Get Healthy! – Day 4

‘I’ll be there’,  said Alex cheerily, before adding, ‘I hope!’

‘You can’t miss this for anything!’ replied Freddy, smiling soggily to himself.

*****

On Sunday morning, back at HQ, Hardy was trying to get his makeshift bass working.  Although it looked fine, he couldn’t get more than the most basic thup sound out of it.

‘There’s got to be some solution man…’   said Jimi thoughtfully, looking intently at the box, ‘oh, hey man, I didn’t see you there.  How’s it going?’

Freddy, who was sitting huddled in a corner of the shed, said nothing.

‘I said hi, man, how are you?’  repeated Jimi, walking over to where Freddy sat, and waving his hand in front of Freddy’s eyes.

‘Uh, eh, what?’ said Freddy, ‘Oh, hi…er…Jimi’.

‘You OK, man, you look kinda rough!’

‘What?  Oh yes, fine…thanks’.

Freddy returned to his book.  Jimi returned to Hardy and the box.

‘Yes, we need some way of the sound getting out.  At the moment, when you twang the string, all the sound is getting lost inside, like the box is swallowing it up’.

‘We need to plug it in to your amplifier really’,  said Hardy hopefully.

‘I know what you’re saying man, but you’ll have to wait for that!  There’s got to be a simpler solution’.

Freddy nodded his head slightly as he read, then suddenly jerked his head up.

‘Hey, you’ll never guess what, you won’t believe this…’

‘NO!’  screamed Michael from the doorway, ‘don’t tell us!  Let us read it ourselves!’

‘Uh…oh…yeh…sorry’, muttered Freddy quietly, his head dropping slightly as he returned to his book.

*****

‘I think we need to make a hole in it!’  said Hardy, ‘that way the sound could get out!’

‘Yes, you’re probably right there, man’, Jimi replied.

‘How can we do it?’

‘Let’s try this’,  said Jimi, picking up a rusty hammer from the pile of junk outside the shed.

‘I’ll do it’,  said Hardy, ‘I’m stronger than you, and you need to look after those fingers!’   Jimi smiled appreciatively.

‘Oh no!  Oh my word!’,  said Freddy from the corner, ‘Mad-Eye Moody has just been…’

BANG!  Hardy brought the hammer crashing down onto the side of the wooden box.  The box jumped a few centimetres backwards, but the thick wood remained intact.

‘…and Ron has just been given…’

CRASH!   Hardy brought the hammer down once more.  Again, the box failed to give in.  Freddy returned to his curled up position, and carried on reading.

*****

‘Maybe we need something stronger.  Is there a saw out here?’  said Michael.

Michael, Jimi and Hardy went outside to look for more powerful tools.  Freddy carried on reading.  As they returned, with a sort of long, bent two-man saw, Freddy looked up again,

‘Where’ve you been, did I tell you about Hermione accidentally…’

BONG!  The bells of the church next to Hardy’s house started to ring out for midday,

‘…and then a Death Eater…

BONG!

‘I told him not to say anything!’ said Michael in frustration, as the bells of the church rang twelves times.  Freddy had given up trying to compete with them. 

‘Well, he’s been reading for twelve hours already’, said Hardy, ‘he probably can’t even think straight.  So, let’s try this!’

They sawed, and they sawed, and they sawed.  Freddy tried, and tried, and tried, to tell them what was going on, what a Deathly Hallow actually was, what happened to Dumbledore, and who the mysterious RAB actually is, but the sawing drowned out his fading, faltering, feeble voice.  As Hardy picked up the broomstick and jabbed it into the top of the new bass box, Freddy said, quite perkily this time,

‘Oh no, Hardy’s just said…’

THUNG!  THUNG THUNG!   Hardy’s bass rung out around the enclosed room.  It sounded sweet, and mellow, and rich.  Jimi jumped up and down in the excitement, and reached over for his guitar.  Michael went to sit at the drum kit.

Freddy, barely able to raise his head, murmured,

‘Oh…that’s so sweet, Hardy and SNORE!...er…I mean Ron and SNORE!  er…SNORE!’

And with that, Freddy closed the book and fell into a deep deep slumber, his mission accomplished, his mind full of happy thoughts.  He started to dream a long complicated dream about the time Hardy used the Polyjuice Potion to do that terrible thing to….

NO!

*****