You really should have finished ahead of us Spurs. If we can’t consider our season a success then you MUST consider yours a failure. Shabby.

… but am I the only one who feels far safer with the occassional terrorist attack than I do with the Draconian Police presence that follows?

BY JK SHAKESPEARE (but really by me)

Act I, Scene ii

(VOLDEMORT and BELLATRIX in a musty, dusty English mansion in a state of disrepair.)

VOLDEMORT
    Here cease more questions:
    Thou art inclined to sleep; ‘tis a good dulness,
    And give it way: I know thou canst not choose.

    (BELLATRIX sleeps)
    Come away, servant, come. I am ready now.
    Approach, my WORMTAIL, come.

    (Enter WORMTAIL)

WORMTAIL
    All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
    To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,
    To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
    On the curl’d clouds, to thy strong bidding task
    WORMTAIL and all his loyalty.

VOLDEMORT
    Hast thou, servant,
    Perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?

WORMTAIL
    To every article.
    I boarded the Hogwart’s Express; now on the engine,
    Now in the waist, the roof, in every car,
    I flamed amazement: sometime I’ld divide,
    And burn in many places; on the windows,
    The rails and ties, would I flame distinctly,
    Then meet and join. Your lightnings, the precursors
    O’ the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary
    And sight-outrunning were not; the fire and cracks
    Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune
    Seem to besiege and make his bold waves tremble,
    Yea, his dread trident shake.

VOLDEMORT
    My brave grovelling fool!
    Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
    Would not infect his reason?

WORMTAIL
    Only Potter.
    All else felt a fever of the mad and play’d
    Some tricks of desperation. All but Potter
    Hid in their compartments of quit the vessel,
    Then all afire with me: the Granger girl, the Weasly boy,
    With hair up-staring,—then like reeds, not hair,—
    Were the first that leap’d; cried, ‘Azkaban is empty
    And all the Dementors are here.’

VOLDEMORT
    Why that’s my rat!
    But was not this nigh the bridge?

WORMTAIL
    Close by, my master.

VOLDEMORT
    But are they, WORMTAIL, safe?

WORMTAIL
    Not a hair perish’d;
    On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
    But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
    In troops I have dispersed them ‘bout the fens.
    Potter have I landed by himself;
    Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
    In an odd angle of the highlands and sitting,
    His arms in this sad knot.

VOLDEMORT
    Of the Hogwart’s express
    The professors say how thou hast disposed
    And all the rest o’ Dumbledore’s army.

WORMTAIL
    Safely at the station
    Is the Express; in Hogsmeade, where once
    Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch butterbeer
    From the still-vex’d Rosemerta’s, there she sits:
    The professors all under hatches stow’d;
    Who, with a charm join’d to their suffer’d labour,
    I have left asleep; and for the rest o’ his Army
    Which I dispersed, they all have met again
    And are within Hogwart’s,
    Bound sadly for the Sorting Hat,
    Supposing that they saw the Express wreck’d
    And the great Potter perished.

VOLDEMORT
    WORMTAIL, thy charge
    Exactly is perform’d: but there’s more work.
    What is the time o’ the day?

WORMTAIL
    Past the mid season.

VOLDEMORT
    At least two glasses. The time ‘twixt six and now
    Must be spent by you most preciously.

WORMTAIL
    Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
    Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
    Which is not yet perform’d me.

VOLDEMORT
    How now? moody?
    What is’t thou canst demand?

WORMTAIL
    My arm.

VOLDEMORT
    Before the task be complete? no more!

WORMTAIL
    I prithee,
    Remember I have done thee worthy service;
    Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served
    Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
    To make me whole, my Lord.

VOLDEMORT
    Dost thou forget
    From what a torment I did free thee?

WORMTAIL
    No.

VOLDEMORT
    Thou dost, and think’st it much to tread the ooze
    Of the salt deep,
    To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
    To do me business in the veins o’ the earth
    When it is baked with frost.

WORMTAIL
    I do not, Lord.

VOLDEMORT
    Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot
    Thy foul friend Sirius Black, who with age and envy
    Was grown into a dog? hast thou forgot him?

WORMTAIL
    No, Lord.

PROSPERO
    Thou hast. Where is he now? speak; tell me.

WORMTAIL
    Sir, escaped Azkaban.

VOLDEMORT
    O, was he so? I must
    Once in a day recount who thou hast wronged,
    Which thou forget’st. This damn’d wizard Black,
    With mischiefs manifold and disloyalties terrible
    To enter wizard hearing, from Azkaban,
    Thou know’st, has fled: for one thing he desires
    Vengeance upon thy wretched head. Is not this true?

WORMTAIL
    Ay, sir.

VOLDEMORT
    This blue-eyed Black who once wronged us
    And hates you wretched rat. Thou, my slave,
    As thou report’st thyself, betrayed him for me;
    And, for thou wast a wizard too weak
    Too pathetic, too abhorr’d to strand alone,
    Gave your loyalty to me, did betray Black,
    With the help of my more potent ministers
    And in his most unmitigable rage,
    He seeks you now; within which state
    Only I protect you from his wrath
    These dozen weeks; within which space he roams free
    And haunts thee with potential; so thou grovel’st and groan
    As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was your service—
    Your right servitude to my greatness your protection
    Thou buck toothed whelp, hag-born—dishonour’d with
    A rat’s shape.

WORMTAIL
    Yes, my Dark Lord.

VOLDEMORT
    Dull thing, I say so; thou, thou cunning Rat
    Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know’st
    What torment I did find thee in; thy whinges
    Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts
    Of ever angry bucks: it was a torment
    To lay upon the damn’d, which Dumbledore
    Could not again undo: it was mine art,
    When I arrived and heard thee, that made an end to freindship
    Gave thee purpose and let thee out.

WORMTAIL
    I thank thee, master.

VOLDEMORT
    If thou more murmur’st, I will rend an oak
    And peg thee in his knotty entrails till
    Thou hast howl’d away twelve winters.

WORMTAIL
    Pardon, master;
    I will be correspondent to command
    And do my wizarding promptly.

VOLDEMORT
    Do so, and after two days
    I will rearm thee.

WORMTAIL
    That’s my noble master!
    What shall I do? say what; what shall I do?

VOLDEMORT
    Go make thyself like a rat o’ the sewer: be subject
    To no sight but thine and mine, invisible
    To every eyeball else. Go take this shape
    And hither come in’t: go, hence with diligence!
    (Exit WORMTAIL)
    Awake, dear BELLATRIX, awake! thou hast slept well; Awake!