Hollywood or What?

Chapter Four
Shades of Gray

My eyes flickered open, and were met – as usual – by the drab gray ceiling of my office. Heavy rain spattered on the window, the sodium lights outside casting gray bands of light through the blinds. I’d had a bugger of a headache a while ago, I remembered that much, but it had faded to a dull throb. It was a day like a thousand others – though, I noted with curiosity, I couldn’t actually remember any others specifically. My life was as it always had been...

...I just couldn’t remember if it had always been like that yesterday.

Once I’d sat up and shaken the cobwebs out of my head, I leaned back against the file cabinet. It was going to be one of those days, I could feel it. Or one of those nights, rather; in my business, I rarely see days. It’s a nocturnal job, but then I knew that going in. A job where everything goes in gray, where greenbacks are dark gray and whiskey bottles almost black.

Because I’m Harry Potter, P.I.

Business had been slow. Business was always slow. I like business slow. Slow business means nobody trying to kill me, and that’s the thinking that had gotten me this far. Not much cash, but not many bullet holes either. Life was pretty good.

That’s how I knew it couldn’t last, but I hadn’t expected things to change so fast, or arrive in such a pretty package, or be heralded by such a dainty, yet precise, knock on the door. I dropped my gray shoes off the gray desk to the gray rug, straightened my garish gray tie, and called her in.

What started it all was, of course, a dame. It’s always a dame. This one was better-looking than most; cute face, not as tall as she looked, great figure with curves in all the right places, and dressed real expensive in a white satin dress, with...

What the hell...

She had red hair. Red hair and red lips. That was wrong, that was physically impossible... red was a color, and color didn’t exist. For that matter, how the hell did I know what red was?

The questions just piled up, like a 47-car pileup on the interstate. And she hadn’t even opened her mouth yet. And what a mouth, that treacherous something at the back of my brain leered.

“Mr. Potter,” she breathed, her voice silky like a vintage Scotch. She had an odd accent, clean and precise, though somehow off. “I need to retain your services.”

She pushed a photo across the desk. It showed a rough-looking cat in a pinstriped suit, sucking on a fag...

...wait a minute, that sounded wrong...

...smoking a cigarette. He looked a mean piece of work, pinched face and bulbous eyes shaded under a battered fedora.

“This man’s name is Clough, Mr. Potter,” she aspirated. “He’s following me, and I think he means to kidnap me.”

My headache was coming back. It was as though there was someone else, from somewhere else, in the back of my mind, trying to break through.

“Kidnap you? Why would he want to kidnap you?”

She raised a sarcastic eyebrow, cocking her head and her hip, showing off her figure again as if to say ‘Look at me, you schmuck, why the hell wouldn’t he?’ She glared at me for a moment, then:

“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

There was something familiar about her, about that glare... I got an odd feeling that I knew her, but from where? And names were drifting around the periphery of consciousness... Jenny? Sally? Something with –y, anyway.

“Sure,” I said, rounding my desk like a greyhound and pulling up one of those office chairs on little wheels that never all go the same way at once. “Sit down,” I told her, thrusting the chair towards her.

I sank onto my couch opposite her as she sat down and crossed... oh God, crossed her legs... crossed her legs, perching her purse on her knee. She dug through it, pulled out a wooden stick – a wand, mate, come on – a stick of some kind – it’s a bloody wand, you thick-headed pillock! – but it was as if I recognized it from somewhere, as if something was knocking at the back of my mind, trying to tell me something.

That’s Ginny, for heaven’s sake! You’re here looking for her! You’ve got a wand of your own in the top drawer of your desk! THAT’S GINNY, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!

She looked at the stick, paused for a moment as if she was as puzzled by it as I was. She ran a few fingernails over it in case it was a nail file, but she put it away when it didn’t seem to do anything. I blinked, shook my head, but that damn buzzing wouldn’t go away. Maybe...

“Doris?” I asked, pressing the intercom button on the wall above me. “Doris, do you have the radio on out there?”

The garbled squawk that I’d come to recognize as Secretary-Through-Intercom-speak translating roughly as “No, I’m doing the paperwork you forgot to do last week” squelched out through the tinny speaker. I pressed the button again.

“You’re sure?”

I couldn’t really make out the reply, but it sounded like “duck cough”. I turned back to the dame.

“Oookay... well, why don’t you tell me all about it from the top? Like, your name.” I poured myself a glass of whiskey and split a capsule of aspirin into it, then downed it in a gulp.

“Van Wezel. Ginny van Wezel.”

See! I told you so, you deaf bugger... Come on, just grab her, cast the portal spell, and let’s get home! Okay? Home, remember, with the Burrow and Hogwarts and lots of colours?

“Okay, Miss... Miss?” She nodded. “Miss Weas... van Wezel. Who’s the goon?”

“Clough. He works for a shady character called Thomas De Mort. He wants me so he can capture and kill my fiancé, Harry Potter.”

Are you stupid as well as deaf? Her fiancé has your name! Does that not strike you as odd at all?

Something about the guy’s name struck me as odd, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The headache was starting to fade, and I was starting to tune out that irritating, nagging buzz at the back of my mind.

“Why?”

“Harry’s with the CIA, working on a big case. I don’t know the details, but De Mort’s behind it all. If Harry dies, De Mort gets away with it.”

Anyone listening? Hello? Heeello? She sells sea shells on the sea shore, the shells she sells are sea shells I’m sure, are you stupid or something? Wibble? Monkeys? Oh, for god’s sake...

“And is your fiancé safe at the moment?”

“I don’t know. I think so, otherwise they wouldn’t be looking for me.”

My brain, my body, my quest, and it’s all ruined because some idiot behind a typewriter fifty years ago can’t think straight.

.

I looked out the window. The bright gray neon of the city refracted in the raindrops rolling down the glass, a police siren cruised off into the night, and my headache was almost completely gone.

I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t. Why, I ought...

As its last remnants drifted away, the case started to come into perspective.

“Leave your card. Go home. Lock everything. I’ll be in touch. And take this.” I fished one of my backup guns, a snub .38, from a drawer and handed it to her; she took it, nervously.

“You’ll catch him?”

“Sure.”

And I knew I would. Because I’m Harry Potter, P.I.

* * *

My first – and, as it turned out, only – stop that night was a bar I knew. I had gone to interview some of my informants, but I may have gotten sidetracked.

I don’t remember much else of that night.

* * *

My head was pounding; this time, though, it wasn’t the strange headache that had plagued me the day before, it was a perfectly ordinary hangover. The usual suspects were lined up – the furry tongue, the world spinning around me – but the big whammy was the throbbing, pounding sledgehammers behind my eyes. And it wasn’t made any better by my goddamned phone ringing... and ringing... and ringing...

I picked it up, knocking over the table lamp as I scrabbled. The voice at the other end was terrified, hurried, and hers.

“Mr. Potter?”

“Mm-hmph.”

“He’s here! In the house!”

A shot rang out over the line – that sure woke me up.

“Are you OK?”

“I missed him! He’s here! Hurry!” There was a clunk, a thump, a scuffle... then nothing.

“Miss Van Wezel? Jenny? Are you there?”

She didn’t reply.

I hung up the phone and sat up. Some damn bright thing – the damned sun, I guess, but I could be wrong – was shining in through the blinds, and things had just gotten a lot more complicated.

I needed a drink. I needed life insurance. I needed a vacation. I needed a house in the country. What I had was a hat, a coat, and a gun. I put them on and headed out.

* * *

An hour and forty-eight minutes later – long story; detours, roadworks, engine trouble... I don’t want to talk about it – and I was at her door. There were no signs of forced entry, just perfectly white marble, varnished mahogany and polished brass, reflecting that damn sun back in my eyes. I glanced round to the back yard, but couldn’t get far because of the iron gates. And the Dobermans.

So I went back to the front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. I tried to kick it in, but really only managed to dent my ankle; the only option was to go to the service entrance round the side.

That was locked too.

But that wasn’t a major problem, because the locked door was lying on the floor just inside the splintered frame. I stepped inside, careful not to make too much noise, and found myself in the kitchen. It was empty, but a trail of muddy footprints let out into a hallway. I followed them.

The corridor emerged into a really swanky dining room, the kind of place where I might be able to afford one of the place-mats.

If I saved up.

For a year.

I continued following the tracks. They paused by an open door, where the last of the mud was smudged as if a couple of guys had stood there kicking their heels for a while. A couple of cigarette butts were ground into the Persian carpet. And the door had a hole in it, about the right size for a .38 and ringed with the greasy lead smear of an unjacketed slug like the ones I loaded my backup revolver with.

I drew my .45 auto and crept up to the doorway. I listened for a while, didn’t hear anything, so I swung in through the door and scanned the room.

It was empty. Well, when I say “empty”, I mean “empty of bad guys”, not “empty of stuff”. It was full of stuff. Persian rugs, busts, statues, paintings, a chandelier the size of my car. And a side table with a phone beside it.

The phone was off the table, the earpiece was off the hook, and the cord was out of the wall. No wonder the line had gone dead.

I stepped inside the room and hit the lights, and that’s when I saw it.

Gleaming a rich, dark gray on the floor was a pool of blood. Nearby, only a foot or two from the blood, lay the .38 I had given her.

I walked over to it, carefully listening for any sign of company, but whoever had been there, there was no way they were going to be anything but long gone.

I took a knee by the gun, wrapped the grip in a handkerchief, and picked it up. I flicked the cylinder open and ejected the cartridges; two of them had been fired. But I had only heard one shot, and that pool of blood on the elegant parquet floor had me worried.

She’d been here. She’d tried to shoot somebody here, and somebody had bled here. I found myself really hoping that wasn’t her.

I looked around, scanning the room with my flashlight. I couldn’t see any more bullet holes.

Suddenly there was a tremendous crash as the front door burst open. I looked up to find myself staring down the barrels of a couple of police .38 specials.

Behind them, once I’d managed to focus beyond the guns – they had a pretty understandable ability to hold my attention – were two cops. They were holding the guns. One was short and scrawny, and, when he eventually spoke, spoke in a high, squeaky voice. The other... well, I had to assume he was human, because he was the right size (more or less) to fit in his uniform, he walked on two legs, and to the best of my knowledge there’s no such thing as trolls.

Yes there is... are... oh, why do I bother?

“Drop the gun and put your hands on your head!” one of them shouted. I did, in roughly that order.

“I’m on your side, guys. Harry Potter, P.I. I’m here to check on one of my clients.”

“Sure you are,” Zog the Troll said. “And you don’t got nothin’ to do with the shots fired, I bet.”

“I gave her the gun, if that’s what you mean. And I was talking to her on the phone when she fired it. And I have a hunch who she fired it at.”

They glanced at each other then, and Squeaky reached into my inside pocket. He found my credentials, and they had a quick, muttered conference over them for about a minute before they both holstered their revolvers.

“Okay,” Squeaky squeaked, “say we buy it for now. You still gotta come with us to the precinct.”

I sighed, shaking my head. “No,” I said, “I’m not the guy you’re looking for.”

“You’re not the guy we’re looking for?” Zog asked. “We’re not looking for anyone... yet.”

“I can go about my business.” I waved my hand vaguely in front of him; I’m not sure why.

“You have business?”

“Move along.”

“OK,” Zog sighed. “Move along. Frank, better call it in.”

Squeaky went over to the phone, hooked the earpiece back on, then lifted it up and listened intently.

He frowned, then rattled the hook a bit.

“Hello? Operator?” he yakked into the horn. I sauntered over there.

“Allow me.” I picked up the cord off the floor and plugged it back in the wall. “Try it now.”

He tweaked the hook a couple times more, then put the earpiece to his head again. “Operator?”

The result seemed to satisfy him, and after a moment’s wait he spent a couple of minutes talking Cop at someone on the other end. He finally hung up and came back over to us.

“The Sarge says the guy can go if he leaves his card.”

I fished one out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“You guys can send me a receipt for that snub gun, by the way,” I said, pointing to it. “I’ll be wanting it back after it’s finished its stint as Exhibit F.”

Zog nodded, and pulled out a paper bag to go get it. Squeaky stopped him.

“Uh, Steve, he said not to touch anything.”

“Like the phone, you mean?” I asked gently. The glare I got indicated his appreciation for the remark.

“You can go. You’ll be getting a call. Don’t leave town, don’t shoot anybody, drive carefully, you know the drill. And don’t be a damn smart-ass.”

I grinned, and patted my trilby down onto my head.

“Sure,” I said. “And say hi to McGinty when he gets here. Let him know we’re still on for the game next week.”

Their jaws dropped. “You know the sa...”

I had already turned, and was on my way out the door. “See you, boys,” I called over my shoulder. “Take good care of the place.”

I left the two cops guarding the house, got in my car and headed out.

* * *

“Say, Steve, what time is it?” Squeaky asked as the gumshoe drove off.

“Wait a minute,” Zog said, rummaging in the pockets of his uniform, “I’ve got it written down here on a piece of paper. A nice man wrote the time down for me this morning.”

“Why do you carry it around with you?”

“Well, if anybody asks me the time, I can show it to them.”

“Oooh... Wait a minute.”

“What?”

“It’s written on this bit of paper, but it’s eight o’clock that’s written.”

“Yeah. Um, when I asked the fella to write it down, it was eight o’clock.”

“Well... what if, when somebody asks you the time, it isn’t eight o’clock?”

“Then I don’t show it to ‘em.”

He contemplated this for a moment. Then a thought struck him.

“Hold on... how do you know when it’s eight o’clock?”

“I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper.”

The incontrovertible logic of this seemed to satisfy Squeaky, and he observed the paper with renewed envy.

“I wish I could afford a piece of paper with the time written on.”

“Yup.”

“Hey, Steve, let me hold that piece of paper to my ear?”

“Sure.” He handed the folded piece of note paper over. Squeaky held it to his ear and listened intently.

“Hey, Steve...”

“Yeah?”

“This piece of paper ain’t goin’.”

“WHAT?” Zog yanked it back and listened, then glared at it. “I’ve been sold a forgery!”

“No wonder it’s stopped at eight o’clock!”

“Damn it!”

“You should get one of those things my grandpa’s got. His company gave it to him when he retired.”

“Oh?”

“It’s one of them things what wakes you up at eight o’clock, boils the kettle and pours a cup of coffee.”

“Oh yeah, one of them... what’s it called...”

“My grandma.”

“Well...” A rare doubt pounded its way into Zog’s rather thick skull for a moment. “How does she know when it’s eight o’clock?”

“She’s got it written down on a piece of paper.”

* * *

During that interlude I’d had time to drive to Green Street, where this De Mort guy was supposed to live. His house was a big brownstone, almost as impressive as the Van Wezel place. I parked half a block down the street and made my way round the back.

This place had a wall, but that was it. No dogs, no wire. Easy.

I climbed over the wall and dropped into the back yard. A few cars were parked there, and a trail of blood drops led from one of them to a garage in one corner of the yard. I followed the trail.

The door to the garage was well oiled, and so slid quietly and smoothly open. I paused at the door for a moment, listening, but the silence was the relaxed silence of a room with nobody in it rather than the cautious silence of someone being real quiet.

I crept in, stumbling slightly over something – a piece of wire? – on the floor. Still nobody. I turned on my flashlight.

Turns out, it was the relaxed silence of a room with nobody alive in it.

The guy was lying on a board in the middle of the floor. Even without the handkerchief over his head, I’d have known that he was definitely dead. In fact, it’d be hard to be any more dead while still having all the bits attached.

He had a bandage around his chest, but it had been put on by a moron; the goon had kept leaking after he got here, at least if the puddle around him was anything to go by.

I reached for the cloth to see if it was the guy who’d been following the broad, but just as I was about to yank it off, the side door bust open and two guys charged in.

In retrospect, I should be more careful with what I stumble over.

“Hold it right there, friend,” said one of the thugs – a slick hood in a sharp suit, pointing a cavernous muzzle at my face – in the kind of tone that suggests the word ‘friend’ should not be taken literally. His buddy, a gorilla in greasy coveralls, tucked a Derringer back in his pocket and thumped me over the head.

About a minute later my hands were cuffed, King Kong had my .45, and I was being led across the yard and into the house. It was darker and warmer than the Van Wezel place, with lots of leather and wood, but I had other things on my mind than architecture.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we headed up the stairs.

“Mr. De Mort axed to see ya,” the gorilla said.

“I’ve got a choice?”

“Nope.”

“Then I’d be delighted to accept his most kind and generous invitation.”

“Shut up.”

They shoved me into a small lounge and dumped me on a couch next to a bored-looking black guy with his hands cuffed much like mine.

“Sit here, friend,” said the goon in the suit. “Move if you want to die.”

“Yur,” said King Kong.

I didn’t, so I did. The goons disappeared through the double doors, and they slammed shut.

“What’d Killer Joe catch you for, man?” the black guy asked amiably, as if he was just passing the time.

“He didn’t appreciate me visiting without an appointment. You?”

“He likes me a lot less than his wife does.”

I gave a sardonic chuckle. “Well, I guess neither of us are gonna be popular in the next room, then.” I gestured to my cuffed wrists. “I’d shake your hand, but...”

He laughed out loud.

“Sheeyut, man, these suckers use standard police cuffs! Interchangeable keys!” He fidgeted behind his back for a few seconds, and then his hands emerged unshackled. A shiny silver key was in his hand. “I always carry one with me.”

A few moments later, my hands were free as well. We shook.

“Jack McGuffin,” he said. “They call me ‘Brother Jack’.”

“Harry Potter. P.I.”

“You’re not here for me?” he asked, raising a cautious eyebrow.

“You know, Jack, I’m just trying to get a girl back. If you didn’t take her, you’re not on my list.”

He grinned.

“Is Tommy?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Need a hand?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” He nodded, and we started eyeing up the door to De Mort’s office. “What’s the plan?”

I hadn’t thought that far.

“Well, we need to get one of the guys alive. And the girl could be in there. So if we...”

CRUNCH

I barely flinched this time when I heard the door crumple inwards. I was getting used to it.

“Who’s trying to shoot me this time?” I asked nonchalantly over my shoulder.

“We’re not here for you, pal, just get out of our way.”

I looked up. There were three of them this time, in defiance of tradition, and almost as if they were deliberately trying to flout Chandler’s Law, all three were women. Very definitely women. With guns. And just to instill terror in the hearts of men, one of them had a Tommy gun, and she held it like someone who knows how to use it.

“Stay,” the blonde with the Tommy ordered as she strode past. I nodded.

Another kick sent the double doors flying into the office; they walked in, somebody started to say “Who the...”

Then all hell broke loose.

First was a .38, I think. Or maybe it just sounded weedy compared to the dry cracks of a 1911, and they were both drowned out by the roar of the Tommy gun.

Then the noise stopped. A couple of plings echoed as the last few casings bounced to the floor. And then the three breezed back out as if nothing had happened, their guns still smoking.

One of them paused by the table, picked up the phone, dialed a number, and, after a moment, spoke.

“Charlie? We’re all done here. Yeah, we’re heading back to the agency. Yeah, we’ll see... well, hear from you then.”

With that, she hung up and followed the others out. The whole thing had taken maybe twenty, twenty-five seconds.

“Hooooly sh...” Jack began.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We should...”

“Yeah.”

We stood and headed into the office. The scene didn’t disappoint.

Thomas De Mort was in his chair behind the huge desk. He was dead. He was really dead. And if he wasn’t dead, he was at least really well air conditioned. The goons were dead too, sprawled on the floor with their brains up the walls.

“...” Jack said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“So much for asking him about your girl.”

“She’s not my girl per se,” I corrected him distractedly, still staring at the mess behind the desk.

A whimper nudged me out of my reverie, and I turned, instinctively reaching for the currently empty holster on my belt.

In the corner, curled up in a whimpering ball of cowardice, sat Clough. It had to be him. The bulging eyes, the short stature... he looked just like the photo. I frisked one of the dead goons and found my .45 stuck in his belt. A quick press-check revealed that he’d left it cocked and locked, which suited me fine. I yanked Clough to his feet.

“Where’s the girl?” I demanded.

“What girl?” he sniveled, turning his head to avoid looking at the carnage.

“The girl. Van Wezel.”

“I don’t know!”

I spun him round and slammed him face first onto the desk.

“Hidden door!” he screamed, a thin trickle of blood appearing below his nose. “Behind the bookcase!”

I glanced to the side, and Jack headed to the bookcase. He studied the shelves, pulling at random books.

“How does it open?” he asked. I grabbed Clough by the collar and pulled him over to the wall.

“Hold him,” I told Jack. “And stay over by the far wall.”

They backed off as instructed, and I surveyed the bookcase. There had to be a hidden latch somewhere, but I couldn’t figure where. I got tired of hunting, and instead got a good grip on the thing and climbed to the ceiling. I grabbed the rail at the top of the bookcase, planted my feet firmly against the wall, and pulled.

As the bookcase pulled away from the wall, I started to reconsider the wisdom of my method.

As the bookcase started to fall, I was squeezing my eyes shut in anticipation of the pain to come.

You bloody idiot...

Then there was no more bookcase to support me, and gravity took over.

Ow.

The next thing I knew, Jack was pulling me out of a pile of books, splinters, and plaster. A quick check established that, yup, there was a spot – one of the fingers on my left hand – that wasn’t hurting.

Ow.

“You okay, man?”

“Yeah...” I said. “Mostly.”

Clough just gaped, from where he had tumbled to the floor.

“Can you walk?” Jack asked.

“I’m not gonna like it, but sure.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“’Cause we got a door.”

I looked up. There, in the wall, was a rectangular opening. A couple of metal brackets marked where the middle section of bookcase had been attached, and a narrow staircase led up into the darkness.

Jack pulled me to my feet, and I turned to Clough.

“She’s up there?”

He nodded dumbly, and I set off up the stairs, releasing the safety on my retrieved gun. Jack followed, pushing Clough up the stairs ahead of him.

“Is the guy bonkers?” I heard Clough ask; by the sound of it, the only reply he got was a clip on the back of the head.

The stairs ended in a rough wooden floor. A quick fumble provided a light switch, which I flipped.

And there she was. She lay, still in that great white dress, on a cot in a cell of chicken wire. She stirred as the light came on, then yawned and sat up.

“I can’t tell you anyth–” She looked up. “Harry!”

She sprang to her feet, throwing herself against the mesh.

“Hold on, Miss Van W, I’ll have you out of there in a minute.”

“Um, Mr. Detective?” Clough interrupted from behind me.

“Just be quiet,” I said, “I have to get her out.”

“But...”

“Zip it.”

I examined the cell. It was well made, no doubt about it; the joints were both bolted and welded, the mesh was made with heavy-gauge wire, and the lock was heavy and solid. I tried kicking the door, which had much the same effect as it had had back at her house.

“Um...” Clough started to say, but a death glare silenced him.

“Better back off a bit, Miss.” I raised the gun again and drew a bead on the padlock, squeezing off a round into it. It ricocheted off the heavy steel, tearing a ragged hole in the floorboards by my feet.

A moment later I’d stopped skipping long enough to examine the lock. It was dented, but that was about all.

“Um...” Clough started again. I spun round, my trigger finger daring him to say the wrong thing.

“WHAT?!”

“Um...” He pulled a glinting metal object from his jacket pocket. “I have the key.”

“Oh.” I was momentarily given pause, then I lowered the gun. “Well, good.”

A moment later, Ginny was in my arms, a sensation that felt oddly familiar from somewhere, and not at all unpleasant. There was a genteel cough from behind me.

“I’ll leave you two kids alone,” Jack said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice. Ginny and I both spun.

“Oh no,” I began, “we’re not...”

“It’s not like...”

“Exactly, we’re just...”

“Yeah, kinda like...”

“So yeah.”

Jack’s eyebrow had risen, thinly-veiled hilarity clear on his face.

“Sure, kids. Whatever you say.” He nudged me in the ribs. “She deserves a nice room and some supper, fella.” I gaped.

“But... I’m not...”

But he’d already gone down the stairs, taking Clough with him. I turned back to Ginny, looking apologetic. She, on the other hand, was looking speculative.

“I’m sorry about that, Miss V...”

“Shut up,” she said, coming to a conclusion and spinning me into an embrace, “and kiss me.”

Ye gods, does anyone talk like that? Not that I’m complaining...

So I did.

It may have gone on for some time, or it may not, I’m not sure. But footsteps coming up the stairs dragged us apart. And that damn headache was coming back.

“What?” I demanded as Clough came back up the stairs.

He sagged, dejected.

“I’m tired,” he sighed. “I’ve been chasing her for weeks, I’ve had you on my bloody tail since Ottery, and I’m bloody sick of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about, man?” I hadn’t heard of either of them until the day before, and I didn’t have a clue who Ottery was.

“Oh, drop the accent.”

He knows! Someone who isn’t me has a clue! Oh, thank heavens...

“What accent?”

“I don’t have an accent,” added Ginny, which wasn’t strictly true; she had a great, cultured Louisiana accent. “You’ve got an accent, though.”

“Who?” I said.

“Not you, him.”

“Him?” Clough said. “I don’t have an accent.”

“Yeah, kinda do,” I said, but Ginny cut us off.

“Damn it, who’s Ottery?”

Clough giggled, the kind of desperate giggle that’s thirty seconds from tears. He gestured to the cot before sagging down in a seat opposite. We sat.

“You live in Ottery St Catchpole. In England,” he said. “Your name’s Ginny...”

Ginny Weasley. Your... my... our girlfriend.

“Weasley,” I said. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I knew. But Clough seemed to have an inkling, because he latched onto it like a drowning man onto a liferaft.

“Yes! You know!” He was leaning forward, eyes wide. “She’s Ginny Weasley, you’re Harry Potter, and I kidnapped her from The Burrow on the Dark Lord’s orders!”

Amnesia. That had to be it. We’d been dosed with something, forgotten things, and they were starting to come back to us, that had to be it. We had to be from out of town, that was the only explanation. One thing bothered me, though...

If you’re from out of town, how come you’re working as a detective?

...how had I been working?

Something was nagging at me, like a voice at the back of my mind. I really needed an Aspirin. And something he was saying didn’t make sense. Or, worse, it did make sense and just didn’t fit with the reality I knew. Then something else caught Ginny’s attention.

“Who’s the Dark Lord?”

Clough stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

“He’s Lord Voldemort. I only joined because my uncle was a Death Eater.”

“Death Eater?” But he shook his head – never mind.

“I got assigned a simple courier job. A sort of initiation. I’ve always been bollocks at this sort of stuff, so getting something like this... it’s an honour, y’know?”

“A courier job’s an honor?”

“Yeah, it’s an honour if you do it well.” He shrugged. “Which I sort of don’t.”

Memories started clicking into place, engrams slotting into notches in my mind, and something was ringing true. The sensation of familiarity with Ginny, the nagging suspicion that I’d been chasing someone for weeks. I wasn’t sure who I was or who she was, but I knew for damn sure who she was to me.

“So you did the job... kidnapping Ginny?”

He nodded slowly. “It all went wrong. And then you followed me in.”

Ginny had been silent for some time, but she finally spoke.

“Why are you telling us this, if you were trying to kidnap me?”

He gave another of his little giggles, and I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t in possession of a full complement of marbles.

“Why not? You’ve been getting away from me for weeks, wonderboy here’s been chasing me for weeks, and neither of you stand still for a second. Voldepillock’s scary when he’s waving a wand about, but he can barely cross a room on foot. You two are scarier, and I haven’t seen either of you cast a single spell yet.”

“Spells?”

Things were falling into place. I could feel it.

“Never mind. Truth is, I just can’t be buggered to do it any more. He’s not after the good of anyone, he just wants to rule. It’s worth a bit of a chase, but not this much. The work, the servility, the bowing and bloody scraping... Sod him. I’m out.”

“Out of... Voldemort’s club?”

“Yeah. You two will want to go home,” he said. “Or at least, I guess you will once you remember where it is. And I want to go... well, somewhere.” He turned and gazed out the window for a moment.

I nodded. “Okay.” Then he turned back, abruptly.

“Look, just tell me one thing,” Clough said, his brow furrowed. “You’ve been chasing me all this way just to get this girl. Why?”

I stared at him. “Eh?”

“I mean, what’s so special about her? I mean, we broke guys out of Azkaban, but they’re, y’know, experts at stuff. Why are you going to so much trouble to get a schoolgirl back?”

Finally! A way in... now, if I can only find a way to break back...

...into my mind, and it was all suddenly clear.

I stared blankly at nothing for a moment. Then– “I love her.” At this, Ginny spun to face me with a gasp, but my attention was still on Clough.

“You mean...” He seemed to be wrestling with an unfamiliar concept. “You mean you don’t want her for what she can do?”

“No.”

“For...”

“For who she is.”

He sagged, then sank to his haunches. “I think,” he started slowly, “that I would prefer that.”

His sudden turn had taken me by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Well, could you, y’know, put in a good word for me with your side? When we get back?”

“Back?” Ginny asked, getting more and more confused.

“Back to our dimension.”

Ginny looked questioning, and I don’t imagine I looked much more intelligent at the time.

“We don’t belong here?” I asked. Clough looked genuinely surprised.

“You mean you haven’t figured it out? The portals, jumping us between dimensions? It was supposed to just let me grab the girl, jump into a dimension where that ruckle you live in is unwarded, but I think I made a... tiny little mistake with the incantation.”

“What mistake, exactly?” Ginny’s expression was dangerous.

“Um. Well, it seems I accidentally created a portal to leap us into the magical world of movies.”

“Wait,” I said, a sense of recognition fading into my mind. “We’re in a film?”

“A film?” Ginny said. “What’s a film?”

This stopped our musings for a moment; Clough and I joined forces to explain the muggle concept of films.

“So we’re in a film.”

“Seems so.”

“So everything I know and remember...?”

“The film – the story – imposes itself on you.”

“Oh, that’s just great. How are we supposed to get home? What, we just yell Cut or some...”

The world stopped.

Everything went black, a strange flapping sound fading away with the last of the light. Memories, identities, fragments started flowing back, pouring into my brain. Then there was an odd sensation, like a perspective shifting, as though I were suddenly someone else, outside myself, a dispassionate observer of my own personal epic. As always, however, Ginny had a rather more succinct way of summarising my philosophical musings.

“What the bloody bollocking hell...” her voice drifted out of the oleaginous celluloid blackness. Harry was about to add his voice to the chorus, when, out of some last nod to convention, a low blue light faded out of nowhere, not really doing anything other than illuminating the darkness so they could see it better.

“I don’t know why,” Harry muttered slowly, “but I’ve got this strange feeling that I should have a sheet around my waist.”

“Or an ice pick,” Ginny added wryly, though she was not sure why.

Harry looked around, gradually realising that colours were seeping slowly back into the world. He still wore his trenchcoat – which, he realised, was a rather unflattering chocolatey brown that he for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on found oddly appealing – and Ginny still wore the dress that he really hoped against hope that she’d keep when they got home, but they were both returning to their normal proportions.

The world around them was still gone, though.

“So, um... how do we get home now?”

Clough pulled his wand out. “We open the portal again and jump through. It might take a few jumps, though,” he added sheepishly.

“What, jump randomly until we hit the right film? We’ve been there, that guy looked nothing like me.”

“No,” Clough said, shaking his head. “The portal’s cyclic, I think. Sooner or later it should return us to the place where it was cast. Eventually.”

He paused, something Harry had come to recognise as an indicator of his mildly deranged mind about to leap to another track.

“I was wondering,” he said, his brain freewheeling on the express train of negotiable sanity. “Can I... inconvenience Voldemort at all?”

Ginny and Harry exchanged a glance. Then they smirked.

“Have you ever heard of horcruces?” Harry asked.

They spent some time explaining what they were and how they worked, with the occasional digression to summarise Voldemort’s various transgressions. Clough had seemed particularly shocked to hear of murders and attacks on hospitals, and by the end of the conversation he sat, shocked, his mouth opening and closing like a stoned goldfish.

“The bloody bastard...” he breathed, and they knew that they had him.

“Clough,” Ginny asked cautiously. “You’re coming with us? Help us fight Voldemort?”

Clough hesitated, then a manic smile formed on his face. “I think I have a better idea. The Hor-things, they resurrect him if he dies?”

“Yes.”

“And each one will be used up when it resurrects him?” A giggle punctuated the sentence.

“Yes.”

He seemed to reach a conclusion. “Then I have an idea.”

This gained him their undivided attention.

“Well, the way I see it, the fewer hor-wossnames he’s got, the easier he’ll be for you to kill, right?”

“Right.”

“And if you don’t have to chase down so many, you can get to him sooner, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if I can kill him a couple of times...”

Harry raised an eyebrow, impressed.

“You’d do that?”

“Well...” He shrugged, a frown of determined desperation flitting across his face. “I mean, he’s killing all these people, he’s made me kidnap you –” He nodded at Ginny. “– and made me turn myself into a criminal... it’s the least I can do. Right?”

Harry and Ginny stared at him for a second, then Harry spoke.

“You know, Professor Dumbledore kept saying that Snape was the bravest man around. Well-”

He was interrupted as the vast blackness behind them burst silently to life, a bright white rectangle appearing out of nowhere. It was marked with a circle and divided into rectangular quarters much like the crosshairs of a... whatever it was. It flickered, rotating sectors counting out the seconds as they ticked by, marked by occasional ephemeral sigils.

They stared, startled, at the enormous spectacle for several seconds, but it did not seem to be doing anything else, so they ignored it once more.

“Well,” Harry continued, “bollocks to that. I tell you one thing, mate; if you can pull it off, you’ll have played a big part in putting things back the way they should be.”

“Not to interrupt the back-patting, boys,” Ginny said, clamping a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “but speaking of putting things back the way they should be... How do we get back?”

“Well, the spell was ‘Postulo Foris’...” He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. “‘Postulo Foris Sinescutum’, and that was supposed to take me to a parallel Burrow with no shields...”

“Postulo Foris...” A sudden flash of recognition flared in Ginny’s mind.

“Harry,” she exclaimed, “it’s a variant portal spell, just for travelling between realities rather than ordinary places! That must be what the mundofinitis clause is for!”

Harry goggled at her for a moment. “Ginny... How do you know that?”

The vast ticking icon continued flickering, now throwing building-sized numbers into the centre of the crosshairs.

“You can talk – you’re the one who decided to skip seventh year. It’s in the books! Practical Ostiomancy and Isolocal Applications, seventh-year Arithmancy! It’s all based on Al-Khwarizmi’s Vermicular Tunneler.”

“You’re turning into Hermione,” Harry teased, impressed, but quickly turned serious again. “All right, how do we get back?”

Ginny glared at him for a moment, then: “Easy, if it uses the standard Hawking magorithms.” She pulled out her wand and pointed it at the empty blackness opposite the vast screen. “Postulo Foris Origo.”

Behind them, the huge, flickering numbers continued to count down.

- tick -

12

The beam this time was different, a tight lance of light that focussed on a point before them, then widened and spread as the portal opened. Ginny lowered her wand, but the flickering pyramid of light remained; for a moment, out of the corner of his eye, Harry imagined he could hear and see a boxy, clattering shadow linger in the air at its apex, but when he looked directly at it, it was gone. But the portal was there, and that, for now, was all that mattered.

- tick -

9

“Home?” he asked Ginny.

- tick -

6

“Home.”

- tick -

4

They stepped forward together, toward the iridescent flux of the screen. They paused for a moment before entering.

- tick -

3

“Aren’t you coming?” Harry asked, seeing Clough hang back. Clough shook his head, grinning out a disconcerting giggle.

- tick -

2

“I’ve got one more stop to make,” he said. “You go on ahead.”

- tick -

1

And so they did.

- tick -

0

(A moment later, in a flare of grand, orchestral diegesis, because the universe loves a joke as much as anyone, the music swelled, heralding the start of a new tale – Hollywood Or What II: The Revenge Of Clough.)