The Image
When Tom arrived at the classroom the next evening Scho was already there. He was hunched over at the table, poring over textbooks and stacks of papers. There were bags under his eyes when he glanced up at Tom.
“Evening,” he said. “Sleep well?” His voice was only slightly sarcastic.
“Actually, yeah,” Tom said. For the first time since the Defense class, the nightmare had not come. He had fallen into a dreamless sleep upon returning to his bed.
Scho blinked, looking surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Erm – good. At least one of us did.”
Tom wasn’t sure he’d been meant to hear that, so he remained quiet.
Things felt odd between the two of them, and not just because of the increasingly awkward silence in the classroom. Tom wasn’t sure how to feel about the other boy – he didn’t think he particularly liked Scho, but it was hard to dislike someone who had given you chocolate and let you hold their cat and also kind of saved you from your own stupidity, even if they had been a total prick about it.
“Thanks – again,” he said lamely. “I – you didn’t have to. You know.”
Scho gave him a flat look, like he could sense what Tom was thinking.
“I’m well aware,” he said. “Try to be a bit less idiotic in the future.”
Tom blinked.
“Right,” he said eventually. “Um. Well – you said you got some notes on it? The boggart?”
Scho nodded and began to look through the stack of papers. “Not much,” he said. “Just that it looked a bit like – like the beds at St. Mungo’s. With the – tubes and such.”
“Like a – a hospital bed?” There was something about that at the edge of Tom’s mind. If he could just remember it – but it was like trying to hold water in cupped hands, and slipped away.
Scho nodded again. “I also,” he said, uncertainty coloring his voice, “I also heard back from my – family about some thought spells. That might help to visualize it more – for both of us.”
Tom blanched. “What – on ourselves? Isn’t that a bit risky?”
Mind-related spells were questionable at the best of times; even a simple Memory Charm could have dire consequences if it was botched.
“Not like that,” Scho said quickly. “More like – just to capture the, the surface image of something you remember. It’s like you’re – like you’re scraping the very top layer off.”
Tom stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Right,” said Scho. “So it’s like – every time you recall something, you’re actually recreating that memory, right?”
Tom blinked. “Right. Sure.”
Scho rolled his eyes. “So what we need,” he said pointedly, “is just to recreate that memory in a more permanent way – like on parchment. So the image of the memory will go from your head to the paper.”
“I – okay,” Tom said more slowly. “Um – how do we do that?”
“There’s two ways I know of,” Scho said. “Depends on if you want the picture to be moving or not.”
Tom thought of the way the white thing had wriggled on the bed, and grimaced.
“I think,” he said, “I think, uh, a Muggle picture would be better. Not moving.”
Scho nodded. “In that case,” he said, “the spell for a Muggle picture is, uh, Mentis oculo imago. You picture whatever it is in your head, focusing as hard as you can. Then say it, tap your head with your wand, and tap the paper.”
Tom felt a little dizzy from the onslaught of information. “I’ve never heard of that spell,” he finally said.
“That’s because it’s not in any spellbooks,” Scho said briskly. His nose scrunched up like he was about to sneeze. “My – friend wrote it.”
Tom stared at him. “Your friend wrote a spell?”
“Yes,” Scho said, his eyes narrowed. Tom could almost see the walls going up. “She’s brilliant.”
“Obviously she is,” Tom said quickly, “if she’s bloody writing spells. Um. Is there a version for, uh, to make the pictures move?”
Scho nodded, looking slightly pacified. “Same movement,” he said, “but different words. Meministe imago. And you’ve got to make the movement while you’re saying it.”
“She write that one too?”
“No,” Scho said. “That – that was me. But I was just expanding on her idea.”
Tom goggled at him. “You two are writing spells? Bloody hell.” Maybe he ought to ask Scho for more help with Defense after all.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Scho said sharply. Color had risen in his cheeks. “Let’s just – let me show you how it goes.”
He took out a sheet of parchment and laid it in front of him.
“Now,” he said, half to himself, rummaging around in his pockets, “I know I brought them – ah. Here we are.”
And from the depths of his robes he pulled out – of all things – a ballpoint pen. Tom stared at it for a moment.
“I – I thought we were only allowed quills,” he said. Scho shrugged.
“For papers and exams, sure,” he said. “But pens work better with the spell – don’t have to dip them.” He clicked the pen and made a scribble on the edge of the parchment, then nodded with a satisfied look and placed the pen on the parchment.
“Here,” he said. “Like this.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as if he were concentrating very hard.
“Mentis oculo imago,” he said, enunciating carefully and tapping his temple with the end of his wand. Then he opened his eyes, touched the tip of the wand to the parchment, and stared.
The ballpoint pen twitched where it lay, then jumped up and began to scribble wildly on the parchment. Scho stared at it intently as an image began to form. The pen’s movements became gradually slower, until finally it settled back down where it had been.
“Thanks very much,” Scho said softly, touching the pen with his pinky. “Alright – have a look.”
He slid the parchment over to Tom. On it was a photorealistic drawing of a girl’s face, her eyebrows scrunched down and her mouth pursed as if she were deep in thought. The edges of the drawing were blurry and uncertain, but the rest was crisp and clear like it was a black-and-white Muggle photograph.
“Who’s that?” Tom asked, looking at the drawing. The girl looked vaguely familiar, like he’d seen her before.
Scho’s face scrunched up again. “My –” he coughed. “My – friend.”
His voice was soft, and Tom had the feeling he’d been allowed to see something very private – though why, he was not sure. Then it hit him: she was the dead girl that had appeared when the boggart had landed in front of Scho.
“She – she looks like you,” he said, because it was the only thing he could think to say, and because it was true – he could see the same narrow features, the same light eyes and hair, the same crease in their forehead when they were thinking hard about something. When he really looked, for that matter, the resemblance was very strong. Almost like they were –
Scho coughed. “She’s much nicer-looking than me,” he said. “But thanks.”
Looking at him, Tom frowned. But then Scho was speaking again, more briskly.
“So here’s another sheet of parchment,” he said, sliding it over to Tom, “and here’s another pen. Do you want the words again or have you got it?”
“Mentis oculo imago, right? And, uh – why do we need another pen?”
“Because the first one needs a rest,” Scho said, like it was obvious. “It’ll explode if you use it too often in a row. And yes, you’ve got the words. Make sure you focus very hard on the image in your mind.”
“Alright. Got it.”
Tom closed his eyes and the image of the boggart immediately appeared. He forced himself to focus on it as he spoke the words and moved his wand, first to his temple and then to the blank parchment.
The pen began to scribble frantically across the parchment as Tom stared at it. He could feel the fear creeping up on him again as the indistinct lines and scratches gradually reconciled themselves into that goddamn thing, somehow looking at him from the paper even without any eyes. But he gritted his teeth and kept his eyes on the paper, until at last the pen’s scribbling slowed and came to a stop.
“Alright,” Schofield said. “Let’s have a look.”
Tom sat back and rubbed at his face, mentally preparing himself. Then he took his hands from his face and made himself look at the parchment.
He blinked.
Somehow it was different, looking at the thing on a piece of parchment versus in real life. The effect was still there – the fear was still there – but it was muted, an echo of itself.
Schofield leaned over and peered at it, grimacing. His eyebrows were furrowed in the exact same way as the girl in the picture.
“Bloody uncanny, that is,” he said. He frowned harder and pointed at the white strips covering the misshapen thing.
“Could those be – bandages, perhaps? Like an effed-up mummy?”
Tom tilted his head to see it better. “I – maybe,” he said uncertainly. “But I don’t remember ever being scared of mummies.”
Scho nodded. “So it looks like a hospital bed,” he said, scribbling something down, “and there’s some sort of bandages or wrappings on the thing. Vaguely person-shaped.”
Tom nodded. “These weird strings or tubes, as well,” he said, pointing to them. “So maybe it’s something to do with –“
He cut himself off and blinked, staring at the image again. Somehow it had changed while he looked at it, like one of those Muggle optical illusion pictures; stare at it long enough or in the right way, and it just shifts and you can see what was hidden. Tom had a sudden, horrible idea of what the image was.
“Blake?” Scho sounded worried. “What’s the matter?”
Tom didn’t answer at first, too busy looking at the image. The odd shape, the bandages, the bed, the tubes, the beeping machines – Christ, it was bloody obvious when he just looked at it. He was a fucking idiot.
“I think,” he said, “I think I know what it is. What it might be.”
Scho looked at him warily.
“And?”
“I just – I didn’t think they could do that,” Tom said faintly. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the picture. “I thought – I thought it was Dementors who, like, who saw your worst memories, made you relive them. I didn’t think boggarts could.”
He could feel Scho looking at him.
“Perhaps your worst fear is – something that happened in the past,” the other boy said, his voice infuriatingly gentle. It made Tom want to snap at him.
“I – yeah,” he said, finally managing to look away from the image – from the memory. “It – I guess it is.”
Scho hummed. “You don’t have to tell me what it is,” he said in a low voice. “But – I suppose it’s not something you can make funny, is it?”
Tom shook his head, his eyes burning. Nothing about it could ever be funny; the very thought was obscene.
“Right.” He heard Scho clear his throat. “In that case, as mentioned, happy thoughts or memories can also work – preferably related in some way to what you fear.”
Tom nodded and sniffed. “Like – casting a Patronus,” he said. “Sort of.”
“Sort of,” Scho acknowledged. “But if the happy memory is connected to what scares you, that does better to replace the image of the boggart. Does that make sense?”
Tom nodded, then paused and shook his head. “Sorry, um – isn’t the point that I fear the thing?”
Surprisingly, Scho didn’t scoff or roll his eyes; instead he looked down at the table.
“I – explained it badly,” he said. “Um. Right, here’s an example: I – I told you my fear was seeing my – my family dead. So to combat it, I think of happy memories – happy things – related to them.”
Tom nodded. “Like you did with the – the girl,” he said. “Right?”
Scho looked at him for a long moment, his face unreadable.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Like with that.”
Tom wanted very badly to ask who she was – a cousin? A sister? But then why hadn’t he heard of any other Schofields at Hogwarts? – but Scho’s face had shuttered shut like a window on a cold day. So he bit his tongue and asked, in a voice that came out much smaller than he’d intended, “What if – what if I can’t really think of any?”
He had been so young when it happened, after all – most of the memories he had from before were hazy and indistinct. And Mum and Joe were reluctant to talk about it at the best of times.
For some reason, Scho’s eyes widened at that.
“I – I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize – um. Shit. It – it doesn’t need to be about the – the thing itself. The – person. If – you could – you could always ask someone who would know? But it doesn’t have to be related. If that’s – not possible. Don’t – don’t try to, um, sugarcoat things. It doesn’t help.”
Tom blinked. He had the feeling he’d missed something, and the way Scho was looking at him made him feel – cut open, somehow. Like he was something to be handled delicately. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable feeling.
“I,” he said, trying to sound casual, “I suppose I could ask my mum about it. Happy – memories, or something.”
Scho nodded, still looking at him cautiously.
“That’s up to you, of course,” he said. “Did – would you want to meet again tomorrow, or --?”
“I’ll let you know,” Tom said quickly. “Um – once I hear back from her, maybe we could. Not much point before that, is there?”
Scho blinked, and for just an instant Tom could have sworn there was something like disappointment in the other boy’s eyes – but it passed as soon as it had come.
“Alright,” Scho said. “You can probably find me in the library, when you’ve heard.”
He stood up from the table and gathered his things into the rucksack, heaving it over his shoulder. Then he paused and rocked on his heels, looking at a point just next to Tom’s head.
“You still have to help me with Herbology, of course,” he said, still not looking quite at Tom. “Don’t try to skive off or anything.”
“I won’t,” Tom said, a bit affronted. “See you later, then.”
Scho nodded. “See you.” Then he quickly walked out of the classroom.
Tom watched him go with a frown, but he didn’t dwell on Scho’s sudden moodiness for long. He had a letter to write.
---
“Go on, Myrtle,” said Tom, giving the owl a treat. “Take this to Mum. Maureen Blake.”
Myrtle nipped at his finger affectionately and grasped the letter in her talons, then took off, her wings beating languidly as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Tom watched her go and hoped the letter wouldn’t be too much of a shock.
After all, it had been years since he’d asked about his dad.