Hollywood or What?



Disclaimer addendum: All other properties referenced are owned by their respective copyright holders. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.

---

Episode One
A New Trope

Almost thirty years ago, in a plot device far, far away...

Ooww...

Clough lifted his face off the gleaming black floor. He painfully rolled over slightly, enough to look behind him and see the portal wink out.

I came here in that thing? Bloody hell, I’m braver than I thought.

He laboriously clambered to his feet, dusted off his robes...

That’s odd...

His robes were gone. In their place were quilted, black leather trousers, and all sorts of shiny metal... stuff. That wasn’t right...

He looked around. In the distance, two men in dark grey uniforms sauntered across a corridor. There was something odd about them... He looked closer, and blinked in surprise when his eyes seemed to zoom in on them. And when they did, he saw crawling patterns of light blue over them, through them, following their every move.

He zoomed out again, looked around; now that he was looking for it, he saw the trickling light everywhere. It rolled across surfaces, bent and curved as people – in strange white and black armour, it seemed – passed through it. It moved as though it were alive.

There was something here, something pervading everything, tying it all together.

: : : and i can control it

The thought popped into his head unbidden, unrecognised. He spotted a polystyrene cup of something on a shelf a short distance away. He reached for it...

...and it drifted through the air into his – gauntleted, he now noticed – hand.

Well, that was weird.

He’d never been good at wandless magic; he’d never managed wordless magic at all. Come to that, he wasn’t great at magic even when he used both wands and words. And now, clearly, he’d just cast Wingardium Leviosa with barely a thought.

But he never had time to finish the thought, as a blaring claxon startled him out of his reverie. He caught a snippet of an announcement – something about a docking bay – and set off at a brisk pace. He didn’t know where he was going, but apparently his feet did, and that was good enough for him.

* * *

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Harry asked the red-haired monstrosity crammed into the compartment with him. It was under the floor of the Centennial Goshawk, currently sitting in a very big room with a very large number of troops examining it in very great detail. Harry instinctively felt it would have been a very good time to be elsewhere.

The beast roared, as quietly as it could. Harry wasn’t sure how he understood it to mean "You got a better one, shorty?" – but he did. He glanced nervously upward as armoured footsteps clanked off the floor above him.

He held his breath. Partly because he was nervous, and partly because... well, wookiees don’t smell great.

* * *

Clough looked out over the docking bay, where hundreds of people –

: : : i command them all

– from technicians in grey to pilots in black to soldiers in white bustled hither and thither. Now and then one of them would salute him as they passed – many of them seemed terrified of him.

Really, he thought, all of them?

: : : yes

But he wasn’t interested in them for now. He had to find that blasted Weasel girl.

: : : use the power

The light blue lines were more prominent here, flowing over and through every surface, curling around the oblivious troops as they hustled from task to task. Clough found that if he concentrated, it was almost as if the real world faded away, leaving just the roiling blue in its place – but somehow, he could still see.

And then he saw it, and his eyes opened wide, that strange, fluctuating world of blue fading in an instant.

It was huge. It was massive. It looked, admittedly, like a hamburger. And it was the most beautiful thing Clough had ever seen.

This, then, was the Centennial Goshawk, the ship that had been captured.

Ship? he thought. It doesn’t look like a boat to me. But somehow, a deeper part of him knew that the oceans this ship ploughed weren’t made of water.

That, and the starfield outside the gaping opening in the far wall was a clue.

He walked towards it, not noticing the small cup of ball bearings that his boot knocked over into the path of two white-garbed men carrying a large green chest. He vaguely heard a thump, loud clattering, and pained swearing as he drifted up the ramp into the grubby white ship, but didn’t really notice it.

Inside, it was silent. It was empty. He let the blue fade in again, watching in fascination as it played across walls and panels. It bent and curved around the strange chess board in the common room, into the floor in the corridor, over the control panels on the bridge.

For a moment, he thought he heard breathing, but put it down to the ship settling on its landing gear.

He closed his eyes, sinking into reminiscences of a muggle toy shop he had once snuck into as a child. In it there had been things like this, great creatures of metal that could soar through space, and here, standing inside one for real... He leaned against the wall, overwhelmed.

Something went click.

He opened his eyes, straightened up, looked at the wall. He’d put his shoulder on one of the little levers... or one of the little red buttons. He flicked it back.

He flicked something back, anyway.

The ship shuddered slightly as a thundering volley came from outside.

He flicked something else. The noise stopped.

He looked around.

Just pretend nothing’s happened, he told himself, and headed for the ramp.

There seemed to be some commotion outside.

A dozen figures lay on the ground, smoking craters decorating their uniforms here and there. Beside the ramp, a long black tubular object was withdrawing back into the ship’s hull. He ignored it.

"That’ll leave a nasty mark," he opined helpfully as he passed an officer with an unpleasant burn to his arm. The officer glared at him. Clough smiled broadly, not that it could be seen behind the metal visor. "Jolly good. Keep up the good work, that man."

He turned to two lightly bruised technicians, who were manhandling a green trunk – a scanning system, though he didn’t know how he knew – up to the ramp.

"Scan the whole ship. Bring any stowaways to me." He hadn’t a clue what he was saying, but it felt right.

One of the men saluted, almost dropping a corner of the heavy crate on his toe.

"Yes, Lord Vader."

Clough frowned, but nodded. He turned and headed onwards.

As soon as he was out of the hangar, he collared the first unfortunate to cross his path.

"Who’s Lord Vader?"

"Um..." the ensign looked panicked. "The daddy?"

"Oh, clear off." He held his hand up to the man as if to ward him off, and the joker started pretending to choke.

Great, he grumbled mentally, I’m in charge of a battalion of comedians.

The man crumpled to the floor behind Clough. He ignored him. You couldn’t encourage that sort of behaviour, it would just get silly.

He swept on, his cape – where did that come from? – billowing out behind him.

* * *

Ginny was annoyed. She couldn’t believe she’d let herself been taken so easily, and now that bloody vortex thing had dropped her straight into... well, it must have been one of Voldemort’s dungeons, though it seemed rather too new and shiny for his tastes. And she was pretty sure Voldemort didn’t have sliding doors.

She lay on her side on the uncomfortable bunk, staring at the door, one hand resting on her hip. To an observer, she might have appeared languorous, even seductive, particularly as the spell seemed to have transfigured her training gear into a long white dress that she would reluctantly admit did very flattering things for her figure.

Not that there were any observers, of course – though the hiss from the doorway told her there would be within seconds.

Quickly, but quietly, she grabbed the steel water jug that stood beside the bunk, and hid beside the door, holding the jug high above her head.

A white-armoured figure lurched in, clattering as the too-large armour plates knocked each other.

She brought the jug down heavily on its head, then kneed the figure in the stomach and watched, with some satisfaction, as it dropped to the floor, moaning.

She tore a couple of strips from the bottom of her dress and briskly tied the figures ankles and wrists. Then she looked down at it, a triumphant gleam in her eyes.

"Aren’t you a little thick for a Death Eater?"

"Mmmph mmh hpPPHM mmph!"

She twisted the figure’s dented helmet round the right way and lifted it half an inch so it no longer perched on its shoulders.

"Say again?"

"I said, I’m Harry Potter," came the irritated reply. "And I’m here to rescue you."

She looked at him for a moment, stunned, then tugged off the helmet and sure enough –

"Harry!" She slammed against him, hugging him to her and inadvertently crushing his tied hands behind his back.

"Ow!" Harry tugged his hands free, briskly returned the embrace, then caught her roving hands. "Ginny... Ginny, come on, we’ve got to get out of here."

She settled down. "Oh. You know where?"

"There’s a grating a bit down the corridor. I think it leads straight to the hanga... exit."

"You think?"

He tugged her out into the corridor as troops approached at the far end and searing red bolts started sipping through the air around them.

"Well, princess, I know those guys want to kill us, so it’s as good a plan as any. And your knots are rubbish."

They reached the duct sinking into the wall, the discarded grating lying beside it. A tall, gangly creature with pointy, bat-wing ears, platypus face and bulbous eyes stood beside it.

"Master Harry, Sir, meesa opened de grate for yousa and de Wheezy! Go quick, big bombin’ coming up!"

"Harry," she said nervously, goggling rather rudely at the strange creature, "I really hope you’re right about this."

And with that, they dived into the chute. A fraction of a second later, Dob-Dob disappeared with a pop.

* * *

He strode mightily – or so he thought – along the wide corridors. "Eighth left, across the bridge, up two levels, and down the hall," the major had said a good two and a half hours ago. The bridge was out of order somehow, so he had had a stab at navigating around it.

This proved more difficult than he had expected, and so he was now wandering the corridors, hopelessly searching for the cells. He would, he realised, finally have to face facts.

Edwin Clough, Death Eater 3rd Class and Chosen of Voldemort, was lost.

He stopped.

He looked around.

He pondered. Possibly mightily.

It came to him in a flash. ("Ow," said the nearby Crewman Wilhelm, blinking his eyes against the green afterimage on his retina.) A spell that he should have thought of earlier. A spell from his school days. ("Wooaaaaaaaaggghhh!" screamed the crewman as he stumbled blindly into, and subsequently – inevitably – down, a nearby lift shaft.)

Oblivious, Clough grabbed his wand. It had somehow become shorter, thicker, and heavier than he remembered – not to mention apparently transmuting into metal – and now dangled from his belt instead of being tucked into his inside pocket. But it had to be his wand. After all, he was a wizard, wizards had wands, and it was the only vaguely wand-shaped thing he could find about his person. Q E D.

He laid it flat across the palm of his hand, and whispered "Point me."

A great deal of nothing happened. Even the italics that normally imbued the incantation with its power failed to appear.

"Point me?" he tried again.

"Point! To The Cells!" he attempted.

"Point me? Please?" he wheedled, concentrating on the cell, the girl, whatever.

He gave up. He tossed the wand up in the air a couple of times, spinning it and catching it, spinning it and catching it... and his thumb touched the activation stud on the side.

A glaring blade of angry red light sprang from the end, but stopped a mere yard out. That was odd in itself. He knew of very few spells that would stop after such a short distance, and fewer still that he could competently cast. He waggled the curious wand experimentally; it sliced through the air with a throbbing hum. He looked closer at it.

"Bloody strange thing," he muttered.

He shook it, trying to shake off the useless frozen spell. It thrummed angrily through the air, accidentally cutting a nearby soldier in half. Oddly, it hardly seemed to leave a mark.

Clough’s thumb absently touched the stud on the device, and the spell seemed to withdraw back into the wand. He turned it round, peered curiously into the end, then spotted the corpse... the bisected... the unfortunate soldier on the floor beside him.

"Whoops," he said.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some trouble about that, he thought.

And in his world, a world where the concept of a hierarchy ending with him was unthinkable, trouble was one thing that was concealed from those above as far as possible, and even when impossible deserved a good attempt.

With the toe of his boot, he daintily prodded the halves into a convenient shadow to his right, then clasped his hands behind his back and, whistling, nonchalantly sauntered round the corner before breaking into a run.

Two more corners, and a deranged scream came towards him. Then a flood of white-armoured figures rounded the corner, screeched to a halt, and stared at him. They seemed to have been fleeing.

Another figure – oh, bollocks, that bloody Potter kid came along for the ride – rounded the corner, screaming at the top of his lungs, only to skid to a halt as he realised that his quarry had stopped.

Before them stood their lord and master, a man – to them – known to execute generals if they’d ruined his cornflakes. Behind them was a young lunatic with green eyes and a bit of wood.

As one, they turned.

Glaring red bolts of energy – stunning spells, if Clough was any judge (which he wasn’t), though perhaps the curious dog-leg design of their bulky metal wands affected their marksmanship rather more than it should – barbecued the air around Potter as he spun on his heels and ran. The troops ran after him. And Clough followed sedately, at what he thought was a stately pace.

A small black box on wheels chittered rudely at him as it overtook. Clough picked up his pace. There was, after all, such a thing as too stately.

He arrived at a large blast door, which wheezed open as he approached. Outside...

...the Centennial Goshawk was lifting. The bloody kids had got to it after all!

He whipped out his wand, thumbing the activation stud, and bellowed a few choice curses. None worked.

Clough was, as may have been noted once or twice, not the sharpest athame in the box, but he knew that if the ship managed to leave the– space station? Moon? He wasn’t sure. –then he would have an absolute bugger of a time finding them again. So he did the only thing he could think of.

"Recro Foris," he screamed, and a blast of pure, blazing, actinic white light shot from the end of the strange wand of light.

: : : oh, wasn’t that a good idea

Shut up, he thought.

As the hamburger-shaped vehicle turned and floated towards the exit, the atmosphere shield...

...rippled, brightened, swirled, coalesced into a blinding, actinic rectangle.

The Goshawk drifted, an image of serenity, into the light, and was gone.

: : : didn't quite think that one through, did we?

"Bugger."

Clough ran, his breathing laboured like a milking machine in the desert, his black cloak flapping behind him, his boots pounding a slightly irregular tattoo on the polished floor. The vortex was shrinking, and even its lower edge was a good thirty feet off the deck.

He jumped, knowing he’d never make it.

: : : boinga-boinga-boinga upsidaisy

The floor receded quicker, and further, than he had expected.

Wow, he thought, I never realised I could jump this high. The shrinking silver rectangle grew closer, his upwards momentum slowing but still guaranteeing him a direct hit in the centre of the vortex. I could almost believe I can...

The vortex closed behind him.

The figures milling about in the hangar wondered where their commander had gone. The gunners outside wondered where their target had gone. And something wondered where its champion had gone.

: : : hello? where'd you go?

: : : bloody foreigners

: : : bugger this for a lark i'm off home

With the painfully bright glare gone, the hangar somehow felt a little on the dark side.