I left you in cruel suspense, I have no doubt, with my last entry, and I shall rush now to relieve your anticipation.
The morning after our eventful day with the ladies - containing as it did another attack, a move, and Jasmine - I was mightily wearied, and slept far later than is my habit. The others were still asleep as well when Mulan hailed us from without, and we rose to find that this day promised no less by way of excitement.
“I don’t know where this came from,” Mulan said from the roof of the dollhouse, “and it’s no Barbie Dream House, but I’ve checked it out, and it’s safe enough to look over.” This last she pronounced with the resigned air of one who would prefer we didn’t, but accepted the odds of this happening.
For my part, I had no intention of passing up a stroll through such a fine abode, and indeed the others seemed to share my point of view. For all its size, it is too small for the three princesses, leaving them to look at the lower floor while Tara and I wandered the upper two.
The house is, as is evident, in rather poor repair at this point, and missing much of its accessories - a sad sight if ever there was one. However, it is really rather remarkably suited to Tara and myself. I have no doubt that I am capable of putting it in living condition again, and it would likely do her good to have a proper house to look after, rather than a drawer and a jewelry cabinet - especially if I am to be gone, questing for her loved ones and leaving her on her own.
After our exploration, the princesses aided us in gathering the accessories left to the house in the living room so as to take stock of our new treasures. Many of them are falling apart, and all are most dusty, but their appeal remains.
“I just don’t want you to get too fixated on the idea,” Mulan said hesitantly when I elaborated upon my plans. “Not yet, anyway. We can help you fix it up, but with the spiders acting this strangely, I don’t want anyone actually staying here. Until we figure out what’s wrong, no one needs to be staying in this place. It’s a strategic nightmare, all these flimsy walls and windows, out in the middle of the room this way…”
“A man’s home is his castle,” I replied. “I can most assuredly protect my own castle.”
“I thought the point was that you wouldn’t be here.”
“And she saved you, remember?” Jasmine put in. “You couldn’t protect yourself then.”
“I was not in possession of a house then,” I explained.
“You know what, Will, it’s fine,” Tara said. “I’m really okay with just fixing it up for now. I don’t think I’m ready to hang out around windows all day. They make me queasy.”
“As long as we’re clear,” I conceded. “It is our house, isn’t it - yours and mine?”
“Sure,” she said, glancing at Jasmine with a slightly helpless expression. “Definitely our house.”
“You will lose everything,” someone announced in what were, now that I look back upon the incident, quite sinister tones.
“I’ve said I can protect it,” I said impatiently and I admit rather heedlessly, and then followed the others’ gazes up the bookshelf nearby.
“You will lose everything,” this strange person repeated, with less force this time.
Mulan grabbed her lance and scaled the building with alarming rapidity, facing the stranger from one of the peaks of the roof. “What do you want?” She asked guardedly.
(On the ground floor, Tara murmured, “He looks really familiar. Does he look familiar to anyone else?”)
He seemed to grow rather more sure of himself now, raising his alarmingly glittery stick in a threatening fashion and twisting his head in a snakelike gesture which was most unnerving. “You will lose -” he started again.
“I heard,” Mulan said, sliding down to the attic. “What do you want?”
“Don’t do that,” Ariel said when he continued to wave his glittery stick, and she clambered rather more awkwardly up to join Mulan in the attic, evading Jasmine’s attempts to keep her with us.
(Tara added, “This is driving me nuts. I’m sure I know who that is.”)
“Ariel,” Mulan snapped, “not now -”
“Go away,” Ariel insisted, her voice stretching tight with panic, and she waved her own small weapon at the mysterious figure.
He reacted with rather more alarm than this merited, as her weapon is a tongue depressor - he recoiled, pointed his glittery stick with more purpose, and cried, “Avada -”
(“You’re kidding me,” Tara said.)
Ariel threw her stick at his, which was in the process of admitting a sickly green light, as he finished, “Kedavra!”
The green light hit Ariel’s weapon as though striking a physical blow, whereupon the entire thing went up like a match in midair, raining down several pieces of twisted, blackened wood upon the table before us.
A moment of stunned silence clutched all of us, including I daresay the man looming above us, as he managed a second later to say, “Oop-” still with his gaze fixed below.
Mulan struck before the word had fully left his mouth, making the not inconsiderable jump to the shelf with catlike grace, and rendering him instantly helpless with her superior physical force irrespective of his dark powers.
“Ow,” the person protested hollowly.
Mulan rendered him defenseless with alacrity, keeping her lance at his throat until he had been tied securely and then dragging him back to the dresser for questioning, which she began with a strongly-worded request for him to reveal his motivation for attacking us.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said forlornly. “I was practicing, and then you lot got very confrontational.”
“We didn’t try to kill anyone,” Tara pointed out. “I’m not an expert on Harry Potter, but I’m pretty sure ‘Avada Kedavra’ isn’t something you say to signal your peaceful intentions.” She gestured to the debris of Ariel’s weapon, which Jasmine had brought back as evidence. She paused, and then added, “And do you seriously have Voldemort’s face taped to your head?”
He pulled himself up to his full height and announced in tones more ringing than usual, “I Am Lord Voldemort.” Deflating, he added, “It was the only spell I could remember.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mulan said. “Who’s Harry Potter? Who’s Voldemort?”
“I’ll go get more evidence,” Tara said. “Hang on. Will?”
Naturally I did as she asked, although it was menial labor, and aided her in carrying a truly monstrous book back to the dresser. Jasmine plainly knew more about this affair than did Mulan or Ariel, as she was saying when we returned, “…very popular. Sort of a… Sword in the Stone set in a British boarding school deal.”
“It was quite the cultural phenomenon,” Tara agreed. “Actually, I guess it still is - there are two more movies coming out, I think. I used to… well, I haven’t really kept up with it. But it was a global deal.”
“I shouldn’t think it displays unparalleled disinterestedness, or unparalleled range and profundity of insight, does it?” I inquired anxiously.
“Not everyone can be -” Tara started.
Jasmine finished hastily, “Cervantes.”
“Yes. Him.”
“And who, pray, is Cervantes?”
“Let’s worry about Lord Voldemort first,” Mulan interjected. “I understand that you needed a… well, a personality, and everything, but you chose the arch-villain of a kids’ series? That doesn’t seem healthy.”
“I Am Lord Voldemort,” he repeated. “I researched the matter and concluded that it was the only possibility. I have torn my soul into seven pieces, which explains my feelings of emptiness and doubt, and must retrieve the pieces to be whole again.”
Mulan and Ariel looked at each other for a long moment, and then Tara said carefully, “Okay. But… what about the, you know, murder?”
He looked shocked. “I never did!”
Tara leaned against the book, rubbing her eyes. “Have you read Harry Potter? At all?”
“Not precisely. I saw the trailers and found further information on the internet,” he said. “Having given the matter some thought, I suppose I may have killed some people. A bit. But I am certain that all I need in order to be converted to the side of good and to regret my unconscionable actions is a great big hug.” He looked expectant.
Mulan made an incoherent sound expressing her deep dissatisfaction and slight amusement with the situation.
“Really?”
I had forgotten Ariel’s presence, and looked over to find her approaching Lord Voldemort with an expression of rapture.
“You need to find your soul, too?” She breathed, reaching out to him.
“Oh, Ariel,” Mulan groaned. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I do,” Lord Voldemort said mournfully. “And it will be a long quest, and difficult, because the bits could be disguised as anything at all. Like a stick, or a pebble, or a marshmallow, although I certainly hope not, because then someone might eat it.”
“Ariel,” Mulan warned.
“But he thinks he can. It’ll be hard, but he can,” Ariel said, grasping Lord Voldemort’s robes, and then she widened her eyes and did speak those words most dreaded: “Can we keep him?”
Mulan shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t trust him. He tried to kill you!”
“That was an accident,” Lord Voldemort promised. “I shan’t do it again.”
Jasmine raised a finger. “I have a question. I’ve lived around those spiders for going on fifteen years now, and they’ve never tried to attack anything. Now they’re like a little guerilla army. Do you know anything about that?”
“I don’t know about any spiders,” he answered promptly. “I’ve been upstairs.”
“So were we,” Mulan said suspiciously.
“I was in the living room. Perhaps they’re frightened of the cats?”
“Mm.”
“The ropes do cut a bit, you know,” he said. “And I’ve said I’m sorry.”
“You still have a superior weapon,” Mulan replied.
“No he doesn’t!” Ariel disappeared momentarily, and climbed back up bearing another glittery stick. “I saw this earlier,” she said. “I want to do magic too! Then we’ll be even.”
“I don’t think that’s how magic works in Harry Potter,” Tara said hesitantly. “But in a logical world, that wand wouldn’t work at all, so…”
“Okay,” Mulan said. “I don’t know what else we’d do with you, anyway. I’ll untie you, you show Ariel how to do something simple, and if that works, then we’ll talk.”
“Thanks ever so.” Upon being released, Lord Voldemort said, “And for my next trick, I will require something dead.”
“About not being evil? Try harder,” Jasmine suggested.
“How about a flower?” Tara said by way of mediation.
“That will do.”
Ariel arranged herself before him, awaiting instructions, and Mulan remained vigilant and rather hostile as Lord Voldemort nudged her into what one assumes was the proper position for spellcasting, although it looked not unlike standing around aimlessly, albeit with more pointing at things.
“And now,” Lord Voldemort said, “you shall pronounce the incantation: Cretum!”
“Cretum,” Ariel said dubiously.
“It sounds like an insult,” Jasmine murmured.
The flower appeared not to care whether or not it was being insulted; it obediently proceeded to twist and grow, never losing its overall brown and unquestionably dead appearance.
“It worked!” Ariel exclaimed.
“Well, good,” Mulan said, sounding distinctly unhappy. “Ariel, can I talk to you for a minute? Privately?”
“I was going to ask anyway,” Ariel responded blissfully, and they retired with the newly-stemmed rose, Mulan casting highly suspicious and displeased looks over her shoulder.
“I suggest you leave off the soul talk around Ariel,” Jasmine said firmly. “You’ll just feed her issues, and then Mulan will be unhappy.”
“Well, I can stop talking about it, but I have to keep looking,” Lord Voldemort said anxiously. “I am missing the most essential part of my being. It’s terribly nerve-wracking.”
Jasmine nodded wearily. “Okay. Fine. Two insane ones. Wonderful.” She walked away as well, leaving Tara and I alone with the new insane one, which struck me as rather unfair.
In the spirit of British brotherhood, though - for here, indeed, was just what I had wished for the night before - I offered sympathetically, “Never mind - they will scorn quests, these women. I too seek something not easily found, and they were distinctly dismissive.”
“I wasn’t dismissive,” Tara protested.
“Oh? What are you after, then?”
“I intend to travel the world in search of the Tara’s lady-love, Willow, and her daughter in spirit if not in blood, Dawn,” I informed him.
“Really? Do you suppose you could keep an eye out for pieces of my soul, while you’re at it?”
“While it would be no mean feat, I suppose I could watch for them,” I conceded generously. “Do you have any inkling of what they might be?”
“In the books,” Tara said, “he - you - he chose things that were important to him.”
Lord Voldemort shrugged with a defeated air. “I don’t remember, do I.”
“How do I tell when I’ve found them?”
“Oh, I’m sure that you’ll know,” he said, cheering up. “You’ll probably feel an electric shock, or something will resonate within your heart, or similar.”
“Where have you already checked for this stuff, then?” Tara asked. “Just so that Will isn’t stuck with a repeat performance.”
“The house, mostly,” he said uncomfortably. “And the yard, a bit. I like it here.” He met my eyes solemnly. “But I can show you the way out, if you like.”
“Down there,” he said a few moments later, pointing below us.
“What? That?”
“Yes. Whenever it gets cleaned out and packed up, especially with the laptop, just make sure you’re in it as well. It always goes missing after,” he explained, leading the way down to my ticket out. “I wonder that Tara hasn’t mentioned it.”
“She may not want me to know,” I confessed. “I suspect that she doubts my ability to find her family.”
“Women. They don’t understand. Quests and that.”
“Even should it come to pass that I find nothing on my first trip,” I said, “my absence will likely worry them.”
“Makes the heart grow fonder,” Lord Voldemort agreed.
“When do you think…?”
“Now you mention it, it was cleaned out recently."
“Truly? Now that’s interesting.”
