Chapter 3b

After three hours or so, when I had resorted to doing Quidditch exercises in the central aisle, an extremely grumpy Voldemort arrived and announced, "Fucking Nostradamus."

"What's that when it's at home?"

"Who? Nostradamus? A mean-spirited, sadistic arsehole. How I hate the bastard."

"What's he done?"

"He made a stupid prophecy," Voldie said, and suddenly raised his wand and blasted down the bookcases. They fell to the floor in rows like dominoes, books exploding outwards all across the library, and we just kind of stood there looking at them until he put them right with a snap of his wand and said, "Do you have any idea of the effect that kind of thing has on an eleven-year-old? The world is going to end in 1999, he said. 'And from the sky will come the great king of terror.' I read that in 1940. I spent every night praying that I would die before I was seventy-two. But I didn't and now look, it's fucking happening."

I stared at him is dismay and started slowly edging away, feeling only a sense of maudlin wonderment at the way everything managed to go wrong for me. Here I was stuck at the end of the world with an ingenious madman, and he couldn't even remember what frigging year it was. Brilliant. "What are you doing?" he barked, and I shouted, "IT'S NOT 1999, VOLDIE!"

He doubled up laughing, slapped his thighs, hooted for a while and then suddenly plucked me off the floor and spun me round a few times. While I was recovering from the shock of this he put me down, hugged me warmly and said "Ooooooooh, Harry. It's all so simple for you. I'm glad I've got you here."

"Right."

"You don't know how lucky you are," he said, sitting down on the floor and starting to cry. "But you're right, don't you see? He said July 1999, and it isn't July 1999! It's June 1997! So he got it WRONG!" he exulted, hurling his arms out like a scarecrow and laughing and crying at the same time.

Perhaps this sounds like an unbelievable wuss-out, but I was quite frightened. In my experience, a ranting Voldemort was generally A Very Bad Thing. A crying Voldemort seemed, if anything, worse. Still, it seemed I'd better do something, so I gritted my teeth and sat down next to him. I patted his back and said "Yes, that's right. Don't worry," privately sending a resentful complaint up to God. Or should that be Gods? Perhaps I should complain to the Hindu gods; there were a lot more of them, after all.

Anyway, in a sob-caesura I said "We should probably go back home now," and he said "Yes, yes, sorry," and stood up again.

"D'you want to ask that house-elf anything?" I said reluctantly. I didn't really want to stay here any longer in case he went bonkers again, but on the other hand, I really didn't want to go back to Wales and then come back again because he'd forgotten something. "At least she doesn't scream like Albert."

"True," he concurred fervently. "All right. D'you remember her name?"

"Er... Lakshmi Bhattacharya?"

"Yes?" the distant voice said from just above my head, accompanied by a crack that made Voldemort start violently and elbow me in the head. His elbows, if you recall, are extremely pointy. Through the tears and agony I heard him demand, "Do you have to pop up every time like a crumpet from a well-sprung toaster?"

"What is 'crumpet'?" Lakshmi said curiously.

"Harry is, but never mind that. If anything arises, I want to be able to get in touch with me..." and they debated the best method of achieving this and finally decided that Lakshmi should come back to Wales with us and have a look at the house; and accordingly I was Apparated mercilessly homewards and sent to draw water from the stream while Voldie and Lakshmi discussed Ministry politics in the kitchen. I hobbled into the garden and stared wonderingly into the stream as I sank the bucket; here I was, not only a lackey of Voldemort, but the house-elf of a house-elf. I'd known it would be difficult becoming an Auror or a professional Quidditch player, but never had I foreseen this as my future role in life. Trelawney would have been delighted, I thought as I withdrew the bucket, which intriguingly left a bucket-shaped hole in the stream.

I made tea for Voldemort and Lakshmi while he attempted to explain concepts such as atomic structure and chain reaction (most of which were news to me, since I'd never done high school science) and got it across to her that a war was quite important, so much so, indeed, that she might have to leave India, and even to temporarily desist completing the entire Ministry's unfinished paperwork. It appeared that even emancipated house-elves were workaholics. Voldemort generously offered to provide my catering services, but Lakshmi declined, saying she had to double-check the list of Squibs born in 1986 before filing it; so she vanished back to India and I made toasted sandwiches for me and the maniac. I expected him to provide conversation of some sort; instead, he gobbled down his butties with impressive speed and delicacy, leapt to his feet, clapped his hands and said "I'm off for a bath. You're all right on your own, aren't you?"

I blinked. "Yes, fine. – How are you going to have a bath?"

He looked at me as if I were wearing a turban made of bananas. "Walk into the bathroom, close the door, take my robes off, fill the bath..."

"How are you going to fill the bath if the taps don't work?" I interrupted.

"Aguamenti."

"Oh. Yeah. How are you going to drain the water away afterwards?"

"Evanesco," he said patiently.

"Oh. Good idea," I said, feeling silly, and he swept away on his enormously long legs, of which I was beginning to feel slightly envious. I couldn't sweep; I could only stump about in my jeans. I tied a tea towel round my waist and tried to sweep, but it didn't work. I got on with the washing-up and wondered what we would be doing with Albert the next day. My wonderings did not extend very far, because I knew almost nothing about anything except that we would be getting bombs out of a submarine called Trident. This gave me a feeling of vague irritation, which, as I dried the knives, finally condensed into a totally unfamiliar desire for intellectual pabulum.

"Voldo," I called, and listened. No response. I walked down the hallway and saw that the bathroom was empty; listening at his bedroom door, I was rewarded by a strong pong of seaweed bubble-bath, plus happy singing. I knocked on the door and he shouted, "Yes?"

"I still don't know anything about nuclear stuff."

"It's all right."

"I meant, can I read your books?"

"Which books?" his voice said immediately, perking up at the magic word; really, he was as bad as Hermione. A couple of seconds later he went sweeping into the dining area – yes, still sweeping, even though he was wearing a maroon terry-towelling dressing gown – and shouted, "There's no point in your wading through these. Small print, impenetrable terminology, no diagrams; even I find them boring. Here – " and my arms were suddenly laden with Unclear Physics: A Layman's Guide To Splitting The Atom and It's Not Nuclear Physics!... Oh, It Is: Nukes For Dummies. Then he found me a diagram of a Tornado plane and a photocopied political pamphlet dated 1984, and various things about cultural legacy and climatology and stuff like that, and soon there was this vast pile of books in front of me and I was sat there speechless while he rattled on about the poor quality of the German translation. Then he finally buggered off to polish his head and I was left to wade haplessly through this cataract of knowledge. Thanks, Voldie.

Actually, as I soon discovered, this was rather a good thing for him to have done. On reading the different books I quickly discovered that (a) they didn't agree with Voldemort, and (b) they didn't agree with each other. Some mentioned EMP and some didn't; some insisted the whole planet would be rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear war, while others reckoned the prognosis had been exaggerated; some referred to a nuclear arsenal as a "deterrent" and others said that was stupid. Well. That had made me a lot more confused than I was when I'd started. It also suggested that Voldie might be wrong. Wonderful.

Eventually he bounced back in and said eagerly "Well? What do you think?"

I've said it before, but I shall reiterate: the war had changed his personality completely. Not that that concerned me at the time; I was grappling with the horrors of climatology. Looking up from the book, I said with total incomprehension, "This bloke says there wouldn't be a nuclear winter."

"Really? Which one is it? If it's Unclear Physics then that's because it was published in the Seventies, dear."

"No, no, um, it's General Ripper's How We Will Win The War We Do Not Want."

"Oh. Him. Voldemort's Life Lessons No. 1," said Voldemort. "Soldiers make rubbish environmentalists."

"What are the rest of Voldemort's Life Lessons?" I said, intrigued.

"No. 2: looks aren't everything. No. 3: don't kill babies. Anything else?"

"Er, what's unilateral disarmy – armamy - "

"Oh, no, no, skip the politics."

"Right."

"No use to us now. Would have been useful," he admitted, "if I'd got my backside in gear; but I didn't. Mind you, neither did anybody else. People's fatalism when it comes to the end of the world is really astonishing. They seem to have decided to just leave the whole thing to chance... I would say everyone else made this mess and dumped us in it," he fumed, "but in fact I was just as idiotic as they were. Worse, in fact."

The conversation was taking a very depressing turn. I didn't want a self-flagellating Voldemort. I cast about for a way to change the subject.

"Could the magical world survive the blast?" I brooded. "Even if all the Muggles got killed?"

This, unbeknown to me, was the magic question.

"Could they," said Voldemort, brightening and clapping his hands together. "Could they. Aha, now there's an interesting question, boy. The answer is, they could survive it very easily if they (1) took Muggle weaponry seriously," he said, counting on his fingers, "(2) learnt a few basic facts about nuclear physics, and (3) cast the fairly elementary spells and wards needed to protect themselves from the various effects of the bomb, which would depend on where they were. So, tell me, Harry, could the magical world survive the blast?"

"No," I said promptly.

"Got it in one. Well done."

"What are the elementary spells and wards?" I wanted to know.

"Depends where you are, doesn't it? And the strength of the bomb. If they were very close to the hypocentre they'd be buggered, because the temperature might reach, say, fifty million degrees."

"Oh."

"Yep."

"Isn't there any charm that would work? A Flame-Freezing Charm?"

"...is effective against temperatures up to about thirty thousand degrees."

"But you could," I argued, and he gave me a pitying smile.

"Oh, Harry. If only I were as powerful as you seem to think I am."

I gurned and flicked him the V, and he sniggered.

"All right, a survival pack if you weren't near the hypocentre. A Shielding Charm would protect you from the blast, if it was strong enough. Impediment Jinx would work on shrapnel and suchlike; you'd need to turn it into a ward, of course. Bubble-Head Charm to keep a supply of oxygen. Flame-Freezing Charms and suchlike only work in an actual conflagration, so outside you'd need something to guard against thermal radiation. Then afterwards there would be fallout, so they'd have to cast anti-ionic radiation charms, which are exceedingly simple but would most likely be the biggest problem of the lot, because you need to understand a few basic facts about radiation in order to cast them; oh, and they're classed as Dark spells, naturally."

I nodded obediently for a while, then finally registered that last sentence and said "Er – why are anti-radiation spells considered Dark?"

"Because I invented them."

"You?"

"Who else?" he said.

"Can I ask you something? With all this stuff that you've done, why did you become a Dark Lord?"

He laughed for ages, until I got irritated and said "No, really! Why? Yeah, laugh, I'm glad you think it's funny."

"Enough of your impudence, boy."

"Well, why, though?"

He batted his eyelids at me, not having lashes, and said "Perhaps I wanted something to take my mind off radiophobia."

"You're doing all right at the moment."

"Yes," he said doubtfully, and a ripple of worry crossed the surface of his face; but then he shouted cheerfully, "Oh, what's the use of protecting the witzies? They don't understand the first thing about the risks or how to calculate them, so they would almost certainly cast the wrong spells anyway. They would all die from infra-red burns, or something equally ridiculous."

Really, he was such a miserable git. "How would you do it, then?" I challenged. "If you were in charge."

He looked at me with unexpected glee and said hopefully, "Are we playing Harry And Voldemort, The Ministers Of Magic?"

"Yes," I said firmly.

"Excellent!" he enthused, clapping his hands and Summoning a piece of paper and a quill, with which he drew a rough map of Britain. He headed this, "PROTECT AND SURVIVE (Magical version)".

"Right," he said. "We find someone intelligent with good literary skills..."

"Hermione," I put in.

"We get Hermione to draw public safety leaflets, and... is that the Muggle genius? These leaflets do have to be understandable to complete morons, you know."

"She's not a Muggle, she's Muggle-born. I'll get Ron to proofread," I decided. "They'll do it all right between them."

"Right. First we have to explain what a nuclear war is, because when they see the word 'war' they'll expect it to go on for six years."

"Oh. OK, 'All the Muggle cities will be destroyed within seconds'..."

"Within a millisecond of impact, actually, Harry."

"How long is a millisecond?"

"True. 'A massive explosion will destroy the Muggle cities within seconds. The effects of the explosion will remain deadly for at least a month.' So, anyone living in a city has to clear out immediately. I'll send Lucius to tell the Ministry to shift itself, there's no earthly reason why it should be in London, everyone Apparates or Floos there anyway..."

"Where do the evacuated people live? Hogsmeade?"

"They wouldn't fit," said Voldemort, who was happily scribbling out London, Manchester and Glasgow. "We'll just tell them to find a new place in the country. Take over Muggle houses. What? They're all going to die anyway! Oh, all right, we'll find them empty Muggle houses, all right? I'll send Wormtail to find them, the rats always know. Next, we have to shift St. Mungo's! I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided to put the hospital in bloody Central London, which is 100 certain to be the first place to be bombed in any war."

He drew in a new hospital in the Welsh Mountains, then sighed dispiritedly, "Now we have to try to explain to them what thermal radiation is."

I thought. "It makes you glow in the dark."

"Pardon? – That's ionising radiation, Potter. I'm on about thermal radiation. X-rays. Ultraviolet. Infra-red. Light! Well, admittedly, X-rays and gamma rays are ionising too, but..." Blah.

This went completely over my head apart from the bit about ultraviolet, which I was vaguely aware meant UV. "It gives you cancer."

"That's in small doses, Potter, over a long period of time. This would be a single huge dose, like incredibly powerful sunburn, since the exploding bomb is ten-to-the-power-of-sixteen times brighter than the sun."

"OK, say that."

"Oh. – It's all so simple for you, isn't it?"

"Well, you just said it!"

"Fine, fine. So, we have to find an impossibly patient person to tell the massed morons about thermal radiation..."

"Professor Lupin," I said.

"You must really hate him. All right, Professor Lupin explains that when a nuclear bomb explodes it gives off a very bright flash of light that can cause third-degree burns twenty miles away... well, probably more like seven or eight miles in this day and age, actually. Anyway, they must stay inside their houses with the shutters closed, unless they want their family members to ignite like flashbulbs." Voldemort drew a little Hogwarts in the Highlands and added the notation Lupin. "Then he teaches them an Invisibility Charm. Well. He teaches the adults, anyway. Can you cast one?"

"No, we haven't done that yet."

"Oh, sod," he sighed, picturing the entire younger generation going up in smoke.

"I've got an Invisibility Cloak anyway."

"Well, you can't hide the whole witzy population of Great Britain under it... Of course, provided we get everyone more than ten miles from the nearest town, we won't need anything anyway. I don't think it would hurt to show it to them, though, do you?"

"Er."

"Quite. So then poor Professor Lupin must teach it to our idiotic brethren."

"He won't mind. He's had worse jobs."

"Really? Anyway, he explains infra-red, he explains EMP... well, actually, he doesn't..."

"What's EMP?"

"Electro-Magnetic Pulse. We'll skip that. Witzies don't use electrical equipment anyway. Theoretically it might affect our ability to use magic, since magic interferes with electricity and vice versa and the EMP would be much greater than anything we'd experienced before. But I've no idea and there's no way of finding out, apart from having a war."

"Better not, then."

"Funnily enough, no."

"It seems odd that just when we'd need magic most, we might find out it had vanished."

Voldie showed all his teeth and said "I think you may have summed up every civil defence scheme ever. To quote that horrendous line from I forget where, 'Unforeseen effects of the war should be assumed to equal or exceed predicted effects'."

"Right."

"I love your face. Ha ha! You look as if you're revising for a three-hour Arithmancy test."

"I don't do Arithmancy."

"It shows. Never mind. Where were we?"

"EMP."

"Yes, yes, we skip that. All right, your teacher friend explains to the common fools about the blast, and tells them to strengthen their foundations and open their windows. – Do they understand bombs, d'you think?"

"They must do, cos they've got Dungbombs, haven't they? Hey," I said, experiencing a sudden revelation, "is it possible to stick a radiation charm in a hat?"

"In a hat! Ha! Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Fred and George Weasley do Shielding Hats! The Ministry buys them."

"Fred and George – would they own the pink flashing shop in Diagon Alley?" he said with an expression of the deepest distaste.

"That's them!" I said enthusiastically.

"Hm... we'll draw a veil over that. In any case, a Lead Shield Charm would work very badly, but a Röntgen Charm would be a handy thing to have in, oh, a wristband."

"Right, Fred and George make Ready Röntgen Wristbands," I decided.

"As long as they don't spell 'wristband' with an R."

"OK."

"And we could put little sirens in them that'll sound when the bomb drops. So, Lupin hands out wristbands and then tries to explain to them about ionising radiation... dear god, we've done all this planning and we haven't even got to radiation yet."

We both looked at the map. Voldemort decisively relocated Weasley's Wizard Wheezes to Hogsmeade, adding a note that read, Pink flashing wristbands.

"So, we have to tell them what radiation is."

"Invisible stuff that kills you," I suggested.

"I like your way with words, boy. All right, then we explain to them that the deadly rays can't penetrate a Shielding Charm to a two-inch lead equivalent. They understand solid things, don't they, boy? Lead, lead is dense, the invisible killer rays (and particles, but we'll skip that) can't get through two inches of lead... you think?"

"I'd go with that."

"So he teaches them how to cast a lead shield. – You can, can't you?"

"Er."

Protect And Survive (Magical version) was temporarily aborted while Voldie made me wave my wand and chant "Protego Plumbum". After a while a silvery Harry-shaped shield popped into existence, and he was satisfied.

"You're a good boy, Harry. You'll do all right. Are you going to learn some physics?"

"Er, I'd never really thought about it."

"I'd noticed. All right, Professor Lupin explains to them about radiation, and then... There's no need to warn them about the initial emission," he noted, "because everyone close enough to catch a dose would be incinerated. So it's the fallout they've got to watch out for."

"What is fallout?" I said, feeling stupid.

"Literally stuff that falls from the sky after the bombs drop. Rain, snow, soot, all of which are highly radioactive and have to be avoided for a month. Well, except for Wormtail, he can just turn into a rat. So they stay indoors for a month, existing on a stockpile of clean food and water... well, the Muggles always reckoned at least a month, but perhaps they were assuming it just wasn't feasible to stay underground for much longer... oh, well, anyway," he decided, chucking the pencil down, "that would keep the witzies alive until horrific climate change arrived, at which point we would all die except me; and frankly I think even I'd commit suicide at that point."

"Oh, well."

"Yes. We did a lot better than the Muggle government."

"Which built the bombs in the first place."

"There you go. I've never been terribly impressed with Muggle governments."

"Apart from insane dictators?"

"Potter, they all die."

That stymied me completely. Like most people, I thought of mortality as unfortunate, but I couldn't quite see how it could be considered a personal failing; the problem immediately arose that such a rule would render all life-forms, ever, to be failures. Except him; Voldemort: Flight From Death. Obsession could be taken no further.

"People do die, you know," I said. "Even Salazar Slytherin."

"Yes," he nodded, his expression suggesting that he considered himself a vast improvement on that inferior prototype.

000

I wouldn't say I had nightmares; not nightmares, quite. My dreams, however, were growing progressively more persistent; they were like deep water, very cold and black and wearying, and in the middle of the "night" I was woken up by something, someone, clutching at my arm and fingers scrabbling at my face. I was so exhausted and brain-dead that none of this made sense.

"Boy – I never thanked you, boy. I have to tell you, to let you know that you saved me."

My battery was completely flat. I let out a groan that sounded as if it came from a gearbox rather than a human.

"I would never have made it, Harry. I would never have managed to deal with the Eighties. I wasted all this time hating you. You forgive me, don't you, Harry? You forgive me?"

"Yes, yes," I said. I would have forgiven him anything just then as long as he'd let me get to sleep; hell, I would have forgiven him for murdering my own parents – hang on.

"It would have killed me. I'd be dead, boy, and I can't face it if this goes wrong and I never told you. You're a good boy, Harry."

By this time I'd vaguely figured out that he was gibbering about something, and I felt kind of sorry for him. I also felt vindictively delighted; embarrassed and uncomfortable; and totally unnerved. Even if Voldemort was weeping over you and begging your forgiveness, it wasn't pleasant to wake from a nightmare to find him clutching at your face. He looked like some kind of pervert.

The emotions initiated combat. Weariness triumphed. "Lord – Voldie – why don't you come in here with me and I'll keep you warm," I slurred, barely even aware of what I was saying. Ten seconds later I had a traumatised, shivering Voldemort in bed with me, but fortunately he had finally shut up. I think he said something else as well a minute or two later, but I'd already slid back into the void.