Author's note: See if you can guess who the subject of the mobile phone conversation towards the end is. The incident with the barbecue is wholly fictional, but the posters aren't, and they rankle!
We were having a quiet cup of tea and discussing possible ways to spend the evening when there was a flash of greenish-blue light and a small thunderclap, followed by a crash and a volley of cursing.
Snape and Flitwick sat up, brushing dust off their clothing. "Well, we know it works!" Flitwick said chirpily. It vaguely occurred to me that he looked and sounded almost exactly how I would have pictured the bastard offspring of Professor Branestawm and his housekeeper, whose surname he shared. Maybe he is.
"Yes, I can see that. But where, and more importantly, when have we ended up?"
"A dragon reserve in Romania, on the eighth of August 2004," I said helpfully. "Um, sir, what were you trying to do?"
"Ultimately," Flitwick said importantly, "we wanted to land in James Potter's front room a short while before you-know-who. Looks like we're getting closer, actually!"
"Yes, only sixteen years short and a couple of hundred miles off course!" Snape held out the revolver. "It is a great shame that you inherited your brains from your mother and not your father, Weasley," he said bitingly. Ah, that firearms interest of Arthur Weasley's. I thought he had the right idea with that.
"Have you compared their exam results lately, Severus?" Flitwick rejoined pointedly.
"It's a good idea, though," I said. "The Dark Lord might have spells on the go to protect him against every form of magic on the planet, but I'll bet he wouldn't think of wearing Kevlar!"
"Surely you aren't thinking of doing this alone, with only one revolver, sir?" said Harry. Surprisingly, Snape looked thoughtful for a moment, and then almost smiled.
"I shall happily accept volunteers, if only so that there will be that many fewer essays to mark next year."
"Count me in," Harry said firmly. "Seeing as you've been taking what my father did to you at school out on ME since my first year, I'd like a few words with him, as it happens!" He grinned in a mildly alarming way.
"Damned if I'm missing out on this!" I added. There was a rumble of assent from the others.
"Ron, can you get on the blower to Charlie?" I said. "We'll need his Mafia connections."
"What makes you think he's got any?" Ron demanded, anger flaring.
"This is Charlie we're talking about here, Ron," Ginny said with a laugh. "Of course he's going to have Mafia connections!"
"I don't actually," Charlie told us through the fireplace shortly thereafter. "I do know an address where you can get what you need, though..."
Ron hastily wrote it down. "We'd better get the next bus," he said, glancing at his watch.
"Come on then, folks," said Fran, "let's go buy some guns!"
"And whilst we do that," Snape told Flitwick, "YOU try and get us a little closer to our target. We're lucky we didn't end up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean!"
We made our way to a disused warehouse, and knocked on the door. A little barred hatch opened.
"Da?"
"We've come to do business," Snape explained.
"Buy, or sell?" the man on the other side asked in broken but intelligible English.
"Buy, and buy a lot." The door opened, to reveal an unremarkable-looking man in a cheap suit; the same man I'd been sitting next to on our flight. "Come," he instructed us. We followed him into a large room, solely furnished by a trestle table covered with a cloth. With great dramatic flourish, our new friend whipped the cloth away to reveal an impressive selection of arms, from .38 Specials (a toylike popgun of a revolver; you can THROW it farther than it'll shoot accurately) to AK47s- lots of AK47s, in fact.
"Choose," he said, grinning like the manager of Harrods when the doors open for the January Sales. We took quite a while to comply.
I went Israeli, for some reason; Uzi 9mm submachine gun and .357 Desert Eagle sidearm. The others mostly picked similar SMGs or AKs, with an ecclectic mix of pistols. Hermione and Fran both picked 12-gauge shotguns, barrels sawn short for added punch at close quarters at a cost of shorter range, apparently because: "Everything else just looks so PHALLIC, you know?" I didn't, frankly, but if it kept them happy...
Draco chose TWO Tec-9 machine pistols; you know the one you get if you do the Stage 1 Weapon Cheat on GTA: Vice City? If he could fire them both one handed then the best of luck to him, but I had to use both hands just to LIFT one with a full sized twenty round magazine, and I dreaded to think what the recoil would be like. Snape, with great deliberation, chose a beautifully made and finished bolt-action hunting rifle. He got Flitwick a small Makharow automatic, which was lightweight and easy to handle even though it's short ranged, mostly I think so Flitwick wouldn't feel left out.
Our dealer tapped the place where the magazine should fit in Cho's AK. "How much bullet?"
"Loads. We've got to practice a bit first," Hermione said briskly. She handed over a large bag of pooled Galleons, dollars and local currency. Our new friend looked at a Galleon askance.
"Gold," Snape explained.
"Gold? Da, is good." I wasn't surprised; this was hardly the sort of place that took American Express, was it? Apparently he was impressed enough to throw in a couple of boxes of paper targets.
"I'm glad he took our word for it," Fran remarked as we left, carying our purchases. "If he'd decided those Galleons were fake..."
"He looks like the sort who can tell fakes from about eighty paces," Cho replied. "If they HAD been fake, though, he'd probably have had us kneecapped."
"Poked us in the back of the knees with a shotgun and pulled the trigger," I explained, seeing Snape's blank expression. "A popular variation uses an electric drill instead." On that happy note, we went to spend several hours practicing with our new purchases.
Ron shredded the centre of his target with a five-round burst. "Gotcha!"
I grinned, and followed suit. Stonewalls school Time Crisis champion three years running! "You know, I reckon we're ready," I said to the others. As if to prove me right, a hole appeared in a nearby target, right over the tiny little X in the centre. Several hundred yards away, Snape emerged from beneath Harry's invisibility cloak; the best ghillie suit I'd ever seen.
Flitwick finished making adjustments, and called us over. "It ought to work this time," he told us, "but I can't promise our arrival being accurate to within less than about a square mile."
"Just so long as we don't come out a hundred feet in the air," I replied. "How does this work, then?"
"You just stand in the circle I've marked, and let me handle the rest. Give me another few moments to set up..."
Snape obligingly took the photograph of all of us in our Weasley sweaters, holding a variety of firearms and grinning wildly. Our parents were going to just LOVE that!
We stood in a circle, which seemed to be sprinkled with Floo Powder mixed with something else. He said a few spells, waved his wand, and threw a Time Turner into the air. It hovered there, spinning, and began to emit vivid blue light. Suddenly there was a BANG that knocked me off my feet, a brief sensation of being in about eight hundred places at once, and then...
Thump! I hit the ground hard, and got up painfully. //Okay, I'm in a field on the edge of... Ah, hell, I wouldn't know Great Houghton from Brigadoon!// I ducked through a gap in a hedge, and wandered through several anonymous side streets. I posessed my wand, Uzi and Desert Eagle plus ammunition for both, £3.47 and two Galleons and the clothes I stood up in. I was lost, half my money was dated after 1986, and I wasn't even too sure which part of the country I was in.
//What a way to spend my summer holidays!// I supposed I needn't worry too much about money; you'd be amazed at the discounts you're entitled to when you posess a fully automatic weapon.
"Rick!" somebody hissed. "Over here!" I turned, and saw Hermione crouching behind a car. I ducked down beside her.
"That house opposite us," she whispered. I just saw Harry's father." I looked carefully, and saw the man she was referring to at the window. The resemblance was striking, though the bag of frozen peas over one eye detracted from it somewhat.
"Looks like Snape got there before us," I laughed.
"Yep."
We cautiously moved in, one of us moving forward to the next bit of cover whilst the other kept a lookout, a method of advance known as protective overwatch; it's amazing how much you can learn about infantry tactics from SOCOM: US Navy SEALs on PC. We rang the doorbell, which played a tune which sounded suspiciously like the theme from Smokey and the Bandit, and were confronted with Harry's mother.
Lily Potter was confronted with two teenagers carrying guns, but magnificently failed to scream or call the police.
"Oh, you must be with Severus," she said pleasantly. "Come in."
"But why in hell did they get PETUNIA of all people?" a voice demanded. "Why not Sirius?"
"Everybody thought it was him who betrayed you to Voldemort," Harry explained patiently. "It was actually Peter Pettigrew."
"I might have known," James Potter growled. "I'll strangle that little rodent!"
"My cat already tried," Hermione said, putting her shotgun down. "He spent a couple of years being Ron Weasley's pet rat, you see."
"Good, he's found his true vocation!"
None of the others had arrived yet, so we gave them a quick breakdown of who was who.
"Blimey, I know Arthur fancied Molly for ages before they started going out, but SEVEN kids?" Lily shook her head.
"Not much to do round their house of an evening, I suppose," Harry replied. This was Molly's standard joke in the event of anybody commenting.
"Yeah, right. He'd spent about ten years trying to get off with her!" Lily said with a girlish giggle. "He'd got a hell of a lot of lost time to make up!"
Eventually, the others turned up, and we worked out some sort of plan. It wasn't particularly complicated, and basically involved everybody hiding near windows until Voldemort turned up and then letting him have it. Flitwick was banished to the attic, and told to set up a return time portal so that if all else failed we could just leg it.
* * *
With a crack, Voldemort apparated in front of the house. He paused, listening for sounds no normal human ear could detect. Where were they? Expecting the likes of Pettigrew to come up with useful information had been stretching credibility a bit. Hah, intelligence from Peter Pettigrew? Bit of a contradiction in terms, really.
There was an oiled snick as Snape drew back the bolt of his rifle, beneath the cloak and perched precariously on the roof. Voldemort looked up, and dived sideways as Snape fired.
"Well, well, well," he chuckled evilly. "I am almost impressed."
"You ain't seen nothing yet!" I yelled, popping up and taking aim. "Have some of THIS, you bastard!" Voldemort dodged at lightning speed, like Agent Smith in the Matrix (his people skills are about the same, too) as we let fly with everything we had. James and Lily contributed to the fight with a combination of some empty milk bottles, the handkerchiefs Petunia had sent her for Christmas and a large quantity of barbecue lighting fluid. Who says the Cruciacus is the nastiest way to die in the world?
"Right, then!" Voldemort called up about thirty Death Eaters, who began slinging Adava Kedavaras at the house.
"Suppressing fire!" Harry yelled to the others. We lay down a barrage of shots, forcing those who weren't hit to duck or run for their lives. They clustered behind nearby cars, leaving them vulnerable to a well thrown Molotov.
"Rush them, you idiots!" Voldemort yelled, blowing the front door down.
"Shit," I said to myself. "Fall back up the stairs, quickly!" Luna and I sprayed covering fire past the remains of the door as the others retreated, then ducked up there ourselves.
Cho vaulted the bannisters one-handed, Kalashnikov in her free hand, and booted the first Death Eater through the door out of it again. He didn't get back up; we later found out that she'd snapped his neck with a single kick to the face. James followed her, swinging an aluminium softball bat he'd used to play Beater in Quidditch. Harry and I weren't too far behind.
Harry isn't a big guy by any definition, but he's lightning fast, and blocked every punch or hex sent his way. Kickboxing hadn't visibly improved his muscle definition, but he broke one Death Eater's nose with the edge of his hand, then floored another with a roundhouse kick. This was turning into a melee, with no room for wand or gun. I dodged a wild swing from a Death Eater and climbed back up the stairs towards my Uzi. Cho followed, switching her AK to single fire as she went. She picked off the nearest Death Eater, and the rest began to retreat.
"If the People's Liberation Army ever need a face for their recruitment ads, don't settle for less than half a million," I told her. For some reason this seemed hysterically funny right then.
I leant out of an upper window, and with the others sprayed the last of my Uzi's 9mm rounds towards the surviving Death Eaters, then drew my pistol. Luna and I exchanged relieved grins; neither of us was dead yet.
"Very well," we heard Voldemort snarl. "I shall have to deal with you all myself." He pointed his wand at himself. "Multipla!" About a dozen Voldemorts appeared at on either side of the original, who broke out in maniacal laughter; definitely a Matrix fan. Snape sighed and shook his head, and put a round clean through a Voldemort's mouth, spraying blood and brain over the tarmac.
"That shut HIM up," Lily remarked, lighting the last Molotov. I took a shot, the Desert Eagle bucking like a rocket launcher as it hurled an eyeball-sized hollowpoint round through a Voldemort's chest cavity, which basically exploded.
The Voldemorts raised their wands in unison, but found themselves facing a dozen handguns, a sniper rifle and a petrol bomb. It was a short fight, but a brutally and messily efficient one. One Adava Kedavara hit the house, wrecking the brickwork, but that was about it.
A squad of very surprised Aurors turned up just as we began cheering and exchanging high fives. "Merlin! What the hell happened?" one of them exclaimed.
"Lateral thinking, time travel and lots and lots of guns, that's what happened," James replied cryptically, hauling a still-living Death Eater to his feet. "Well, well, Peter. Fancy meeting you here!" Wormtail was firmly bundled away, several wands against his head. Other Aurors began aplying memory charms to the neighbours, as well as clearing up the worst of the richochet marks and the blood left by the bodies, which were removed discretely.
"Come on," Snape told us. "We'd best get back to our own time before they start asking questions."
"And once we've done that," Lavender said firmly, "we are going to the pub!"
We landed in our own time, and spent the rest of our holiday in a normal fashion. We returned home by Floo Powder, so as to avoid unpleasantness with HM Customs and Excise about the machine guns.
"I think I prefer easyJet," I grumbled, brushing soot off my trousers. Everybody's parents, Harry's included, were waiting.
"Snape told us what he was planning," Molly explained. "Dumbledore has gone MAD!"
"I might have guessed he didn't authorise recruiting us," I laughed. "Can you let him know that we're back, entirely unwounded and well pleased with ourselves? Might calm him down some."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Dumbledore replied severely, striding into the room.
"Don't knock it, Albus," Arthur replied. "They did it, didn't they? Voldemort's dead, Lily and James are back, and the war's as good as over."
"And if you even contemplate giving Snape the sack..." James warned.
"I wasn't," Dumbledore replied. "What could I achieve? This whole lunatic venture is something of a fait accompli. No doubt you will be selling the story to the Daily Prophet within the next few hours," he added sourly.
"I was thinking of the Quibbler, actually," Harry replied, mindful of the Heckler & Koch USP handgun Luna still had in her pocket. Dumbledore had a better view of what happened than me. He waged an internal struggle for a moment, then gave in and began to laugh. I heard a click as Luna put the safety catch back on her sidearm.
"Crikey," I said to myself.
"It wasn't loaded," she hissed back. "Do you think I'm crazy?"
"From time to time."
We assembled on Platform 9.75 (can't remember how to get a three quarters symbol from Special Characters), and waited for the train. Draco earned amazed stares from his fellow Slytherins when he stood around next to Harry and Co, with no apparent emnity between them. Harry's younger sister Elisabeth, invariably known as Sally for obvious reasons, was cheerfully engaged in yakking into her mobile phone to her friend Amber.
"Look, I know he's got worse hair than my brother and he's about as sexy as Patrick Moore, but why dump him? I said PATRICK Moore! Look, if he's prepared to put up with all those damn great posters of Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood on your bedroom wall he's worth hanging on to, surely! Well, I agree with him on that. Of course Gordon Tracy's gay, just because you've got a thing for HIM, too... I bet he says that as well!" (Amber39 will now have guessed PRECISELY who she is referring to!)
Harry and I exchanged looks. The boy in question, a deeply nerdy aspiring writer with a passion for steam trains and retro shirts, had first come to Harry's attention whilst attending a family barbecue. He'd accidentally set fire to the fence separating the McCulloch family's garden from the Potter family's whilst attempting to get it lit, something I personally wouldn't have let him do, though fortunately everybody had seen the funny side.
Pansy Parkinson wandered past, with some rather Neanderthal-looking Slytherin on her arm. "Well, well," she sneered at Draco. "Gone down-market, haven't we?"
"Sod off, you pug-nosed tart!" Draco replied, to spontaneous applause from most of our year.
"You know something, Draco?" Ginny remarked as Pansy stormed off in a sulk. "You might want to think about asking to switch Houses."
"He's already an honourary Ravenclaw!" Luna pointed out. Fran chucked a Polo mint at her head. Ron sighed, and endeavoured to separate them, aided by Hermione.
//I love this lot,// I told myself. I'm astonished to say that I meant it.
Draco successfully transferred to Ravenclaw, and became the nice guy Lucius had tried to submerge beneath a layer of sarcasm, eugenics and general gittishness- is that a word? He was also responsible for the design of several t-shirts bearing the logo of what we call the Order of the Basilisk. It was the only heraldic creature we could think of that covered everybody's House. Mercifully, Flitwick -a Hufflepuff- declined membership, largely because there was no way we'd find an animal to represent all four Houses. Snape also declined to join.
Remus returned as DADA teacher (Snape had finally got sick of marking essays for two subjects), with his new American wife Amanda teaching Muggle Studies; I really, REALLY wish they'd called it something else, but oh well. Snape had apparently paid a visit to New York and been very rude about Remus, lycanthropy in general, and Americans. Amanda took great offence at this, though I wish the record to state that she has nothing whatsoever to do with the sachets of shampoo marked 'Use Me' that keep being pushed under his door. That's Sally, 'keeping up a family tradition', though if her father heard her say that he'd do a Molly Weasley.
Our families have forgiven everything except the drunken antics captured on tape, though if you listen to Tonks they were nothing to what my parents got up to at that age. I can neither confirm nor deny this.
There was a happy ending to the matter discussed by Sally and her friend by phone on Platform 9 3/4 (found it!), and the two of them are firmly back together. The current consensus is that he is Luna's male equivalent, though that's decidedly unflattering to Luna in my opinion. And he really, REALLY needs to get a haircut; he looks like the lead singer of A-Ha, as well as having the dress sense and social skills of Spud from Trainspotting. (Author- if you hadn't worked it out, it's me.)
The guns are kept under lock and key at Grimmauld Place, which Sirius has done up a treat. Owing to our buggering about with the space-time continuum he didn't die, and even succeeded in getting off with Madame Hooch. Just don't ask, okay?
I suspect we'll be needing the guns some day; the Dark Lord can't possibly be the last evil murdering bastard the magical word will ever see.
#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~#
In the next exciting installment...
Draco Malfoy, Lieutenant of Aurors First Class, read the report that had been handed to him in silence. //So, some bugger think's he can be the next Voldemort, hmmm?//
"Sergeant, ask Major Black if I can have a word with him at some stage. This needs nipping in the bud as soon as humanly possible, or it could get nasty."
"Sir!" The NCO saluted and exited. Draco glanced at the photograph on his desk, which showed twelve teenagers in Weasley sweaters holding a variety of guns. He had his arm around Ginny, and was giving a thumbs-up to the camera. It had been taken by Professor Snape, just before they went back in time to save Harry's parents and kill the Dark Lord.
Draco opened the drawer of his desk, and produced a pair of machine pistols. He began to clean one of them; he'd be needing them before the week was out, probably.
Major Sirius Black entered the office without knocking, as was his perogative as a senior officer. Draco shot to his feet and saluted. Sirius returned the salute with a terse, "As you were."
"You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?"
"I did, sir. This individual calling himself 'The Heir of Voldemort' needs to be dealt with, and soon. He could become the figurehead of a rejuvenated Dark Army if left alone." Black started.
"Where did you hear of this?" he demanded. "All word of that individual is classified!"
"The report was put on my desk, sir," Draco replied. "I assume it was supplied to me in error, and there was nothing to indicate it was a Top Secret document. I recieved it in good faith, sir, and I had no intent to violate regulations."
"Never mind," Black replied. "I was planning on getting you in to set up a team to eliminate this individual anyway."
Draco's eye strayed to the photograph. "I think I might have a team already set up, sir," he said thoughtfully.
Who is the Heir of Voldemort? Will he learn from his predecessor's mistakes and wear Kevlar? The Order of the Basilisk will just have to find out. Can Draco get all the old gang back together? Are they going to leave behind their homes and families and risk life and limb once more? Some of them have kids, after all.
Will Rick ever look good in Lycra? Of course not!
NB: The author would like to offer his sincerest apologies to his girlfriend for the unnecessary crack about her favourite Tracy brother, and would really appreciate it if she would put down that axe.
But I still reckon he's...
Further text was obscured by spatters of blood, and was irrecoverable.
We were having a quiet cup of tea and discussing possible ways to spend the evening when there was a flash of greenish-blue light and a small thunderclap, followed by a crash and a volley of cursing.
Snape and Flitwick sat up, brushing dust off their clothing. "Well, we know it works!" Flitwick said chirpily. It vaguely occurred to me that he looked and sounded almost exactly how I would have pictured the bastard offspring of Professor Branestawm and his housekeeper, whose surname he shared. Maybe he is.
"Yes, I can see that. But where, and more importantly, when have we ended up?"
"A dragon reserve in Romania, on the eighth of August 2004," I said helpfully. "Um, sir, what were you trying to do?"
"Ultimately," Flitwick said importantly, "we wanted to land in James Potter's front room a short while before you-know-who. Looks like we're getting closer, actually!"
"Yes, only sixteen years short and a couple of hundred miles off course!" Snape held out the revolver. "It is a great shame that you inherited your brains from your mother and not your father, Weasley," he said bitingly. Ah, that firearms interest of Arthur Weasley's. I thought he had the right idea with that.
"Have you compared their exam results lately, Severus?" Flitwick rejoined pointedly.
"It's a good idea, though," I said. "The Dark Lord might have spells on the go to protect him against every form of magic on the planet, but I'll bet he wouldn't think of wearing Kevlar!"
"Surely you aren't thinking of doing this alone, with only one revolver, sir?" said Harry. Surprisingly, Snape looked thoughtful for a moment, and then almost smiled.
"I shall happily accept volunteers, if only so that there will be that many fewer essays to mark next year."
"Count me in," Harry said firmly. "Seeing as you've been taking what my father did to you at school out on ME since my first year, I'd like a few words with him, as it happens!" He grinned in a mildly alarming way.
"Damned if I'm missing out on this!" I added. There was a rumble of assent from the others.
"Ron, can you get on the blower to Charlie?" I said. "We'll need his Mafia connections."
"What makes you think he's got any?" Ron demanded, anger flaring.
"This is Charlie we're talking about here, Ron," Ginny said with a laugh. "Of course he's going to have Mafia connections!"
"I don't actually," Charlie told us through the fireplace shortly thereafter. "I do know an address where you can get what you need, though..."
Ron hastily wrote it down. "We'd better get the next bus," he said, glancing at his watch.
"Come on then, folks," said Fran, "let's go buy some guns!"
"And whilst we do that," Snape told Flitwick, "YOU try and get us a little closer to our target. We're lucky we didn't end up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean!"
We made our way to a disused warehouse, and knocked on the door. A little barred hatch opened.
"Da?"
"We've come to do business," Snape explained.
"Buy, or sell?" the man on the other side asked in broken but intelligible English.
"Buy, and buy a lot." The door opened, to reveal an unremarkable-looking man in a cheap suit; the same man I'd been sitting next to on our flight. "Come," he instructed us. We followed him into a large room, solely furnished by a trestle table covered with a cloth. With great dramatic flourish, our new friend whipped the cloth away to reveal an impressive selection of arms, from .38 Specials (a toylike popgun of a revolver; you can THROW it farther than it'll shoot accurately) to AK47s- lots of AK47s, in fact.
"Choose," he said, grinning like the manager of Harrods when the doors open for the January Sales. We took quite a while to comply.
I went Israeli, for some reason; Uzi 9mm submachine gun and .357 Desert Eagle sidearm. The others mostly picked similar SMGs or AKs, with an ecclectic mix of pistols. Hermione and Fran both picked 12-gauge shotguns, barrels sawn short for added punch at close quarters at a cost of shorter range, apparently because: "Everything else just looks so PHALLIC, you know?" I didn't, frankly, but if it kept them happy...
Draco chose TWO Tec-9 machine pistols; you know the one you get if you do the Stage 1 Weapon Cheat on GTA: Vice City? If he could fire them both one handed then the best of luck to him, but I had to use both hands just to LIFT one with a full sized twenty round magazine, and I dreaded to think what the recoil would be like. Snape, with great deliberation, chose a beautifully made and finished bolt-action hunting rifle. He got Flitwick a small Makharow automatic, which was lightweight and easy to handle even though it's short ranged, mostly I think so Flitwick wouldn't feel left out.
Our dealer tapped the place where the magazine should fit in Cho's AK. "How much bullet?"
"Loads. We've got to practice a bit first," Hermione said briskly. She handed over a large bag of pooled Galleons, dollars and local currency. Our new friend looked at a Galleon askance.
"Gold," Snape explained.
"Gold? Da, is good." I wasn't surprised; this was hardly the sort of place that took American Express, was it? Apparently he was impressed enough to throw in a couple of boxes of paper targets.
"I'm glad he took our word for it," Fran remarked as we left, carying our purchases. "If he'd decided those Galleons were fake..."
"He looks like the sort who can tell fakes from about eighty paces," Cho replied. "If they HAD been fake, though, he'd probably have had us kneecapped."
"Poked us in the back of the knees with a shotgun and pulled the trigger," I explained, seeing Snape's blank expression. "A popular variation uses an electric drill instead." On that happy note, we went to spend several hours practicing with our new purchases.
Ron shredded the centre of his target with a five-round burst. "Gotcha!"
I grinned, and followed suit. Stonewalls school Time Crisis champion three years running! "You know, I reckon we're ready," I said to the others. As if to prove me right, a hole appeared in a nearby target, right over the tiny little X in the centre. Several hundred yards away, Snape emerged from beneath Harry's invisibility cloak; the best ghillie suit I'd ever seen.
Flitwick finished making adjustments, and called us over. "It ought to work this time," he told us, "but I can't promise our arrival being accurate to within less than about a square mile."
"Just so long as we don't come out a hundred feet in the air," I replied. "How does this work, then?"
"You just stand in the circle I've marked, and let me handle the rest. Give me another few moments to set up..."
Snape obligingly took the photograph of all of us in our Weasley sweaters, holding a variety of firearms and grinning wildly. Our parents were going to just LOVE that!
We stood in a circle, which seemed to be sprinkled with Floo Powder mixed with something else. He said a few spells, waved his wand, and threw a Time Turner into the air. It hovered there, spinning, and began to emit vivid blue light. Suddenly there was a BANG that knocked me off my feet, a brief sensation of being in about eight hundred places at once, and then...
Thump! I hit the ground hard, and got up painfully. //Okay, I'm in a field on the edge of... Ah, hell, I wouldn't know Great Houghton from Brigadoon!// I ducked through a gap in a hedge, and wandered through several anonymous side streets. I posessed my wand, Uzi and Desert Eagle plus ammunition for both, £3.47 and two Galleons and the clothes I stood up in. I was lost, half my money was dated after 1986, and I wasn't even too sure which part of the country I was in.
//What a way to spend my summer holidays!// I supposed I needn't worry too much about money; you'd be amazed at the discounts you're entitled to when you posess a fully automatic weapon.
"Rick!" somebody hissed. "Over here!" I turned, and saw Hermione crouching behind a car. I ducked down beside her.
"That house opposite us," she whispered. I just saw Harry's father." I looked carefully, and saw the man she was referring to at the window. The resemblance was striking, though the bag of frozen peas over one eye detracted from it somewhat.
"Looks like Snape got there before us," I laughed.
"Yep."
We cautiously moved in, one of us moving forward to the next bit of cover whilst the other kept a lookout, a method of advance known as protective overwatch; it's amazing how much you can learn about infantry tactics from SOCOM: US Navy SEALs on PC. We rang the doorbell, which played a tune which sounded suspiciously like the theme from Smokey and the Bandit, and were confronted with Harry's mother.
Lily Potter was confronted with two teenagers carrying guns, but magnificently failed to scream or call the police.
"Oh, you must be with Severus," she said pleasantly. "Come in."
"But why in hell did they get PETUNIA of all people?" a voice demanded. "Why not Sirius?"
"Everybody thought it was him who betrayed you to Voldemort," Harry explained patiently. "It was actually Peter Pettigrew."
"I might have known," James Potter growled. "I'll strangle that little rodent!"
"My cat already tried," Hermione said, putting her shotgun down. "He spent a couple of years being Ron Weasley's pet rat, you see."
"Good, he's found his true vocation!"
None of the others had arrived yet, so we gave them a quick breakdown of who was who.
"Blimey, I know Arthur fancied Molly for ages before they started going out, but SEVEN kids?" Lily shook her head.
"Not much to do round their house of an evening, I suppose," Harry replied. This was Molly's standard joke in the event of anybody commenting.
"Yeah, right. He'd spent about ten years trying to get off with her!" Lily said with a girlish giggle. "He'd got a hell of a lot of lost time to make up!"
Eventually, the others turned up, and we worked out some sort of plan. It wasn't particularly complicated, and basically involved everybody hiding near windows until Voldemort turned up and then letting him have it. Flitwick was banished to the attic, and told to set up a return time portal so that if all else failed we could just leg it.
* * *
With a crack, Voldemort apparated in front of the house. He paused, listening for sounds no normal human ear could detect. Where were they? Expecting the likes of Pettigrew to come up with useful information had been stretching credibility a bit. Hah, intelligence from Peter Pettigrew? Bit of a contradiction in terms, really.
There was an oiled snick as Snape drew back the bolt of his rifle, beneath the cloak and perched precariously on the roof. Voldemort looked up, and dived sideways as Snape fired.
"Well, well, well," he chuckled evilly. "I am almost impressed."
"You ain't seen nothing yet!" I yelled, popping up and taking aim. "Have some of THIS, you bastard!" Voldemort dodged at lightning speed, like Agent Smith in the Matrix (his people skills are about the same, too) as we let fly with everything we had. James and Lily contributed to the fight with a combination of some empty milk bottles, the handkerchiefs Petunia had sent her for Christmas and a large quantity of barbecue lighting fluid. Who says the Cruciacus is the nastiest way to die in the world?
"Right, then!" Voldemort called up about thirty Death Eaters, who began slinging Adava Kedavaras at the house.
"Suppressing fire!" Harry yelled to the others. We lay down a barrage of shots, forcing those who weren't hit to duck or run for their lives. They clustered behind nearby cars, leaving them vulnerable to a well thrown Molotov.
"Rush them, you idiots!" Voldemort yelled, blowing the front door down.
"Shit," I said to myself. "Fall back up the stairs, quickly!" Luna and I sprayed covering fire past the remains of the door as the others retreated, then ducked up there ourselves.
Cho vaulted the bannisters one-handed, Kalashnikov in her free hand, and booted the first Death Eater through the door out of it again. He didn't get back up; we later found out that she'd snapped his neck with a single kick to the face. James followed her, swinging an aluminium softball bat he'd used to play Beater in Quidditch. Harry and I weren't too far behind.
Harry isn't a big guy by any definition, but he's lightning fast, and blocked every punch or hex sent his way. Kickboxing hadn't visibly improved his muscle definition, but he broke one Death Eater's nose with the edge of his hand, then floored another with a roundhouse kick. This was turning into a melee, with no room for wand or gun. I dodged a wild swing from a Death Eater and climbed back up the stairs towards my Uzi. Cho followed, switching her AK to single fire as she went. She picked off the nearest Death Eater, and the rest began to retreat.
"If the People's Liberation Army ever need a face for their recruitment ads, don't settle for less than half a million," I told her. For some reason this seemed hysterically funny right then.
I leant out of an upper window, and with the others sprayed the last of my Uzi's 9mm rounds towards the surviving Death Eaters, then drew my pistol. Luna and I exchanged relieved grins; neither of us was dead yet.
"Very well," we heard Voldemort snarl. "I shall have to deal with you all myself." He pointed his wand at himself. "Multipla!" About a dozen Voldemorts appeared at on either side of the original, who broke out in maniacal laughter; definitely a Matrix fan. Snape sighed and shook his head, and put a round clean through a Voldemort's mouth, spraying blood and brain over the tarmac.
"That shut HIM up," Lily remarked, lighting the last Molotov. I took a shot, the Desert Eagle bucking like a rocket launcher as it hurled an eyeball-sized hollowpoint round through a Voldemort's chest cavity, which basically exploded.
The Voldemorts raised their wands in unison, but found themselves facing a dozen handguns, a sniper rifle and a petrol bomb. It was a short fight, but a brutally and messily efficient one. One Adava Kedavara hit the house, wrecking the brickwork, but that was about it.
A squad of very surprised Aurors turned up just as we began cheering and exchanging high fives. "Merlin! What the hell happened?" one of them exclaimed.
"Lateral thinking, time travel and lots and lots of guns, that's what happened," James replied cryptically, hauling a still-living Death Eater to his feet. "Well, well, Peter. Fancy meeting you here!" Wormtail was firmly bundled away, several wands against his head. Other Aurors began aplying memory charms to the neighbours, as well as clearing up the worst of the richochet marks and the blood left by the bodies, which were removed discretely.
"Come on," Snape told us. "We'd best get back to our own time before they start asking questions."
"And once we've done that," Lavender said firmly, "we are going to the pub!"
We landed in our own time, and spent the rest of our holiday in a normal fashion. We returned home by Floo Powder, so as to avoid unpleasantness with HM Customs and Excise about the machine guns.
"I think I prefer easyJet," I grumbled, brushing soot off my trousers. Everybody's parents, Harry's included, were waiting.
"Snape told us what he was planning," Molly explained. "Dumbledore has gone MAD!"
"I might have guessed he didn't authorise recruiting us," I laughed. "Can you let him know that we're back, entirely unwounded and well pleased with ourselves? Might calm him down some."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Dumbledore replied severely, striding into the room.
"Don't knock it, Albus," Arthur replied. "They did it, didn't they? Voldemort's dead, Lily and James are back, and the war's as good as over."
"And if you even contemplate giving Snape the sack..." James warned.
"I wasn't," Dumbledore replied. "What could I achieve? This whole lunatic venture is something of a fait accompli. No doubt you will be selling the story to the Daily Prophet within the next few hours," he added sourly.
"I was thinking of the Quibbler, actually," Harry replied, mindful of the Heckler & Koch USP handgun Luna still had in her pocket. Dumbledore had a better view of what happened than me. He waged an internal struggle for a moment, then gave in and began to laugh. I heard a click as Luna put the safety catch back on her sidearm.
"Crikey," I said to myself.
"It wasn't loaded," she hissed back. "Do you think I'm crazy?"
"From time to time."
We assembled on Platform 9.75 (can't remember how to get a three quarters symbol from Special Characters), and waited for the train. Draco earned amazed stares from his fellow Slytherins when he stood around next to Harry and Co, with no apparent emnity between them. Harry's younger sister Elisabeth, invariably known as Sally for obvious reasons, was cheerfully engaged in yakking into her mobile phone to her friend Amber.
"Look, I know he's got worse hair than my brother and he's about as sexy as Patrick Moore, but why dump him? I said PATRICK Moore! Look, if he's prepared to put up with all those damn great posters of Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood on your bedroom wall he's worth hanging on to, surely! Well, I agree with him on that. Of course Gordon Tracy's gay, just because you've got a thing for HIM, too... I bet he says that as well!" (Amber39 will now have guessed PRECISELY who she is referring to!)
Harry and I exchanged looks. The boy in question, a deeply nerdy aspiring writer with a passion for steam trains and retro shirts, had first come to Harry's attention whilst attending a family barbecue. He'd accidentally set fire to the fence separating the McCulloch family's garden from the Potter family's whilst attempting to get it lit, something I personally wouldn't have let him do, though fortunately everybody had seen the funny side.
Pansy Parkinson wandered past, with some rather Neanderthal-looking Slytherin on her arm. "Well, well," she sneered at Draco. "Gone down-market, haven't we?"
"Sod off, you pug-nosed tart!" Draco replied, to spontaneous applause from most of our year.
"You know something, Draco?" Ginny remarked as Pansy stormed off in a sulk. "You might want to think about asking to switch Houses."
"He's already an honourary Ravenclaw!" Luna pointed out. Fran chucked a Polo mint at her head. Ron sighed, and endeavoured to separate them, aided by Hermione.
//I love this lot,// I told myself. I'm astonished to say that I meant it.
Draco successfully transferred to Ravenclaw, and became the nice guy Lucius had tried to submerge beneath a layer of sarcasm, eugenics and general gittishness- is that a word? He was also responsible for the design of several t-shirts bearing the logo of what we call the Order of the Basilisk. It was the only heraldic creature we could think of that covered everybody's House. Mercifully, Flitwick -a Hufflepuff- declined membership, largely because there was no way we'd find an animal to represent all four Houses. Snape also declined to join.
Remus returned as DADA teacher (Snape had finally got sick of marking essays for two subjects), with his new American wife Amanda teaching Muggle Studies; I really, REALLY wish they'd called it something else, but oh well. Snape had apparently paid a visit to New York and been very rude about Remus, lycanthropy in general, and Americans. Amanda took great offence at this, though I wish the record to state that she has nothing whatsoever to do with the sachets of shampoo marked 'Use Me' that keep being pushed under his door. That's Sally, 'keeping up a family tradition', though if her father heard her say that he'd do a Molly Weasley.
Our families have forgiven everything except the drunken antics captured on tape, though if you listen to Tonks they were nothing to what my parents got up to at that age. I can neither confirm nor deny this.
There was a happy ending to the matter discussed by Sally and her friend by phone on Platform 9 3/4 (found it!), and the two of them are firmly back together. The current consensus is that he is Luna's male equivalent, though that's decidedly unflattering to Luna in my opinion. And he really, REALLY needs to get a haircut; he looks like the lead singer of A-Ha, as well as having the dress sense and social skills of Spud from Trainspotting. (Author- if you hadn't worked it out, it's me.)
The guns are kept under lock and key at Grimmauld Place, which Sirius has done up a treat. Owing to our buggering about with the space-time continuum he didn't die, and even succeeded in getting off with Madame Hooch. Just don't ask, okay?
I suspect we'll be needing the guns some day; the Dark Lord can't possibly be the last evil murdering bastard the magical word will ever see.
#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~#
In the next exciting installment...
Draco Malfoy, Lieutenant of Aurors First Class, read the report that had been handed to him in silence. //So, some bugger think's he can be the next Voldemort, hmmm?//
"Sergeant, ask Major Black if I can have a word with him at some stage. This needs nipping in the bud as soon as humanly possible, or it could get nasty."
"Sir!" The NCO saluted and exited. Draco glanced at the photograph on his desk, which showed twelve teenagers in Weasley sweaters holding a variety of guns. He had his arm around Ginny, and was giving a thumbs-up to the camera. It had been taken by Professor Snape, just before they went back in time to save Harry's parents and kill the Dark Lord.
Draco opened the drawer of his desk, and produced a pair of machine pistols. He began to clean one of them; he'd be needing them before the week was out, probably.
Major Sirius Black entered the office without knocking, as was his perogative as a senior officer. Draco shot to his feet and saluted. Sirius returned the salute with a terse, "As you were."
"You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?"
"I did, sir. This individual calling himself 'The Heir of Voldemort' needs to be dealt with, and soon. He could become the figurehead of a rejuvenated Dark Army if left alone." Black started.
"Where did you hear of this?" he demanded. "All word of that individual is classified!"
"The report was put on my desk, sir," Draco replied. "I assume it was supplied to me in error, and there was nothing to indicate it was a Top Secret document. I recieved it in good faith, sir, and I had no intent to violate regulations."
"Never mind," Black replied. "I was planning on getting you in to set up a team to eliminate this individual anyway."
Draco's eye strayed to the photograph. "I think I might have a team already set up, sir," he said thoughtfully.
Who is the Heir of Voldemort? Will he learn from his predecessor's mistakes and wear Kevlar? The Order of the Basilisk will just have to find out. Can Draco get all the old gang back together? Are they going to leave behind their homes and families and risk life and limb once more? Some of them have kids, after all.
Will Rick ever look good in Lycra? Of course not!
NB: The author would like to offer his sincerest apologies to his girlfriend for the unnecessary crack about her favourite Tracy brother, and would really appreciate it if she would put down that axe.
But I still reckon he's...
Further text was obscured by spatters of blood, and was irrecoverable.