Closed Pages from the Past

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty could never entirely relax when he was expecting someone to drop by. He'd tried doing a bit of gardening, reading a book, and disassembling an old mechanism; but in the end, the only thing that cured his restlessness was cleaning. The house desperately needed it, anyway. In the two months since Arvo had died, the most Monty had done was wash dishes and fold laundry. The dust on his coffee table was thick enough to write his name in. He could ignore it, at least until his allergies kicked in, but his visitor was likely to be unimpressed. Besides, they would need somewhere clean to spread out the half-dozen books and scrolls Monty had sent off for restoration last Tuesday. And so he cleaned, tidied, and organised, moving from room to room with more energy than he'd had in some weeks. Embarrassment was a dependable motivator.

But it wasn't just a fear of judgement that energised him. He'd been feeling a little lighter ever since Mary Lou had dropped by. Grief still sat with him, biding its time, waiting for some happy memory to pounce on, but he was no longer afraid of it. The pain was a mark of how much he had loved his dear old friend, and its intensity was temporary, while his fond memories were permanent. He would have to find a way to thank her. In these sorts of circumstances, words seemed so very inadequate.

When the living room was clean, he moved on to the hall, and then the kitchen. He had hoped to tidy his workshop, too, but no sooner had he dried his hands than the doorbell rang. On his way to answer it, he glanced at the clock. One minute to two. Perfect timing.

The bookshop had sent the parchment restorer himself. Monty invited him straight through to the living room, apologising for the mess. No matter how much he tidied, a certain baseline of clutter was to be expected. This was Monty's house, after all. But the clutter was happily dust-free, and the coffee table did indeed make a convenient place to land the books. "Did you have any trouble with Crowther's Charms?" he asked, fetching his glasses. "I was a bit worried it might be beyond repair." There was something... familiar about about the man, but Monty wasn't certain why. The phrase 'small world' was especially applicable to the wizarding world; when you reached a certain age, you almost expected to run into old wizard acquaintances. It usually wasn't worth thinking too hard about.

 

[Alistair MacKenzie]

Alistair wasn't much of a traveller these days, at his age he had seen more of the world than most people had. Much of his research had been done in the tiny village towns in places all over Europe, and of course there was the time he'd spent as a Professor of Transfiguration in his early thirties at Hogwarts Scotland - but that was mostly irrelevant in the face of the work he has done since then. Still, he couldn't say he didn't like the travel and he had enjoyed being able to see all the different places people lived, the difference in some of the cultures, even between Europe and the Americas. That had been something of a culture shock for him in the first instance, but after some time it had become far more interesting to him being able to explore these places on his own, and then in some cases in his first years exploring them with his wife, Laura. The trips to the places he'd visited in Africa had been with his husband - Glenn, but he'd remained friends with Laura. He was still friends with Glenn too, and from what he'd last heard the man was on his second or third grandchild.

So it wasn't too much of a hassle for Alistair to head to New Zealand. It was not his primary home, but he'd been in the area for several months doing some work for the branch of Flourish and Blotts here in Obsidian Harbour. The only reason he'd been given the manuscripts he was now set to return was because they were of particular interest to him. The ones on engineering were not so important but the ones about herbal biology (which he was particularly fascinated with since he had been doing some work recently with the mixed breeding of certain potions ingredients) made him curious as to what other work this MP fellow might be working on.

It was not just the material that was interesting though, it was the charm work imbedded in them, the way that they were so carefully crafted, he'd had to rip through layers of the charm to get to the underlying issue and to be honest, he had been rather certain it would have all been for naught. Miraculously though, after the days he'd spent working on them, he'd managed to bring them back to their not quite former state. The texts were now completely legible and the even better point was that he was even able to recover several of the previously hidden pages that he been cursed into invisibility. Though he was still not sure if it had been the potions at work or the charms for it.

"Aye, a few, but I’ve worked wi’ similar before. I’ll admit, though, these were some o’ the most eclectic collections I’ve handled in o’er a decade. Congratulations, ye’re a truly fascinatin’ man!" He said, having followed the man quickly into the - he assumed living room - it was certainly lived in, not that he could judge a man on having a home that worked well for him. Alistair was rather a bit more conservative with his belongings but that really only happened out of his need to so frequently live out of a suitcase. The months he had spent in New Zealand for instance had been spent in several inns - it was just easier that way for him. "I can assure ye, Sir, naething is beyond ma capabilities. I’ve been at this for decades," and he was indeed very proud of his work. "If ye find somethin' amiss, please dae let me know. I can probably fix it right here." he couldn't very well have someone giving him a bad review.

@Monty Pendleton ​

 

[Monty Pendleton]

The voice, too - the voice was familiar. Not just because it was Scottish, and reminded Monty of his youth, but because of its rhythm and cadence. He was sure he’d heard it before. Yet there was nothing obviously familiar about the man’s face. Monty held his eye a moment longer than he normally might have, searching for a flash of recognition, a memory, a distinguishing feature - but there was nothing. So he dismissed it.

Monty perched on the edge of the sofa, opening one of the heavy books to its title page. “Ah! You even removed the coffee stain,” he said. “That one was me, I admit. Goodness - this is superb. Really, I thought this one was completely irreparable. Chapter two point five - I didn’t even know there was a chapter two point five. Well, that makes sense, yes. Of course. I should have known.”

He looked up, mildly pink. It certainly was an eclectic collection - and only a small part of the larger one he kept in England. He’d amassed a frightening number of old books and academic journals over the years, some authored by wizards, others by muggles, most of them on the subjects of herbology, potions, charms, and engineering. He’d also had a large number of them restored, but none to the exceptional quality he beheld now. The man’s self-confidence was utterly warranted. “Thank you - if you don’t mind, I’ll have a quick look through them now. Although I’m sure I’ll have nothing to complain about. This one looks cleaner than it did the day it was written.” Of course, this was an exaggeration - and thank goodness. The marks of the books’ age were well-preserved, as they ought to be. He’d once received back a two-hundred-year-old tome without any wear on it whatsoever. That was something to complain about.

“Sorry - would you like to sit down?” Monty gestured to an armchair. If he was going to examine the books more closely, the restorer ought to make himself comfortable. “Is this really an unusual collection? I always imagined you must see some esoteric things. Physics and herbology must be mundane in the scheme of things, surely?”

 

[Alistair MacKenzie]

"Aye, I actually considered leavin' the coffee stain in. I wasnae entirely sure it wisn't original, but after a couple o' tests, I determined it was likely user error. Ye've clearly had that one a long time, since it was difficult tae pinpoint the age o' the stain, only that the stain was younger than the rest o' the manuscript." he teased, baring his teeth in a wide grin. Now, for the most part, Alistair is a professional and doesn't allow himself to bring things down to a non professional level, however, it felt as though it might have been warranted in this case specifically and precisely because the man had opened the way forward and Alistair was loathe to leave a door open.

He felt like there was something strangely familiar and oddly satisfying about their sudden teasing of each other, although he wasn't entirely certain yet that it was reciprocal teasing or even intended teasing at that, but he was a man who enjoyed his life and at his age he needed to take his entertainments and pleasures as they came up. Some people, not the people he liked of course, but some people liked to believe that there was nothing at all exciting about his work, he liked to point out that he was one of only three people in the entire world today who had physically handled the original magna carta. Illegally, of course, but he didn't add that bit in. He might have been the kind of man who did things he strictly shouldn't have been doing in the name of science, but he as also a smart man when he did it. No evidence was to be left behind.

He'd learned that lesson the day he'd snuck into the potions cabinet in his fifth year in an attempt to alter his bad grades.

"If ye'll skip tae the middle o' the twelfth chapter, ye'll see the lucky... or maybe unlucky, chapter thirteen has also been recovered. I think ye'll find the section on certain artefacts tae be o' particular interest, given yer varied tastes." he suggested, taking the moment to glance about the place a bit. He had to admit he could admire a man who actually properly lived in his home. Alistair hadn't had the time to make a space like this, one that felt simultaneously welcoming and suffocating in equal measure. Not suffocating as though it made him feel unwelcome, but suffocating as though it's mere existence made his feel like there was nothing he could not know about the man if he wanted to. It was as though he lived so entirely in his space it was difficult not to bring others into the web. Honestly, Alistair wasn't aware people still lived in this way - it made him happy to think about actually.

Alistair didn't spare too much time thinking over the offer of a seat when it was offered, bunching and hunching himself over desks and tables all day as he did didn't really lend itself to great posture and so standing could, on occasion, become a little more of a chore than he would have liked and given he had come almost directly from finishing up the last of this collection, he was grateful for the respite. "I dinnae believe either of us truly think ye consider yer collection tae be mundane, Mr..." he realised in that moment he actually hadn't caught the gentleman's name, and was about to ask for it when his eyes landed instead on something he'd not noticed as he'd walked in. Montgomery Pendleton - well, how about that?

"Mr. Pendleton - but then, whit could be mair mundane than a man wha cheated intae a win in his sixth year duellin' tournament?" Ha! That would get him.​

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty laughed, relieved the man understood his sense of humour. "Mm - well, let's just say it was on the indeterminable side of forty years ago," he said. "I was very, very young, obviously." In his head, Monty was still in his forties. It was just that his body disagreed with him. Merlin, he was beginning to sound like Arvo, knocking a handful of years off his age - soon enough it would be a couple of decades, and then he'd start complaining about his 'dodgy hip' (Monty still didn't believe it wasn't a clever excuse to get out of climbing stairs). The thought both tickled and consoled him. His friend would never really be gone as long as Monty felt his influence, and he was sure he always would, like a comforting hand, or perhaps a very cheeky devil on his shoulder.

With almost reverent care - he had learned his lesson with the coffee stain - Monty turned to chapter thirteen. Another he hadn't realised was missing. He'd known several authors to skip it on account of superstition, and now he wondered whether any of those books would also benefit from the restorer's penetrating eye. "I wonder who removed it," Monty mused. "Not the original author, surely? I don't suppose you can tell." The temptation was to sit and digest the whole chapter right there, but he was conscious of keeping the man too long, so he turned to chapter twenty. Time (and a number of careless previous owners) had not treated these final pages well, but Monty was once again quite impressed. It was was unlikely the restoration had revealed anything of great significance, but he felt a thrill at the possibility all the same. Who knew how long it had been since anyone had laid eyes on this text?

Monty was about to offer his name when the man seemed to notice something across the room - a certificate, perhaps - and beat him to the punch. It took him several seconds to process the next statement, in which his face formed a variety of expressions before settling on delight. "I knew I knew you!" he said. "Alistair, yes?" How could Monty forget? Well, the man had changed. Time had not been unkind to him, per se, but it had certainly left him a business card. The same, of course, could be said for Monty. He'd stopped counting his new wrinkles; they developed faster than he could keep up. And that was nothing compared to the chaos gravity had wreaked all over him. Neither of them were young any more, and perhaps this was why the recognition had been slow on both sides, but now that Monty had taken off his glasses and looked Alistair in the eye, there was no mistaking him for the boy who'd slept adjacent to him in the Ravenclaw dormitory.

Fragments of memory assembled themselves in his mind. A duelling platform. A crackle of magic. An expectant silence, and eyes all over him. He'd never stood a chance against Alistair MacKenzie. That was what he'd believed, anyway, and the pressure had begun to suffocate him. He should have lost - but he didn't, because Alistair gave him a moment to breathe, and that moment gave him the edge. "No, no, I remember! I didn't cheat - but I did try to convince the proctor I had. Did I ever tell you? No - I was so terribly shy, I don't suppose I did." Monty laughed, his recollection expanding. "I implored her to disqualify me. I felt so guilty; I was absolutely distraught. But when she asked me to tell her how I'd cheated, I couldn't come up with an answer. I'm so sorry, Alistair. You deserved that victory. Goodness, how long ago was that? Forty, forty-five years? It feels like yesterday."