Chapter 4: A Comedy In A Foreign Language

In the morning I woke suddenly and decisively. I knew that I had fallen asleep with Voldemort and that he had crept quietly off to his own room some hours later, although I wasn't sure precisely how I knew that; and I was entirely alert and furiously angry. I jumped out of bed, feeling that I had to do something or I would start punching walls. I went outside.

The garden was serene and beautiful. Leaning against the house was a little shack full of big fat logs. Next to that was a nice sharp axe. I grabbed the axe and started chopping the logs into smaller and smaller pieces.

After about half an hour I admitted to myself that I wasn't angry. I was afraid. I couldn't kill Voldemort, I realised; I couldn't kill him because he didn't exist any more. He had vanished and been replaced by his wibbling, radiophobic identical twin, and not only did it seem rather unfair to kill such a pathetic creature, but I needed him to save the world.

Now I was scared that I would start to like him. I was really pretty good at liking people. Case in point: Sirius; I'd begged to move in with him about ten minutes after finding out he wasn't really a mass murderer. So now, if the unthinkable occurred and I changed my mind about Voldemort...

I gave one last savage, frightened chop, then laid down the axe and looked around me. Countless chips of wood were poised, immobile, in mid-air, having flown just beyond the perimeter of my personal time-bubble. I walked up to them, and they fell to the ground. I looked at my shadow; it reached only as far as the thorax and then petered out.

Perhaps there was no point in killing Voldemort, I thought dispiritedly. This world we were in was only half real anyway.

000

"Have you finished chopping enough kindling to last us the next six months?" a pile of huge books asked in a preoccupied tone as I entered the kitchen. "If you remember, I said I'd show Albert round Faslane once he's finished searching various Ministries for animate people."

"Where's Faslane?" I said wearily, bracing myself for the news that it was in Australia.

"North-west of Glasgow."

"Oh," I said, surprised.

"We won't need anything. Well, except plans of the subs, that is, and I've got those... Hell, it won't even be all that cold. Usually a terrible wind off the sea up there."

"Have you been there before?"

"Loads of times."

"Right," I said, feeling otherwise somewhat speechless. "I'll make us some toast."

Atom And The Ants: The Bombs That Dwarf Humankind lowered itself just enough to ask hopefully, "Can I have porridge? Salted porridge."

"Don't be disgusting."

"If we're going there I'll need more than toast."

"Well, you're not having that stuff. Cook it yourself."

"That's the point. I can't!"

"Well, I won't!"

We argued away, and he sulked horribly while eating cornflakes, then donned a purple woolly scarf and matching mittens and Apparated to Scotland. This was much less traumatic than going to India; also, obviously, much colder. We appeared on another endless stretch of concrete, this one framed between green fells, aggressively hideous government buildings and twinkling sea. I looked around with great interest. This was the first time I had ever been to the seaside; and to be honest, considering the state of the average British beach, it was probably a much more enjoyable experience than Cleethorpes or Skegness. There wasn't much of a smell, although I did detect the whiff of salt on the air, and the seagulls, plus droppings, were frozen in mid-air; but it was still the sea and I was happy.

Voldemort looked around, shivered and tightened his scarf. I didn't know why; I thought the place was quite nice. Well, as nuclear bases go.

"Well," he said after casting a few non-verbal, glowing spells, "Albert's not here yet, which is typical. Shall we walk up and down the harbour?"

"We could play I Spy."

"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with D," said Voldemort.

"Doomsday," I said immediately.

"Idiot. You can't see Doomsday! I was thinking of the docks."

"Oh. That's not very depressing, for you."

"I was TRYING to be CHEERFUL!" he shouted, marching off along the harbour.

"You were doing really well, well done. – Why is the submarine still in dock?" I said with a feeling of woolly perplexity as I ran to catch up with him.

"Because Ploughshare bashed it to pieces," said Voldemort, and he suddenly stopped looking sulky and started cackling again.

"What are Ploughshare?"

"Lesbian hippies who smash up ordnance. It's because of that line in the Bible, I forget which chapter and verse, 'and thou shalt beat swords into ploughshares'. They take it quite literally." More cackling. "It's not fair to call them hippies, really. What do they call them now, boy? Crusties?"

"Er," I said, dodging an airborne seagull turd, which fell to the concrete with a plop. (Since I spent ten months of the year in a magical boarding school, I was not terribly cognisant with contemporary musical movements.)

"Well, they're the only people who've done anything useful so far, anyway. Just think, all that peace and love stuff... I much prefer the kind of peace and love that involves rampant vandalism, don't you?"

"I thought you would," I concurred. "Can the sub fire its missiles if it's in dock?"

"Don't know. They might have damaged other bits of it as well. Or the navy might have disarmed it while it was being repaired... That was a very sensible question, by the way. Are you sure you feel all right?"

"Eff off," I was just starting to say when Albert appeared a foot in front of me with a quiet pop and I barged straight into him. We both stood poised in mid-air for a moment, arms flailing, then fell over in slow motion and crashed onto the concrete. There followed a long session of separating my limbs from Albert's, during which Voldie stood next to us doing nothing to help and laughing so heartily he was practically doubled over. I reflected that, had I met him only two minutes ago, this quintessence of Voldemoric behaviour would still have left me with an excellent grasp of his character.

"Well, that was very funny," he said at last when we'd disengaged ourselves. "But I suppose we'd better get down to business now. All right, Albert?"

"I am quaite well, thank you," Albert said with colossal dignity, despite the fact that he was wearing an enormous fake-fur coat and looked like a polar bear. It matched his crinkly white hair. "How is yeur research progressing?"

"Very well, thanks," Voldemort lied. "What did all the people in China say about me?"

"That they would laike to kill yeu."

Over Albert's shoulder I saw that Ploughshare had graffitied some of the buildings; a skull leered at me like the Dark Mark. Clear capitals underneath read, NO TO NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST! NO TO DEATH.

Well. That set the tone very nicely. We walked in silence down an incredibly long dock... road... thing that seemed to get longer and longer as we advanced. Vast cranes loomed over the glinting sea like herons waiting to snap us up with their giant beaks.

WAR SUICIDE, read the graffiti this time.

Then – there is no really way to put this – I was confronted by a horribly ugly grey machine rearing its sinister head out of the water. If asked previously, I would have said I had no particular preconceptions about submarines; upon actually seeing one I discovered a reservoir of deep antipathy towards what was essentially a machine for killing people. Films about World War II scrolled through my head. Über Periskop; Ünter Periskop. I no longer considered Faslane quite nice as nuclear bases go. I waited for Voldie to collapse in a heap, but he just walked straight on past; and we went past the little (little!) grey Dutch subs and all the way to the black creature hanging from the cranes, dead, like a corpse in a gibbet.

"Heo," Albert said when he saw which way we were heading. "So they've got it eout of the drink? Well. Doesn't make a great deal of difference."

"No, it doesn't," Voldemort said with ominous calm, nestling into his scarf. "Because I am not going inside it, no matter what."

"What?!"

"What?!" demanded Voldie.

"Well, if yeu won't go inside it, then yeu can't – !"

Voldie ignored him completely, raised his wand and drew the complex neon lights that rendered the side of the sub transparent. Albert wisely shut up during this sequence to avoid causing some kind of horrible invisibility-related accident, but as soon as the procedure was complete he burst out, "YEU'RE SEU BLOODY NEUROTIC. YEU'D WALK FAIV MAILS TO AVOID GEUING UNDER A LEDDER. AND WHEN ALL THIS IS AT STAKE. YEU'RE QUAITE INSANE."

Voldemort shouted a lot of things back at him (e.g. "YOU'RE SUCH A BITCH. YOU KNOW I'VE GOT CLAUSTROPHOBIA"), but he didn't Crucio him or anything, so I just studied the inside of the sub. This was frankly dismaying: there were a million little offices inside, all of which looked like the inside of a waste paper basket. I hoped it was just the Ploughshare sortie that had caused this effect, but suspected the condition was permanent; God only knew what state the bombs were in. I wondered if we would all die. The graffiti this time said RECYCLE TRIDENT!

"...and I don't care," Voldemort shouted. "I don't fucking care about you. I'm running this bloody show. Did you cast a stasis spell? Did you? Well, shut up then. If I say we're not going in, we're not going in."

"I caun't cast a stasis spell, as you kneuw perfectly well. Yeu might be a genius, but you've got bugger all common sense."

True. I wondered if I should back Albert up, but decided to stay out of it. Voldemort relieved his feelings by yelling, "Twat!"

"And how are yeu going to get rid of the bombs?" Albert demanded. "If you're not dismentling them?"

The bombs. The missiles leered from within the submarine; they looked strangely innocuous, little stripy factory chimneys. I wondered why I'd never joined CND or Ploughshare or something. It seemed rather late now.

"I'm Vanishing them," Voldemort said shortly.

"VENISHING them!"

"What?!"

"I kneuw yeu like to mix magic and technology, but this is RIDICULOUS! Look, dismentling this type of warhead is quite straightforwar – "

"I'M NOT GOING NEAR IT!" shouted Voldemort.

Oh, so now they were going to throttle each other. I squatted down and put my head in my hands. This only seemed to aggravate the temperamental twosome, since they shouted simultaneously, "STAND UP!"

"Why Venish it?" Albert appealed. "Why?"

"Because there is no other way of getting rid of the plutonium, as far as I can see," Voldemort yelled impatiently. "An ageing spell of some sort would theoretically work but, given the half-lives involved, it just wouldn't be feasible. The only Philosopher's Stone I know of was destroyed," glare at me, "and, frankly, its powers would have been very difficult to harness in the first place. I could just Vanish the explosives and the fuel and prevent the bomb being launched or detonating, but it's not enough. I don't want the Muggles to have any plutonium at – "

"You can't pinpoint the pleutonium from here, not witheout going on board!"

"So?" said Voldemort.

"OH, SO YOU'RE GOING TO VENISH THE ENTIRE BLOODY WARHEAD, ARE YOU?" screeched Albert. "Go ahead. Show me just how yeu're planning to do that."

Voldemort showed his fangs and grated, "I will."

Trying to Vanish a nuclear bomb in a fit of bad temper. Great. Gripped by a feeling of impending doom, I tried to intervene with "You ought to think about this – "

Too late. He brandished his wand like a scorpion lashing its tail and shouted, "EVANESCO!" Not just the warhead, but the entire missile promptly vanished.

Albert was speechless. I laughed hysterically for a very long time. Evanesco is a spell you use to clean up at the end of Potions. The sight of Voldie using it to dispose of sixty tonnes of fibreglass and plutonium was too surreal. Recycle Trident, indeed. I pictured Voldemort crumpling up the warhead and throwing it into his green bin.

"Very nice demonstration of power, comrade," Albert said at last, "although I think it maight have worked better had there been more people around."

Voldie made eloquent movements with his eyebrows.

"Well," Albert elucidated, turning round to include me in this, "since the plutonium itself weighs eunly ten kilograms..."

This elicited a broad, smug smile on Voldemort's part. The smile widened to a grin. Finally he cackled incredibly loudly, and Albert suddenly joined in. They did the whole hooting and dancing and slapping-each-other-on-the-back thing all over again, while I just stood and watched in bemusement, since for some reason I didn't find it funny any more. Really, the whole thing should have been called The Hottie And Riddle Show. I'd watch it.

Eventually they stopped laughing and Voldemort wandered down alongside the sub, Vanishing the plutonium and the fuel doofers in the remaining missiles. Albert explained to me spontaneously that the fuel had to go too because, even without a nuclear explosion, a sixty-tonne lump of metal wasn't a very nice thing to drop on your enemies. I nodded obediently. He was quite sensible really.

At last Voldie strode back to us two, still shivering and huddled in his scarf, and said "Right. Enough for you, Albert?"

"It was meust satisfactory."

"Because you didn't have to do any of the work, you mean. All right, Harry, we can go now."

"I'll be geuing back to China," Albert said, pacing nervously. "I weun't tell them where you're staying for a while, they seemed quite engry – "

"Stop fussing, Albert," Voldie yawned; and, of course, the sight set me off too. I took a great mouthful of seaweedy air and yawned out, "You didn't ask him if he'd seen the German people that write magical runes in textbooks."

"What?!" Albert said.

"Oh," said Voldie. "Yes, I have, I've asked him loads of times. Albert, have you found out anything more about the élite since the Seventies?"

"No," said Albert. "Really, you're not still on that, are y – "

"There you go," Voldie told me.

"It would make much mhaw sense to deu things now," Albert argued, obviously unimpressed with the élite, if indeed they existed at all.

"We are," barked Voldie. "What d'you think we're doing, making fucking daisy chains? I'm pinning any hopes on invisible Teutons, I'm just keeping an eye out, all right?"

"Fine," sniffed Albert.

"Calm down," I said.

"But I've told yeu before that it's a euseless solution," Albert continued. "Any lasting solution to nuclear war, or all wars, hez to be democratic. Élites only prevent our tackling the problem at all, and create mhaw problems themselves..."

"I KNOW, ALBERT," said Voldie.

"And blue glows," I said.

"Ha," said Voldie, becoming much more animated. "Yes. Listen, Hottie, was that you stalking us at Fylingdales the other day? We don't know who it was, except that they made some noise and then disappeared and left a blue glow behind."

"A blue gleo?" said Albert. "What, the blue flash?"

"No, not the blue flash. Something magical."

Pause. "Well... what?"

"I don't KNOW! So you don't, either."

"Neu. Sorry," Albert said, looking totally bewildered, and Voldemort growled to himself and started sharpening his claws with a nail-file.

"Er... so... if that's all..." said Albert.

"That is all," said Voldemort. "And I really need to get on with my research."

"Bleedin' liar," I said in Parseltongue.

"Shut up," he said out of the side of his mouth.

GET INDONESIA OUT OF EAST TIMOR, read the final bit of graffiti. I don't know anything about East Timor, but we did get out.