Chapter 18
Ziad was quite relieved when, the next morning, he was provided with a schedule. It appeared that he was to take a bizarre mixture of second and third year classes. According to professor Sprout, "You're more advanced than most second years in potions and herbology. Don't tell anyone I said this, but the more practical classes."
Ziad didn't particularly care either way. The way he was planning his life did not, by and large, involve magic any more than he was already doing. Yet he did not wish to abandon Hogwarts, because, to put it simply, he didn't have much else to do.
His first class was potions. It had always been his favorite class, because he didn't need special skills in some stupid shit he didn't know and was therefore useless.
Plus, professor Snape was a cold hard badass, and Ziad respected that in a man. Especially if that man had the balls to be as obviously evil as Snape.
This lesson began somewhat more eventfully than Ziad had otherwise hoped.
"Mr. Jarrah, you appear to have been accelerated to my third-year class. Are you prepared?"
Ziad thought it over before answering, "I have absolutely no idea."
"Ah. Mr. Jarrah, did you do the assigned summer reading?"
"No."
Snape sneered.
"And why not?
"Do you want the long story or the short story?"
"In the interest of saving time, give us the short story."
"Well, first I was homeless. Then I was in Israel. Then I was blown up. Then I was in a coma. Then I was in Britain with no money. Now I'm here."
Even Snape looked surprised.
"Interesting. Well, do you at least have the textbook?"
"I do have that."
"Excellent." He addressed the class, "Please turn to page 10 and prepare the potion listed on that page."
Ziad removed the textbook from his bag, turned to page 10, and began.
The rest of his first week was very uneventful. Uneventful for a given value of "eventful." To explain this further, his first week would have been very eventful for somebody who has spent the last fifty years in solitary confinement. However, for a Hogwarts student, it was quite normal.
That Friday, before lunch, Ziad met Seamus.
"Have you improved the design for the Trouser-Chimes?"
Seamus glanced around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping.
"Yeah, I have. They're almost certain to work."
Ziad rubbed his hands together.
"Excellent... Can you make a prototype? We need to begin marketing."
"I could. But why? Who in their right mind would buy something this absurd?"
Ziad put his arms around Seamus's shoulders conspiratorially.
"Can I trust you?"
"Of course!"
"Let me put it this way: I have recently come into rather a lot of money. I need a way to make it seem legitimate. In addition, I have plans for making much, much, much more money."
"What're the plans?"
"Now that would be telling. Let's just say it's not exactly, how should I put this, legal."
"Ah. So you want to produce and sell Trouser-Chimes as a cover for this sublegal business venture of yours?"
"That's correct. Now, dear Seamus, if you prove yourself to be trustworthy, I may let you join my nefarious business. However, due to its sensitive nature and, dare I say it, inherent danger, I will only do so if you truly prove yourself."
Seamus nodded, "Of course."
By Saturday morning, Seamus had produced the model X-177 Trouser-Chime prototype.
It was a pair of trousers.
With chimes on it.
"It's beautiful!" said Ziad.
"It does have a strange sort of animalistic beauty about it, doesn't it?" said Seamus, his voice full of awe.
By Saturday afternoon, Ziad and Seamus had placed over a hundred advertisements around the school.
By monday morning, they had received thirty orders.
"I honestly didn't expect us to actually sell any yet." said Seamus in their classroom-turned-production facility.
"Neither did I," said Ziad, as he charmed another chime onto a pair of trousers.
For the rest of the weak, Ziad and Seamus wore Trouser-Chimes around Hogwarts to advertise their benefits of looking and sounding awesome. Ziad received dozens of compliments.
"Magical people are crazy," he concluded, at the end of the first day, "If I wore these in the muggle world, I'd either be shot or put in an asylum."
Seamus didn't respond, but he lovingly tweaked his pants. It was very, very strange.
By the next Saturday, they had sold nearly one hundred pairs of Trouser-Chimes.
A week later, they had sold out their entire stock. They went into production once again. They even hired some first-years to do most of the grunt work.
The soft cacophony of chimes filled the school.
Money began rolling into Seamus and Ziad's pockets.
Ziad also worked on his other money-making venture, this one a little less benign. That first Saturday, he sent a letter to Shlomi.
Shlomi,
I will have the opportunity to do more business in three weeks time, on a Saturday. Reply with information.
-Ziad
Shlomi's reply was prompt and equally terse.
Ziad,
I have a sale lined up. Be ready.
Five hundred thousand is the number.
-Shlomi.
P.S. Start signing and writing with our codenames. Mine is "The Atomic Child."
Ziad replied,
Atomic Child,
That name is stupid. Come up with something less childish (if you'll pardon the pun).
-The Director
Shlomi replied,
Director,
Are you kidding me? That name is awesome! But if you insist, I can be something a little less conspicuous. How about Gus?
-The Atomic Child/Gus
Ziad replied,
Dear Gus,
You can be Gus.
-The Director
Then, The Day arrived. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, obviously, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get to where he needed to be; namely, Jerusalem. Ziad made his way to the village with Parvati and Padma before disappearing into a side street and quickly changing into his new custom-tailored suit and aviators. Ziad Jarrah became The Director.
He made a portkey and disappeared.
Ziad reappeared two thousand miles away in Shlomi's kitchen in Jerusalem.
Shlomi was waiting, wearing his own suit and sunglasses. He nodded gravely at Ziad.
"The product is in a warehouse outside of town. Come."
They climbed into Shlomi's car and drove out into the outskirts of the city. They arrived at the aforementioned warehouse, which looked incredibly sketchy. Broken windows, rusted metal, and filthy concrete.
"It's perfect," sighed Ziad wistfully.
"The atmosphere is really good, isn't it?"
Ziad and Shlomi entered the dingy, dusty, dirty, alliterative warehouse. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the broken windows, wavering in the dusty air. Inside were several crates, their tops lying on the stained cement next to them. In the crates were rifles. Lots and lots of rifles.
"It's a thousand M-16s and a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition," said Shlomi, "We're taking them to an East Timorese rebel group called Falintil. They've been fighting for independence from Indonesia since 1975."
"Do you have a picture of the drop-off point?"
"Indeed I do." Shlomi removed a photograph from his pocket and handed it to Ziad.
Ziad stared at the photo, committing it to memory. He then removed an old sock from his suit pocket and turned it into a portkey.
"Can we lash those crates together?" he said.
Shlomi nodded and did so with a rope he had brought from his house.
"Grab on," said Ziad.
Shlomi held tightly to the rope that tied the crates together and touched the sock along with Ziad.
They disappeared.
They reappeared in a jungle clearing. Ziad was bowled over by the sudden heat and humidity. Bugs buzzed all around them.
A group of men dressed in camouflage appeared out of the jungle, rifles slung over their shoulders. The men noticed Ziad and Shlomi, who stuck out like a forest of sore thumbs in their shiny, fashionable suits and sunglasses. The men unslung their rifles and advanced cautiously.
Shlomi stared at them intently.
"Oh shit."
"What?"
"Those aren't our contacts. Those are Komando Pasukan Katak, Indonesian naval special forces. We've been compromised."
"I don't think you need to show off your knowledge of international militaries right now."
"And I don't think you need to be such a smart-ass at a moment like this!"
"Oh, so now we're arguing. Come on!"
"Shut up Ziad! We need to get out of here, now!"
Ziad cast around for the sock, and saw it lying twenty feet away. A snake had taken up residence on it.
"Shit."
He cast around for an object he could make another portkey out of and grabbed the first thing he could. It turned out that he had very bad luck.
The first thing he could grab was one of the rifles. The Indonesian soldiers shouted at them, raised their rifles, and flicked off their safeties.
Then the Indonesian soldiers fell to the ground in puffs of blood, accompanied by loud cracks.
"Well, that was a freebie," said Ziad happily.
"You can say that again," mumbled Shlomi.
Yet another group of armed men materialized from the jungle, but this one was less well-uniformed.
"I'm assuming these are our contacts?" asked Ziad, "Because I can get us out of here, if necessary."
Shlomi stared at the men before saying, "Those are our contacts."
The men walked over. One man wore a scarf to cover his face. He stepped forward and gestured at the crates.
"Is this all we ordered?" he asked, his voice muffled but barely tinged with an accent.
Ziad became The Director once more.
"One thousand M-16's and one hundred thousand rounds of ammo, at discount prices?"
"Indeed." He then shouted at his men to unload the crates.
"Our money?" asked Ziad.
The masked man removed the bag from his back and tossed it to Ziad, who fumbled the catch.
Ziad bent over and unzipped the bag, which had fallen to the ground. Inside were American dollars. A lot of them. Ziad handed the bag to Shlomi.
"Count it, Gus."
Shlomi flipped one of the crates over and used that as a table to dump the cash out and count it.
He finished and nodded at Ziad.
"It's all here, Director."
"Excellent."
The leader of the Timorese rebels talked to his men, who had been examining their purchase. They nodded at him.
The leader turned to Ziad and said, "Thank you. I appreciate doing business with you."
The rebels loaded down with rifles and bullets before disappearing into the jungle, stopping only to relieve the dead Indonesians of their weapons and ammunition.
Ziad turned to Shlomi.
"Are we just going to leave those bodies there?"
Shlomi thought about it.
"We're going to have to move them. If they find those bodies here, this spot will be compromised, and we may be doing business with Falantil again in the future."
Ziad walked over to the half-dozen bodies. Flies were gathering on the bloodstained corpses. He walked back to the empty crates and took the rope that had been used to lash them together and lashed the bodies together with Shlomi's help.
Then they portkeyed back to the outskirts of Hogsmeade, bodies in tow.
"Were is this?" asked Shlomi.
"Northern Scotland."
"Ah. This should work."
They buried the bodies underneath the loam of the forest.
"Indonesia is mostly Muslim, right?" asked Ziad.
"I think so."
Ziad nodded, knelt down, and said a short prayer.
Ziad stood, brushed his suit off, and glanced at the burial site. The loam was bloody, and a few arms or legs stuck out conspicuously.
"If someone was standing right here, they'd notice the bodies. But I don't think anyone is going to come out here from the village, and we're not implicated in any way," said Shlomi.
Then it all went to hell.
Author's Note:
And so school begins and Ziad begins his plans.
A little background information for those who don't already know it:
East Timor was a Portuguese colony until 1974, when it became independent. Indonesia quickly occupied it in 1975, and claimed it as a province of Indonesia. The next twenty four years were pretty brutal for East Timor, with about 100,000 dying. Falintil was a rebel group constituted from local Portuguese-trained garrison troops in 1975 to fight Indonesian occupation, and continued doing so until 1999.
East Timor finally gained its final independence in 1999, but those events occur after the timeline of Ziad's story. But I believe that the sudden acquisition by Falintil of such a large number of weapons might speed up that independence... Or maybe not. We'll never know.