Fic post: PUSH part II

[tree_and_leaf]

Part 1 is here

“Miss Smith,” said Professor McGonagall, eyeing her austerely over square-rimmed glasses. Amy gulped: McGonagall looked like a respectable and rather terrifying great-aunt, with her black hair pinned up in a bun, and a white blouse with a silk tartan scarf at her throat. And yet she turned into a cat… It wasn’t so much that this world was full of wickedness, thought Amy, but that none of it made any sense. Full of things that ought to be wrong, and yet didn’t feel that way. Of course it was a trick, it had to be. Not that any of the people she’d met so far actually seemed evil – not even those horrid girls in her dorm, or the Slytherins, or that idiot Pusey. They were just like the kids at her old school, no better or worse. Which meant, therefore, that they all must be deluded. By Satan?

Only she didn’t think she was going to win many arguments with McGonagall. Hermione had been bad enough. And come to that, she found herself boggling at the idea the Devil could get the better of either of them…

McGonagall pulled out a sheaf of parchment, eyed it dubiously, and then looked back up at her. “I have a series of notes here from your subject teachers, Miss Smith, and I find them rather worrying. Your performance, I see, is acceptable in History of Magic, and good in Potions and Herbology. Professor Grayne describes you as a pleasure to teach; Professor Sprout has some concerns about your temper, but is otherwise very positive. However. All the other reports are completely unacceptable. You are, I am informed, refusing to do any practical work involving wands or casting magic, though I gather your written work is of a reasonable quality. Clearly you are not incapable, so I am left to assume that this is deliberate disobedience. What I am not clear about is why, particularly as you are generally described as polite. Well?”

Amy took a deep breath, tried to meet McGonagall’s cold eyes, and failed. Be brave, she thought, and half started as she remembered the Sorting Hat. Magic got into everything and spoiled it, she thought miserably. “I can’t do magic,” she began, and stopped.

“Nonsense,” said McGonagall sharply. “You mean you won’t. Clearly you can do magic; you are not a Muggle, and if you were, you wouldn’t be able to make Potions – you’d just get an unsuccessful chemistry experiment.”

“Potions uses magic?” said Amy, feeling wretched, “But – I didn’t know – I didn’t do anything.”

“Of course you didn’t consciously do anything. You are magic. It comes out of you whether you want it to or not.”

“But I don’t want to be,” burst out Amy. McGonagall looked at her, severely, and then pushed a biscuit tin at her. “Ginger newt?”

“I – um, thanks,” said Amy, bewildered. The biscuit did, indeed, look like a newt, but thankfully it didn’t move. Not like those chocolate frogs, which were the most disgusting things Amy had ever seem.

“Is anyone being unkind to you, Miss Smith? Is someone bullying you? Do you miss your mum and dad?”

“I – no, not really,” Amy stuttered. She did miss her parents, but she was also very angry with them for making her go to Hogwarts. And the other kids weren’t really bullying her, exactly. They just didn’t like her much. There was Fenwick, but she had been badly wrong, there, and in a way that hurt too much to think about. And Pusey, but even though he was an idiot, he wasn’t actually a bully. He had tried to help her with Fenwick, and he had even conjured her matchstick for her when the Transfiguration teacher, Bulstrode, had been going to give her detention and take fifty points off Gryffindor if she didn’t do some magic by the end of the lesson. She’d been angry with Pusey for it, and kind of shocked that Bulstrode hadn’t realised it wasn’t her work, but he’d meant well and he had said that he just didn’t want Gryffindor to lose all those points, which made sense, at least.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I mustn’t do magic. I’m a Christian.”

Professor McGonagall’s eyes narrowed. “So am I,” she said, “so are lots of wizards, as I imagine lots of people have pointed out to you.”

“It’s not right, though,” said Amy. “You can’t make me do something I don’t think’s right. You can expel me, but you can’t make me do magic.”

“Fortunately for you,” said McGonagall, “that is true. Though I might remind you that the previous regime would have no compunction in making you do anything they wanted, and the one reason that you are here and not somewhere considerably nastier is because various people did magic in the service of what’s right.”

“I expect they meant well,” said Amy miserably, “but that doesn’t prove they were right. I just have to do what the Bible says.”

“Amy, the Bible was written in a different place and time; you can’t just assume that it’s talking about what you think it’s talking about.”

“It’s God’s word,” said Amy, flatly. “How can you be a Christian if you don’t follow God’s word?”

“I do try to,” McGonagall’s voice was terse, and she pinched the skin between her eyes, as if she was getting a headache. “Sometimes it’s very, very difficult… But given that neither of us has obtained our magic by striking a deal with the powers of hell, I fail to see the problem with using the gift God gave us.”

Amy stared at her, mute and unhappy. McGonagall appeared to reach a decision. “All right,” she said. “No-one will take points off you or give you detention for not performing magic. However, you will not be able to get decent marks without it, and you will fail your exams at the end of the year and you will be asked to leave the school if you do, which I need hardly point out could have very serious consequences for your future. I sincerely hope that you will have come to your senses before then.”

“Oh. Um. Thank you.”

“And I want you to go and talk to Fr David. And bear in mind that asking him if he is a Christian or not is a really, really stupid question.”

•••

Gloomily, Amy plodded down to the church the following Sunday evening. The noticeboard was odd; on the one hand it looked like a perfectly normal church noticeboard, if not of one she’d have gone to, but the details were weird. S. Dunstan’s, Hogsmeade, Scottish Episcopal Church, Diocese of Iona. Incumbent Rev’d Dr. David Smethwick SCP, M.Thaum. (Witt.), M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.) it read, followed by a list of weekly services, Baptisms, weddings, funerals, confessions by arrangement (please avoid Mondays except in emergency). Below a poster advertised a service of blessing of broomsticks, and the Mothers’ Union were having a speaker come to tell them about sewing spells (with prize for best charmed cauldron), while the Men’s Group were going to hear about Arithmantic Principles of Change-Ringing. One sign appealed for donations for Christian Aid and another for a group of Anglican nuns teaching basic magic to AIDS orphans in Malawi, while a third informed her that a light burned for the church at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Amy stared at it, no longer quite sure which detail she found most bewildering or repellent, then, giving it up as a bad job, she walked into the porch, and put her hand on the latch.

The church was cool and surprisingly light, given that it was illuminated only by daylight streaming in through the south windows in the nave, and by the candles on a chandelier, which a man in a cassock standing perilously on the top step of a stepladder was engaged in snuffing. There was a strange sweet smell, not unpleasant, but heavy and unfamiliar. The man, who was presumably the Rev’d Dr David Smethwick SCP and whatever the rest of it was, was tall and thin, though not quite tall enough for the job he was doing, and his rather untidy hair was snow white.

Amy stood there awkwardly, not wanting to startle him, but he looked down from what he was doing anyway. “Hullo, you must be Amy,” he said, “I’ll just snuff these, and then we can go through to the rectory.”

“That looked awfully dangerous” she burst out, after he had climbed down. “You should get a longer ladder. Or – why don’t you use magic?”

He darted a sidelong look at her, and she saw with a start that though his hair was white, his face was quite young looking. He was a lot younger than her father.

“You’re probably right about the ladder,” he said “though there always seems to be more important things to worry about. But it’s funny you should ask about magic.”

“No-one else seems to have a problem using it,” she said, oddly reluctant, “other than me, I mean.”

He laughed. “Yes, I’ve heard a bit about that; I expect that’s why Professor McGonagall sent you down. I don’t have anything against using magic, though, not normally. But I trained at a Muggle college and was a curate in a Muggle parish, and it just feels more natural to carry on as I learned. The Archdeacon thinks it’s a bit pretentious, but I can’t help feeling that it means more if I do things in the church by hand. Which the Archdeacon says is sentimental, and he’s probably right, but there you go.”

“You trained with Muggles? So there’s no Bible colleges for wizards? So much for all that stuff people keep telling me about the wizarding world being full of Christians.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s just a matter of numbers. It doesn’t make any sense for the wizard province to train its own priests, we haven’t got enough parishes or enough vocations – well, we haven’t got the population – and anyway, the priesthood’s the priesthood, whether you’re a wizard or a Muggle. We do a couple of extra seminars, because sometimes there are different pastoral issues, but other than that, it’s exactly the same. Mind you, there’s other ways to do it. The Church of Scotland works like we do, but the RCs either train within the magical orders or send them to the Wizard College in Rome. And I think some of the free church types go to separate colleges in the States. But I think our way’s better, though I did feel very out of my depths out there at first.”

“You’re not – Muggle-born?”

“Nah, I’m what they used to call pureblood, back in the bad old days. I expect I’ve got some Muggle tucked away somewhere, virtually everybody does, but my family’s wizard as far back as anyone’s ever traced.”

“And what do they think of you being a vicar?”

“I don’t think they were much bothered one way or another… well, except for my irritating uncle Eustace who keeps telling me that with O’s in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes I should have gone into banking and made my fortune, but I somehow suspect that that’s not what you mean. I have good parents who say good parent-like things like ‘we’ll support you whatever you choose.’ I come from a fairly religious family, actually. It’s not like no-one in the Wizarding World goes to church. Wizards aren’t very devout, as a bunch, but then neither are British Muggles. America’s different, of course.”

“But it doesn’t make sense!” said Amy, almost crossly. “The Bible says you shouldn’t let a witch live!’

“Fairly close to where it says that you shouldn’t eat prawns or wear mixed fibres, if I remember correctly” said the vicar, dryly. “And are you seriously suggesting that God wants your classmates dead? Or Professor McGonagall? Or me?”

“Well… no.”

“Glad to hear it. And not just because of my selfish preference for being alive,” he said, with a wry grin.

Amy thought of the story Pusey had told her, but only said, “But I don’t think he wants you to do magic.”

The vicar sighed, and folded the step ladder up. “I’ll put it away, and then we can have some tea. Or would you prefer juice? And I’ve got some real, honest-to-goodness Muggle chocolate digestives. I got fond of them when I was at theological college.”

“That would be lovely,” said Amy, disarmed, “Anything. As long as it’s not pumpkin juice.”

•••

She wasn’t sure what to make of Fr David – she wasn’t even sure she wanted to call him that, because she remembered someone at church saying that was wrong, because only God was our father. Fr David noticed her hesitating, and said “Please, just call me David. To tell you the truth, I don’t much like being called ‘Father,’ but people will do it. You can’t imagine how embarrassing it is coming from someone like Professor McGonagall, when I still half expect her to give me detention for not handing my Transfiguration homework in on time.”

On the other hand, thought Amy, it was a bit weird to call a grown up ‘David.’ And his house was weird. Not just weird in the way that Hogwarts was weird, though there was that as well, thrown into sharp relief by being in an ordinary house, not a castle like Hogwarts. The rectory was lit by lamps, magic lamps that burned as steady as electric light but more warmly, and the kitchen didn’t have a fridge – “Cooling charms on the larder,” David explained as he fetched milk for his tea –, the kettle worked on magic, and she suspected that the same went for the big dark range, but in many ways it was the things that looked perfectly Muggle that threw her. He had a whole lot of icons, and there was a funny uncomfortable looking little wooden desk with no chair, but a platform to kneel on, and a crucifix hanging over it in the corner of his study. His shelves were jammed with books; some of them looked like wizard books, but most of them seemed to be ordinary Muggle ones. She didn’t recognise any of them, other than three battered volumes of The Lord of the Rings, which someone at church had said was heathen (though come to think of it, Terry had said that was stupid, and that Tolkien had been a faithful Christian in his way). It was like the church; partly familiar, and partly alien in a way that didn’t seem to have too much to do with magic, which made things even more disconcerting. Like David himself, who was unselfconsciously wandering about in a cassock, a sort of tight black sash round his waist. Amy couldn’t imagine anyone she knew dressing like that, but the truth was that it didn’t look wizard. Odd and old fashioned, yes, but he might as well have been a Muggle. It didn’t seem right, somehow, that the closest similarities between the two worlds should lie there, in religion. Only it was such a strange kind.

David wasn’t, she suspected, the sort of minister that they approved of at her church. On the other hand, surely someone who had been in prison for his beliefs like that couldn’t possibly be bad?

“So, um,” she began, “Are all wizards who think - who call themselves Christians like you and Pusey?”

“High church, do you mean?” David looked amused. “No. I suppose High Mass and bells and smells aren’t your sort of thing?”

“I’m not even sure what that means,” said Amy, honestly. “I like worship songs. And that sort of thing. Services that are fun and cheerful and help you to praise God. Not all really old hymns and silly clothes and prancing about, and… um, sorry.”

“That’s all a matter of taste, you know – it may be hard to believe, but some of us would rather sing the old hymns. They’re a lot meatier, theologically, and the tunes are better for a congregation to sing together, if you ask me. But there are wizarding services that are more like what you’d like. There’s a church down in Birmingham that does some quite amazing things with charms – sort of like a Power-point presentation, I suppose, but… well, it’s well done, but I always think it’s a bit of a gimmick. Still, I suppose they’d say the same thing about incense.”

Amy looked at him oddly, “Incense? Isn’t that what Hindus use?”

“It’s an old part of Christian worship, you know. You should come to Mass – Communion, it’s the same thing and it doesn’t matter what you call it – one Sunday morning.”

“I don’t think I’d like it much,” said Amy, cautiously, trying to be kind. “But thank you, anyway.”

“Fair enough,” said David. “Although, you know, I don’t suppose you’ve been to church at all since the start of term, and the Bible does say you ought to be faithful in prayer and meeting with other Christians…”

“But… it’s… It’s not that simple. Is it?”

David gave her a small smile. “You tell me, Amy. Isn’t that what this is about? How you make sense of what the Bible says, and how we should live now?”

“You make it sound so complicated,” said Amy, feeling vaguely resentful.

“Isn’t it?”

“It shouldn’t be. The truth ought to be simple.”

“Why?” said David, and then added, at her rebellious look, “I mean, if you’re going to say ‘the truth is that God loves us’, then sure, that’s simple. So’s ‘do as you would be done by.’ But if you want to get more specific… the world’s a big, complex place, and God gave us big, complex brains to make sense of it. Maybe not quite big enough, but then he also gave us revelation and his Spirit. And the traditions of the church, of course, which are how the Spirit has worked in his people.”

“But what if they’re wrong?”

“Then we try to work out what God is actually calling us to do.”

“Do you really think he’s calling us to use magic?”

“Yes,” said David, simply. “Assuming we use it well. Look at the parable of the talents; God wasn’t exactly pleased with the servant who buried the money in the ground because he was scared he’d make a mess of things, was he? God doesn’t give us gifts so that we can ignore them.”

“But is it a gift? It feels more like a temptation to me. I mean, just because it’s part of you doesn’t mean it’s good.”

“No, it doesn’t… I’m afraid the only way you can know that is to ask what using it does. Does it make you love God more or less? Is it good or bad for the people around you?”

“What if you don’t know?”

“Then you pray about it until something happens to show you what God wants, I suppose.”

“Pray until something happens,” said Amy, thoughtfully. “I’ve got a bracelet to remind me of that – look, it says P.U.S.H.” She thrust out her arm, so that David could see. She almost thought that he pulled a face, but surely she had imagined that.

•••

The rest of the term was fairly uneventful. She argued a lot with Pusey and a bit with Vicky; since McGonagall had told the teachers not to dock her points, the other Gryffindors had decided not to care about her not doing magic. She got detention for not trying to ride a broomstick (shame, really, she thought wistfully, it looked like fun), but that wasn’t too bad. Hagrid, the big, wild man took her into the Forbidden Forest to count unicorn foals, and gave her some really awful cakes.

The unicorns were beautiful, the most amazing thing she had ever seen, and there was no way, she thought, that they could be evil. Surely God must love them? After all, they were animals. Animals couldn’t sin.

Pray until something happens… only nothing much did. The castle was decorated for Christmas, great enormous pine trees covered with glimmering fairies, and it actually snowed. It wasn’t fair, thought Amy, that the magical world was so much prettier…. then she thought about the dark stories Pusey had told her about the previous year, and thought of David, with his young face and snow-white hair, and wondered who had really got the better deal. Bits of the castle were scarred from the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters.

The end of term came, and Amy went home. It was a perfectly uneventful Christmas; she ran into Terry in the shopping centre, and was very embarrassed, because she couldn’t think of what to tell him about her term. Somehow she hadn’t thought about what it would be like to come back from Hogwarts and be back; she felt horribly out of place. But she didn’t belong at Hogwarts either; she couldn’t, since she’d promised God she wouldn’t do magic.

What if she’d been wrong? But a promise was a promise.

Just before New Year her parents took her to visit her Gran, who lived in the Yorkshire Dales. It was a terrible drive – it had come on to snow unexpectedly, and Amy’s dad thought they should turn back, and the hillside dropped sharply away from the road on one side. But it seemed stupid to turn back when they were so close, and Gran would be worrying, and the road back would probably be worse, said her mother. And the snow wasn’t really that bad, it was getting brighter – and at that moment, the car slewed in a skid, and Amy heard her parents scream. It was the most frightening thing she’d ever heard.

The car was hanging over the edge; it seemed to be suspended, as if time had stopped, though that couldn’t be. Amy thought, “We’re all going to die” and “Oh Jesus help!”

And then – it was almost as if she heard a voice inside her, a voice that somehow sounded a bit like Professor McGonagall, and a bit like David, and a bit like Hermione Granger, and, strangely, a bit like Terry, and the voice seemed to say, “You can save them. You’ll be safe whatever happens, but you can save them too. But only if you choose.”

Magic, she thought, and then, but it’s wrong, and then, but I haven’t got a wand.
“You can save them,” the voice that wasn’t a voice said without words. “But you must choose – now.”

It’s wrong, she thought, it’s rejecting God – and yet she couldn’t, she just couldn’t let them all die. A sob tore from her throat: and suddenly there was a flash of light, and she knew no more.

•••

She came round in a bed that wasn’t her own; the light was bright and hurt her eyes. A figure bent over her. “There you are, dear, it’s all right. Drink this.”

“Mum?” she whispered, “Dad?”

“They’re all alright, dear. You were the only person who was hurt, and you’re going to be fine soon too; they’ll be able to come and visit you before too long. You’ve been very brave and strong. Now, drink this…”

Obediently, Amy did; so her parents were all right, thank God… except she didn’t have any right to say that now, because she’d saved them by doing magic. She’d rejected God… and she couldn’t, somehow, quite manage to be sorry. Or she was sorry, but she knew she’d do the same again, so it wasn’t really repenting.

I’m probably damned, she thought. But at least the others were OK. Perhaps it wasn’t her that had done it, perhaps it really was a miracle (but she knew deep down that it wasn’t). Oh, it was all far too difficult…

She slept again.

•••

“Hullo Amy, the nurse says you can have visitors that aren’t family, now.” It was David, who was standing in the door, carrying a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates, which Amy thought looked mildly incongruous in combination with a cassock. “May I come in?”

Amy smiled, then blinked unhappily as the misery of the mess she was in rushed back over her. “Yeah – sure.”

“Well, tell me the moment you start to feel too tired, and I’ll go” he said, and put the flowers and the box down on the bedside table. “The nurses say you may have one chocolate with your tea. They’re Cadbury’s, I thought you’d like something Muggle better than Honeydukes when you’re feeling poorly. And I brought you something to read - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I expect you’ve read it umpteen times before, but I know I like rereading good books when I’m ill.”

“Only once, a long time ago. And – well, I didn’t like books with magic. They made me feel scared…”

“Oh? I thought it was compulsory for Evangelicals to like Lewis… Well, give it another go. Maybe it won’t be scary now you know something about magic. And talking of which, I hope you’re prepared to be a heroine when you get back to school. Saving your family with wandless magic isn’t bad for someone who’s only been at Hogwarts for a term, especially when they were doing their level best not to learn. Though I must say, filling in the valley was possibly going a bit far, but it’s all very Biblical and the Ministry has decided it was still reasonable use of magic, and that the Muggles probably won’t notice. Which is typical of those out-of-touch idiots, because it’s been on Radio 4 and in the papers, but I won’t tell the Ministry if you don’t.”

“Filling in the valley?” said Amy in a small voice. “And definitely magic? I was hoping – I thought maybe it was a miracle.”

David snorted, and he suddenly looked, despite his hair, very young. “My dear girl, miracles are very rarely so far over the top. God doesn’t do party tricks. But,” and he looked at her sharply, “Why hoping? You’re not sorry for what you did, are you?”

“I-” He was the first person who had had any idea that she might feel anything other than pleased and proud of her own heroics, and it was too much. She dissolved, silently, into tears. David passed her a handkerchief. After a bit she said “No. No, I’m not. Only I feel I ought to, since I’ve done the one thing I’ve promised God I wouldn’t do, and I’ve broken his word, and… I’m probably going to Hell and I hate what I did – but I’d do it again.”

“Good girl,” said David. “Good girl.” She looked at him in incomprehension, and he continued “Have you read Huck Finn?”

Puzzled, she shook her head.

“I’ll lend you it some time, it’s a good book. Anyway, it’s a story by a guy called Mark Twain, set in the American South – when they still had slaves there, before the Civil War – and it’s about a boy who runs away from home to live on the river. He meets a man he knows is a runaway slave. Now, Huck’s been taught that slavery is God’s will, and he believes that God will be angry with him if he helps him escape. But when he’s put in a situation where he could give Jim – that’s the slave – away, he can’t bring himself to do so, and he says, well, I’ll just have to go to Hell, because I can’t betray him. Now, Twain was an atheist, but I’d say that in that moment, if Huck’d been real, he’d have been close to the heart of God, because although he thought he was rejecting Him, he was doing so because of love, and justice, and because of his conscience. And when you get down to it, God is love – and conscience is the voice of God inside us, though I admit it can be very easy to mishear it.”

“But slavery’s evil.”

“Yes, it is. But the Old Testament doesn’t think so” said David. “Oh, I know, they weren’t talking about exactly the same thing, and the Bible is always concerned about protecting the weak against the strong – but that’s the point. The church came to recognise that slavery is inherently evil, and also that magic isn’t. Magic – our magic – isn’t what the Bible condemns. You can do evil with magic, but that’s wrong because it’s cruel or proud or greedy, not for any other reason… What happened in the car?”

She paused, struggling for words. “We slid off the road – and we seemed to be hanging there – and I prayed – and then I thought I heard something like a voice, and it told me I could save them, if I wanted to. And – I didn’t want to do magic, but I knew I couldn’t let them die. And then I’m not sure what happened. There was a lot of light.”

“Mm. So – you prayed, and you seemed to hear a voice which told you could save them, and then you did… Well, that may not be a miracle in the technical sense, but – why on earth are you still worried about God being angry with you for doing magic?”

“You don’t think God was telling me to do magic?”

“Well, while it’s safe enough to see the hand of God in any event, it’s usually a bit dodgy trying to work out what he’s doing – but in this case I’d say yes, definitely” said David, and the sun streaming in through the windows of the ward caught his white hair, making it gleam. “But you know what I think. You’ve been given a gift in magic – a talent, if you like, in the Biblical sense – but the thing about gifts that God gives is that He expects you to use them, not to say ‘No thanks, I don’t like the colour.’ Use them for others, if nothing else. You used your gift to save your parents, and if anyone tells you that God didn’t want you to do so, they want their heads examined. But I should stop preaching at you, or your temperature will go up and the Healers will use my head as a Christmas decoration, and I don’t think that would help anyone.”

“Well, no,” said Amy, rather lamely. They talked for half an hour or so, mostly about football. As David got up to go, she said “I think… I think I ought to give magic a chance.”

“Good. Will I be seeing you some Sunday come the new term?”

“Yeah, I guess. I still don’t like old-fashioned services, though.”

He laughed. “Fair enough. It’s not one of the fundamentals of the faith.”

After he’d gone, Amy started to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and was somewhat embarrassed to realise that she’d completely missed what it was about the last time she had read it.

Around teatime, the nurse brought in a get-well card from Pusey. It read “Dear Heretic, I hope you get well soon and are OK by next term. History of Magic will be even more boring without you. If you like, I’ll teach you the bat-bogey curse. With best wishes, Sabine Pusey.”

Sabine, thought Amy incredulously, but she didn’t just smile because of that. Maybe next term would be all right after all.

It’s a shame I can’t tell Terry he was right, she thought drowsily, and fell asleep.