#although the owners said to wash my hands as she likes to run in poison ivy

[raspberryspace]

8/13/23 - Meteors & Meditation & Manual & Makers

[the-original-b]

Archangel Chapter 10: Underhanded Practice

Format: Prose / Fiction, multi-entry

Part in Series: 2 of 9 (Previous Chapter | The Beginning)

Word Count: c. 5,400

Summary: Krueger investigates a lead at a popular lounge, uncovering a plot to bring a new drug market to the Branch’s back yard. 

Warning(s): blood and gore, violence

Krueger blearily opened his eyes in bed and stared absentmindedly at the ceiling fan as he tried to quiet his mind again. After half an hour, he realized trying to return to sleep was an exercise in futility, so he slid out from under the sheets—careful not to disturb Khai curled up next to him—and quietly made his way to his bathroom to wash up before pulling a hoodie on over track pants to run a few laps around his block.

When he returned home at the crack of dawn, Khai was already dressed in a dark suit and lavender blouse, pouring her coffee into a to-go cup. They shared a quick kiss before she left, and Krueger returned upstairs to retrieve his P30L to start his day at the shooting range out east.

 ~~~~

Krueger sat at the diner counter later that morning, picking at the remains of his egg white Denver Omelette when the owner Henry Everett brought him a fresh coffee.

“Espresso,” he confirmed, placing it in front of him. “Black with no sugar.”

“Danke, Henry,” Krueger returned. He took the off-white mug by its handle and sipped slowly, savoring the flavor.

Everett leaned over the counter and looked the other man in the eyes. “How are you feeling, Milo?” he asked. “You look unwell.”

Krueger exhaled as he laid the coffee cup back down on the saucer. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” he began. “Which of course means Liz hasn’t been sleeping well… a lot on my mind after my last job.”

“Yes, Liz mentioned something like that the other day. Something about a girl in the Rockaways and a den in Patchogue.”

Krueger nodded. “As much as I want to call it an isolated incident, I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s part of something bigger.” He minded his volume as he spoke to Everett. Although the place was his, there were still other parties present that were uninvolved with their shared line of work.

“Would you sleep any better if I said I think you’re right?”

Krueger arched his brow behind the coffee cup.

“Chloe, one of my associates at Pharaohs, might be on to something,” he disclosed. “She thinks somebody may be trying to move some contraband into the Boroughs.”

“Contraband?” Given the nature of their business and the rules set in place by Isaac Hayden, contraband could only mean one thing in this context. “Does Chloe know for sure it’s connected to Patchogue?”

“Nothing concrete yet,” he said, taking Krueger’s plate as a server passed them by. “But she’s got a keen eye for suspicious activity, better than anyone else there.” He carried the plate to a plastic bin by the kitchen and returned to continue. “According to her, the same two individuals would meet at Pharaohs to talk. At the same time each day over the last three days. One of them had a habit of ordering a drink and staring at it until his contact arrived.”

Krueger broke eye contact and slowly sipped his coffee as he considered the information presented. “Could be nothing,” he surmised. “It could be unrelated… or it could be worth looking into,” he concluded, reestablishing eye contact. “I’ll come by Pharaohs tonight. I’m supposed to go out with Liz after she’s done at the Branch today, but I can have her meet me there.”

“I would appreciate that,” Everett said, “thank you. I’ll let Chloe know you’re coming.”

~~~~

A lo-fi hip hop instrumental permeated through the main atrium of the Pharaohs Lounge that evening, providing a relaxed atmosphere in which the patrons enjoyed their hookah and cocktails. They conversed, closed business deals, and flirted in the dim light under the watchful eyes of the Ramesses II, Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, and Hatshepsut immortalized in busts at the four corners of the room.

The bartender, a woman wearing a white button-up shirt that seemed to glow under the spotlight keenly observed the space from behind the bar, and would briefly scan the room between preparing martinis for the servers to bring to the guests.

Krueger walked into the lounge in a black turtle neck sweater, dark washed jeans, and classy casual shoes under his pea coat. He headed straight for the bar and took a seat, interlacing his fingers and resting his hands on the counter.

The bartender returned the bottle opener to the rear right pocket of her jeans and crossed her arms on the countertop, leaning forward. “Anybody ever tell you how cool your eyes are?” She got his attention with a rich, dulcet voice.

Krueger turned to meet her gaze. “Danke—er… Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she returned, smirking playfully. “I don’t think we’ve met,” she added, moving to a spot directly across from him, “but I’ve definitely seen you around before.” She reached across the bar to offer him her hand. “Chloe Zaydan,” she introduced herself. She had warm ivory skin, long dark hair parted down the middle, bright brown eyes, and full lips.

Krueger accepted and shook her hand. “Milo Krueger,” he said. “Happy to make your acquaintance. Mr. Everett speaks highly of you.”

“I would hope so, he and I opened this place together.” She took her hand back after their contact lingered for a little. “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For not staring.” Her shirt’s first three buttons were undone, and a good deal of her skin was visible. “Most of the guys here forget where my eyes are once they start drinking.”

“I haven’t started drinking yet.”

“Let’s fix that, shall we?” She straightened up, whipping her hair out of her face with a quick shake of her head. “What’s your poison, Milo Krueger?”

“Water for now,” he said, turning in his chair to scan the tables behind him. “I’m working.”

“Uh huh…” Chloe retrieved a water bottle from the refrigerator under the bar and a pint glass from the freezer. “What do you do, exactly?” She cracked the bottle open and poured its contents into the glass before sliding it over to him then resting her hands on the countertop and leaning forward a little.

“I solve problems, currently, for Mr. Everett’s boss. Before that, I shot people for money; Kommando Spezialkräfte, the Bundeswehr, a few private clients, and my own team once.”

“Not going to lie to you,” she admitted, gesturing her head. “All that registered was Commando.”

Krueger turned back to face her and blinked, then took from his water glass. “Special Forces,” he said. “Now I’m in the private sector.”

“You see? Wasn’t that easier?” She flashed him a coquettish smile.

Krueger chuckled to himself as he drank more water. “I suppose… and you, Chloe Zaydan? What do you do?”

Chloe looked up to take a drink order from one of the servers working the floor behind Krueger. She nodded at the server and turned to gather a few of the ingredients from the wall behind her. “Well,” she began, “officially I’m the head bartender here at Pharaohs. I take care of the staff and make sure the staff take care of the patrons.” She took a rocks glass and a cocktail shaker from the drying rack and placed a single large ice cube into the glass, then cracked a second ice cube into the shaker. Then she opened the half-finished bottles of Redemption rye and Domaine de Canton she retrieved from the wall, poured a full measure of the rye into one side of her jigger, and turned it over to add the whiskey into the shaker as she poured the Domaine de Canton into its other side. She turned it over again to pour the liqueur into the shaker as well.

“It’s thankless work,” she continued as she retrieved pomegranate juice and sour mix from the refrigerator below the bar, “but if I don’t do it, nobody else will.” She poured a half measure of the juice into the shaker along with one and a half measures of sour mix, then covered the container up and shook it vigorously. Once satisfied she tapped the shaker on the bar top to open it and strained the contents over the ice cube in the rocks glass. Finally, she rubbed a thin strip of lemon peel over the rim of the glass and placed it into the finished cocktail before sliding it across the bar to the server with a wink. “Turns out I’m pretty good at it too, so, bonus.”

Krueger nodded. “And unofficially?” he queried.

“I’m Number Two here,” she said plainly. She turned briefly to place jigger and cocktail shaker into the sink to run them under hot water. “Kind of like a general manager but with more authority.” She gave the instruments a quick but thorough clean with a sudsy sponge before rinsing them and returning them to the drying rack. “Some days I have to have our guests escorted from the building, and on the worst of those days I have to be in the room with Henry when Mr. Hayden has a word with those guests.” She turned back around to reestablish eye contact as she dried her hands. “So I guess I solve problems too.”

“Then I take it you know why I’m here this evening.” He lowered his volume.

“Yes, sir,” Chloe said, matching his tone and leaning in a little. “I suspected somebody here is looking to either buy or sell drugs. I know how big a no-no that is with Henry’s boss, so I brought it to his attention. Then I’m guessing Henry called you up to help with that..?”

“That isn’t exactly how it went, but yes… The suspected party,” Krueger said, “is he the younger man seated at the table on my five o-clock?”

Chloe peered over his right shoulder to identify the person in question. “Yep, that’s him,” she confirmed. “Nervous Nelly’s been staring at his ginger ale for the better part of the last hour.”

“And his contact?”

“Should be here any second now…” Chloe broke eye contact to scan the room one more time. She straightened up and reached for a mop towel behind her when she spotted him. “Yep,” she confirmed, wiping the bar in front of her. “There he is.” She wiped more of the surface down as she discreetly scanned Nervous Nelly’s contact and relayed her observations to Krueger so he wouldn’t have to blow his cover. “Backpack slung over one shoulder, other hand hooked into his pocket… he just sat down across from Nervous Nelly, and put the backpack on the floor next to him.”

“How good are you at lip reading?”

“Not very…” Chloe returned the mop towel to its hook behind her and turned back around to line a dozen shot glasses up in front of her. “Newcomer’s relaxed enough, laid back in his chair” she continued as she took a bottle of Blue Nectar silver tequila and uncorked it. “His friend on the other hand…” she poured an equal measure into each of the glasses and set the bottle aside as she arranged them on a platter for one of her servers.

“Jiggling knee?” Krueger theorized as he took from his water glass.

“That, rubbing the back of his neck, wringing his hands; basically the picture next to what you’d find in the dictionary if you looked up ‘nervous behavior.’ Plus he keeps looking back this way.” She retrieved the tequila bottle once more and poured one last shot into a glass to send with the server to give to the newcomer, then re-corked the bottle and returned it to the shelf behind her.  

“He doesn’t suspect you,” Krueger assured her. “It’s much more likely he can’t take his eyes off you, a beautiful woman serving drinks behind the bar at a lounge in Bayside.”

Chloe smiled and looked away from him, chuckling to herself. “You know, that’s dangerous, flirting with the pretty girl at the bar,” she returned, smirking wryly at him.

“I’m just stating facts, Chloe” he added in jest, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lip. “How you interpret those facts is up to you. Besides,” he continued, “danger is nothing new in my line of work.”

She laughed to herself and shook her head, grinning. “Well, you’re cute,” she admitted, “so I’ll let it slide… just this once.” She broke eye contact with Krueger to watch the man with the backpack and his contact again. “Backpack guy just downed his shot… looks like he enjoyed it.”

“And his friend?”

“Still hasn’t touched his soda… Hold on,” she said. “He just looked over both his shoulders. Looks like he’s reaching into his pocket for something.” Even in the dim light she could see what it was. “An envelope,” she said to him. “He’s handing it over under the table… other guy’s peeling it open, looking inside… he seems satisfied with it.

“Money?”

“Probably,” she continued. “No, definitely. He just slid the backpack over with his foot.”

“Fair trade,” Krueger commented.

“Looks like he’s verifying the purchase…” Chloe watched in silence as the nervous buyer—as discreetly as he could—opened the backpack’s zipper a few inches and reach one hand inside. He seemed to struggle with whatever was inside, then pulled his hand back out and looked over his left shoulder as he brought his fingertips to his mouth. “Taste test,” she finally commented. “Gotta be.”

Krueger nodded. “Then you were right to suspect them. Good instincts.”

“Thanks.” She took her eyes away from them to look at Krueger again. “What happens now?”

“We deliver the buyer to Mr. Everett.”

“Not the seller?”

“No, the seller is just a vector, probably one of a dozen,” he surmised. “A means to an end; at those quantities it’s the buyer looking to create the market here. He’s the one to make an example of.” Krueger stood up from the bar stool and straightened out his coat. “Thank you for the water.” He turned to head to the back of the atrium, toward the stairs to Everett’s office.

Chloe watched him leave, and when he was no longer in her sight she walked over to the wall-mounted phone at the far side of the bar area, picked it up out of its cradle and dialed a three digit extension. “Table six,” she said into the receiver. “Two and a backpack.” Then she hung the phone up and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, watching the two suspects at their table while three large security guards in black t-shirts and pants wove through the atrium tables and between servers to apprehend them.

The seller, facing the direction they came from, spotted them immediately—he quickly but calmly stood up to make his getaway. The buyer wasn’t so lucky; he was scooped up and lifted clear above the floor in a matter of seconds by one of the guards while the second secured the backpack. The third broke off in pursuit of the seller while the other two took the buyer out of the lounge via the rear exit, away from the other guests who looked on in confusion, but quickly returned to their business after it was done.

Chloe uncrossed her arms and took her place at the bar again, accepting an empty crystal tumbler from one of the servers.

“What was that about?” the server asked her?

“They broke the rules,” she plainly told him. “This one was Blanton’s, right?” she asked, gesturing the empty glass in her hand.

“Uh, yeah. Blanton’s. On the Rocks.”

 ~~

Each of the two security guards cupped one the buyer’s arms as they hauled him into Everett’s office, his feet dragging on the floor behind him. They placed him into an old chair facing the desk as the third security guard laid the confiscated backpack on Everett’s desktop.

The buyer looked up from his lap at the man seated across from him, wincing between pained breaths as he tried his best to nurse his beaten sides and stomach from his seat.

Everett slowly stood up from his chair and took a few measured steps around his desk to approach the buyer. He towered over the other man, glaring at him from behind the frames of his glasses. “Do you understand why you’re here?” he asked the buyer.

The buyer nodded guiltily. “Yeah,” he spat out.

“Explain to me why I had my staff make an example of you in front of my other guests,” Everett ordered. He removed his glasses one-handed and placed them in the front pocket of his jacket.

“I—I bought drugs,” he stammered.

“Louder.”

“I bought drugs..! I was going to sell them... corner the market,” he admitted, shrinking into himself.

Everett took a slow step toward him, invading his personal space now. “Listen to me,” he said quietly. “You have one advocate in this room.” He gestured Krueger seated quietly to the right. “This conversation was his idea. We have a strict set of rules in place here, and a clearly established set of consequences for those who break them. When I heard the extent to which you and your associate were planning violate those rules…” Everett blinked slowly. “Suffice it to say if it weren’t for the respect and admiration I have for that man and his opinion, I would have handled this differently.”

The buyer sheepishly looked to his left at Krueger.

“Don’t look at him,” Everett growled. “You look at me..!”

He snapped to attention, looking up at Everett again towering over him.

“You will leave this place,” Everett declared. “You will leave behind what you have purchased. And he won’t be able to deliver you from what will happen if I or my associates catch you here again.” Everett’s glare bored into the other, smaller man for all of five seconds in total silence before he finally turned back around toward his seat behind the desk. “This exchange is over.”

The buyer swallowed hard before he looked to his left at Krueger one last time. Then he slowly stood back up and staggered out of the room, abandoning his prize to walk away with his life.

Krueger shot Everett a glance before standing up to follow the buyer out of the office and intercept him on the stairs down to the main floor.

He placed his hand on the buyer’s shoulder to turn him around, then shoved him against the wall once he had his attention. With his other hand he drew and opened a folding knife then pressed its point against the buyer’s waist, just above the belt. “I’m going to ask you two simple questions,” he said. “And I want simple answers…”

The buyer, terrified, nodded in silent compliance.

“Are those Dragon Tears in the other room—?”

“Yeah.” His answer was immediate.

“Who’s your seller?”

“I don’t know him.”

Krueger’s eyes narrowed. He brought the blade up from waist-level and rested its flat side against the buyer’s cheek. “Not a simple answer.”

“I don’t know him, I swear..! I was set up with him.”

Krueger blinked, pulling the knife away. “Who set you up? Who is it that’s looking to corner the market on the Dragon Tears here in New York?”

“Peter Cross,” he blurted out. Despair washed over him immediately after he gave Krueger the name.

Krueger blinked, then after three seconds of silence he released the buyer. He’d seen that expression before—the hopelessness that grows and takes over when a man realizes he just signed his own death warrant. He folded the knife one-handed and slid it back into his pocket. “Go,” he finally said. He stood to the side and let the buyer pass. He wasn’t certain from the distance between them, but he could swear the buyer was crying by the time he made it off the stairs.

He returned to Everett’s office to share what he was told. “He wasn’t acting alone,” he began. “He and the seller were proxies for someone named Peter Cross.”

Everett laced his fingers together atop the desk as he sat back down. “Did he say whether Cross was behind the den in Patchogue as well?”

“No, but I don’t believe in coincidence.” Krueger rested his hands in his coat pockets. “Whoever Peter Cross is, all we can be sure of is that he wants that heroin here for a reason. But until we have more information I feel the best thing to do is to stay vigilant… I’ll run his name by Brandon Desmoulins, see what he can dig up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Everett agreed. He gestured the backpack full of Dragon Tears. “I’ll get this to Isaac in the morning and let him know you’re investigating Cross. He’ll want confer with us once we have some useful information.”

“Understood.”

“Thank you again for your help Milo,” Everett said, his expression softening again. “Have some fun on your way out,” he said. “On the house.”

 ~~

Krueger washed his hands in the bathroom. After shutting the faucet off he ran his still-wet fingers through his hair and over his face, then dried his hands and face with paper towels from the dispenser. He inspected his reflection one last time before leaving the restroom to return to his place at the bar.

He reached into his inside coat pocket for his cell phone, but paused as he recognized Khai in his seat chatting with Chloe. He got their attention with a little wave. “I was about to call you,” he said to her. “I just finished and was going to ask you to meet me here.”

“Who says I’m here for you?” Khai jested. “I came to see my best friend.”

Krueger paused for a moment, then chuckled to himself. “Of course you two know each other,” he said.

“Yep,” Chloe added. “Sorry about not being up front with that, but I wanted to test you. Liz said so much about you I had to be sure.” She flashed him a smile. “You passed, by the way.”

“Well,” Krueger said as he reclaimed his seat at the bar next to Khai, “if it makes no difference to you I think I’ll have that drink now, Chloe.”

“You bet,” she said, wiping the rim of a square rocks glass dry and placing it in front of him. She looked over at Khai. “What does he like?” she asked her, nodding her head in Krueger’s direction.

“The Old Fashioned at Tillman’s,” she said.

Chloe nodded in approval. “Ah,” she noted. “A man of taste..! Extra credit.” She went into the freezer to retrieve a single large ice cube with an orange peel frozen inside of it and placed it into Krueger’s empty glass. She turned over her shoulder to survey her options for whiskey, lingering on a Woodford Reserve but ultimately selecting a Four Roses Single Barrel over it. She poured enough bourbon into the glass to cover the ice, then reached to her left for a bottle of turbinado syrup to add a pre-determined amount of the sweetener to the whiskey. Then she retrieved a bottle of angostura bitters from underneath the bar and added a few dashes to the mixture, then added a few drops of orange bitters to it as well. Finally she stirred the cocktail in the glass with a bar spoon and, when mixed to her satisfaction she skewered a single cocktail cherry with a stainless steel pick and placed it into the glass beside the ice. “It’s not a perfect recreation,” Chloe noted as she slid the glass toward Krueger, “but it’s close.”

“Liz trusts your judgement,” he said to her, smirking. “That means you get a pass from me.”

“Danke,” she said, returning his expression. She turned her attention to her friend. “And you?”

“Surprise me,” Khai said.

Chloe broke eye contact while she considered Khai’s tastes and preferences. She knew what to make her—she ducked below the bar to retrieve a bottle of ginger beer from the refrigerator and placed it on the countertop when she surfaced again. Krueger and Khai looked on in intrigue as she picked a bottle of premium vodka and a honey liqueur off the shelf behind her and placed them on the counter next to the ginger beer. She turned around one last time to get another rocks glass and cocktail shaker from the drying rack and then got to work. Into her shaker she cracked some ice, then poured an equal measure of vodka and the honey liqueur. She cut a lime in half and squeezed its juice to the shaker, then closed and shook it to combine the ingredients. When she was satisfied she tapped the shaker on the counter’s edge to open it, then set it aside as she reached into the rear pocket of her jeans for her bottle opener to uncap the ginger beer. Finally, she topped the open cocktail shaker with a strainer and poured its contents into the rocks glass one-handed while she poured in the ginger beer with her other hand to nearly fill the glass.

“That your take on a Moscow Mule?” Khai asked.

“Been workshopping this one,” Chloe returned, rubbing a lime wedge on the rim of the glass and garnishing the finished product with it. “And no,” she jested. “Henry never got us copper mugs.”

“Eh, details.” Khai brought the experimental cocktail to her lips and sampled it, then paused, analyzing the flavors at play on her tongue. Her eyes lit up as she raised her brow. “Whoa, that’s good. Wait, hold on..!” She took more from the glass and when she finally pulled it away from her mouth she examined it in her hand. “Okay, that’s actually delicious..! It deserves a spot on the menu for sure..!”

“I’ll put that into the suggestion box,” Chloe said. “You know, as soon as we get one of those,” she joked. She raised the unfinished ginger beer bottle above the countertop and brought it to Krueger’s and Khai’s cocktails. “To friends..!” she said.

 ~~~~

Peter Cross pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled, seated opposite the other man at a small square table. The other seated person, visibly terrified, tried desperately to control his breathing under a third man in the room with them, clad in dark tactical gear and concealing his face with a Kevlar mask. The masked man was dead silent, his hands resting on the shoulders of the man seated opposite Cross.

“You’re not making a ton of sense, Davey,” Cross said. “So what I need you to do is take a breath—right now, breathe in through your nose,” he gestured breathing deep from his seat to the man seated opposite him in the dark room. “And slowly let it out through your mouth.” He guided the other man through the exercise. “Are we feeling better now?”

Davey, frantic and barely intelligible just a minute ago, took a moment to collect himself. “Yeah,” he lied, briefly looking Cross in the eye again averting his gaze again.

“Good,” Cross’s guided him with honeyed tones. “Now… Start again, from the beginning.”

“I talked to your contact,” he began. “We met up at Pharaohs, every day for the past week, just like you said.”

“He mentioned that. He had to get a feel for you.”

“We talk,” Davey continued. “Until finally, I made the buy today. Just like you said.”

Cross nodded behind his interlaced fingers.

“But then security comes out of nowhere, and before I know it I’m getting the hell kicked out of me in the alley behind Pharaohs…” He tensed up as the masked man’s grip tightened ever so slightly. “Then they bring me back in, sit me down in front of the boss. He tells me I would have been dead if not for his friend.”

“Describe his friend.”

Davey shrugged under the masked man’s hands. “Average height. White guy, brown hair, gray beard—late forties, probably. Had blue eyes… or were they green? Maybe one of each, I don’t remember.”

“Heterochromia,” Cross surmised.

“Hete-what?”

“Differently-colored… go on.”

“They kept the product and cut me loose,” Davey continued. Then his head hung as he recalled what happened next. “Then the boss’s friend pulls me aside, asked me who my supplier was.”

“What did he sound like?”

“Not super deep, average I guess… I thought I heard an accent when he spoke.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Huh?” The masked man adjusted his grip on Davey’s shoulders again, placing them centimeters closer to his neck.

“You said he asked you who your supplier was. What did you say?”

“I told him I didn’t know.”

“Then why’d you mention you gave him my name, earlier?”

“I thought he was gonna kill me if I didn’t give him something..! I didn’t think about what I was saying, I…” he began to tear up under the masked man’s hands. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cross,” Davey entreated. “I’m so, so sorry..!”

“I know you are,” Cross offered, leaning forward in his seat a little. “I do, and I accept your apology… but,” he continued, standing slowly, “it’s not my acceptance you want today, it’s the Viper’s.” He looked up at the masked man standing behind Davey. “Viper, do you accept his apology?”

The Viper said nothing; he loosened his grip on Davey’s shoulders, and even let go completely with his right hand.

Cross shrugged, looking back down at Davey. “Looks like he accepts your apology too,” he said. He turned around and headed toward the door with his hands in his coat pockets.

Davey took a deep breath to calm himself, relieved, just before the Viper retrieved a knife from his belt and ran its blade across his neck, severing his right carotid artery.

The Viper moved his left hand from Davey’s shoulder to under his chin to pull his head back while his right hand held Davey’s arm in place to prevent him from covering his wound and stopping the gushing. He ignored Davey’s muffled gurgles as blood spurted from the gaping neck wound all over the floor and table in front of him.

“However,” Cross said as he paused in his tracks and slowly turned over his shoulder to face Davey again, “I and the Viper can not afford failure, and we do not tolerate it.”

Davey tried to stand as he struggled, eventually freeing his left hand to try and peel the Viper’s away, but his efforts were thwarted by the larger man’s strength—the Viper pulled his head back further and pressed down with his other hand to keep Davey in place.

“We’re at the cusp of something huge,” Cross continued. “Bigger than anything we’ve ever accomplished, and those who would want to stop us are some powerful people. So until we set ourselves up with people powerful enough to destroy them, we have to stay off of their radar.”

Davey’s movements became more sluggish, and his left hand eventually fell from the Viper’s as life escaped him.

“Discretion, my friend,” he concluded. “That’s how we win here.”

Davey finally went limp in the Viper’s arms, and he let the man fall forward onto the table and slide onto the floor to his left. His blood leaked out from the wound as he hit the floor; the Viper, looking down at his victim, didn’t move when the growing puddle reached his boots. The only sounds in the room with them for six whole seconds was the dripping of Davey’s blood off the table onto the floor, and the Viper’s muffled breathing.

Cross exhaled, quickly scanning himself for Davey’s blood before looking back up to address his associate again. “Did you have to make such a mess?” he asked.

The Viper slowly turned his head upward away from Davey’s corpse to look at Cross again, peering through the eye holes of his face shield to meet his gaze.

“Of course you did,” he added sotto voce. “Clean this up,” he continued audibly. “After you’re done here find my seller and take care of him. Then cancel whatever other plans you have for the week.” He turned back around and headed for the door. “If I’m right about what about to happen, we’re gonna need you around to deal with Archangel.”

(Masterlist | Peter Cross | the Viper | Chapter 11)

[papergirllife]

I'll Be Your Home

Chapter 12 of Chasing The Flames

*gif credits to owner

When Jaemin decided to tend to his drunk boyfriend, it was too late. Jeno had just confessed his feelings for you. He looked on at the hallway, your back was facing his, so you didn’t know he was standing right there, watching the tension filled scene unfold before his eyes.It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but what other way to solve this now than to just wait for your reaction?

Y/N backed away from Jeno at what he just said, he could see a bit of her eyes, they were displaying a hint of shock and disbelief, her lips parted, speechless. She finally noticed Jaemin, her eyes tearing up at his sight. Jaemin was going to try to explain himself, but his reactions are still slow from Jeno and Y/N’s sudden confrontation of feelings.Y/N walked up to Jaemin in quick hurried steps, eyes barely looking at Jaemin.

“I’m sorry for everything, I’ll go now.”

Y/N ran past Jaemin, seconds later a loud bang of the door could be heard. When Jaemin finally registered what had happen, he ran to the door, only to notice you boarding the bus that had just arrived. He ran towards the bus reaching your window, only to notice the bus starting its engine, beginning to drive away.

Jaemin desperately banged at your window, mouthing the words ‘I like you too’ over and over, he noticed your expression changing when you finally looked at him, he could see your brows being furrowed, your lips mouthing something, but he couldn’t tell what it meant as the bus picked up speed, sending you away form him.

Jaemin walked back to their dorms, head hung in sadly, his lips were down turned. He walked back into his own room, only to see Jeno silently crying on thier bed. Even though he felt bad, he figured Jeno could be feeling even worse. Jaemin wrapped his arms around Jeno, head dipped into the crook of Jeno’s neck.

“It’s going to be okay, Jeno ah. She’s just in shock, give her some time.”

“I fucked it all up, Jaem. She’s going to hate me.”

“No she isn’t, she’s way too kind to do that. Just wash up and get some sleep, okay? I’ll call in sick for you tomorrow, you’ll need to rest or you’ll get distracted at work.”

Jeno only nodded, his eyes closed, but mind wandering back to that scene, wishing it had never happened.

When I got back, the first thing I did after shutting the door was breaking down behind it. Why did I say that? I could still see the disappointment on Jeno’s face when I rejected him. Was it wrong? What about Jaemin? Did he mouth the words ‘I like you too’ or was it my tears blurring my eyes? My head and heart hurts, I don’t know what to do. What if I’m the reason they’re breaking up if they do? Even if they don’t, I’ll be a wedge in their picture perfect relationship.

I picked myself back up from the floor, footsteps heavy as I dragged my body to wash up for the day with all my remaining will power. Before going to sleep, I called in sick for work for the next three working days, making up a food poisoning excuse.

The next few days consisted of me being numb of all feelings, whenever I ate, I hurled everything out again. Tears staining my face as I was perched in front of my toilet bowl. I don’t know how long this could go on, empty stomach and sleepless nights. I could feel my anxiety levels rising back to the time I was still in high school, the social life there that took a toll on me was also the reason I chose to travel all the way to Seoul, my clean slate.

Would I need to run away again?

Calling Jaemin and Jeno worried was an understatement. These past days, they had a problem practicing the collaboration stage with the 127 hyungs, but they pulled through it, with the encouragements from Jaehyun and Jungwoo who are rather close with Jeno and Jaemin. The other dreamies however, have been stressed over their feelings even yours as days pass and still had no sign of you at work, the projects they had known you were going to participate in were substituted by other staffs.

They had tried calling you multiple times, Chenle tried going to your place behind their backs, but was stopped by Renjun when his plan was accidentally spilled by the all too clumsy Jisung. Renjun said you needed time to think, and that barging on your doorstep would be the last thing you wanted. Although they understood what Renjun was saying and abided by his words, they couldn’t help but to miss you. Other than Jeno and Jaemin being so smitten by you, your personality gave their dorms a sense of homey warmth, the others missing your bubbly presence as well.

It has been two weeks, and still no sign of you. Jaemin was starting to think that you had quit, until he asked Mr Kang of your situation and he had only said that you had went on a holiday after non stop of work those past months, confusion written on his face when Jaemin hadn’t known about it, many staffs were aware of how the dreamies enjoyed your company.

“I think it’s time the two of you talk it out with her.”

Renjun said this in the middle of them having dinner, Jeno having noodles in his mouth, making him choke on his ramyun.

“We don’t even know where she went.”

Jaemin recalled his conversation with Mr Kang, remembering you still had a few days of leave left.

“She’s at home. I check up on her from time to time, but she doesn’t know that, so be careful not to mention that.”

They knew Renjun and you were close, but they didn’t know you were like a sister to him. This just makes Jeno feel guiltier, he fucked up so bad but not once any of his members blamed it on him, not even the usually hot tempered Renjun.

Jaemin was nervous when he was getting ready to meet you that morning. He was always confident, when he first debuted and won the hearts of many nctzens, when he shamelessly pursued for his best friend turned boyfriend Jeno, even when he had hurt his leg he was confident he would’ve been fine. But the Jaemin reflecting back on the mirror was jittery, his teeth chewing on his bottom lip.

Jeno was in no better shape, but the two of them had cleaned and dressed up well to see you, switching out their days old sweats. The two of them had decided to walk to your place, since it isn’t that far away from their dorms. They had picked up a bouquet of flowers from the old lady’s stall by the park near your home.

Jaemin’s hand felt heavy as he reached up to knock three times against your door, hoping for the best.

I should’ve checked to see if it was the delivery man before swinging my door open, I must look like shit now, not having good sleep for days, drinking, I don’t even remember when I last combed my hair, thank goodness I bathed today.

“Jeno, Jaemin...

“Can we talk?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything to talk about.”

Even speaking to them felt like my throat was constricting on its own.

“I think you do, but I’m willing to speak first if you want.”

Jaemin was gentle, the way he carefully picked his words before he spoke them. Jeno was silent, eyes avoiding mine, cheek in teeth. This is all my doing, I thought it would’ve been for the better, to not get involved, to just react the right way, but is the right way always correct?

I went to the kitchen to pour them water with my shaky hands as they sat down on the couch, when I sat down in front of them, their attentive eyes looked up as mine went down to look at a spec of dust on my floor.

“Y/N, I don’t know if you realised, but you were never at fault for anything, Jeno and I aren’t in a fight, and both of us are interested in you, not only Jeno.’

“What?”

“We like you Y/N, I know this sounds very weird to you, and it’s not everyday you’d hear something like this, but both of us agreed to like you, okay wait this sounds fucked up.”

Jaemin was running his hands through his hair as the gears in his head turn, just as yours was spiraling into a heap of messy thoughts. Jeno, who was silent ever since he came in, spoke up.

“Y/N, we’re both bisexual, and when I first saw you, I was really frustrated with myself, I thought I only liked men, because I was never attracted to the women in the company, even when Jaemin made me confront my own identity, I was angry. I might be wrong, but maybe you’re in denial as well. The times we spent together, you and me, you and Jaemin, all three of us, those times felt so right,, don’t you think?”

Jeno reached forward to hold your hands in his, his thumb tracing shapes on your knuckles, his fingers loosening up your tensed ones, his eyes gentle, far from the ones that were full of charisma on stage. I swallowed down the rock that was caught up in my throat and started to speak.

“You want us to date? As in all three of us in one relationship?”

“It’s called a polyamorous relationship, but only if you’re comfortable with it, we don’t want to rush you into anything you’re not ready for. But the real question should be, do you like both of us, Y/N? Have you ever thought about it?”

“It’s the one thing that keeps me up at night. How can I like both of you? Is that natural?”

I could feel the tears threatening to escape once more as I recalled the many times I thought of myself as a freak, a greedy bitch, a homewrecker, and many other ugly things.

“Y/N, calm down. Look at me, it’s alright, Nana’s here, no one’s judging you, and there’s nothing unnatural about what you’re feeling, feelings can’t be defined as normal or not. And to be honest, I’ve grown to not bother to define them as I grew up. Isn’t it better to always follow your heart? Just like how the fairy tales teach us, instead of what this cruel society spews on the internet?”

Jaemin was kneeling in front of me, his hands cupped both mine and Jeno’s, his eyes full of sincerity, just like his words. I looked at Jeno, his eyes looking into mine as he gives me a supportive smile along with a slight squeeze. The reasons why I fell for them are evident as I take in their caring expressions and words. This small little house suddenly feels more like a home then it ever has.

“Okay, I won’t beat myself over it anymore. and if I do, will the two of you be there for me?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.”

Jaemin reaches up to gently wipe away a tear that escaped the corner of my eye.

“So is that a yes? You’ll be in a relationship with us? We’ll take it slow, I promise, no rushing.”

Jaemin asked as his eyes scan my reaction, Jeno looking silently, praying for my approval.

“Yes.”

Jaemin reaches out to hug me, his warm embrace lasted short however, when Jeno pulled him off of me.

“We agreed to take it slow, Jaemin.”

Jaemin immediately went back to his seat, a guilty look on his face.

“Sorry Y/N.”

“It’s alright, you can hug me. Come here Jeno, Jaemin.”

The two boys hugged me so tightly, I had to remind them to not squeeze me to death. Even though this was not how I planned my first relationship to be like, I don’t want it any other way, as my cheeks start to get sore from all the sudden smiling.

Jeno and Jaemin after facing so many difficulties and set backs, finally won your heart, as their arms wrapped around you, not wanting to ever let you go.

There would probably have other problems that they’re going to have to face, but they’ll never be alone.

*Guys, this is the end of Chasing The Flames. Thank you to everyone who read this series, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever wrote, and I know that many of you may wonder why I didn’t write about their first date or something before I ended this series, it’s because I think it’s time to say goodbye to this work of mine, it’s been almost a year I think. The good news is that you can always request for scenarios from this story, like their first kiss, date, fight, or even smut. Lastly, I would like to thank all of you once again, for supporting me along this journey, thank you.🥰

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Chapter 24 - Epilogue

by Dan H

Wednesday, 01 August 2007Dan concludes his review, having abandoned any semblance of impartiality, bless his bitter little heart.~

Previously: Harry does nothing of any interest for 23 chapters. We finally destroy one single solitary Horcrux.

Chapter Twenty Four: The Wandmaker

In which we learn a bunch of shit about wands that will be contradicted by the end of the book.

This chapter opens with a genuinely touching scene in which Harry buries Dobby by hand (as opposed to using magic). It's really sweet, although perhaps I would have found it more affecting if Dobby hadn't died out of sheer authorial malice.

So Harry dithers over whether to go for the Hallows or the Horcruxes, and thinks about all the shit that's happened and what it could all mean. He spends a really, really long time thinking about Dumbledore, and what his plans for the whole thing were.

So then Harry goes and talks to the Goblin they rescued from the Malfoys (did I mention the goblin? There was a goblin). The Goblin is all "you totally rock Harry Potter, because you sometimes treat other races with the barest minimum possible level of decency when you remember to." You see, it's because Harry understands love.

So Harry goes and talks to Ollivander about his broken wand. I mean seriously, it's not even worth doing jokes about, is it.

Having got his penis-metaphor out of the way, Harry then talks some more about Wand-Lore with Ollivander. Here we learn that it is the wand that chooses the wizard, not the other way around, and that if you take somebody's wand by force, that wand will work better for you than one you just picked up somewhere.

In particular, the discussion goes like this:

"I took this wand from Draco Malfoy by force," said Harry. "Can I use it safely?" "I think so, subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master."

This all leads into a big discussion of the Elder Wand and how to take control of it you have to kill its previous owner or some such shit like that.

All of which turns out to be nonsense. In fact the rules for wand ownership seem to be roughly these:

Every wand has a True Owner.

When a wizard takes a wand from another wizard, he becomes the True Owner of every wand of which that wizard was previously True Owner.

"The Wand Chooses The Wizard" is crap, the thing about the Elder Wand changing hands through murder is crap. Like all the rest of the magic in Harry Potter, wands aren't mysterious or mystical, they follow simple rules which can be written down and followed very, very easily.

This will all become apparent later on, when it is revealed that Harry's act of yanking some wands out of Draco's hands made him the True And Destined Owner Of the Most Powerful And Destructive Wand In History.

Lame.

This chapter ends with another flash of Voldy-vision, as we see the Dark Lord claiming the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's tomb. But it's okay, because he's not the True Owner of it, because of rules one and two above.

Chapter Twenty Five: Shell Cottage

In which Harry spends so much time sitting on his arse doing nothing that it's not even funny.

This chapter is short, at a mere thirteen pages, but that is precisely thirteen pages longer than it needs to be.

Harry gets all weird about how Dumbledore is totally alive, and totally talking to him by weird magical means. It's like that Buffy episode where Giles thinks that a poltergeist is Jenny, but it isn't. Only with more sucking.

Bill and Fleur carry on being shit. Fleur carries on 'aving zee most stupeed accent ever written, and doing that really fucking annoying thing that French characters in books always do, where they put one French word into every sentence so that they wind up sounding like they're failing their GCSE oral.

During the big slew of inactivity, Lupin shows up to tell everybody that Tonks has had their baby. His opening line of dialogue is truly, truly, truly stupid:

"It is I, Remus John Lupin ... I am a werewolf married to Nymphadora Tokns, and you, the Secret Keeper of Shell Cottage, told me the address and bade me come in case of emergency!"

Okay, I get that he's trying to convince them that he isn't a Death Eater using Polyjuice (it's nice that somebody in the Potterverse has worked out how trivial it is to use), but none of the information he gives is secret, except for the stuff about Bill being the Secret Keeper, and since the Fidelius charm already prevents people from getting into the cottage, it's a bit of a waste of breath.

Remus asks Harry to be godfather to his child, then leaves.

Harry decides to break into Gringotts with the help of a Goblin. He bargains the Sword of Gryffindor for this, because apparently it belongs to the Goblins anyway. In one of the few moments of (a) this book being remotely interesting and (b) my finding a piece of Fantasy Worldbuilding worth listening to, we learn that Goblins believe that anything they make remains the property of its original creator, and that if they make something for somebody else, that something should go back to the goblins once said somebody dies.

So they're off to Gringotts. Four hundred and fifteen pages in and we're onto Horcrux number two!

Chapter Twenty Six: Gringotts

In which they finally run out of fucking Polyjuice.

They Polyjuice Hermione into Bellatrix, give her Bella's original wand (which Ollivander conveniently identified for them), and head for Gringotts.

And they use the Invisibility Cloak, of course they use the invisibility cloak.

Anyway, Hermione has trouble working with Bellatrix's wand (because she "had not won its allegiance by taking it personally from Bellatrix" - although as we will learn by the end of the book, casting Expelliarmus on whoever did take it personally from Bellatrix, or on anybody who had ever cast Expelliarmus on Bellatrix at any point in the past, should also have worked). Blah blah some crap, blah blah diagon alley.

They head to Gringotts, where they are interrupted by another Death Eater, who asks Hermione-as-Bellatrix how she managed to get hold of a new wand, since the only Wandmaker in England is currently AWOL and hers was known to have been stolen by Harry Potter. Tragically, Hermione does not respond by saying "I don't know, the same place the new intake of Hogwarts students got theirs I suppose."

By the time they get to the main desk of Gringotts, the jig is totally up. All the crap with the Polyjuice and the Goblin and all the rest has been for nothing. From the security of his invisibility cloak, Harry uses the Imperius curse to get past the goblin on the desk. I'd like to think that this marked a genuine change in Harry's character, but it totally doesn't. He was in a difficult situation, he took the easy way out. I'd also point out that, compared to turning your target irreversibly into a drooling lunatic (like Hermione did to Xenophilius Lovegood) the Imperius Curse doesn't seem half bad. It gets your target to do what you want and go where you want, but so does a Confundus charm.

Just so we get the message that we're now in the company of dark, edgy Harry Potter, he uses the Imperius curse a couple more times, and each time it seems not so much like an unforgivable violation of somebody's free will, but a comparatively harmless way to get somebody to look the other way for five minutes. It's rather like the Jedi Mind Trick, in fact.

So they get deeper into Gringotts, and it's revealed that yet, they do have a couple of defences, in the shape of some water that washes away magical concealment (wouldn't it be better to have that before you get into the building - and shouldn't the Ministry invest in some of it as well?) and a blind dragon which is scared of loud noises.

Impregnable, huh?

So they head to the Lestrange vault, and realise that they find that every time they touch something, it multiplies itself and becomes burning hot. How the hell do the Lestranges expect to get anything out of there, I ask you? Or does it only work if you aren't the rightful owner of the vault? In that case, why not just rig the door to only open for the right person? They could use that "flesh memory" shit which snitches are apparently built with.

Seriously, though, this is what I hate (okay, one of the many things I hate) about Rowling's universe. It's all so arbitrary. Everything works according to these stupid rules which operate on the basis of pure plot-convenience. Like the poison in Book Six which "has to be drunk" in order to get at the Horcrux. All throughout this book, the "magic" is arranged so that the "only thing to do" is whatever the hell JK Rowling wants to have happen next. It's fucking lazy.

So they grab the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff, but they lose the Sword of Gryffindor. Don't worry, though, they can still pull it out the Sorting Hat.

Actually, thinking about it, wouldn't that have been a better, faster way to get the Horcruxes together: just get a True Ravenclaw, a True Hufflepuff and a True Slytherin to yank the damned things out of the Sorting Hat. Except, of course, that wouldn't be the way it Had To Be Done.

Chapter Twenty Seven: The Final Hiding Place

It's Hogwarts.

Chapter Twenty Eight: The Missing Mirror

In which we get yet another dose of Dumbledore backplot.

So Harry is off to Hogwarts, because he saw in Voldemort's mind that the last Horcrux was there. He also saw that Voldemort had only just realised that his Horcruxes were in danger at all.

I mean, seriously, I get that he's arrogant, but you'd think that however overconfident you were, spending eleven years as less than a ghost would teach you some level of caution. I mean, I don't like leaving my keys where I can't see them, let alone fragments of my actual goddamned soul. But Voldemort, intent as he was on finding the Elder Wand, has just decided to take it on trust that his immortal soul is nice and safe and not hacked into bits with the Sword of Gryffindor.

Seriously, this guy totally deserves to get killed by his own rebounding curse.

Harry and co Apparate into Hogsmeade, where they immediately set off the alarm system and get set upon by death eaters, but the bartender at the inn takes the rap for them, and pulls them out of the shit.

I mean seriously, how many times can somebody get rescued from their own fuckups by smarter more capable people and still be considered a hero?

The bartender turns out to be none other than Aberforth Dumbledore. Woohoo, we're in for some more exciting Dumbledore backstory.

Aberforth tells us the exact same story we have heard six times already: Dumbledore hung out with Grindelwald for three months in the eighteen fifties, there was a fight and their sister got killed in the fallout. Aberforth thought it was Dumbledore's fault, Dumbledore thought it was Dumbledore's fault, Grindelwald ran off to be a Nazi somewhere.

Harry gets into Hogwarts through a secret passage which Neville created using the Room of Requirement. Because Neville rocks.

Chapter Twenty Nine: The Lost Diadem

In which Harry is systematically upstaged by every single character in the book.

Neville takes Harry into his secret military base in the Room of Requirement. Neville, incidentally, also has honest to god scars from standing up to the Death Eaters in charge of Hogwarts. Notice that's "standing up to" not "throwing a tantrum at" which was the best that our hero ever really managed.

Neville fucking rocks. No wonder Voldemort didn't mark Neville as an equal, he knew when he was outclassed.

It turns out that Dumbledore's Army, freed from having to put up with Harry's complete inability to get over himself for eight seconds, has gone on to actually be useful and effective. They offer to help Harry, and Harry has an attack of stupid.

"You don't understand." Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours. "We - we can't tell you. We've got to do it - alone." "Why?" asked Neville.

Harry Potter everybody: whiny shit with a messiah complex, completely incapable of independent thought. Eventually they do in fact manage to convince him that he's being totally totally stupid. But wouldn't it have been nice if he'd just not been stupid in the first place?

So the DA go off to fight Death Eaters while Harry looks for the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, which somebody else told him might be the best place to start. Seriously, Harry does nothing for himself in this book. Or in any of the previous books come to think of it. But it's okay because he's "brave".

Harry and Luna try to sneak into the Ravenclaw common room to catch a look at the statue of their founder. In a rare moment of actually being kinda cool, we find that the Ravenclaw common room is not protected by a password but by a riddle (more of a koan, really: the question asked of Harry and Luna is "what came first, the phoenix or the flame?"). Needless to say, Luna answers the riddle, not Harry.

Worst. Hero. Ever.

They get to the common room, and are immediately ambushed by an interchangeable Death Eater.

Chapter Thirty: The Sacking of Severus Snape

In which Snape appears for ten seconds and utterly steals the show.

Oh look, they've summoned Lord Voldemort again. Pity they couldn't summon somebody actually scary instead.

So the Dark Lord is on his way, and all the people that are actually cool rush to the defence of Hogwarts. Harry, on the other hand, runs around looking for somebody to tell him what to do next. He eventually decides to start taking orders from the ghosts.

Everybody mills around in the corridors, and all the parents seem to have shown up. Molly Weasley continues to be completely fucking shit, insisting that Ginny can't fight because she's only sixteen.

Everybody gets ready for battle.

Oh, and Snape leaves so that he can get killed.

Chapter Thirty One: The Battle of Hogwarts

In which a battle presents no impediment to the interminable exposition.

While the rest of the student body are actually getting stuff done, and preparing to lay down their lives in battle against the Dark Lord, Harry goes off looking for a plot dump.

He finds it in the shape of the Grey Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw tower, who reveals that she is actually Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw. Wow. Words cannot explain how little I care about that. She also reveals that she stole her mother's diadem, and that she hid it in a tree in Albania (the very Albania where Voldemort once went! Amazing isn't it). Harry suddenly remembers that he saw a diadem in the Room of Lost Things in the previous book (funny how he can remember that, but not - say - things that happened two chapters ago). He goes to get it.

While Harry is doing this, Ron and Hermione dash of to have sex in the Chamber of Secrets, which Ron manages to open by imitating Harry's use of Parseltongue. That's right folks, the magical language Harry carries in his soul as a result of his connection with the Dark Lord can be picked up by any schlub who pays attention for five minutes.

Hermione destroys the cup offstage, so we miss the big plot point, and get the ghost story. Oh JK, you master storyteller you.

Then the Troika go to the Room of Requirement and start ransacking it for Horcruxes. It's a good thing Harry happened to see it in the previous book really, or they'd be totally fucked.

In the Room of Requirement they meet Draco, Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe and Goyle have been presented previously as a bit thick, but basically just your average bully types. In this scene, though, they're positively retarded. In, like, an actual way, rather than the way in which the whole book is retarded.

"We was hiding in the corridor outside," grunted Goyle. "We can do Diss-lusion charms now! And then," his face split into a gormless grin, "you turned up right in front of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! What's a die-dum?"

I've typed a lot of quotes into this article (I intended to do one a chapter, but I couldn't quite bring myself to), and fuck me JKR uses a lot of exclamation marks. Also: for fuck's sake, if you can cast a Dissillusionment charm, you should damned well be able to say "Dissillusionment charm".

Anyway, it turns out that Draco, Crabbe and Goyle have shown up to kill Harry, or bring him to the Dark Lord or something. I would like to believe that Draco is only doing this because he fears for the safety of his family, but since every single Slytherin turned against Hogwarts in the crunch, I think he's probably just being Evil.

So Crabbe or possibly Goyle summons Fiendfire, which is wild and uncontrollable and, conveniently, one of the few things that can destroy a Horcrux. This kills Crabbe, and allows Harry do demonstrate his heroism by rescuing Draco.

They get outside to see the penultimate (they think) Horcrux bleeding itself to death, and meet up with Fred, Percy and some nameless others. Percy gets quite a nice moment of redemption, where he apologises for trying to have a career when he should have just settled into virtuous poverty like the rest of his family. Then Fred gets killed in a horrible explosion.

Poor Fred. Ah well, it's not like he and George had distinct personalities anyway.

Chapter Thirty Two: The Elder Wand

In which Snape gets it for spurious reasons.

This chapter begins with Harry being Really Really Upset that Fred is dead.

The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant lain down their arms?

Oh just shut up! Just shut the fuck up JK Rowling. If you want us to mourn the death of a minor character, spend some fucking time developing them instead of telling us how we should all be really sad and shocked that they died.

So the battle rages on. Harry decides he's got to go find Voldemort, because he has to kill Nagini and end the plot once and for all. Also: he has to overhear Snape's final confrontation with Voldemort.

So Harry sneaks into the Shrieking Shack with his posse in tow, and we see Voldemort killing Snape in order to become True Master of the Elder Wand. Snape coughs his memories into a jar, and Voldemort calls an intermission in the battle, instead of just killing Harry where he stands.

I fucking hate this book.

Chapter Thirty Three: The Prince's Tale

In which all the fanfic turns out to have been right.

Snape was in love with Lily.

Harry is a Horcrux.

Dumbledore is an asshole.

Chapter Thirty Four: The Forest Again

In which the forest still fails to be remotely threatening.

This chapter makes me genuinely uncomfortable. Not in a "it's so dark and edgy and outside my comfort zone way". In a "I seriously am beginning to find JK Rowling morally despicable" kind of way.

Harry discovered, through Snape's memories, that he (Harry) is a Horcrux, and that the only way Voldemort can be defeated is if he (Voldemort) first kills Harry, thereby destroying the fragment of his (Voldemort's) soul which is inside him (Harry).

Harry, being the braindead personality-free fucktard he is, accepts this at face value, and marches off to die, pausing briefly to tell Neville to kill Nagini if he gets the chance. I'll say this for Harry, he knows how to leave things in the hands of better men.

He realises that "I open at the close" (the cryptic message inscribed on the snitch that Dumbledore gave him) means "I open when you're marching off to sacrifice yourself pointlessly". So the snitch opens, and he gets the (new, not-cursed) Resurrection Stone out of it. He puts on the ring and turns it, and all the dead people in the book (well, James, Lily, Lupin and Sirius at least) show up in spectral form to tell him how proud they are that he's off to commit suicide by means of Dark Wizard.

I mean, seriously, this is all kinds of fucked up.

Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily as though she would never be able to look at him enough. "You've been so brave." He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough. "You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are ... so proud of you." "Does it hurt?" The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it. "Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong on so many levels.

Now I admit, all through this book, I've been annoyed by the overprotective coddling of Molly Weasley, who won't let anybody under the age of thirty do anything that might be considered dangerous, but I'd even take that interfering old biddy over this creepy band of suicide groupies.

I mean seriously: the Potters both sacrificed their lives to save Harry, but now they're all in favour of him rushing headlong into his inevitable destruction? And what's with Sirius' "being dead is totally cool" speech? I mean seriously, this is exactly the kind of shit that Christian Fundamentalists have fits over, and with good reason.

Harry confronts Voldemort. Voldemort kills him.

I really, really wish this article could end here.

Chapter Thirty Five: King's Cross

In which JK Rowling, through Dumbledore, tells us how to feel about Harry.

I almost cannot bring myself to write about this chapter, in which Harry has a vision of Dumbledore in King's Cross station, and Dumbledore explains the plot to him again for old times' sake.

So it turns out that Harry isn't dead after all, because of the Very Special Bond between Harry and Voldemort, but Voldemort did ironically manage to destroy the fragment of his soul which was inside Harry all this time.

Wow. Convenient.

Then Dumbledore gives us a big speech about how fucking wonderful Harry is. You see Dumbledore sought the Deathly Hallows himself, but he sought them for bad reasons. Which in this case means "any reason at all." Harry, on the other hand, is Good and Pure, because he went through his entire life without having a fucking clue what he was doing. Because Harry was a passive little pussy who never did anything, never achieved anything, never had any ambition or even motivation.

"You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying."

So Harry, by blindly and unquestioningly allowing Voldemort to kill him, has shown himself to be a better man than any other.

I'm sorry, but I find that genuinely offensive.

I'm going to go into more detail about this in my post-book wrap up, because I think it bears some close analysis, but for now I'll make a couple of simple points.

Every single man, woman, and child in Hogwarts is risking their life to defeat Voldemort. Every single one of them is confronting death (or, if you prefer, "Death") and every single one of them has accepted that there are far worse things than dying. But their sacrifice doesn't count, because they're actually fighting, which is to say, they are trying to survive. In the new morality Rowling wants us to accept, the only true way to show courage is to lie down and just accept death.

Furthermore, Harry's stoic acceptance of his mortality is grossly undermined by the fact that he actually doesn't die. His great sacrifice is actually just another instance of him doing nothing by himself, and relying on other people to make things turn out alright.

Consider: if Harry actually had died, his mastery of the Elder Wand would have died with him, and Voldemort would have been able to carry on slaughtering to his heart's content. He would have still had one Horcrux left, and Hogwarts would have been destroyed.

This is the emotional and moral crux of the book, and it sucks beyond the telling of it.

Chapter Thirty Six: The Flaw in the Plan

In which all that seemed wrong was now right and those who deserve to are certain to live a long and happy life, ever after.

Voldemort seems to have collapsed, as well you might after nuking your own soul. He sends Narcissa to check whether Harry is alive, but when she realises that he is, she asks him (in a whisper) whether Draco is still alive.

Seriously, I love the Malfoys. I mean compare Narcissa - whose first and only concern is for her child, so much so that she risks defying the Dark Lord who, let's face it, isn't exactly known for his forgiving nature, just to know if he's alive or dead - compare her with Lily Potter, who just moments ago was cheerfully watching her son go to his certain death.

So Voldemort carries Harry's "dead" body to the front lines and does his big "ha ha, I've won you bunch losers" speech.

Everybody acts really sad that Harry is dead. Then Neville rushes the Dark Lord. Because Neville fucking rocks.

The Dark Lord disarms him, binds him, and then puts the Sorting Hat on his head and sets it on fire. Dude, you know she's reaching when she kills the goddamned Sorting Hat.

Neville breaks free of Voldemort's curse (which I like to think is Neville being a badass, but it is later revealed to be the Power of Harry's Big Love Death Sacrifice), pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the sorting hat, and totally decapitates Nagini. Because he has had it with this motherfucking snake, oh yes.

So then the shit hits the fan, and Harry jumps under his invisibility cloak again. There's a bunch of really badly written action. Molly Weasley takes out Bellatrix Lestrange in what our esteemed editor would identify as the Battle Between The Virtuous Woman And the Sinful Woman. Harry finally reveals himself, and reveals too that he has learned from Dumbledore the capacity to make long stupid speeches.

I'm going to reproduce this in full, and I'll say beforehand that Voldemort is totally right about everything:

"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me." Voldemort hissed. "Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today Potter?" "Nobody," Harry said simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good ..." "One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?" "Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "Accident when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"

Umm ... yes. Yes to every single one of them. At no point was it suggested that Lily Potter deliberately invoked ancient magic when she put herself in front of her son. Harry certainly didn't go to the graveyard by choice, and he had no idea that his wand would magically prevent Voldemort from hurting him. So yes, it was in fact all accidental. Harry Potter: the boy who was too dumb to die.

There's one more bit I want to draw attention to in this speech, because I find it so abominably offensive.

"I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people ... I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding?"

This comes back to my point from further up (and I'll come back to it again, because it genuinely sickens me). Why the fuck is Harry's sacrifice more significant than anybody else's? Why did Harry's "willingness to die" create a special magic forcefield around Hogwarts, but not the willingness to die of every single other person in the damned school?

Essentially, Harry is setting himself up here as a literal Christ figure. The perfect innocent, going meekly and willingly to his death in order to take the place of the whole world. The thing is, though, Jesus was supposed to actually be God. His sacrifice (according to Christian tradition) was greater than the sacrifices of normal men because he was not a normal man. He was God, suffering as a man for the sins of man. Harry Potter is just a miserable self-involved kid with a martyr complex.

Harry carries on talking for another three pages. Then Voldemort tries to curse him, but his curse rebounds because of that bullshit with the Elder Wand really belonging to Harry because he "conquered" Draco.

Of course with the Dark Lord fallen, his entire army disperses without a word.

They collect their dead, and we find that Mr and Mrs Remus Lupin are among the fallen. Harry is momentarily sad.

The final page of the book shows Harry with the Elder Wand, which is now most definitely His. In a scene which I think sums up the vacuous nature of the entire series, he uses the Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick, to magically repair his old wand.

Because lord knows, we wouldn't want the events of the last six hundred pages to have any consequences now, would we.

Epilogue: Nineteen Years Later

In which we learn that nothing that happened in the entire series meant shit.

Harry is married to Ginny. Ron is married to Hermione.

Back when I read The Order of the Phoenix, one of the few things I liked about it was the fact that Ginny seemed to have got over her crush on Harry. I thought that it was a refreshingly subtle, and subtly mature message to put into a children's book: sometimes you just get over people.

It saddens me greatly that JK Rowling, divorcee and single parent that she is, would feel the need to present such a naive view of romance. It seems like she spent so long talking about Death, she couldn't find anything to say about Life beyond "you grow up, get married, and have children."

Harry and Ginny's children are called James, Lily, and (as I am sure you already know) Albus Severus.

I think this, more than anything else, shows how deeply immature the series is. Harry goes through seven years of constant danger, he suffers torment, loss and even death. He touched the soul of the greatest Dark Wizard who ever lived, and practised the blackest of magic when he was forced to. But has he grown as a person? Has he changed? Not at all. His life still revolves around James and Lily, Dumbledore and Snape.

I also find it more than a bit offensive that Ginny (who we learn in

this interview

goes on to be an international sports superstar) doesn't seem to get any say in naming her own kids. I know it's an epilogue, I know it's sweet and everything, but her brother died at Hogwarts as well. The epilogue essentially says "And Harry Finally Got The Happy Family He'd Always Longed For". Never once does it consider the fact that after seven years he might want something else.

Coming Soon: My thoughts on the book as a whole, and the series in general.

Wardog at 15:46 on 2007-08-10I'm sorry I keep quoting David and Hannah at you but they're one of the few people to whose arguments I would naturally grant credence and they both very much enjoyed DH. David pointed out that there's something very different in fighting in a war in which there's a chance you might get killed and knowing walking to your death - thus Harry's sacrifice has more nobility and courage attached to it than you're giving him credit for. I guess it's the difference between rushing the Bastille and going to the guillotine..permalink - go to top

Dan H at 16:00 on 2007-08-10There is indeed a difference between fighting in a war in which there's a chance you might get killed and knowingly walking to your death. Knowingly walking to your death is easier. Harry doesn't really have a choice. He's "the chosen one". Colin Creevey, however, could have just walked away from Hogwarts and nobody would have thought the less of him for it. I'd also point out that Harry didn't sacrifice himself to *save* anybody. He sacrificed himself to *kill* somebody.permalink - go to topArthur B at 17:10 on 2007-08-10I have to say that I'm also deeply uncomfortable with any situation where deliberate suicide is actually a good idea. Walking bravely to the guillotine, I don't count as suicide, because you don't normally have much choice as to whether or not you get your head hacked off: the only choice is whether you cry and whine and piss your pants, or whether you walk with your head held high and, possibly, impress the crowd with your stoic acceptance of your fate. Walking to a duel which you are going to deliberately lose, because you think a loophole in the metaphysics in the universe will allow you to become Master of Death and give you the power to be the Messiah, isn't the act of a brave or noble individual. It's the act of a paranoid schizophrenic.permalink - go to topDan H at 17:15 on 2007-08-10He's not even doing it because he knows about the loophole, though. He's doing it for the same reason he does everything (see next article): Because He Thinks Dumbledore Wanted Him To.permalink - go to topArthur B at 17:31 on 2007-08-10So it is, in fact, literally true that if Dumbledore asked Harry to jump off a cliff, Harry would do it. (Which is kind of odd, in a series of books where mistrusting authority is supposedly a recurring theme.)permalink - go to topWardog at 21:51 on 2007-08-11I can't believe I'm trying to defend JK. I really have no investment in this, which is why I'm doing such an appalling job of it. But surely Harry has just as much right to walk way than Colin Creevy? He could go and live with Hermione's parents in Australia. I mean, through Snape's memories Harry sees what Dumbledore always intended for him (that he should nobly sacrifice his life) and *chooses* to do it anyway. An alternative reading might be that Harry realises that, rather than run around desperately trying to find alternative solutions to the Voldemort Problem, the adults around him have essentially groomed him into a passive matyr figure who will Do The Right Thing, even though it means his own death. And by the time he realises how thoroughly screwed he is, it's in the middle of the final battle and there's nothing much he can do short of pegging it. To *choose* what other people want you to do is still a choice, and after all that's happened to him, that Harry still has enough love in his heart to lay down his life is, y'know, pretty damn noble. For the record, I don't actually buy this. I don't actually buy that it's harder to walk knowingly into death than take a chance on it in a battle. Given a choice, I'd go for the battle and hope to find somewhere to hide.permalink - go to topWendy B at 23:29 on 2007-08-13Daniel --- I just wanted to say that you are not alone in your suffering. I've been working on a review of DH from my Livejournal site, but the 7th book seems to have killed my will to write. I am reading the book one more time to possibly find redeeming value, besides inducing millions of otherwise illiterate youngsters to get interested in reading. Beyond the insufferable plot details/holes you chronicle above, the series up through B6 appeared to be a gigantic and elegant mystery puzzle to be unveiled. And then on 7/21 we discover that it was an UNSOLVABLE mystery --- in B7 she introduced new characters and clunky plot devices. at the 11th hour (it burns! it burns!), to contort and bring the damn story to a close. All her prior book "clues" that fandom crawled over with a tweezer --- they weren't clever clues at all. Bah...but I loved this essay and laughed through the entire series. I might not write a thing but just refer folks here. Wendypermalink - go to topDan H at 15:13 on 2007-08-16the series up through B6 appeared to be a gigantic and elegant mystery puzzle to be unveiled. And then on 7/21 we discover that it was an UNSOLVABLE mystery I think that's part of why I found the last book so unsatisfying. While I wasn't ever massively into the "puzzle box" aspect of the books, I can understand other people being into it. But the last books lost sight of even that giving us, as you say, a bunch of new characters and clunky plot devices which came out of nowhere (or at the very least, out of previously untouched areas of her notes). If you do manage to get your review finished, I'll be very interested in seeing it. permalink - go to topWendy B at 16:18 on 2007-09-16Daniel...you might get some traffic to these articles as I posted the links within an essay I just posted to LiveJournal's hp_essays: http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/239017.html Wendy Bpermalink - go to topDan H at 12:24 on 2008-03-25On the Dumbledore side of things, I just don't understand how she can have a character that she spends half the book going off on a tangent about their unnecessary backstory (although it is a tangent away from that fucking tent so maybe I shouldn't complain) - the point of which is supposed to reveal that he turned away from power and ideas of sacrificing people for the 'greater good' - only to have him control and use every single character to the point where the entire book is just enacting his great Masterplan! Surely that contradicts a bit?!! JK is chronic for this: her Good characters behave exactly the same way as her Evil characters, except that everything that is a sign of an evil character's Evilness is a sign of a Good character's Goodness. Cases in point: Draco is evil because he "bullies" Harry. James is good because he "sticks up" for people against Snape (Harry similarly does a lot of "sticking up" for people that involves dogpiling defenseless Syltherins). Umbridge is a "racist" because she thinks Hagrid being a half-giant makes him a bad teacher. Harry, Ron and Hermione treat the full giants with patronizing contempt, and this is a sign that they're great humanitarians. Voldemort hates Muggles because he's evil. All the other Wizard treat Muggles like vermin but it's okay because they're endearingly careless about it. Then of course there's the fact that Harry's furious desire for vengeance is apparently a sign of his great capacity for "love". p.s ooh look, my first post. How exciting :) Welcome aboard.permalink - go to tophttps://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156 at 20:29 on 2009-07-29Dan doesn't realise just how absolutely spot on he is. I remember the Magnet series in 1930 where the Remove overthrow a demonic temporary headmaster from Greyfriars. Did anyone else read the Magnet when it was still being published? DH should have followed the Hogwarts front with Neville and Luna leading the rebellion against the Carrows. Or better yet, Voldemort should have made himself headmaster and Neville should have barred him out, that would have made for an infinitely better story. Voldemort really was no more capable than the wicked headmasters who sometimes got foisted on Greyfriars were. But instead... JKR wrote so much about nothing happening that she seemed as nihilistic as Samuel Beckett.permalink - go to topGamer_2k4 at 21:20 on 2011-06-02I know I've been guilty of some serious comment thread necromancy as of late, but I've got a question. "I think so, subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master." Is this an inaccurate transcription, or does the book really have run-on sentences like that? I've seen a few other quotes from the book with similar use of commas, and it's almost painful to think that writing that bad can make it past an editor and into the final version of a book.permalink - go to topDan H at 21:36 on 2011-06-02I'm honestly not sure if I transcribed that right or not, although to be honest I'm not overly fussed by slightly long sentences and I think Orwell would have supported the choice of a comma over the semicolon (although I think the line would sound better split into two sentences: "I think so. Subtle laws govern...").permalink - go to tophttp://sunnyskywalker.livejournal.com/ at 02:52 on 2011-06-03I don't remember about that particular quote, but I do remember noticing several instances of comma splices while reading the book and wondering why the editor didn't, as Dan suggests, split the sentence in two or something, because there didn't seem to be any good reason to have them. (I accept that sometimes there is a good reason. JKR didn't have it.)permalink - go to tophttp://vonnemattheus.livejournal.com/ at 00:21 on 2012-05-04The Horcrux hunt should have been a dangerous and exciting adventure, instead of the Camping Trip from Hell plot you get in sitcoms like Bottom. It was like watching someone else play Zelda really, really badly. Also, I thought there was an expiry date on the Mother's Love charm that keeps Harry's arse above ground? The best part of the book is when Harry is at his parents grave were, for some reason, he starts thinking of them rotting underground. JK even uses the word "Mouldering".permalink - go to tophttp://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/ at 03:01 on 2012-05-04Inspired by that scene, I buried my old HP books in the backyard after Deathly Hallows, but when I dug them up recently, they weren't nearly as decomposed as I had hoped. I don't think the maggots or the bacteria liked them very much either.permalink - go to topFurare at 13:28 on 2012-05-04Since this article was bumped onto the front page again, I noticed the comment about JKR's abuse of commas. I was reminded of reading the climax of Half Blood Prince; it's supposed to be really exciting and everything, and all I remember thinking is "Wow, are there four separate clauses separated by commas in that sentence?" I thought that several times. It's really quite shockingly badly-written in places.permalink - go to top

[mizjoely]

The third of four prompt fills promised to new followers of @geekyangie. This one is for @sherlockholmesismytype. The prompt was Sherlock undercover as a bartender at a 1920s Speakeasy, where Molly comes in for a drink to get her mind off colleagues who are intimidated by her being a woman. Enjoy!

Speakeasy

Why, Molly thought morosely as she plunked herself onto a barstool, had she ever believed it would be easier to take up her chosen profession in the United States? Men were men no matter what country they came from, and she was sick of how intimidated they were by her being a female, much less a doctor. The fact that she worked in the morgue and did autopsies didn’t help; she couldn’t begin to count the number of ‘helpful’ suggestions that she might be better off delivering babies or dealing with ‘women’s problems’ she’d been subjected to in the past six months. She was glad her friend Meena had recommended this place to her just the other day; Molly was more than desperate for a nice cold gin and tonic to wash away the taste of male testosterone clogging her (figurative) senses.

“I should have asked that idiot Moran if he’d rather I told him to turn his head and cough,” she muttered to herself as she waited for the bartender to show up and take her order.

The sound of choked off laughter brought her out of her reverie, and she looked up to see the single most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on standing in front of her, still chuckling. At her highly inappropriate words. How perfectly mortifying.

She was still trying to work out a way to explain herself when she realized he was asking her a question. “What’s your poison?” he repeated patiently as she just gawped at him like an idiot.

It finally clicked that he was the bartender. The one she’d been waiting for. “All my life,” she breathed out, then blushed bright red as she realized what she’d done. “Uh, a gin and tonic, please, been gasping for a drink...um, all my life,” she added in a lame attempt to explain her earlier words.

The slow grin he gave her told her she wasn’t fooling him in the least, and she blushed even redder under his knowing gaze. As soon as he served her drink she mumbled her thanks, handed over the necessary coinage, and tried to make herself invisible as she sipped at the refreshing beverage.

“You’re not from around here,” she heard someone say, and looked up as soon as she realized it was the bartender speaking, and not one of the men seated on either side of her.

Coming from one of them she’d have rolled her eyes and given them the cold shoulder; too many American men seemed to think that an Englishwoman must be easy, although Heaven knew why. It was a good thing she knew how to handle that sort of unwanted attention.

Unfortunately what she was less adept at handling was attention of the wanted kind. Especially when it came from a man who ticked all her favorite boxes: tall, dark curly hair, gorgeous blue (green?) eyes, sharp cheekbones, and...British??

She really was in bad shape, if it was taking her brain this long to catch up with the fact that his accent screamed Posh Londoner to her ears. “Um, no, I’m not,” she replied, wishing that her cheeks would cool down just a tiny bit. “I’m from…”

“Northamptonshire,” he said promptly. “Born there, studied in London, moved here for the so-called better opportunities available to a female doctor. Discovered that was only a myth, and are more than ready to move back home at the first opportunity, where at least your boorish male co-workers will come from familiar backgrounds and might more easily be set back on their heels.”

“Uh...how did you know all that?” Molly asked, bewildered and more than a little suspicious. “Did Meena put you up to this?” She craned her head around, trying to spy her friend in the crowd of people, to no avail.

“Don’t know any ‘Meena’,” he replied with a shrug as she turned her questioning gaze back on him.

“Then how…”

“I deduced it,” he replied, rather smugly. Before she could ask what exactly that meant, he went on: “As a fellow countryman with a very practiced ear, your current accent and its origins were clear to me. And your profession and your distaste for your colleagues were both made blindingly obvious by your disparaging remark as you seated yourself at the bar...and of course, there’s this.” Brashly, he reached forward and flipped a finger under her coat collar, exposing the black band of her stethoscope hung round her neck. Drat, she’d forgotten to remove it before leaving work again.

“But how did you know I was thinking about moving back to England?” she asked, fascinated in spite of herself - and willing to forgive him the overly familiar gesture. She’d honestly expected him to explain that he was an undercover policeman or, that yes, Meena had told him about her - but neither answer would explain how he’d known she was thinking about chucking it all and returning home.

Before he could answer, the sounds of shouting and swearing erupted behind them. Molly whipped her head around to see what was going on, her mouth opening in a shocked ‘O’ as she saw a veritable sea of uniformed policemen streaming into the room. “Bollocks,” she heard the bartender mutter, as if this were some minor inconvenience rather than a full-on raid.

As the shrill sound of police whistles added to the noise, Molly started to rise from her feet, just as eager to avoid arrest as the thronging masses milling about the speakeasy. However she was stopped by a pair of hands grasping her upper arms, and let out a startled screech as she felt herself being hauled bodily over the top of the bar. She was pulled close to a warm male body, and looked up to see that the bartender was the one now holding her semi-captive while chaos ruled over the rest of the room. “Shh, it’s fine, I’m the one who summoned them,” he murmured as he pressed her closer. “Although their timing could use a bit of work.”

“Wh-what? Why?” she stammered out, utterly confused - and wishing she’d had time to finish her drink before all hell broke loose.

“Because the owners are using the speakeasy as a front for an international drug-running ring,” he replied, spinning them both around so that she was pressed between his body and the bar-back. Before she could protest his high-handed treatment of her, the sound of something whizzing by her ear and smashing into the mirror behind them caused her to duck her head against his chest. “By the way, the name’s Sherlock Holmes.”

“Molly Hooper,” she mumbled into his collar, feeling more than a little dazed at how the night was shaping up. She peeked up at him. “Or did you already know that, too?”

“Nope,” he replied, popping the p obnoxiously and at the same time tugging her down so they were both crouching on the floor. His timing was impeccable; more bottles and glasses were slung their way, showering them with glass. He held her close, her forehead on his clavicle and his hands over her head, shielding her from the worst of the debris.

She kept her eyes tightly shut but couldn’t resist continuing to pepper him with questions while the police and patrons shouted and fought on the other side of the bar. “So you’re a policeman after all?” she asked. “How long have you been in Chicago? Why did you move here? Surely someone as clever as you has no end of opportunities in London for…”

The fact that he silenced her wasn’t surprising, considering the circumstances - but the fact that he did so with a rather searing kiss came as something of a shock. A welcome shock, to be sure, but still, a shock.

“Hey, Holmes! You back there?”

Gradually Molly realized that the background noises had lowered to a dull rumble peppered by the occasional curse. Blushing furiously, she allowed Sherlock to help her back to her feet, fearing that her rumpled appearance and undoubtedly dazed expression would give away the fact that the pair of them had been snogging like a couple of adolescents.

Why had he kissed her? Most likely to distract her, of course. Or he was simply taking advantage of the situation, and her, the way any man would under the circumstances. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it could be anything more than that - certainly he hadn’t done it because he found her attractive!

“Stop that,” he said crossly. She couldn’t help but notice that he kept his arm around her waist as they turned to face whoever had called out to him. A policeman, of course, one who was eyeing them both askance.

“I’m not doing anything!” she protested, trying to pull away from him.

“You’re thinking too loudly. I’m not taking advantage of you and I didn’t kiss you just to keep you quiet, I did it because yes, I do find you attractive and more than mildly interesting,” he retorted, tightening his grip on her waist.

“If this is a bad time,” the policeman interjected dryly, “we could always come back, do it all over again. You know, at your convenience.”

Sherlock waved his free hand in an irritable gesture. “Don’t be an idiot, Gregson. You’ll find the evidence you need down here.” He stamped his foot, and Molly heard the hollow sound of what she presumed to be a trapdoor beneath their feet. She allowed Sherlock to shuffle them both off to the side as Gregson - a lieutenant, she believed, if she was reading his rank insignia correctly - ordered a group of other policemen to go around the bar.

Sherlock brought Molly down to the far end of the bar, lifted the bar flap, and nudged her through before lowering it back into place. Thinking that was her sign to leave she pasted on a smile and opened her mouth to thank him for protecting her during the raid, but he stopped her with one raised hand. With the other he pointed at the nearest bar stool. “I still owe you a drink, Doctor Hooper. And if you’ll allow me, I’d like to escort you back to your flat.”

Molly hesitated for the briefest of seconds before nodding and sliding onto the seat. Her smile this time was sincere. “Yes, that would be lovely. And please, do call me Molly.”

“Molly,” he repeated obligingly. As he handed her her drink, he added, “Perhaps on the way we can continue our discussion of why it would be an excellent idea for you to return to England sooner rather than later. By the end of the week would be best, actually.”

Molly’s brow knit in confusion. “Why by the end of the week?”

He flashed her a grin that would have turned her knees to butter had she still been standing. “Because that’s when I’m due to fly back, and I would enjoy your company on the flight. Now, let me tell you about an acquaintance of mine in London by the name of Mike Stamford. Last time I spoke to him he mentioned a shortage of doctors at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital…”

[wavenetinfo]

Posted June 01, 2017 10:22:35

Photo: Gelding Bailey gets a ‘willy wash’ by vet Stuart Skirving. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Related Story: Images of overweight show dogs online ‘normalising’ obesity: study

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Rubber-gloved to the armpits, vet Stuart Skirving disappears under the back end of a heavily sedated and swaying horse and fiddles about.

Gelding Bailey, although practically asleep at the end of his lead rope, gives a noticeable jerk and the vet emerges triumphant.

“That’s the biggest I’ve ever seen,” exclaims the vet, proudly displaying a large waxy object on his gloved palm. “You’ll be able to pee better now mate.”

Extracting a ‘bean’, or a lump of hardened smegma from a horse’s penis, is the kind of job only a country vet can get excited about.

Photo: A bean, or hardened smegma extracted from a horse penis. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

At Gambier Vets, a large practice in South Australia’s south-east, husband and wife vet duo Rebel and Stuart Skirving never know what emergency or creature will pop up in the daily appointment book.

A wombat off his food, a cat with a blocked bladder, and pigs with pneumonia are all on today’s list, along with the nuts and bolts of daily vet work — desexing, vaccinations and consultations.

A complex desex

Today’s most complex case involves young female kelpie Sheebah, in for spaying. Although it’s a routine procedure Ms Skirving has performed thousands of times, this dog will be no easy operation.

Twice before, Sheebah’s heart rate has dropped dangerously under anaesthetic and vets have had to put off her surgery.

Today, the dog is being monitored on a state-of-the-art anaesthetic monitoring machine to ensure she’s not ‘too light’, which could mean she wakes up under anaesthetic.

Photo: Third time lucky for Sheebah, a young kelpie in for spaying. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

The dog delivers an ominously dirty look sideways at Rebel as the vet tries to inject a pre-med sedative.

As a preventative measure, Rebel slips a muzzle on her to protect both her and the assistant holding the dog.

The words “she’s never bitten anyone” are treated with a certain touch of irony today, considering Rebel’s weekend battle scars.

A cat with paralysed hind limbs rushed to the clinic for emergency treatment had decided the vet’s digits were fair game.

“Without warning, the cat sunk it’s teeth into the fleshy part of my hand right up to it’s gum line,” she said.

Suddenly, the vet was the one dripping blood all over the surgery floor.

Photo: “Every day is different,” says vet Rebel Skirving. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

After euthanasing the cat due to its injuries and dealing with another emergency case, it was 2:00am. Although her arm was aching and sore, Rebel chose a few hours’ sleep instead of a doctors opinion.

But in the morning, the throbbing bite site was looking grim and there were angry red lines spiralling up her arm.

Her doctor sent her straight off to hospital where she was told she had developed septicaemia, or blood poisoning.

After a short stint on the IV, duty called and Rebel discharged herself to go and look after her animal patients with a little help from her children and one thoroughly amused husband.

“After 16 years as a vet, it was the first time an animal had put me in hospital,” she said.

A one-eyed pug

Photo: Uno the one-eyed pug gets his nails trimmed. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Today, a steady procession of canines are streaming into the clinic. Two elderly father and son pugs, Sam and Uno, come in for their six-week ‘mani-pedi’.

In some dogs, it’s easy to confuse the tough nail with the highly sensitive nail bed and clip too far in, hence the reason for their regular visits.

Uno, who has broken his hip twice and is minus one eye, is nicknamed the $9,000 dog by his owner Beverley as they have spent so much money on him during his nine years of life.

“At one stage he even had his own credit card,” she quips.

Photo: Racing greyhound Mike comes in for draining of his wound. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Rebel drains a vast pool of seroma from a large wound on the side of prize-winning racing greyhound Mike, who takes the needle in his side without so much as a whimper.

Although this owner is a regular, the Skirvings have noticed a definite rise in the number of owners bringing their racing dogs in for treatment during the past year, after the industry was rocked by the live-baiting scandal last year.

One reason may be due to Greyhound Racing South Australia, which has introduced a Track Injury Surgery Rebate Scheme, which reimburses 80 per cent of surgery costs for injuries sustained in the running of races.

In further good news for ex-racers, those injured greyhounds in the scheme are given priority entry into the Greyhound Adoption Program after their rehabilitation.

Companion and supersize pets

Purebred toy poodles Mocha and Mia are led into the examination room with Marilyn Gribble and her daughter Heidi.

Photo: Mocha the toy poodle gets an examination. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill )

As Ms Skirving examines them, she listens patiently as Marilyn explains how the dogs have not left her side after Graham, her husband of 48 years, died suddenly last year.

“They follow me everywhere,” she tells the vet. “I think they’re protecting me and watching that I am okay.”

“They’re not just dogs or companions. They are family.”

The position of many animals in society, be it a horse, rabbit or cat, is vastly undervalued in many cases, the vet believes.

“If that animal is someone’s companion, there is so much more to that animal than being just a pet,” Ms Skirving said.

“It’s someone’s life. Those animals have personality and character and they hold a lot of emotional significance to people.”

Impervious to such matters, Mocha lifts his leg and slyly pees on the table leg.

Photo: Around two or three dogs a day are desexed at the surgery. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Of course, then there are those owners who spoil their companion animals a little too much, one of Ms Skirving’s bugbears.

“Obesity is the most common form of neglect I see,” she said.

Just like their human counterparts, supersize pets can suffer from serious health problems such as heart, liver and kidney complaints, diabetes and a reduced life span.

Not surprisingly, the incidence of obesity in pets gets higher the fatter their owners are and Rebel said most people are not keen to hear they are the reason for their pets widening proportions.

“I tell them overfeeding them is just as detrimental as underfeeding.”

Blood, guts and gore

On a mild and sunny Sunday afternoon, a farmer snaps a few shots of a blood-spattered Rebel Skirving and vet nurse Teagan sitting in a paddock. Rebel is pulling bits of a dead calf from a cow and Teagan is dealing with a prolapsed uterus in another cow.

Deciding to introduce their Facebook followers to the delights of a ‘fetotomy’, a fancy word for cutting up a dead calf inside a cow, Ms Skirving said she was surprised to see the graphic images become one of their most popular posts.

The Skirvings have never shied away from showing those keen to see an accurate and honest look at daily vet life.

Photo: “You need a very good washing machine,” vet Rebel Skirving says. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Many a starry-eyed young student has come to the clinic on work experience and has been shocked by the amount of “blood and guts and vomit and diarrhoea” the vets deal with on a daily basis.

“I like to be really honest with them about what to expect. There is a lot of cleaning involved,” she said.

“Especially being a country vet, you need a lot of changes of clothes and you need a very good washing machine,” she laughs.

“It’s mucky and filthy and smelly, but by the same token rewarding and challenging.”

Stuart Skirving, who was once told to “stick to animals” by a doctor after suggesting that a client’s broken foot was not actually broken, takes particular delight in grossing people out.

“If he gets to deal with a big abscess that explodes, he loves it,” Ms Skirving said.

Love and bad smells

It takes a strong relationship to endure the odd smells that a vet brings home and it is here where Rebel and Stuart Skirving count themselves lucky they’ve married into the profession.

The awful smell that lingers after dissecting dead calves in utero is particularly soap-resistant, Ms Skirving says ruefully, but her husband understands.

“When you come home smelling like something terrible and rotten, he’s not offended, because it has probably only been a few days earlier since he came home smelling the same,” she said.

The pair met while studying — a “first-year vet school romance” as Ms Skirving dubs it.

Twenty years later, their flock includes three children, a dog called Mo, 40 bantam chooks, 20 breeding cows and a bull.

“If you take an eyeball in a jar to a class of kids, it is amazing how many of them are genuinely intrigued to have a look,” Ms Skirving says.

The pair are often invited to career days or schools and have a golden tool in their vet arsenal — the surgery’s pathology collection of curiosities.

Photo: The surgery’s pathology collection includes bladder stones, cancerous lumps and aborted foetuses. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

The strange assortment of objects floating in formalin-filled jars includes maggots, cancerous lumps, bladder stones, an aborted kitten, and malformed foetuses.

Among the horrified faces, a junior vet-in-the-making is quickly spotted.

“Some are fascinated, some are revolted,” said Ms Skirving, laughing.

Rex’s legacy

As the day ends, Sheebah is recovering nicely from her operation, Sam and Uno have gone home freshly manicured, and Bailey’s genital offering has been much admired and added to the collection.

As the phone stops ringing and the plaintive howls in the recovery room quiet for a moment, Ms Skirving is able to reach for her ever-present coffee flask and tell a story.

Although vets aren’t supposed to have favourites, there’s always one animal, owner or tale that grabs your heart and sticks fast.

Photo: Rebel monitors Sheebah’s heart rate on an ECG machine. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill)

Rex was a feisty wire-haired Jack Russell who had been coming to the clinic for more than a decade, a much loved ‘only dog’ of a couple.

“He was certainly a character around the clinic and we developed a stronger and stronger bond with the dog and his owners,” she said.

As vaccinations and health checks on a young Rex gave way to illnesses and age-related injuries, the day came when Ms Skirving had to explain there was no more that could be done to keep the elderly and cancer-stricken dog alive.

Ms Skirving says the day Rex was euthanased was “heart wrenching” for both her and the owners.

A short time later, a gift from the couple arrived at the clinic.

They donated a large sum of money to buy a state-of-the-art anaesthetic monitoring machine for the clinic, vital life-saving equipment to be used for other pets.

It was a thank you for the many years of looking after their Rex.

Enjoyed this story? The country vet series continues on June 7 on ABC South East.

Topics:

veterinary-medicine,

rural,

human-interest,

mount-gambier-5290

1 June 2017 | 12:22 am

Kate Hill

Source : ABC News

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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[newstfionline]

Kim Jong-nam’s Killing: A Geopolitical Whodunit

By Richard C. Paddock and Choe Sang-Hun, NY Times, Feb. 22, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--The two young women were what South Korean intelligence calls “lizard’s tails,” expendable assets to be cast off after an operation.

Guided by North Korean agents, they practiced at malls in Kuala Lumpur, then set their sights on their target: the estranged elder brother of North Korea’s erratic leader, Kim Jong-un.

With hands doused with toxic liquid, they rubbed the face of their victim, who was waiting to check in for a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Minutes later, their target died on the way to a hospital. The two women washed their hands and fled.

The suspected assassins--one from Vietnam, the other from Indonesia--were swiftly taken into custody as circumstantial evidence mounted that North Korea was responsible for the attack.

The very public killing of Mr. Kim appears to be another remarkable episode in the annals of bizarre North Korean behavior, a whodunit with geopolitical implications. Speculation swirled that the victim, Kim Jong-nam, had been killed to remove him from the line of succession in North Korea. He has long been on a hit list drawn up by his half brother, according to South Korean intelligence, and his death could complicate North Korea’s relations with its main ally, China.

North Korea has denied any involvement in the killing, which is likely to anger Beijing. Kim Jong-nam is thought to have long been protected by the Chinese government. Kim Jong-un, 33, who has ordered the execution of scores of senior officials, including at least one disfavored relative, may have been prompted to act if he believed that Beijing saw his half brother as a possible replacement for him.

Malaysian authorities say the two women arrested, Doan Thi Huong, 28, and Siti Aisyah, 25, were recruited, trained and equipped by four North Koreans, who have since fled to their home country.

On Wednesday, Malaysia’s police chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, said a senior diplomat at the North Korean Embassy and an employee of the North Korean state-owned airline, Air Koryo, were also wanted for questioning. A seventh North Korean, who was not identified, was also being sought. Mr. Khalid also said that extra police officers had been sent to the morgue where Mr. Kim’s body was being kept after an attempt to break into the facility was detected.

North Korea has refused to even acknowledge that the dead man was Kim Jong-nam and has accused Malaysia of carrying out a politically motivated investigation to placate South Korea and the United States.

North Korea has nonetheless demanded that the body be sent to North Korea and, in a statement on Wednesday, the North Korean Embassy said the two women were innocent and should be freed.

If the women really had poison on their hands, the embassy statement said, “then how is it possible that these female suspects could still be alive?”

One possible theory to answer that question could be that each woman used a single chemical that became lethal only when mixed with another. However, Malaysian police said the substance, or substances, used in the attack was still unknown.

If the attack was a plot by North Korea, it would not be the first time it had tried to kill Kim Jong-nam.

In 2010, according to South Korean investigators, a North Korean agent based in China received a special order from Pyongyang: “terminate” Kim Jong-nam and bring his body to the North.

The agent, Kim Young-soo, was told that Kim Jong-nam was going to travel to China from Singapore, where he was then living. The agent’s boss gave him a bundle of cash and ordered him to bribe a taxi driver to run over Mr. Kim in a fake traffic accident.

The plot was scrapped when Mr. Kim failed to arrive as planned. But it came to light in 2012, when the agent was caught entering South Korea and confessed under interrogation.

Since 2011, when Kim Jong-un succeeded his father as North Korea’s ruler, there has been a standing order to assassinate his half brother, South Korean intelligence officials said last week. There was another assassination attempt against him in 2012.

Mr. Kim was so afraid that he begged for his life in a letter to his half brother in 2012.

“Please withdraw the order to punish me and my family,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying in the letter. “We have nowhere to hide. The only way to escape is to choose suicide.”

The Kim family, which has ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948, has presided over a Shakespearean nest of internecine plots and family intrigue, with rival relatives sent into exile and occasional bloody purges to kill off anyone of questionable loyalty and set an example for others.

Kim Jong-nam was an early dropout in the Kim dynasty’s third-generation power struggle. Sidelined from the race to succeed his father since the 1970s, when his mother was abandoned by his father, he had been effectively shut out of power, and shut off from his father, since he was a teenager. South Korean officials say he never met his half brother, Kim Jong-un.

The final straw for Kim Jong-nam was when he was caught entering Japan on a false Dominican Republic passport in 2001, embarrassing the family. He told Japanese officials that he had wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

Mr. Kim lived in exile, mostly in Macau, but enjoyed the affluent life of a globe-trotting playboy, sometimes traveling with a female bodyguard. While his father was still alive, the government in Pyongyang sent him cash allowances.

His uncle, Jang Song-thaek, became a father figure and his main connection to his country. South Korean officials said Mr. Kim was thought to have used that connection to conduct business for himself, like handling contracts involving North Korean minerals.

Mr. Kim often visited Kuala Lumpur, where Mr. Jang’s nephew, Jang Yong-chol, served as North Korean ambassador until 2013.

Mr. Kim sometimes stayed at an embassy guesthouse and sometimes at five-star hotels, according to Steve Hwang, a restaurant owner who became a friend.

Mr. Kim would often come to the restaurant, Koryo-Won, with his wife, dressed casually and always wearing a baseball cap. A bodyguard would sit outside in the mall, visible through the window.

“He was very humble, very friendly, a very nice guy,” Mr. Hwang said.

Mr. Kim never gave his name, but Mr. Hwang, who is from South Korea and has family in the North, recognized him. To be certain, he said he collected Mr. Kim’s dishes after a meal and sent them to the South Korean Embassy for fingerprint and DNA analysis, he said. The word came back that it was indeed Mr. Kim.

When Kim Jong-un took power, he cut off his half brother’s allowance. In 2013, he executed their uncle, Mr. Jang, on charges of corruption and sedition. Mr. Jang’s nephew, the ambassador, was recalled the same year and is thought to have been executed.

Kim Jong-un may have been angered by reports that his half brother had once considered defecting to South Korea. After Kim Jong-nam’s assassination, some defectors claimed that he had been asked to serve as head of a government in exile. But Kim Jong-nam never formally proposed to defect, according to South Korean officials, and he had told reporters that he had no interest in politics, although he also criticized the dynastic succession in Pyongyang.

When Mr. Kim arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 6, he was using a diplomatic passport with the name Kim Chol.

By then, it appears, the plot against him was already underway.

Four North Korean men accused of organizing the attack had begun arriving on Jan. 31, nearly a week before Mr. Kim, the police say. Each one landed on a different day. The last one arrived Feb. 7, a day after Mr. Kim.

Unlike most countries, Malaysia allows North Koreans to enter without a visa and makes it relatively easy for them to work. North Koreans have established a number of businesses in Malaysia to export products to other parts of the world and earn foreign currency to send home.

The four North Korean conspirators apparently recruited Ms. Doan and Ms. Siti from entertainment establishments. Ms. Siti worked as a “spa masseuse,” the police say, and Ms. Doan as an “entertainment outlet employee.”

Ms. Doan grew up in a small farming village in Vietnam about three hours south of Hanoi and studied pharmacy at a community college. Ms. Siti, grew up in a farming village east of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. She quit school after sixth grade, was married at 16 and divorced at 20, before she left for Malaysia.

There were reports that the women were duped, that they had been told they were participating in a prank. Indonesian officials said they thought Ms. Siti was tricked into thinking that she was part of a comedy video involving spraying liquid onto unwitting victims in public.

But Mr. Khalid, the police chief, said they knew what they were doing. The women had practiced the attack at two malls, he said.

“We strongly believe it is a planned thing and that they are being trained to do that,” he said. “It is not just shooting movies or a play thing. No way.”

The police say the plotters also brought in Ri Jong Chol, a North Korean who had been living and working in Kuala Lumpur since at least August. He was almost certainly a government agent, according to Thae Yong-ho, a North Korean diplomat who defected to the South last summer, because he was allowed to live with his family abroad.

On the morning of Feb. 13, Mr. Kim went to the airport to catch his flight home.

Security videos show him entering the departure hall at Terminal 2 carrying a shoulder bag, checking the departure board and walking toward the check-in counter for AirAsia, a budget airline.

After his encounter with the women, Mr. Kim approached airport staff and security officers, waving his hands toward his face repeatedly as he told them of the attack. They walked with him to the airport clinic one level down.

Within minutes, he was in an ambulance, but by then the poison was taking effect. He was dead before he reached the hospital, the police said.

His last words were, “Very painful, very painful. I was sprayed liquid,” China Press, a Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper, reported.

The police say the four North Korean conspirators watched the attack unfold. Soon after, they passed through immigration, had their passports stamped and left the country before the authorities realized Mr. Kim had been murdered. All are now believed to be in North Korea.

Mr. Hwang said Mr. Kim had stopped coming to his restaurant around 2014, after his uncle’s execution, and may have fallen on lean times--which may explain why he had no bodyguards last week as he prepared to fly home on a budget carrier.