InsaneJournal

Red Serpent: the DVD extras
Red Serpent: the DVD extras

Chapter One: M's Man - Chapter Two: A Bar With A Reputation - Chapter Three: Dinner For Two - Chapter Four: Small Spaces and Close Encounters - Chapter Five: The Howl Of The Wolf - Chapter Six: To Travel Lustfully... - Chapter Seven: Arrival At The Truth - Chapter Eight:'You Damn Traitor!' - Chapter Nine: A Cold Final Kiss - Chapter Ten: Gunpowder Against Curses - Chapter Eleven: The Serpent's Head - Chapter Twelve: An Unexpected Pair of Boots



Why does the internet need a Snupin Bond fic anyway?
Because Dolores Jane Umbridge is Colonel Rosa Klebb by another name. That was probably the starting point anyway. I remember realising that at least six years ago now.

Colonel Klebb is an absolute toad of a woman.

It was an ugly face, toadlike, under the powder and under the tight cottage-loaf of white hair. The eyes were so light brown as to be almost yellow. The pale lips were wet and blubbery below the fringe of nicotine-stained moustache.

Fleming, Ian, From Russia With Love (Pan Books Ltd.: London, 1964) p.204

Umbridge too.

He thought she looked just like a large, pale toad. She was rather squat with a broad, flabby face, as little neck as Uncle Vernon and a very wide, slack mouth. Her eyes were large, round and slightly bulging. Even the little black velvet bow perched on top of her short curly hair put him in mind of a large fly she was about to catch on a long sticky tongue.

Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury: London, 2003) p.134 (British hardback edition)


Unfinished poster idea.

---this document classified under the highest security---eyes only---

Both the head of MI6 and MI7 go by the epithet ‘M’. It helps to conceal the existence of the Magical Intelligence department. If you know about MI7, you will know which M signed it. Both of the men known as M enjoy a quite game of bowls and can occasionally be seen taking tea together. They call each other ‘Miles’ and ‘Albus’, which would seem to demonstrate a certain level of familiarity.

The Wizarding World is separate from the Muggle one, of course, but the Secret Service is one of its few overlaps. Since the first M – a Mr. M. Holmes, who discovered the Wizarding World in a quite brilliant piece of deduction that he never even breathed a hint of to his brother, let alone the garrulous Dr. Watson – the heads of Muggle and Magical Intelligence have found it beneficial to at least acknowledge each other’s existence, if only behind closed doors. After all, threats to the country can come from either side of the magical divide or, worse, both. Goodness only knows what would have happened to the world if Hitler and Grindelwald’s proposed pact had not been sabotaged by the collaboration between the then wizarding operative A- D- and the muggle spy George S-. Indeed, the success of this mission was certainly the reason for A- D- rising to the rank of M after the war.

---end extract---document to be destroyed---



Who needs gay spies?
Everyone. Even Fleming knows that.

'Retired officers of the Indian Army,' Bond had pronounced, 'can't possibly understand the thought processes of a Burgess or a Maclean. They won't even know such people exist - let alone be in a position to frequent their cliques and get to know their friends and their secrets. Once Burgess and Maclean went to Russia, the only way to make contact with them again and, perhaps when they got tired of Russia, turn them into double agents against the Russians, would have been to send their closest friends to Moscow and Prague and Budapest with orders to wait until one of these chaps crept out of the masonry and made contact. And one of them, probably Burgess, would have been driven to make contact by his loneliness and by his ache to tell his story to someone. (1) But they certainly wouldn't take the risk of revealing themselves to some man with a trench-coat and a cavalry moustache and a beta minus mind.'
'Oh really,' Troop had said with icy calm. 'So you suggest we should staff the organisation with long-haired perverts. That's quite an original notion. I thought we were all agreed that homosexuals were about the worst security risk there is. I can't see the Americans handing over many atom secrets to a lot of pansies soaked in scent.'
'All intellectuals aren't homosexual. And many of them are bald. I'm just saying that ...,'

(1) Written in March 1956. I.F.

Fleming, Ian, From Russia With Love (Pan Books Ltd: London, 1964) pp.82-83


Why do KGB men always come in threes? One to write a report, one to read it, and one to check up on the 2 intellectuals.
- Soviet joke


Biggles on Communists:

’But the man’s a Communist!’
‘So what? I have yet to meet a Communist who wasn’t interested in money. It’s not having any that makes him a Communist. He wants some, and the only way he can think of to get it is, as he hopes, by getting his hands into the pockets of those who have.’
‘Communists hate capitalists.’
‘Of course. But they’d all be capitalists if they knew how.’

Johns, Captain W. E., Biggles Follows On (Armada, 1972) pp.55-56




Bolshevists do make the most embarrassing dinner party guests.

“I know not what this young man has done: I care less. In Russia such trifles matter not. He has the appearance of a bourgeois, therefore he must die. Did we not kill thousands – aye, tens of thousands of his kidney, before we obtained the great freedom? Are we not going to do the same in this accursed country?” His voice rose to the shrill, strident tone of the typical tub-thumper. “What is this wretched man,” he continued, waving a hand wildly at Hugh, “that he should interrupt the great work for one brief second? Kill him now – throw him in a corner, and let us proceed.”
He sat down again, amidst a further murmur of approval, in which Hugh joined in heartily.
“Splendid,” he murmured. “A magnificent peroration. Am I right, sir, in assuming that you are what is vulgarly known as a Bolshevist?”
The man turned his sunken eyes, glowing with the burning fires of fanaticism, on Drummond.
“I am one of those who are fighting for the freedom of the world,” he cried harshly, “for the right to live of the proletariat. The workers were the bottom dogs in Russia till they killed the rulers. Now – they rule, and the money they earn goes into their own pockets, not those of incompetent snobs.” He flung his arms out wildly. “It is freedom; it is the dawn of the new age.” He seemed to shrivel up suddenly, as if exhausted with the violence of his passion. Only his eyes still gleamed with the smouldering madness of his soul.

McNeile, Cyril “Sapper”, Bull-Dog Drummond (Hodder and Stoughton Ltd: London, 1920, fifty-fifth edition 1933) p.171



And some icons. Credit if you take, please, and if anyone asks where you got them from do advertise!