Hallo loo-hoos! I've been gone a while, I know. It's college, you know? Had a spare forty five minutes today though, so I wrote a little one-shot. POV? It doesn't really matter. Anyone you want it to be.

This is an odd one, I think. Let me know!

-h

Disclaimer: No ma'am.

Red Shoes

For Professor W,
Thanks for the insight.

Ever wondered how a Polaroid photo works? It's like magic. Picture appears from nothing. Face out of the fog. Crystal ball vision kind of thing, you know?

Heard someone nearly failed his Divination O.W.L for that. Said he saw a face with a wart on the nose, only his examiner fit the same description. I never saw any faces in Divination class fog. Never once. Aside from my own, that is. Of course.

Saw shoes though. Red ones. Well, mostly red. White soles. Totally red except for the soles. Trelawney didn't care much—said something about overzealous hopefuls. Me: rolled eyes, quick glance back at the ball, figured it was a quirk.

That sort of thing can disappear with a shrug. Red shoes in a glass bowl. You look at it, wonder for a second, and move on. You forget, mostly. Maybe not. I don't think there are many things a person actually forgets. It's more like there are things that disappear for a while. You know, pushed to the side, like the ordinary sneakers in the closet. White ones. Probably you'll run across them again some day, be mildly surprised (oh, I'd forgotten…), remember them for a while. Forget again.

It's just, they're still in the closet.

Like the red shoes. The mostly red ones. Not the ones in the closet. They appeared again the other day. I ran across them at work; they were on a pair of feet belonging to a woman on the third floor.

"It's…it's…I'm looking…they said to tell you…it was…chocolate ice cream. From Fortesque's. I…I think Marie had sprinkles," she said.

I don't think I said anything. I don't remember.

"It's just they said to tell you. To tell you what she'd eaten recently?"

Question. Unanswerable? The chart would probably tell her, if she knew how to read it. She didn't look like a Healer though. Too much shock in her eyes. Healers, middle of a war, the eyes start to disappear. Sort of melt back into the face. Before it happened to me I think I thought it was disturbing.

I don't really remember.

"Because of the…the, you know, the thing with her sto—"

"Abdominal laceration," I read from the chart. Slicing jinx, strong one. The girl was probably already dead. Or at least mostly. It didn't really matter that she'd had ice cream.

She nodded. Looked around without reacting much. You know, the blank thing people do. When her mind can't focus on much because she's just carried her sister in from a day of shopping and it's stained her shoes red. Well, mostly red. There were large white blotches left still. Not totally red.

A gurney went by. A perpetual burning hex judging by the bubbling skin. Stained Shoes blinked.

"Your shirt is stained," I said. "Are you injured?"

She looked down. Looked surprised. Like she'd forgotten.

"Oh," she said. Nothing more. I watched the stain. It wasn't spreading, turning brown. Drying. I took my wand and touched it to a red line on the wall.

"Lead," I said. The line turned green. "Follow that. It'll take you to the waiting room. We'll inform you of your sister's condition as soon as we know something."

She didn't move.

"The green line," I said.

She nodded but didn't move. Another gurney passed. This time a Blood-boiling hex. I was probably needed. Stained Shoes was standing in front of me, near the wall, out of the way. No one was looking at us. Everyone who still had eyes was doing that blank thing.

"Alright," I said.

Stained Shoes looked at me. She still had eyes. Blank.

"Sprinkles," she said. "You don't think that'll kill her do you?"

I don't remember what I said. I think I said, "no."

Another gurney passed, Cruciatus. I followed.

It's the silver that does it. The Polaroid, I mean. The Muggles they figured it out. Odd, a bit. There's no instant photographs in the Wizarding World. Muggle magic, I guess.

That's how it works. The silver grabs the chemicals—the ones that bring out the colors with the air and the light. Then there's a picture.

I remembered the shoes, finally. The red ones, I mean. The completely red ones besides the white soles, not the blotchy ones the girl had been wearing. It was the gurney.

It passed. No face, covered by a teal sheet. The Red Shoes were poking out the bottom of it.

I guess my brain is coated in silver. I remembered the fog.

"Who is that?"

A Healer I didn't recognize looked up from behind the gurney. He had blue eyes. He was The New Guy.

"She was up on the third floor hallway," he said. His eyes showed shocked anger. "Stood there and bled to death from a gash in her back. Stood in her own puddle of blood. And nobody noticed. Nobody noticed. Jesus." He looked back down to the faceless sheet. "Jesus, you know?"

I think a gurney with an Entrail-Expelling curse passed. I think I went. I think I was needed.

Someone cleaned the puddle of blood on the third floor. Maybe The New Guy.

I don't really remember. That sort of thing can disappear with a shrug.

-h