Ray's Malapropisms Explained

Administration of Muggle Protection and Secrecy

Obliviator Division, Section Four, Great Lakes Region

Case File Number: RCW-139

Subject: Kowalski, Stanley Raymond, a fifteen-year-old Muggle, residing in the City of Chicago. (Case was referred by the Tempe, Arizona Office)

Agent: Rosemary Forgetina

Date: Aug. 27, 1972

Report: What follows is a transcript of the memories retrieved from the subject's mind prior to the application of appropriate Memory Charms.

Begin Memory Transcript.

The desert! Why the desert? Mom must have really cracked this time. Why are we vacationing in the desert in August? Oh look, a cactus! Look, another and another and another! At least they let me get out alone sometimes. If I'm cruising around in the morning sun, I must be getting something out of being in all that nature, right? Wrong! There is nothing here, just sand and cacti, cacti and sand. I wander aimlessly, hoping to die of heat prostration rather than have to go back to the hotel and listen to Mom go on about the delicate balance of the desert environment. She never cared about nature before. It's just all there is to talk about here. It's not like I got anything to go back to in Chicago, Stella having crossed me off her list again. Of course, she always puts me back on the list after a while, so maybe I'll drink some water and hope for the best.

I think I see a mirage. The air is all shimmery over there. Maybe I'll see if I can figure out why. Hum? I thought that a mirage was supposed to move, so you always see it in the distance and never reach it. How come I've stepped really close to this one and it's like I'm standing next to a weird kind of fog? It's not really a fog, just a strangeness to the way things (sand, cacti, tumbleweeds) look.

I take another step and Holy Crap! Suddenly there are all these girls on brooms, flying like it's the movies, only you can't see the strings. Wait, they're not all girls, they're just all wearing long coats or dresses? There's a set of bleachers full of cheering people. It's set way up high, I guess you can see better up there. Oh, duh. It's a game like hockey or something. Maybe they need to fly 'cause there's no ice in the desert. I walk over to the stands and start climbing. When I reach the top, I take a seat near the stairs in the top row.

This is too frickin' amazing to be real. Maybe the brooms are some new, personal, rocket systems the military-industrial- complex has thought up and this is how they are training the pilots to use them. Then why ain't they in Air Force uniforms? Oh, so they gets points for putting the ball in that bucket of purple goo at the end of the field. Wow, I just noticed the remote-control balls trying to hit everyone. It's more like hockey every minute. New ball. Damn, that guy is good, I was sure he was going to hit that pole. I wonder what that big countdown clock is for. Whatever it is, the time is getting low. Come on, fake right and you can get passed the goalie. The purple goo is waiting. Oh, ten seconds left . . . nine . . . eight, get around him, seven . . . six . . . oh, oh, pass it . . . four . . . three . . . shoot it . . . 1 . . .

Shit! The ball just blew up. Guess that's what the big timer was for. The poor guy fell off his broom. Oh, that's bad. . . . Nobody doesn't get internal injuries from something like that. The trainer's working on him. Why's he pointing a stick at him? What the hell is that stick doing? What's that light coming from it?

Other guys are bring a remote-control, floating stretcher for him. It must work like the brooms. Only how can it go so slow? Magnets maybe, like the big electronic ones. Whatever it is the Air Force has made some freaky choices on this one. The Air Force . . . the desert . . . Oh man! I'm in Area 51! All the weird stuff must be alien technology. That's not a game (who uses bombs in a game?), it's training exercises. They're training to defend us from an alien invasion. These guys are learning how to defuse bombs in the middle of an attack, to minimize civilian causalities.

Oh God, I've got to get back and tell . . . shit! Who can I tell? No one would believe me. I scramble down the stairs, as quietly as I can, while being in a blind panic, which is to say not very. At the bottom of the stairs a couple of soldiers spot me and start yelling. I run back the way I came, waiting for the shimmery-cold-fog thingy again. I pass through it but don't stop. Like they say, 'Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force'. I got no chance. I'll never outrun one of those broom things, plus they might have a jeep or something. I can hear them behind me now.

One of them yells, "OBLIVIATE" and I'm suddenly all fuzzy and warm. Where was I going? I look around. Three guys in dresses and pissed-off expressions are running after me. I zig and I zag and I zig again, running passed them, through the desert. How did I get to the desert? Why is that cactus so blurry? Holy shit! Where did all this come from? A playing field and bleachers and lots of people dressed like the guys who are chasing me. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque, 'cause the pissed-off guys now have a whole lot of company.

Someone in front of me points at me with the stick in his hand and shouts, "OBLIVIATE." Wow, that's nice, blue sky, white-yellow sand, green cacti, just really nice. This is a good dream. Two guys come up to me and pick me up off my back. "Are you angels?" I ask the one on my left. I catch a glimpse of a weird, little, green guy, only like two feet tall, just over there. Funny, little green man. Little green men? Oh yeah! Area 51, Air Force, alien bomb diffusers. Shit, I pull away and try to make a break for it.

"IMMOBULUS." I can't move. One of my feet ain't even touching the ground, but I'm not falling over. The only thing I can do is breathe. A bunch of the soldiers gather around me and start discussing what to do with me.

"Memory Charms aren't working . . ."

"Take him to a remote location and do it. . ." Oh no! I ain't going out like that, Mom never knowing what happened to me, vultures building nests out of my bones, snakes eating my eyeballs, wolves and turtles fighting over my liver. No way! I struggle to struggle, but it's not happening. One of them grabs my wrist and pulls me, one foot dragging, through the sand. They put me on one of those spaceman stretchers and float me back through the shimmery, cloaking device, force-shield thing and much closer to the hotel. Well, not that close to the hotel, just in that direction. The vultures and the snakes and the wolves and the turtles will still get their meal before I'm found. There are just two of them now.

"Hey Fitzy, watch," one of them says, pointing his ray gun at me. This is it. God, I hope Stella doesn't end up an alien love-slave. Damn, now there's an image . . . "FURNUNCULUS!" Un-ergh my neck and entire left arm itch. Not just itch, but ITCH and I can't even move to scratch. Kill me please. I can't take this.

"Jarvis, that's cruel."

"Oh, come on, he's just a Muggle." I'm starting to think that maybe these guys aren't Air Force. Maybe they're not even human. Maybe they're shape-shifting little green men. They're not the Earth's defense, they're the invasion force! Muggle must be the alien word for Earthling.

"He still feels pain and the frustration of not being able to scratch. You wouldn't torture a defenseless animal, would you? Let's just do this okay?"

"Yeah right, OBLIVIATE. FINITE INCANTATUM."

"Wow fella, you lost?" They think I can't remember again, but I do. I fake dazed and confused.

"Uh, which way to the hotel?" One of them points behind me.

"I see you had a little trouble with the cacti, huh?" he gestures at my arm, which I am scratching vigorously.

"Yeah, I guess."

"So, uh," he points behind me again, "see you around." They start walking away, dragging the un-floaty stretcher behind them. I don't even know where to begin figuring out who to tell about this. I scratch some more and start walking.

End Memory Transcript.

Subject then proceeded to report his experience to Muggle police, the Muggle Military and everyone else in authority he saw for nearly three days before the Tempe office of AMPS was made aware of the problem. Obliviators processed all Muggles involved in the breach and Aurors apprehended nearly two dozen of the attendees and players from the unauthorized Quodpot match, using the physical descriptions of the lifted from the subject's memories.

A running file was opened on subject RCW-139, as he has been labeled MA (Magicnetically Attracted) , having both a resistance to memory charms and an uncanny ability to find any magic in his vicinity. He is, in fact, dating a Muggle-born witch (one Stella Jane Warren, who attends Madam Pfeiffer's Academy and Finishing School for Witches, here in the City of Chicago).