Chapter 4 - Punk and Kitty
I am doomed! I know that I've said it again and again, but the extinction of my existence continues to become ever more possible. A picture emerges before my inner eye. In a small, calm cemetery under a willow is a small grave surrounded by a low, weathered fence. Ivy climbs around the base of the white stone, but somewhat further above it one can read in fine lines:
Here lies Lilian Agatha Evans
A fragment of wood made me pass away,
It stuck in my buttock, what can I say?
Yes, one will definitely read that inscription unless something miraculous happens within the next hour. Beside me, James fiddles with something on the doors - the lock.
"What are you doing?"
"Can't you see, Kitty?" He alludes to my underwear.
"No! Otherwise I wouldn't have asked, Punk Potter."
He murmurs something to himself until he can come up with an answer. "I want into the hospital wing!" And the lock clicks, the door swings open, and a place of medical refuge opens to us.
Hastily, we slip inside and close the door. All of the beds are empty; it smells like herbs and disinfectant. In a corner, bandages sit, neatly rolled. Hopefully, there isn't a defensive charm on them so that they might attack us on the smallest inadvertence. I definitely wouldn't be able to handle being tied up with J.H.P. like mummies. What would people think of us?
"Come on..." James drags me through the room to a cabinet. He opens it and rummages around until "AHA!"
"What?" I yell, frightened, and whirl around…well as much as I can.
"Here, I found it!" And he presents to me a small blue bottle.
Harriett's wonderful hair tonic
A drop on the baldhead,
And then to bed.
Your hair will regrow during the night,
And in the morning you won't have sight.
Not suitable for the regeneration of eyebrows & lashes.
I giggle again like a small girl, while Punk Skunk Potter opens the bottle. "Shall I help you?" I offer; it's the least I can do after his terrible loss.
"No, I'll do it myself," he growls and pulls me to a mirror not too far from us.
"Well, okay." I cross my arms and wait. He will see what happens when he's rude to me.
With the greatest meticulousness that I've ever seen, my little punk drips something on his half bald head, and instants later new, brown, shining hair grows. I immediately spy the content expression on his face. The old grin returns. Oh, but what is that? A few small drops blot from the bottle and, you guessed it, meet his brows!!!
"NO," he yells, while his view becomes obscured by his fast-growing eyebrows. Now he looks quite like a Bobtail! First his eyes are covered, then his nose, his mouth, and finally his chin.
"You've always wanted a beard, haven't you?" I inquire informally.
He uses both hands to divide his eyebrow fringe like a curtain and looks angrily at me.
"This is all your fault!"
I think my ability to hear has temporarily gone bad.
"I beg your pardon? It's what?"
"You bumped into me!" he continues to accuse me.
"And my Kneezle whistles!" I hiss. "It was your fault! What can I do when you are a motor muff?"
"I am THE captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team," he says, as if that would explain everything.
"And if you were the emperor of China, that would change nothing about it. You look like Cousin It from the Addams Family!"
James looks at me, perplexed for a change. "Like who?"
"Not important." I ignore his question and search for something in a drawer.
"What are you looking for?" he asks me.
"Can't you see that?"
"No, otherwise I would not ask, Kitty."
"Stop alluding to my pink underwear." And I pull out a pair of scissors.
James raises his hands in surrender. "Eh, I didn't mean it like that."
I look at J.H.P. and then to the scissors in my hand and finally figure out what he's talking about. "Ha-ha, what do you think I am? I'm going to get rid of your hair. Now stand still!" I instruct.
That Punk Potter allows me trim his eyebrows shows how desperate he is, don't you think so, too? And I must say, so that you appreciate my work, that it is rather difficult to shape eyebrows! Oh, but what one wouldn't do to make sure that the witches and wizards around one are well. Exhausted, I put the scissors aside while Punk Skunk Bobtail Eyebrow Potter regards his newly shaped eyebrows.
"Thanks." He grins again. "As good as new."
"Don't mention it," I wheeze and try to figure out what I'm going to do with myself. My buttock hurts and slowly forces me to take a step that makes also my despair obvious.
I could: a) Jump out of my shadow and ask him directly to help me,
b) Act as if everything will be okay, and then, secretly in the quiet in the night, die a painful death and have James carry my corpse around…if he doesn't change his trousers, or c) Outsmart him to offer me his help because then it wouldn't look like I were so depressed/desperate/in misery/devastated or whatever other word occurs to you in addition to the former ones.
"And what do we do now?" I ask hypocritically. "I'm still in pain!"
"We could go to St. Mungos," James suggests.
"So everybody can see us? That would be ridiculous!"
"I don't think so," he says confidently and pats me on the shoulder.
"But I don't want to go to St. Mungos!" I wail. "They have many more important things to do!"
"There's no other way. Everything will be fine!"
"It's only one fragment of wood. Anyone could get that out!" I nearly roar, reaching desperately for his collar and trying to shake some sense into him.
"What do you want to do?" he wants to know, seemingly frightened by the way I am acting.
"Ask me again!"
"What do you want me to ask?"
Are men thick as a brick? Can't he read it off of my forehead? What does he want me to do, sing it to him?
"Look!" I growl for a change.
"What?" he chokes. He completely seems to lose his cool. He's turns pale, his eyes are wide open on shock, and his mouth is open like a drivelling dog. If only his tongue would hang out of the side out of his mouth with saliva running down his chin.
"Lookatitandgetitout!"
"Wha?"
"Look at it and get that damn thing out!"
"Oh, okay. But how?" he inquires.
Damn, I didn't think about that. OH NO! Now I am really doomed... except... well...
"You have to take off your trousers," I determine.
"Never!"
"Do it for me!"
"That is not fair," he howls.
"Why not?!"
"Because! You have to take off your skirt, too."
Great, James has set the conditions. I'm sure he just wants to look at me to get a good shot at my knickers again now that his problems are solved. He recovered wonderfully from his asphyxiation and hair loss. But what can I do?
"Well okay, but if I hear rumours circulating about my underwear, I'll have you emasculated faster than you can say `Gryffindor'!" I threaten.
"I swear," he says seriously and begins to open his trousers.
Oh boy, if someone were to come in right now! I don't want to think about how embarrassing that would be for me. For J.H.P. it wouldn't be so bad; he's accustomed to that. But I? Not so well. I surrender to my fate, and the skirt falls to the floor. He already stands in his Merlin shorts. My laughter is inevitable, and he glares at me.
"I wouldn't be laughing if I were you, Kitty."
This immediately takes the wind out off my sails. What annoys me the most is the fact that I have a small cat on the left side of my knickers. Damn! A man was never supposed to see that piece of clothing! But I will be annoyed later. My momentary concern is that James Potter is kneeling behind me and looking at my right buttock. Please, holy Agrippa, don't let anyone come in just now!
I notice James's hand.
"Don't dare you feel me up!" I warn him.
"Simply staring at it won't help to get rid of it," he hums and rummages in a drawer.
"What are you looking for?" I turn a round.
"Tweezers."
Well, now I am calmed down. Wait a moment. TWEEZERS?
"That wont cause me more pain, will it?!"
"Oh, miserable agonies you will suffer," laughs Potter.
"Then how is it different from the rest of my day?"
"Dunno," he shrugs his shoulders and kneels down again.
Again his hand... I know he's doing it intentionally. I just know it. It's so crystal clear that he would use my state of distress. Ouch, there was a pinch.
"Tada!" my inadvertent rescuer says. "There is the scallywag!" And he shows me a hardly recognizable fragment.
"Sure that's it?" I ask quizzically, because I can't imagine that THIS small thing caused me that much pain.
"Positive, Kitty!" And he claps me on my backside.
I shut my mouth before I can say what I had been about to say. I don't want to appear ungrateful and reach for my skirt. But I cannot pick it up. I really don't know who invented these chewing gums, but they stick like... everlasting chewing gum.
"James, our clothes are stuck to the floor."
"Yeah, sure!" he scoffs.
"Well, then try it yourself."
Punk Potter pulls with all his might, but nothing moves an inch.
"Well, what now? It's a little chilly in the castle," I say.
"We need to get to the Gryffindor tower somehow," he tells me with narrowed eyes, as though trying to think of something clever.
"Yeah, I know, but how do we do that?"
A few seconds pass and his expression is still the same, then:
"We must somehow get to the Gryffindor tower."
"Well that's nice, but you already said that. What now?"
"Erm, we must somehow..."
"James, you're not helping!"
"I don't know!"
"Well then admit it."
"I already did."
"Good!"
"Good!"
We stand there in our underwear and glare at each other. But then my eyes see the scissors, and a brainstorm nearly kills me.
"I have an idea," I say and seize our rescuer. Even if it is my favourite skirt, it's for the best that I sacrifice it. A little here and a little there and I will be free.
"What is it with me?" Punk Potter says grumpily.
"Okay, okay, I'm already on it."
I make a few cuts, and a few seconds later I'm wearing my skirt. James buttons his trousers and turns around to see how bad the damage is.
"It's not bad," I assure him, though I can see a Merlin head winking at me. But James doesn't need to know that.
"You've still got something there," James says and does something to my skirt. It's not much, I know. "So, everything's gone now." And he tosses something away.
"Thanks!"
"No problem. You would have done the same for me."
Well, I'm not really convinced right now, but I'm not the one who has a Merlin head peeping through a hole in my trousers.
Heads held high, we slip out of the hospital wing and agree not to speak about the incident. That will remain our embarrassment. We nod at each other and go off in different directions. I have to laugh when I look over my shoulder, because Merlin waves at me again.
However, at the time I didn't realize that James had cut a hole into my skirt so that one could see the small white cat on my pink underwear.
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