Chapter 46.5: Original Spin (Patreon)

Chapter 46.5: Original Spin

Piccadilly Circus, London. June 2009.

[A man crashed across a delicatessen counter, tossing a fountain of baked goods everywhere. It should’ve been me.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Not me. Not me who? Not me who’s getting hit with a - “Petrificus Totalus!” Hermione shouts with a ferocious switch and flick. Another stunt death eater goes stock still and teeters himself on to a breakaway cafe table that shatters under his body weight. 

Lucky bastard.

“D-diffindo.” Both death eaters now down, Hermione proceeded to turn her lethal wand on Ron. 

“Mmmph!” He protested in pain as the spell splashed through his severed restraints. “You nicked me, Hermione.” Ron wrestled his way out of a coil of green ropes - that would later be CGI’d into the transfiguration spell he’d been attacked with. The burst squib fake blood pack leaked from a cut on his thigh.

“Oh, I’m so sorry Ron. My hands won’t stop shaking. Episkey.” As the two of them allowed the adrenaline to vibrate out of their voices and body. I used my own surge of the hormone to fuel my rapid response for the aftermath.

Shards of faux glass and other detritus crunched under my trainers as I scurried over to my marker by the display window of the cafe. Invaded by a far more mercenary mindset, my darting eyes scanned the street for additional magical gestapo. My line of sight flew over the secondary camera rig, pointing from the outside looking in. 

Cursory glance not finding any suspect activity, I satisfied my sudden, but well earned, bout of paranoia. A sharp slash of the wand tightly clenched in my hand shuttered the storefront. The folding gate on an automated pulley rattled and slammed down hard. 

My shoulders were tense, and I scowled with as much restrained aggression as the situation deemed appropriate. 

Marching behind the battered counter, I came to a stop inches away from the first incapacitated death eater - just barely resisting the urge to stomp his face with a subtle flex of my heel. “Thorfinn Rowle. He was there on the night Dumbledore died. I recognise him.” My glare and wand were steadily trained on him; I spoke with a bit of warble in my intonation, almost to growl - but not quite. A slight tickle of unidentifiable emotion. Unconscious though he was, I wasn’t prepared to discount him as a threat, and neither was I ready to address another festering loss. 

“This one’s Dolohov.” The frame of the shot, and the camera angle in his favour, Ron pretended to boot his own adversary. “Remember him, Hermione? He’s the one that cursed you at the ministry. Won’t be forgetting him in a hurry, will I?” 

“Never mind who they are!” Hermione abruptly rose from where she had been running her wand over the stunned cafe waitress who had been caught in the crossfire. ”What are we going to do about them? How did they find us? Where are we going to go? Do you still think they have the trace on you, Harry?” And pelted us with the predictable series of unending questions she usually did when she was in the midst of a fit.

Suffice it to say, our escape from Fleur and Bill’s Weasley wedding at the Burrow wasn’t as successful as we’d assumed. We needed answers, still unaware of the taboo of Voldemort’s name that we’d inadvertently triggered in the directly preceding scene. The ministry has fallen, and it can’t get up.

“He can’t have. The trace breaks at seventeen, you can’t put it on an adult.” Ron’s exposition brokered no argument. “We need a safe place to hide. Give us time to think things through.”

“Grimmauld Place.” I suggested - mostly because that’s where the plot was. 

“Don’t be silly, Snape can get in there!” Hermione’s attempt at being the voice of reason. “We can just go to my house - not like my parents are there anymore.” While any boy would normally rush to take advantage of that implication. This invitation came about because Hermione had memory-charmed her parents and sat them on a plane to Aus. 

“So what? I swear, I’d like nothing better than to meet Snape!” Thorfinn might have been there, but no one earned my enmity more than the person who cast the killing curse. 

“Mate, now isn’t the time.” Ron chided for letting my adrenaline get the better of me. 

I closed my eyes, stopped grinding my teeth, and took a breath. “We’ll save that as a last resort.” JK Rowling preserved her Jesus allegory, and I, as Harry, would still get my forty days in the desert. Only this time, it wasn’t as on the nose as us three impotently stranding ourselves in a forest. “We’ll have crowds of death eaters swarming us if we think they can track us when we use magic. We need to be somewhere that’s steeped in it without being inside the magical world itself, where anybody can spot us.”

Conflicted, Hermione pursed her lips. She just snatched her magically expanded pouch off the lone standing table and acquiesced without a better solution. “Fine. But that means we can’t apparate either. At least until we know we’re safe.” 

“Brooms again?” Ron was quick to stop me from potentially gainsaying her again. 

“Hardly. We can go the muggle way - like the tube.”

“Anything’s fine. Let’s go. Oh, and…. er, we should probably take her with us.” I knelt down next to the actress playing the waitress, doing her best to remain as boneless as possible. “No telling what they’ll do to her if we just leave her here with ‘em.”

As Hermione and Ron helped my sling the comatose extra onto my back, a pair of car keys, placed precariously and precisely in her purposely shallow pocket, fell out.

The camera zoomed in enough to highlight the Ford logo on them. The shot served as a subtle bit of product placement - David Heyman had to stack his production budget from somewhere. As well as a callback to the iconic Weasley Ford Anglia. “Good bit of luck, for once.” In concert, my gaze and the camera panned from the keys to Hermione. “I think we just secured our mode of transportation.”

“I don’t know how to drive, Harry.”

“Then Ron can.”

The camera then whipped with Hermione’s hair towards our Weasley’s suddenly paling face. “Wha-! Me?”

“Who else? As I recall, you’ve been driving cars since we were twelve.” For what felt like the first time in an age, I smiled. It was cheeky and a little mocking - more of a smirk, really. But it was a smile, nonetheless.

“That’s different! ‘Sides, I haven’t got like a licence or anything.” Ron tried scrambling away from the keys as if they were going to burn him, but Hermione was quick to scoop them up and force them into his hand. 

“Licence? Are you a wizard or not?” With a plan of action, and room to breathe, Hermione also allowed herself to relish the fleeting moment of levity and tormented Ron. “Admittedly, I do feel bad just spiriting her away like this. And for leaving the shop in this state - we really tore this place apart. Oh, I sincerely hope the poor shop owners have insurance…” 

Easy magical (and VFX) solve. I pointed my wand at the damaged cashier’s till. The tray full of prop money sitting on top of a mechanical contraption that - “Geminio-” erupted at my duplication spell, sending thousands of pounds flying everywhere. “Grab some for us. We’ll need it. Take some for her,” I jostled the sleeping piggy on my back, “we’ll pay for her petrol. And leave the rest. Now c’mon, we need to get moving.” Ron and Hermione shot each other shocked looks at the obvious solution as money rained around them.

Though something tells me (namely the book and script) that the next time we encounter a duplication spell, we’ll be after something else with significantly higher stakes.]

–

The thing about on location shoots is that they’re always a logistical nightmare.

Just because we got done with one scene a little earlier didn’t mean we immediately got to move on to the next one. Our schedule, especially on a heavily trafficked fairway like Piccadilly, was always going to be beholden to public traffic and government regulation. 

If the three of us hadn’t been as famous as we were, there was a decent chance we could have gotten away with shooting the public scenes guerilla style. 

But reality had us traversing through an entirely different sort of jungle. “There they are!” 

Snap! Flash! Ker-chak! A veritable canopy of flashing lights burst brightly enough to blot out the sun. Ooh! Ooh! Aah! Entire packs of fans and paparazzi did their best impression of howler monkeys as they ambushed us with their cacophonic cries for attention. 

Our security detail, dressed in high-vis jackets instead of coordinated suits, immediately stepped in as barricades for us from the surrounding crowds. Their burly arms acting like machetes as we cut through the swathe. Allowing us as a group to navigate towards the vacant office building that served as our temporary base of operations. 

As soon as the door shut behind us, I had hoped that the wall of sound would’ve dampened, but the interior of the building was no less of a madhouse than the street. 

Discounting the couple dozen film crew burdened by their tons of technical equipment, the relatively tiny office had to also handle nearly three hundred extras who had all been hired to play fake pedestrians. Packed like sardines upstairs, with only assorted biscuits and watered down cocoa to keep them entertained until we were ready to film their parts. 

Despite our deep pockets, we weren’t going to secure a public road during commuting hours. The powers that be had only provided the dispensation to strut our stuff late into the night, and early morning. We were stuck here, all desperately doing the pee-pee dance while lined outside the one functioning bathroom in the place. 

Luckily for me, wardrobe had plenty of spares for my outfit, so I could just soil myself as needed. Perks of being the big star. So I sequestered myself in a corner to nap away until I had to make myself useful again. 

David Yates wasn’t around that I could see, so I bee-lined it for his chair. He kept an extra cushion for lumbar support and likely had a scarf that I could steal as well. Sounded like the perfect make-shift sleeping bag to me. I reached his unoccupied folding chair. And wouldn’t you know it? He left a bedtime story for me as well. “Red Riding Hood?” A script with the WB logo stamped on it. “Slated for release Q2 2011. Cutting it close there Yates.” If it was just Hallows part one we were filming, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but….

I began flipping through the screenplay. Stellar decision on my part because, “hooah,” a yawn escaping me meant I couldn’t have conked out faster. A script this dull almost felt custom tailored for a boring guy like David.

–

Barely after I woke up, I found myself miming a deer in headlights as a double-decker bus came hurtling at me.

Was I gonna be reincarnated again?

Before I could test that theory out, Hermione grabbed Rupert and I, and hurriedly pulled us aside. She pressed us into the pavement railing as the bus irritably honked its way past us.

The cameraman, supported by his steady rig, dollied up to us in a low-angle shot to capture our startled expressions. Where we were coincidentally framed by the flagship UK outlet of one of our leading sponsors. The Uniqlo sign cast a bright red neon halo around our terror. “Bloody hell! Where are we?” Ron’s voice cracked.

And though we’d successfully dodged a motoring accident, we were unable to avoid another sort of pile-up.]

“Rupert! I want your baby! I want your baby!” Although we’d cordoned off our own allotted section of the road for filming, a rowdy bunch of fans extended that space by parking themselves on the sidelines. Their slurred speech and sloshing cans also meant that some had taken the time for more than a few refreshments while they waited for us to emerge. Fewer inhibitions resulted in greater proclamations of affection.

“Cut!” David wasn’t feeling the love.

“Don’t I have any female fans?” Neither was Grint. He still politely smiled and waved at the man in the leopard print shirt collecting genetic donations. Something told me this ginger tiger wasn’t gonna change his stripes. 

“Emma! Over here! Please!”

“I wish I did, too.” Emma felt the need to commiserate when we spotted a middle-aged bloke - this time in ill-fitting jean shorts, bravely rocking socks and sandals - get down on one knee and manically flap a sign that read ‘Marry Me Emma Watson!’

“Bas! Bas Rhys! Bas! We love you!” Unfortunately for the both of them, I seem to be hogging that demographic. 

At the same time our rabid fanbase made themselves known, I spotted security hoofing it over to pacify them. Which, by this point, I knew, would only drive them to clamour for us that much harder. 

The theatrical shot was already ruined; so while the extras and bus reversed back into place to reset, I might as well use that time to ensure our next take got final cut. 

“I love you too, babes! But we’re working. Your nattering rubbished an entire take just now.” I cupped my hands over my mouth to project my voice over to them. 

“Oh. My. God! He’s talking to us! We’re sorry, but we wanted to meet you all so badly!” Their drunkest spokesperson shouted back. 

“It’s late. Go home. Go to bed. I promise you’ll meet us in your dreams!” 

“Yeah, sure. The wet ones.” Rupert mumbled.

“Bas! Stop encouraging them.” Emma hissed.

I whispered to both of them. “Just let me work my magic.” Neither of my co-stars had yet fully realised the insurmountable power of the fangirl. I just needed to put them to work, and they’ll successfully box out anyone else from disturbing us. “Alright then, promise me you lot will keep it down until the director gives us the all clear. If you do, I’ll sign whatever and take as many pictures as you want - even if it takes me all night. Deal?” 

“Deal!” they all chorused back. 

Harry Potter was as undesirable as I was desirable. There wasn’t a shortage of people and problems hunting either of us, and apparently we were both equally proactive in dealing with them. Hopefully that would continue to hold out in the future, too.