Chapter 2
September 18:
These last two days have really been a comedy of errors, and today the comedy nearly became a tragedy. When the others were finally able to wake me up yesterday, we put our heads together to figure what to do. The first thing, we all agreed, was to arm ourselves and then to find a better hideout.
Our unit - that is, the four of us - rented this old dusty cottage under a false name nearly six months ago, just to have it available when we needed it. (We just beat the new law which requires a landlord to furnish the Ministry with the Full Adult Wizard Number of every new tenant, just like when a person opens an account at Gringots.) Because we've stayed away from the apartment until now, I'm sure the Ministry hasn't connected any of us with this address.
But it's too small for all of us to live here for any length of time, and it doesn't offer enough privacy from the neighbors. We were too anxious to save gold when we picked this place.
Gold is our main problem now. We thought to stock this place with food, medicine, tools, spare clothing, maps - even a broomstick - but we forgot about money. Two days ago, when the word came that they were starting the arrests again, we had no chance to withdraw money from Gringots; it was too early in the morning. Now our accounts are surely frozen.
So we have only the cash that was in our pockets at the time: a little over 14 galleons altogether.
And no transportation except for a dusty broom which had all but lost its magic. According to plan, we had all abandoned our personal brooms, since the Ministry would be looking for them.
Yesterday Ron, who is our contact with Unit 9, took the dusty broom and flew over to talk to them about the situation. They're a little better off than we are, but not much. The six of them have about 80 galleons, but they're crowded into a hole in the wall which is even less satisfactory than ours, according to Ron.
They do have four flying carpets, imported straight from Saudi Arabia and a fair number of house elves. Seamus Finnegan, who is with them, made some very convincing counterfeit ID plaques for everyone with a broom in his unit. We should have done the same, but it's too late now.
They offered Ron one 1978 Nimbus Gremlin and 10 galleons, which he gratefully accepted. They didn't want to let go of any of their house elves, though.
That still left us with no money to rent another place, and no house elf to send back to our wand cache. We didn't even have enough money to buy a week's groceries when our food stock ran out, and that would be in about another four days.
The network will be established in ten days, but until then we are on our own. Furthermore, when our unit joins the network it is expected to have already solved its supply problems and be ready to go into action in concert with the other units.
If we had more money we could solve all our problems, including the house elf problem. House elves are always available on the black market, of course - at nearly twice what it costs at the harbor.
We stewed over our situation until this afternoon. Then, desperate not to waste any more time, we finally decided to go out and take some money. Hermione and I were stuck with the chore, since we couldn't afford for Ron to get arrested again. He's the only one who knows the network code.
We had Snape do a pretty good polyjuice job on us first. For once the bastard proved useful.
My inclination was just to walk into the first liquor store we came to, knock the manager on the head with a brick, and scoop up the money from the cash register.
Hermione wouldn't go along with that, though. She said we couldn't use means which contradicted our ends. If we begin preying on the public to support ourselves, we will be viewed as a gang of common criminals, regardless of how lofty our aims are. Worse, we will eventually begin to think of ourselves the same way.
Hermione looks at everything in terms of our ideology. If something doesn't fit, she'll have nothing to do with it.
In a way this may seem impractical, but I think maybe she's right. Only by making our beliefs into a living faith which guides us from day to day can we maintain the moral strength to overcome the obstacles and hardships which lie ahead.
Anyway, she convinced me that if we are going to rob liquor stores we have to do it in a socially conscious way. If we are going to cave in people's heads with bricks, they must be people who deserve it.
By comparing the liquor store listings in the Wizard Directory with a list of supporting members of the Ministry of Magic Wizard Relations Council which had been filched for us by the girl we sent over there to do volunteer work for them, we finally settled on Dredgit Liquors and Wines, Dredgit the Drunken, proprietor.
There were no bricks handy, so we equipped ourselves with blackjacks consisting of good - sized bars of Salamanker's Sudswirls Soap inside long, strong ski socks. Hermione also tucked a sheath knife into her belt.
We parked about a block and a half from Dredgit's Liquors, around the corner. When we went in there were no customers in the store. A Dementor (good for business, if you're selling booze) was at the cash register, tending the store.
Hermione asked him for a bottle of vodka on a high shelf behind the counter. When he turned around I let him have it at the base of the skull with my "Sudswirls special." He dropped silently to the floor and remained motionless.
"Hey, Hermione," I asked, "did you know that you can fell Dementors with Salamanker's soap?"
Hermione sighed exasperatedly. "Obviously it's because of the patronus essence that they mix into it."
"Does that do anything? I mean, like for soap?" I asked.
"Of course not. It's a marketing gimmick."
"By the Goblins of course." I added.
Hermione nodded solemnly and calmly emptied the cash register and a cigar box under the counter which held the larger denominations. We walked out and headed for the broom. We had gotten a little over 165 galleons. It had been surprisingly easy.
Three stores down Hermione suddenly stopped and pointed out the sign on the door: "Dredgit's Deli." Without a moment's hesitation she pushed open the door and walked in. Spurred on by a sudden, reckless impulse I followed her instead of trying to stop her.
Dredgit the Drunken himself was behind the counter, at the back. Hermione lured him out by asking the price of an item near the front of the store which Dredgit couldn't see clearly from behind the counter.
As he passed me, I let him have it in the back of the head as hard as I could. I felt the bar of Salamanker's shatter from the force of the blow.
Dredgit went down yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he started crawling rapidly toward the back of the store, screaming in Gobbledegook, loud enough to wake the dead. I was completely unnerved by the racket and stood frozen.
Not Hermione though. She leaped onto the goblin's back, seized him by the hair, and cut his throat from one pointy ear to the other in one, swift motion.
The silence lasted about one second. Then a fat, grotesque looking goblin woman of about 160 - probably Dredgit's wife - came charging out of the back room waving a meat cleaver and emitting an ear-piercing shriek.
Hermione let fly at her with a large box of chocolate frogs and scored a direct hit. She went down in a spray of chocolate and blood.
Hermione then cleaned out the cash register, looked for another cigar box under the counter, found it, and scooped the coins out.
I snapped out of my trance and followed Hermione out the front door as the fat woman started shrieking again. Hermione had to hold me by the arm to keep me from running down the sidewalk.
It didn't take us but about 15 seconds to walk back to the broom, but it seemed more like 15 minutes. I was terrified. It was more than an hour before I had stopped shaking and gotten enough of a grip on myself to talk without stuttering. Some terrorist!
Altogether we got 295 galleons, 13 sickles and 26 knuts - enough to buy groceries for the four of us for more than two months. But one thing was decided then and there: Hermione will have to be the one to rob any more liquor stores. I don't have the nerves for it - although I had thought I was doing all right until Dredgit started yelling.
September 19: Looking back over what I've written, it's hard to believe these things have really happened. Until the Wand Raids two years ago, my life was about as normal as anyone's can be in these times.
Even after I was arrested and lost my scholarship at Hogwarts, I was still able to live pretty much like everyone else by doing consulting for Fred and George. The only thing out of the ordinary about my lifestyle was my work for the Order.
Now everything is chaotic and uncertain. When I think about the future I become depressed. It's impossible to know what will happen, but it's certain that I'll never be able to go back to the quiet, orderly kind of life I had before.
Looks like what I'm writing is the beginning of a diary. Perhaps it will help me to write down what's happened and what my thoughts are each day. Maybe it will add some focus to things, some order, and make it easier for me to keep a grip on myself and become reconciled to this new way of life.
It's funny how all the excitement I felt the first night here is gone. All I feel now is apprehension. Maybe the change of scenery tomorrow will improve my outlook. Hermione and I will be flying to get our wands, while Ron and Snape try to find us a more suitable place to live.
As rationing has increased during the last few years, so has petty corruption of every sort. I guess a lot of the large-scale graft in the Ministry which the Fudge incident revealed a few years back has finally filtered down to the man in the street. When people began realizing that the big-shot politicians were crooked, they were more inclined to try to cheat Lord Voldemort a little themselves. All the new rationing red tape has just exacerbated the tendency-as has the growing percentage of Dementors in every level of the bureaucracy.
The Order has been one of the main critics of this corruption, but I can now see that it gives us an important advantage. If everybody obeyed the law and did everything by the book, it would be nearly impossible for an underground group to exist.
Not only would we not be able to buy house elves, but a thousand other bureaucratic obstacles with which Lord Voldemort increasingly hems the lives of our fellow citizens would be insurmountable for us. As it is, a bribe to a local official here or a few knuts under the counter to a clerk or secretary there will allow us to get around many of the Ministry regulations which would otherwise trip us up.
Looking at it philosophically, one can't avoid the conclusion that it is corruption, not tyranny, which leads to the overthrow of governments. A strong and vigorous government, no matter how oppressive, usually need not fear revolution. But a corrupt, inefficient, decadent government - even a benevolent one - is always ripe for revolution. The system we are fighting is both corrupt and oppressive, and we should be thankful for the corruption.
The silence about us in the newspapers is worrisome. The Dredgit thing the other day wasn't connected to us, of course, and it was given only a paragraph in today's Prophet. Robberies of that sort - even where there is killing involved - are so common these days that they merit no more attention than a traffic accident.
But the fact that the Ministry launched a massive roundup of known Order members last Wednesday and that nearly all of us, more than 2,000 persons, have managed to slip through their fingers and drop out of sight - why isn't that in the papers? The news media are collaborating closely with the Ministy, of course, but what is their strategy against us?
There was one small article on a back page of yesterday's paper mentioning the arrest of nine "racists" in London and four in Edinburgh on Wednesday. The article said that all 13 who were arrested were members of the same organization - evidently ours - but no further details were given. Curious!
Are they keeping quiet about the failure of the roundup so as not to embarrass the Ministry? That's not like them.
Probably, they're a little paranoid about the ease with which we evaded the roundup. They may have fears that some substantial portion of the public is in sympathy with us and is aiding us, and they don't want to say anything that will give encouragement to our sympathizers.
We must be careful that this false appearance of "business as usual" doesn't mislead us into relaxing our vigilance. We can be sure that the Ministry is in a crash program to find us. It will be a relief when the network is established and we can once again receive regular reports from our informants as to just what the rascals are up to.
Meanwhile, our security rests primarily in our changed appearances and identities. We've all changed our hair styles and either dyed or bleached our hair. I've begun wearing new glasses with heavy frames instead of my old round ones, and Snape has switched from his contact lenses to glasses. Hermione has undergone the most radical transformation, by drinking polyjuice potion. And we all have pretty convincing fake broom licenses, although they won't stand up if they are ever checked against Ministry records.
Whenever any of us has to do something like the robberies last week, Snape can do a quick-change job and temporarily give him a third identity.
Tomorrow will be a long, hard day.
