Monday, February 05, 2007

Titus Andronicus and the Chamber of Secrets

The final Harry Potter book is rumored to be very dark; in fact, two characters are already stated as dying in the course of the book. We've been placing bets on who, but I've started to realize that two is only the minimum boundary.

The new book could, in fact, be the darkest piece of literature known to man.

Chapter One

Hermione, Ron and Ginny Weasley, and Remus Lupin arrive to retrieve Harry early from the Dursleys. Not a word is said between the adoptive, careless characterization of suburban malaise and the bohemian, bonhomie bunch as they depart. This is merely one more parting in a revolving turnstile of hatred.

As the group arrives at the burrow, they find Mrs. Weasley fretting over the absence of Mr. Weasley, Bill, Charlie, and the Weasley twins, as they are late for Harry's welcome dinner. She has prepared a feast of bangers and mash, having called on their trusted magical butcher for a truly prodigious amount of sausage to feed the Weasley clan and the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore's death hangs unspoken over the table, as the members and the present Weasleys decide to tuck in to the creme of British cuisine. The clock on the wall, which tells of the location of all the Weasley family, reads "mortal peril" as it has for months.

After most of the group has had two or three starch-soaked bangers there is a knock on the door, frantic but limp-wristed. Mrs. Weasley opens it to find Percy, looking wild.

"Mother," he says, "I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Weasley is overcome with the homecoming of her estranged son, but swallows her sobs to welcome him to the table, telling him that the rest of the family will be so pleased to see him when they come.

Percy remains standing in the doorway.

"Mother, no. I'm so sorry."

Everyone is staring at him.

"The Ministry arrested Winston Abattoir an hour ago. Our butcher. He was under the Imperius Curse. Our butcher, mother. He had no choice"

Percy walks to the clock on the wall and pencils in "RENDERED INTO SAUSAGE" in blocky letters. Five of the hands on the clock turn to point at the fresh location.

As he walks back out the door, Percy says over his shoulder:

"I'll leave you to grieve."

The wails follow him across the lawn, as he mounts his broom and flies back to Cornelius Fudge's arms.

Chapter 38, 895 pages later

Voldemort sneered at the bound Harry and Ron.

"The last surviving members of Dumbledore's Army." The Dark Lord raised his wand. "Yet, no army has ever been easier to kill. Observe, Harry."

Voldemort placed his wand on the ground and held out his hand, palm up, with his fingers forming a basket.

"Accio Ron's heart."

And it was done. Harry fell to the ground, the bonds loosened by the sudden space created in Ron's chest. Voldemort tossed something heavy and damp into a shrub.

"Accio Ron's scalp." Voldemort placed a matted and freckled orange beret on his own bare, pale yellow head.

"You see, Harry, Weasley is our king."

Harry felt his wand by its absence. It was still snapped in half inside an inferi's eye socket. He thought it used to be Snape, he couldn't have been sure.

"You won't need your wand, Harry. I'm not here to kill you."

He summoned forth three lumpy sacks on shaking legs.

"You're here to watch."

Voldemort levitated the sacks away with a gesture. It revealed the Dursley family, smeared in blood, missing an appendage each. Dudley no longer had ears or a nose; Harry would never know that Petunia was keeping them in her purse.

"I've made something, you see, and I want you to see it eat for the first time."

Two Deatheaters had their wands out, levitating light-sucking space between them as if it would rip their skin off.

"I crossed a boggart with an interesting plant that I found in the Longbottom corpse's pocket. It was serendipitous, you see, not having the werewolves eat all of him."

Harry blinked.

"It will take the first thing it eats, and then split in two. Then they will eat, split, and forever be hungry for that one thing it has tasted in its dimmest memory. When its food is gone, it will starve and die, but not before it has stripped the planet of every filthy Muggle. It's about to eat these blood-streaked vermin and then my creation will move on to Birmingham."

Harry looked at the Dursleys. He had never seen them more pitiful, even in all the times when all he could feel for them was that wrenching pathos of the superior towards those they have weighed and found wanting.

He knew that his was an invisible world to the majority of the planet's inhabitants, but that was that. Harry had grown pragmatic in his years-long fight against evil and he knew that all that was good had lost, was dead, was corrupted and timorous, damned to a half-life of servitude to blood, their thin picture frames, or the waxing of the moon.

Harry Potter leapt onto the creature and his world went black.

He never saw it divide, consume, and divide again.

Voldemort did not survive to see the black creatures crawl over his armies.

The two mortal enemies did not witness a world that had lost its wizards, witches, giants, merpeople, doxies, elves, goblins, and magic.

Only the muggle, that benighted wretch ignorant of the hidden world, would inherit a world of a logic as rigid as clockwork.

3 Comments:

Blogger Jessica said...

I hate you.

9:47 AM  
Blogger Alcarwen said...

In the current haze my mind is in from constant studying for comps, I have no idea whether to laugh, cry or attempt to deconstruct that.

7:05 PM  
Blogger *moosie* said...

I envy the fact that you had enough time to even come up with that...you bastard.

4:34 PM  

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