Year/Job
Owner of Club Brielle
He's good bad, but he's not evil. |
Travis
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Post by Lawrence Gable on Jan 10, 2024 21:23:19 GMT -8
With Christmas just around the corner, Flourish and Blotts was packed full of holiday shoppers. That was exactly what Bash Naggston had expected when he’d booked the event. This was finally Bash’s chance to tell his side of the story, and maybe inspire a little change in the world. He wanted his message to reach as many people as possible.
Bash looked out among the gathering crowd as shoppers filtered in. Some were there to see him, and others were just curious to see what the guest speaker had to say. Bash didn’t look like someone who’d spent the better part of the last decade in Azkaban. His hair was as golden as it had been when he was a star Quidditch player at Hogwarts. His smile even whiter. He credited his lingering youth despite adversity to the power of positive thinking.
After graduating from Hogwarts, Bash landed a role at his father’s firm as an investment professional. There, he managed the assets of some of the wizarding world’s biggest names. He rattled off a few for the audience: “Baldric Stormwind, Verner Wolfhand, Robert Downey, Jr.” Bash cooked up phony portfolios for his clients, funneling their money into his own bank account. When a client wanted to make a withdrawal, Bash would urge caution in the market. But he could only stall the inevitable discovery of his crime for so long.
“This is not a story of redemption,” Bash said to the audience. He stood at a heavy table behind stacks of his bestselling autobiography The ComeBash Kid: A Story of Redemption. “I cheated. I lied. I stole. At twenty-two I found myself on The Prophet’s Thirty Under Thirty list. But just like that,” he snapped his fingers. “All the brooms, the castles, thediamond studded wands—gone, like tears in rain. Before I knew it, I was living in a cell, working for three Galleons a day cleaning the windows at Azkaban. That was my punishment.”
Even without dementors, three years was a long stretch in Azkaban. Three long years for Bash to reflect and grow from his mistakes. Three long years to think about her. Three long years that ended abruptly when a cable snapped, sending Bash plummeting nine stories down.
“I know you’re thinking, ‘why him?’” Bash said. “I myself think that very question every night. Not everyone is as lucky as me. When my body made contact with the icy serf below, shattering all three hundred bones in my body, I didn’t think that I was. I thought I’d certainly taken my last breath. How was I supposed to know that this was the first of several lucky breaks? That my lawsuit would result in millions paid in damages, or that the Ministry would agree to commute my sentence to protect Azkaban from bankruptcy.”
A new face had joined the audience, one which Bash spotted as she squeezed in among the crowd. Brielle Quinn, the love of his life. She’d come! If he were anyone else, Bash wouldn’t have believed she would come. But Bash Naggston wasn’t just anyone.
“Ah heck,” he said, wiping away a tear. “Look at me getting all misty eyed. The point is, I paid for my mistakes and I’m here now to give back. This book represents my life of hardship and the bright path forward, and I believe that if you follow my rules, you won’t have to fall sixty stories to find your path.”
Bash rushed through the book signing, keeping his eyes on the back of the room where Brielle remained the entire time. He feared that if he looked away she might just evaporate. When he was finished, he rushed over with a freshly signed book in his hand.
“Brielle Quinn,” he smiled, offering the book to her. “I can’t believe you came! Happy Christmas.”
Gabrielle Quinn
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