Character Assassination

Character Assassination
3. People I Meet On The Internet Are Jerks

People on the internet were angry. (I heard they often are.)

Hermione Granger's mother posted a message. My daughter is fighting to put that woman back where she belongs. She can do it. Have faith. But I suppose no-one had much faith, because the names Hermione was called. I felt a bit sorry for her, that clever woman I didn't know, although I had the feeling that by the laws of the universe, I shouldn't because she was one of them.

But I didn't think like that. I was pretty sure I'd never thought like that. That was why everything had got so bad to begin with, the them and us thing.

Stupid bitch should die in a fire and rot in hell, someone wrote about Hermione as the days dragged on. And then later, We can't put up with this anymore. In the old days they used to burn witches. I wondered if they knew, the witches and wizards, how many people wanted them dead. I supposed that was why they kept things such a secret. They had magic but we had bombs.

Nuke them, someone said, they've killed thousands of us. And we'd get away with it. Can they build nukes? Can they even build aeroplanes? Turn us into toads, but we'd still have the Internet. And I sat back at the computer and I had a we're-fucked sort of feeling. I knew something was coming. I could picture it, a whole horde of helpless non-magic humans somehow marching into Hogwarts School and getting mowed down with spells. Maybe. Probably.

So I wasn't surprised when, a whole two months after Umbridge was freed, Aaron the American stepped in. Aaron the American, who was actually just Aaron, was the only guy on the forum from the States. The US managed alright during the wizard war, you see, came out of it fine. But Aaron's twin daughters were witches. He moved to England to send them to Hogwarts, because they'd heard Hogwarts was the best and wanted to go. You can guess where this is going: they're both dead. Not Kissed, thankfully, but dead.

Aaron announced that Something Should Be Done.

I lost my wife to cancer, I lost my daughters to monsters, I won't stand back anymore. Hogwarts School is a castle in Scotland, and castles, they BURN. We'll go to Scotland, we'll get terrorist on their asses, we'll send them a message. The children there can defend themselves, we're all VERY aware of that. we have no choice anymore, they masscred us, and now they've swept their crimes against humanity under the rug.

On the whole, people agreed with him.

I dunno if it was just the Umbridge thing which fired people up. I think people were just sick of...being Muggles. This magic stuff affected us and we didn't have even remotely a say in it. And people's kids had died, you can't expect anyone to act rationally if that happens. So something bad was going to happen. That was obvious.

*

We'd never all met up before, us forum people. Obviously I'd met Khalid and his family, a few other people were friends, but there'd never been a big general meeting. One day when the Internet was down, and had been down for a few days, Khalid called me.

"I need to talk to you," he said. "That American bloke..."

"Aaron."

"Yeah, Aaron...he's asked people to come see him at his house. Like a...party. A meeting. A sort of planning session."

"Oh," I said.

"Afraid so."

I sighed.

"He posted a message on the board a few days ago. I thought you'd have seen it," Khalid said.

"Internet's been down."

"Oh. Anyway, he's...this is bad, Mal." Khalid's voice was higher and more panicked. "Aaron and his supporters, they're planning to go to Scotland and dynamite the place. People are gonna get hurt. Maybe killed."

I twisted my hands around, because this was a Big Thing.

"How can he even find it? It's hidden from people like us."

"It looks like an abandoned castle," Khalid said, and I wondered if his sister had told him this. "There's meant to be spells on it and all sorts. But he thinks he can do it. Mal, he's basically declared war."

I looked around the house. Behind the glass of the kitchen window, I could see Mum. And Grandad would be asleep on the sofa in front of the TV.

"I don't think it's a war if the people you're fighting don't know it's a war."

"No, they call that a massacre, actually," Khalid said, and I remembered he was a politics student, top of the class, wanted to be Prime Minister. That Khalid was coming out now. "Innocent people will be hurt. Innocent children. We can't allow that to happen."

"No," I agreed. "We can't."

*

Me and Khalid went to the meeting. It was in London, and Khalid met me at the train station. Night was falling, and we walked amongst the crowds and Khalid said, "It's weird that all this stuff, with magic and wizards is going on and none of these people know about it."

"Yeah," I said.

We had to go past King's Cross, but neither of us looked at it. When we reached Aaron's house there were already a few people there, and a hard-faced woman opened the door to us.

"Names?" she asked.

"Khalid Abdel and Mal Young."

"Screen names?" she asked with a hint of impatience. "What you use on the message board."

"Um...Khalid and Mal."

She looked at us crossly and consulted a list. "Alright. Fine. Aaron's through in the living room."

We went through. Aaron's house was nice, clean, with pictures of two smiling girls on the wall that made my heart sink. In the living room there were a lot of people gathered, some of them clutching cups of tea, waiting for something to happen.

Aaron shook our hands. "Nice to meet you," he said, although clearly he didn't really know who we were. "Sit yourselves down...there's coffee in the kitchen...tea..."

Me and Khalid found chairs and sat down. We were the youngest people there, and as we looked at the adults it was obvious that most of them were nervous. There were a few who weren't, though...the woman who'd opened the door was glaring around at us, a blonde man with a denim jacket was consulting a weapons magazine, and an old man seemed to be...

"Khalid? That man has a machine gun."

"I know," he said, and resolutely stared ahead. Eventually a few more people turned up, took their places, and Aaron finally got started.

"We're most of us here cos we lost someone," he said. He didn't have much of an accent. "Me, I lost my girls. Brenda here, she lost her son. Matthew at the back, he lost his as well." Two people who I took to be Brenda and Matthew nodded. "And we can do nothing. We're voiceless. We're betrayed. The woman who sent our kids-" His voice cracked, "-to their deaths is free and well. We need to send these people a message. A violent one if needs be."

If needs be.

"What's your plan?" someone spoke up.

"Introduce yourself," Aaron told him. "Actually, we all should introduce ourselves."

We did. It didn't take long. Khalid mumbled his name, I told them all that my sister was dead, people explained themselves while staring at the floor and the man who'd just spoken gave his name as Kevin. Then finally we carried on.

"My son, Joe, he talked about Hogwarts non-stop," said Kevin, a far-away look in his eyes. "He said that it was protected by spells, that if any...anyone like us went there, they'd suddenly remember something they had to do and turn around again."

"I heard the same thing," said somebody else.

"How would we get around that?" someone asked. And I realised Shit shit shit, they're seriously considering this. ALL OF THEM are considering this.

"I say we use a plane, fly over it, drop a bomb-"

"How can we do anything? They're all powerful..."

"How can we get near the castle?"

"MENTAL STRENGTH!" announced a voice, and we all turned to see the old man with the gun. He was standing up with the thing clasped in his hand. "Mental strength. When approaching the castle, you're going to have to fight and hard! Your brain will tell you to turn back, it'll tell you that your car's being stolen, that your house is on fire, that your parents are dying, and you have to fight it! Understand?"

Who'd disagree with an armed man? People nodded.

"Thank you, Mr Creevy," Aaron said. "Mr Creevy, everyone." Mr Creevy gave a grunt and sat himself down.

"So we're actually doing this, then?" I suddenly said.

People looked at me. I didn't look away. Which was good. And I figured I'd say it a second time. "We're doing this?"

"Yes," Aaron said. And then, "What're your concerns?"

"There's gonna be people in the castle," I said.

"People who can defend themselves."

"And they hit first!" someone said. "My daughter died because of them!"

Khalid spoke up. "Listen to yourselves! You're actually thinking of bombing a building full of children. You're planning it! People will die. Just think about it, please, just for a second!"

Silence. A very short silence. "He's right," I said loudly. "You're psychos to be planning this." And Aaron gave me a very angry look.

"Why did you two come to this meeting?" said the hard-faced woman cooly.

"We came to talk you out of it," I said. "You dicks."

"What you're planning is an act of terrorism," said Khalid.

"Well, you'd know all about that," said Aaron. I felt Khalid next to me tense up.

"If you're going to resort to cheap mud-slinging-" He took off his glasses, cleaned them, and I felt him shaking a bit. "We're going to report you to the police."

"They'll laugh," said Matthew, but he was looking more and more uncomfortable. So were some of the others. "If you start going on about wizards and witches..."

"We'll find a way," said Khalid.

"We're gonna go now," I said loudly, standing up. I looked at everyone. A few people looked sort of afraid, and I thought back to Roseanna, to the people who'd stood and done nothing while innocents got killed. "Who's coming?"

No-one else stood up. We left without a word. As we got to the end of the street I heard Khalid let out a breath.

"I don't like those people."

There was a bench by the road and we both collapsed onto it. "What do we do?" I asked.

"Going to the police might be our best bet. We'll say they're...anarchists. Who want to blow up old castles. Or something. We'll make something up."

It seemed a stupid idea, but the world in general seemed pretty stupid. We went home.