Declan Chatterjee
August 22, 2006 4:27 PM
Home Sweet Classroom by Declan Chatterjee
Declan Chatterjee smoothed the edges of his last self-sticking poster and stepped away from the wall, rubbing the slight film of adhesive off his fingers as he surveyed his handiwork. Every inch of all four walls – excepting, of course, a few bookcases, windows, and doors – was plastered with moving posters of various celestial bodies and phenomena. There were even a few particularly spectacular Muggle photographs scattered here and there. The ceiling, though – that was his piece de resistance, if he did say so himself. It was the same charm performed who knows how long ago on the ceiling of his alma mater’s Great Hall – though goodness knew this one was much less advanced, and on a much smaller scale. It wasn’t designed to show the sky at that exact moment, but rather to constantly show a slowly revolving image of the cosmos.Still, he was very pleased with the effect, and couldn’t wait to see the students’ faces when they first entered the astronomy classroom.
There were, of course, the usual classroom implements, as well – bookshelf groaning with textbooks, supplies of spare parchment and quills, desks neatly lined up in rows, and the like.
He turned to his own desk, running one hand over the smooth dark wood. It was almost empty now, though he had the feeling it would soon be quite cluttered – it had always been Michael who organized the desk they used to share in BAMA’s American liaison office. Declan grimaced briefly at the memory before turning to the door that connected the classroom and his office. There were almost as many photographs in here as in the outer room, though these were of people. Most often he saw his family – Ravi, his stepfather, smiling down benevolently; his half-sister Maggie grinning and waving; his mother, Niamh, with her waist-length, violently red hair – and friends. There were photos of teenaged boys and girls in their Hogwarts robes and in Muggle clothes on Hogsmeade weekends, of house Quidditch games… And then there was Declan’s favorite photograph, which featured him – sun-browned and messy-haired, smiling brilliantly – with one arm of the shoulders of his best mate and love, a tall Scotsman with rust-colored hair and an infectious, crooked grin. That photo was taken only about a month before Michael’s death.
An inquiring mew and the feeling of something warm, wet, and rough against his fingers distracted Declan; he looked down and scratched behind Twitch’s ears, a slight smile coming to his lips. “So, what d’you think, beastie?” he asked. “Home?”
Twitch purred.\n\n
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Home Sweet Classroom
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