT WORKING.”

13 Jeremy Mordue Is that what you call this? 1443 0 5