Harry and Dudley walked up behind the salesman, who was near the high point of his presentation.

  “...now see this sample bit of wall here?” The clerk spun it on the mount set into the counter. “On the back here, we’ve got a little bit of everything that could make a drill job go wrong. But we turn it back so we can’t see all that. First, lock the wall down. Now we set the depth and gauge of the hole we want...,”

  “No bits?” the customer mumbled through his unfashionably lush moustache.

  “Absolutely none, sir! Our patented Expandable Sliding Core technology makes them obsolete! Any size up to an inch across, any depth up to a foot, and in any material you can name! Wood, rock, concrete, tile...”

  “What about sharpening?”

  “SELF-sharpening, my good man. And watch!” He put the business end of the drill to the wall and pulled the trigger. A red SQ flashed in a small display on the back of the drill. “See? I’m not square with the wall. If I needed to drill at an angle, I would have to override that.”

  He put the muzzle at various places on the wall and pulled the trigger. “There’s a water pipe. There’s an electrical line. There’s a phone wire. There’s a nail in the stud right behind this spot. There’s nothing behind this spot, but we’re off the stud. (Various two letter codes flashed up as he demonstrated). And there! Perfect!” The drill made a whirring sound that seemed slightly fake to Harry.

  The moustached man leaned in and examined the crisp little hole. “No sawdust?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Saf-T-Drill grinds it up so fine, it’s just powder. Hard to see even if you’re looking for it.”

  Harry knew this was a bit of a stretcher. The drill actually used a very precise Defodio Spell to gouge the hole, and a Vanishing Spell to get rid of the ejecta.

  “And you can’t even nick yourself on the bit! Look!” He put the drill against the palm of his other hand and pulled the trigger. The letters ID, IO, and T! flashed up in quick succession. “The bit will NOT come out unless it’s to do the job you set it for! AND it’s in and out so fast, you can barely see it!”

  “What if the power goes bad?”

  “Lifetime Warranty, sir! All D&W products are guaranteed for life. And it’s very unlikely to go bad, sir. Our patented Wireless Rechargeable Built-In Battery Pack is supremely reliable. Just plug this small separate unit in somewhere near where you store your tools, and your Saf-T-Drill will always be ready to go. And you’ll be amazed how little power it uses.” (That part was true, Harry supposed. ‘None’ was about as little as anything could get).

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I just like working on my own tools,” the man grumbled.

  “Work on what, sir?” The salesman sounded just a trifle exasperated. Dudley and Harry grinned at each other.

  “Look!” The salesman slammed the drill to the floor, snatched it out of the air as it bounced head high, turned to the wall and drilled another perfect hole. “Lifetime Warranty, sir! Uni-Body construction, sir! To get it open, you’d have to break it, sir, and you would never, ever get it put back together.” The salesman paused, breathing a little heavy.

  “Oh, all right. Give me the bloody thing. But I want a different one, not one you’ve been chucking about.”

  “Very good, sir.” The salesman brought a sealed box out from under the counter. “Just sign here.”

  The moustached man looked wary. “I’m paying cash.”

  “Company policy, sir. We don’t let a product go out the door without a name and current address for the purchaser.” The man grunted, threw down the exact change, scribbled hurriedly and grabbed the box to go.

  “Thank you sir! I hope you enjoy many years of... Whew! What’s that smell?”

  Beside Harry, Dudley turned purple, (strongly reminding Harry of Uncle Vernon for a moment). He leapt forward, grabbing the contract from the nerveless fingers of the startled clerk.

  “RED!” he bellowed. “Come back here, you!” The moustached man darted a wide-eyed look over his shoulder, and broke for the door. Dudley held the paper work above his head, and roared, “THIS CONTRACT IS VOID!!” He ripped the papers into two ragged halves and tossed them. They flashed into fire in mid-air and disappeared.

  Someone leaving had just released the door from outside. The moustached man hit the opening at a full run, box held in front of him. At the plane of the door, the box stopped dead. The man ran into it, his feet going right out from under him, and he landed flat on his back. Scrambling back up, he turned to see Dudley, stalking towards him.

  “Who are you with?” Dudley growled in a low menacing rumble. “Grunnings? Kraftywerx? The Hong Kong Consortium? They’ve all been warned.” The man started to back through the door, away from the unfairly large and somewhat ape-like thing that Dudley seemed to have become. The box stopped again at the plane of the exit. The man wrenched at it. He could slide it left, right, up and down, but it would NOT go through. Dudley stretched out his massive hands.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Dudley. “I just hope that moustache is real.” His hands slowly went through the air above the box, as the man leaned back, still desperately pulling.

  “‘Cause I’m going to yank it out,” Dudley said calmly. “One. Clump. At a time.”

  The man’s nerve broke. He released the box, (which Dudley neatly caught), fell backwards, scrambled to his feet again, and took off at a dead run down the sidewalk.

  Inside the store there was another moment of frozen silence, broken by a clear, loud shout from near the back wall.

  “WOO!! MIS-TER D!!” All the staff and most of the customers, (and the bell over the door), started cheering and clapping. Dudley waved one hand genially.

  “That’s ENOUGH!” he bellowed, in a much friendlier tone. “Back to work!”

  He walked back over to Harry and the justifiably nervous clerk. Dudley immediately held up a calming hand.

  “Not your fault, Jeremy. No harm, no foul. I’m guessing that was your first Code Red?”

  Jeremy nodded vigorously. “It was different in training, Mr. Dursley. And nobody mentioned the smell.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to check with your trainer, that really should have come up. And you don’t have to put on a show like I did. As long as you declare the contract void and tear it up, you’re fine. If the product is inside the door, it can’t get out. If it’s already outside, it calls for help.”

  Jeremy nodded intelligently. “Like a GPS signal, Mr. Dursley?”

  One side of Dudley’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah, more or less. Either way, our Loss and Prevention staff can handle it from there. And, hey, you call me Mr. D, like the rest. That was a fine sales pitch you did, even if it went to waste. You’re going to fit in well!”

  Jeremy flushed. “Thanks, Mr. D!”