Meeting a childhood hero (tag Professor Gray) on Charms

Cleo James

December 06, 2017 8:50 PM

Meeting a childhood hero (tag Professor Gray) by Cleo James

Cleo hung back as the rest of the class filed out, tucking her slightly singed test paper into her bag, as it wasn’t the reason that she wanted to talk to Professor Gray, and she didn’t want to cause confusion, or really remind him of her pyromaniac tendencies. She felt like those were improving the most rapidly in Charms, of all her wandwork subjects, and today she felt it had only got out of control because she had been excited to see what Professor Gray had said, and whether she had impressed him. She thought he might be the reason she was doing better in Charms than the other spell-based subjects. There were the radio shows, the ones she had listened to growing up, that meant being in Professor Gray’s company evoked a warm sense of comfort and of the familiar. And then there was him. He was… There was something… He was the least fiery person she could imagine. He was definitely safer, in some intangible way, than Professor Nash, for example. Perhaps this was unfair, although Cleo did not entertain this degree of introspection and examination of her own thoughts. Professor Nash taught a dangerous class, and one which the pressure of led to more fiery outbursts from her. All she knew was that she felt a tension with Professor Nash that she couldn’t place, and that she didn’t feel it with Professor Gray.

“Professor?” she asked, approaching his desk. “I… I liked your radio shows. When I was small. Smaller,” she told him shyly. Her daddy had said he was sure the Professor would be pleased at the compliment but Cleo still felt a little funny talking to him one on one, both because he was her professor and because it was slightly unreal to be talking to the writer of The Secret Lives of Chess Men. “And I’m sorry that I set things on fire sometimes,” she added, because this was something she felt she owed it to most of her teachers to say.

13 Cleo James Meeting a childhood hero (tag Professor Gray) 389 Cleo James 1 5

Professor Gray

December 07, 2017 8:12 PM

Probably not being very impressive. by Professor Gray

Another Beginners class was done. Gray had just sat down at his desk when he heard someone saying “Professor”?, an appellation it was still slightly consciously strange to apply to himself but which he had become accustomed to looking up automatically at hearing when he was the only adult in the room.

He expected a question about the lesson, or a desire for reassurance about performance, or maybe a complaint. The last thing he expected was the statement “I… I liked your radio shows.” and he blinked in confusion through his glasses for a moment, looking blank and probably a bit foolish as she followed this incredible pronouncement with an apology for setting things on fire.

“Ah – you have been doing better,” he said, hopefully encouragingly. “Just keep it up, keep working on it – carefully.” He hoped that did not count as discouraging, but…she did set things on fire rather a lot. Gray supposed he could think of it as a chance for personal growth – he was pretty sure he’d stood frozen in horror at least once last year, but when something happened enough, one stopped reacting to it as much as one did before. “And I’m glad you, ah, enjoyed the shows, thank you – but – how do you know that I’m me?” he asked, still puzzled by that. He hadn’t thought that much of his former audience had known who he was. Of course there had been credits, but people really listened to those? He’d thought those only existed so hiring managers and editors could check the details he put in his resume.

16 Professor Gray Probably not being very impressive. 113 Professor Gray 0 5

Cleo

December 07, 2017 10:13 PM

Oh, I don't know. I rather like- Charms. by Cleo

She nodded, smiling brightly as he assured her she was getting better, and to keep working on it.

“I will,” she assured him, “I find it’s getting better more quickly in Charms. In Defence, everything’s all pressured and scary, and that makes it worse, and Transfiguration’s so difficult… And I also like- Charms,” she finished, hoping it hadn’t been obvious that that sentence was about to finish a different way. She thought most students had favourite teachers, but it probably wasn’t very wise to point out that she liked him better than Professor Nash. “Thanks for not getting cross with me about it,” she added. “That helps too.”

She hesitated, wondering whether she should, or even could explain… She wasn’t even sure what exactly she wanted to know… Whether it was normal, she supposed? But it wasn’t what she had come here to discuss and she didn’t have the words ready…. And then he was talking about the radio again instead.

“My daddy figured it out. Your full name was on my report card, and we had the ‘Secret Lives of Chessmen’ on record, and it had ‘by Grayson Wright’ printed along the bottom,” she blushed slightly realising she’d just used a teacher’s first name, only… Only not quite. ‘By Grayson Wright’ was different. It was hard to connect it to the person in front of her. Grayson Wright was a set phrase, a name, and the person who had written the shows. He was different than ‘Excuse me, Professor Wright.’ Talking about ‘Grayson Wright the writer’ didn’t seem like it should be personal, even when Professor Wright was in front of her, and they were, apparently, the same person. “He’s good at remembering,” and, whilst Professor Wright had seemed a perfectly common name, once you added in ‘Grayson’ it was certainly much more distinctive, though Cleo decided not to comment further on her Professor’s first name. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked. ‘How did you know’ was always something someone said when you had found out something they didn’t want you to know. “My daddy said you’d be pleased to know that people liked your shows.”

13 Cleo Oh, I don't know. I rather like- Charms. 389 Cleo 0 5

Professor Gray

December 08, 2017 9:45 PM

So I gather. by Professor Gray

Hearing himself referred to as ‘professor’ was strange but not, it turned out, quite as strange as hearing his actual name in this context. Grayson was – well, technically it was his name, on documents and such, but in practice, it was his father’s name. This caused a momentary, and amusing, mental image of some terrible mistake being made and poor old Dad being thrown into a production meeting where none of the other participants had ever met Gray and therefore didn’t realize they had the wrong person….

He shut down that line of thought quickly. For one thing, it was impolite to daydream when people were talking to him, and for another, laughing out loud for no visible reason was not the sort of behavior which was encouraged in adults for reasons other than politeness – it made them think the laugher was a bit insane, though Gray hated to think what this implied about the people who thought that. Did they really just float though life doing things, never thinking at all? Sounded dull, though Anne argued that having an imagination was really just proof that he hadn’t made enough efforts to create a life that was more interesting than the stray thoughts he could make up stories to follow.

Anne, however, was of a different sort than Gray – she’d been psychoanalyzed and then married a rich guy and had a rich baby and surrounded herself with people. Gray avoided doctors as much as humanly possible and was somewhat solitary by nature. He thought it was a family dynamics thing – her mom and dad had apparently been nervous, dramatic, somewhat unstable people all their lives, and their neighbors had proven even worse, while Gray had been an only child’s only child, spending most of his early childhood with no-one but his not-particularly-fascinating parents for company. He’d had to either learn how to entertain himself or die of boredom, so he’d done the former.

One of those entertainments had been listening to the radio, so he suspected he had a slight kinship of sorts with Cleo there. The difference, of course, was that she’d listened to stuff he’d developed and written. “Oh, yes,” he said quickly, realizing his question might have seemed a touch accusatory. “Very pleased, thank you – just surprised. Chessmen is still available, then? I enjoyed that one.” That was why he was not entirely surprised that it had been like pulling teeth to get the second series released on record, and why doing so had taken a good two years after the show ended. He knew it had had an audience – he’d had the even-more-surreal-than-this-one experience of seeing someone dressed up as Bartimaeus the White Pawn at a Halloween party, a person who’d had no idea who he was (the person had seemed to think that Gray’s name was Carl) and had made multiple unconvincing interjections into his monologue about the character about how the costume had been his kid’s idea, apparently embarrassed in hindsight to have admitted the nature of the costume – but he supposed it would take a lot more such encounters before he stopped being mildly surprised to put faces and names to the vague idea of ‘an audience.’

16 Professor Gray So I gather. 113 Professor Gray 0 5