Horcrux
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horcurx
(n.)
An object in which a warlock, wizard or witch has hidden a fragment of his or her soul in order to later attain immortality. Horcruxes can only be created after committing a supreme act of evil — corporate insolvency, forgetting to register a charge, splitting an infinitive — that kind of thing. Therefore lots were generated in the wake of the global financial crisis, and to this day practitioners of dark arts (eg credit officers) may still invoke them to ward off over-enthusiastic salespeople.
Horcruxes in current circulation
The most famous Horcrux takes the form of an Iron Mountain box stuffed with personal effects and deal bibles. It is the “Lehman”. Since it first emerged in late 2008, the Lehman has been an ever-present weapon in the armoury of those devilish advocates, buy-side legal eagles. These men and women are all of Slytherin:[2] they wield their magical spells in the service of the Dark Lord of the Swaps — yea; he who shall not be named; the very master of the universe himself, against the righteous forces of the First Men, whose heroes one typically finds defending the ramparts of the worshipful company of broker-dealers.
So, for more than a decade, pandaemonium reigned. The dark armies advanced, all but unchecked. They ransacked the shires and, where they encountered any resistance had only to mention the Lehman horcrux to reduce brave defenders to quivering goose-flesh. Sell-side negotiators were defenceless against such deep magic.
A prophecy is fulfilled
But then a wild-haired prophet[3] came down from the high mountain and stood\before the townspeople. “Children of the Forest!” he cried. “I teach you the Superman!”[4]
“For it is foretold that a new force born of ordinary, mortal, deplorable retail investors, rise out of the swamp to vanquish the Dark Lord of the Swaps. Just remember, you reddit here first!”
The townsfolk laughed and pelted poor Zarathustra with rotten vegetables.
“There they stand,” said he to his heart; “there they laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears.”
But yea, in the year 2021 it came to pass. Of the low-born retail investors emerged a counter-Horcrux of great power: at least as powerful as the Lehman. Advancing buy-sider soldiers were stopped in their tracks; bogged down; beaten off. What is this new sorcery? They cried.
The forces stood at an impasse for weeks. No quarter was given. Then, a single, small, brave prime broker clambered out of her trench, stood up and walked calmly into a clearing, utterly unarmed, waving a margin lock-up in front of her.
What the hell is she doing?
The little negotiator raised the lock-up above her head, and tore it into pieces.
Her friends quailed from their trench. “Someone stop her! This is suicide! She will kill all of us!”
The buyside soldiers pulled back the arms of their monstrous trebuchets.
But then she shrieked, “EXPECTO GameStopGAMESTOPIBUS!!!” And there, in the sky, a luminous, snorting apparition appeared. The trebuchets imploded. A monstrous wind flattened the buy-side encampments and their mercenary forces scattered to the four winds.
See also
References
- ↑ Actually this may be an actual undead Lehman employee.
- ↑ Or, at a pinch, the darker recesses of Ravenclaw: at any rate, there are no Hufflepuffians or Gryffindoran alumni in their throng.
- ↑ Look, a fellow can dream. okay? About having hair, at any rate.
- ↑ “Humankind should be overcome. What have you done to overcome it? All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: do you want to be the ebb of this great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome yourself?” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra