magic

La Porte de La Magie

Painting 'La porte' by Henri Duhem used for a microfiction writing prompt
La Porte by Henri Duhem, 1937

I tip toed through the field, not knowing if there were tiny creatures underfoot, like chickens, rabbits, or even my cat. Maybe the Jains have a point. The higher vantage made me appreciate that life is still life no matter how small or seemingly invisible. I had the tractor in hand. It looked just as a toy vehicle should in my palm; even the weight seemed to feel about right. It didn’t take many paces to get to the gate at the edge of the forest that had given away just how out of wack my world was. That same gate that my grandmother and I had unlatched and walked through countless times when I was barely as tall as the highest post- we’d look for fairies and magic dragons. The posts now looked like matchsticks lined up in those promotional books of matches you don’t see much of nowadays. Of course I couldn’t fit through the gate. I paused right there, peering down at the forest and wishing to reverse the magic my grandma had made me believe.

179* words inspired by Jane Dougherty’s Microfiction Challenge #5. It is also a part 2 to this story, although I hope it can stand on its own.

*Shaved off 4 words with an edit following Jane’s comment about repeated reference to ‘hand’.

The Trade

Image of worker's legs and work boots suspended off ground with office filing cabinet background- prompt for flash fiction
Photo by Rosan Harmens

On the odd occasion, Harry got called out to re-wire a house that was a sitting liability or had the chance to dabble in the circuitry at the local cement works; otherwise, most jobs were no more complex than doing a tag and test in offices and sending out invoices, leaving him bored and desperate for a challenge. Worse still, the waiting made it all the more tedious- waiting for the right person to show him in, waiting for sign-off for the pre-start safety checks, waiting for security passes to go from one part of a building to the next, the endless waiting for bureaucratic loops to be closed and hierarchies of boxes ticked. He started making use of the waiting time to refine skills he’d abandoned since leaving Hogwarts to train in the more employable electrical trade, until his use of idle time cost him his job when a client walked in at the inopportune moment his tool belt got stuck on the edge of the drawer, leaving him dangling just above the floor before tumbling with a drawer full of sensitive documents strewn around him, his claims of innocence and levitation falling on deaf ears.

 

Inspired by Sonya’s Three Line Tales, Week Twenty Two. Apologies if I have offended any HP fans- I am not familiar with the story, I have just absorbed enough from the world around me to know the main character’s name, that it is something to do with wizards, and the school he attended. Oh, I also read somewhere that JK Rowling wrote a book using time she had on her work commute- something I find encouraging and inspiring as I am doing the same.

Postscript: I did a check of that JK Rowling ‘fact’ and it seems I was wrong. Her biography on the Harry Potter Bloomsbury website says ‘J.K. Rowling first had the idea for Harry Potter while delayed on a train travelling from Manchester to London King’s Cross…’ Ha! I too have been delayed on trains plenty of times, and incidentally I have done the Manchester to London King’s Cross a few times.