I’m on TV! (Showbiz SI)

Chapter 23.5: Float Like a Boggart, Sting Like a Ray

Leavesden Studios, UK. August 2006.

Despite having enough WD-40 and lubricant to put a professional garage to shame, I knew the five steps I stood above, and the door I’d have to approach would creak as loud as the added sound effects in popcorn horror movies.

“Ready when you are, Bas.” I nodded at the camera behind my shoulder. I didn’t have the headspace for a quip or joke. I was in the game. “Silence, everyone, we’re rolling. Action!”

[I tiptoed down the stairs to the main hallway in Grimmauld Place. Each step echoed by an eerie creak.

The sound of sobbing suddenly whimpered down the hall. My head snapped to the drawing-room door. Mist was billowing in from beneath the gap.

The camera focused on me as I entered the room, my expression filled with trepidation. The set was dimly lit by the sconces that made shadows dance on the walls. I knew it wasn’t real, but damned if my heart wasn’t experiencing an uptick because of the foreboding atmosphere. “Hello?” I called after another purposeful whine of the door hinge. I spotted a head full of hair that was orange.

Julie Walters, as Molly, cowered in a darker corner of the already gloomy room, leveled a shaky wand. The camera zoomed in on her face, revealing the fear etched in her features. “R-riddikulus!” Another sob racked her form.

The camera, and my gaze, both swam through the river of mist to find a bloke in a green chroma-key suit with the balls lying prone on the floor. In this moment, it may be anticlimactic, but the audience’s breath will hitch just as worriedly as mine when they superimpose the footage of Ron on the green suit. 

There was a line of well-hidden grates from beneath him that pumped the mist out. 

A small puff of air disturbed, and swirled the mist around him as the spell struck. Ron’s corpse would switch to Bill’s.

I found my feet, once again, under me when I understood it wasn’t the real Ron. “Mrs. Weasley?” I took a step ahead. I wasn’t the only one on the move. My green suited colleague reached a hand out, clawed at the floorboards, and inched himself forward. This boggart wasn’t staying quite so still. 

Molly wailed again. “R-r-riddikulus.” A bloodied Ginny scrambled on her knees. “R-ridikkulus.” A deathly pale Arthur rose to his feet. “No!” Molly moaned. “No… riddikulus! Riddikulus! RIDDIKULUS!” Another gust of air. Dead twins. Another swirl of mist. Dead Percy. Another hand reaching out. Dead me.

As Molly manically tried and failed to swat the boggart away spell after spell, the camera zoomed in a slow, deliberate pan, capturing the tension in her every step as the frame shrunk with every syllable.

I wasn’t idle. Every time she swung her wand, and every time the boggart stumbled, I crossed the room until I abruptly reappeared in the frame, blocking Molly’s line of sight.

I snatched her wand arm and dragged her away. “Let’s get out of here, Mrs Weasley. Let someone else-!” 

Moody, Sirius, and Lupin burst in through the door. Sirius froze immediately at the undead Harry. Moody quickly intercepted and green goblin toppled over. He was an inanimate object now. Specifically, a trunk. “Riddikulus!” Lupin flourished his wand and the boggart would vanish. “Molly, it was just a boggart,” he tried to reassure her.

Moody snarled and swept the room with his wand and his constant vigilance. 

I released Molly, whose hands shot forward and ran across my face and torso. “Oh-Oh-!” In the next moment, she buried her face in my chest, latched her arms around me, and began crying her heart out. “I see them dead all the time!” We both shook as she let tears stream down her face to soak into my shirt. I patted her soothingly. “Even in my dreams, it’s the same.”

I felt a third hand on me. Sirius’ warm hand, near painfully latched on my neck, his fingers tangled in the low curls of the hair on my nape. “Just a stupid boggart…” I turned my head to look at him. His haunted eyes were glued to where other Harry had been.

“It wasn’t real.” Three and a half pairs of eyes shifted to me. “I’m here. We’re all here.” 

“Harry, I’m so sorry. What must you think of me?” she said shakily. “Not even able to get rid of a boggart. I’m being so silly…” 

Wait. What was my next line? Shit! This was a fantastic take, too. I’ll just have to improvise. “No less than everyone else. I think we can all acknowledge if that was actually my corpse, there’d be a lot more blood, and a lot less of me.”

If my blunder wasn’t evidence enough, the speed with which my senior stars synchronized a natural reaction together would clue me in to just how far I had yet to go in my acting career. 

In the sudden tornado of thumps, I couldn’t tell you who smacked me where. “Harry Potter!”]

“Cut!” I distinctly noticed the lack of ‘Print!’ that followed. David was contemplative as he reviewed the footage. I left well enough alone, clamped my mouth shut, and waited for his verdict.

“Why is it that every other time we have a scene together, one of us is bogeying all over the other’s clothes?” Julie Walters stepped out of my arms and gathered herself.

“Don’t be so quick to dry those tears. I messed up the line. We’ll probably be doing another take. Sorry, everybody, I’ll do better next time.”

“No need for that, Bas.” Gary Oldman punched me on the shoulder. “Acting on rails makes the mind go numb. There’s no shame in making a mistake here and there, and neither is making a creative choice either. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Life goes on and so does the show.” 

Thewlis threw in his own two cents. “The scene needed a little levity, regardless. Rather too morose even for my tastes.”

“We’ll go with this take. Nice job ad-libbing, people.” Huh, what do you know? 

“Finally, now someone get this ruddy fake eye off of me!” Brendan demanded rather gleefully.

St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. August 2006.

Being arguably the oldest hospital in England, and quite open to film crews and studios, St Bartholomew’s was the ideal location to shoot the St Mungo’s scenes.

We were given permission to set up and dress a small disused ward, which still carried the history of the previous millennium, into the Permanent Spell Damage Ward. Alongside the extras to fill out the beds, the call sheet mostly listed me, Rupert, Emma, and Karen Gillan.

Seeing as it was very much his time to shine, Dan Radcliffe got first listing on the sheet today. 

One person missing, though, was Kenneth Brannagh. He’d declined his reprisal of Gilderoy Lockhart, citing the completion of the character’s arc. But my nose caught the manure in that statement right away - he just didn’t want to do it. So we’d had to cut his part out.

Either way, another legend of British cinema would join us today instead. 

Fresh off the set of Atonement, our newest colleague traded her pearls for a stuffed vulture hat. 

[“Friends of yours, Neville, dear?” Came Venessa Redgrave’s smoky voice; stern and domineering as Augusta Longbottom.

Dan, as Neville, sat hunched on the stool beside his father’s bed. He peered, unsurely and accusingly at us, over his shoulder. “Yes, gran.”

Augusta hovered close to me and stuck out a veiny, clawlike hand for me to shake. “I know who you are, of course. Neville speaks most highly of you.”

“Er…thanks.” I shook her hand politely, but my eyes met Neville’s. His gaze left mine and dropped to his shoes as a blush stole over his face. 

Augusta moved down the train of confused teens. “And you two are clearly Weasleys. Fine people.” Regal hands snatched, fixed, and shook limp wrists. “You must be Hermione Granger. Neville’s told me all about you. Helped him out of a few sticky spots, haven’t you? He’s a good boy, but he hasn’t got his father’s talent, I’m afraid to say.”

“Is that your dad, Neville?” All heads snapped to the patient near Neville. My foot slammed down on Ron’s toes.

“What’s this?” Augusta was as sharp as the talons of the bird on her head. “Haven’t you told your friends about your parents, Neville?” Neville’s gaze left the floor and shot to the ceiling, his shoulders somehow dropping even more. He shook his head. No words came from him, just a tired sigh. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud!” She scolded with lips pursed, purse clutched - ready to swat her grandson.

And suddenly, Neville wasn’t so mousy anymore. The steel he’s been cultivating during the DA poked through. His eyes snapped angrily to his grandmother and bore into her. “I’m not ashamed!” He straightened and looked at us. His voice wavered ever so slightly, but ultimately remained as firm as his new found spine. “My mother and father, Frank and Alice Longbottom.” He paused. “They were tortured into insanity by Bellatrix LeStrange and the rest of you-know-who’s lot.” He searched each one of our faces. Hermione and Ginny clasped their hands over their mouths. Ron looked away, ashamed. I just stared right back at him. 

“Highly gifted, the pair of them. I — yes, Alice dear, what is it?” Augusta attempted to go on before being interrupted by Alice Longbottom. Neville stood up immediately. She looked waiflike in her nightdress. She shuffled over in fuzzy bedroom slippers the same colour of white as her wispy hair. Her unseeing eyes floated over us and zeroed in on her son. She gestured timidly at something held in her fist. “Neville, take it, whatever it is…” 

But he’d already done so and stared at the crumpled gum wrapper unraveling slowly in his palm. “Thanks Mum.” Her gift given, she strolled away back to her bed. He glared defiantly at all of us. Daring us to laugh at this most private moment. No one did.

“Well, we’d better get back. Very nice to have met you all. Neville put that wrapper in the bin. She must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now.” Augusta made for the exit, with Neville trailing her steps.

“Yes, gran.” But as we parted for them, I and the camera both focused on Neville slipping the wrapper into his pocket.”]

The scene quickly concluded from there. 

“Hey, Dan?” I sought Radcliffe as we wrapped and the crew got to clearing the set.

“Yeah, mate?”

“You killed it.”

Leavesden Studios, UK. September 4th 2006.

[“G’day, mates! Here we are, deep in the heart of the Forbidden Forest, on the lookout for some magical creatures! And who do we have guiding us? None other than the legendary wizard himself, Harry Potter!” Steve Irwin spoke directly into the camera as both he and I trudged over the leafy set. 

This was our second day filming and his first day not dead (even if he didn’t, and would never, know that.)

“Wands at the ready, everyone. I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with creatures here. Everything from acromantulas to werewolves, and plenty in between, including the dispossessed spirits of murderous wizards.” I stayed with the bit as he and I slunk around the trees.

“Ah, don’t you worry, Harry! We’re in for a ripper of an adventure! Now, let’s see what kind of magical critters we can find!” We parted a bush and poked our heads through. “Crikey, would you look at that, mate! We’ve stumbled upon Nagini, the infamous snake companion of You-Know-Who himself! Let’s see if we can’t get a closer look, eh?”

Steve approached the consummate actor that was Nagini, who’d been placed coiled on the ground. “Now, in actuality, this snake is a reticulated python usually found in the dense tropical jungles of South and SouthEast Asia.” He gently hefted the docile snake and placed it over his shoulders. “They’re constrictors by nature, and don’t carry any venom.”

The snake hissed. “Let me translate. I’m a parselmouth. Hesss siyah hesth. Yeah, she says ‘why don’t I take a bite out of you and you tell me if I’m venomous or not.’”

“Whoa, she’s angry! But tell you what, know what’ll get her to calm down?”

“My demise?”

“Nah, mate! Let’s take her home. You got anyway we can fly out of this forest?”

“I might.” I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled across the clearing. The animatronic Buckbeak trotted out from behind a boulder.

“What a beauty! These magnificent wings of a Hippogriff can take us clear from Scotland to Vietnam in no time flat.” I hopped on and pulled Steve up behind me.

The robotic wings unfurled. “Hang on, tight!”

The camera swiped up and away, as we descended back into reality.]

I dusted off my pants as Steve jumped off and handed the python back to her handler. “That was dynamite! Reckon the kids’ll love that little TV spot. When d’you think it’ll come out?”

“Next year in the summer sometime. Closer to the movie’s release. And seriously, thanks again for taking the time to come all the way here and shoot this.”

Good thing Australia was such a massive market for the HP franchise and my stunt at SDCC had given Heyman enough confidence in my marketing strategies, so he stuck his neck out and went with it.

“No worries, mate.” Tell that to the hair I pulled out trying to get your and WB’s approval when I made the plan to set this up. “Wasn’t doing much of anything, anyways. Weather’s been pissing down on the reef this past week, so I was only piddling in the shallows for me daughter’s show.” Why don’t you take that stingray and stab my heart with it? “Thanks for the massive donation, by the way.” Ben was pulling his hair out, too.“Bring the crew down to Oz next time. We’ll see how you handle some real beasties.”

“Deal. As long as you stay alive till then.”

We were clowning on the outside, but I had proverbial tears on the inside. “Don’t you worry, fella. Only way I’m dyin’ is old age!”

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