Character Assassination

When we got the news we expected it, we knew she was in trouble from early on. We knew about the trials and the killings. People kept in touch with us, you see. There was this one girl, this one brilliant girl, Nymphadora. She's dead now. She was a witch and awesome. She could change her hair and face, she was a sort of shapeshifter, not many witches can do that, I think. Anyway, she died with her husband at that last great fight.

I don't know how we survived after Roseanna's death. Dora helped us, provided alibis, to this day our friends and family think she died in a car crash. And she got the body back so we'd have something to bury. They got a lot of bodies back, Dora said, with so many in so much trouble and pain who would miss a body here or there? She got drunk once with me. I was fourteen then, not allowed to drink, but I did and all night we sat on the dustbins in the alley near the road and watched the traffic and the stars.

I really wish she wasn't dead.

There were others, too, other witches and wizards. With most of them I never found out if they survived or not. But these are all stories for a different time, maybe. The thing is-

-Dolores Umbridge killed my sister. And years passed, years, and I grew up the way Roseanna never would, I had boyfriends and cigerettes and sex. I didn't get to college, but I knew I wasn't stupid even if my careers advisor didn't, and I got a job in a hotel and then in a cinema. Got an assistant manager job, not too shabby actually, and I stayed with Mum and Grandad in our tiny little house, still in my old room, next to Roseanna's. And I shouldn't have found out, but I did.

Because Dolores Umbridge didn't die. Lots of good people died, I know because I heard about that last battle from the people who didn't- but Dolores, the evil witch, she lived. She was locked up in a prison, a special magic prison, but she lived and my sister died. And then, I was nineteen, I had outlived my sister, when I heard.

There's a message board, you see. Bit like Facebook. Facebook for magic.

Yeah. Sounds nuts, right? But there is a internet forum for the non-magic families and friends of wizards. Around 2001 it appeared, some guy in London who we knew only as John (someone close to the Prime Minister, I later discovered, who wasn't a wizard but knew about the world) sussing out that us Muggles who knew we were Muggles might sometimes want to talk.

Muggle. Man, what a label. It sounds so dumb. And don't think there weren't people pissed that we'd been labelled. Oh, there was talk of revolution or talk of war from the odd weirdo, but it was always stifled because we figured the witches and wizards watched. Those people with world-destroying power, how could we foil them? So we, those magic-less people on the Internet who made grand plans, carried on without a name for ages, because we didn't want the one the wizards gave us. We were They Who Must Not Be Named. No-one was given the password to the forum without a checking process that could take months, but me and Mum were among the first members. We talked about the war. About our loved ones. It was a forum for the bereaved, and we knew it.

Anyway, as I got older I never checked back there much, same as I never went into Roseanna's old room. But one day I did. And there it was, a post dated a few weeks ago, Dolores Umbridge wasn't in prison anymore, she'd made a deal, she was out and about and free to do as she wished. The thread was posted by a woman called 'MG1', and I found out later she was Hermione Granger's mother. But that's another story. Actually it's the same story, just later on.

There aren't words, there really aren't, to describe how you feel when you discover your sister's murderer, a mass murderer, is free. So I won't bother with them. I'll just say, I called Mum and Grandad over, and we all looked at it, and both of them were so quiet, and then Mum let out this sound...

We sent an email to John. It was true, we'd been betrayed. The wizard world had taken Roseanna, had killed countless people, and had freed the one who killed them. And we were Muggles. And we were powerless. And we were angry.

Anyway, Grandad made the first move, went upstairs, got his old gun.

"No, Dad!" Mum said when he came downstairs with it. "Have you lost your mind?"

"I'm heading that way, Sharon," Grandad said fiercely, and he put the gun on the computer desk, where it could be seen by all three of us.

"Let's do it," I said.

"Mal!" Mum said, appalled.

"You're thinking it. All of us are. The bitch killed Roseanna."

"We can't shoot someone!"

"Who would know?" I asked, my hand inches from the revolver. "She's not...you know, she doesn't live in the human world, she's not human, she doesn't have a bank account or a passport or..." But even as I said this I felt like a psycho, I was talking about killing someone. Me who'd grown up reading Batman comics, who'd watched as he never killed the Joker. Who'd dreamed about being a superhero when suddenly there were wizards instead. And I was scared, I was suddenly shit-scared of myself, but I kept talking. "No-one would know who she was, she'd just go rot in a morgue somewhere, if they ever found her..."

"Mal," Mum said again. And she looked at me with such a freaky expression. "I know how you feel, sweetie. But we can't kill her...."

"Sorry," was all I muttered. And I felt like a part of me had actually died. Another part, I mean. "I'm just...angry. Really fucking angry."

"We all are," said Grandad. But he put the gun away.

And it didn't finish there.

*

A few days later I got an email.

hey mal. it's me, khalid. remember me?

I did remember him, actually, and he probably knew I did, but he was a shy one, was Khalid. He lived in London, and I'd been down there a few times to meet him. We were in a similar position, you see. He had a sister...

...she was Kissed, alright? Before she was ever even kissed, she was Kissed. She was twelve fucking years old. She's in a hospital now, one of ours. A 'muggle' one. Permanant vegative state, the doctors say. But we know better. I've seen Khalid and his brother and their parents watching her breathe and just not being able to fathom it. They were quite religious, they were. I don't know if they are anymore.

Anyway. We all have sad stories. His is one of the saddest.

I emailed him back.

wats up?

He answered:

Umbridge's out. They let her go.

I won't bore you with the email back-and-forth, but yeah, we agreed to meet up again. Just me and him. Mum didn't want to come and Grandad didn't either. Both were kinda lost in their own thing, Mum staring at Roseanna's pictures on the wall as if hoping to vanish into one. Grandad not telling me where he'd hidden his gun. Little things. We were fucked, I knew it, we'd drown in grief once more.

So me and Khalid ended up in the Milton Keynes shopping centre, slumped by the fountain, McDonalds burgers in our laps. He was staring into space. I was staring at him.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what?" he said.

"I don't know. For the world being shit."

He continued to stare. He was watching the people going past and I figured he was wondering the same thing I was: which of these people are witches? Which of them could command a creature to suck my soul out?

"You don't have to be sorry," he said. "Weird thing to say."

I shrugged. A gust of wind blew spray onto my coat.

"I hate them," I said. "The people who did it, and the people who stood by and watched it all happen."

"I know," said Khalid. Then he stood and hurled his french fries into a nearby bin, and turned to me and said, "We should kill her."

Another gust of wind blew my chip packet and my discarded lettice from my lap. It fluttered down the courtyard, got stuck against the shopping centre doors. "What?"

"It's justice," Khalid said quietly. "She should have spent her life in prison. Now she's not going to."

I stared at him. And the wind blew a little harder. "I've been thinking the same thing, we all have, me and my mum and Grandad. I just never expected you-"

"You never really knew me all that well," Khalid said, although without much of an accusation. "I want her punished. Me and Dad and my brother Hakan, between us we have the resources. We want to bring some- some balance back."

I thought of my sister, of the broken mirror and the broken lives. "I can't kill someone. I actually thought about it, I can't."

"You don't have to," Khalid said, sounding geninuely horrified at the idea. "Not you. Someone else, someone who doesn't...mind."

And we were quiet for a few seconds.

"You mean like a hitman?" I finally asked.

The wind had gone out of Khalid's sails. "S'alright. Doesn't really matter. Let's drop it."

So we did for the moment. But it did matter. And bit by bit, an army came to us. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of army.