Chapter 8
One morning I chase Ginny off to the sound of hammering and sawing. I go down into the basement, and see triple-decker bunk beds making a labyrinth, filling every spare square inch of space and then some. Military-surplus mattress, blanket, pillows. The doorbell rings and Voldemort passes me on the way to the stairs up. What is this, I ask him.
"What do you think" Voldemort asks.
Bunk beds. What do we need bunk beds for?
The front door opens, and standing on the front steps is a someone from Wizard Club, dressed in all-black robes, a cauldron stuffed with a bundle sitting on the porch in front of him.Voldemort looks at him for a half-second.
"Too young. Sorry", then turns and goes back in the house, shutting the door.
"If the applicant is too young, tell him he's too young. Old, too old. Fat, too fat."
Applicant?
"If the applicant can wait for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement, then he may enter and begin his training."
Training for what?
We tell him there's been a mistake, he should probably go home. We tell him he's trespassing and threaten to Transfigure him into a toad. Good Auror, Bad Auror. After three days the wizard is still standing there, and Big Ron is standing next to him, staring off into the distance with the same look of grim determination. Voldemort looks at the first wizard.
"You have two black robes? Two pair black pants? One pair black boots? Two pair black socks? One regulation black cauldron? Three hundred galleons personal burial money?"
Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir.
The wizard picks up his cauldron and goes in. Ron is still standing there. Voldemort looks at him, laughs. "You're too old, fat man. And your tits are too big. Get the fuck off my porch." Voldemort turns and comes back in the house, and Ron looks after him like a kicked puppy, and I can see the tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He picks up his cauldron and turns to leave, and on an impulse I dash after him. Ron, Ron, hold on.
Inside, Voldemort has shaved the head of the wizard, standing his black robes in front of a cracked mirror. Voldemort gives a sharp slap the back of his head. "Like an elf, ready to try the latest experimental potion. A house elf, ready to sacrifice for the greater good."
From one to two to many, Grimmauld Place was soon swarming with house elves. Raking, sweeping, scrubbing, cleaning, stirring, cooking, mixing, molding, brewing.
Why was Lord Voldemort building himself an army? To what purpose? For what greater good? In Voldemort we trusted.
One night I come home and Voldemort high-fives me.
What's all this for? I ask.
"We're celebrating", Voldemort says. Celebrating what?
"Check it out," he motions to the sitting room.
I come into the sitting room of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place one night to see a dozen house elves in their black robes, spattered in green paint and holding bottles of butterbeer. They're hunched around the radio, listening anxiously. The door to the closet, used as a darkroom, is sealed shut, and I can hear noises behind it.
One of the house elves is fiddling with the dial, and finally settles in on the voice of a reporter, live outside the Hogwarts Divination Tower.
"Headmaster Dumbledore has just arrived, Headmaster could you please tell us what you think has happened here?"
Dumbledore sounds frazzled, which is quite something for a wizard of his power and prestige. "We believe this is related to recent acts of wizard Muggle-baiting around the city, somehow related to underground duelling clubs. We are coordinating a rigorous investigation."
The door to the darkroom bursts open, and two house elves emerge, triumphantly holding a massive poster-sized photograph between them. Everyone leaps up to look, and there in smoking glory is the Divination Tower of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Smoke billows from two of the towers, forming the flaming eyes of a massive smiley face, capped with a professor's mortarboard, waving a wand. The moving photograph shows the effect of the magical paint, and the smiley face is grinning, waving it's wand, and winking at the photographer. The house elves erupt in cheering and laughter.
What the fuck is this? What the fuck did you guys do?
They all calm down, subdued. Ron says quietly, "The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is you do not ask questions, sir."
Dumbledore's Army? Why did you name yourself after the Headmaster of Hogwarts?
"The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is you do not ask questions, sir."
I turn and look at Voldemort, lounging in the kitchen. He doesn't look back at me.
THE BANQUET HALL DOESN'T NEED waiters, but it has them anyway, to give the impression of luxury and opulence. The real house elves, the ones scurrying around in the kitchens directly underneath the tables, remain unseen as they prepare the food and give it to us to take up to the diners above. When the magic of teleporting food is commonplace, the frivolity of hand-delivered food is a novelty.
Someone or other is being awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class, for who knows what. Dumbledore excuses himself to take a leak halfway through the fourth speech, and I nod at Ron who nods at the others, and we all quietly leave the banquet hall, depositing trays of lobster and fish in bins just inside the kitchen.
Ski masks over the head proide a simple and elegant disguise as we follow Dumbledore to the bathroom. He opens the door and is ambushed by Voldemort, who Stuns him, headbutts him, and drags him on his back down to the last stall on the left, as the rest of us swarm in after him, wands out and at the ready. Dumbledore is disarmed, then hit with another stunner, then a silencer, and then duct tape is placed over his mouth, sticking to the white hairs of his beard and moustache as we all crowd around him, staring down.
The other house elves pull his robes apart, down to his underwear, and snap a rubber band tight around his testicles. Dumbledore's normally calm and placid blue eyes are wide-open with fear and shock.
Voldemort leans down over him, filling his field of vision. He isn't wearing a ski mask.
"Hi. You're going to call off your 'rigorous investigation'. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or: These guys here are going to take your balls."
They smile and wave. One of them holds his wand up and mutters "Castriato". A bluish-white blade sprouts from the tip, a spell imported and adapted from the ones that Arabian Shieks used to make harem guards. Dumbledore's eyes grow wide with fear, and he shakes his head.
"We'll send one to the Daily Prophet, and one to the Quibbler, press-release style. Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we handle your owls, we drive your Knight Busses. We guard you while you sleep. Do not FUCK with us."
The house elf with the bluish-white wand snaps it down and around, and Dumbledore is screaming so loud it's almost audible through the duct tape and the silencer. The rubber band flips up and over, landing on the mountain of scraggly hair that is his beard. The house elf laughs.
"Fooled ya."
Leaving the banquet hall through a side exit, we all split up, going in different directions. Voldemort grins at a blond, snotty-looking house elf with pale skin and a widow's peak, slapping him on the back like they were buddies from Hogwarts. He ignores me as he and Blondie go in one direction, myself and Ron in another.
I am Harry's Inflamed Sense of Rejection.
Later, at Wizard Club, I fight Blondie. The blood roars, a dull echo in my ear. I unleash a dozen spells, one right after the other, with a fury I haven't felt in all my time in Wizard Club. Blondie reels back, the curses and jinxes interacting with each other in very unpleasant ways. He tries to raise his wand, but I cast expelliarmus and his wand flies into the crowd.
Expelliarmus isn't one of the Unforgiveables, but it's use is still forbidden in Wizard Club. The crowd goes silent as I continue my assault, hex after jinx after curse blasting Blondie full in the face. Slugs, blood, pus, sweat, spatter across the floor and the crowd as they silently close in on us. I come to my senses crouched over the gibbering, slobbering mess that was a wizard, wand clutched in my hand like a dagger.
Voldemort comes up behind me.
"Where'd you go Psycho Boy?"
I wanted to destroy something beautiful. I wanted to breathe smoke.
On the ground, the thing that was a wizard makes a gibbering sound, and tries to roll over.
"Get him to St. Mungo's," Voldemort says, and takes me by the arm. "We're going for a ride."
Above, out in the street, a car floats down from the skies and settles onto the ground in front of us. An older man with a thinning head of red hair slides out from behind the steering wheel. "From the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, Lord Voldemort. Use at your leisure."
Voldemort and I get in the front seat, two house elves slide into the back, and we are off through the air in a flying blue Ford Anglia above the streets of London, rain spattering on the windshield, the rainwater making fluid patterns of light on Voldemort's face and hands as he grips the steering wheel.
Voldemort kills the silence. "Something on your mind, dear?"
Why didn't you tell me about Dumbledore's Army? I ask.
"The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is that you do not ask questions", the two house elves in back recite.
"What are you talking about?" Voldemort asks me.
Why didn't you include me in the beginning?
"Wizard Club was the beginning, now it's out of the basements and it's Dumbledore's Army."
You and I started Wizard Club together, do you remember that? It's as much mine as it is yours, you know.
"Is this about you and me?"
I am Harry's Irritated Bile Ducts. Yeah, I thought we were doing this together.
"You're missing the point", Voldemort says as he turns the steering wheel and the flying Ford Anglia drops and swoops towards the ground, flying over city streets. Outside I can hear honks, yells, imagine the surprise of Muggles as they see a two-ton hunk of steel and metal flying through the air above them. "We are not special"
Fuck that. You should've told me.
Voldemort has driven down into the canyons of the London streets, swerving and diving and ducking and bobbing like a Seeker trying to avoid a bludger. He's not paying attention to where he's going, and a Knight Bus no not a Knight Bus a normal red Muggle double-decker bus blasts it's horn and swerves to one side as we nearly take the top deck off, Muggles screaming and shouting. I yell, and Voldemort jerks the steering wheel to one side, almost as an afterthought, and for another moment we're safe.
Goddamnit, Voldemort. God damn it. God damn it.
"What do you want?" Voldemort asks. "Should I send you an owl? Send you a carbon-layer parchment form in triplicate?"
I want to know--
"YOU decide YOUR level of involvement!" he yells.
I will, but first I want to know--
The house elves in the back seat interrupt me. "The First Rule of Dumbledore's Army is--"
Shut UP, I interrupt them right back. I want to know what you're thinking.
"Fuck what you know," Voldemort says. "You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you THINK you know. About life, about friendship, and especially about you and me."
What is that supposed to mean?
The Ford Anglia stops flying and is now skimming a few inches above the pavement so it may as well be driving down the highway, going the wrong way at eighty miles an hour in pitch black driving rain. Voldemort turns to the two house elves sitting in the back seat and asks them, what would you wish you'd have done before you died?
Paint a self-portrait, says one. Invent a new spell, says the other, and Voldemort looks at me and says what about you? I tell him I don't know, turn the wheel, there are headlights coming at us and Muggles thinking this is just a drunk driver, not a flying Ford Anglia with four wizards, no, two wizards and two house elves in it and honking to try and get us out of the wrong side of the road.
You have to know the answer to this question, Voldemort persists. If you died right now, how would you feel about life? I don't know, I tell him, I wouldn't feel anything good because I'd be dead, is that what you want to hear me say? But it's not good enough, I try to turn the wheel and Voldemort grips with both hands, tighter on the wheel and I wrench it to the side just in time to avoid a massive lorry drive by, splashing the Ford Anglia with rainwater and bellowing rage with an airhorn.
Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Fuck you. Fuck Wizard Club. Fuck Ginny. I'm sick of all your shit.
And Voldemort lets go of the steering wheel and we drift back into the oncoming lane.
Quit screwing around, I tell him. Take the wheel. He tells me I'm pathetic, I ask him what he's talking about. "Why do you think I blew up your closet?" he asks.
What?
"Hitting bottom is not a weekend-retreat. It's not a goddamned Hogsmeade visit. Stop trying to control everything and just let go!"
And I do.
All right.
Fine.
Fine.
The hovering flying Ford Anglia barrels on through the night until a stalled car on the side of the road comes out of nowhere, red lights blinking a warning too little too late. I keep my hands off the wheel and then we're plowing through the car, the undercarriage of the Anglia shearing off the top of the stalled car, followed by total thaumaturgical failure. All the enchantments break in a sizzling crackle of purple and green lightning and then the passenger compartment is flying through the air, turning barrelling, whirling, spinning.
The passenger compartment flies up end over end, then spins and does a full gainer with a twist into a ditch landing on the roof with a sickening crunch then rolls twice before stopping. Everything is suddenly silent again, the house elves in the back are twisted piles, except for Voldemort who is laughing and laughing and pulling me out the smashed side door of the Anglia into the rain.
"God-damn! Hahaha! We just had a near-life experience!"
The rainwater falls down on us, mixing with my tears and my spit and my sweat and my blood. I hear Voldemort laughing as everything goes black.