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Red by Rockinfaerie
Exploring the Drawer
James could hear the front door repeatedly opening and shutting, and he realised with some relief that the guests were leaving. He could not have returned to the drawing room to listen to their stupid talk and pointless comments.
He raised his head from his hands, looking once more at the tea-tray. It just wasn’t fair. His head was pounding; he wished never to see Lucius again, nor any of his friends he had insisted on introducing him to. He hoped his mother would be all right; it was as if she had removed a mask when he saw her cry, as if suddenly nothing was as it seemed; that he could no longer trust his mother to see fun in everything. He wondered if he would ever have fun again.
Why was it, he asked himself, that he always felt trapped in his own home? Did other people feel the same way, as if they had to think before they said anything, or were always pretending to listen, never actually hearing what anyone said?
This was not a new feeling. He had known it as far back as he could remember, that no-one in their community actually cared for each other. They only cared about appearances, and their conversation was the dullest on earth. They never seemed concerned about anything, as if they lived inside their own portrait; circumstances would change, but they would do their very best to make sure they stayed the same.
He sank further into the chair. His father had not been dull. His father had not succumbed to their predictable ways. He had not agreed with everything they had said. Sometimes, he would just remain silent – a neutral ground. But away from these people, his cousins and co-workers, his father had been different.
He had said many times that it was not blood that carried notions of separation; it was the people. He would say that James’ blood should not make him any higher or lower than any one of his classmates.
Thus, James had followed his father’s dictum, which was echoed by his headmaster. He never thought himself higher nor lower than others, unlike some of Sirius’ cousins, or other students, mainly Slytherins, who thought it fun to insult people about their parentage.
Instead, he and Sirius had laughed at their narrow-mindedness, and sometimes, during parties thrown by his mother in their house, he and his father would escape from the drawing room into the study and mimic their guests, laughing at their expressions and hypocrisies.
But his father was not here now. Apart from James, the study was empty. He sighed, and glanced at the window beside him, the dark outside showing his reflection. He had never thought he looked like his father – he had black hair of course, but people had often told him that his face was more like his mother’s. But now, seated in his father’s chair, he thought there was some likeness, and that if he looked until his vision blurred, that he might see his father looking back at him.
He looked down at the desk, away from the window. He had never felt this loneliness. However important to him, his other friendships could never replace his father’s companionship, and this he longed for. Some joke to break the tension, the way his father always seemed to think the same things as him. Without him, his life’s errors had been made clear, and somehow the idiosyncrasies of the guests who had appeared in the drawing room no longer were funny. They were saddening, and frustrating.
At least, he realised, he could escape the adult childishness at school, but his father had to put up with it all the time. He must have been as trapped as James felt now, trapped by the confines imposed on him by his blood type.
He wondered grimly if he was also doomed to live forever in this fake society. He could not run away from his home like Sirius had. He would not be able to leave his mother all alone. He did not want to make her cry again.
His tired eyes wandered over the yellowing newspapers of two weeks before. James knew that his father rarely read the front pages. He would always flick to the back, to the Quidditch news. Slowly, James opened the paper to these pages, just as his father had done not long ago.
It showed nothing irregular. There was news of Puddlemere United’s most recent victory. His father always had great fondness for that team. There were photographs of the revised Montrose Magpie team, and a small one of Ludo Bagman, the beater for the Wimbourne Wasps. James tried to imagine what his father might have been thinking as he read those columns, and the report of recent broom innovations.
As calmly as he could, James folded up the paper neatly, just as his father had done, and put it back on the desk. He leaned back, gazing at the drawers of the desk, wishing that Dumbledore had never spoken to him that morning during Transfiguration. It seemed that years had passed since then.
Without knowing why, he opened the top drawer of the desk, the one closest to him. He pulled it a bundle of what looked like parchment, but when he put in on the desk before him saw that it was a collection of old photographs and other things.
James picked up the photograph on top of the pile, and smiled unexpectedly. A four-year-old James waved back, sitting on his father’s shoulders, who grinned from the picture. It had been taken in the countryside – there were trees in the background. Perhaps it had been at Godric’s Hollow. He touched it, thinking how much simpler things would be if he were four-years-old again, with nothing to worry about except staying upright on his father’s shoulders. His father winked at him from the photograph, and James found himself winking back, but his eyelashes were wet. The sides were well-worn, as if his father looked at it often.
Grudgingly, he tore his eyes away, and looked to the next in the pile. It was another photograph, without colour. His father was there again, with his arm around another man. James knew the picture well; there was one just like this in the hall. The brothers were laughing, and the uncle James had never known was wearing his English Quidditch robes – he had just been made captain of the national team. Like the one of James and his father, this photograph was also well worn, as if his father was fond of looking at it.
Looking curiously through the rest of the pile, James found an old Honeydukes’ wrapper; he had sent it to his father in third year after his first trip to Hogsmeade. He was amazed that his father had kept it for so long. He also found letters that he had written to him, from his first scribbly, well-spaced words of his days at Hogwarts to his briefer, more organised reports of exams, and birthday cards that he had made and drawn himself. There was even a request for “Ani-Magic: An Advanced Study of the Transformation of Animagi” by Wilbur Arru, from James and Sirius.
His father had assumed that they were doing advanced study for their Transfiguration classes and had complied; the book had arrived the following morning. James thought with regret that his father had never known what they had managed to do, and how they had broken several Ministerial laws into tiny pieces by doing it.
As he shifted through the rest of the pile his heart grew heavier. There were mounds of detention notations, and stern letters from McGonagall about James’ behaviour. His father had never spoken to him about the way he acted at school, but every September first, when he and Sirius raced onto the train, he would hear his father call after them sternly, “Behave!” Now James heard these words echo through his mind, and felt rather ashamed that he had never heeded this word. He found his O.W.L. report card, which he had forgotten about. His father had been proud of James’ results, but never boasted to his colleagues, unlike some fathers.
Unwilling to delve further into the pieces of parchment and photographs, he made to put them back in the drawer. But the drawer was as open as far as it could go, and the sudden weight of the pile made it fall to the floor with a loud clatter.
Jumping at the sound, James kneeled down to pick it up. As he did so, he glanced at the cavity in the desk where the hole had been. At the very back there were several folds of parchment, just visible in the dark space. James grabbed them and put them on the floor beside him, surprised that his father would hide them like that.
Hastily, he shoved the drawer back where it belonged; making sure it was shut tight. He picked up the folds of parchment, and one of the photographs he had looked at earlier. He stood up, his heart beating fast.
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