Muggles Bereaved Read online

  Muggles Bereaved

  A novel about the conflict between the champions of

  The Quintessence, the source of all goodness,

  and all who espouse the unutterable evil of

  The Needful One

  Vernon C Moyse

  ©2017 Vernon C Moyse. All rights reserved.

  Published by Vernon Moyse

  Fisherfleet Press

  17th April 2017

  Foreword

  The word “Muggles” is now enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary and embedded in the consciousness of almost everyone who can read or access a movie. It was no great stretch for me to imagine a world in which the creator of Harry Potter is part of everyday existence. This book about Rowling world is an homage to J.K.Rowling and stems from my feeling of bereavement and yet celebration. Yes, I am separated from my virtual family; from Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and all the other boys and girls of Hogwartz. But they ever remain the dearest friends in memory. As a 73 year old Muggle I also understand Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and his loves rather well. Like him, the magical ‘Mr Chips’, I am an ‘old’ that needs the wind-shifted flowers of youth to inspire me. Not there for the plucking, those flowers, but for admiring and for turning the deepest winter into a series of summer afternoons. I also understand that Albus Dumbledore, who is the benevolent gay but celibate master of Hogwartz. His name is an anagram of ‘Male bods rule, bud’ and mine is an anagram of ‘Men very soon’. And we have more in common than that silliness. The joyful beneficence of our years, for example.

  I am not alone in a difficult, post-Potter life of burdens and bereavement. My characters Lim, Jim and Tracy are also struggling with the happy memories and shadows of their heroes who fade into legends every bit as glorious as those of St George and King Arthur. We all yearn for Rowling’s trio to reappear, hurling spells with a crackling thunder and lightning and with shouts of doubtful Latin origin. But dear J.K.Rowling cannot be expected to mar her exquisite creation with a succession of ‘Son of Potter’ sequels, whatever Hollywood might pay. For that reason, I decided to tell to myself the tale of Lim, Jim and Tracy, three imperfect souls who gladly afford me the company that I seek on those winter’s nights. I hope they do not too much encroach on territory belonging to La Grande Dame, Madame Rowling. They simply give expression to my grief at my loss of new adventuring for Harry Potter.

  I acknowledge the copyright of JK and hope that the mention of her name and of characters from her books is not an infringement. They are or have been mentioned in almost every life across the world and are indelibly imprinted on our minds and hearts. Mental tattoos that are adornments willingly accepted.

  So, this book was originally for my entertainment, my therapy. It addressed my teary, feminine side via Tracy, my self-conscious bereavement via Lim and my would-be anti-bully via Jim. I have been encouraged to present it for the benefit of other ‘teens of all ages’ like me. It has a few passages which mention ‘farts’ and ‘willies’. So I do hope that this doesn’t offend any readers with gap-toothed children who are too, too precious or perforce too troubled by ADHD remedies. But just in case, I have labelled it as having ‘adult content’. I suggest everyone should quickly come to a realisation that their boys and girls know what both farts and willies are and rejoice in them. It will enable all to better communicate with, and keep safe a growing progeny. The kids in my story have challenges of a physical kind and this is quite deliberate. They are not the pretty, pretty boys and girls who always get the starring roles. But the choosing of such ‘victims’ as the champions of The Quintessence should encourage everyone to realise that every child has incredible potential in the great book that lies between their ‘covers’.

  Vernon Moyse

  April 2017

  List of Chapters

  Chapter One – Muggles Introduced

  Chapter Two – Tracy Makes Her Mark

  Chapter Three – In Which Jim Discovers His Superpower

  Chapter Four – Tracy Acquires a Different Kind of Power

  Chapter Five – Rowling to the Rescue

  Chapter Six – The Portal

  Chapter Seven – A World Apart

  Chapter Eight – Interstellar, Interplanetary Travel

  Chapter Nine – Netting a Newton

  Chapter Ten – The Sorcery of Saucers

  Chapter Eleven – Recapitulation and Reckoning

  Chapter Twelve – Newton and Lateral Thinking

  Chapter Thirteen – Spaced Out to California

  Chapter Fourteen – Another Portal and All That Jazz

  Chapter Fifteen – The Cat is Out of The Bag

  Chapter Sixteen – An Occasional Lucasian is Located

  Chapter Seventeen – Ven Vorlds Are Beink Colli-ted

  Chapter Eighteen – That Ain’t Rain, Is It?

  Chapter Nineteen – Conflict of the Big Kahunas

  Chapter Twenty – Time-Space Folds to Cloud Surf Jupiter.

  Chapter One – Muggles Introduced

  If you stand on HexdeBaron VII and view the southern sky, you will see a constellation known as The Jackass. If you then try to pin the tail on that particular donkey, you will be attracted to the brown, fundamental swirl of a dying nova towards the back end. The so-called ass of the Jackass. Fix your attention above that nova as the location for your ‘tail’ and you risk piercing the universe and galaxy which is home to the little blue planet called Earth. That planet flip-flacks with an alternate in the multiverse, a planet known to its inhabitants as Rowling world. And on that planet, on the patch of greenery known as Angle-land, lives Lim Gee Song, a British citizen, born and bred in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. An ethnic Chinese, he spends time being tired of being asked which part of Japan he came from. He always responds “I am Chinese, not Japanese” and marvels at his own confusion. For he is actually a Briton who has never visited China. But he happily describes himself as Chinese as the easiest way to explain those oval eyes carved out of ivory cheeks. This is unwise, because being Chinese is even more interesting than being Japanese to people who are apt to mix up Kung Fu and Aikido and who study the country of origin labels on every product they buy. Made in China appears on everything. The label students are the same people who have lots of time to while away in every Post Office queue. Lim has met more than one of them as he runs Postal errands for neighbouring old folk. There are also people who have a resin-not-ivory Buddha that needs valuing in advance of a trip to the Antiques Road Show. Lim has met them, too, and has become expert in spotting fakes.

  He is patient with all these enquiries, and has the facts and figures to explain that China suffered more in wars and famines than did the whole of Japan, Europe and Gwondanaland combined. This serves to increase his Chinese-ness but makes him an object of suspicion with some who are disbelieving when he says that he was born in “King’s Lynn.” Others who are just visiting the town for the first time will easily stray from China-talk into anecdotes about the naming of Norfolk towns. He may then be told how his, usually elderly, correspondent once visited Happisburgh and was amazed that he, Lim, and other locals pronounced it Hazebrough. Or that Hunstanton is called ‘Hunston’ and Wisbech is called ‘Wisbidge’. People will do much to while away time in a queue. And young people like Lim are too polite and too lacking in self-confidence to do anything but listen and adopt some of the proffered archetypes.

  Yes, Lim was muggle-born in Lynn where magic did not exist and could not explain anything about his appearance. He was not the scarred result of a spell gone wrong, he was simply a freak. He knew it because other schoolkids told him so. And it was not just his uncharacteristically big and wide nose and his bottle glass spectacles, so quickly replaced with contact lenses. It was the things
he did and said. How many other boys so vociferously disclaimed any link to the great dragonslayers of British folklore? Most of his peers revered the memory of St George, Bard the Bowman and the other filmic dragon killers. But how many boys believed in goodly dragons so much that it was necessary for them to make such denials of kinship with dragon killers? Lim, far from fearing dragons, thought of them fondly as bringers of good fortune. He shared that with distant Chinese ancestors he supposed, ancestors to whom the appearance of dragons presaged the arrival of good times. Those fond, dragon-loving ancestors who almost certainly did not have big, wide noses like Lim. Ethnic Chinese people don’t.

  Dragon dancers were at every celebration of good times even in Angle-land’s own China Towns. Of course, it was accepted that the creatures were most likely mythical creations from the mists of time. Accepted with just a tinge of hope that somewhere up in the high Kunlun or Qinling mountains might live a dragon or two, aged ancestors of already ancient and fictitious Smaug and Urgost. In this way do myth and history conspire to addle men’s brains. Lim’s Chinese ancestors were not in such distant mists or flights of mystery that his name could not be traced back to them through the many Lim Kong Si, the clan halls of the family Lim. He was and would always be Lim Gee Song. It was a name and lineage to be proud of and to be worn like a medal of honour. Even the bullies who baited him about his looks did so in the half-expectation that Lim would spin into the air producing the sanjiegun flailing weapon of Chinese martial arts. And the prodigious productivity, inventiveness and ingenuity of the far away Chinese people was gob-smackingly astonishing to all and enhanced Lim’s own reputation. He did not have to bask in the reflected glory, it was thrust upon him.

  This day in Angle-land is Midsummer MuggleMass which coincides with the Christian festival Lammas, which was once the pagan festival hlaf-mas or loaf-mas. Modern festivals usually sat upon the shoulders of much earlier celebrations. Feasts were liberated from prehistory as worthy of perpetuation because they engendered the imbibing of liberal amounts of alcohol and much eating. Pagan rituals became Christian rituals, Muslim rituals, Jewish rituals or Rowling rituals with great ease. At the school Prom, there would be a great deal of horseplay and other so-called ‘fun’, but little alcohol and limited feasting to be indulged. Orange squash, Rock cakes, pork pies, sausage rolls and jellies were not a bit festive to the Chinese palate, Lim’s palate. For that reason Lim planned to miss the Prom and indulge in the Nonya pork soup his mother was preparing at home. Pork soup with pickled mustard greens and a hint of tamarind, black pepper and soy. Lots of added vegetables and a fragrant base of white rice flavoured with coconut milk and Vietnamese coriander. Yes, not truly Nonya food, but fusion food of the finest cooked with inventive flair.

  At the Prom, smuggled bottles of cider and bags of Heroes would be the only comestibles that the junior barbarians of the modern day could use to embolden their advances upon the fairer sex. Or as sugar hits to heighten and enliven their macho bullying of the likes of Lim. Competing for the attentions of the fairer sex and contesting with thugs was not much on Lim’s mind. His interest in those departments lay well into the future. To many girls, his tall frame and smooth unblemished skin were attractive, a factor he was totally unaware of in his self-deprecating way. His struggles with puberty had been much like any others, but not beset with pimples and dramatic changes in voice. He was a blemish-free Shaolin priest to his female admirers.

  This day, at school in the late MuggleMass evening, there would be a bonfire on which would be burned the painstakingly built effigy of the witch Dolores Umbridge, a spectacle that Lim would indeed be glad to miss. The school’s main bonfire architects were the mass of scholars other than Lim and a few like-minded souls, including Jim Bean and Tracy Emmendage. Everyone knew that Hogwartz was a fiction, though many wished it could be true and most still relished the idea of burning a witch in effigy. They would dance happily in the hallowed, marshmallowed toasty radiation of the spitting, crackling flames. But Lim, Jim and Tracy had other concerns about celebrating Midsummer Mugglemas by burning down poor, silent Dolores Umbridge. There would be an accompaniment of screeching and squealing from green wood sizzling and bursting its bark in flame and smoke. But the occasional hedgehog also squealed its last in this kind of bonfire and during his lunch hour Lim had searched the pile of wood as thoroughly as its bulky skirts allowed. Jim and Tracy had joined in this search, unbidden and from their own, individual sense of concern.

  The bonfire tradition was a recent one, invented in honour of the author J. K. Rowling who had given such pleasure to the entire world, but who abhorred any burning of hedgehogs as much as anyone. Perhaps more. And it was in honour of “JK’ that the whole world also cheerfully adopted the self-deprecating term ‘muggle’ and the global, UN-given name, Rowling World. It chimed so nicely with the word “muddle” which best described the state of world affairs. It did not occur to anyone that being called a muggle might mean that there were other people who would crazily believe themselves to have some affinity with the legendary Harry Potter and other Wizards and Warlocks. That was too logical. If there was a God, then there must also be a Satan. And so, if there were Muggles, there must be their opposites, surely. Non-Muggles, or more precisely Wizards. But far worse, there were even human beings who made a practice of worshipping the literary but mythical Voldemort, though they did so for all the vicarious gains to be had from wickedness; debauchery and much skinny dipping in dark woodland lakes. This Dark Side worship was very prevalent in Chancellor Junckerby’s newly founded Holy European Empire, though neither Junckerby nor High President Oso-Barroso deigned to skinny dip their corpulent bodies.

  Honours with titles derived from the Potter legends were multiplying around the world, but J.K.Rowling, now had no say in the matter at all. The honours were carefully named to protect against copyright infringement. La Grande Dame was not the least litiginous, wisely standing aloof from the non-literary kerfuffles about the propriety of calling this or that chivalric honour by a Potteresque name. She shared this kind of aloofness with her contemporary compatriots Professors Hawking, Newton and the only recently deceased Robert Hooke.

  These names deliver your first clue that there is much amiss in the timelines and facts of this story. And I can only warn that it is because this tale unfolds in that alternative, flip-flacking universe. A universe in which some events of the 1700’s, the 1800’s and the 1900’s in your universe occur after events of the new millennium. A universe in which Health and Safety bonfire regulations had not yet been considered necessary and in which children had a vote at 14 and performed military service by operating drones from their cellphones at an even earlier age. Yes, fully loaded drones complete with warheads. Mr Junckerby and M. Oso-Barroso would never be elevated to powerful positions in the elected stratosphere of your Universe and your schoolchildren would never pilot killer drones. Or would they? Or will they? And will your children be given control of Paveway and Hellfire missiles just because they scored maximum points and achieved championship status in game playing?

  Both Lim and Jim had flown practice drone missions across Gondwanaland and had delivered dummy munitions to targets highlighted with sprites fashioned as fist shaking little red devils on their computer or cellphone screens. Goodness knows what real munitions might have done to the actual inhabitants of those target sites. Tracy, the other main character of our story did not join the School Drone Corps for very great reasons of principle. In time she would wean Lim and Jim away from the savagery dressed with inglorious euphemisms about death and country before they could do any real damage.

  Many other differences will reveal themselves to you, some affecting the very laws of physics. For example, the Law of conservation of energy remains unproven and even somewhat shaky in Lim’s universe and planet Rowling World. The reasons for this, Sir Isaac Newton, who lives there, is impishly poised to reveal. Some of these changed physical laws will affect our friend Lim and his companions and their adventu
res. The technical diversity of the multiverse is real and surprising and based on layers of logic way beyond our imagining. Planets, though inanimate, are said to have doppelgangers in Universes which flip-flack in the Space-Time continuum. In this multiverse, new logical frameworks are legion and Mathematics is a fluid construct which can be changed by tweaking that Space-Time continuum using a recently invented, improbably named, device, the Wobbeliser.

  Yes, Wobbeliser. So-called because when the toroidal device is in operation its thousand tonne bulk appears to wobble like rotating candyfloss. All that now remains is for us on Rowling World’s first flack to discover the ability to move between universes without encountering another copy of ourselves and thereby creating millions of paradoxes. The Wobbeliser at CERN is dedicated to that very pursuit and to a method of interplanetary travel, while NASA still uses Roman candle style rockets and Britain is struggling to make the far more effective Skylon acceptable to the giant corporations of the TTIP. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the TTIP, is a grand name for an organisation of American hegemony with its ‘temple’ in Poughkeepsie, New York State.

  Despite all the corporate investment in space launching hardware, transport by portal does also exist. Portals to other places are only revealed to the select by the unfathomable choices of The Quintessence, but they cannot be created by humankind in convenient locations, at Piccadilly Circus, or the Elephant and Castle. Nor can they be created across Universes for which there is no route map anyway. If the science of Rowling World can achieve transfer between universes it will have provided the perfect way of trialling Wobbeliser outputs. Then the prospect of saving entire civilisations threatened by global warming events such as transformed the second planet of Earth’s solar system into a roiling, broiling volcanic mess would become reality. Sir Isaac Newton would become the Saviour of Planets, The Master Mariner of Wormholes and an even more thoroughly self-satisfied and rich old man whose ego had the crushing pressure of a black hole..