***

  Friday, July 25th, 2014. Early Afternoon.

  After popping the Anomaly, Jo-Jo slept for 24 hours straight. Late the next morning, he, his Room Boss, Lars, and Shamir's Second, Rosey, came to find Shamir.

  They found us in Barracks Two, the other Men's Barracks on our level. We had moved in on them first thing that morning. Most of them had been very happy to hear about the new regime. Only one Bunk Room still had the same Boss as before. The other two rooms had been nasty nests of coup, counter-coup, dissolving alliances, and beat-downs. Their body count had been more than ours, but much less than Barracks Three.

  It wasn't even a skirmish in the Consolidation Wars. The Red Element rousted them all into the Rec Room, and I gave them the same sort of little talk I had given in our Barracks. When I got to the part about Shamir being the Man, and no back-talk, one of the Shambolic Room's current Boss jumped up and started to swing at me. Our original 'George' dropped to one knee and gave him a Right Cross in the Goolies, with plenty of shoulder behind it. The next thing that 'Boss' knew, he was curled up around his Precious, and all twelve 'Georges' and the two "Georgettes' were administering a thorough, if light-weight, beat-down.

  Oh, the 'Georgettes'? The 'battle' for the Women's Barracks turned out to be a matter of having Fawksey unlock the Gate from the Outside Rec Area, Shamir tapping politely on the Door, and, when it opened, inviting the Chairwoman of their Committee to the next meeting of the Barracks Bosses. The women, with a few exceptions, were only using one of their Bunk Rooms.

  The office of Barracks Boss had been instituted once Shamir had responsibility for more than one Barracks. Rosey was promoted, and pulled another of his lads up as Room Boss. Second Barrack's Boss ended up being the one Room Boss who had held his people together. And Third Barrack's Boss...?

  Well... me. It ended up being me. No one else wanted it, save a couple of idiots I wouldn't trust to keep a stone alive.

  ***

  When Jo-Jo and the others showed up, Shamir was finishing up with the new Second Barracks Boss, Eunon Blackwood XXIV. He's a Scot, like me, and comes of a long line of Wizards who mix Dark Magic and Herbology, often with catastrophic effect. He had risen to Room Boss more from sheer competence than anything else, but he had the long-fingered, large-jointed hands the Blackwoods were known for. They made very knobbly fists, and he used them to good effect.

  As a Dark Wizard, though, he was a bit of a scrub. He honestly tried to live up to his family name, but his heart was more in his Herbology. A few years behind Neville, he had also been one of Pomona Sprout's favorites. She staunchly ignored his Slytherin status and his family history. She was fond of telling people that Eunon was the only first-year who had ever been accepted at first sight by her Venomous Tentacula. He spent all his classroom time with the great red viney plant draped over him like an old wizard's scarf.*

  I saw Jo-Jo, Lars and Rosey first. I called out, "Hail, Jo-Jo, Master of Myst'ries! Good t' see ye up, lad! Nae bad dreams, ah hope?"

  He smiled, a little shyly, but you could believe as much or as little of that as you pleased. Like I said, the nicest man you would care to meet. Just never play cards with him.

  "No bad dreams, Whiskey John, but I did wake up feeling a bit odd. Lars came to check on me when I woke. I told him I was feeling a bit light-headed."

  Lars nodded. "I gave him a hand to help him up. And up he did not come. It was like tugging on an anchor chain for one a' them Muggle oil tankers. Then he tugged on me, and down I did come on top o' him. An' I might as well have done a belly flop onto a Jo-Jo shaped boulder."

  I looked at Shamir. We looked at Lars, half again as tall as Jo-Jo. And weighing, I would say, three times as much.

  "Go on," Shamir said.

  "I got up by myself," said Jo-Jo. "And Lars and I started, I guess, experimenting? Then Lars sent a 'George' for Rosey, and we experimented some more."

  "And the results?"

  Rosey shrugged. "He weighs more than me. I can lift him, just barely. I would guess about thirty-five to forty stones."

  I leaned over, and said, "May I?" Jo-Jo nodded. I poked him in the chest with a forefinger, and damn near jammed it. The give of flesh I was subconsciously expecting was not there. I flexed the finger a few times to loosen the joints back up.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "How th' Hel ere ye movin thet aboot?"

  Lars looked at the shorter man. "Do our trick again?" Jo-Jo nodded, and crouched slightly. He put his hands, open palms up, by his shoulders. Rosey and Lars moved in, each stacking their hands on top of his. They were so much taller, they were able to straighten their arms and start leaning over him. Both big men came up on their toes and leaned into each other over Jo-Jo's head.

  "Ready?" asked the little man. They grunted affirmation. Jo-Jo straightened up, and their feet came up off the ground. There was a moment of wavering as Rosey and Lars settled their balance point. Then five-foot-and-a-bit Jo-Jo Buttons pressed them up to the length of his arms with no effort at all.

  He lowered them and did it again, then lowered them and crouched as they settled on their feet and moved back.

  "Ooo-kay." Eunon blinked hard, as if his eyes were bothering him. "That... was weird."

  "Gets weirder," replied Jo-Jo. He put his thumb in his mouth, and started blowing. And getting bigger. And not just bigger. Muscles were popping up and out, his jaw grew and squared off, his forehead became a craggy shelf over his eyes, which were turning electric blue and sparking with lightning.

  He stopped when he was as tall as Rosey. When he spoke, his voice was thunder rolling over far-away hills.

  "I feel like I could keep going, but I'm not sure if my clothes will keep growing with me. And I don't have any purple stretch pants."

  We all gave him a strange look, and made a mutual decision not to ask.

  "He still weighs about the same," added Rosey. "And he's got a little give to him like this."

  Shamir shook his head. "Is this what you look like when you're Berserking out in the world?"

  "I think so," rumbled Jo-Jo. "Bigger, meaner. Usually bloodier. I never sat for any studio photos." He took a deep breath, and exhaled. And exhaled. And shrank. And kept exhaling, and shrinking and exhaling, until he was back to... normal?

  "Last thing," said Rosey. "As we were coming here, we surprised a Dementor in the shadows by this Barrack's Gate."

  "Yes," said Eunon. "They've been scouting the other Bunk Rooms. They avoid my old one. They just disappear into the shadows when I get close."

  "Yeah, well, this one saw Jo-Jo, made a freakin' dash for a shadow, and bounced. Jo-Jo asked us to hold, then he just walked up to the Dementor. It tore itself to shreds trying to claw through the wall to get away from him."

  "So, we're thinking, what? The Nothing, Something, Whatever was eating your Curse?"

  "And mostly just the 'Crazy Berserker' from my Curse. But it didn't get to the parts that make me big and bad-ass. And somehow made those parts immune to the Suppression Magic on the prison."

  There was a long pause as everybody thought about this.

  "Well," said Shamir finally. "If things ever do get back to normal, we're going to have to figure out a way to keep you away from St. Mungo's. We wouldn't ever get you back. But for now, you're the answer to a maiden's prayer.

  "Last question," I said, catching Jo-Jo's eye. "Y' dinnae really have t' put th' thumb in yer gob, d'ye?"

  Jo-Jo grinned. "Busted!"

  ***

  Barracks Three was declared Dementor-Free forty-eight hours later. Most of the original inhabitants still wanted nothing to do with it. In addition to Jo-Jo, Shamir and I filled it with men unlikely to let a Dementor get inside their heads. They were the ambitious, the hyper, the stolid no-ranny-ga-zoo rocks that were the backbone of a Good Room. There were incidents, and there were still a few Dementors tucked away here and there in the wainscoting. Between the partial resistance the Harnesses provided, and the looming presence of the Head-Busters, it was a good, if rambunctious little Barracks.

  The Dementors were becoming more of a pest than a threat, and now fairly easily dealt with. The men were actually beginning to despise them, rather than fearing them. Plus, of course, our secret weapon. Good old Jo-Jo. We moved him from Bunk Room to Bunk Room, every time a Dementor was sighted. He was great for morale.

  Having the Leagues get going again was even better for morale. I saw some of the toughest men on The Rocks get a little misty when they were reunited with the battered old brooms they flew on.

  ***

  Our biggest problem was, of course, what to do with Bates. He was in some sort of coma state. Actually, it would probably be more correct to say 'suspended animation.' Fawksey speculated that he was suffering from magical backlash from being in unshielded contact with what you folks are calling the Anomaly.

  His respiration was steady, but ridiculously slow. One cycle of inhale/exhale took about five minutes, with a single heartbeat peaking once every minute. He was no trouble, but short of watching him twenty-four hours a day, we could not trust him to stay harmless. Plus that ink-black head and face were just creepy. Especially with the grey stubble on his cheeks and jowls and the grey roots of his hair growing out.

  It was Fawksey that finally came up with a plan. He convinced the Terrible Teen that what everyone out there needed was, surprise, surprise, a morale boost. And what better boost could there be than Herself, Herself doing a presentation on her Research Project? To, yes, everybody. Team Building. Yay, Zabini! The prisoners? What prisoners? You mean those quiet little mice playing with their tatty old brooms? Quiet I promised, and quiet they are. If you are worried, then you could spare old Fawksey (Hah!) to monitor them. I mean, I would hate to miss the presentation, but since you have allowed me to assist in my poor way, I am already familiar with the small bits I am able to grasp...

  Oh, and I'll have the kitchen do up something special in the way of nibbles. Wouldn't want growling stomachs to distract from the presentation...

  The 'presentation' ended up lasting three hours. A Triumph fit for a Roman Emperor, Fawksey called it. And it took only fifteen minutes of those three hours for myself and three of the stouter 'Georges' to cycle ourselves and the Bates thing through the Airlock Door, dog-trot him down to Solitary and seal him in one of the cells, (setting the timelock on 'Until Further Notice'), and then dog-trot our way back. If Bates woke, meals would be cycling through the inner hatch regularly. And I checked thoroughly to make sure this cell did not have the secret exit that my usual cell had.

  And everything was fine.

  For about three days.

  * See Next Chapter.