A word from the writer

A middle aged man in a bowler hat sauntered down a tree shaded path. The wind blew lightly through the autumn leaves, scattering a few to the still green grass. In time, he sat at a bench facing the path and, sitting with perfect posture, rested his hands on his walking cane.

Staring toward the river across from him, he began to speak, “I know you must be upset, and I understand where you’re coming from. I was a little upset too. For a little bit there, I thought I was about to recreate the Tri-Wizard tournament. It would have been fantastic too–you would have loved it: roaring fans, near deaths, some cheating and overcoming, and in the end the hero wins the prize.”

At that, the man looked into the camera of the reader’s mind’s eye. There was compassion there but concern too, a seriousness that certainly didn’t fit with the rest of Danny’s story.

“You already knew the ending to that story, so I couldn’t write it. Danny and Jenny, Benny and Jimmy and Candy have a much more exciting future than a simple win with a few near misses. It’s best for all of them that they missed it, and that you missed it too. You may idealize what might have been if they had only made it, they’ll probably try to have a rematch or some such nonsense, but it won’t work.”

“Sometimes when the story finally has some predictability, that’s when it needs an entirely new direction.”

He broke eye contact and refocused on the river across the path, “You wouldn’t have wanted Danny to win anyway. If he’d won, by some miracle, he’d be in an office reading through policies to magical issues that bore me. And it’s my world.”

“You see, I didn’t choose Danny to be a wizard because I needed some new policies enacted.”

A bright blue butterfly fluttered down and landed on the back of his hands–still resting atop his walking cane. The man closed his eyes for a few seconds, then blew gently on the butterfly. The blue from its wings powdered off into the wind, and left a skeleton of a butterfly behind. Slowly, a scorpion tail grew from the butterfly’s tail. It struck at the man’s thumb.

He closed his eyes again and shook his head, crushing the scorpion/butterfly into black ash with his other hand.

“You see, this world has begun to fall into some kind of corruption.”

“And I need a hero.”

The janitor <= Danny Rocket => The drain troll