TBAY: OoP: STUFFED BEARS, Firewhiskey, and some very bad Apparation.

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 66760



Down at the Royal George, Kirstini was feeling a bit woozy. The wake 
had started off lively enough, but everyone had now drunk so much 
that they were getting maudlin. George himself was still looking 
quite cheerful. He'd made a rather tidy profit out of the night's 
proceedings, enough to buy a particularly splendid looking SILK SHIRT 
from Kirstini. He kept catching his reflection in the Butterbeer pump 
and winking. Kirstini had been rather glad to make the sale. She only 
had a couple left now, and was hoping to flog them before Oriyami 
caught up with her and demanded copyright. Besides, Kirstini was 
violently allergic to SILK. It made her come out in a nasty rash.
	She felt rather drained. It was probably the combination of 
too much Firewhisky and the third communual crying session of the 
night. Space. She needed a little space. She looked round the table. 
Darrin, who had been incongruously spirited into TBAY for the 
occasion, was pounding the table and yelling "He was my boy! He was 
my boy, yunno?", and spilling Firewhisky down his "I love Madame 
Rosmerta" T-Shirt, surrounded by a group of nervously nodding new 
listies with tear-streaked faces.
Kirstini was rather embarrassed to see that the cheap dye she had 
used on the T-shirt was already running. She made a discreet exit to 
the bathroom before Darrin noticed and demanded his money back, and 
she washed all the mascara off her face, neck and arms. Just then, 
she heard a voice
"...Perhaps in the future, we'll see not one, but two 
characters restored to their proper place in the universe: Nick will
stop being a ghost and go through the veil, and Sirius will come 
back! Got another one of those bears?"
"Whosat?" Kirstini slurred, scratching her head. Something caught in 
her nail. "Blurry Extendable Ears," she muttered. It took a while for 
the realisation to dawn, because her brain was whisky-fuzzy.
"At'll be one of the Extendable Ears I put in all the TBAY vessels 
the other day, yeah?" she shouted at her reflection in the bathroom 
mirror.
"Not so LOUD! `M a bit runk." observed her reflection.
"An judging from what they were saying, s'sounds like the SAD DENIAL! 
I could make a sale! I'm sure v'got one of those STUFFED BEARS 
somewhere in here!"
"That's the spirit, dear." said her reflection, sleepily.
With a loud noise which could either have been a crack or a pop, 
Kirstini Disapparated...
...and landed outside the George. On the foot of a rather frightening 
looking woman, who was haranguing someone she vaguely recognised from 
the pub.
"Ouch!" shrieked the woman. "You should *never* Apparate when over 
the limit. Some people! Anyway, so I told her, 'JKR! She *said* he 
was dead!  She cried over him!' Now that's proof if anything."
 "Well maybe not," countered the other woman, not looking a bit 
frightened, "Didn't JKR say that she cried because she knew how it 
would affect Harry? Harry believes Sirius is dead, so he has to 
grieve. JKR likes Harry, so it must've been painful to put a 
character in such a situation. Besides there is that thing with the 
Thestrals, that's quite convincing actually."
Dark!Terry glared at her again, "So you *do* believe."
"Heh, well, for me its more of an intuition thing. I never really got 
attached to Sirius, and the canon is pretty solid against him 
surviving. BUT my gut tells me he isn't dead. Its that rule of soap 
operas 'there's no body, so anything is game.' Even if I was hit over 
the head with a huge GetOverItHe'sDead mallet, I still wouldn't 
accept it on personal merit."
"I don' bleev it," Kirstini slurred. "She didn't say "how it would 
affect Harry." She *said* "And that person was definitely dead." 
Thassit. Finito. He's not coming back. It just wouldn't work 
otherwise. An' I'm going over to the SAD DENIAL to tell them that!"
"Yeah, well, good luck" muttered Dark!Terry sarcastically. "NOTHING 
is going to get through over there. I'm telling you."
"Anyway," said the other woman, who Kirstini thought was perhaps 
called Star, "isn't it a bit cruel? Let them have their denial and 
work through it."
"Thass what I did," said Kirstini, nodding emphatically. "So I can 
*help* them, you see! An maybe make a liddle sale..."
"I'm not so sure that's a good idea!" Star shouted. However, Kirstini 
had already Disapparated. 
CRACK/POP(delete as applicable)! She landed in the middle of a large, 
black-painted warehouse with chains hanging from the ceiling. On a 
stage in front of her, a bushy-haired Pvc-clad dominatrix was 
whipping a small group of teenage boys, while Kneasy looked on 
happily.
"Sorry Kneas, `m a bit drunk. Keep landing in the wrong place." 
Kirstini called, and Disapparated again, without properly taking in 
what she had just seen. Finally, she reached the deck of the SAD 
DENIAL. She could hear the sound of a rather drunken squabble coming 
from inside the cabin.
"...no. It's *my* BEAR. Get your own!"
"Aw, come on. I need a little hug. Look - I'll just hold the leg..."
"Ladies!" Kirstini intoned dramatically as she entered the 
cabin. "You two shouldn't be fighting. You're on the same frigate. 
And it just so happens that I've got another BEAR right here."
"You!" said Terry, coolly. "Oh yes, I've been wanting a word with 
you." She stood up from the sofa, snatching the bear away from Marina 
as she did so. Kirstini blinked. "But didn't I – you. Mm. Sorry about 
your foot."
"My foot? There's nothing wrong with my foot. It's these darned mugs. 
They've started leaking."
"Oh." said Kirstini, looking sheepish. "Well, if you come and see me 
in the morning," She swayed a little. "maybe the afternoon... Anyway. 
I've brought you another BEAR just now."
She reached into one of her coat pockets, pulled out an identical 
STUFFED BEAR, and handed it to Marina.
"How did you get that?" Terry asked, suspiciously.
"It was mine. I clung to it all the way through my second re-reading 
of OoP, but I'm starting to feel that I don't need it anymore. 
Course, it breaks my heart to let it go, even for such a reasonable 
price..."
"Yes. I thought there might be something like that." Terry said.
However, Marina didn't seem to have heard the last exchange. She had 
wrapped her arms tightly round the bear and was whispering 
contentedly into its fur.
"It's all about the Thestrals. They can find any location you ask 
them to go to. And you know what that means, don't you? Not only can 
they find their way beyond the veil, but they can also find the way 
*back*! Sirius is a special case, isn't he? Most people pass behind 
the veil as spirits, leaving their bodies on this side. You can't 
bring back a disembodied spirit. But Sirius went through physically. 
He should be able to come back physically. All he needs is 
transport..."
"Why don't you need the BEAR any more?" asked Terry, 
suspiciously. "Do you mean to tell me that you've changed your mind, 
that Sirius *doesn't* Deserve a Better End And Revival? Because I 
could throw you off my ship for that sort of opinion, you know. We 
might be relatively free of weaponry on the SAD DENIAL, but we 
certainly do have a plank!"
Kirstini blinked again, and stumbled drunkenly backwards. "Look, I'm 
just trying to demonstrate that I've come to feel that Sirius' death 
was rather beautiful, and cemented his importance to the plot. I've 
been trying to tell everyone for...well, for *days* now that the 
whole point of OoP involves a shift away from perceived notions of 
right and wrong as black and white. Harry is gradually moving to 
mature acceptance, viewing the world in shades of grey. That's why 
it's so important that Umbridge isn't a Death Eater, and that 
Wormtail wasn't just another sneaky Slytherin, but a Gryffindor gone 
bad. Sirius himself has the most important line in the whole 
book: "There aren't just good people and Death Eaters". OoP functions 
as a counterpoint to the system of absolutes which structures 
childhood."
"Right," said Terry. "So death itself isn't absolute either?" 
"No, no no!" said Kirstini. "Sirius *is* dead. Definitely. And he 
can't come back. Harry has to use this death to grow up from. I think 
at some point, he's going to be in a position to use an Unforgivable 
on Bellatrix again, and he's going to realise that all the violence, 
all the magic in the world isn't going to bring him back. He has to 
come round to an acceptance of reality. Besides, I don't like what 
this BEAR stands for anymore. Don't you think that that was a 
fitting, beautiful death? Alright, there wasn't a long and moving 
deathbed scene, but it was a war death, and indicative of the 
presense of a new realism within the series. Look at him. He falls 
gracefully, aesthetically, through a metaphor, and it seems to be a 
senseless death at first, but then becomes infused with meaning 
within the text as a whole. He receives a rather wonderful memorial, 
in the form of a heart-wrenchingly sustained and realistic grieving 
process, which takes Harry's character to an entirely new level."

"Yes, yes. We've heard this quite a lot on the DENIAL. She's even 
developed an other self to argue this way with her." observed Marina, 
jerking a thumb at Terry. "*You*, however, haven't answered our 
argument properly at all. What about the Thestrals?"  
"Yeah. Does anybody really think that JKR would introduce such a 
fascinating creature, with such intriguing characteristics, just to 
have them play a minor role and then be forgotten?" asked Terry, 
rather belligerently.

"I really do like the idea about the Thestrals, but I think it's 
going to work rather differently." said Kirstini, taking a couple of 
steps back from the other two, who were beginning to look rather 
bloodthirsty. "Say Harry reaches the other side of the veil, what 
will he find there? His parents and Sirius, plus Cedric; or rather, 
versions of them as they were. Their characters won't have progressed 
from the points of their death, therefore they will have nothing new 
to offer Harry, and the point of his going beyond the veil will be to 
realise this. It's like the Mirror of Erised all over again, but the 
point is that this time no-one will have to take it away from Harry; 
he'll take that step for himself.
"Wasn't there a small foreshadowing of this in OoP, in the fireplace 
scene, just a sense that Harry was beginning to already outgrow 
Sirius? This way Sirius never completes that particular, 
destabilising, trajectory, and remains at a frozen point in the 
series. He becomes an icon, complete in himself and the connotations 
he invokes, but unable to help Harry progress further. . Still 
heroic, every loyal, and damn, damn sexy. But frozen, before the 
reader gets too close and can smell the stale drink off him..."

"You're one to talk." commented Phineas, quietly. However, Marina had 
jumped up from the couch, and was pointing a large wand at Kirstini.
"Alright, that's enough from you. Take that back!" she yelled.
"Wait! You misunderstand me. We never do get to smell the stale 
drink! She's preserved him at a particular point: not quite as 
handsome as he was in the Pensieve, perhaps, but now complete with 
the marks of his love for Harry, and the way that affected him. 
There's just a tiny bit after Molly sees the Boggart, when it ends up 
as Dead!Harry. It's Lupin who's got the power to dispose of the 
Boggart, remember – Sirius is just standing there, staring at the 
place on the carpet where Dead!Harry had been. He couldn't have 
helped him further, and so, rather than show this weakness 
developing, JKR writes him a beautiful, graceful death."
"I don't really care for your tone. It all sounds a bit Third Reich 
to me. You're saying he had to be exterminated because he had 
outlived his usefulness," Terry said. Marina, however, had sat back 
down, and was whispering to her BEAR again.
"Yes, but his death itself becomes monumentally significant to Harry. 
His death becomes part of him, part of the total connotative freight 
of the character within the series. He becomes hugely important. 
Pivotal." said Kirstini,pleadingly. " Oh, what's the use. I should've 
known I couldn't make much impact here."
Something from one of her pockets buzzed. She fished out a small 
mirror, glanced into it and murmured "Hang on a sec, Dung."
Looking up, she saw that Marina, still hugging the BEAR, had dozed 
off. "She can keep that," she said, shortly. "For free. I've got to 
go. Go to see a man about some cauldrons."
And with a noise that some called a crack, and others a pop, she was 
gone.
"I don't believe it." said Phineas.