Chapter 6
ONE MORNING, THERE'S the dead jellyfish of a used condom floating in the toilet.
This is how Voldemort meets Ginny.
All night long, I dreamed I was humping Ginny Weasley. Ginny Weasley smoking her cigarette. Ginny Weasley rolling her eyes. I wake up alone in my own bed, and the door to Voldemort's room is closed. The door to Voldemort's room is never closed. All night, it was raining.
I've been living with Voldemort about a month.
I am Harry's White Knuckles.
How could Voldemort not fall for that. The night before last, Voldemort sat up alone, splicing sex organs into little Timmy's trolley ride.
How could I compete for Voldemort's attention.
I am Harry's Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection.
What's worse is this is all my fault. After I went to sleep last night, Voldemort tells me he came home from his shift as a banquet waiter, and Ginny called on the Floo network from the Gringott Hotel. This was it, Ginny said. The tunnel, the light leading her down the tunnel. The death experience was so cool, Ginny wanted me to hear her describe it as she lifted out of her body and floated up.
Ginny didn't know if her spirit could use Floo powder, but she wanted someone to at least hear her last breath. No, but no, Voldemort answers the fireplace and misunderstands the whole situation. They've never met so Voldemort thinks it's a bad thing that Ginny is about to die.
It's nothing of the kind.
This is none of Voldemort's business, but Voldemort calls the Aurors and Voldemort races over to the Gringott Hotel.
Now, according to the ancient Chinese custom we all learned from the Muggles, Voldemort is responsible for Ginny, forever, because Voldemort saved Ginny's life.
If I had only wasted a couple of minutes and gone over to watch Ginny die, then none of this would have happened.
Voldemort tells me how Ginny lives in room 8G, on the top floor of the Gringott Hotel, up eight flights of stairs and down a noisy hallway with canned wireless laughter coming through the doors. Every couple seconds an actress screams or actors die screaming in a rattle of curses. Voldemort gets to the end of the hallway and even before he knocks, a thin, buttermilk sallow arm slingshots out the door of room 8G, grabs his wrist, and yanks Voldemort inside.
I bury myself in a Witch's Digest.
Even as Ginny yanks Voldemort into her room, Voldemort can hear the popping and cracking of Disapparations out in front of the Gringott Hotel. On the dresser, there's a warm and slightly pulsing dildo made of the same soft pink plastic as a million Quidditch player models, and for a moment, Voldemort can picture millions of baby dolls and Viktor Krums and dildos injection-molded and coming out of the same assembly cauldron in Taiwan.
Ginny looks at Voldemort looking at her dildo, and she rolls her eyes and says, "Don't be afraid. It's not a threat to you."
Ginny shoves Voldemort back out into the hallway, and she says she's sorry, but he shouldn't have called the Aurors and that's probably the Aurors downstairs right now.
In the hallway, Ginny locks the door to 8G and shoves Voldemort toward the stairs. On the stairs, Voldemort and Ginny flatten against the wall as Aurors and Healers charge by with potions, asking which door will be 8G.
Ginny tells them the door at the end of the hall.
Ginny shouts to the Aurors that the girl who lives in 8G used to be a lovely charming girl, but the girl is a monster bitch monster. The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won't commit to anything. "Good luck trying to save her!" Ginny shouts.
The police pile up at the locked door to 8G, and Ginny and Voldemort hurry down to the lobby. Behind them, a policeman is yelling at the door:
"Let us help you! Miss Weasley, you have every reason to live! Just let us in, Ginny, and we can help you with your problems!"
Ginny and Voldemort rushed out into the street. Voldemort grabbed Ginny by the arm and prepared to Apparate with her, and high up on the eighth floor of the hotel, Voldemort could see shadows moving back and forth across the windows of Ginny's room.
Back in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, Ginny tells Voldemort he has to keep her up all night. If Ginny ever falls asleep, she'll die.
Long story short, now Ginny's out to ruin another part of my life. Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.
Fine.
Neat, I say.
Voldemort asks, is this a problem for me?
I am Harry's Clenching Bowels.
No, I say, it's fine.
Put a wand to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
Then one afternoon the fireplace activates and an Auror's scraggly face is projected into the embers and flames, staring out at me, asking if I have time to talk. One of his eyes is missing, replaced by a spinning blue orb that twirls around and around like a heavily greased ball bearing.
"I'm Inspector Moody, an Auror working with the Arson office. We have some new information about the "incident" at your former closet." His face crackles and sputters. We rarely use the Floo connection here, too much interference from the damaged thaumaturgical field. Even the talking head connection is straining the enchantments, and I tell Inspector Moody so. I wonder how long it'll hold.
"That's all right. This won't take long", he says. "I don't know if you're aware, but someone sprayed ice weasel venom into your front door lock, then tapped it with a silver chisel to shatter the cylinder without breaking the other enchantments."
No, I wasn't aware of that at all, I tell him.
I am Harry's cold sweat.
"Does that sound strange to you?" he asks, and I can see his blue eye stop swiveling and fix on me for a moment. I wonder if it works through the Floo connection.
Uh, yes sir, very strange, I tell him.
"The demon powder..."
Demon powder?
"...left a green and purple manachromatic residue on the surviving enchantments. Do you know what this means?"
No, what does this mean?
"It was homemade," he says. The other eye is swiveling around again. I am Harry's shocked silence.
"See, whoever set this homemade demon powder could've unstoppered the Floo network connection days before the actual explosion. The Conduction Gas was just a detonator."
Who could have done such a thing? I ask him.
"I'll ask the questions," he growls at me. His embery, ashy face begins to sputter out. I think the mana field is starting to give. There's movement in the corner of my eye, and I look up to see Voldemort, dancing around naked except for a ratty pair of sweatpants and an old wizard's hat, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, waving his wand around. I can see him, but Inspector Moody can't. Words start streaming out of Voldemort's wand as he waves it around.
Tell him...
"Are you paying attention, sonny?" Moody barks. I look him in the eyes as best I can, watching Voldemort spinning words into the air out of the corner of my eye.
Tell him the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my paradigm of perception floats out of the kitchen and over the fireplace, over the burning head of Inspector Moody.
Inspector, it's just a little hard to know what to make of all this, I say, ignoring the words floating above Moody's head.
"Have you recently made enemies with any wizards who might have access to homemade Demon Powder?"
Enemies?
More words float out of the kitchen. I reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possession!
"Son, this is serious" Moody growls. I know it's serious, I tell him. "I mean that", he says.
The embers are beginning to fall in on themselves. The magic is starting to fade, and I trust that he can see me about as well as I can see him. I get down on my knees in front of the fireplace, and scrunch up my face.
Yes, it's VERY serious, I tell him. Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me. That closet was my LIFE! Okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME! Okay?!
Inspector Moody makes a sour face. "Is this not a good time?"
Voldemort shoots more words stream out of the kitchen. Tell him you fucking did it! I try to ignore them, and more words come flying out, crashing into the others and mashing up against each other. Tell him you blew it up! That's what he wants to hear!
The face of Moody has almost collapsed the Floo connection almost dead. "Are you still there?" he asks. I frown at his ashen face, the flickering eye moving around in its one socket.
Are you saying I'm a suspect? Moody laughs a short, insincere laugh.
"No, no. I may just have to talk to you a little further. How about you let me know if you leave town, okay?"
Okay.
And then the connection finally dies completely, Moody's misshapen head collapsing into a misshapen lump of ashes and coal and cinders spilling out onto the dirty sitting-room floor.
MY BOSS SENDS me home because of all the dried blood on my robes, and I am overjoyed.
The hole punched through my cheek doesn't ever heal. I'm going to work, and my punched-out eye sockets are two swollen-up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little OWL thing. I write little HAIKU things and OWL them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.
Muggles flip a switch
Wizards need spells and potions
Enslaved to the wand.
What are we doing tonight, I ask Voldemort.
"Tonight we make soap. To make soap, first we render fat."
Voldemort and I are ducking and running and dodging the back of a massive building somewhere deep in London. I'm not sure if it's in the wizard district, and Voldemort isn't volunteering the information. "The salt balance has to be just right, so the best fat for making soap comes from humans."
Wait. Where are we?
"A liposuction clinic."
Growing up Muggle, you learn about these things that Muggles do to themselves so they can make themselves prettier. I throw up in my mouth a little and back at number twelve, Grimmauld Place the whole house is filling with the sick acrid stench of human material being processed into spell components. Not technically illegal, but not on the up-and-up, either.
Voldemort has a half-dozen cauldrons going at once, picked up secondhand from the used wizarding equipment store off Diagon Alley. Flakes of rust, odd mark their reasons for being retired or sold. Voldemort doesn't mind.
"This is a nonmagical process," he says. "Purely Muggle. It's good to know Muggle tricks."
This is about Ginny isn't it?
"Don't ever talk to her about me. Don't talk about me behind my back. Do you promise?" Voldemort says.
I promise.
Voldemort says, "If you ever mention me to her, you'll never see me again."
I promise.
"Promise?"
I promise.
Voldemort says, "Now remember, that was three times that you promised."
A layer of something thick and clear is collecting on top of the fat rendering in the cauldron.
"Don't worry," Voldemort says. "The clear layer is glycerin. You can mix the glycerin back in when you make soap. Or, you can skim the glycerin off."
Voldemort licks his lips, and turns my hands palm-down on his thigh, on the gummy flannel lap of his bathrobe.
"You can mix the glycerin with gillyweed to make demon powder," Voldemort says.
I breathe with my mouth open and say, demon powder.
He grabs his wand and mutters some incantation, then holds it like a quill and draws something on my forearm. I look down at it as he gets up. A flaming skull, with a serpent coming out through the mouth, a fanged tongue. The thick ink shines in the firelight.
"You can mix the demon powder nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite," Voldemort says.
The ink shines wet on the back of my white hand.
Dynamite, I say, and sit back on my heels.
Voldemort pries the lid off the can of newt's blood. "You can blow up bridges," Voldemort says.
"You can mix the nitroglycerin with more nitric acid and beeswax and make gelatin explosives," Voldemort says.
"You could blow up a building, easy," Voldemort says.
Voldemort tilts the can of newt's blood an inch above the shining wet kiss on the back of my hand.
"This is a chemical burn," Voldemort says, "and it will hurt worse than you've ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes."
The skull shines on the back of my hand.
"You'll have a scar," Voldemort says.
"With enough soap," Voldemort says, "you could blow up the whole world. Now remember your promise."
And Voldemort pours the newt's blood.