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Rumpole and the Killing Curse
Posted on 2006.11.07 at 12:59
(This is for Shiv, and possibly for a few other folk, but it might as well be for me. A plot for a story that may or may not go any further than this one posting. Anyone who feels like chiming in is welcome to do so.)
You're a wizard who killed your boss, and now you're on the run. Who better to help clear your name than an Old Bailey hack?
You're a wizard who killed your boss, and now you're on the run. Who better to help clear your name than an Old Bailey hack?
There was an upheaval in the on-the-whole agreeable stasis in the existence of a certain cigar-ash-festooned, Wordsworth-spouting barrister named Horace Rumpole -- myself.
The upheaval, while it was in hindsight inevitable, still came as a bit of a shock. T. C. Rowley's presence at Number Three, Equity Court, extended farther back than living memory could span; yet all flesh is grass, as my apostate cleric of a father was wont to say. And really, considering the various possible demises open to the oldest member of our Chambers, expiring of sheer unadulterated delight soon after receiving one's first brief in decades was not a bad way for Uncle Tom to hand in his cheques.
There was of course anguished wailing from the younger lady barristers, and a discreetly dignified and of course utterly sincere tear trickling demurely down the cheeks of our first lady QC, once the Portia of our Chambers but now a judge of awful puissance; and the menfolk had a few sessions of embarrassed throat-clearing before agreeing to hold one hell of a piss-up in his learned memory.
And suddenly, I, Horace Rumpole, the hithero-disregarded-in-the-main Old Bailey hack, who once was famed for his masterful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders but was thought by some (or rather, many -- or most) to have been almost as far past his mediocre best as was Uncle Tom himself -- well, suddenly, I found myself in a position which lent to me a certain amount of unaccustomed good odour:
I was now the oldest member of Chambers.
And suddenly, I, Horace Rumpole, the hithero-disregarded-in-the-main Old Bailey hack, who once was famed for his masterful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders but was thought by some (or rather, many -- or most) to have been almost as far past his mediocre best as was Uncle Tom himself -- well, suddenly, I found myself in a position which lent to me a certain amount of unaccustomed good odour:
I was now the oldest member of Chambers.
------------------------
The brief that had felled Uncle Tom wound up falling to me; partly out of a certain strangeness about it that repelled the more conventional members; partly out of an unvoiced but obvious superstitious fear that what killed Tom might be the end of whoever took it up; but mainly, and touchingly, out of a desire to reward a doddering old cart-horse with an opportunity to earn his keep -- or perhaps because they were hoping that the fatal brief might have been counted upon to put the doddering old cart-horse out of the way without relying on the noose, arsenic, or the programming on the Sky channel.
The clientele to which the brief was attached were duly presented to me before Uncle Tom's carcase had cooled; it was, apparently, a matter of extreme urgency -- for them, at any rate. For me, it was a chance to earn that magical substance which would, for a while, stop the relentless flow of ominous missives from the Inland Revenue to Froxbury Mansions. And it was also a fact that the very cases which caused my learned friends to wrinkle their noses or whiten with dread, were precisely those which make my life worth the living.
So it was with no very great foreboding that I met what would be yet another great upheaval in my life.
To be sure, the first part of this other upheaval, as ushered into my presence by Henry, our clerk, and introduced to me as one 'Hermione Granger', did not at first seem to be very upheaving. She was a girl, verging on young womanhood, with a frizzy brown mane which she had sought to tame by securing it within a chignon, and large, serious brown eyes. I would soon discover that behind those eyes lay, in fledgling stage, a mind and drive to rival that of our very own learned Justice Portia -- but I anticipate myself.
The second part was more plainly ominous. He was a tall, sneering man, black-clad, with black stringy hair and black eyes like the bottom of a freshly-dug grave. I had the distinct feeling that he was a man born out of his time; in Wordsworth's day he would have made a perfect sexton. There was an atmosphere about him that was both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity, and I wondered what such a wholesome girl would be doing with such a perilous creature.
"Severus Snape," he said, introducing himself before Henry could do so, and Henry was more than welcome to let him do it; he shrank from the man and evaporated soundlessly out of the room without saying good-bye.
"Well, Mr. Snape, Miss Granger," I said, putting on my best barrister face, "how may I assist you?"
"I'm wanted for murder," said the man named Severus Snape. "And I'm guilty of it."
(....to be continued?...)
The clientele to which the brief was attached were duly presented to me before Uncle Tom's carcase had cooled; it was, apparently, a matter of extreme urgency -- for them, at any rate. For me, it was a chance to earn that magical substance which would, for a while, stop the relentless flow of ominous missives from the Inland Revenue to Froxbury Mansions. And it was also a fact that the very cases which caused my learned friends to wrinkle their noses or whiten with dread, were precisely those which make my life worth the living.
So it was with no very great foreboding that I met what would be yet another great upheaval in my life.
To be sure, the first part of this other upheaval, as ushered into my presence by Henry, our clerk, and introduced to me as one 'Hermione Granger', did not at first seem to be very upheaving. She was a girl, verging on young womanhood, with a frizzy brown mane which she had sought to tame by securing it within a chignon, and large, serious brown eyes. I would soon discover that behind those eyes lay, in fledgling stage, a mind and drive to rival that of our very own learned Justice Portia -- but I anticipate myself.
The second part was more plainly ominous. He was a tall, sneering man, black-clad, with black stringy hair and black eyes like the bottom of a freshly-dug grave. I had the distinct feeling that he was a man born out of his time; in Wordsworth's day he would have made a perfect sexton. There was an atmosphere about him that was both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity, and I wondered what such a wholesome girl would be doing with such a perilous creature.
"Severus Snape," he said, introducing himself before Henry could do so, and Henry was more than welcome to let him do it; he shrank from the man and evaporated soundlessly out of the room without saying good-bye.
"Well, Mr. Snape, Miss Granger," I said, putting on my best barrister face, "how may I assist you?"
"I'm wanted for murder," said the man named Severus Snape. "And I'm guilty of it."
(....to be continued?...)