Chapturr thee Eighte
Anthony J Crowley breathed a sigh of relief as Albus Dumbledore Disapparated out of his living room. This left him feeling a little peeved. He could have at least slammed the door after the wizard if he'd departed in the conventional way. Oh well, life never went quite as you'd like it, he mused as he flopped onto the black leather designer sofa. He liked his flat very much. It was large, mostly painted white and full of minimalist designer furniture. All neat straight lines and angles.
He had once flirted with the opulence of Art Deco, but it never led to anything1. No, for him, it was modern style that mattered. Thankfully tonight he didn't have to put on all that Victorian clobber again as well as that stupid disguise, because he had been informed earlier that day by the Auditors that Harry Potter had been...taken away to a safe house.
Outside, peals of thunder rumbled across London, as rain hurtled down from the clouds; a million suicides leaping to the city below. Tonight was not a good night to be out in, especially because it had started off so mellow and balmy. Crowley was thankful that he wasn't some girl from the East End who was was in the middle of being sick on her boyfriend as they staggered home when the storm had started to brew, quarter of an hour earlier.
He picked up one of the artsy magazines that he kept on the coffee table simply because he felt that they were the sort of thing a human who owned this place would read, but tossed it back onto the sleek glass surface disconsolately. His brain was still buzzing about what had happened moments before.
(_)
Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Apparated into a a sopping wet London night, and discovered that the address he was searching for was mere feet away. As powerful a wizard as he was, he had Apparated into the street and not simply into Crowley's apartment because he knew it was always unwise to try Apparate into a place you have never set foot in yourself, even if you have been given the address. Simply put, one ends up in two places at once and the results tend to be horrifically messy.
Dumbledore stepped out of the night and though the glass automatic sliding doors after unlocking them with the Alohomora charm. Dominating the middle of two-storey lobby was a square three-tiered fountain which continued to trickle 24 hours a day - it did so, not because it wanted to, but simply because it knew it would face the Wrath of Crowley it it didn't. The same thing applied with all the lifts and the lobby doors. They didn't dare break down lest they incur the Wrath of Crowley. Crowley had never been too detailed about what his Wrath entailed. He had found out long ago that the Imagination of the Victim was far more inventive than his own...
Pleasant wallpaper music drifted through the airwaves of the lobby and in all the lifts at al hours of the day too, simply because Crowley liked the Spirit of Place it lent the atmosphere.
Albus strode to the left of the fountain, ignoring the sleeping security guard at the reception desk. The desk was situated opposite the lobby doors on the other side of the fountain, and was separated from the fountain by an expansive desert of cool grey marble flooring that was occasionally given over to oases of sleek black leather chairs and coffee tables.
He departed the neutral-toned lobby and found himself in a neutral-toned lift, in which more of the pleasant music played. He swished his wand and the lift shot up to the correct floor.
He had a distinct feeling that whatever happened, the result would be...interesting...
(_)
Crowley had been rummaging in the top-of-the-range fridge, stuffing his face out of sheer boredom when the knock at the door came. He tried to shout "Bugger off! I'm not in!" Although when one's mouth is stuffed full of caviare, quail eggs, sushi and turkey nuggets this is much more difficult to achieve.
He thought briefly that perhaps it was an agent of Hell, sent to deliver a message to him – although the Auditors did most of that nowadays. He knew that any salesman who showed up at the lobby would be deported off the premises by stern men in black jackets – so who could be calling upon him at this time of night?
He crept towards his safe until he remembered that he still needed a new emergency flask of Holy Water. He sighed and decided that at least the new arrival would relieve the monotony of the evening.
He pulled open the front door and...words failed him. Briefly. "Who the hell are you?" he blurted out at the bizarre apparition.
The old man, dressed in midnight blue flowing wizard's robes, uttered calmly "Good evening. My name is Professor Albus Dumbledore. I have been, ah, liaising with some colleagues of yours and your name cropped up."
"You'd better come in." Crowley muttered. He had the feeling that if he refused, the old geezer wouldn't budge an inch.
Dumbledore pushed his half-moon spectacles up his crooked nose and swept in the apartment. "May I sit down?" the wizard gestured towards the sofa.
"Knock yourself out." The statement was not so much an invitation as a wish. The demon sat down cautiously – as far away from the newcomer as possible - at the other end.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence Dumbledore said, "Your residence is truly charming. I understand what your friend, meant, Mr Crowley; you would certainly make an ideal candidate to teach at my school."
"Come again? Me? Teach? You've gotta be joking! I'm not cut out for teaching!" Crowley's voice was laced with both confusion and indignation, with a dash of denial thrown in for good measure.
"I do beg your pardon. I have gotten ahead of myself." the old man inclined his head a little. "Sir, I am a wizard, and I wish you to teach the students at my school the ways of the non-magical world."
Crowley felt himself phase out of the conversation as Dumbledore waffled on about that Harry Potter kid, about some wannabe Dark Lord who'd clearly never met Satan before. Lucifer was known to hold no bars against anyone who dared to crown themselves Emperor of Evil.
"Do you really expect me to believe that massive pile of bullcrap? I wasn't born yesterday.2" Crowley was a natural sceptic. In fact, he was the original sceptic. "Aziraphale might've been taken in, but it's his job to believe stuff like this. I'm gonna need proof." he hissed, with an undercurrent of menace.
(_)
It hadn't taken Dumbledore too long to clear away all the fish, animal faeces, bloodstains, frogs, flies, fleas, sand, gravel, parakeets and chain-smoking go-go dancing gorillas out of the place...
(_)
Crowley snapped himself out of his reverie when he noticed the thirteen Auditors hovering around the newly-cleaned living room.
"Piss off!" he snapped and reached for something to throw at them.
We do not understand your meaning. The hovering translucent robes said coldly.
"Just get lost! I'm busy!" he grabbed a black-and-white striped cuboid porcelain table lamp and threw it at the floating beings.
We know the location of every atom in the Universe. Your order is impossible.
"Then what do you want? I'm just taking a break, alright? I'll get back on with my demonic duties tomorrow."
Your reports have become slack, lately. And we have noticed your repeated murder of countless Auditors.
"But I thought that if I killed you then you couldn't report to each other." Crowley's face contorted into one of a man who knows that if he doesn't act quickly, the hangman's noose is never far away...
You missed me when you murdered my colleagues. I passed on my report. Hell is not pleased with you, Crowley. A lone Auditor floated down from the ceiling and in front of the demon.
Crowley's blood-red lips parted into a bright, flashy leering grin. It was the grin of a crocodile about to close its jaws around a particularly plump fish. "Did you just say I?"
No I didn't! Panic writhed in the solitary Auditor's voice. I...I...Oh damn it all to hell with you fellows! It screamed as it was wiped off the slate of the Universe.
To have a personality is to live! To live is to die! The remaining Auditors chanted, showing no mercy for their fallen comrade-in-sleeves3.
"Oh yeah? Well how's this for personality?" Crowley hissed, and thumped his stereo system in way that made him want to say "Coolio!". Wild jazz music blared out of nowhere for a few seconds but began to fade from his ears. The room also felt noticeably...different...somehow. Stuffier, less...airy...
We stationed thirty more of our kind outside the building in preparation for such an event. (An important feature to note about Auditors is that their main strength lies in numbers. In small groups they are easy to overcome and are very weak. Large groups can manipulate Reality as easily as an artisan manipulates clay.) The Auditors' voices were crisp and detached, calm and fearless. As you are no doubt aware, this room will shortly become a complete vacuum. Our analysis of the surrounding structure suggests that it will not survive the external pressures for longer than 10.46 seconds and counting.
Crowley could see the walls of his flat already beginning to buckle and bend now, as the room became a complete vacuum. Thank goodness demons didn't require oxygen! He suspected that the only thing holding the walls back were the Auditors of Reality. Perhaps they weren't allowed to attempt to kill him.
But, seeing as four of them were blocking the front door, this didn't seem too likely. There was only one option left open to him. The walls and ceilings groaned under the strain of keeping Mother Nature outside, they were considerably bent inwards now, almost cartoon-like. He dashed as fast as he could into the tiny saferoom which he and Aziraphale had first used to hide from the Auditors and slammed the door, only to hear an ear-splitting crashing noise that sounded suspiciously like a very large portion of an apartment complex forced by air pressure to collapse onto a single flat.
He gingerly pushed open the door (somehow no rubble blocked the exit) and peered cautiously around. Where his flat had been moments before, there was now a large, empty, gash in the building which allowed cold wind and rain to lash out wildly at his face.
Okaaaaaay, so, he was gonna need to find new digs, or just stay 'on the run', as it were. Until he had to go to Hogwarts, at least. It looked as though he had no choice in the matter now. At least then he'd have a roof over his head and lots of new pastures to innovate and advance his demonic endeavours.
But in a few days, apparently, he had a hearing to attend...
(_)
1 ZDZ: Unlike the time he'd flirted with Marilyn Monroe underneath the opulence of Art Deco.
2 ZDZ: This was almost a Pavlovian response. Whenever Crowley didn't pay attention to something that was said to him, he merely said those sentences on automatic whenever the speaker paused for breath. It had led to several uncomfortable situations. (Particularly one memorable incident in the British House of Commons in 1938, just after Neville Chamberlain had finished a long-winded speech proclaiming what an excellent job he'd done with his plans of appeasement. Only Winston Churchill felt inclined to agree with Crowley's sentiment.)
3 ZDZ: They didn't possess arms. This does beg the question: "Would the Auditors, in a war, have to participate in a sleeves race and use firesleeves?"