Harry Potter and the Headless Thompson Gunner
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling and various publishing and movie companies. Roland belongs to the estate of the late (and sadly missed) Warren Zevon.
Chapter One: A Thompson Gun for Hire…
Harry and Hermione had risked a trip to a Muggle convenience shop to stock up with supplies. They sought out food that was reduced through special offers, or because it was close to its sell-buy date, to stretch out their limited supply of Muggle money. Harry paused at the display of newspapers and magazines to see if any of the headlines mentioned events that might be Death Eater attacks on the Muggle world. Nothing he saw seemed relevant, and he was about to move on, when one of the magazines caught his eye and triggered a memory.
Soldier of Fortune. A long time ago Harry had read an issue discarded by Dudley, not out of interest but purely because the Dursleys had locked away his schoolbooks and he had had nothing else to read, and he remembered an advertisement he had seen then. A mercenary for hire who, if the details in the advert had been correct, might be able to operate effectively in the wizarding world. He decided that, if the advert was still in the current issue, he might try to recruit the mercenary to fight against Voldemort. Even if that advert was no longer there, some of the articles might give useful advice on how to carry out a guerrilla war, or perhaps practical tips on setting up a camp in a war zone, which wasn't that different to their situation. He added the magazine to their shopping basket, ignoring the glare Hermione gave him, and they made their purchases and left the shop.
As soon as they were outside, and out of hearing range of any Muggle passers-by, Hermione gave voice to her displeasure. "Why have you wasted money on a stupid magazine?" she snapped. "We have to watch our spending and don't have anything to spare for frivolities."
"This might have something useful in it," Harry explained. He flicked through the pages, hastily, until he found the personal adverts. Yes, there it was, just as he remembered, and he had a vague recollection of having seen the same advert in the Quibbler, although at that time he'd thought of it as just part of the Quibbler's general weirdness. If that memory was accurate then it would confirm that the mercenary in question could work in the magical world. "Here it is," he said, and showed the advert to Hermione. "I think we should hire him."
"But that would break the Statute of Secrecy," Hermione pointed out. "It would just make things worse for us. And how could a Muggle fight against magic?"
"I don't think anything could make our situation worse, short of actually being caught by the Death Eaters," Harry replied. "He says 'foes both natural and supernatural', and 'supernatural' is the Muggle way of referring to magical beings, and I think I've seen the same advert in the Quibbler. He must know about our world already, so the Statute doesn't apply. And even a wizard would find a bullet in the head would ruin his whole day. I think it's worth a shot."
Hermione groaned at that, although Harry hadn't been intending a pun, and continued to glower at Harry as he led them to a café, ordered coffees, and then wrote out a letter as they sat with their drinks. "I miss Hedwig," Harry lamented. "She'd have been able to find him, for sure, but without her I'll have to write to his post box. I should have bought a stamp at the shop, and I didn't think of it, so we'll have to go back. I hope it doesn't take too long to reach him and for him to reply."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
Four days later Harry and Hermione were back in the woods but at a new camp. They had vacated their previous camp in a hurry, after seeing a pair of Death Eaters in the vicinity, and Hermione was worried that Ron wouldn't be able to find them if he decided to return. Harry was less forgiving of Ron, and more concerned that the mercenary he wanted to hire would not be able to get in touch to accept or decline the contract, but his primary concerns remained how to destroy the evil locket and find the other horcruxes. And how to endure this seemingly interminable, hellish, version of a camping trip, although his guess that Soldier of Fortune might contain some useful tips had been correct and putting them into practice had ameliorated the hardships to some extent.
Hermione was still intermittently sniping at him over his plan to hire the mercenary. "That advert says he has over thirty years' experience," she said, after re-reading the Soldier of Fortune magazine and pulling out some uninteresting pages to use in starting their campfire. "That means he must be in his fifties at least. Won't he be getting old and slow?"
"If he's been fighting for more than thirty years, and he's still alive, he must be pretty good at it," Harry countered.
"Oh, right," Hermione conceded. "Yes, that's a good point. Like Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde."
Harry frowned. "Don't you mean Conan the Barbarian?"
"No, Cohen," Hermione said. "You haven't read any Terry Pratchett, have you?"
"Never heard of him," Harry replied.
"Oh, that's a shame, I'm sure you'd really enjoy his books," Hermione said. "I don't have any with me, unfortunately, but if we make it through this I'll lend you some."
Harry missed most of what she said because he was staring at something that had appeared at the edge of their little clearing. A truly hideous sight. A man, clad in faded jungle camouflage, who would have been tall if not for his lack of something everyone else Harry had ever seen possessed. A head. His neck ended, just above his shoulders, in a ragged mess of severed flesh. It took Harry several seconds to recover enough to observe the other unusual feature of the new arrival. He was holding a Thompson submachine gun.
Hermione realised that Harry was no longer listening to her and turned to see what had distracted him. She yelped in surprise and fear, and grabbed for her wand, as she saw the advancing figure.
Harry managed to gather himself together enough to speak. "Uh, Mr Roland, I presume?" he croaked out.
The headless man took his left hand away from the gun and made a 'thumbs up' sign.
"Harry! He doesn't have a head!" Hermione squeaked.
"That would be why he's called Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," Harry said, trying to act as if he hadn't been just as shocked as Hermione when he first saw the mercenary approaching. The headless man made another 'thumbs up' sign.
"So, you got my letter, then," Harry said, wondering as he spoke how the man had managed to read it without a head and the accompanying eyes. For that matter, how was he hearing Harry's words without ears? "Uh, I'd like to hire you to fight a Dark Lord. Voldemort and his Death Eaters."
Roland held up five fingers, closed his fist, held up five fingers again, and then circled his fingers to form an 'o' shape three times in succession.
Harry guessed he was indicating a price. "Ten thousand dollars?" he queried. US dollars were the usual currency for mercenaries, or so he had gathered from the articles in Soldier of Fortune. It would be awkward to get the money, and the goblins would probably cheat him on the exchange rate, but he could afford it.
Roland made a 'thumbs down' gesture.
"Pounds?" Harry tried.
Roland gave 'thumbs down' again and then drew the shape of a 'g' in the air.
"Ten thousand galleons?" Harry interpreted.
Roland gave him a 'thumbs up'.
Harry grimaced. He had enough in his vault to pay the mercenary's fee, if he could get to Gringotts, but it would almost wipe out his reserves. Still, it would be worth spending such a large sum if he could get rid of Voldemort, and he believed Sirius had left him a substantial sum. "Seven thousand?" he offered, hoping to bargain the headless mercenary down.
Roland gave a 'thumbs down' and then held up five fingers followed by four.
"Eight?" Harry tried.
Roland replied with five fingers followed by three fully extended and one bent over half-way.
"Eight and a half thousand? Deal," Harry agreed, "but only payable if we win."
Roland gave a 'thumbs up' just as a series of popping noises sounded from the other side of the clearing. Someone, or rather several someones, had Apparated into the area. Harry and Hermione spun round and saw five wizards with their wands out. They weren't outfitted as Death Eaters, being clad in an assortment of clothing with the only common denominator being that they were dressed for warmth, but all five had strips of red cloth tied around their arms as some sort of crude insignia.
"Now who are the stupid sods who've triggered the Taboo this time?" the apparent leader wondered. "Bloody hell, it's Undesirable Number One! We've struck it lucky here. We'll be re… what the fuck is that?"
"An inferius!" another of them cried. "Kill it!"
Harry glanced back at Roland and saw that the merc was waving his hand in urgent 'down' signals. He grabbed Hermione and tackled her to the ground just as Roland's hand returned to the Thompson's foregrip and his right finger tightened on the trigger.
As soon as the kids were out of the way Roland's Thompson gun started to chatter. Harry raised his head just enough to see the five wizards jerk and stagger as bullets tore into them. One of them got off a Reducto, which missed, and another tried to cast a Protego but only managed to get out the first two syllables before he was silenced by a .45 bullet that hit him in the mouth and tore off half of his jaw.
Roland ceased fire and walked over to where the wizards lay on the ground. Three of them were obviously dead, torn apart by the storm of lead, but two were still moving feebly. Roland clicked the Thompson's fire selector over to single shot and methodically put a bullet through the centre of each of the living wizards' foreheads. He ejected the magazine, drew a fresh 30-round box magazine from a pouch, and inserted it. With the gun once more ready for instant use he sat down, propped the gun against his knee, and began to refill the used magazine with loose rounds.
Hermione got up, shakily, and Harry could see tears on her face. "He… he… just killed them!" Hermione gasped out.
"This is war," Harry reminded her, as he climbed to his feet. "It's what he does, what I hired him for, and it's the only way we can win. The Death Eaters are in charge at the Ministry, and we can't have them arrested. It's kill or be killed. I don't know who those wizards are… were… but I know they didn't have anything good for us in mind. I bet they would have taken us to Voldemort."
This time the pops of incoming Apparitions were almost immediate. Roland dropped the part-filled magazine, snatched up his Thompson, and made another urgent 'down' sign. Harry responded instantly and once again tackled Hermione to the ground. They had barely landed when the gun began to roar.
These wizards, six in number, were more alert and better prepared than the first contingent. The failure of their colleagues to return had warned them that something was wrong. It didn't help. The hideous sight of the headless warrior slowed their reactions enough that three of them were dead before they could even think about casting spells. Of the rest, one got part of the way through casting a Shield spell, another had managed to conjure a Fire Whip but it fizzled out harmlessly when a bullet broke his arm and another perforated a lung, and the last was hit in the shoulder just as he completed the final syllable of Avada Kedavra. The impact of the .45 bullet spun him half around, the spell missed by yards, and the next two bullets hit him in the throat and left him giving a good impression of Nearly Headless Nick. Unlike the fully headless Roland, the wizard didn't pick himself up and seek vengeance on the one who had decapitated him. He just fell to the ground and bled to death.
This time two of the wizards were still alive, although seriously injured and apparently incapacitated, when Roland ceased fire. Once more he set the Thompson to single shot and finished one off with a single bullet to the head, but then the bolt locked in the forward position as the magazine was empty. Instead of changing magazines Roland drew a panga, the African version of a machete, and used that to administer a bloody coup de grace. He wiped it clean on the robes of a wizard corpse, sheathed it again, and then ejected the Thompson's empty magazine and replaced it with the partially refilled one. With that done, and the gun ready for action once more, he sat down again and began to refill the empty mag.
Hermione's eyes were huge circles, she had gone noticeably pale, and she was crying out "Oh God, oh God, oh God." Harry could barely hear her as his ears were ringing from the loud noise of the gunfire. "They know where we are!" Hermione gasped out. "We have to get out of here!"
"Wait!" Harry said. "I think we accidentally called them here. The first lot said something about a 'Taboo', and I'd said Vol-, uh, You-Know-Who's name when I was making the deal with Roland and the wizards arrived a minute later, and then I said it again and this bunch turned up right away. A 'Rapid Reaction Force'," he deduced, using terminology he'd read in Soldier of Fortune. "There must be some sort of curse on the name that tells his followers where to find anyone who says it. He must have had the same thing going in the first war, and that's the reason nobody says it and everyone calls him You-Know-Who instead. Ron was right that it's bad luck to say the name. Bloody Dumbledore. So much for 'The fear of a name increases the fear of the thing itself'. There was a good reason, and nobody bloody told us, and it nearly got us caught."
"We still have to get out of here," Hermione insisted. "There will be others like these, and it won't take long before they start wondering why two lots of them have gone out and not come back. They'll find us again."
"Yeah, and they'll probably send even more next time. You're right, we'd better move on." Harry moved closer to the dead bodies. "It might be an idea to take these blokes' wands," he mused. "They might make useful spares, if we could find ones that work for us, or if we rescue any prisoners we can give them wands." He froze as he got a good look at one of the dead. "That's Fenrir Greyback!" he exclaimed. When Snape had given lessons on werewolves, during the lessons when he was filling in for Remus Lupin, he had told the pupils that the Muggle idea that it took silver to kill a werewolf was a myth. It seemed that he had been correct; Greyback had been torn apart by the bullets and was deader than a Norwegian Blue parrot. "Remus will be over the moon to hear that he's dead," Harry commented.
"Maybe not over the moon," Hermione said, with a shaky attempt at a smile. "It's not his favourite celestial body."
Harry was feeling somewhat shaky himself, as even the fight at the Ministry, his struggle against Inferi at the seaside cave, and the battle when Draco had brought the Death Eaters into Hogwarts hadn't prepared him for the shattering violence of Roland's destruction of the attacking wizards, but he managed to control his reactions. He had a feeling that if he showed signs of weakness Hermione would break down totally. They had to stay strong if they were to defeat Voldemort, even with the aid of their lethal undead companion. He forced a short laugh at Hermione's weak attempt at a joke and then gathered up wands from beside the bodies.
"Okay, let's pack up and move out," Harry said, after pocketing the wands. "I was planning on going to Godric's Hollow soon anyway, to look for Bathilda Bagshot, so we'll head in that direction."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
They arrived in Godric's Hollow on Christmas Eve. Harry and Hermione were Polyjuiced as nondescript Muggles, just a random man and woman from whom they'd managed to acquire hairs, but there was nothing they could do about Roland's distinctive appearance. Harry was hoping that any Muggle observers would think it was a costume, or special effects to do with the filming of a zombie film; not a very convincing explanation, perhaps, but he felt much safer with the undead mercenary accompanying them and at this stage attracting the attention of Muggles was the least of his worries.
In fact there were few Muggles around and those few didn't come close enough to notice anything unusual. Harry and Hermione could hear the sound of carols drifting from the church and guessed that most of the village's inhabitants were gathered there, or perhaps were at home watching television and getting ready for Christmas Day, or in the pub from which they could hear snatches of Christmas pop music.
"I can hear people singing, it must be Christmas time…" Hermione chanted, as the strains of '2000 Miles' by The Pretenders reached them.
"Well, yes," Harry said, initially not realising that Hermione was quoting from the song and thinking she was merely stating the obvious, but then he caught on and was pleased that Hermione must be feeling more or less normal. Whatever normal was these days, anyway.
Whether the Muggles were in the pub, the church, or at home they weren't anywhere near the two kids, and their headless escort, as the trio approached the graveyard. They saw a war memorial which, when they approached closer, turned into statues of James and Lily Potter and baby Harry. In the graveyard they found several graves that Hermione found interesting but Harry less so, until eventually they came upon the graves of Harry's mother and father.
Harry stood in front of the graves, silently paying his respects, and Hermione conjured a wreath of roses and Harry laid them in front of the gravestone. Roland stood at attention beside Harry, his Thompson held in the Reverse Arms position, obviously joining Harry in paying his respects. Harry only vaguely noticed the gesture, being preoccupied with his own thoughts, but a small corner of his mind was touched. They stood for a minute in silence and then moved on towards the wreckage of the house in which his parents had died. It was hidden by a spell until they drew close, no doubt one that would make it totally invisible to Muggles, but once they passed through the boundary of the spell they could see the ruin clearly.
As they drew near the house they saw a figure further up the street, hobbling towards them. An old woman, bent and wizened, looking ancient enough to make even Dumbledore seem young by comparison. She halted and beckoned to them, obviously able to see them despite them being inside the Notice-Me-Not wards that would have hidden them from Muggles, and therefore she had to be a witch. She didn't seem in the least alarmed by the sight of the headless man walking alongside Harry and Hermione. The old woman – perhaps best described as an old crone – beckoned again, turned, and began to walk back the way she had come.
"That must be Bathilda Bagshot," Harry deduced. "We'd better follow her."
Harry led the way and the others followed, Hermione looking distinctly uncertain about the advisability of going with the old crone, and Roland as inscrutable as only someone without a head could be. The woman led them past several houses to one with a rotting garden gate, then through an overgrown garden into a dusty house that smelt of unwashed clothing and stale food. She beckoned them on until they reached a dark and filthy sitting room. Harry felt the locket at his breast grow warm and seem to throb. He wondered if this meant his guess that Bathilda had been given the Sword of Gryffindor was correct and the locket could sense the proximity of its nemesis. Suddenly, without warning, Roland opened fire.
Harry was so shocked that he could only utter a strangled yelp, unheard by anyone over the thunder of the gunfire in a confined space, but then his shock turned to horror as he saw the muzzle flashes of Roland's Thompson gun illuminating a ghastly transformation. Bathilda's body came apart to reveal a huge green snake, King Cobra size or bigger, and Harry recognised it at once. Nagini. Either it had been inside the woman or else the apparent old crone had been nothing but a glamour. He had walked into a trap.
At least he had brought back-up. Nagini rocked under the impact of the hail of .45 bullets and tried to evade. It was a narrow target, and moved fast and erratically, but Roland's aim was unerring. Scaly skin, and pieces of flesh, flew as bullets tore into the snake but it stayed alive, braced itself against the impacts, and headed for Harry.
Harry felt the locket growing painfully hot against his chest and the scar on his forehead began to hurt. He had no time to think about what that meant as he was preoccupied with trying to stay away from the charging snake. The light from the muzzle flashes produced an eerie stroboscopic effect that made the snake's motion hard to predict but he managed to dodge its first strike, as Roland stepped quickly to one side to avoid Harry getting between him and his target, and then Hermione cast a Lumos that lit up the room and gave Harry a clearer view. It didn't seem to make any difference to the headless, and consequently eyeless, Roland.
Nagini was torn and bleeding in a dozen places, and was being driven back, but still wasn't dead and kept on trying to get to Harry. Then Roland's gunfire stopped, as the magazine ran out, and the snake turned its attention to him.
Harry was scared, in pain from the now red-hot locket, and astonished that the snake was still alive after being shot so many times. He had seen the mangled wreck to which Fenrir Greyback had been reduced after less than half as many bullets; Nagini was wounded, certainly, but the wounds appeared to be superficial. Voldemort's familiar must be much tougher than a werewolf. And now Roland was out of ammunition, although he was changing magazines with the speed and precision of long practice, and Nagini was taking advantage of the respite to try to remove its most dangerous opponent. The snake reared up to strike, mouth gaping open and deadly fangs poised…
…and Harry cast Sectumsempra. The spell struck its body a foot below the deadly triangular head and sliced a deep gash through its skin and into its flesh. Hermione joined in and hit Nagini with a Confringo, which inflicted a wound slightly deeper than those from Roland's bullets. Still it didn't fall, and only recoiled for a brief moment, before gathering itself and striking. Its fangs flashed forward…
…and Roland met the strike with the barrel of his Thompson gun, burying the Cutts Compensator muzzle-brake into the fanged maw, and the two spells had gained him enough time to complete the insertion of a fresh magazine. Before the snake could pull back Roland opened fire again. Whatever armour, or magic, had enabled Nagini to survive so many bullets to the body didn't protect the inside of its mouth. The bullets, and the upward muzzle-blast from the Compensator, ripped apart the snake's head and blew its brains out.
As the coils of the snake's body flopped limply to the floor Harry saw a new horror. A black cloud rose from the destroyed head, taking the shape of a human face, and simultaneously a stab of almost unbearable agony shot through him from his scar. It lasted only a couple of seconds before the pain faded and the face-shaped cloud dissipated.
"A horcrux!" Harry exclaimed. Dumbledore's guess had been correct. That explained how the snake had withstood the hail of bullets that should have turned it into a long, thin, flexible colander. Even its magical protection hadn't been able to make it completely invulnerable, however, and its demise proved that making a living creature into a horcrux had not been one of Voldemort's brightest ideas.
Even as the thought crossed Harry's mind he felt a renewed stab of pain from his scar and a feeling of rage and urgency. Voldemort. "He's coming!" Harry cried. "We have to get out of here, now!" He grabbed Roland's arm and Apparated back to the last place where they had camped.
For a moment, after they arrived, Harry cursed himself for not telling Hermione where he was going. He had to hope that she could guess correctly. Then a rush of thoughts not his own hit him and he was too overwhelmed by them to worry further about his omission. Rage. Fear bordering on panic. Flashes of images; a ring, a diary, a golden goblet, the locket that Harry was wearing, a diadem, and Nagini both alive and as a bullet-riddled corpse. The rage intensified as the image of Nagini's dead body appeared, and it was accompanied by a feeling of grief. Then it was replaced by a feeling of… elation… and the image of a framed photograph. Harry was vaguely aware of the 'pop' of an incoming Apparition but the visions he was receiving prevented him from paying attention. Only after a minute was his connection with Voldemort broken and he was able to react to Hermione's frantic attempts to attract his attention.
"Harry! Harry!" she was calling. "Can you hear me?"
"Uh, yes, I hear you, Hermione," Harry answered. "Sorry. I was seeing a vision from V… You-Know-Who."
"Oh, right," Hermione said. "I thought maybe the noise from Roland's gun had made you go deaf. It was loud. Spinal Tap loud, all the way up to eleven."
"Yeah, my ears are still ringing," Harry agreed, "but they'll get better. I hope." He didn't get the Spinal Tap reference, never having seen the movie, but guessed, correctly, that Hermione was referring to a rock band. The thought only crossed his mind for a second before he was distracted by becoming aware of pain coming from where the locket rested against his chest. "Shit, that burns!" he exclaimed, and opened his shirt to investigate. He found that the locket was no longer red-hot, but it was stuck to his skin. When he pulled it away some of the skin came away with it, leaving a red oval with raw and bleeding patches.
"Ouch, that's got to hurt!" Hermione said. "I'll get the essence of dittany." She took the vial of healing solution out of her bag and applied it to the burn. "Maybe we should put the locket in the bag, for now," she said. Roland gave a vigorous 'thumbs up'.
"I guess so," Harry agreed, and took off the locket. A thought occurred to him as Hermione was putting the locket away. "Roland knows a lot of stuff about the magical world," he observed, "and he advertises in the Quibbler, and Muggles don't keep on going when they lose their heads. Maybe he was a wizard?"
"He certainly acts like a Gryffindor," Hermione agreed.
Roland gave a brief 'thumbs down' and pointed to a small, faded, flag patch on the breast of his camouflage jacket.
"Oh, a Norwegian flag," Hermione identified it. "So, Durmstrang?"
Roland again gave a 'thumbs down' and then held his thumb horizontally.
"Not Beauxbatons, surely," Hermione said, "but… you are a wizard?"
Roland repeated his gesture of 'thumbs down' followed by a horizontal thumb.
"A Squib," Harry guessed, and this time Roland gave a definite 'thumbs up'. "Oh. Right, that explains a lot," Harry said. "He saved my life at Godric's Hollow because he recognised something wrong with the fake Bathilda Bagshot. Hiring him was one of the smartest things I've ever done. With Roland backing us up, maybe we can really take the fight to the Death Eaters."
"I think we can," Hermione agreed. "In the words of John McClane, 'Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.'" Harry caught that reference; he had managed to see most of 'Die Hard', as the Dursleys had watched it on video, and he had been particularly amused by the resemblance of Hans Gruber to Severus Snape. "We have an edge at last," Hermione continued, and then frowned. "Although, our ears are going to suffer. Perhaps I should put a Silencio on his Thompson gun."
Roland gave an enthusiastic 'thumbs up'.
Harry frowned as he considered their situation. "We have some planning to do, and I picked up a few things from V… from Tom Riddle's mind that I need to think about. If he picked up anything from me, he might be able to track us here. We'd better move out. Pack up, quick, and let's go."
