Paul Ryan wrestles with the most overwhelmingly complex emotions he’s ever had to deal with. “Kill the spare” his master whispers, and Paul Ryan obeys, his wand arm trembling as he mutters the Killing Curse and watches the body of handsome Hufflepuff quidditch hero John Boehner crumple to the ground.
He can finally turn all his attention to his prisoner, now chained to a cracked and fallen tombstone that reads ‘Friedrich Drumpf, 1905-1999’. The prisoner snarls something heroic at Paul Ryan, calls him a coward, implores him not to do this. But the beautiful eyes of the House Speaker glaze over and he simply smiles in vacuous bliss as he explains to Potter: “the person who wins 1,237 delegates by the Republican electorate wins the primary. It’s just that simple.”
But inside, Paul Ryan is utterly torn. He is giddy from the significance of the moment, childishly excited that he can finally usher in some of the policies he’s dreamed of for so long. But he is also repulsed and ashamed, for the eggs that must be broken to make this omelet, and for the fact that the one destined to Make America Great Again has to be a creature as revolting and insincere as Donald Trump.
Taking a bone from the grave of Friedrich Drumpf, Paul Ryan begins to chant his incantation. “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son.” He drops it delicately into a box marked ‘CONVENTION 2016’ before continuing: “flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master.” He cringes in terror as he rests his knife against his wrist, pausing. I must be strong, he thinks to himself, this is the only way we can defeat political correctness before it’s too late. He cuts his hand free from his arm, wailing as he slices through the bone, but love of his project gives him the insane strength to finish and he throws the severed appendage into the box. The delirium makes him sway stupidly, babbling “I don’t support the deportation plan, that’s not part of our agenda.”
But he remembers his purpose and finally rounds on Potter. The flow of blood from his stump makes him dizzy. He realizes he must act quickly. “Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken,” he wheezes, “you will resurrect your foe.“ And he cuts Harry’s arm open, filling up a chipped Romney 2012 mug with blood before pouring that, too, into the convention box.
They wait in silence. Paul Ryan feels his body rapidly draining of life, so exhausted he can’t even properly panic about the prospect that this might not have worked. He isn’t sure if it’s his bloodless confusion making him hallucinate, but he could swear he can hear words carried upon the wind that say “an extremely credible source has called my office and told me that Happy Potter’s birth certificate is a fraud.”
The House Speaker looks up. The thick puff of tasteless cologne hanging above the convention box dissipates, and from that toxic cloud the naked orange blob of Donald Trump steps out. The Dark Lord had returned.
Who was the Dark Lord in the first place? Paul Ryan can’t remember now, and feels faintly concerned about it. Images flash across his mind rapidly, of karaoke nights, and of Mussolini, and then of a Mussolini-themed karaoke night where talentless pretenders sing his greatest hits. One performer in the fantasy, the most outrageous and idiotic of the whole crowd, sings an especially poor rendition of the 1938 hit Stato Corporativo, but as he finishes he turns around and hugs an American flag hanging behind him, and he wins the Mussolini Karaoke 2016 award to the sounds of cheering and gunfire.
The inexplicable reverie is interrupted by Trump tapping him on the forehead. “My wand, Wormtail.” Paul Ryan snaps back into action, reaching with his remaining hand into his back pocket and pulling out a grubby sheet of paper. Potter strains to see the words, and is able to make out that it says ‘I – FREEDOM, II – GUNS, III-XXVII – NOT SURE PROBLY NOT IMPOTRANT’. Paul Ryan rolls it up, staining it with his bloody stump as he struggles with it, and thrusts it desperately towards Trump. A pink Post It note is attached to the back of it that says ‘TEH CONSITUTOIN: IMPORTANT!’
“Hold out your arm, Wormtail.”
“Master, please,” Paul Ryan whimpers, but knowing that he is speaking not to a man but to the hopes and dreams of the GOP base, he obeys. And for his loyalty he is rewarded with a silver hand that immediately replaces the bloody stump, and his body begins to stabilize once again as the power that flows from the genius and acumen of the entrepreneurial class trickles over him, warming him like a summer rain, or piss.
Trump grabs Paul Ryan’s sleeve and yanks it up roughly, pressing an orange finger against the Dark Mark engraved in the Speaker’s wrist. The symbol is faded because it’s been so many years now, but even in this silvery darkness one can still clearly make out the Confederate flag’s unmistakeable form on Paul Ryan’s tender flesh. The House Speaker winces, partly in disgust at the powdery lungful of fake tan that makes Trump’s immediate presence so viscerally unpleasant, but mostly because he prefers to keep the Dark Mark where nobody can see it.
Who will respond to the call? It doesn’t take long to find out. Chris Christie apparates, and immediately glares at Paul Ryan as he realizes there’s an even greater bootlicker than he. The moment Bellatrix Lestrange materializes she whoops with joy and bellows “YOU BETCHA!” before taking a bloody bite out of the haunch of Alaskan moose she had hunted perhaps just minutes earlier, streaks of red down her chin. Pat McCrory and David Duke arrive at the same time; Duke is looking lovingly at McCrory, one hand down the front of his pants, while McCrory sweats and trembles like a hostage who is pretending desperately not to be one. Lyin Ted dusts himself off and goes to stand with his friends (that is to say, alone). Others appear, Republicans, neo-Nazis, Breitbart staffers, looking at one another curiously, as if they’d all been drinking at the same bar for years but had never hung out as a group in all that time.
“Oh…such a handsome boy,” Trump says, absently kicking Boehner’s corpse. He looks around at the Death Eaters arriving, but doesn’t note their look of collective relief when he wraps a heavy flag around his shoulders to cover his nakedness. He glances at Potter for a moment longer before turning to his reassembled crew. “All lives matter!” he barks.
“All lives matter!” they reply. Dementors circle the area, their deathly presence almost silent except for their endless murmur of ‘#BlueLivesMatter’ and ‘Snowden is a traitor’. With any luck, they think, we might not even need to form a prison workers’ union any more.
Paul Ryan wonders for a moment if he’s done the right thing. Of course he has. It’s what the base wants. Does he care? The question tortures him. He’s torn by his loathing for the Dark Lord, but he agrees with the plan, and, if he really looked within, he knows that he’d find in himself a figure too pathetic to assault his master. He’s spent years hiding in rat form, waiting until the time had come to finally anoint the fascist overlord of his tortured dreams.
And he’d hidden himself so well! In a nice liberal family, who loved it when their rat would say things that pleased them. Barely three months ago he’d really impressed them by saying “takers wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family.” Noting their interest he’d continued: “most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong.” As their tears began to flow he finished by saying “I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point,” and they wept openly for how good and sweet their little rat was.
His stealth was so skilful that even Mad Eye Bernie couldn’t catch him, even with his magic eye and kooky ways.
But the urgency to bring the Dark Lord to power had made him sloppy, and he’d been forced to turn back into his human form as he was interrogated by his erstwhile liberal guardians. “Why did you betray us?” they wailed.
Paul Ryan snivelled and cringed before them. “The Dark Lord, you’ve no idea the delegates he possesses! What would you have done?”
“I would have died!” his former friend Lindsay Graham had bellowed, and Paul Ryan had wondered with terror if Graham was about to turn into werewolf form.
But he got away. He got away, and he performed the endorsement ritual, and he supposed that he had done the right thing. Yes, Trump says things that are blatantly racist, but…the party, you know? Fiscal discipline! What about political correctness? He had a duty to his nation, to kill the mudblo- sorry, to, to promote meritocracy and opportunity – and really that duty is best filled by being dutiful to the party, right?
Trump paces up and down as he speaks to the Death Eaters. He’s just told the assembled that mudbloods can’t take Ministry jobs as Aurors because they’d be biased against him. The Death Eaters grin and nod, but Paul Ryan’s face crinkles with concern. I disavow these comments — I regret those comments that he made. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable. But do I believe that Dolores Umbridge is the answer? No, I do not. He keeps quiet. We must be disciplined. The plan must be allowed to continue. We can put up with this.
Trump continues with his speech. “The only card Dolores Umbridge has is the woman’s card. She’s got nothing else to offer and frankly, if Umbridge were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote.” The Death Eaters applauded their totem speaking these truths they’d been too frightened to utter out loud for all these years.
And Paul Ryan thinks, but aren’t you and Umbridge old friends? Of course he says nothing, because he also knows the terrible secret that when the time comes Umbridge will loyally play her part, when the mudbloods and muggle born need to be rounded up, for security purposes. She’s no true believer in anything, but she can be moved to support most of the policies we actually believe in, with the right incentive. Here, too, he decides it’s best for the party if he keeps quiet.
I’m not racist, he tells himself. But if death camps for political prisoners and minorities are the only path to party unity, then who am I to resist? I’ve worked very hard for this party. I’ve been a good rat. I am so afraid of the Dark Lord. I hate him so much. He is so good to me. It’s a question of how to move ahead on the ideas that I—and my House colleagues—have invested so much in through the years. I’m confident the Dark Lord will help turn the Death Eater agenda into laws.
Paul Ryan stares at his silver hand, his reward, and wonders if one day it might just strangle him to death.
