Mama this surely is a dream

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Television boxes are strange things. Even for wizards, there's just something about them that wields a certain power. They're only happy when they're used, providing a stream of muffled laugh tracks, flashing lights and comfortable background distractions. But when they're unhappy, dead-screened and neglected, they can cast something almost oppressive around the room, making it seem emptier, quieter and distinctly uncomfortable - much more so than if it hadn't been there at all. They're particularly temperamental children; they demand interaction, input, ears and eyes.

Sure enough, like a failed father, Barty had never gotten the thing to work. As much as he loved it, cherished it, bragged about it, the tiny little muggle television, left behind by previous inhabitants, had never lit up as intended. Oh, he'd enchanted it innumerable times - but without the aid of wires the reception had never lasted for very long and usually picked up the worst sort of channels.

He sits in front of it now in cross-legged reverence, as if bowing before some fallen mentor. It lays where he pushed it, its screen-side flat to the floor, glass shards spewed up around it like fresh sick.

Clutching the cable box to his chest, Barty frowns.*

Comments

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*By now Kreacher has become quite the expert at acquiring newspapers. When Regulus' collage had first begun, with just a few careful clips and awkwardly rebellious sticking charms, he had asked Regulus if he would be continuing. From then on, a selection of papers was always available for Regulus to sift though, to slice windows from with scissor blades that could lop off any unaware fingers. He really isn't certain how Kreacher always manages to find headlines from publications he by all accounts should never have heard of, but the date on Rita Skeeter's article is still fresh when Kreacher passes it to him with a wrinkled frown.

He's outside Barty's door in moments.*


Barty? Are you - home?

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Barty doesn't reply, only shifts slightly to avoid the serrated point of a glass shard from sticking his thigh. His door, however, is as unlocked as it always is, ready to admit Regulus inside.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Regulus' polite pause seems unnecessary for the situation, but eventually the knob turns and Regulus steps inside. The fallen body of the tv delays his thoughts.*

...

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Barty doesn't turn to look, or even note Regulus' presence. He merely and moodily stares ahead, even in his current state of mind a creature of habit - refusing to relinquish to simple social expectation or to show emotional weakness. Instead, he only maintains the absolutely most theatrical and dramatic reaction, which in this case is none at all.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*He's still holding the Quibbler but quickly crouches down to leave it on the rug by the door, cover down. On his way back to standing he picks up a piece of glass but winds up standing there, uselessly holding just one piece of the dozens around Barty.*

You're being dangerous.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Still Barty doesn't turn, speaking more to the broken television than his lifelong friend.*

And YOU smell like you know. I didn't want that.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

Kreacher found it. I don't...

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Barty makes a sound that's somewhere between 'dying cat' and 'unoiled door'. Regulus knows and even house-elves are reading and telling. This is clearly it. Barty watches his life careen to an unfortunate and sticky end in front of him. An end that looks a lot like the television.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

But he's quite good at it, I'm sure no one's read it, for goodness' sake what's a quibbler.



I thought perhaps you would be at home, not here.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Barty's reply is as vague and unfathomable as always.*

I'm not allowed.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

But your mother is here.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*This, finally, causes Barty to whip around, the wires of the cable box dragging errant glass shards with them, in time with his movement.*

She is?

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*He's quite accustomed to Barty's rapid changes of interest and intensity, but Regulus looks rather floored and uncomfortable on the topic of Bernadette.*

Well - she's herethere. So you ought to see her, really, shouldn't you?

If she isn't feeling well.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

*Barty had been expecting, hoping, that, in some mysterious turn of events, his mother had come to visit his flat, on her feet and out of the house. When it becomes progressively more obvious that this isn't the case, when the meaning of Reg's words become solid and visible, Barty simply sucks in his lips as though he's eaten a bit of lemon.*

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

I'm sure she would like to see you, I mean after this. I like to see you.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

I think the TV is broken.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

I do too.

*Using his shoe as a broom, Regulus clears a pathway step by step over toward Barty. He doesn't know why, but Barty seems strangely sharp today, his features and character and imperfections so much more in focus. Perhaps it's simply because, for once, he is still. But more likely, it is just the product of awareness that Barty always wanted to deny from him.*

We can fix the glass...

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

You can't really, though. You can only throw it away. The rest of its useless.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

I've seen it work, you made it go.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

No I didn't. It wasn't REAL - that was just a trick. I must always be tricking you, you just never notice.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

You can't trick pictures, they were there.

Perhaps it was a bad one, that's why it was left behind. You could get a proper one, if you really like. I've always thought it was... peculiar but Gringotts does exchange for muggle currencies as well as proper ones.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

No. All televisions will rue my name now. Murderer, they'll call me. My name passed down through generations and reviled.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

That's rather surly for a box. It's probably best not to have one.

[mad-actually.livejournal.com]

Maybe.




You don't believe any of it, of course.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

You mean what they wrote about your father? And you.