Who: Andy Kirke and about two dozen or so 8 to 10-year-olds When: Backdated to Wednesday Where: Quidditch Museum in London Summary: [SOLO] Andy gives a tour of the museum to kids. This is going to be fun. Rating: Medium due to unwanted bodily fluids.
Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!
Andy's head was pounding. He felt as if he had been knocked on the head with a bludger at least eighteen times. Slowly, he brought his hand up and rubbed his face with it, pinching the bridge of of his nose with his thumb and index finger. What the hell had he gotten himself into? Well, it wasn't like he'd asked for it really, more than 20 running, screaming children taking a tour of the Quidditch Museum in London. It was possibly more than he could handle, especially being an intern. Then, he supposed they gave all the interns the shitty tasks anyway.
It hadn't all been bad. In fact, when the children arrived, walking in a straight line with their fingers pressed up against their mouths to show that they were being quiet, Andy thought he was really going to make it. Boy was he wrong.
"Hello," he'd started, his usually chipper smile permeating his face. "My name is Andy Kirke, and I'm--"
"What kind of a name is Andy Kirke?"
"Errwhat?" Andy frowned and peered over the crowed of midget primary school students. He wondered which smartass little brat had said that. He wanted to go over there and stick a Beater's Bat up his snarky little nose. The students all remained quiet, aside from the few giggles that cropped up here and there. "It's a very.... n-n-normal name!" Andy was furious. He was shaking from head to toe and it was causing him to stutter, but he tried to control himself. It wouldn't do him any good to mess up this job no matter how annoying the little kids were.
After that brief, pulse-raising experience, Andy led the group through several of the rooms in the museum, each of which corresponded with an important era in Quidditch history. The rooms all went in chronological order in a counter-clockwise fashion around the building. Before the tour, Andy had to take the tour itself at least four times with world renowned Expert of Quidditch history, Oscar Mclean, his mentor. The man was a rather persnickety bloke who had made Andy read a 300 page handbook one day and had him sorting ancient jock straps the next. Needless to say, Andy wasn't exactly fond of him, but he had to deal with him nevertheless.
"The Quaffle was actually the first ball ever used to play Quidditch back when they played at the Queerditch Marsh," Andy explained, pointing to a picture of the evolution of the quaffle. "Of course, it didn't look anything like what it does today, and it's been modified throughout the years to keep the ball up in the air longer using magic as well as enchanted with Gripping Charms which were discovered in 1875 -- which was not that long ago really. The--"
"This is boring!"
Andy turned quickly to finally spot the boy who continued to interrupt his tour. He glared at him sourly before pointing to him and calling him over with his fingers. "What's your name, kid?"
The boy who barely reached up to Andy's waist wore thick-rimmed glasses with clear evidence of a recent snot-bubble in his nose. "Eugene," the boy said, rubbing the back of his arm across his nose.
Andy fought the urge to puke. "Alright Eugene, tell us what you've learned about Quidditch so far, hmm?"
Eugene laughed and shook his head. "Nothing! Cause you're so boring!"
"Ah." Andy grinned and leaned down over the boy. He started speaking to him in a low voice, one that only he could hear. "Maybe you haven't learned anything because you're a stupid, annoying little bugger face whose parents hate him and can't wait for him to get his Hogwarts letter so he can go away for months at a time and only have to see him during breaks and holidays. Maybe that's why."
Andy stood and watched the boy's face transform into one of horrified shock. His eyes looked even larger now behind his spectacles, and his hands shook at his sides. Andy felt triumph for one brief, blissful moment before... "YOU'RE A JERKFACE JERK!" Eugene stomped on Andy's foot and stormed past all his classmates, clearly wailing and sobbing as he went. Andy made a high-pitched noise that seemed to erupt from the back of his throat as he pulled up his foot and held it with his hands, hopping a little on one leg to keep his balance.
"Son of a--"
"Mr. Kirke!" It was one of the few adults in the room with him, and it took all of his strength to keep himself from saying whatever other expletives were on the tip of his tongue. It took him a moment to compose himself, but finally, he managed to put his aching foot down, though he winced with every single step from then on out.
The rest of the rooms they entered were of the same persuasion, with pictures and diagrams, actual equipment used during the games and replicas as well. For the most part, the rest of the tour went without further incident, though Andy could hear several loud yawns every once in a while. Was he boring people? Was he just as boring as Professor Binns was? No, it couldn't be that. It had to have been that... those children were demons. Yes, they were demon children with forked tongues, bad breath and dangling bogies. There was no way they were actual children. He had never acted like that, like a bloody savage.
Their hands went up every time he asked a question, but instead of remaining quiet and waiting for Andy to call on them, they would erupt in a chorus of ME ME ME ME ME ME ME! And THEN, when Andy would call one of them (one who had been clearly raising their hand and ME ME ME ME'ing all over the place), they would just stay quiet and stare at him as if he had twelve heads and was do the lambada up and down the museum. What the hell was WRONG with these kids!
Just when Andy thought he was going to get a break, things got even worse. At the end of the tour, there was always a mock game of Quidditch, which had been modified for the purposes of these tours. During this game, the kids got to play Chasers, and Andy... Andy had to be the Snitch. Of course, since most of them hadn't been paying attention to him as he explained the rules of the game, none of them knew that the Snitch was not, in fact, the ball that you were supposed to smack repeatedly and smash into the other players. That was a BLUDGER!
Andy was tossed around like a ragdoll, somehow being completely unable to outrun the little brats. Yes. They were definitely demons. By the end of the match, Andy looked worse than he did after a regular Quidditch match, where he'd had injury after injury from the bludgers being hurled at him. He sat panting on the floor as the kids all skipped off toward the exit with their respective adults. Just when he thought he was alone, a tiny shadow crept over him. When Andy glanced up, he realized that Eugene was there, hovering over him like a spaceship ready to unleash its fury on all mankind. Before Andy could react, Eugene had already managed to hock up a loogie and spit it right in Andy's face. Then, he too skipped off happily after his classmates as if nothing had happened.
"DEMON SPAWN!" Andy shouted at him but then remained motionless on the ground with a large clump of gooey mucus dripping down the side of his face. He blinked several times and wondered if it was time to call it quits already. He was in severe need of a break, not to mention a bath in Clorox. That was when he heard the voice of his mentor standing at the door. "Your next tour is here waiting for you, Andrew! Chop chop! Can't be late! Must be on time for your tours always!"
Something hard and heavy dropped into Andy's stomach, and he gripped the side of a chair immediately. It was the only thing he could do to keep from falling back on the floor and collapsing from exhaustion. And in that moment, Andy was sure of only one thing. "I never want to work here ever."