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He looked at me with unexpected glee and said hopefully, "Are we playing Harry And Voldemort, The Ministers Of Magic?"

"Yes," I said firmly.

"Excellent!" he enthused, clapping his hands and Summoning a piece of paper and a quill, with which he drew a rough map of Britain. He headed this, "PROTECT AND SURVIVE (Magical version)".

"Right," he said. "We find someone intelligent with good literary skills..."

"Hermione," I put in.

"We get Hermione to draw public safety leaflets, and... is that the Muggle genius? These leaflets do have to be understandable to complete morons, you know."

"She's not a Muggle, she's Muggle-born. I'll get Ron to proofread," I decided. "They'll do it all right between them."

"Right. First we have to explain what a nuclear war is, because when they see the word 'war' they'll expect it to go on for six years."

"Oh. OK, 'All the Muggle cities will be destroyed within seconds'..."

"Within a millisecond of impact, actually, Harry."

"How long is a millisecond?"

"True. 'A massive explosion will destroy the Muggle cities within seconds. The effects of the explosion will remain deadly for at least a month.' So, anyone living in a city has to clear out immediately. I'll send Lucius to tell the Ministry to shift itself, there's no earthly reason why it should be in London, everyone Apparates or Floos there anyway..."

"Where do the evacuated people live? Hogsmeade?"

"They wouldn't fit," said Voldemort, who was happily scribbling out London, Manchester and Glasgow. "We'll just tell them to find a new place in the country. Take over Muggle houses. What? They're all going to die anyway! Oh, all right, we'll find them empty Muggle houses, all right? I'll send Wormtail to find them, the rats always know. Next, we have to shift St. Mungo's! I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided to put the hospital in bloody Central London, which is 100 certain to be the first place to be bombed in any war."

He drew in a new hospital in the Welsh Mountains, then sighed dispiritedly, "Now we have to try to explain to them what thermal radiation is."

I thought. "It makes you glow in the dark."

"Pardon? — That's ionising radiation, Potter. I'm on about thermal radiation. X-rays. Ultraviolet. Infra-red. Light! Well, admittedly, X-rays and gamma rays are ionising too, but..." Blah.

This went completely over my head apart from the bit about ultraviolet, which I was vaguely aware meant UV. "It gives you cancer."

"That's in small doses, Potter, over a long period of time. This would be a single huge dose, like incredibly powerful sunburn, since the exploding bomb is ten-to-the-power-of-sixteen times brighter than the sun."

"OK, say that."

"Oh. — It's all so simple for you, isn't it?"

"Well, you just said it!"

"Fine, fine. So, we have to find an impossibly patient person to tell the massed morons about thermal radiation..."

"Professor Lupin," I said.

"You must really hate him. All right, Professor Lupin explains that when a nuclear bomb explodes it gives off a very bright flash of light that can cause third-degree burns twenty miles away... well, probably more like seven or eight miles in this day and age, actually. Anyway, they must stay inside their houses with the shutters closed, unless they want their family members to ignite like flashbulbs." Voldemort drew a little Hogwarts in the Highlands and added the notation Lupin. "Then he teaches them an Invisibility Charm. Well. He teaches the adults, anyway. Can you cast one?"

"No, we haven't done that yet."

"Oh, sod," he sighed, picturing the entire younger generation going up in smoke.

"I've got an Invisibility Cloak anyway."

"Well, you can't hide the whole witzy population of Great Britain under it... Of course, provided we get everyone more than ten miles from the nearest town, we won't need anything anyway. I don't think it would hurt to show it to them, though, do you?"

"Er."

"Quite. So then poor Professor Lupin must teach it to our idiotic brethren."

"He won't mind. He's had worse jobs."

"Really? Anyway, he explains infra-red, he explains EMP... well, actually, he doesn't..."

"What's EMP?"

"Electro-Magnetic Pulse. We'll skip that. Witzies don't use electrical equipment anyway. Theoretically it might affect our ability to use magic, since magic interferes with electricity and vice versa and the EMP would be much greater than anything we'd experienced before. But I've no idea and there's no way of finding out, apart from having a war."

"Better not, then."

"Funnily enough, no."

"It seems odd that just when we'd need magic most, we might find out it had vanished."

Voldie showed all his teeth and said "I think you may have summed up every civil defence scheme ever. To quote that horrendous line from I forget where, 'Unforeseen effects of the war should be assumed to equal or exceed predicted effects'."

"Right."

"I love your face. Ha ha! You look as if you're revising for a three-hour Arithmancy test."

"I don't do Arithmancy."

"It shows. Never mind. Where were we?"

"EMP."

"Yes, yes, we skip that. All right, your teacher friend explains to the common fools about the blast, and tells them to strengthen their foundations and open their windows. — Do they understand bombs, d'you think?"

"They must do, cos they've got Dungbombs, haven't they? Hey," I said, experiencing a sudden revelation, "is it possible to stick a radiation charm in a hat?"

"In a hat! Ha! Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Fred and George Weasley do Shielding Hats! The Ministry buys them."

"Fred and George — would they own the pink flashing shop in Diagon Alley?" he said with an expression of the deepest distaste.

"That's them!" I said enthusiastically.

"Hm... we'll draw a veil over that. In any case, a Lead Shield Charm would work very badly, but a Röntgen Charm would be a handy thing to have in, oh, a wristband."

"Right, Fred and George make Ready Röntgen Wristbands," I decided.

"As long as they don't spell 'wristband' with an R."

"OK."

"And we could put little sirens in them that'll sound when the bomb drops. So, Lupin hands out wristbands and then tries to explain to them about ionising radiation... dear god, we've done all this planning and we haven't even got to radiation yet."

We both looked at the map. Voldemort decisively relocated Weasley's Wizard Wheezes to Hogsmeade, adding a note that read, Pink flashing wristbands.

"So, we have to tell them what radiation is."

"Invisible stuff that kills you," I suggested.

"I like your way with words, boy. All right, then we explain to them that the deadly rays can't penetrate a Shielding Charm to a two-inch lead equivalent. They understand solid things, don't they, boy? Lead, lead is dense, the invisible killer rays (and particles, but we'll skip that) can't get through two inches of lead... you think?"

"I'd go with that."

"So he teaches them how to cast a lead shield. — You can, can't you?"

"Er."

Protect And Survive (Magical version) was temporarily aborted while Voldie made me wave my wand and chant "Protego Plumbum". After a while a silvery Harry-shaped shield popped into existence, and he was satisfied.

"You're a good boy, Harry. You'll do all right. Are you going to learn some physics?"

"Er, I'd never really thought about it."

"I'd noticed. All right, Professor Lupin explains to them about radiation, and then... There's no need to warn them about the initial emission," he noted, "because everyone close enough to catch a dose would be incinerated. So it's the fallout they've got to watch out for."

"What is fallout?" I said, feeling stupid.

"Literally stuff that falls from the sky after the bombs drop. Rain, snow, soot, all of which are highly radioactive and have to be avoided for a month. Well, except for Wormtail, he can just turn into a rat. So they stay indoors for a month, existing on a stockpile of clean food and water... well, the Muggles always reckoned at least a month, but perhaps they were assuming it just wasn't feasible to stay underground for much longer... oh, well, anyway," he decided, chucking the pencil down, "that would keep the witzies alive until horrific climate change arrived, at which point we would all die except me; and frankly I think even I'd commit suicide at that point."