Chapter 6b: Hi John

I expect the brained-with-a-teapot thing looks funny, the way I've put it, but in fact it was awful. There was a muffled clunk like two pots being banged together and Voldie collapsed awkwardly on the floor, showing no signs of being conscious or even alive.

"YOU WANKER!" I yelled. "Non Disapparatus! Stupefy!"

The Anti-Disapparation Jinx hit John square in the chest and trapped him in a little cage of white light. The Stunner, on the other hand, went straight through him, as he was already beginning to melt away into blue nothingness; and by the time I remembered the incantation for the Entrail-Expelling Curse he was gone altogether.

Right. Sod him. "Mobilicorpus!" I said, and dumped Voldie in his armchair. His head lolled back upsettingly. "Voldie," I begged, patting his face, "wake up, sweetie-pie. Come on, you miserable shit – Rennervate," I said, finally remembering the charm. "Yep, that's it, breathe... Salutifera... Voldie, you can't die now, after all the time I spent in peacetime trying to kill you. You have really bad timing. Salutifera!"

"The devil take you, Wormtail, it's Consanesco for substantial injuries," he snapped in a horrible voice that scraped on my nerves like quartz, and I stepped back, unnerved, and said, "Voldie?"

"Harry?" he said in surprise, opening his eyes. "Harry. No – there's no time, I have things to do. Harry, nuclear war's broken out," he said, flapping his hands distractedly and trying to stand up. "Can't sit around like this..."

"You need to maintain the temporal stasis spell," I said loudly and clearly, pushing him back into the chair. Sorry if that sounds callous, but I was much more concerned with remaining alive than with poor old Voldie's broken bonce. "You've already cast the temporal stasis spell. You need to keep it up."

"Maintain the... Yes, yes, it's working," he said absently, recovering quickly at the mention of his beloved science. "Temporal flow localised to... how very odd. You shouldn't be causing an incursion like that... sorry, who are you?"

"Harry Potter, and don't kill me. I'm helping you with things. Actually, I was making your breakfast... would you mind if I finished cooking it?"

"No," he said, sounding confused. "No, no, don't leave me alone."

"I won't, I'll be over there."

"No, no."

"Locomotor armchair," I said, losing my patience once again, and Voldie plus chair trundled over to the fireplace and sat there mumbling (not the chair) while the blessed breakfast finally materialised. After that there was ten minutes of intense communion with my stomach, interspersed with attempts to get Voldie's fork in his mouth.

"My head hurts," he said at last.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I don't know any proper healing spells. I only know Episkey and – "

"That's not your fault," he snapped. "They don't teach Healing to children."

"I'm not a child."

"How long has the war been on for?" he asked.

"About a week."

"Is that all? I was thinking six months. Trying to work out how much time would have to pass before Harry Potter had to be on my side."

"Oh fuck off."

"I wouldn't have expected the light side to be pragmatic. I would have thought you'd say, 'Death by atom bomb is preferable to joining Voldemort'."

"The light side tries to stop billions of people dying, and you need me around. You can't look after yourself. You can't even cook anything that isn't borscht."

"True, true," he said sadly, and he sat in his chair with unwonted quietness while I washed up and checked on his laboratory in case anything was blowing up, which it wasn't. When I came back he said calmly, "Do you know what electric shock therapy is, Harry?"

"They put electricity through your head," I said, eyeing him warily and hoping he didn't want me to administer a DIY job.

"Works by destroying your brain cells," he said. "That chamber-pot over the head might have done me some good, if you take the long view."

Well, if he was talking nonsense again he must be back to normal. "Listen, Voldie, I know it's a tall order and all that, but can you remember what we were actually supposed to do today?"

He stared at me. "Well, if you can't remember, how the hell can I?"

Good point. I went back to his lab and peered around for sticky notes. I didn't find any, but I did find a Bunsen burner; on top of it was a flask full of black liquid.

I held the potion up to the light and peered at it. This, presumably, was Voldie's interrupted Calming Draught. I wondered if he should take it now. For that matter, I wondered if I should take it. I trundled back to the kitchen.

"Do you write things down at all?" I asked him. "If you had a diary or something you might have put appointments."

"I don't keep a diary," he said, staring absently into the motionless fire. "I might have made a note on a Push And Prattle."

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

"A pink round flat thing like a make-up compact. If you push it it'll talk to you."

"And I found your Calming Draught."

"Wasn't I calm?"

"Well, no."

"Not very surprising, really."

"But I'm not sure if it's finished."

"What colour is it?"

"Black."

"Mmm," he said. "The last ingredient's asphodel. So it depends on whether I've already added that or not."

"Shall I put some more in, just in case?"

"Please don't. Unless you would appreciate projectile diarrhoea?"

"Bizarrely, I wouldn't. Wait there."

I went to his bedroom and peered about for pink make-up compacts. However, I mostly found dust, chocolate bar wrappers and crumpled heaps of black robes. It came as a great shock to discover that he had more than one raggedy black dressing-gown, and I wondered how one went about getting the sinister rips and tears in precisely the same places on all of them, but I was relieved by the notion that he was changing his clothes occasionally. Still, I determined to tidy his room at the first possible opportunity. Wondering where on earth to start looking for the pink thing, I sat down on Voldemort's bed.

There was an almighty screech and some sort of... thing... erupted vigorously up my backside. Meditating with some abstracted part of my brain on how fortunate it was that I was wearing jeans now and not just my pants, I leapt up out of the way and spun round in time to see a bright blue snake rise up from the bedclothes and announce melodiously, "Fifteen minute reminder: meet Albert and fogies at French Ministry." It then shot back into the bed and vanished.

I poked through the bedclothes and found a thing like a pink make-up compact. Well. That was one question answered. I picked it up and hurried back through to Voldemort's laboratory. Grabbing the possibly incomplete Calming Draught off the Bunsen, I returned to the kitchen.

"Voldie, we've got to go," I informed him, dragging him away from a half-empty jar of pickled onions. "We've got to meet Albert Hottie and the Chinese witzies at the French Ministry of Magic. Here's your calming potion."

He looked at me as if I was totally crazy, which I suppose was really quite reasonable. "Chinese witzies in Grenoble? Why? And what's Albert Hottie doing there?"

"There's a nuclear war on," I explained patiently. "You spent yesterday teaching everyone how to defuse the warheads, except Albert I suppose already knew, and they'll probably want to report back and ask if they're doing it right. And I don't know why France. But we're supposed to be there in fifteen minutes."

He carried on staring at me. "Well, if I can't remember anything, or who they are, how can I lead a meeting?"

I thought. "Just talk about science," I instructed him. "You only need to tell them about nuclear physics, which is your favourite thing anyway. Or ask Albert for help."

"I'm not asking Albert for help, he'll be unbearable," he snapped immediately.

"Oh, don't be so childish, there's a war on," I said, feeling my temper start to escape once again. I remembered him banging his head on the bookcase and thought I might quite like to do that. Instead I found a Tupperware tin and started hurling apples and pasties into it.

When I'd amassed a reasonable amount of nosh, I suddenly saw John's wand, which I had left on the breakfast bar while I was succouring Voldie. I picked it up and put it in my back pocket. If he wanted it back, he could whistle for it.

000

My first impressions of Grenoble were decidedly mixed. The breathtaking snow-covered mountains visible through gaps in the cloud could not obscure the fact that the air tasted horrible. There were pretty churches and bridges visible, but the Ministry was in a grey box-like building that might once have been a bank; while Voldie waved his wand at the magical keypad I stared around in confusion and wondered why the French had put their central office in such a peculiar place.

"Did they put it here so it wouldn't get bombed?" I asked Voldie. "Why not Paris?"

"That wouldn't stop it getting bombed," he said. "Grenoble's got a load of important research centres. They put it here because the postwar Minister of Magic really liked skiing."

"I thought wizards didn't ski."

"He was Muggle-born."

"Oh."

"Bienvenue à Grenoble," shouted the keypad. "Babyquidditch, c'est interdit," and the door zoomed open. The Ministry interior (the interior ministry?) did not alleviate my confusion: we were in a bare cement cell that looked like a warehouse, although there were one or two frozen French witzies in garish robes there, so we were clearly in the right place. Voldemort navigated past them and up a dingy flight of stairs, then approached a tiny, globular, glass lift. This was already full of people.

Voldemort produced his wand. "Voldie," I said warningly.

He gave me a meaningful look, said "Mobilicorpus," and moved all the paralysed people out of the way.

"You're really getting quite nice," I said approvingly.

"'Wars always achieve the opposite of their avowed purpose,'" he recited absently. "'The war to make the world safe for democracy produced the worst dictatorships the world has ever seen. The war to end war produced the most fearful weapon of war the world has ever seen. And the war to stop communism has reduced all of us to living communistically'."

"Your war was to kill all the Muggleborns," I said, trundling into the lift and peering at the keypad, which only seemed to have one button.

"And now all we half-bloods are saving the world," he said. "Wonder what the avowed purpose of the nuclear war was? I don't think it actually had one. Mind you, maybe that's the point," and he pressed the button.

The lift door slammed shut. The entire roof of the building suddenly split in half down the middle and rose up into the air on two giant sets of hinges, and the lift shot into the sky like a missile. Once my insides had returned to their normal place, I managed to perceive that we were in a telephérique; the glass bubble was suspended above Grenoble by a glowing golden cord, which presumably was invisible to the Muggles.

I looked down through the glass between my feet and saw the Drac River wobbling slowly back and forth way below me as the Ministry roof returned to its original configuration. Looking up again very quickly, I decided that brooms were definitely the best way to travel, and that the British Ministry wasn't so bad after all; Voldemort, needless to say, felt a little more strongly than that, and collapsed into my arms with a loud moan, his hand over his eyes.

"It's all right, it's all right," I cooed, trying to hold on to my Tupperware tin while patting his back.

"Aaaargh," he soughed. "What if the cable breaks?"

"I'll just cast Wingardium Leviosa and make it fly back up again. Don't worry."

"Ohhh," he said. "I don't know how Muggles can stand to go skiing."

Our bubble slowly homed in on an elegant castly-type building (architecture is not my strong suit) sticking out of a bare cliff. The entrance hole for the bubble was a very snug fit, and Voldie unfortunately chose that moment to look up; he gave another agonised moan as we crept into the crag. I couldn't comfort him; I was pretty speechless myself.

The Ministry turned out to have a spectacularly posh reception with lots of velvet and gilding, but by that time the damage was done; Voldemort and I staggered into the toilets and I spent five minutes rubbing his back while he puked into the marble basin. It must have been Yevfimy and Svetlana who suggested meeting at the French Ministry, I decided. Only they could hate us this much.

000

The meeting was held in an opulent reception room with huge windows, which I suspect would have had a nice view of the snow-covered Alps if there hadn't been a huge cloud of radioactive smog in the way. Chinese and Scandinavian witzies were seated round a big mahogany table, yakking away to one another; some, I noted, were covered in engine oil, and looked distinctly knackered. One of the Chinese persons was snoozing away with his white beard resting on his chest, and looked distinctly like Professor Flitwick.

"Sit next to me, boy," Voldemort muttered, elbowing me in the ribs; he took his place at the head of the table, looking very haughty and majestic, and I scuttled in next to him and hid the Tupperware tin under the table. It occurred to me that he probably really needed his Calming Draught, so I discreetly fished it out of the tin and put it by Voldemort's elbow.

A Chinese bloke rushed up to us, coughed politely and indicated a big whiteboard behind Voldie's seat. "We remembered your made pictures yesterday," he said, "so we have made white screen for your use."

"That was a very good idea. Thank you," Voldie said smoothly, although presumably he had no idea what the guy was talking about. "Thank you, sir," Mr Whiteboard said genially, and he rushed off back to his seat. Voldie took a large gulp from his Calming Draught.

We'd been cutting our arrival a bit fine, of course, so within only a few minutes the room was bustling with oily witzies. I saw Albert and waved him over, but Voldie grabbed my wrist and hissed, "What are you doing?"

"I was just going to say hello," I lied.

"You were going to ask him for help!" Voldie fumed. "I tell you, I'm not asking him anything!" and I rolled my eyes and hoped the world wouldn't get blown up just to save his pride.

Eventually Miserable Svetlana seemed to think we'd been waiting long enough, because she banged the table loudly with a carafe and then sat there busily shuffling papers. All the standing persons obediently plonked their arses on chairs, and Voldie, seeing no way to procrastinate any further, tapped his wand on the table and said "Is everyone now ready to begin?"

Everyone was. Our two hours of purgatory began.

At first the proceedings were very formal. Voldemort cleverly shuffled responsibility onto everyone else by simply demanding that they report. They did so; since he basically understood everything they were telling him, this worked well. Soon the whiteboard was covered with a magical map of the Arctic Ocean, with little green ticks where a submarine had been successfully sabotaged, and big red question marks where the witzies weren't sure. The ticks outnumbered the question marks by a large amount, and I began to feel quite cheerful. Even Voldemort looked a bit more relaxed, and didn't bother drinking any more of his Calming Draught. I also began to feel extremely sleepy, which I suppose makes sense given the early-morning wakage; so I passed my time by looking at the ceiling, and counting bald patches, and amusing myself with the fact that if you turned "Grenoble" backwards you would get a town called "Elbow Nerg"; and finally I nodded off.

I had an odd dream at that point. I suppose that sentence is meaningless, because it's difficult to think what type of dream would be considered ordinary in a nuclear-war-prevented-by-Chinese-witzies context, but anyway, I had this dream. Practically nothing happened in it, but we were in this house and there was me and Dumbledore and my parents and Remus and Mr Weasley, and all the people that had died in Threads; they were drinking some wine and Dumbledore was lounging on the sofa, explaining to my mum and dad that there was a war in 1997 and I was saving the world with Voldemort. My mum and dad were nodding and smiling approvingly and I wanted to get back into the '80s to tell them something, to tell them I loved them or not to worry about nuclear war or to worry about it more, because perhaps if people had protested more in the past it might not have happened in the present; but I seemed to be looking through a pane of glass, because I could see them smiling at me, but I couldn't say anything. Then the last image of the dream was Cedric Diggory smiling at me too, just sitting there, and then I woke up and it all faded away.

I had a terrible crick in my neck and my shoulder was covered in drool. I rubbed my neck while thinking about the dream.

"What! How could you confuse a whale with a submarine? Do you have any idea how big those things are?!"

"It was, ah, vot is it?... blue vhale."

"They're only thirty metres long, you idiot!"

"But ve have seen small submarine..."

"That's because it wasn't nuclear!" Volide seethed, taking another gulp from his Calming Draught, which was now half-empty. I patted his arm absently.

I could see why the Threads lot were happy: because they hadn't died, because the war hadn't happened in 1984 and now it wouldn't happen in 1997 either. Remus and Arthur, fair enough; they wouldn't want to pop their clogs, and Arthur had a million offspring to worry about. As for Dumbledore, he would probably think it was OK if he died so long as we saved the world afterwards. (Hell, for all I knew, he'd ordered Snape to kill him for that very purpose. He was bonkers enough, I supposed.)

My mum and dad, though... they had died. They hadn't even made it to 1984; and that seemed such a long time ago, even though it was only thirteen years, such a dark labyrinth of time in which to be lost.

"What? But why did you stop them?"

"Because that vos our submarine. It vos a Russian submarine, also, we had got there first – "

"They did not get first, we had discover two hours earlier and bookmark – "

"Aha. Ahahahaha! Are you all completely mad? Ha! There is a nuclear war on! Fighting over a submarine! Ha-ha-ha!"

My dad never even knew what nuclear war was, I realised. Purebloods didn't know or care about silly Muggle inventions. This made me feel strangely alone. I thought of how impressed everyone had seemed with me, in the dream, that is; the responsibility seemed rather awesome, and then I remember that there were theoretically five billion people depending on us, not just a dozen wizards or however many people there were in Sheffield.

We could save five billion Muggles, even, bizarrely, people from the past; we could alleviate the fears of everyone who thought 1997 would be a wasteland, but we couldn't save my mum and dad. As for Cedric, I had no idea what he was doing there.

At that point, "This is Harry," Voldemort shouted, hurling his arm around my shoulder. "He's a good boy really, aren't you, Harry? I thought he wash just one of Dumbledore'sh minidons – myrmi – Merm – A good boy. I'm NOT some kind ugh predator," he ranted, and I realised, possibly rather late in the day, that something had gone awry. The something happened to be a chemist's flask that was now almost entirely empty of black fluid.

"I've always hated escargots," he added for good measure.

"Er – sorry," I apologised to the tableful of silently gaping witzies. "He, er, I made him a Calming Draught. I think I forgot to put in the asphodel." I put my arms around Voldie and smoothly detached the flask from his hand before he could get himself any more rat-arsed.

He didn't like that. He staggered to his feet and shook me off angrily. "That idiot from America," he seethed. "He shought Harry was a Muggle. How shtupid. What you don't realise," he lectured the boggle-eyed fogies, "is that – er – And another thing, the blue glow wasn't a blue glow at all! So our psychobological universe is, well..." and then, perhaps seeking inspiration, he turned round and looked out of the window.

There was a ghastly scream. Everyone jumped, and it took me a moment to figure out that the strange noise had emanated from Voldemort, who was pointing out through the window in a frenzy of horror.

"Look, look," he shrieked, "the bomb! It's coming, there it is," and we all leapt to our feet and stared out at, well, the telephérique, which Voldie in his drunken paranoia had clearly mistaken for a missile; and everyone except me burst out laughing as he frantically legged it across the boardroom and into the foyer.

I, needless to say, had many choice words I would have liked to say to the ancients; but all those words were in English, and besides, I had more important things to do. Hurling a few "fuck"s over my shoulder, I sprinted after Voldemort, who was moving remarkably quickly; fortunately he was leaving a trail of urine for me to follow, but the French Ministry turned out to have an awful lot of sweeping mahogany staircases for panicking Dark Lords to run up and down. Exhausted and impatient, I finally cast a Trip Jinx that made him fall up the stairs and bruise his elbows.

"Now, stop that," I said firmly, gathering him up in my arms and holding tightly on to his robe. "Voldie, what's the spell that sobers people up?... Rennervate. Consanesco," I said, hoping the effects of the potion were an illness that could be cured. "Stop being stupid and just calm down. You've had a bang on the head, and you're drunk."

He blinked a couple of times and said, "Yes, I am, aren't I?"

"So you know that," I said, vastly relieved.

"Ahh..." he said, and opened and closed his mouth a few times, apparently speechless.

"Oh, Voldie," I said, "we just don't ever seem to..." but I couldn't think what to say either. I cleaned him up briskly, and walked up and down the Ministry stairs erasing his little trails of wee; and then I put my arms around him and ordered him to Apparate us back to Wales, because quite frankly, I cared about as much for those senile old idiots back in the conference room as I did for stupid John.