Chapter 6: Hi John

I was woken by a loud clanging noise. While I lay there wondering what it might have been, I was treated to an extra clang, followed by a crash and a clatter. All were coming from the garden.

I hurried outside in my pants to find a furious Voldemort striding around the flowerbeds in various random directions, grabbing hold of whatever came to hand. I arrived in time to see him snatch the top half of a buddleia and shake it violently; he then gave it a good kick and stalked off in the opposite direction. Judging from the assorted items spread across the lawn, he had already kicked a compost bin, a wheelbarrow and a big coil of rope.

Catching sight of me, he stopped, glared and shouted, "Not real. None of it! Not real!"

Dear god. "Calm down, Voldie," I said wearily, taking hold of his arm and steering him towards the kitchen. "Of course it's bloody real. We're in the house in Wales..."

"How d'you know?" he demanded. "It could be wrong! It could be answers!"

"You're off your fucking head," I said, my temper starting to give way as I realised how thirsty and groggy and generally early-morning I was. I hadn't noticed till now, since I'd believed some sort of emergency was under way, but really. "There's nothing going wrong. We're not even getting attacked by dragons. Get back to bed!"

"It's not real!" he wailed. "The sun doesn't move! Nothing moves! It's like artificial reality. Like living on a film set!"

"So what?!" I said. "It's been like this since you cast the fucking stasis spell, and it's not like we're frozen in the middle of the night and it's raining. It's a lovely morning and the sun's shining, so stop complaining!"

"I can't cope with it," he lamented. "I can't relax..."

"Just do whatever you normally do all day!... What do you normally do?"

"Kill Muggles," he said with a sudden, improbable giggle. "But I suppose that's no good... Oh, Harry, I can't stand it, I can't switch off and be normal like you can," he moaned, allowing me to settle him down at the breakfast bar.

"Just read a book or something," I said in exasperation, but looking through the shelves, I couldn't find anything apart from reed beds, nuclear physics and Woman's Own. I chucked the Woman's Own at him and got on with cooking breakfast, employing maximum discontented pan-rattling; I think he got the point.

After a few minutes he said, "Cancer. Mercury moving into your sign this week means a possible financial windfall – good news if you've been saving up for that particular little black dress. As for personal relations, do you really have to be quite so selfish? You may think you're acting in everyone's best interest, but try examining your motivations more closely. Oh, and your lucky colour is blue."

"I'm a Leo, Voldie."

"Doesn't matter, this is dated May 1995."

"Well, it's not much use then, is it?!"

"I thought it was remarkably accurate," he cackled. "Saving up for a little black dress? It was only last night you proposed wearing lingerie."

"Oh, eff off."

He sniggered away to himself while progressing through the recipes, and called out, "Raspberry tart, couscous thing with almonds, pears in cinnamon sauce."

"Excuse me, I know how to cook!" I snorted, chopping up mushrooms.

"I don't. Perhaps I should start learning... HA!" he suddenly shouted very loudly, causing me to slice a large hole in my hand; so everything had to be adjourned while he apologised profusely and cast a spell called Salutifera to heal the cut; "but," he enthused, "I've just realised! I could make myself a Calming Draught! That'll sort out the problem, and it'll keep me out of your hair while you make the breakfast. I'll just suck your blood off the mushrooms," and off he went, singing loudly.

I was not comforted by this outburst. Singing!Voldie was an alarming phenomenon, and I had no data on whether he was good at Potions. I also had the feeling that if bog-standard Calming Draughts were likely to have any effect, someone would have tried them on him before now. Still, I thought, as loud clanking and rattling noises emanated from one of the spare bedrooms, it would stop him from startling me and making me cut my hand for the next few minutes; so I carried on with the fry-up. I was just getting some courgettes out of the larder when the whole of the corridor that led to the bedrooms lit up blue.

I stood frozen to the spot for a moment with a courgette in my hand, wishing I had some clothes on and unable to decide what I was frightened about most. Then I heard the clanking continue in Voldemort's laboratory and my heart started beating again just in time for a stout, middle-aged-looking bloke to run into the kitchen. He was white, but so heavily tanned that his lips were twice as pale as the rest of his face; this made him look oddly as though he were wearing pale pink lipstick.

He didn't look aggressive, but you could never tell; I raised my wand, cast a Shielding Charm and poised myself ready to spring sideways in the event of a Killing Curse. He looked astonished.

"Hell, I'm not gonna attack you! Are you the wizard?" he demanded in a North American accent. (Note: like most Britons, I was quite incapable of distinguishing between American and Canadian accents.)

"No," I said, bemused. "You're probably after Voldemort."

"You're a Muggle?" he said, confused.

"No, but – "

"I'm here," Vol said from behind him in a voice like a glacier scraping along bedrock; and the man swung round and gave a tremendous start of fright, which as far as I was concerned was quite unwarranted.

"What ARE you?!" he demanded.

"What am I?" said Voldemort, far from pleased. "I'm a human like yourself, you bumbling fool. Do you mean, Who am I? I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. And this is Harry," he added as an afterthought.

"John Pritchard," he said, still shaken.

"Well? Have you brought any news?" Voldie said, his little nostrils flaring hopefully. "Which country are you from?"

"Do I bring any news?" the man yelled, recovering from the shock and inflating like a mushroom cloud. "What, don't you know what's happening? I thought it was you that had cast this damn spell!"

"It was I."

"Will you calm down?" I interjected.

"How old are you?" John said suspiciously.

Voldie raised the bit of skin where one eyebrow would be if he had any. "I am sixty-nine."

"Sixty-nine!" he balked. "Barely into middle age! No sixty-nine-year-old could have cast this spell!"

There was an awful silence in which Voldemort made himself slowly taller and taller in the manner of an angry owl. When he seemed to be at least eight feet tall, he drew up his lip magnificently and sneered, "It is a delayed action spell. I put it in place when I was twenty-eight."

John fluttered his hands about as if plucking invisible birds from the air, then shouted, punctuating with stamps of one foot, "THAT – IS – IM – POSSIBLE!"

That was a bad move. Voldie extruded a wand instantaneously from his hand the way a cat unsheathes its claws. John's wand appeared equally abruptly from under his waistcoat. Voldie shot a huge, blood-red sphere of magic at him; John whipped a protective shield up just in time, but still staggered back under the impact. "FUCKING STOP THAT!" I yelled, jumping in between them with my arms splayed out like a scarecrow; "We might need him for something!", and John did not appear to find this at all reassuring, because he sprinted out of the back door and Voldie sprinted after him, with me running after on my little short legs.

"I am a Dark Lord!" he was roaring after John. "D'you think I'm concerned with your piffling little notions of what's possible and what isn't? I stopped this war! I stopped the PLANET! I am greater than Slytherin, greater than Merlin; I am the king of war, and the prince of peace! I am the first! The last! The greatest! I AM LORD VOLDEMORT!"

John, understandably, decided that sticking around and listening to all this was a bad idea, and at the end of the garden he melted away in a slow pulse of blue light. Voldie fired off a couple of AKs, apparently just for fun, and stood there with a self-satisfied expression.

"Have you quite finished now?" I panted, finally catching up with him. "You're not supposed to try and kill them!"

"I didn't! I just thought I'd shout at him for being a prick. Fancy not having heard of me, the silly bastard. And did he just vanish in a load of blue light then, or was it my imagination?"

"He did," I said, bending over and massaging a stitch in my side. "That's how he arrived, too. I was terrified."

"Huh," said Voldie. "So that's the mysterious blue light we were both so scared of. What an unbelievable anticlimax; he was quite useless. Is breakfast ready?"

He marched back to the house. I limped after him in disbelief. "No, it's not," I shouted. "And you're not supposed to yell at them and drive them off! He could have been someone important!"

"Rubbish!" he snorted. "Besides, it was all his fault. He shouldn't have asked such stupid questions, and he was wearing a horrible waistcoat." With that, he vanished inside and slammed the back door.

I limped towards the kitchen in my undies, quite speechless. I suddenly noticed I was still holding the courgette.

If I were John, I reasoned, I would sneak back carefully towards the house, avoiding the red-eyed maniac and heading for the relatively sensible person in the kitchen. To this end, I used the Flagrate charm to write a message just outside the back door reading HI, JOHN. PLEASE SNEAK INTO THE KITCHEN. (BE CAREFUL) Then I got dressed, brushed my teeth and went back to cooking, as by this time I was seriously hungry. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, John would dawdle until Voldemort had drunk his calming-down potion, and I'd had my breakfast.

Alas, no such luck. As I added the onions there was a faint knock on the back door and an American voice whispered hopefully, "Has he gone yet?"

"He's making potions in one of the bedrooms," I said, stepping resignedly away from the fire. "Calming potions, specifically. Perhaps we should wait until he's finished."

"What's wrong with him?" said John in a hushed voice, tiptoeing into the kitchen. "Is he crazy?"

"No," I lied, "he's just having a bad week. If you could – "

"HA!!!" roared Voldemort, plunging into the kitchen and prodding a terrified John in the neck with his wand. "YOU AGAIN! I KNEW IT!!!"

"We're just talking," I said, at the end of my patience. "Go and finish your potion."

"Don't move!" Voldie barked at John, who was trying to draw his wand.

"Expelliarmus!" I said, and their wands flew into the air and broke the bulb in the kitchen light. I caught them on their way down – some practical use for Quidditch at last! – and Voldie and John started shouting at each other. Voldie advanced on me threateningly, clearly intent on getting his wand back; I drew mine on him and he stopped in astonishment.

I was waiting for him to say "Lower your wand immediately or die, meddling cretin," but in fact he said, "You can't Stun me, Harry. You wouldn't do that," in a very hurt voice. This made me feel guilty.

"No, I'm not going to," I assured him. "You're going to drink your potion, and then we're going to sit down and talk to John. Nicely."

"I can't," he said. "It's not ready. Wait here a minute while I take it off the Bunsen." He swished off into his laboratory and made some more clinking noises.

John sat down, subdued, and I sat and guarded him. His waistcoat really was rather awful; it was purple paisley.

After fidgeting next to me and sweating nervously for a while, he decided to make small talk. "How did you meet this Voldemort guy anyways?" he asked genially.

"He murdered my parents."

That spoilt the conversation a bit. We carried on waiting until Vol got back.

Understandably, there followed a very long and loud argument. I clung very tightly to Voldie's wand in order to prevent a large number of Unforgivables, but surprisingly, it didn't appear to be necessary; Voldie was only looking down his nose (nose... well... you know what I mean) at John and inflicting random insults. For a while I was quite puzzled by this; but finally I twigged from the relish with which Voldie was sneering that he was rather enjoying himself. He was preening at the unintentional flattery of being told that his twenty-eight-year-old skilz were impossible. This made me roll my eyes and poke him in the shoulder.

"Stop that, Vol," I said when they turned to face me in mild astonishment, having long since forgotten I was there. "You're just showing off. John, Lord Voldemort is a Dark Lord. He almost took over Britain, but our side kept stopping him – "

"Hah! – "

"Shut it, Voldie. And of course he's powerful enough to have cast this stasis spell, so stop complaining and tell us what you want us to do about it."

John sat back, looking a bit dazed, then shouted, "I want you to take it off, of course!"

"Ha, yes," Voldie sneered before I could get a word in edgeways. "You want to be obliterated by ballistic missiles? Well, that can be arranged, of course..."

"What he means," I interjected, "is that he cast this spell so we could stop the nuclear war."

"I KNOW that," John shouted excitably, "but surely you didn't want to do it like this? Dear god, man, what will happen when you cancel the spell? The Muggle governments will throw fits!"

"Fuck the Muggle governments," said Voldemort, with which I was rather inclined to agree. "Since when do I care about their feelings?"

John groaned and clapped his hands to his face just the way Albert had several days earlier. This prompted me to shoehorn in, "Where have you been all this time?"

"What?" he said.

"He cast the spell a week ago, at least..."

"Everybody else turned up days ago," Voldie said at the same time.

"THERE ARE NO DAYS!" he shouted, banging his fists on the breakfast bar and spilling his coffee.

At this point, I'd had it. "WILL YOU BOTH STOP LOSING YOUR TEMPERS!" I bellowed deafeningly. While they both blinked at me I said courteously, "Thank you, John. I'm Harry Potter; I shout very loudly. Stop fighting and getting worked up – both of you – or I'll Bat-Bogey Hex the pair of you. No," I added menacingly, raising my wand, as Voldie started to object; "no arguments. Right. John: why haven't you been to the Chinese Ministry?"

"The what?"

"The Ministry of Magic in China," Voldie put in sardonically.

"Why?" John said blankly.

"You haven't been checking the Ministries for other witches and wizards?" I said.

"Uh..." he said, and stared at the table with an aura of guilty calculation so obvious he reminded me immediately of Mundungus Fletcher.

"Where have you been?" demanded Voldie.

"Uh..."

"Quiet, Vol," I said. "So. You haven't searched the Ministries. Where have you been searching?"

"Oh, here, there," he said vaguely, trying not to make eye contact. "All the usual places..."

I tried to figure out what he was talking about (or, rather, not talking about), and looked at Voldie, but he seemed to have no idea either.

"You appeared with a blue flash. Why d'you do that?"

"Mmm..."

"Were you following us at Fylingdales?" Voldie said suspiciously.

John stared at him in confusion. "What's that?"

"In Yorkshire."

"Huh?"

At this point, as you may have noticed, we were not so much getting nowhere as hurtling towards nowhere at nine thousand miles per hour. John, it appeared, was either exceptionally dense, a compulsive liar or both. Voldie was unable to stand it any longer, and said in Parseltongue, "Give me my wand and I'll Crucio some answers out of this bastard."

"Not bloody likely," I hissed firmly, moving away and raising my own wand. In English I said, "Er, John, there's a war on. It's quite important that you tell us the truth. What is that blue glow thing, and where have you been all this time?"

I expectedly him to get angry and start shouting again; instead he stared at the breakfast bar and mumbled, "Ain't really supposed to talk about that."

Voldie stared at him with horrible pertinacity and sudden said, "Where's Elke?"

"Who?" said John, startled.

Voldie sat back in dissatisfaction, folded his arms and said "You are the most singularly obstructive and gormless plank it has ever been my misfortune to meet." John glared at him. He glared back. They both looked at me speculatively as if wondering how long it would take to wrestle their wands off me, and I waved my own wand warningly.

"Potter," Voldie said in Parseltongue, "get torturing him. He obviously knows something, and this village idiot game really isn't funny."

"We're not torturing anyone," I said. "Besides, your élite'll really love you if you Crucio them."

"Him, élite! He's a moron!"

"We're not torturing him!" I said firmly as John sat and watched us in astonishment, unable to figure out what all the hissing was about. He suddenly reminded me very strongly of the Ministry bloke who had delivered the summons to Morfin Gaunt in the 1920s, only really stupid.

"Then put an Anti-Disapparation Jinx on him, at least. It's just Non Disapparatus. I don't want him getting away again before we can bore some answers out of him – "

"You can't do that!" I began, but at that moment John seized the opportunity to brain Voldemort with the teapot.