The story of the three little pigs is a famous story that has been told through
generations. However, the story is not entirely true. It is very much one-sided
because it has has only been told from the pigs point of view. So I, Mr.Woolfe,
will attempt to set the story straight by telling you what really happened. First of
all, let me take you back to when it all started.
My wife and I and our two kids lived in our peaceful little home in the
elmwoods. I knew it was a good place to live because it was safe…that is, until the boars moved into town. Word is, they were kicked out of their last neighbouhood because all the animals there had had enough of them. Apparently they would wreak havoc and act like they owned the place. Rumours started to spread through our neighbourhood about the things they had done in the neighbourhood where they had lived previously. A lot of the animals in the area started to worry for their safety, so much that many of them left town. But I decided that I wasn’t going to let a bunch of pigs frighten me out of town, I was determined to stand my ground.
One day I went to get some bread and milk from the dairy, when all of a
sudden into the dairy came the boars. Immediately they started to fill their bags with food, and when they were done, they headed straight for the door. I was fed up with their rude behavior, so I said to them,“Hey mud faces! You gonna pay for that!?” They stopped and looked at me surprisingly, and then looked intimidatingly over at the dairy owner and said to him “you tell this dog who we are”, and the owner replying in a frightened voice said “y…y…yes boys it’s alright”. As they continued on to the door, one of them turned to me and said “watch your back woolfe, you don't know who you’re messing with!” But I wasn't afraid.
Shortly after the boars moving in, the town became desolate because a lot of
the residents had left. A lot of my friends had moved away and I was led to think
“why did this have to happen now, when everything in my life was perfect?”. I had a nice house and a beautiful family. And just when things couldn’t get any worse, my wife took our kids and left me because I wasn’t prepared to leave town.
As you could imagine, I had pretty much had enough, and I just couldn’t take anymore. I was determined to make those boars pay. Legend has it that that all wolves descend from the Great warewolf ‘Wolf-tang’ who had the ability to transform into a vicious beast when he became furious, and as his descendants we had inherited the same ability. I’m not normally one to resort to violence but this was an exception. With all this fury in me I had turned into this vicious beast. I advanced over to the boar’s house and knocked on the door of his straw house and said “hey boar! let me in, or Ill huff and Ill puff and Ill blow your house in!” when he saw who was knocking on his door he cried “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”. So I huffed and I puffed and I blew his house in. His house came tumbling down, but he ran away to his brothers house down the street. Before I could get to him he had already got to his brothers house.
So I took off to his brothers house, and saw that it was made of stick, I said “Hey coward! Let me in, or Ill huff and Ill puff and Ill blow your house in!” and he said “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin” so I blew his house in. They both ran next door to their brother’s brick house. I knocked on the door and said “let me in or Ill huff and Ill puff and Ill blow your house down”, and he said “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”. So I started to blow and blow but I couldn’t get it to fall. So I thought about going through the chimney, but I could see smoke coming out of it. I then snuck in through the back door and went inside to deal with these fools. It was three onto one, but I only had to throw a few punches and put in a few drop kicks to the face, and they were out cold. I was so fast that they were all seeing stars by the time you could say ‘don’t mess with me’. And so I left it at that. As a result, the boars moved away and were never heard of after that. I only hope that they learnt their lesson.
The animals who moved away have all since moved back and the town is thriving once again. And whats better, my wife and kids have returned too. All the animals think I’m a hero for saving the town, but I don’t think Im a hero. I’m just a dog trying to live my life, that’s all.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Setting the story straight
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Finished Product
Harry watched the retreating form of Snape from the grounds with a mixture of anger, fear and confusion. He was utterly alone on the high tower. Gazing over the edge, he could just make out the crumpled form of his dear friend and mentor Albus Dumbledore on the ground below. In a blind panic, Harry ran back down the stairs, barely aware of the curses and hexes blowing holes in the walls around him. His heart ached for effort and for grief as he ran around the perimeter of the school to the place where Dumbledore lay.
Tears streamed from his eyes as he laid hands on the lifeless Headmaster of Hogwarts. Suddenly jumping to his feet, Harry ran back into the school and made his way to Dumbledore’s quarters. Curiously, the entranceway was already open and as Harry ventured in he found that the same was true of the door. He decided to ignore this fact for now and instead busied himself looking for something he could use to mend this terrible situation.
‘There must be something!’ he screamed in a frustration. A thought suddenly struck him like a wet towel, ‘What can restore somebody back to life? The only thing I can think of is the blood of a…’ he stopped short, the sentence left unfinished on his lips
Harry turned slowly and looked at Fawkes, who looked straight back at him, an expression of what must have been reproach on his birdly features. ‘…Phoenix’ Harry concluded. He tilted his head slightly and regarded the Phoenix with a half-glazed look of curiosity. His eyes twinkled ominously. Fawkes croaked uneasily
Harry’s eyes wandered from the sword of Godric Gryffindor mounted on the wall and then back to Fawkes, who was now regarding him with a look of tentative flippancy. Harry looked again at the sword, then back to Fawkes, then back to the sword again. Fawkes’ eyes darted from the sword, then back to Harry Potter. All pretence aside, Fawkes began gnaw at the tether around his ankle as beads of sweat fell from his feathered hide and sizzled in his ashtray. Without a moments notice Harry lunged at Fawkes and in one fluid movement grabbed the sword of the wall and lopped off the ill-fated firebird’s head.
Fawkes let out an almighty scream and Harry, without a seconds delay, began looking for a receptacle with which to gather the blood. He searched through the drawers of Dumbledore’s desk and suddenly stumbled upon something that made him wince.
The severed head and respective body burst into flames and a highly irritated but wholly reanimated Fawkes came squawking from the ashes. Harry remained crouched behind the desk trying to gather the courage to face his angry victim.
A weak voice issued from behind the desk, ‘Sorry Fawkes’. Slowly Harry stood up from behind the desk with a sheepish grin on his face and a small golden hourglass in his hand. He shrugged. Fawkes just glared at him and muttered something under his breath.
Hermione and Ron burst in to the room, smiling and breathing heavily. Hermione started speaking without looking up ‘Harry, all is well, the Death Eaters are gone and as it turns out – Harry?’ she looked up to find Dumbledore’s office uninhabited save for a newborn Phoenix staring aghast at a bloody sword on the ground. Ron began to catch up with the pace of events ‘What happened in here then? Where’s Harry?’
But Harry was long gone by then. Although it is hard to say one is long gone when one is hurtling backwards through time itself. Harry arrived precisely in time to see Snape and Draco Malfoy making a beeline up to the high tower.
‘Infinito Probabiliatus’ Harry roared.
Where once there were two wicked hearted wizards there now sat a fully grown sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias. Without sparing a moment to run them through the finer points of existentialism Harry continued on his way up the tower taking two steps for every stride. He reached the top and found Dumbledore, alive and well, leaning against the battlements, smoking his pipe with a disturbing air of nonchalance. ‘Okay Severus, Draco, let’s do this’ he said as he whirled around, then with a look of surprise he exclaimed, ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here?’ his pipe falling from his mouth and landing with a loud crack on the stone.
‘I’m here to save you Professor, I just stopped Malfoy and Snape on their way up here to disarm and kill you!’ replied a breathless Harry
‘You’re kidding’ said Dumbledore with an unnerving lack of concern
Harry picked up on this and replied, nervous and confused, ‘No sir, they were running with their wands and everything, but it’s okay, I turned them into a sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias’
Albus Dumbledore closed his eyes and pinched his nose-bridge between his thumb and forefinger ‘Harry did you really think a stupid little git like Draco and a sub-par Potions teacher would be able to disarm and kill the most powerful wizard in the known world?’
Harry couldn’t answer that but he tried anyway, despite his near-mute better judgement ‘But, I thought -’
‘Did you?!’ Dumbledore interrupted, 'did you really think Harry?! Or did you just do what you always do and just acted without thinking?! By the ever loving mother of Merlin you can be so stupid sometimes Harry!’
Harry became immediately defensive ‘Hang on a moment…I saw you die!’ he crowed as if he had won some unspoken dispute.
Dumbledore sighed in resignation ‘Harry, you saw no such thing, what you really saw was a very carefully orchestrated and apparently successful farce designed to mislead Voldemort and simultaneously fulfil the terms of Snape’s Unbreakable Vow. I was to die and fall from the tower while Snape and Draco were to go and join the Death Eaters, under rather impressive credentials I might add, and then at an opportune moment they would slip some broccoli into one of Voldemort’s salads, he’s terribly allergic you see. Meanwhile, once the Death eaters were gone, Ron and Hermione were to come out of hiding in the bushes at the foot of the tower and give me a dose of Phoenix blood that Fawkes was kind enough to supply us with,’ at this Harry winced again and decided it best not to mention his earlier misdemeanour, ever, Dumbledore continued ‘Then with Voldemort incapacitated or possibly dead, we are unsure yet just how allergic he is, and myself alive once more, the Order and I would go around making sure he was properly dead and finishing of his little band of miscreants once and for all,’
It took a moment for the plan, and the immediate consequences of his actions to sink in, but before they had a chance his indignation caught up with his remorse, ‘Hey! How come I was the only one left out of this little plan of yours’ he whined, while searching his memory for anyone else that might have been overlooked.
‘You weren’t, Mr. Filch was too, and Neville Longbottom!’ said Dumbledore ‘We left you out because of your alarming propensity to act on your emotions and screw everything up, and Mr. Filch is just a useless and embittered old man’
‘What about Neville?’ asked Harry, still trying to avoid the touchy subject of what was to come. His cheeks flushed and his ears burned.
‘Neville was involved, I was just trying to make you feel better’ muttered Dumbledore ruefully.
There was a painfully long silence…
'So, what now?' Harry ventured.
'Well Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'You used time-magic to change the course of history which resulted in the breaking of an Unbreakable Vow, not to mention giving away the clever deception to Voldemort. You tell me'
Hermione and Ron burst onto the parapet, frowning and breathing heavily. Hermione was carrying a rather attractive bowl of petunias, Ron looked utterly lost. 'What's happened here then? Why isn't Dumbledore down there? Harry you flapjack, what did you do?' but before Harry could defend himself 'Dumbledore stepped forward, 'Never mind that, let's get Professor Snape into the lake and would somebody please water Master Malfoy? Whatever the consequences of Harry's meddling with the very fabric of time and space are I am certain there will be little good in squatting up here waiting to find out'
As he said this the sky began to glow orange and great flaming meteors, too many to count, began to fall from the sky.
'Oh, good work Harry,' growled Ron, 'You've gone and initiated the apocalypse!'
'No I haven’t!' cried Harry, but not entirely convinced that he hadn’t, he added, 'I can fix it, I'll just use the spell on Snape again, then he can kill Dumbledore and set things right!'
'No good,’ replied Dumbledore, 'If you use Infinito Probabiliatus again the chances of you turning him back into “Snape” are infinity to one, you’ll more likely turn him into a small sun or an apricot tree or something even more inconvenient than his current form.'
He spoke these words as he walked down the stairs and was suddenly aware of the large crowd of Death Eaters that were assembled at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for them. Hermione coughed loudly and nudged Harry into the front, but before he could even draw his wand the side of the room exploded in an almighty inferno as a meteor collided with the castle wall, obliterating the nefarious crowd.
Moments later, Voldemort himself came marching down the hallway shouting out orders ahead of himself, 'Alright you lot, look sharp, Dumbledore will be coming down those stairs any minute now and if you – damn it all, why must all my minions be killed by meteors?! - Well, that's me then, I'm off!' and with a look of pained resignation he spun on his heel and fled the castle on his own.
There was silence for the first time in over an hour. Not only had the remaining Death Eaters cleared out but it seemed the meteors had also stopped falling. ‘Some Apocalypse,’ muttered Ron. The Earth gave an indignant quake and Ron quickly retracted his statement.
Renovations and repairs began immediately and Dumbledore had Slytherin commons converted into a laboratory for the examination of the meteor that had crashed into the building. Professor Snape was moved into the lake where he immediately began feasting greedily on Grindylows and Mermaids with gusto. Draco Malfoy was given a nice windowsill to perch on and some slugicide pellets.
The children spent many an evening gazing at the rocky surfaces of the cosmo-stone but nothing came of it. Eventually Dumbledore forbade students from wasting away their hours looking at it, but one night, after staring at it for a while he decided there was no sense in wasting his own time investigating it either but just as he was about to leave a small section of the stone began to glow. Without even thinking, Dumbledore touched his wand to the glowing spot and it immediately spread in a glowing ring around the stone. Jets of what appeared to be steam began pouring out as the meteor began to cleave along the glowing line and finally, like a great gaping cosmo-clam shell, the top half of the stone lifted up and a young boy stumbled out.
His appearance was as interesting as it was disturbing. The most striking thing was his enormous, glistening eyes, grossly out of proportion to his tiny nose and mouth. His mop of black hair was roughly matted down by a bright red baseball cap and he wore what appeared to be a mostly denim outfit, with red sneakers and a black tee shirt. On his belt was clipped what appeared to be a red metallic diary and some little wee orbs, half red, half gray.
‘Hi,’ said the stranger, ‘My names Ash, and this little yellow fellow…’ he gestured to a pitiful jaundiced rodent that had just this moment emerged from the meteor ‘…this is Pikachu’
Dumbledore started, but introduced himself all the same. The students at Hogwarts had a similar first impression but soon after took a shine to their ghastly new friend and his yellow companion. A number of weeks in, he and Pikachu managed to get a position helping Hagrid catch monsters in the forbidden forest and storing them in his “Pokeballs”. One afternoon, while Hagrid was enjoying a cup of tea on a stump in his pumpkin patch, Ash came tearing up the garden path from the direction of the forest. His eyes were wide with shock, he was flailing his arms wildly and for a second Hagrid would have sworn on his life he saw what appeared to be an enourmous, sky blue raindrop clinging to his head.
‘A meteor,’ he cried once he was within hearing range, ‘another meteor in the forest!’
Hagrid sat up, ‘We’d best tell Dumbledore about this’
Fifteen minutes later Ash, Hagrid and Dumbledore were standing around the recent discovery. Harry had insisted on coming along as well because, after all, he was still the protagonist of the story, even if he was a snotty opinionated protagonist. Dumbledore went through the same motions as he had with the last meteor. There was a hiss and a crack and a puff of cosmo-steam and there before their very eyes stood a young man with sandy blonde hair. His face was gentle and his eyes were resplendent and blue. His clothes consisted off a light tunic and tight fitting pants with shoes to match, all of which were a rather sickly off-cream colour. He stepped forward and drew a rather impressive glowing green sword that could rival even the mighty Sword of Gryffindor.
'My name is Luke Skywal-' he began, but Dumbledore cut him off, 'No need for formalities, my good man, we mean you no harm and I doubt you could do us any,' the fellow attempted to protest but again Dumbledore silenced him with a wave of his hand and asked simply, 'Can you cook?'
Luke nodded his head gingerly with a look of utter bewilderment on his face. He took over as head chef at Howarts and the students certainly didn't seem to notice, although all the food, even the coleslaw, from then on had a slightly scorched flavour to it as though cut with a red hot knife. Dumbledore was thrilled. His taste buds were too ancient to register the change in taste and he could work the out of towner for a pittance because he had no grasp of wizarding currency.
Harry could hear Dumbledore and Snape talking as he approached them at the dinner table that night, the distinct taste of char-grilled cucumber still ripe in his mouth.
'...and the best part is' said Dumbledore, 'I finally found a way of getting around those blasted House Elf Workers Unions set up by that infernal Hermione Granger, be sure to give her and her friends some grief net Potions for me would you?'. He trailed off as he noticed Harry coming nearer and groaned inwardly when the look on the boys face indicated he was about to whine about something.
'Dumbledore, I think I have an idea that could help us defeat Voldemort once and for all...' Harry hesitated, slighty perturbed by their apparent complete lack of interest in his idea, he started again more slowly, 'I couldn't help but notice that those two characters we got out of the meteors have a rather charismatic and confident air about them that I also share', Dumbledore and Snape both raised an eyebrow, Harry pressed on 'I think perhaps they possess a certain star quality which would be quite useful when taking on You-Know-Who'
Dumbledore groaned again, outwardly this time. Here he was going off on his "I-am-the-chosen-one-it-is-I-who-must-defeat-Voldemort" schtick again. However the boy was right in one sense, that the two recent employees did possess a certain air of confidence and strength, or perhaps it was just naivety. Either way, their ignorance of local knowledge would come in handy since they were just about the only ones around that didn't flinch when you said their enemy's name.
'Great idea Harry' he whispered and then straightened up to make an announcement, 'Students of Hogwarts I have just had a rather excellent idea!'. Harry's smug smile dropped instantly in font of the body of students. 'I will be assembling a group of students and some staff members to take part in a rather difficult and potentially dangerous quest. If you wish to apply simply see me after supper at the front of the great hall here.'
After the meal a large number of students flocked to the front and Dumbledore halved the group immediately by picking, seemingly at random, a large cluster of students who immediately began chattering excitedly about their quest until he dismissed them with the slightest amused grin curving up the edges of his mouth. In the wake of the disappointed and grumbling students, he began choosing students simply by pointing them out with his bony index finger. The list grew quickly as he shouted out the names:
'Neville, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Seamus, Dean, Cho, Fred, George, Draco, Crabbe, Goyle...' with these last three names, the conspicuously and primarily Gryffindor group scowled at them and the trio gave back as good as they got, '...and of course, for a group such as this we will need a student leader, someone with great magical ability, courage like a lions and a quick head on his shoulders...It seems obvious that choice will have to be none other than...' Ron looked disgusted but dewey eyed Hermione looked on, both of them as sure as the rest of the group as to who would be picked and yet also equally shocked by the last name called, 'Colin. Colin Creevey.'
An awkward, skinny white haired boy squealed with delight from somewhere in the throng. Harry rounded on Dumbledore in a right furor. 'THAT COTTON TOP SPAZ WITH THE CAMERA?!' he roared. 'Oh, Harry stop being such a prima donna,' sighed Dumbledore 'I have actually had it up to the tip of my tall pointy hat with your crap and frankly I would rather see this plan go horribly horribly wrong in the hands of the pasty little moron than see you traipsing off to save the day again with a stupid grin on your cocky little chops and trying your best not to look like a big headed twat which you invariably end up doing.' he turned back to his group leaving Harry with an expression of furious indignation plastered all over his cocky little chops. 'Now, the teachers that will be going are: Myself, of course, along with the Professors Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick and Hagrid, we will also take along our cosmo-chums for good measure'
And so it was settled and Harry was left to stew in the castle on his own, having all of his subjects canceled until further notice and none of his usual supporting characters around, he spent most of his time taking walks around the grounds, reading the letters that were being sent by his friends telling him of all the wonderful adventures they were having. Harry couldn't be sure, but he detected just a hint of gloating in their writing and he hated the way they signed off all the messages with 'Having Great Fun Without You, Ron & Hermione'
No matter, he had made new friends anyway. A small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy from the first years and a frizzy haired third year girl who was suffering from a bad case of wizard-acne, which we all know is ten times worse than muggle-acne. He had taken to calling them Ron and Hermione and shared with them all sorts of secrets and deeply personal facts that made the small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy go whiter still and the third year girl would blush, although you could hardly tell. They were too scared to tell Harry, but they did not enjoy the coercive friendship as much as he seemed to. When they pointed out that their names weren't Ron and Hermione, nor were they Bum and Hermiobum as he called them when he was in one of his moods, he would simply laugh derisively and say 'Of course you aren't, I know perfectly well what your names are!' and yet nothing changed.
Nothing, that is, except for the growing number of employees that seemed to be taking on positions at Hogwarts, bringing with them employment slips signed and sealed by Dumbledore himself.
There was an enourmous red, blue and gray robot who had the remarkable ability to transfigure himself into a flat-bed truck. He had taken over the role of transporting students between the school and the train station. He also washed dishes between transportational faculties. Harry made a witty remark about how he couldn't transform into a dishwasher. His new friends just laughed half-heartedly and flinched as he raised his hand to pat himself on the back.
Also now working at the castle was a new gardener who called himself simply Wolverine, although Harry hadn't the faintest idea why. Rumours and speculations began circulating about exactly what the well dressed man who called himself 'Bond' was doing with his time at Hogwarts. All they knew was that he seemed to get along well with the tall swarthy, mustichioed man who pranced about the castle in black leggings, masks and wide brimmed hats carving Z's into drapes and banners with his rapier.
A very small man, smaller even than Ron 2.0, with hairy feet and an inexplicably attractive gold ring on a chain around his neck had taken to working with Filch to keep an eye on students out past curfew. They weren't sure how he used to sneak up on them so easily and neither Harry nor Frodo got an explanation as to why one night while roaming the corridors, both of them ran headlong into an invisible entity that muttered obscenities and then seemed to scurry off in the other direction.
A tall, wild-haired, wild-eyed man in a leopard skin loincloth had been given a job as janitor but had promptly been fired for flinging his own faeces at the paintings and first years. With a loud hoot he scarpered off into the old forest, beating his chest and was never seen again. The position was later filled by a girl who said little but wandered round in her blue dress and bright red heels mumbling things about scarecrows and emerald cities. She was a tad creepy but far less disruptive than the previous job holder. 'She's mad that one is,' Harry told his "friends" one afternoon, 'she keeps insisting that I was present in all her dreams!'
Another fellow dressed in a white jumpsuit had used his futuristic vacu-broom to finally rid the castle of those pesky poltergeists once and for all and then, having not much else to do, busied himself with fixing various leaks and creaky floorboards around the building. He had gotten into an argument one evening with a group of teenagers which had apparently come down in one large meteor together as to whether or not ghosts were real. Most of the debate occurred between the Ghostbuster arguing for and a bookish girl dressed entirely in orange and a tall blond boy that Harry insisted was gay, arguing against, insisting that they were simply crafty, well-disguised criminals.
There were two other teens in the group, an attractive red headed girl that Harry cryptically said could solve his mysteries any day and a ill-shaven gaunt looking figure who was clearly coming down off some seriously illicit substances and had a disturbing appetite for dog biscuits. Their pet dog had become good playmates with Hagrids dog, Fang, until they had a spat over a female rough collie with the name tag Lassie. Although they seldom were seen to be doing any real work, the teenagers had been commissioned to find and catalogue all the hidden chambers and ominous switches in the castle. They didn't so much use any kind of scientific, or magical for that matter, method but instead seemed to just stumble around and fall on buttons and doorways.
The two original additions, Ash and Luke, had come back as well, taking back their respective posts in the school. The only one who didn't seem to be fitting in was Skeletor: Overlord of Evil who insisted on going by that title but couldn't seem to find a job to put his specific skills to work in. He spent much of his time skulking around the restricted section of the library quietly whinging about the lack of evil in Hogwarts.
Harry did his best to get up to mischief and rehash the capers of the past, but his companions for the most part lacked any real enthusiasm. It was a bit tragic really. All he really managed to do was make a nuisance of himself, spread unease and discomfort in the foreign workers and attract many pitying glances in his direction. He would run around with blow up snakes shouting, 'Look out! The Chamber of Secrets has been opened again! Don't worry I'm on it!'
Finally his torment came to end with the return of the search party. Accompanied by a severely under dressed and disproportionately huge man with golden locks and a gigantic sword which he swung around at every chance. The hulking figure had the rather redundant title of He-Man.
'We got all we could,' the original Ron and Hermione told Harry one night in Gryffindor commons. Harry was putting on his most devil-may-care facade and trying to look interested when really he was just seething internally. 'It seems Voldemort has been doing some recruiting of his own, and get this, it seems that all the guys we got our hands on, by sheer coincidence have evil counterparts that have sided with the enemy. There's this big white robot that can transfigure into a gun and this green lady that has a snitcher on our new janitor. Oh yeah and this huge flaming eyeball! It's like a team made of pure EVIL!'
A loud cackle burst out in the corridor and cause the three to jump and turn around while a single set of boots clattered down the marble steps towards the entrance. Skeletor had been listening in from behind the portrait of the fat lady. Upon hearing the news he had made haste to join what he perceived to be a side more accommodating to his unique talents.
'Yeah, yeah,' said Harry impatiently, turning back to his friends, 'We've all had our fair share of adventures over the past few weeks'
The following morning Dumbledore had the entire school down in the grounds by the lake. The Great Hall was no longer large enough to fit everybody. Mostly to the fault of Optimus Prime.
Dumbledore pressed his wand against his throat and began speaking in a magically amplified voice, 'Attention all students! We are now facing a challenge the likes of which the wizarding world has never seen before! Fortunately we have assembled some very able bodied fighters on our side, unfortunately You-Know-Who has recruited their evil counterparts. I would like to be able to dismiss all the first, second and third years but we may just need you, if not to fight at least to use your lifeless bodies to block breaches in our defenses!' Several young students went white, somewhere somebody in the crowd was violently sick. Albus Dumbledore continued as though he wasn't speaking atrocities, 'Also we will be transfiguring many of you into livestock which will then be set ablaze and herded into their ranks after which McGonagall and I will-'
However Harry and the students and the special guests and you and I will never know what Dumbledore had planned for he and McGonagall to do as an encore to his first barbaric battle plan. We will never know because at that very moment an enourmous sperm whale, for his own inscrutable reasons, suddenly burst from the calm lake waters and soared high over the headmaster. Owing largely to Dumbledores age-worn reflexes and whale-Snapes inability to fly, the behemoth landed with a resounding thud on the former head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Former, because it seemed quite improbable that he would be able to continue at his position in his new exanimate form.
Ron nudged Harry in the side and laughed mirthlessly to himself, 'Looks like Snape knocked off old Dumbledore in the end after all' and as is if in answer to his insensitivity there was an earsplitting crack and a kind of whirring, screeching sound.
Before Harry could get his bearing he suddenly realised he was standing on the high tower again. There was a stabbing pain in his left hand and he could see the lifeless form of Dumbledore on the ground below. Not squashed by a whale, but dead nonetheless. He looked at his aching palm and found the fragments of a shattered hour glass embedded deep in his flesh. After turning it over a few times and pouring the sand feebly from one hand into the other, he eventually accepted that the Time Turner was broken. The phoenix blood hadn't worked either. While they had been administering it to their headmaster Hermione had suddenly remembered it was unicorn blood they had needed and besides it was probably too late for anything to be effective at this point anyway so they may as well go get a cup of tea, pop themselves in front of the telly and wait for this whole shambles to blow over.
His friends came rushing up the stairwell just in time to see Harry collapse onto his knees and let out a blood-curdling scream of anguish. His clothes were torn and battered. In true poetic form, the skies opened up and rain began to fall on the three as they stood there on the parapet, their heads hung low. They stood there for several minutes, soaking wet, none speaking, but all thinking the same thing. They had done all they could but Hogwarts would never be the same again...
Also Hedwig died of an unrelated heart attack.
Tears streamed from his eyes as he laid hands on the lifeless Headmaster of Hogwarts. Suddenly jumping to his feet, Harry ran back into the school and made his way to Dumbledore’s quarters. Curiously, the entranceway was already open and as Harry ventured in he found that the same was true of the door. He decided to ignore this fact for now and instead busied himself looking for something he could use to mend this terrible situation.
‘There must be something!’ he screamed in a frustration. A thought suddenly struck him like a wet towel, ‘What can restore somebody back to life? The only thing I can think of is the blood of a…’ he stopped short, the sentence left unfinished on his lips
Harry turned slowly and looked at Fawkes, who looked straight back at him, an expression of what must have been reproach on his birdly features. ‘…Phoenix’ Harry concluded. He tilted his head slightly and regarded the Phoenix with a half-glazed look of curiosity. His eyes twinkled ominously. Fawkes croaked uneasily
Harry’s eyes wandered from the sword of Godric Gryffindor mounted on the wall and then back to Fawkes, who was now regarding him with a look of tentative flippancy. Harry looked again at the sword, then back to Fawkes, then back to the sword again. Fawkes’ eyes darted from the sword, then back to Harry Potter. All pretence aside, Fawkes began gnaw at the tether around his ankle as beads of sweat fell from his feathered hide and sizzled in his ashtray. Without a moments notice Harry lunged at Fawkes and in one fluid movement grabbed the sword of the wall and lopped off the ill-fated firebird’s head.
Fawkes let out an almighty scream and Harry, without a seconds delay, began looking for a receptacle with which to gather the blood. He searched through the drawers of Dumbledore’s desk and suddenly stumbled upon something that made him wince.
The severed head and respective body burst into flames and a highly irritated but wholly reanimated Fawkes came squawking from the ashes. Harry remained crouched behind the desk trying to gather the courage to face his angry victim.
A weak voice issued from behind the desk, ‘Sorry Fawkes’. Slowly Harry stood up from behind the desk with a sheepish grin on his face and a small golden hourglass in his hand. He shrugged. Fawkes just glared at him and muttered something under his breath.
Hermione and Ron burst in to the room, smiling and breathing heavily. Hermione started speaking without looking up ‘Harry, all is well, the Death Eaters are gone and as it turns out – Harry?’ she looked up to find Dumbledore’s office uninhabited save for a newborn Phoenix staring aghast at a bloody sword on the ground. Ron began to catch up with the pace of events ‘What happened in here then? Where’s Harry?’
But Harry was long gone by then. Although it is hard to say one is long gone when one is hurtling backwards through time itself. Harry arrived precisely in time to see Snape and Draco Malfoy making a beeline up to the high tower.
‘Infinito Probabiliatus’ Harry roared.
Where once there were two wicked hearted wizards there now sat a fully grown sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias. Without sparing a moment to run them through the finer points of existentialism Harry continued on his way up the tower taking two steps for every stride. He reached the top and found Dumbledore, alive and well, leaning against the battlements, smoking his pipe with a disturbing air of nonchalance. ‘Okay Severus, Draco, let’s do this’ he said as he whirled around, then with a look of surprise he exclaimed, ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here?’ his pipe falling from his mouth and landing with a loud crack on the stone.
‘I’m here to save you Professor, I just stopped Malfoy and Snape on their way up here to disarm and kill you!’ replied a breathless Harry
‘You’re kidding’ said Dumbledore with an unnerving lack of concern
Harry picked up on this and replied, nervous and confused, ‘No sir, they were running with their wands and everything, but it’s okay, I turned them into a sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias’
Albus Dumbledore closed his eyes and pinched his nose-bridge between his thumb and forefinger ‘Harry did you really think a stupid little git like Draco and a sub-par Potions teacher would be able to disarm and kill the most powerful wizard in the known world?’
Harry couldn’t answer that but he tried anyway, despite his near-mute better judgement ‘But, I thought -’
‘Did you?!’ Dumbledore interrupted, 'did you really think Harry?! Or did you just do what you always do and just acted without thinking?! By the ever loving mother of Merlin you can be so stupid sometimes Harry!’
Harry became immediately defensive ‘Hang on a moment…I saw you die!’ he crowed as if he had won some unspoken dispute.
Dumbledore sighed in resignation ‘Harry, you saw no such thing, what you really saw was a very carefully orchestrated and apparently successful farce designed to mislead Voldemort and simultaneously fulfil the terms of Snape’s Unbreakable Vow. I was to die and fall from the tower while Snape and Draco were to go and join the Death Eaters, under rather impressive credentials I might add, and then at an opportune moment they would slip some broccoli into one of Voldemort’s salads, he’s terribly allergic you see. Meanwhile, once the Death eaters were gone, Ron and Hermione were to come out of hiding in the bushes at the foot of the tower and give me a dose of Phoenix blood that Fawkes was kind enough to supply us with,’ at this Harry winced again and decided it best not to mention his earlier misdemeanour, ever, Dumbledore continued ‘Then with Voldemort incapacitated or possibly dead, we are unsure yet just how allergic he is, and myself alive once more, the Order and I would go around making sure he was properly dead and finishing of his little band of miscreants once and for all,’
It took a moment for the plan, and the immediate consequences of his actions to sink in, but before they had a chance his indignation caught up with his remorse, ‘Hey! How come I was the only one left out of this little plan of yours’ he whined, while searching his memory for anyone else that might have been overlooked.
‘You weren’t, Mr. Filch was too, and Neville Longbottom!’ said Dumbledore ‘We left you out because of your alarming propensity to act on your emotions and screw everything up, and Mr. Filch is just a useless and embittered old man’
‘What about Neville?’ asked Harry, still trying to avoid the touchy subject of what was to come. His cheeks flushed and his ears burned.
‘Neville was involved, I was just trying to make you feel better’ muttered Dumbledore ruefully.
There was a painfully long silence…
'So, what now?' Harry ventured.
'Well Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'You used time-magic to change the course of history which resulted in the breaking of an Unbreakable Vow, not to mention giving away the clever deception to Voldemort. You tell me'
Hermione and Ron burst onto the parapet, frowning and breathing heavily. Hermione was carrying a rather attractive bowl of petunias, Ron looked utterly lost. 'What's happened here then? Why isn't Dumbledore down there? Harry you flapjack, what did you do?' but before Harry could defend himself 'Dumbledore stepped forward, 'Never mind that, let's get Professor Snape into the lake and would somebody please water Master Malfoy? Whatever the consequences of Harry's meddling with the very fabric of time and space are I am certain there will be little good in squatting up here waiting to find out'
As he said this the sky began to glow orange and great flaming meteors, too many to count, began to fall from the sky.
'Oh, good work Harry,' growled Ron, 'You've gone and initiated the apocalypse!'
'No I haven’t!' cried Harry, but not entirely convinced that he hadn’t, he added, 'I can fix it, I'll just use the spell on Snape again, then he can kill Dumbledore and set things right!'
'No good,’ replied Dumbledore, 'If you use Infinito Probabiliatus again the chances of you turning him back into “Snape” are infinity to one, you’ll more likely turn him into a small sun or an apricot tree or something even more inconvenient than his current form.'
He spoke these words as he walked down the stairs and was suddenly aware of the large crowd of Death Eaters that were assembled at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for them. Hermione coughed loudly and nudged Harry into the front, but before he could even draw his wand the side of the room exploded in an almighty inferno as a meteor collided with the castle wall, obliterating the nefarious crowd.
Moments later, Voldemort himself came marching down the hallway shouting out orders ahead of himself, 'Alright you lot, look sharp, Dumbledore will be coming down those stairs any minute now and if you – damn it all, why must all my minions be killed by meteors?! - Well, that's me then, I'm off!' and with a look of pained resignation he spun on his heel and fled the castle on his own.
There was silence for the first time in over an hour. Not only had the remaining Death Eaters cleared out but it seemed the meteors had also stopped falling. ‘Some Apocalypse,’ muttered Ron. The Earth gave an indignant quake and Ron quickly retracted his statement.
Renovations and repairs began immediately and Dumbledore had Slytherin commons converted into a laboratory for the examination of the meteor that had crashed into the building. Professor Snape was moved into the lake where he immediately began feasting greedily on Grindylows and Mermaids with gusto. Draco Malfoy was given a nice windowsill to perch on and some slugicide pellets.
The children spent many an evening gazing at the rocky surfaces of the cosmo-stone but nothing came of it. Eventually Dumbledore forbade students from wasting away their hours looking at it, but one night, after staring at it for a while he decided there was no sense in wasting his own time investigating it either but just as he was about to leave a small section of the stone began to glow. Without even thinking, Dumbledore touched his wand to the glowing spot and it immediately spread in a glowing ring around the stone. Jets of what appeared to be steam began pouring out as the meteor began to cleave along the glowing line and finally, like a great gaping cosmo-clam shell, the top half of the stone lifted up and a young boy stumbled out.
His appearance was as interesting as it was disturbing. The most striking thing was his enormous, glistening eyes, grossly out of proportion to his tiny nose and mouth. His mop of black hair was roughly matted down by a bright red baseball cap and he wore what appeared to be a mostly denim outfit, with red sneakers and a black tee shirt. On his belt was clipped what appeared to be a red metallic diary and some little wee orbs, half red, half gray.
‘Hi,’ said the stranger, ‘My names Ash, and this little yellow fellow…’ he gestured to a pitiful jaundiced rodent that had just this moment emerged from the meteor ‘…this is Pikachu’
Dumbledore started, but introduced himself all the same. The students at Hogwarts had a similar first impression but soon after took a shine to their ghastly new friend and his yellow companion. A number of weeks in, he and Pikachu managed to get a position helping Hagrid catch monsters in the forbidden forest and storing them in his “Pokeballs”. One afternoon, while Hagrid was enjoying a cup of tea on a stump in his pumpkin patch, Ash came tearing up the garden path from the direction of the forest. His eyes were wide with shock, he was flailing his arms wildly and for a second Hagrid would have sworn on his life he saw what appeared to be an enourmous, sky blue raindrop clinging to his head.
‘A meteor,’ he cried once he was within hearing range, ‘another meteor in the forest!’
Hagrid sat up, ‘We’d best tell Dumbledore about this’
Fifteen minutes later Ash, Hagrid and Dumbledore were standing around the recent discovery. Harry had insisted on coming along as well because, after all, he was still the protagonist of the story, even if he was a snotty opinionated protagonist. Dumbledore went through the same motions as he had with the last meteor. There was a hiss and a crack and a puff of cosmo-steam and there before their very eyes stood a young man with sandy blonde hair. His face was gentle and his eyes were resplendent and blue. His clothes consisted off a light tunic and tight fitting pants with shoes to match, all of which were a rather sickly off-cream colour. He stepped forward and drew a rather impressive glowing green sword that could rival even the mighty Sword of Gryffindor.
'My name is Luke Skywal-' he began, but Dumbledore cut him off, 'No need for formalities, my good man, we mean you no harm and I doubt you could do us any,' the fellow attempted to protest but again Dumbledore silenced him with a wave of his hand and asked simply, 'Can you cook?'
Luke nodded his head gingerly with a look of utter bewilderment on his face. He took over as head chef at Howarts and the students certainly didn't seem to notice, although all the food, even the coleslaw, from then on had a slightly scorched flavour to it as though cut with a red hot knife. Dumbledore was thrilled. His taste buds were too ancient to register the change in taste and he could work the out of towner for a pittance because he had no grasp of wizarding currency.
Harry could hear Dumbledore and Snape talking as he approached them at the dinner table that night, the distinct taste of char-grilled cucumber still ripe in his mouth.
'...and the best part is' said Dumbledore, 'I finally found a way of getting around those blasted House Elf Workers Unions set up by that infernal Hermione Granger, be sure to give her and her friends some grief net Potions for me would you?'. He trailed off as he noticed Harry coming nearer and groaned inwardly when the look on the boys face indicated he was about to whine about something.
'Dumbledore, I think I have an idea that could help us defeat Voldemort once and for all...' Harry hesitated, slighty perturbed by their apparent complete lack of interest in his idea, he started again more slowly, 'I couldn't help but notice that those two characters we got out of the meteors have a rather charismatic and confident air about them that I also share', Dumbledore and Snape both raised an eyebrow, Harry pressed on 'I think perhaps they possess a certain star quality which would be quite useful when taking on You-Know-Who'
Dumbledore groaned again, outwardly this time. Here he was going off on his "I-am-the-chosen-one-it-is-I-who-must-defeat-Voldemort" schtick again. However the boy was right in one sense, that the two recent employees did possess a certain air of confidence and strength, or perhaps it was just naivety. Either way, their ignorance of local knowledge would come in handy since they were just about the only ones around that didn't flinch when you said their enemy's name.
'Great idea Harry' he whispered and then straightened up to make an announcement, 'Students of Hogwarts I have just had a rather excellent idea!'. Harry's smug smile dropped instantly in font of the body of students. 'I will be assembling a group of students and some staff members to take part in a rather difficult and potentially dangerous quest. If you wish to apply simply see me after supper at the front of the great hall here.'
After the meal a large number of students flocked to the front and Dumbledore halved the group immediately by picking, seemingly at random, a large cluster of students who immediately began chattering excitedly about their quest until he dismissed them with the slightest amused grin curving up the edges of his mouth. In the wake of the disappointed and grumbling students, he began choosing students simply by pointing them out with his bony index finger. The list grew quickly as he shouted out the names:
'Neville, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Seamus, Dean, Cho, Fred, George, Draco, Crabbe, Goyle...' with these last three names, the conspicuously and primarily Gryffindor group scowled at them and the trio gave back as good as they got, '...and of course, for a group such as this we will need a student leader, someone with great magical ability, courage like a lions and a quick head on his shoulders...It seems obvious that choice will have to be none other than...' Ron looked disgusted but dewey eyed Hermione looked on, both of them as sure as the rest of the group as to who would be picked and yet also equally shocked by the last name called, 'Colin. Colin Creevey.'
An awkward, skinny white haired boy squealed with delight from somewhere in the throng. Harry rounded on Dumbledore in a right furor. 'THAT COTTON TOP SPAZ WITH THE CAMERA?!' he roared. 'Oh, Harry stop being such a prima donna,' sighed Dumbledore 'I have actually had it up to the tip of my tall pointy hat with your crap and frankly I would rather see this plan go horribly horribly wrong in the hands of the pasty little moron than see you traipsing off to save the day again with a stupid grin on your cocky little chops and trying your best not to look like a big headed twat which you invariably end up doing.' he turned back to his group leaving Harry with an expression of furious indignation plastered all over his cocky little chops. 'Now, the teachers that will be going are: Myself, of course, along with the Professors Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick and Hagrid, we will also take along our cosmo-chums for good measure'
And so it was settled and Harry was left to stew in the castle on his own, having all of his subjects canceled until further notice and none of his usual supporting characters around, he spent most of his time taking walks around the grounds, reading the letters that were being sent by his friends telling him of all the wonderful adventures they were having. Harry couldn't be sure, but he detected just a hint of gloating in their writing and he hated the way they signed off all the messages with 'Having Great Fun Without You, Ron & Hermione'
No matter, he had made new friends anyway. A small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy from the first years and a frizzy haired third year girl who was suffering from a bad case of wizard-acne, which we all know is ten times worse than muggle-acne. He had taken to calling them Ron and Hermione and shared with them all sorts of secrets and deeply personal facts that made the small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy go whiter still and the third year girl would blush, although you could hardly tell. They were too scared to tell Harry, but they did not enjoy the coercive friendship as much as he seemed to. When they pointed out that their names weren't Ron and Hermione, nor were they Bum and Hermiobum as he called them when he was in one of his moods, he would simply laugh derisively and say 'Of course you aren't, I know perfectly well what your names are!' and yet nothing changed.Nothing, that is, except for the growing number of employees that seemed to be taking on positions at Hogwarts, bringing with them employment slips signed and sealed by Dumbledore himself.
There was an enourmous red, blue and gray robot who had the remarkable ability to transfigure himself into a flat-bed truck. He had taken over the role of transporting students between the school and the train station. He also washed dishes between transportational faculties. Harry made a witty remark about how he couldn't transform into a dishwasher. His new friends just laughed half-heartedly and flinched as he raised his hand to pat himself on the back.
Also now working at the castle was a new gardener who called himself simply Wolverine, although Harry hadn't the faintest idea why. Rumours and speculations began circulating about exactly what the well dressed man who called himself 'Bond' was doing with his time at Hogwarts. All they knew was that he seemed to get along well with the tall swarthy, mustichioed man who pranced about the castle in black leggings, masks and wide brimmed hats carving Z's into drapes and banners with his rapier.
A very small man, smaller even than Ron 2.0, with hairy feet and an inexplicably attractive gold ring on a chain around his neck had taken to working with Filch to keep an eye on students out past curfew. They weren't sure how he used to sneak up on them so easily and neither Harry nor Frodo got an explanation as to why one night while roaming the corridors, both of them ran headlong into an invisible entity that muttered obscenities and then seemed to scurry off in the other direction.
A tall, wild-haired, wild-eyed man in a leopard skin loincloth had been given a job as janitor but had promptly been fired for flinging his own faeces at the paintings and first years. With a loud hoot he scarpered off into the old forest, beating his chest and was never seen again. The position was later filled by a girl who said little but wandered round in her blue dress and bright red heels mumbling things about scarecrows and emerald cities. She was a tad creepy but far less disruptive than the previous job holder. 'She's mad that one is,' Harry told his "friends" one afternoon, 'she keeps insisting that I was present in all her dreams!'
Another fellow dressed in a white jumpsuit had used his futuristic vacu-broom to finally rid the castle of those pesky poltergeists once and for all and then, having not much else to do, busied himself with fixing various leaks and creaky floorboards around the building. He had gotten into an argument one evening with a group of teenagers which had apparently come down in one large meteor together as to whether or not ghosts were real. Most of the debate occurred between the Ghostbuster arguing for and a bookish girl dressed entirely in orange and a tall blond boy that Harry insisted was gay, arguing against, insisting that they were simply crafty, well-disguised criminals.
There were two other teens in the group, an attractive red headed girl that Harry cryptically said could solve his mysteries any day and a ill-shaven gaunt looking figure who was clearly coming down off some seriously illicit substances and had a disturbing appetite for dog biscuits. Their pet dog had become good playmates with Hagrids dog, Fang, until they had a spat over a female rough collie with the name tag Lassie. Although they seldom were seen to be doing any real work, the teenagers had been commissioned to find and catalogue all the hidden chambers and ominous switches in the castle. They didn't so much use any kind of scientific, or magical for that matter, method but instead seemed to just stumble around and fall on buttons and doorways.
The two original additions, Ash and Luke, had come back as well, taking back their respective posts in the school. The only one who didn't seem to be fitting in was Skeletor: Overlord of Evil who insisted on going by that title but couldn't seem to find a job to put his specific skills to work in. He spent much of his time skulking around the restricted section of the library quietly whinging about the lack of evil in Hogwarts.
Harry did his best to get up to mischief and rehash the capers of the past, but his companions for the most part lacked any real enthusiasm. It was a bit tragic really. All he really managed to do was make a nuisance of himself, spread unease and discomfort in the foreign workers and attract many pitying glances in his direction. He would run around with blow up snakes shouting, 'Look out! The Chamber of Secrets has been opened again! Don't worry I'm on it!'
Finally his torment came to end with the return of the search party. Accompanied by a severely under dressed and disproportionately huge man with golden locks and a gigantic sword which he swung around at every chance. The hulking figure had the rather redundant title of He-Man.
'We got all we could,' the original Ron and Hermione told Harry one night in Gryffindor commons. Harry was putting on his most devil-may-care facade and trying to look interested when really he was just seething internally. 'It seems Voldemort has been doing some recruiting of his own, and get this, it seems that all the guys we got our hands on, by sheer coincidence have evil counterparts that have sided with the enemy. There's this big white robot that can transfigure into a gun and this green lady that has a snitcher on our new janitor. Oh yeah and this huge flaming eyeball! It's like a team made of pure EVIL!'
A loud cackle burst out in the corridor and cause the three to jump and turn around while a single set of boots clattered down the marble steps towards the entrance. Skeletor had been listening in from behind the portrait of the fat lady. Upon hearing the news he had made haste to join what he perceived to be a side more accommodating to his unique talents.
'Yeah, yeah,' said Harry impatiently, turning back to his friends, 'We've all had our fair share of adventures over the past few weeks'
The following morning Dumbledore had the entire school down in the grounds by the lake. The Great Hall was no longer large enough to fit everybody. Mostly to the fault of Optimus Prime.
Dumbledore pressed his wand against his throat and began speaking in a magically amplified voice, 'Attention all students! We are now facing a challenge the likes of which the wizarding world has never seen before! Fortunately we have assembled some very able bodied fighters on our side, unfortunately You-Know-Who has recruited their evil counterparts. I would like to be able to dismiss all the first, second and third years but we may just need you, if not to fight at least to use your lifeless bodies to block breaches in our defenses!' Several young students went white, somewhere somebody in the crowd was violently sick. Albus Dumbledore continued as though he wasn't speaking atrocities, 'Also we will be transfiguring many of you into livestock which will then be set ablaze and herded into their ranks after which McGonagall and I will-'
However Harry and the students and the special guests and you and I will never know what Dumbledore had planned for he and McGonagall to do as an encore to his first barbaric battle plan. We will never know because at that very moment an enourmous sperm whale, for his own inscrutable reasons, suddenly burst from the calm lake waters and soared high over the headmaster. Owing largely to Dumbledores age-worn reflexes and whale-Snapes inability to fly, the behemoth landed with a resounding thud on the former head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Former, because it seemed quite improbable that he would be able to continue at his position in his new exanimate form.
Ron nudged Harry in the side and laughed mirthlessly to himself, 'Looks like Snape knocked off old Dumbledore in the end after all' and as is if in answer to his insensitivity there was an earsplitting crack and a kind of whirring, screeching sound.
Before Harry could get his bearing he suddenly realised he was standing on the high tower again. There was a stabbing pain in his left hand and he could see the lifeless form of Dumbledore on the ground below. Not squashed by a whale, but dead nonetheless. He looked at his aching palm and found the fragments of a shattered hour glass embedded deep in his flesh. After turning it over a few times and pouring the sand feebly from one hand into the other, he eventually accepted that the Time Turner was broken. The phoenix blood hadn't worked either. While they had been administering it to their headmaster Hermione had suddenly remembered it was unicorn blood they had needed and besides it was probably too late for anything to be effective at this point anyway so they may as well go get a cup of tea, pop themselves in front of the telly and wait for this whole shambles to blow over.
His friends came rushing up the stairwell just in time to see Harry collapse onto his knees and let out a blood-curdling scream of anguish. His clothes were torn and battered. In true poetic form, the skies opened up and rain began to fall on the three as they stood there on the parapet, their heads hung low. They stood there for several minutes, soaking wet, none speaking, but all thinking the same thing. They had done all they could but Hogwarts would never be the same again...
Also Hedwig died of an unrelated heart attack.
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Tuesday, August 7, 2007
As if by Magic!
Harry awoke to the sounds of Ron and looked about suspiciously.
“Teehee!” he giggled, as he pulled a huge phial full of eight hundred millilitres of shiny resplendent and glowing golden liquid from under his pillow.
“I’ve been saving this for yonks!” He said, and swiftly uncorked it.
“Is that Felix Felicis?! Asked Hermione (unexpectedly). “Well..”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me how the hell you got in here!” “I probably wouldn't tell you even if you weren’t my fanfiction lover that I totally wouldn’t be within the confines of the original works by J.K. Rowling.”
“Ahahaha!” said Harry as they both laughed and said “Ahahaha!”.
“Anyway, yes, it is a crock of Felix if you must know. I’ve been brewing this shit up since like second year yo!”
Hermione erupted into hearty chanting. “ Skull! Skull! Skull!” She chanted long into the morning. Finally Harry gave in to the brutal peer pressure as all the boys in the dormitory had gathered round and joined in the festivity.
“FINE!, I will!” He sobbed through a stream of thick salty tears, and downed the contents of the shining cylindrical phial in one fell swoop.
The onlookers looked on intently, their eyes hungrily scanning Harry up and down for signs of side effects.
“Oh boy.” Mumbled Harry woozily. And he did appear to be quite magnificently drunk. For about twenty seconds, after which he appeared to turn to gold.
Despite this newfound shiny metallic appearance he was still quite soft... warm... smooth and.. “Get the hell off me Neville!” Neville reluctantly withdrew, blushing heavily.
“Well? How does it feel Gary?” spluttered Dumbledore.
By now basically everyone at Hogwarts was in the Gryffindor common room despite the strict weight restrictions displayed obviously on the grimy stone wall, glistening in the eleven thirty A.M. sunlight in a solid ruby frame.
“I'm Harry, not Gary, sir...” said Harry slowly “Senile.” Harry whispered raspily to the crowd as Dumbledore forgot something important. “but yeah, I guess I feel pretty lucky, yeah!”
“Well then, show’s over lets g- AAR!” Said Filch as the common room collapsed in a shower of splinters, shreds of gold and red wallpaper, and Hogwarts students.”
Due to Harry’s magical luck everyone in Slytherin perished, while all of those he cared for sunk into thick white, slightly damp pillows, which stood out among the debris like marshmallows in milo in which the milo hasn’t properly dissolved.
Harry clambered hastily out of the clingy linen of the pillow he had been slowly sinking into and surveyed the surrounding destruction.
“Blimey!” Exclaimed the survivors in perfect unison, fading away at different pitch levels like a barbershop quartet.
Dumbledore swished his wand in a grand arc, trailing emerald sparkles like long lines of Christmas tree tinsel, gracefully falling through the air then melting amongst the dewy blades of grass. With that, the entire common room took form again, as if by magic!
“Move along now!” barked Filch as he began digging a mass grave for the Slytherins.
As Harry Ron and Hermione moved off amongst the shuffling crowd they began to converse with one another, slowly but then with increasing speed.
“well . . . that.. was . . . really . . . lucky that we managed toavoiddyingjustnow!”
Laughed Ron, all the while scratching his thigh under his robes, attracting disapproving looks. “Ron!” shouted Hermione while pashing Harry confidently.
Harry removed a third year lady who was clutching at his ankles and tossed it to Ron who gratefully accepted the generous gift. “Cheers Harry!” He beamed over his shoulder, scampering away into the castle.
“Well Hermione, it’s been nice but I’m going to have to break up with you.”
“What?!” cried Hermione tearfully.
“Yup … uhh sorry!.. Wow, this is kind of awkward… you see…”
“Oh save it Harry! I’ve had enough of boys!” and with that she ran away but not without dropping a letter at Harry’s feet…
Harry picked it up tenderly and inspected it for a moment, then decided it was largely insignificant and thus discarded it into a helpfully placed rubbish bin which stood next to the less popular and more contrived Rubbish Cauldron™.
He took out his timetable and saw that his next subject was iMagic Writing Class.
“Well Off I go! looks like the author has run out of ludicrous and improbable luck based situations for now.”
He scooted through the large stone arches which framed the imposing wooden doors to the castle and then pretended to care about the four large hourglasses displaying the house points for a while, so as to keep up his scholarly reputation.
Suddenly Hedwig flew through the open door and landed on his shoulder.
“Letter from the Ministry, Harry!” said Hedwig happily. Harry roughly untied the letter from her small, scaly legs, then tied her legs together, laughing, and threw her like a football into the sky.
“Hahahahaha good luck with getting that off … without any opposable thumbs! Hahahahaha”
And he kept laughing all the way to the great marble staircase.
After opening the letter and finding out that he had been granted all his OWLs due to luck, Harry looked around, real sly, then proceeded to walk under the stairs through a secret passage, straight through the solid wall! As if by magic!
On the other side, it was much like a muggle elevator, and glancing once more at his crumpled timetable he pushed a large black button with “LEVEL 4” laser etched into it’s shiny plastic surface, and even though it was gloomy in the lift, it was easily readable, because it was backlit by a bright purple L.E.D as if by magic, but not really by magic at all… by technology!
The lift lurched upward then came to a halt with a painful onomatopoeic device to represent a grinding or a screeching noise.
Stepping out of the lift Harry found himself inside the iMagic Writing Class, which was cool.
They had a substitute teacher today in place of the regular Professor Scrawle,
The substitute handed out a roll of parchment to each member of the class without introducing himself, which Harry found to be instructions for today’s work.
The instructions were to write at least 800 words of fan fiction then blog about it.
Harry chose, Animorphs!
Harry spent around two weeks feeling uninspired and eventually discarded his first attempt, which now seemed lame.
BANG! He found himself once more in the iMagic Writing Classroom, and began to belt out a ridiculous tale, “lol” he chortled to himself quietly.
All of a sudden he found he had written well over 800 words, 1179 words in fact!
Leaving the classroom he spotted a penny, crouched down to pick it up and found one hundred galleons in an alcove invisible to those standing up!
“What a day!” Said Harry smiling, as he stood up and gazed dreamily out the window.His skin slowly changed back from reflective gold to its normal pasty complexion while his green eyes took in the grounds, lit by the setting sun, where now, underneath a patch of freshly moved soil, lay the baddies of Slytherin.
The End
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Desperate Housewives - still a work in progress..... be nice! :)
Susan Meyer awoke in the middle of the night, rolled over and stared at the empty half of her King-sized bed where Mike had been sprawled out before she had fallen asleep earlier that night. It was12.38am and her ‘devoted’ fiancé had gone AWOL from their bedroom….
Susan sat up, yawned and reached over to where her silky bathrobe hung and put it on over her purple, lacy nightgown. She walked over to the bedroom door, flicked the hallway light on and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She thought she would give Mike the benefit of the doubt, and check if he had simply disappeared downstairs for a midnight snack or a glass of water before she started stressing out.
“Oh no…” She said to herself. Her worst fear was a reality. Mike was nowhere to be seen. Susan’s mind started working overtime. What could Mike possibly be doing out of the house at 1am???
“He must have freaked out about the wedding and made a run for it.” She thought to herself. “What else could he possibly be doing at this time of the night? There’s nothing else he could be doing…….” She sighed to herself, “How could this be happening to her??” Just when she thought she had finally gotten the man she loved and had a chance to live happily ever after in marital bliss, it seemed her dream was being crushed right before her eyes.
Not knowing how else to process this newly found information, Susan did what she did best, freaked out. She fiercely opened the freezer, grabbed the 2L tub of Cookies and Cream and started to dig in to the ice-cream while sobbing uncontrollably and thinking back over all the good times she and Mike had had together.
Julie rolled over in bed, groaned, grabbed her pillow and pulled it over her head to block out the terrible noise that had woken her up. She had heard a loud groan followed by hysterical crying. “Is something dying down there?” Julie moaned, even though she knew exactly what was going on…… It was her mum crying, and it wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence.
Julie regretfully sat up, groaned again and got out of her nice, warm bed. She pulled her red, woolen jumper on over her pyjama top, slipped her feet into her fluffy slippers and made her way downstairs to see what all the fuss was about this time. Sometimes Julie felt like she was a mother figure to Susan, instead of the other way around and she could tell this was going to be one of those times.
“Mum…..? What’s the matter….?” Julie asked cautiously.
“It’s Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike……………..” Her mother moaned. “He’s gooooooooone! I woke up and he was just…… He was just gooooooone!”
“Why would he leave at this time of the night? Have you two had an argument or something mum?” Julie questioned. “There must be a rational explanation for this.”
“Ohmygod…..” Susan shrieked. “Ohmygod Julie……”
“What, mum? What is it?” At this point Julie was starting to worry something big might actually have happened. Susan was being even more dramatic than Julie was used to.
“Mike and I………. We have argued tonight! We started talking about wedding plans and I mentioned I wanted white lilies in my weeding bouquet and he asked why I didn’t want roses…….. Then we started arguing about it and he backed down. I wouldn’t have argued if I’d known roses were so important to him! What have I done, Julie? What have I done?”
“Mum…..?” Julie interrupted. “I don’t actually think Mike would have run away just because you prefer lilies to roses.”
“He must not have been sure about the whole wedding in the first place and now I’ve gone and scared him away completely by trying to control the whole thing and not giving him any input. I’ve pushed him away Julie and he’s gooooooooone,” sobbed Susan
“Oh god…..” Julie thought to herself. Her mum’s imagination had well and truly gotten out of control now.
Right then the front door started to rattle, a key turned in the lock and, speak of the devil, Mike appeared in the doorway holding his keys in one hand and his bag full of plumbing equipment in the other. Julie and Susan both turned to stare at him, but he just smiled and said, “What on earth are you two doing up at this time of the night?”
Susan opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out so she just sat there staring at Mike thanking God for bringing him back to her. Julie took one look at her dumbfounded mother and realized she’d have to do the talking this time.
“We could ask the same of you, Mike….?” She replied. “Where have you been at this time of the night?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this Susan, but I’ve been taking on a lot of extra work lately….” Mike started.
“Extra work at 1am? How dumb do you think my mother is, Mike?” Julie couldn’t help but interrupt him.
Susan remained in the exact same position, staring at Mike with her mouth open, but still not able to say a word.
“Yes Julie, extra work at 1am,” Mike carried on. “I have been at Mrs. McCluskey’s house for the last two and a half hours……”
“Mrs McCluskey’s house…….?” Susan finally managed to speak her first words since Mike’s return.
“Yes, at Mrs McCluskey’s house, fixing the pipe under her kitchen sink because she called me, in shock, telling me she had just gotten up and walked in to the kitchen to get a drink and was walking in water up to her ankles!”
“But, why would you go over there so late? People can’t expect you to work until 1am!” Julie butted in.
“Okay, here’s the part I haven’t told you guys yet……” Mike started. “I have been advertising as a 24hr plumber for the last couple of weeks to make a bit of extra cash.”
“A 24hr plumber……?” Susan piped up.
“Why do you need extra cash? You’re not in trouble again are you Mike?” Julie asked suspiciously.
“No, no, not at all,” Mike assured them both, “I’m doing it because……. Well, because I want to be able to give you the wedding you’ve always dreamt about Susie…….. The wedding Ian would have given you……”
Julie smiled to herself and starting making her way back up the stairs to bed. Her work there was done, now she knew Mike wasn’t doing anything to hurt her mother, they could sort the rest out themselves.
“Oh, Mike…..” Susan exclaimed. “You don’t have to do that for me…… I don’t mind how much we spend on our wedding because it will be perfect for me just so long as you’re there! Just please, promise to never scare me like that again!”
“I’m so sorry honey and I promise I won’t ever again. I love you….” Mike replied and then smiled to himself. His real secret was safe……
Susan sat up, yawned and reached over to where her silky bathrobe hung and put it on over her purple, lacy nightgown. She walked over to the bedroom door, flicked the hallway light on and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She thought she would give Mike the benefit of the doubt, and check if he had simply disappeared downstairs for a midnight snack or a glass of water before she started stressing out.
“Oh no…” She said to herself. Her worst fear was a reality. Mike was nowhere to be seen. Susan’s mind started working overtime. What could Mike possibly be doing out of the house at 1am???
“He must have freaked out about the wedding and made a run for it.” She thought to herself. “What else could he possibly be doing at this time of the night? There’s nothing else he could be doing…….” She sighed to herself, “How could this be happening to her??” Just when she thought she had finally gotten the man she loved and had a chance to live happily ever after in marital bliss, it seemed her dream was being crushed right before her eyes.
Not knowing how else to process this newly found information, Susan did what she did best, freaked out. She fiercely opened the freezer, grabbed the 2L tub of Cookies and Cream and started to dig in to the ice-cream while sobbing uncontrollably and thinking back over all the good times she and Mike had had together.
Julie rolled over in bed, groaned, grabbed her pillow and pulled it over her head to block out the terrible noise that had woken her up. She had heard a loud groan followed by hysterical crying. “Is something dying down there?” Julie moaned, even though she knew exactly what was going on…… It was her mum crying, and it wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence.
Julie regretfully sat up, groaned again and got out of her nice, warm bed. She pulled her red, woolen jumper on over her pyjama top, slipped her feet into her fluffy slippers and made her way downstairs to see what all the fuss was about this time. Sometimes Julie felt like she was a mother figure to Susan, instead of the other way around and she could tell this was going to be one of those times.
“Mum…..? What’s the matter….?” Julie asked cautiously.
“It’s Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike……………..” Her mother moaned. “He’s gooooooooone! I woke up and he was just…… He was just gooooooone!”
“Why would he leave at this time of the night? Have you two had an argument or something mum?” Julie questioned. “There must be a rational explanation for this.”
“Ohmygod…..” Susan shrieked. “Ohmygod Julie……”
“What, mum? What is it?” At this point Julie was starting to worry something big might actually have happened. Susan was being even more dramatic than Julie was used to.
“Mike and I………. We have argued tonight! We started talking about wedding plans and I mentioned I wanted white lilies in my weeding bouquet and he asked why I didn’t want roses…….. Then we started arguing about it and he backed down. I wouldn’t have argued if I’d known roses were so important to him! What have I done, Julie? What have I done?”
“Mum…..?” Julie interrupted. “I don’t actually think Mike would have run away just because you prefer lilies to roses.”
“He must not have been sure about the whole wedding in the first place and now I’ve gone and scared him away completely by trying to control the whole thing and not giving him any input. I’ve pushed him away Julie and he’s gooooooooone,” sobbed Susan
“Oh god…..” Julie thought to herself. Her mum’s imagination had well and truly gotten out of control now.
Right then the front door started to rattle, a key turned in the lock and, speak of the devil, Mike appeared in the doorway holding his keys in one hand and his bag full of plumbing equipment in the other. Julie and Susan both turned to stare at him, but he just smiled and said, “What on earth are you two doing up at this time of the night?”
Susan opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out so she just sat there staring at Mike thanking God for bringing him back to her. Julie took one look at her dumbfounded mother and realized she’d have to do the talking this time.
“We could ask the same of you, Mike….?” She replied. “Where have you been at this time of the night?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this Susan, but I’ve been taking on a lot of extra work lately….” Mike started.
“Extra work at 1am? How dumb do you think my mother is, Mike?” Julie couldn’t help but interrupt him.
Susan remained in the exact same position, staring at Mike with her mouth open, but still not able to say a word.
“Yes Julie, extra work at 1am,” Mike carried on. “I have been at Mrs. McCluskey’s house for the last two and a half hours……”
“Mrs McCluskey’s house…….?” Susan finally managed to speak her first words since Mike’s return.
“Yes, at Mrs McCluskey’s house, fixing the pipe under her kitchen sink because she called me, in shock, telling me she had just gotten up and walked in to the kitchen to get a drink and was walking in water up to her ankles!”
“But, why would you go over there so late? People can’t expect you to work until 1am!” Julie butted in.
“Okay, here’s the part I haven’t told you guys yet……” Mike started. “I have been advertising as a 24hr plumber for the last couple of weeks to make a bit of extra cash.”
“A 24hr plumber……?” Susan piped up.
“Why do you need extra cash? You’re not in trouble again are you Mike?” Julie asked suspiciously.
“No, no, not at all,” Mike assured them both, “I’m doing it because……. Well, because I want to be able to give you the wedding you’ve always dreamt about Susie…….. The wedding Ian would have given you……”
Julie smiled to herself and starting making her way back up the stairs to bed. Her work there was done, now she knew Mike wasn’t doing anything to hurt her mother, they could sort the rest out themselves.
“Oh, Mike…..” Susan exclaimed. “You don’t have to do that for me…… I don’t mind how much we spend on our wedding because it will be perfect for me just so long as you’re there! Just please, promise to never scare me like that again!”
“I’m so sorry honey and I promise I won’t ever again. I love you….” Mike replied and then smiled to himself. His real secret was safe……
Work in Progress
Harry watched the retreating form of Snape from the grounds with a mixture of anger, fear and confusion. He was utterly alone on the high tower. Gazing over the edge, he could just make out the crumpled form of his dear friend and mentor Albus Dumbledore on the ground below. In a blind panic, Harry ran back down the stairs, barely aware of the curses and hexes blowing holes in the walls around him. His heart ached for effort and for grief as he ran around the perimeter of the school to the place where Dumbledore lay.
Tears streamed from his eyes as he laid hands on the lifeless Headmaster of Hogwarts. Suddenly jumping to his feet, Harry ran back into the school and made his way to Dumbledore’s quarters. Curiously, the entranceway was already open and as Harry ventured in he found that the same was true of the door. He decided to ignore this fact for now and instead busied himself looking for something he could use to mend this terrible situation.
‘There must be something!’ he screamed in a frustration. A thought suddenly struck him like a wet towel, ‘What can restore somebody back to life? The only thing I can think of is the blood of a…’ he stopped short, the sentence left unfinished on his lips
Harry turned slowly and looked at Fawkes, who looked straight back at him, an expression of what must have been reproach on his birdly features. ‘…Phoenix’ Harry concluded. He tilted his head slightly and regarded the Phoenix with a half-glazed look of curiosity. His eyes twinkled ominously. Fawkes croaked uneasily
Harry’s eyes wandered from the sword of Godric Gryffindor mounted on the wall and then back to Fawkes, who was now regarding him with a look of tentative flippancy. Harry looked again at the sword, then back to Fawkes, then back to the sword again. Fawkes’ eyes darted from the sword, then back to Harry Potter. All pretence aside, Fawkes began gnaw at the tether around his ankle as beads of sweat fell from his feathered hide and sizzled in his ashtray. Without a moments notice Harry lunged at Fawkes and in one fluid movement grabbed the sword of the wall and lopped off the ill-fated firebird’s head.
Fawkes let out an almighty scream and Harry, without a seconds delay, began looking for a receptacle with which to gather the blood. He searched through the drawers of Dumbledore’s desk and suddenly stumbled upon something that made him wince.
The severed head and respective body burst into flames and a highly irritated but wholly reanimated Fawkes came squawking from the ashes. Harry remained crouched behind the desk trying to gather the courage to face his angry victim.
A weak voice issued from behind the desk, ‘Sorry Fawkes’. Slowly Harry stood up from behind the desk with a sheepish grin on his face and a small golden hourglass in his hand. He shrugged. Fawkes just glared at him and muttered something under his breath.
Hermione and Ron burst in to the room, smiling and breathing heavily. Hermione started speaking without looking up ‘Harry, all is well, the Death Eaters are gone and as it turns out – Harry?’ she looked up to find Dumbledore’s office uninhabited save for a newborn Phoenix staring aghast at a bloody sword on the ground. Ron began to catch up with the pace of events ‘What happened in here then? Where’s Harry?’
But Harry was long gone by then. Although it is hard to say one is long gone when one is hurtling backwards through time itself. Harry arrived precisely in time to see Snape and Draco Malfoy making a beeline up to the high tower.
‘Infinito Probabiliatus’ Harry roared.
Where once there were two wicked hearted wizards there now sat a fully grown sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias. Without sparing a moment to run them through the finer points of existentialism Harry continued on his way up the tower taking two steps for every stride. He reached the top and found Dumbledore, alive and well, leaning against the battlements, smoking his pipe with a disturbing air of nonchalance. ‘Okay Severus, Draco, let’s do this’ he said as he whirled around, then with a look of surprise he exclaimed, ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here?’ his pipe falling from his mouth and landing with a loud crack on the stone.
‘I’m here to save you Professor, I just stopped Malfoy and Snape on their way up here to disarm and kill you!’ replied a breathless Harry
‘You’re kidding’ said Dumbledore with an unnerving lack of concern
Harry picked up on this and replied, nervous and confused, ‘No sir, they were running with their wands and everything, but it’s okay, I turned them into a sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias’
Albus Dumbledore closed his eyes and pinched his nose-bridge between his thumb and forefinger ‘Harry did you really think a stupid little git like Draco and a sub-par Potions teacher would be able to disarm and kill the most powerful wizard in the known world?’
Harry couldn’t answer that but he tried anyway, despite his near-mute better judgement ‘But, I thought -’
‘Did you?!’ Dumbledore interrupted, 'Did you really think Harry?! Or did you just do what you always do and just acted without thinking?! By the ever loving mother of Merlin you can be so stupid sometimes Harry!’
Harry became immediately defensive ‘Hang on a moment…I saw you die!’ he crowed as if he had won some unspoken dispute.
Dumbledore sighed in resignation ‘Harry, you saw no such thing, what you really saw was a very carefully orchestrated and apparently successful farce designed to mislead Voldemort and simultaneously fulfil the terms of Snape’s Unbreakable Vow. I was to die and fall from the tower while Snape and Draco were to go and join the Death Eaters, under rather impressive credentials I might add, and then at an opportune moment they would slip some broccoli into one of Voldemort’s salads, he’s terribly allergic you see. Meanwhile, once the Death eaters were gone, Ron and Hermione were to come out of hiding in the bushes at the foot of the tower and give me a dose of Phoenix blood that Fawkes was kind enough to supply us with,’ at this Harry winced again and decided it best not to mention his earlier misdemeanour, ever, Dumbledore continued ‘Then with Voldemort incapacitated or possibly dead, we are unsure yet just how allergic he is, and myself alive once more, the Order and I would go around making sure he was properly dead and finishing of his little band of miscreants once and for all,’
It took a moment for the plan, and the immediate consequences of his actions to sink in, but before they had a chance his indignation caught up with his remorse, ‘Hey! How come I was the only one left out of this little plan of yours’ he whined, while searching his memory for anyone else that might have been overlooked.
‘You weren’t, Mr. Filch was too, and Neville Longbottom!’ said Dumbledore ‘We left you out because of your alarming propensity to act on your emotions and screw everything up, and Mr. Filch is just a useless and embittered old man’
‘What about Neville?’ asked Harry, still trying to avoid the touchy subject of what was to come. His cheeks flushed and his ears burned.
‘Neville was involved, I was just trying to make you feel better’ muttered Dumbledore ruefully.
There was a painfully long silence…
'So, what now?' Harry ventured.
'Well Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'You used time-magic to change the course of history which resulted in the breaking of an Unbreakable Vow, not to mention giving away the clever deception to Voldemort. You tell me'
Hermione and Ron burst onto the parapet, frowning and breathing heavily. Hermione was carrying a rather attractive bowl of petunias, Ron looked utterly lost. 'What's happened here then? Why isn't Dumbledore down there? Harry you flapjack, what did you do?' but before Harry could defend himself 'Dumbledore stepped forward, 'Never mind that, let's get Professor Snape into the lake and would somebody please water Master Malfoy? Whatever the consequences of Harry's meddling with the very fabric of time and space are I am certain there will be little good in squatting up here waiting to find out'
As he said this the sky began to glow orange and great flaming meteors, too many to count, began to fall from the sky.
'Oh, good work Harry,' growled Ron, 'You've gone and initiated the apocalypse!'
'No I haven’t!' cried Harry, but not entirely convinced that he hadn’t, he added, 'I can fix it, I'll just use the spell on Snape again, then he can kill Dumbledore and set things right!'
'No good,’ replied Dumbledore, 'If you use Infinito Probabiliatus again the chances of you turning him back into “Snape” are infinity to one, you’ll more likely turn him into a small sun or an apricot tree or something even more inconvenient than his current form.'
He spoke these words as he walked down the stairs and was suddenly aware of the large crowd of Death Eaters that were assembled at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for them. Hermione coughed loudly and nudged Harry into the front, but before he could even draw his wand the side of the room exploded in an almighty inferno as a meteor collided with the castle wall, obliterating the nefarious crowd.
Moments later, Voldemort himself came marching down the hallway shouting out orders ahead of himself, 'Alright you lot, look sharp, Dumbledore will be coming down those stairs any minute now and if you – damn it all, why must all my minions be killed by meteors?! - Well, that's me then, I'm off!' and with a look of pained resignation he spun on his heel and fled the castle on his own.
There was silence for the first time in over an hour. Not only had the remaining Death Eaters cleared out but it seemed the meteors had also stopped falling. ‘Some Apocalypse,’ muttered Ron. The Earth gave an indignant quake and Ron quickly retracted his statement.
Renovations and repairs began immediately and Dumbledore had Slytherin commons converted into a laboratory for the examination of the meteor that had crashed into the building. Professor Snape was moved into the lake where he immediately began feasting greedily on Grindylows and Mermaids with gusto. Draco Malfoy was given a nice windowsill to perch on and some slugicide pellets.
Tears streamed from his eyes as he laid hands on the lifeless Headmaster of Hogwarts. Suddenly jumping to his feet, Harry ran back into the school and made his way to Dumbledore’s quarters. Curiously, the entranceway was already open and as Harry ventured in he found that the same was true of the door. He decided to ignore this fact for now and instead busied himself looking for something he could use to mend this terrible situation.
‘There must be something!’ he screamed in a frustration. A thought suddenly struck him like a wet towel, ‘What can restore somebody back to life? The only thing I can think of is the blood of a…’ he stopped short, the sentence left unfinished on his lips
Harry turned slowly and looked at Fawkes, who looked straight back at him, an expression of what must have been reproach on his birdly features. ‘…Phoenix’ Harry concluded. He tilted his head slightly and regarded the Phoenix with a half-glazed look of curiosity. His eyes twinkled ominously. Fawkes croaked uneasily
Harry’s eyes wandered from the sword of Godric Gryffindor mounted on the wall and then back to Fawkes, who was now regarding him with a look of tentative flippancy. Harry looked again at the sword, then back to Fawkes, then back to the sword again. Fawkes’ eyes darted from the sword, then back to Harry Potter. All pretence aside, Fawkes began gnaw at the tether around his ankle as beads of sweat fell from his feathered hide and sizzled in his ashtray. Without a moments notice Harry lunged at Fawkes and in one fluid movement grabbed the sword of the wall and lopped off the ill-fated firebird’s head.
Fawkes let out an almighty scream and Harry, without a seconds delay, began looking for a receptacle with which to gather the blood. He searched through the drawers of Dumbledore’s desk and suddenly stumbled upon something that made him wince.
The severed head and respective body burst into flames and a highly irritated but wholly reanimated Fawkes came squawking from the ashes. Harry remained crouched behind the desk trying to gather the courage to face his angry victim.
A weak voice issued from behind the desk, ‘Sorry Fawkes’. Slowly Harry stood up from behind the desk with a sheepish grin on his face and a small golden hourglass in his hand. He shrugged. Fawkes just glared at him and muttered something under his breath.
Hermione and Ron burst in to the room, smiling and breathing heavily. Hermione started speaking without looking up ‘Harry, all is well, the Death Eaters are gone and as it turns out – Harry?’ she looked up to find Dumbledore’s office uninhabited save for a newborn Phoenix staring aghast at a bloody sword on the ground. Ron began to catch up with the pace of events ‘What happened in here then? Where’s Harry?’
But Harry was long gone by then. Although it is hard to say one is long gone when one is hurtling backwards through time itself. Harry arrived precisely in time to see Snape and Draco Malfoy making a beeline up to the high tower.
‘Infinito Probabiliatus’ Harry roared.
Where once there were two wicked hearted wizards there now sat a fully grown sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias. Without sparing a moment to run them through the finer points of existentialism Harry continued on his way up the tower taking two steps for every stride. He reached the top and found Dumbledore, alive and well, leaning against the battlements, smoking his pipe with a disturbing air of nonchalance. ‘Okay Severus, Draco, let’s do this’ he said as he whirled around, then with a look of surprise he exclaimed, ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here?’ his pipe falling from his mouth and landing with a loud crack on the stone.
‘I’m here to save you Professor, I just stopped Malfoy and Snape on their way up here to disarm and kill you!’ replied a breathless Harry
‘You’re kidding’ said Dumbledore with an unnerving lack of concern
Harry picked up on this and replied, nervous and confused, ‘No sir, they were running with their wands and everything, but it’s okay, I turned them into a sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias’
Albus Dumbledore closed his eyes and pinched his nose-bridge between his thumb and forefinger ‘Harry did you really think a stupid little git like Draco and a sub-par Potions teacher would be able to disarm and kill the most powerful wizard in the known world?’
Harry couldn’t answer that but he tried anyway, despite his near-mute better judgement ‘But, I thought -’
‘Did you?!’ Dumbledore interrupted, 'Did you really think Harry?! Or did you just do what you always do and just acted without thinking?! By the ever loving mother of Merlin you can be so stupid sometimes Harry!’
Harry became immediately defensive ‘Hang on a moment…I saw you die!’ he crowed as if he had won some unspoken dispute.
Dumbledore sighed in resignation ‘Harry, you saw no such thing, what you really saw was a very carefully orchestrated and apparently successful farce designed to mislead Voldemort and simultaneously fulfil the terms of Snape’s Unbreakable Vow. I was to die and fall from the tower while Snape and Draco were to go and join the Death Eaters, under rather impressive credentials I might add, and then at an opportune moment they would slip some broccoli into one of Voldemort’s salads, he’s terribly allergic you see. Meanwhile, once the Death eaters were gone, Ron and Hermione were to come out of hiding in the bushes at the foot of the tower and give me a dose of Phoenix blood that Fawkes was kind enough to supply us with,’ at this Harry winced again and decided it best not to mention his earlier misdemeanour, ever, Dumbledore continued ‘Then with Voldemort incapacitated or possibly dead, we are unsure yet just how allergic he is, and myself alive once more, the Order and I would go around making sure he was properly dead and finishing of his little band of miscreants once and for all,’
It took a moment for the plan, and the immediate consequences of his actions to sink in, but before they had a chance his indignation caught up with his remorse, ‘Hey! How come I was the only one left out of this little plan of yours’ he whined, while searching his memory for anyone else that might have been overlooked.
‘You weren’t, Mr. Filch was too, and Neville Longbottom!’ said Dumbledore ‘We left you out because of your alarming propensity to act on your emotions and screw everything up, and Mr. Filch is just a useless and embittered old man’
‘What about Neville?’ asked Harry, still trying to avoid the touchy subject of what was to come. His cheeks flushed and his ears burned.
‘Neville was involved, I was just trying to make you feel better’ muttered Dumbledore ruefully.
There was a painfully long silence…
'So, what now?' Harry ventured.
'Well Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'You used time-magic to change the course of history which resulted in the breaking of an Unbreakable Vow, not to mention giving away the clever deception to Voldemort. You tell me'
Hermione and Ron burst onto the parapet, frowning and breathing heavily. Hermione was carrying a rather attractive bowl of petunias, Ron looked utterly lost. 'What's happened here then? Why isn't Dumbledore down there? Harry you flapjack, what did you do?' but before Harry could defend himself 'Dumbledore stepped forward, 'Never mind that, let's get Professor Snape into the lake and would somebody please water Master Malfoy? Whatever the consequences of Harry's meddling with the very fabric of time and space are I am certain there will be little good in squatting up here waiting to find out'
As he said this the sky began to glow orange and great flaming meteors, too many to count, began to fall from the sky.
'Oh, good work Harry,' growled Ron, 'You've gone and initiated the apocalypse!'
'No I haven’t!' cried Harry, but not entirely convinced that he hadn’t, he added, 'I can fix it, I'll just use the spell on Snape again, then he can kill Dumbledore and set things right!'
'No good,’ replied Dumbledore, 'If you use Infinito Probabiliatus again the chances of you turning him back into “Snape” are infinity to one, you’ll more likely turn him into a small sun or an apricot tree or something even more inconvenient than his current form.'
He spoke these words as he walked down the stairs and was suddenly aware of the large crowd of Death Eaters that were assembled at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for them. Hermione coughed loudly and nudged Harry into the front, but before he could even draw his wand the side of the room exploded in an almighty inferno as a meteor collided with the castle wall, obliterating the nefarious crowd.
Moments later, Voldemort himself came marching down the hallway shouting out orders ahead of himself, 'Alright you lot, look sharp, Dumbledore will be coming down those stairs any minute now and if you – damn it all, why must all my minions be killed by meteors?! - Well, that's me then, I'm off!' and with a look of pained resignation he spun on his heel and fled the castle on his own.
There was silence for the first time in over an hour. Not only had the remaining Death Eaters cleared out but it seemed the meteors had also stopped falling. ‘Some Apocalypse,’ muttered Ron. The Earth gave an indignant quake and Ron quickly retracted his statement.
Renovations and repairs began immediately and Dumbledore had Slytherin commons converted into a laboratory for the examination of the meteor that had crashed into the building. Professor Snape was moved into the lake where he immediately began feasting greedily on Grindylows and Mermaids with gusto. Draco Malfoy was given a nice windowsill to perch on and some slugicide pellets.
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