The Bricks

Written by Anakin McFly

Hi. I'm a brick, and my name is Aken. I don't really look that different from other bricks – you know, red and rough and rectangular and all that – but neither am I just any other boring brick. You see, me and my friends form a wall at the back of this pub called the Leaky Cauldron. There's nothing really spectacular about that, just that this isn't an ordinary pub. It's a magic one, and only wizards and witches can see it. Muggles, who are non-magic people, can't see it, but I always say that's a good thing because it means that they have one less place to get drunk in. Drunk Muggles are not a good thing. Actually, neither are drunk wizards, but you get my drift.

The wall I'm in is a special wall too. If you tap a wand on Lenni, who's above me, the wall opens up to reveal a secret passageway into this place called Diagon Alley. I think it looks really cool when we all slide aside into the wall, but Lenni doesn't think so. He doen'st like being tapped on, see, especially by people who tap really hard. He says it hurts, and how would they like it if he tapped on them? Once he actually tried to tap them back, but Fale – that's the brick above Lenni – and I strengthened the cement bonding us to him, so Lenni couldn't do anything.

He got really mad at us after that, which wasn't made much better when some wizard with a very strong hand came and tapped him. Although it wasn't so much a tap, more a whack. Sometimes I admit that they're kind of asking for trouble, hitting Lenni so hard like that. The problem is, quite a few of the folks who come here are usually at least half drunk, mainly because they have to pass through the Leaky Cauldron first. I'm kind of scared for Lenni, actually. I think he's going to crack at any moment now, and not the kind of crack where you can see a little black line going down the affected brick. Those types of cracks can be repaired easily, because all you need is someone to tap you with a wand and say "Reparo". It's happened to me once before. I thought it looked cool the way the black line just disappeared, like it had never existed.

But the cracking I think Lenni is about to do is a cracking of his mind. For some reason, so many people think that bricks don't have brains or minds, but we do. In fact, we once had a very long argument about whether people have them, and finally decided that they do, only they don't use them very often. And it could help if they were a little more considerate. A brick wouldn't be so bad as to go around tapping people, yet people do that all the time to us bricks. Well, Lenni, anyway. It's kind of unfair.

Sometimes I wonder if it was such a good idea after all to hold Lenni back that time. Then, we were afraid that if he went to tap the guy who tapped him, we might end up in trouble and get our wall demolished or something. But maybe if Lenni had succeeded, the people would have learnt their lesson and stopped making magic entrances to places without first considering the effect it might have on the bricks that make up those entrances.

And if they really have no choice but to have a system where bricks need to be tapped, the least they could do would be to arrange it such that the bricks can take turns being tapped on, so they can all share the burden and bricks like Lenni wouldn't feel so singled out, because it's not like he did anything to deserve it. I mean, I've been tapped on before by accident and it hurts, and that was only a few times; Lenni has to endure it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. It's a wonder he's held on so long. Not that he has a choice, because he doesn't.

They don't even spare him at night when he's trying to sleep. Actually, the night time openings are something all of us in the wall don't really like. We rest at night, see. Maybe people don't do that and can stay awake all the time, but bricks need our rest from moving about so much in the day. So we might be happily fast asleep, when all of a sudden someone taps Lenni and rudely wakes him from his much-needed rest. Then he has to yell at us through brick telepathy to wake us up, so that we can slide aside and let whoever it is go through.

But even the night time openings aren't so bad when compared to some of the more inconsiderate visitors we get. Now and then some teenager would come by waving his or her wand around to show that he or she is no longer underage and is allowed to perform magic in public, then he or she would commence to tap Lenni over and over and over and over again just for the amusement of seeing us repeatedly slide aside into the wall and back into our original positions.

The worst thing is that we have to obey and open up whenever Lenni gets tapped. Many many years ago, when we were first created, some enchantment was put on us such that if we disobeyed, something really, really horrible would happen. No one knows what that really, really horrible thing is, but we know that it's really, really horrible and we're not taking any chances. That's why we have to wake up and get moving whenever Lenni gets tapped on at night.

Sometimes I dream of a quiet, peaceful place where the whole wall of us can just live a happy, undisturbed life – perhaps somewhere in the countryside. We would just stand there through the ages, watching time pass by, growing old together, and best of all never getting tapped on. Lenni would really like that. Maybe one day when we're old and crumbly, we'll get moved to such a place. Then we can live out the rest of our lives in freedom, with no enchantments or anything to dictate how we should behave.

That would be great. But until then, I guess we'll just have to make the most of our lives now. We still have at least another hundred years to go.

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