Correspondence Course, Part Seven
Apr. 17th, 2006 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_t_rainThis is the bit where I shamelessly parody every Remus / Sirius coming-out fic ever. Apologies to the people on the f-list who have written them, but I just couldn't resist.
Parts One through Six can be found here.
Mr Bugleblower:
I have examined the ‘Flobberworm’ specimen you sent to me in your last letter. The reason why it refuses to eat or grow is quite simple: It is a rubber band. I wish you had half as good an excuse for being an idiot.
Sincerely,
Severus Prince-Snape
* * *
Misty:
First of all, I insist that you furnish me with your surname, if such things exist in America, and that you refrain from addressing me as ‘Sev.’ This is not a nightclub or a bubble-gum chew; we are on a professional footing here, if you are capable of understanding such a concept. For the same reason, do not send me any more photographs of you in your bathing attire. It makes you look like a beached hippopotamus anyway.
Sincerely,
Professor S. Prince-Snape
As “Mystii” was in fact Rosalind Antigone Bungs, one of the cutest Keepers ever to grace the goalposts of the Holyhead Harpies, I thought this was rather unfair of Professor Prince-Snape. But there is, of course, no accounting for tastes.
He had not answered the third letter, the one from Sister Mary Perpetua, so I decided to send off a reminder:
Dear Professor Prince-Snape,
I understood from Mr Harbottle that I would hear from you within the week, but perhaps I misunderstood, or your letter has gone astray. If not – I do not mean to pry, but may I ask whether you are in any sort of trouble? Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can, in my small way, offer you any assistance.
If, however, you are simply displeased with the statue of St. Mungo, I agree that it may not have been one of my better efforts, so I have enclosed an additional sample of my work. I should be most grateful for any criticism you can offer.
Sister Mary Perpetua
I Transfigured an extra leaf of parchment into a delicate little angel, and sent it off.
* * *
I had a fair amount of time to carry on our letter-writing campaign, since I had lost both of my own students by the end of July. D. J. Prod, as I have already mentioned, cancelled his lessons after successfully Transfiguring his wife into a yak; Sue Hurdabirg met a rather more spectacular demise at the end of a hot and boring day.
The Potters had gone away to the seaside for a week and taken Sirius with them. My mother had likewise left town for an academic conference in Tibet. My father, who was inclined toward overprotectiveness, insisted that I was not well enough to go flying or do much of anything else, despite the fact that it was three days after the full moon and I protested (not entirely truthfully) that I felt fine. So I was left with nothing much to do until Peter came over in the afternoon, and even then there didn’t seem to be very much to do. We tried playing Scrabble, but unfortunately, he had never really got the hang of Muggle games, and all I seemed to be able to draw was consonants. If I had been playing with anyone other than Peter, I should have suspected him of cheating, but Peter still hadn’t got the hang of wordless magic and the idea of him cheating at Scrabble without anybody noticing was absurd.
The game ended when I spelled the word DO along the bottom edge of the board, and he countered with:
W
E
NERDOG
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“It means a dachshund. One that’s going around a corner.”
“You’re not allowed to do that!”
“Show me the place in the rules where it says I can’t.” (Which, of course, it didn’t, since the inventors of Scrabble could not possibly have anticipated the existence of a mind like Peter’s.)
“It’s not even spelled right. It’s missing an I.”
“Right. It’s a blind dachshund turning a corner.”
I laughed and threw a tile at him. “You’re mad.”
“So do I get to count it as a word?” Peter asked, and started writing down the score before I could say yes or no.
“Of course you don’t! Why would you get to count it as a word?”
“It made you laugh.”
“So?”
“James and Sirius always let me count things for points if it makes them laugh.”
This was true, I realized. It had been true since the very first game of pickup Quidditch we had played in first year, when we discovered that the closest thing Peter had to a flying-related talent was making comical faces when he fell off, and nobody had ever questioned it. I was hot, tired, and rather unwell, and suddenly I was heartily sick of it. I judged that there was no reason why he should get free points in Scrabble. He might not be brilliant at magic, but he wasn’t stupid or a bad speller.
“I don’t care what James and Sirius do,” I said crossly. “I say it’s cheating. Besides, you ought to have more pride.”
He sniggered. “Pride about what? Being able to spell two-letter words?”
“No, about not letting them treat you like a little kid or a mascot!”
“I AM NOT A MASCOT!” To my surprise, he was really, genuinely angry.
“I didn’t say you were. I just said don’t bloody behave like one.”
Peter ended up going home in an extreme state of the sulks, leaving me alone to clean up the board; but I felt exhausted and bored and already a bit guilty, and decided that I couldn’t be bothered. I ended up idly playing with the Scrabble tiles instead. I picked out the letters that spelled SUE HURDABIRG and began moving them around...
U GRAB RUSH DIE
I RUE BARD HUGS
RUB SUE HARD IG
My hand froze as I pushed the last tile into place. Slowly, I rearranged the letters to spell one last anagram:
RUBEUS HAGRID
Oh no. It hadn’t been a good day to begin with, but it had just got about ten thousand times worse.
And it got worse still when I thought of the smirk I had occasionally seen on Sirius’ face when I had sat down, blushing, to pen another letter to Miss Hurdabirg. He knew. Oh yes, he must have known all along. I’d seen him solve half a dozen anagram clues from the Daily Prophet crossword before most people had time to get the paper open.
I grabbed the two-way mirror that sat on my dresser and snapped, “Sirius Black!”
“What’s up, Moony?” Sirius answered after the third or fourth time I’d called his name. He was obviously enjoying his holiday with the Potters, even if they were paying for it with filthy capitalist lucre. He looked sunburnt, windblown, and carefree.
I started to explain what was up, but I didn’t get very far before he burst out laughing.
“Padfoot. Do you realize that I’ve been having sexual fantasies about Rubeus Hagrid all summer? This is NOT AMUSING!”
“No, it isn’t, mate, it’s bloody hilarious. James and I were taking bets about when you’d catch on.”
“Well, I hope you lost,” I said. I threw the mirror aside and stomped downstairs to get a drink of water and some fresh air.
My father was in the kitchen; I hadn’t expected to find him there. He usually spent the afternoons in his Potions lab and emerged only when somebody reminded him about dinner, so I had thought I was alone in the house. Reluctantly, I stopped stomping.
“You are of age,” he said. “Come and have a drink with me.”
“All right,” I said, although I didn’t particularly want to. He was talking strangely and gazing at me with a peculiar, intense expression that I found unnerving, and I wondered what I had done to warrant such scrutiny. Had he somehow discovered the joke we were playing on Snape? If so, why didn’t he say so?
“It will have to be a strong drink, I think,” he said, rummaging among the dusty and disorderly collection of half-empty bottles that constituted my parents’ liquor cupboard. “I have it, we shall have cognac. I have never drunk cognac in the afternoon before. It will be a change. One must be open to all manner of things in life.”
He looked at me as though he expected me to recognize that this last statement held some sort of profound and private meaning. I nodded, not knowing what else to say.
“Salut!”
“Cheers, Dad.”
I had never drunk cognac at all, and one sip convinced me that I hadn’t been missing much. I tried not to cough or gag.
Dad, who was not ordinarily much of a drinker, drained his glass in three swallows and poured himself a second generous measure of cognac. I poured about half of my own drink into one of the pot plants while his back was turned.
“Eh bien, as I have said, one must be open to all manner of things. Me, I thought when I was young that I would have a very ordinary, simple life. I would teach at Beauxbatons and pass the holidays in the little village in Provence where I was born. I did not plan that it should be a life full of Dark wizards and werewolves, or that I should be mocked by my former colleagues and called a ‘mad scientist.’ Nor that I should fall in love with an Englishwoman and have a very English son who has a slight problem with the moon. But so it goes. Sometimes the things we do not plan are for the best, yes?” He smiled at me, but there was still something faintly strained in his expression.
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said cautiously, and took another tiny sip of my drink. I could not for the life of me see where this was going.
“And now that I am older, I have often looked forward to having grandchildren. I did not expect them for many years, of course, but I have sometimes thought, someday my son will meet a nice girl, and when I am very old I shall have a few young ones to listen to my stories.”
I felt even more at sea. Did he think that I had got some girl pregnant? This seemed unlikely, as I could not imagine how he might have got that impression, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why he would be talking about grandchildren. “Dad, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I –”
He held out a hand. “Silence, hear everything I have to say before you speak. I am telling you what I have thought and hoped in the past, but in the end, that does not matter. What matters is that you are my son, and that you should be happy.” He tossed back what was left of his second drink and began a third. “This ... Rubeus Hagrid, if he is what makes you happy, that is a good thing and I should be pleased to meet him one day.”
The light dawned with such clarity and force that it caused me to spit cognac halfway across the living-room floor. My father pounded me on the back, and then, being slightly tipsy, enfolded me in a fierce hug. He was clearly one step away from loudly proclaiming his love for his gay lycanthropic son, and I did what I could to head off such an embarrassing declaration.
“Dad. I think you misunderstood something you overheard. Sirius and I were –” For a split second I contemplated the prospect of explaining about the Swedish model, and decided that this was absolutely impossible. “We were rehearsing a play.”
I watched as his entire universe rearranged itself. “You ... are going to be ... in a play?”
“Yes.” This seemed the simplest of all of the possible responses.
“With Sirius?”
“Yes.”
“But that is wonderful! My congratulations! Shall we have another drink to celebrate?”
“No! Not yet, I mean. It’s, er, very experimental drama. Sirius just wrote it. I don’t think it’s actually going to be produced.”
“Ah, Sirius wrote it. Now I understand it all. Is it a Communist play?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I see.” My father wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You are a very good friend, Remus.”
“You don’t have to go see it if you don’t want.”
“You are a good son, too.”
“Thank you,” I said, as this seemed by far the simplest answer, and I tried not to think about how many layers of deceit had led up to this moment.
Parts One through Six can be found here.
Mr Bugleblower:
I have examined the ‘Flobberworm’ specimen you sent to me in your last letter. The reason why it refuses to eat or grow is quite simple: It is a rubber band. I wish you had half as good an excuse for being an idiot.
Sincerely,
Severus Prince-Snape
* * *
Misty:
First of all, I insist that you furnish me with your surname, if such things exist in America, and that you refrain from addressing me as ‘Sev.’ This is not a nightclub or a bubble-gum chew; we are on a professional footing here, if you are capable of understanding such a concept. For the same reason, do not send me any more photographs of you in your bathing attire. It makes you look like a beached hippopotamus anyway.
Sincerely,
Professor S. Prince-Snape
As “Mystii” was in fact Rosalind Antigone Bungs, one of the cutest Keepers ever to grace the goalposts of the Holyhead Harpies, I thought this was rather unfair of Professor Prince-Snape. But there is, of course, no accounting for tastes.
He had not answered the third letter, the one from Sister Mary Perpetua, so I decided to send off a reminder:
Dear Professor Prince-Snape,
I understood from Mr Harbottle that I would hear from you within the week, but perhaps I misunderstood, or your letter has gone astray. If not – I do not mean to pry, but may I ask whether you are in any sort of trouble? Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can, in my small way, offer you any assistance.
If, however, you are simply displeased with the statue of St. Mungo, I agree that it may not have been one of my better efforts, so I have enclosed an additional sample of my work. I should be most grateful for any criticism you can offer.
Sister Mary Perpetua
I Transfigured an extra leaf of parchment into a delicate little angel, and sent it off.
* * *
I had a fair amount of time to carry on our letter-writing campaign, since I had lost both of my own students by the end of July. D. J. Prod, as I have already mentioned, cancelled his lessons after successfully Transfiguring his wife into a yak; Sue Hurdabirg met a rather more spectacular demise at the end of a hot and boring day.
The Potters had gone away to the seaside for a week and taken Sirius with them. My mother had likewise left town for an academic conference in Tibet. My father, who was inclined toward overprotectiveness, insisted that I was not well enough to go flying or do much of anything else, despite the fact that it was three days after the full moon and I protested (not entirely truthfully) that I felt fine. So I was left with nothing much to do until Peter came over in the afternoon, and even then there didn’t seem to be very much to do. We tried playing Scrabble, but unfortunately, he had never really got the hang of Muggle games, and all I seemed to be able to draw was consonants. If I had been playing with anyone other than Peter, I should have suspected him of cheating, but Peter still hadn’t got the hang of wordless magic and the idea of him cheating at Scrabble without anybody noticing was absurd.
The game ended when I spelled the word DO along the bottom edge of the board, and he countered with:
W
E
NERDOG
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“It means a dachshund. One that’s going around a corner.”
“You’re not allowed to do that!”
“Show me the place in the rules where it says I can’t.” (Which, of course, it didn’t, since the inventors of Scrabble could not possibly have anticipated the existence of a mind like Peter’s.)
“It’s not even spelled right. It’s missing an I.”
“Right. It’s a blind dachshund turning a corner.”
I laughed and threw a tile at him. “You’re mad.”
“So do I get to count it as a word?” Peter asked, and started writing down the score before I could say yes or no.
“Of course you don’t! Why would you get to count it as a word?”
“It made you laugh.”
“So?”
“James and Sirius always let me count things for points if it makes them laugh.”
This was true, I realized. It had been true since the very first game of pickup Quidditch we had played in first year, when we discovered that the closest thing Peter had to a flying-related talent was making comical faces when he fell off, and nobody had ever questioned it. I was hot, tired, and rather unwell, and suddenly I was heartily sick of it. I judged that there was no reason why he should get free points in Scrabble. He might not be brilliant at magic, but he wasn’t stupid or a bad speller.
“I don’t care what James and Sirius do,” I said crossly. “I say it’s cheating. Besides, you ought to have more pride.”
He sniggered. “Pride about what? Being able to spell two-letter words?”
“No, about not letting them treat you like a little kid or a mascot!”
“I AM NOT A MASCOT!” To my surprise, he was really, genuinely angry.
“I didn’t say you were. I just said don’t bloody behave like one.”
Peter ended up going home in an extreme state of the sulks, leaving me alone to clean up the board; but I felt exhausted and bored and already a bit guilty, and decided that I couldn’t be bothered. I ended up idly playing with the Scrabble tiles instead. I picked out the letters that spelled SUE HURDABIRG and began moving them around...
U GRAB RUSH DIE
I RUE BARD HUGS
RUB SUE HARD IG
My hand froze as I pushed the last tile into place. Slowly, I rearranged the letters to spell one last anagram:
RUBEUS HAGRID
Oh no. It hadn’t been a good day to begin with, but it had just got about ten thousand times worse.
And it got worse still when I thought of the smirk I had occasionally seen on Sirius’ face when I had sat down, blushing, to pen another letter to Miss Hurdabirg. He knew. Oh yes, he must have known all along. I’d seen him solve half a dozen anagram clues from the Daily Prophet crossword before most people had time to get the paper open.
I grabbed the two-way mirror that sat on my dresser and snapped, “Sirius Black!”
“What’s up, Moony?” Sirius answered after the third or fourth time I’d called his name. He was obviously enjoying his holiday with the Potters, even if they were paying for it with filthy capitalist lucre. He looked sunburnt, windblown, and carefree.
I started to explain what was up, but I didn’t get very far before he burst out laughing.
“Padfoot. Do you realize that I’ve been having sexual fantasies about Rubeus Hagrid all summer? This is NOT AMUSING!”
“No, it isn’t, mate, it’s bloody hilarious. James and I were taking bets about when you’d catch on.”
“Well, I hope you lost,” I said. I threw the mirror aside and stomped downstairs to get a drink of water and some fresh air.
My father was in the kitchen; I hadn’t expected to find him there. He usually spent the afternoons in his Potions lab and emerged only when somebody reminded him about dinner, so I had thought I was alone in the house. Reluctantly, I stopped stomping.
“You are of age,” he said. “Come and have a drink with me.”
“All right,” I said, although I didn’t particularly want to. He was talking strangely and gazing at me with a peculiar, intense expression that I found unnerving, and I wondered what I had done to warrant such scrutiny. Had he somehow discovered the joke we were playing on Snape? If so, why didn’t he say so?
“It will have to be a strong drink, I think,” he said, rummaging among the dusty and disorderly collection of half-empty bottles that constituted my parents’ liquor cupboard. “I have it, we shall have cognac. I have never drunk cognac in the afternoon before. It will be a change. One must be open to all manner of things in life.”
He looked at me as though he expected me to recognize that this last statement held some sort of profound and private meaning. I nodded, not knowing what else to say.
“Salut!”
“Cheers, Dad.”
I had never drunk cognac at all, and one sip convinced me that I hadn’t been missing much. I tried not to cough or gag.
Dad, who was not ordinarily much of a drinker, drained his glass in three swallows and poured himself a second generous measure of cognac. I poured about half of my own drink into one of the pot plants while his back was turned.
“Eh bien, as I have said, one must be open to all manner of things. Me, I thought when I was young that I would have a very ordinary, simple life. I would teach at Beauxbatons and pass the holidays in the little village in Provence where I was born. I did not plan that it should be a life full of Dark wizards and werewolves, or that I should be mocked by my former colleagues and called a ‘mad scientist.’ Nor that I should fall in love with an Englishwoman and have a very English son who has a slight problem with the moon. But so it goes. Sometimes the things we do not plan are for the best, yes?” He smiled at me, but there was still something faintly strained in his expression.
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said cautiously, and took another tiny sip of my drink. I could not for the life of me see where this was going.
“And now that I am older, I have often looked forward to having grandchildren. I did not expect them for many years, of course, but I have sometimes thought, someday my son will meet a nice girl, and when I am very old I shall have a few young ones to listen to my stories.”
I felt even more at sea. Did he think that I had got some girl pregnant? This seemed unlikely, as I could not imagine how he might have got that impression, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why he would be talking about grandchildren. “Dad, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I –”
He held out a hand. “Silence, hear everything I have to say before you speak. I am telling you what I have thought and hoped in the past, but in the end, that does not matter. What matters is that you are my son, and that you should be happy.” He tossed back what was left of his second drink and began a third. “This ... Rubeus Hagrid, if he is what makes you happy, that is a good thing and I should be pleased to meet him one day.”
The light dawned with such clarity and force that it caused me to spit cognac halfway across the living-room floor. My father pounded me on the back, and then, being slightly tipsy, enfolded me in a fierce hug. He was clearly one step away from loudly proclaiming his love for his gay lycanthropic son, and I did what I could to head off such an embarrassing declaration.
“Dad. I think you misunderstood something you overheard. Sirius and I were –” For a split second I contemplated the prospect of explaining about the Swedish model, and decided that this was absolutely impossible. “We were rehearsing a play.”
I watched as his entire universe rearranged itself. “You ... are going to be ... in a play?”
“Yes.” This seemed the simplest of all of the possible responses.
“With Sirius?”
“Yes.”
“But that is wonderful! My congratulations! Shall we have another drink to celebrate?”
“No! Not yet, I mean. It’s, er, very experimental drama. Sirius just wrote it. I don’t think it’s actually going to be produced.”
“Ah, Sirius wrote it. Now I understand it all. Is it a Communist play?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I see.” My father wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You are a very good friend, Remus.”
“You don’t have to go see it if you don’t want.”
“You are a good son, too.”
“Thank you,” I said, as this seemed by far the simplest answer, and I tried not to think about how many layers of deceit had led up to this moment.
