WIZARD PEOPLE, Dear Readers
by Brad Neely
by Brad Neely
Chapter 1
Privet Drive.
The ominous fog makes the nighttime even more hoary and mysterious than usual, here in suburban Britannia. Out from the shadows of God knows what dimension steps the oldest wizard in the books. The near dead Dumbledore. He is clearly a powerful beast and walks with dignity despite his age and attire.
He sees a cat that he knows right before he sets to work. He produces a wizard’s tool, known as the street darkener and with a practiced angling of the arm, begins to siphon away the clarity made from mankind’s bulbs. Magical deeds are afoot dear readers, magical darkness a must.
The atmosphere complete, the cat now protected by shadows, transforms into who else but Professor Hardcastle McCormick, and old friend, an ally of Dumbledore, the half-dead. She is truly a great wizard also and possesses many a skill that might aid in tonight’s random errands.
They speak gravely of tonight’s horrible decision. And dear readers, trust me, their work tonight is dubious. What are they to do, are they really going to go through with tonight’s desperate plan? The choice is clearly in powerful hands, as Dumbledore ponders with his gigantic brain.
Just then, a light approaches in the clouds. Shredding through the stratus, descends no other than Hagar the Horrible, a huge man that if you didn’t know better, you may mistake him for a giant hairy truck. He is Dumbledore’s gofer, and now perched upon his sky-leopard; Hagar seems at the end of an errand that almost bested him.
But lo, out from his manly pape, he produces the most powerful baby in the universe. Dumbledore accepts the swaddled child like the delicate button of an atomic bomb. His bowels tense. No false moves here.
Hardcastle McCormick pleads with Dumbledore not to go through with the plan. “What plan,” you ask? Well, they are going to leave this veritable weapon of the gods, this paradox of babiness and power right here, on a fricken Muggle’s doorstep!
But “shhh,” says Dumbledore to the baby, and “shhh,” he says to the lady, as Hagar gnashes his teeth in inner conflict and almost drowns in snotty fearful tears, his master Dumbledore tells him to wait in the frickin car if he has to.
And, the baby..is left. The baby, with the most telling of scars. The baby that is the seed of power. The baby that is the inheritor of the horrible hoary hammer of the gods, Harry, the wizard who was destined to vanquish all evil, and if he so wishes, brings it back again! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone!
Chapter 2
Harry Potter wakes to the sound of his evil aunt banging on his bedroom’s tiny door. His adopted family treats him so poorly he can barely keep from incinerating them with any number of spells he keeps hidden way up his sleeves.
Harry’s room is cool, though. He’s clearly made the most of it, unlike his cousin, Roast Beefy, whose birthday happens to be today. His cousin has no idea of the power he is toying with. He is indeed a mean little puke who is borderline retarded and must shout moistly every stupid sentence that he manages to piece together.
As Harry prepares breakfast, totally magic-free and labor-intensive, his vomit-inducing uncle, Giggle Snort, looks on as the evil mother does the blind man birthday dance with Roast Beefy. The living room turns out to be full of presents for the nonplussed Roast Beefy Weefs.
Of course, it is never, never, never enough. Chunks of demands splatter on his parent’s faces. Harry must stay calm and repress his urges of igniting the house in a demonstrative fireball, ending the life of these three little pigs. But our wolf remains cool.
The day the family is going to the zoo and on the way uncle Pig Fat sinisterly suggests a beating to Harry if he sees any kind of magic out of him. Oh ho, dear reader, it looks like Uncle Salt Porker has some idea of our hero’s magical brain. His face is the worst.
The family seems to be happy with nothing; a giant Burmese leopard-eating snake basks in front of their piggish faces like a poem. And of course, they want it to dance for them.
But not our Harry. The sweet wizard in remission is psychically linked with the beautiful snake-being. Harry, having dreamt himself of eating leopards, boars, and dic-dics. And what do you know, Harry can actually speak with this creature. Will his talents never stop emerging? Harry, with the social grace of a saint, is relating with the orphaned captive pig-hating snake.
It is a beautiful moment indeed and Harry for once feels in tune with the natural universe. The snake has no parents, is dangerous, and is beautiful. Harry sees himself here, in this snake, like looking at his image in the mirror. It is a perfect moment.
Cousin Roast Beefyweefs notices action, and runs over to spoil the moment. Harry totally loses it, and frags Roast Beefy good with a Glass-be-Gone spell. Wah-oosh! The terrible spills his ass into the cage as the supine beast nobly erects himself out and his thanking Harry as he slithers into the nightmare hearts of all of the Muggles nearby. Everyone is afraid of this beast but Harry. Of course, Harry, who is part of the natural universe now.
And what do you know dear reader? Providence must have cast the Glass-be-Back spell! ‘Cuz take a look at the zoo’s new acquisition! It is a play, a tragic comedy, the lament of Roast Beefyaweefy! Ha Ha! The family Porkums is hit palpably with shame. Yes Harry, do laugh on. Laugh right into their unthinkable faces.
Chapter 3
As the Hog family enters their home to regroup after Harry’s formidable blow, Uncle Porkflaps tries to tear Harry’s wig off, before remembering Harry is a boy, and probably, his hair is real.
‘No more magic!’ his throat rasps without its usual gravy lube. Realizing his throat is foodless; Uncle Piggums exits for the kitchen.
In the following weeks, Harry falls into a depression. He feels like an exile here in this world. He feels alone and hated. Harry, going about his innumerable chores, picks up the mail, only to be bowled over at the discovery of a letter addressed to him!
“A connection is trying to be made,” he thinks. “Someone needs me.”
Having delivered the mail, Harry tries to conceal his letter, but cousin Ragtime Roast Beefy thinks that Harry has a possible cookie or wafer and takes away the letter before Harry can open it. Uncle Piggums inspects the letter as best as he can with those eyes, and a phantom of fear crawls his goutish face. Harry ponders what could be so wonderful.
In the next few days, a miraculous event unfolds. Birds from every breed and fashion begin to crowd the PorknChip’s home with letters addressed to Harry. The uncle is beginning to feel the pressure. Harry, in a spiral of depression, turns to the escape of miniature equine aficionado. He produces many a wine-out-of-nowhere spell and is drunk every day before noon.
He is only half aware of his uncle’s battle with the birds. The aviary hoard perch on everything perchable, tarping the yard, car, roof and all in hawker-like bird waste and of course, the letters. Every bird revels in the madness it is inducing on Uncle Saltporker. The house, under drifts of letters, molting, and bird shit, now pushes the uncle to burn anything that is represented on paper.
Harry, through a cloud of wizard magic and stealthily pinched valium from the evil aunt, notices his uncle fraying.
One morning, while doling out biscuits, Harry listens half-heartedly to his uncle’s plans for a giant cat to be unleashed upon his feathery foes, but Harry’s attention is drawn to the window.
Sunlight. Harry could almost cry at this simple gift of the universe. If it weren’t for these awful people, he would cry, but he must not show weakness, or else they’ll hand him his ass.
He tries to focus on the yard and the birds.
“Why are they trying to contact me?”
The facts makes its way into his jungle of a conscience, just as a veritable fountain of bird-propelled letters issues forth onto the family. Harry decides that this is it.
“This is the moment. I must make my move in this masking of a snowstorm and I will take one letter into my room and whisper it to my horses and see what they think.”
Oh, how the wine talks. But Harry cannot make it to his tiny door. Even impeded by the onslaught of letters, the now totally bonkers Uncle Porkstar crashes down on Harry. The battle that would have been is now a sad display.
Harry, at the drunken bottom of a depression well and his once formidable foe mindless and flailing.
Chapter 4
A crushing blue night lays upon the sleeping porksters. As Harry, awake and active, plays out his happiest of sad moments. Sigh. His birthday of course. But who could care? Especially out here where love is dashed upon the rocks like a rose given as an insincere apology. Love. Don’t give up on it, Harry! Make a wish upon it, upon the stars.
But BLAM! BLAM! BLAAAM at the door. The Porktown family scuttles into position but what busts in the door is far more than expected. It is Hagar the Horrible, the nightmare of hair, a wall of a man. But buried under his woolen chest is a heart I’d trust a baby with. After politely shutting the door, Hagar turns to the squawking uncle and aunt.
His face is a mask that displays he is no mood and he bends the gun that is pointed in his face straight in half. A bullet ejects into the heavens interrupting an angel’s sleep. But oh no! Harry! Hagar confuses Roast Beefyweefs for Harry! No! Don’t take that chili barrel to Hogwarts! Then Harry rolls into view.
“I am Harry.” Phew.
Now if you cry easy, be careful here, dear reader, for Hagar produces for Harry his first birthday gift. It is a cake, handmade, no less, with love, by a warrior of the wind.
“Who are you, nice man?” Harry asks, feigning a child’s air.
Hagar says, “Hagar,” and tells Harry that he is the gatekeeper and keymaster at Hogwarts. Harry is confused, though he knows how to play his cards. A man like this could be in the market for a sidekick.
“What’s Hogwarts?”
A masterful play by Harry. Hagar stumbles around with words and seems put off a bit at himself. Clearly, sidekicking for Hagar would suck balls. Hagar can’t contain it anymore, and just drops his secret.
“You’re a wizard, Harry.”
Harry, with the talent of Lawrence of Olivier, feigns surprise.
“I can’t be a wizard, I’m just…Harry!” again, with the oil of Olivier.
“Well, ‘just Harry’, I imagine that lions are just lions, and gods are just gods. You are a special boy. You don’t know it, but you and I go way back.”
Harry really wishes that he could have a glass of wine or something right now.
Hagar gets up from the couch and produces a letter. It is clear now that Hagar is a bird-friend for indeed the letters are the same as before. Harry begins to read.
“Come to Hogwarts, and become a wizard, Harry Potter it says,” he reads thus, aloud. Uncle Baconface races in to interject a spit parade which Harry translates into a most disturbing disclosure. The pigs knew all along! They knew that Harry’s parents were wizards, of course!
And now, the sickest pinched up mouth of an aunt lets out that Harry’s parents did not die in a car crash, were but of course destroyed in a much cooler way, a wizard’s fight. She begins then to berate Harry’s mom, calling her names, and trying to say that Harry sucks and stuff like that. Her venom is sharp; sucking is nothing Harry wants to do.
Hagar then steps in, seeing Harry is in no state to argue for himself. “This night is going to end good for Harry, end of story.”
As Roast Beefaweefs grabs Harry’s cake and begins to munch it, Hagar describes the pigs as Muggles to Harry. Music-hating, magicless Muggles. He lays down the law on Harry’s schooling, a big fat YES, HE’S GOING. Hagar also goes on to say that the great Dumbledore is the teacher at Hogwarts and will make Harry into a man and stuff.
Uncle Fat Train spews a slander on Dumbledore in return. Hagar gives him a truly horrible look. He points his magical umbrella and starts to say a spell like Don’t-ever-talk-again-Fatty. But then, he’s interrupted by the smacking jowls of Roast Beefyweefs.
ZAP! goes Hagar with the umbrella, and wah-lah! a curled up cheeto shoots right out of Roast B’s bottom!
“Woo-hoo!” shouts Harry. “Bout time he burst that cheeto! He’s been trying to birth years! Hahahahah!”
Hagar takes a sip off of what has to be whiskey and hands the flask to Harry. Harry takes a giant pull and then Hagar says, “Let’s get out of here. You like flying motorcycles?”
Harry replies, “Anything’s better than crawling.”
They both laugh and hold their bellies like two Santas on opposite scales, and then they gather up Harry’s worn out shoes and stuff that Harry wants to take with him.
Chapter 5
Midday London
Whilst walking in broad daylight with Hagar the Horrible, Harry bravely reads his syllabuses demands.
“Wands, magic sands, one Turkish massage owl… Where can I ever obtain such obscurities?”
Hagar makes a knowing ‘O’ shape with his hairy lips and directs Harry into a nondescript black plastic business. A bar? Hagar the Horrible, you’d better know what you’re getting Harry into. Of course, the barkeeper knows Hagar’s bar-darkening frame.
“Hello, Hagar.”
“Hello, Hagar.”
“Hello, Hagar,” it comes from all directions.
“Do you want some beer?”
“No, that’s OK, I have Harry Fricken Potter with me today, and we’re doin’ some shoppin.’”
The bar inhabitants crane their fused-up eyeballs in view. They all want to see the legend of Harry P. Old women, leathery hats, and grizzly madmen pinch themselves under the table to make sure they aren’t dreaming. Harry handshakes with all.
The defender of the Dark Arts teacher from Hogwarts School presents himself. His name is Professor Queerman. He stutters, clearly a fan of Harry. Harry makes a series of heartwarming gestures in an effort to calm the professor’s nerves. Harry is truly a gentleman, and Queerman feels at home in his presence.
Hagar moves along the business, for they have tons of shopping to do. He leads Harry out the back door and into what appears to be a dead-end alley.
“How do all those people know me?”
“Do you wanna do some shopping or what?”
A Masonic pentagram is described by Hagar on a brick wall, and SHAZAM. The doorway to a magical world is afolded back brick by brick for Harry’s brain to take in. And ah… Welcome to Calgon Alley.
Dear Reader, imagine music. Lah-deh-dah-deh-dah, alive and market-placey. Violins, taking a break up in the air with non-threatening amblings and a…and a wreath of tambourine, lightly jangled. Enter scene of what looks like 1800s England downtown; buildings crowded in unstably around tons of magical kids with their parents, scraping together their needs for the upcoming school year. Witchy moms, wizardly dads, and worried, hurried Harry acting excited and happy for Hagar’s sake.
“Look! A Turkish massage owl! And look! It’s a bat! Sweet mustache! Wilikers! Harry watches kids breaking their nose cartilage on the window panes of broom stores. This is heaven.
Chapter 6
“I'm broke, Hagar. What do I do? I want that broom back there.”
Hagar happily extends a finger at the goblin bank of Wobble Columns.
“You got an account up in there, Master Harry.”
They enter the foyer amongst the evil pasty hobbity-uff goody goblins. They are running the money show, clever turnips, these needleteeth. Imagine a human of about three years of age with antler-like nose and ears, and a jellyfish draped over its head, then stuffed into a leprechaun suit.
Hagar prompts the nearest leprechaun teller for a withdrawal from Harry’s account. The leprechaun, famousness of Harry aside, demands Master P’s bank key. Luckily, Hagar, the key master, naturally produces Harry’s key.
“What else does he have of mine?” Harry ponders.
Now pay attention dear readers, Hagar then very earnestly gives the leprechaun an envelope and says it’s from Dumbledore and that it has to do with THAT vault, that SPECIAL vault. The goblin is in time with Hagar and they know that this is grave business. Harry pays close attention.
Soon, they are riding to the vaults on a roller coaster. The grossest looking humanoid in the world tries to scuttle around on its moon-shaped limbs. It tries to remain cool and orders Hagar and Harry to follow it.
It unlocks the door and backs away trying to resemble what it thinks is a cool looking person, but in reality, it is freaking Harry and Hagar out miserably. The door of the vault swings open and right away starts to blow the socks off Harry P. Hagar makes noises out of his mouth but Harry is not a-vailable. The piles of gold that are his instantly make everything beautiful for Harry.
“It’s going to be OK,” he thinks.
Now on to yet another vault.
“More of my gold?” Harry thinks.
The leprechaun lifts a clawed finger up and down, tickling the door’s back enough that it unclenches in its threshold and swings open no to reveal a pile of treasure, but to reveal a silly little gunnysack. Hagar walks in, snatches up the gunnysack and stows it away on his humongous person.
‘This is between you, me, and the little Patty McGrossOut, ok, HP?’
Harry nods.
Chapter 7
Back on the shopping tour and Harry needs a wand.
“Go up in Edvanders’s, I’ve got to tend to a few other details and I’ll meet you in there later,” says Hagar.
So Harry enters Edvanders’s Wand Emporium. The shop is full to the ceiling with wands.
Which to brandish? Which one to call my psychic extension?
Harry irks out a few husky hellos. “Hello? Hello?”
JEEPERS! Edvanders rushes into Harry’s view like a scarecrow carcass, a dreadful visage, indeed. And a ghastly voice, “Harry Potter. Welcome.”
Master H is beginning to feel animosity towards is own celebrity. Harry gazes at the man’s skin, a ketchupy callous of a face.
“I will make spells that save me from looking like him.” Harry makes that mental note, I assure you. The mental notes are stacking.
Edvanders produces a wand that he thinks is suitable for our Harry, but on the first try, Harry totally frigs up half of the store with that wily stag of a twig.
“His stockpiles of nuclear-level energy will be tricky to funnel,” thinks the Edvanders.
He. Is. Tenacious. He pokes around in stacks of wand boxes for round two. A bigger wand, he suspects, will be suitable.
Harry, now bored and tired, brandishes again, but…KABLOOMERS! Destrucción!
Vanders, with a why-didn’t-I-think-of-it-before look, the look that everyone’s dad puts on when he’s trying to pick out shoes and clothes for their kid, even though they have had thought of this before, from the beginning in fact, they just want to draw out the afternoon with needless driving around and tryings on because they don’t know what else to do with their kids, well, he puts on that kind of look and music galore fills the shop.
He stands in front of Harry like some freaking Amadeus. He’s no doubt imagining Harry as his orchestra. A warm light wand, hair-raisingly good idea. Vanders. Is. Flabbergasted. At how good of a choice he has made. He starts to whisper like a thespian in a particularly juicy role.
“This wand’s brother is the wand of that scar-maker. The guy who gave you your famous scar.”
Harry almost dookies a shooter but controls himself. Harry is sick of whispery games, and he says normally, ‘What is this Scarmaker’s name?’
The Edvanders all but holds up a skull and soliloquies, “Oh, we don’t say his name, but know this. He is a badass. He could kill anyone, anything. A gorilla or a bear, whatever, anything. Anything but you,” Edvanders, wasteland of a face, crowds in close. His monologue is stinky. “You are in a great position. You are an army of wizards, Mister Potter. Use yourself wisely.” His breath cascades over Harry’s unbreathing nose.
“How long must I go without an intake of air?” thinks Harry. It’s the only thought that consumes his brain.
Finally, breaking the mood, Hagar taps the window. Holy balls! He’s bought the Turkish owl! Hurrah!
Chapter 8
Hagar and Harry sit eating supper in a foggy wine-spewed inn. The depression creeps into Harry again. His powers seem infinite. Everyone loves and fears him, but he himself can’t seem to find his place among them. He is outside of people and the wine flows. So, in an effort to cheer Harry up, Hagar decides to tell the tale of Harry’s parents’ death.
“Valmart is the name of the scar-maker’, he whispers. ‘He’s a wizard with uncanny powers, but this guy is so evil, as soon as he came out of the womb, he put a scar on his own forehead. Well, Valmart went to Hogwarts and started the Dark Side club. It was actually the coolest club to be in at first, everyone got a kick out of being in a club that stories were told about, you know, that’s all anyone ever does anything for anyway, the sake of a story to be made of them.
“Well, you can be sure that Valmart earned his share of stories. Well, the club got strict; you had to love evil and not be shy about using murder spells, or else you’d be murdered. Your parents were some of the people who decided not to kill for fun.
“And so, Valmart went to their house and killed them, and while he was there, he tried to kill you. You was a baby, of course. But the spell ricocheted off your head and hit him instead. Now no one knows if he’s dead, hiding, or hiding as someone else, but what’s for sure is he hates you for not dying. And it’s sure that if he’s alive, he’ll try to finish off the job, probably when you’re sleeping, and he’ll probably look like someone you love, just to make it worse when he murders you. So, you know, be on the look out for that, and, you know, be careful when anyone loves you.”
“Gulp,” says Harry.
“Yeah, sure, heh. Gulp that down.”
Chapter 9
Whilst walking to the train station, Harry begins to feel the stomach butterflies accumulate. Hagar is then stunned by the time of day. He must get that gunnysack to Dumbledore. So, he gives Harry his train ticket and totally freakin’ disappears on Harry.
Harry thinks to himself, “What the hell is meant by 9 and ¾? Platforms are not broken up that way. Wilikers!”
Harry feels dreadfully alone at this point, but in a way, it is a thrilling situation. Here he is, a young lad making his way in the world today. The stacks of gold coins in his pockets ease his worrying.
Carting along the Turkish owl and luggage, Harry makes his way up to interrupting a station man, only because he’s afraid he’ll miss the train.
“Where’s platform 9 and ¾?”
“Fudge off, you fuck,” says the horrible man. He’s obviously a goutish fucker.
Thank God for the Irish. Harry overhears the redhead mother of a reaheaded herd of children speak wizardly, and he knows he’s in luck.
“Follow them, Harry,” says Harry to himself. “Follow them or die.”
Watching from a distance, Harry sees one boy, cart of luggage and all, disappear into the brick wall between nine and tenth platform.
“Holy Balls. I’m not doing that,” he thinks. “Willikers.”
Some more kids whoosh through and another. And Harry’s nerves begin to settle. So, finally he goes up to the mother and begs a lesson.
“Excuse me, Irish lady, can you show me how to do that?”
Here in the presence of such an honest and loving family, Harry feels immediate, latent, Helsinki-syndrome withdrawals for the Pork family project. He quickly shakes them off when the mother sweetly crimpsons his bottom and in Harry goes like a reversal birth, onto and into the brick wall that stands ominously in front of him. He overcomes his fears and he is on the correct platform. Ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah forever. Amen.
“Well bless my nippers,” cries Harry. “Bless them all day long.”
He stands in awe of the smoking engine, the train that shall propel him to the stage that he was born for. Hogwarts Express.
Chapter 10
As the Hogwarts Express drags along the countryside, all the kids’ hearts race in time with the engine. The scene is so beautiful. The landscape is literally peppered with painters working out masterpiece after masterpiece.
Ron Weasel makes his grand entrance and shares the compartment with Harry. The proud lad remembers Harry from the platform and takes a seat. In the introductions, Ron is stricken with a face almost sacred when Harry introduces himself as the HP. The scar is called into question. It is shown and it is wicked.
The food service wench appears. Ron, obviously from a family whose money is spread thinly over the sheer volume of loin product, cannot buy a thing. But the new, newly minted Monopoly chap HP flashes some coin and the new friends celebrate over a pole of cakes and frogs, and nipples of Witch Venus, and rats, and chocospells, and fruitnuts. You know, wizardly fodder, the same kind of junky food you or I would wallow our mouths upon if we were in Harry and Ron’s place.
Ron. Loves. Twizzlers. They talk over the syllabus and what’s to be demanded of them at Hogwarts.
Ronnie tells Harry that he’s a pot of coffee by day, bottle of wine by night type of guy.
Harry says, “Triple that, and you got me.”
They laugh a congenial laugh and both of them realize that they were instant friends. Friends forever.
Just as Ron is about to produce yellow pillows, a spell he has learned and home, pillows of gold, he and Harry are interrupted by horrible creature that is making it’s way down the hall and appears in the doorway. Only upon closer examination do Ron and HP realize that it’s a girl looking for a frog.
Her hair seems to be made up of hair follicle sized serpents, a pre-pubescent Medusa. Agh. She demands that Ron continues his spell, but by mere proximity to such a wretched creature, Ron cannot concentrate and almost kills his rat instead of producing pillows of gold.
She tries to degrade Ron, but only looks stupid. Knowing that these boys obviously hate her filthy guts, she sits down and repairs Harry’s glasses with a pretty cool spell. The boys have to admit, this creature posing as a humanoid has some chops, definitely some chops, indeed. Only after the spell does she recognize our HP for who he is.
She intros herself as Harmony and begs Ronnie of his name. He only growls and smacks in her general direction. This prompts her to leave, and as a last ditch effort to please, she informs Ronnie of his chocolaty covered nose, as if he didn’t know.
Chapter 11
Finally, the moment of truth! The God Wheel of Fate has stopped for all of these kiddies on yes, yes-in-fucking-deed you will be a wizard, and this moment is the first in a series of moments that no matter what feelings the moments embody, yes, yes is still the answer. Yes to life and yes to magic.
Just look at their faces; look at their auras. Yes! They are aglow. Dear readers, imagine a music that describes a nocturnal heavenly yes as the children float on the black waters, boating up to the castle of Hogwarts School. Harry knows straight away that this shall be a place where he shall surely brandish his wand valiantly, he knows in his heart that this is his stage upon which he will conjure and conquer the world with his unworldly charisma points. Harry trembles and steadies himself in the reassuring pasty presence of Ron the Bear.
This moment of yes consumes our Harry. He feels here that he is the thing of stories. And for this, he nearly weeps a frenzy of weeps.
Finally, the kids make a formation up to the school’s entrance. They file in up the main staircase and are met by none other than Professor Hardcastle McCormick, rasping her fingerbones in withering patience as the children gather beneath her on the front stairway.
She speaks about the school and that the class that is here now shall be divided into four different schools total. Her voice is chilling, and like a piano made of frozen Windex. Her eyes smoke like smears of fish scales on her candle wax stump of a head. She goes on to describe the systems of merits, demerits, house cup, et cetera… Snoozers. All the kids are too tired to listen.
The professor goes on and drones and talks memorably about different alumni that everyone should remember, but is interrupted by the child whose name is Upfish, who finally finds his frog. A victory for Upfish, but a staggering loss for Hardcastle.
After Hardcastle leaves, a dreadful kid with sunburned hair notices Harry somehow and calls him out in front of everybody. The murmurs begin.
Finally, like a cowboy, he saunters up to get a look at our HP. He intros himself as Mouthoyle, and of course Ronnie busts up at this. The rich little bastard starts throwing class trash about Ronnie the Bear’s hard-earning family being poor and rabbit-like. Of course he goes for the shame spell.
But HP gets Ronnie’s back by issuing a comment or two so deft I can’t even start to reproduce them here. The words do wonders for Harry’s initial cred here at Hogwarts.
Chapter 12
The children file into a glorious cafeteria where all the other pre-sorted students and teachers are awaiting the ceremony. A welcoming flute song accompanies their entrance as candles float in mid-air under a ceiling that appears to be made out of glass entirely. The night sky adjusts its clouds above them.
The faculty table is full of weirdo professors and goblin-faced women. There are floppy, pointy head decorations - the true mark of a master magician.
Hagar, Cromley, and friends sit awaitingly. Professor Dumbledore erects himself slowly and tells some jokes about death that most of the kids just don't get. He then after warming up the crowd, introduces the blood-eyed cat that is head of security, and then introduces the cat's manservant, Dazzler.
He then closes with yet another joke about death perplexing some, and scaring most of the children. He sits down, finally.
Hardcastle announces that it is time to begin. Her manners are that of a jilted lover's I-didn't-love-him-anyway sort of mood. The child sorting hat ceremony begins with the wretched Harmony.
A wise child, she is, and reminds herself not to freak out up there in front of everyone. The poor thing has complex on top of complex. She perches on a seat in front of all the kids and Hardcastle places an uggity-buggity looking hat over her hair. It grind dances on Harmony's head, and grumbles pleasurably 'Gryffindor'. Applause all around.
Harry thinks to himself that this will be a long, long night.
Next up, Mouthoyle is called to face the grinding hat, but before his ass cheeks can even start to pancake out on the stool, he is assigned to Slytherin.
Some other kids get up and have their fates directed, and a wicked woman casts a look at Harry that makes his scar hurt. Ouch! This is the weirdest woman Harry's ever seen, a dark, foreboding weirdo that Harry feels certain will be the kind of teacher who paddles for fun.
Ronnie the Bear is next for the hat. Ronnie is certain that this hat will bear down on him and hunch away at his scalp for nothing. Everyone knows that Weasels are put into Gryffindor. Ronnie's twenty brothers and twelve sisters are all Gryffindor students or alumni or faculty. The obvious is true - Gryffindor it is.
Professor Hardcastle tries hard to say 'Harry Potter' like it's no big deal, but the room goes quiet. Everyone edges in to see and hear what's going to happen next. The rustle of bets and cash is muted between robes. Harry doesn't want to bunk with Mouthoyle, but that hat starts in about Harry's potential and near limitless talent.
Oh, Harry only winces at this constant bombardment of pressure to impress. This damn hat, all these fucking kids and teachers looking at him like he's a fucking television.
“I don't care, fuck it. Just don't put me with Mouthoyle,” is all Harry keeps thinking. Finally, the hat's oscillations tense and cease upon Harry's scalp. Gryffindor it is. Yes. And the universe sighs its magical sigh.
Harry is congratulated wildly by his new bunkmates, but he feels numb and distant. A knowing glance is shared between the near dead Dumbledore and the virile youth, and he hopes that he can pound a few cold ones.
Chapter 13
Dumbledore casts his stand-without-effort spell following it up with his most famous food-aplenty spell. If ever a room full of children has looked like little hyenas that have come upon a dead family of zebras, it is now.
Piles of glitzy meat and sweetbreads appear. There are sweaty corns and honeyed everything. Talking bones loosen and Harry relaxes into a wine-ish swagger.
He talks closely with his RA. “Who the fuck is that woman? She’s got to be a half troll.”
The RA replies, “No, that’s Professor Snake, she sucks for the most part, you know, acting mysterious and theatrical.”
“God, I hate that shit,” replies Harry. “I’m here to learn, not to watch a performance.”
Just then, the conversation is busted up by a breeze of hilarious ghosts. There are women ghosts and musketeers. Little John the ghost shows up and demands a song of farts or else. His friend, the Count of Reeds, whips lashingly every child in the face. No one is able to escape his mustached giggle.
A ghost dance begins and the kids watch on as a transparent orgy of flashdances and footlooses fog up the rafters of mealtime. Finally, every ghost is bored, and evaporates either into the walls or out through the ceiling, and every student’s belly is distended with jelly, wine, and pudding pops. The dinner is over.
The RAs guide the new Gryffindors into the stairwell. The staircases are a maddening, moving architecture that forever fuck up the students’ days by moving here and there without warning.
The kids climb stair after stair ad infinitum. Some talk about art, others simply concentrate on not vomiting from the intense vertigo.
On top of the wine and the meat that all of the children have eaten, they’re just hoping to finally get to their rooms so that they can use the potty and acquaint themselves with the water closet.
Finally, they file in front of a painting of the most beautiful woman ever around. The RA says the codeword, and the woman in the painting loosens her perfect tongue from her mouth and beckons everyone present to enter.
Beyond the painting lies the Gryffindor parlor. Smoking, cards, and night caps will all be the room’s main function for the kids, the RA goes on to explain.
All eyes are heavy. The day has been a storm of excitements, and the children, after laying out their uniforms and shoes, are quickly starring in each other’s dreams.
It is a beautiful, pale blue night. All the children are wrapped in their blankets. All except for Harry. Stroking his bird, Harry is lost in thought, bathed in the cold moonlight.
“Who am I now?” he thinks as he winks at the night, and it seems to whisper back to him. “You are everything.”
Chapter 14
Harry awakes to yet another tequila sunrise. He and Ronnie the Bear are lost and late for their first class. But when the boys stumble, out of breath, into class, they are delighted to find that the teacher is late or out for coffee. But in unison, the boys’ faces scream: “Holy freakin balls!” The cat has been Professor Hardcastle this whole time! Willikers!
As the professor puts together a clever witticism about tardiness and George Washington’s trees full of cherries, Harry makes another mental note: never pet cats that you don’t know, no, never pet anything.
The potion class’s door is thrown open, and in dances that black hole of a woman, with a scar aching glare. She leans with her best effort to strike an attractive pose, while beginning to wet her student’s appetite with a taste of what kind of rhetoric could be expected here. The stark impossibility that such a thing is human, not to mention a human that Harry has to pay attention to is only matched by Mouthoyle’s apparent infatuation with her. They look into each others eyes like two serpents on a honeymoon. Snake, astonished that she has an admirer, Mouthoyle, astonished that he likes women.
Snake, seeing now that Harry is not paying attention to her lips syllables and massages of notes, calls him out and rags on his celebrity in front of everyone.
Harry is surprised for he was only taking notes intently. Then Snake demands from Harry how to make a certain spell. Harry good naturedly says he just doesn’t know. How could he? This is his first day! Christ!
Driven by some unholy jealousy, the unfair Snake presses him again. “What is such and such?” or “How many rat tails are in minkerfuls?” Harry again, with the oil of Olivier, acts humble, demure even, thankful for the lesson. He controls his urge to slay Snake’s ears with a few fiery riffs off his wand. Snake finally subsides her onslaught. She stupidly feels she has cowed our Harry.
At lunch, the kids relax and compare first impressions on teachers. Ronnie the Bear tells him that he could hardly see him cowed as such an asshole back there. Harry explains to the Bear that subtly and patience are a great way to look pretty cool. The Bear has to agree, and they give each other Fonzie looks.
The rest of lunch is spent on mail reading, which is delivered by a host of birds that we the readers are already duly familiar with. Some kids get letters, others get ornaments that quickly fill with mother’s blood, and some desperately wait for their letters to arrive, which shall never, for they are the type of kids that mothers never write to.
Harry opts to read the paper.
Now, dear readers, if you’ve ever paid attention to me, now is the time. Harry reads aloud to Ronnie and Harmony that the leprechaun bank which he had been to earlier on has now been broken into. It was that same vault where the gunny sack had been. It was busted into by what is suspected to be black art wizards of Valmart’s order. Jeepers! But of course the gunny sack was gone before the robbers got there.
Chapter 15
Outside, Harry’s class awaits their first lesson in broom stickers. Being that this is the last class of the day, kids are anxious to get rowdy.
Finally, professor Meowmers takes her position in front of the class. This morning, Harry does have one thing in common with Mouthoyle, his mood. A mood of pity for his frustrated, easily astonished and shallow peers. Of course Harry commands his broom with ease, and, like the beginning of Dueling Banjos, so does Mouthoyle. Harry later will be displeased with himself, that he hates everyone today, Professor Catface, Mouthoyle, Tony the Shrimp, Facer, Yellow, Otter Pop and yes, even trusty sidekick Ronnie the Bear.
Whilst Professor Catface Meowmers barks orders, Harry’s imagination sees before it a giant cake. A wedding cake. His parent’s wedding cake, and he wants to eat it. But then he realizes this cake is Dumbledore’s hat, and to reach it he must climb up Dumbledore’s body, using his old ribcage, mouth, sockets and such as footholds. But before he can get halfway up the rickety old scaffolding of a man, degrading the saintly old professor with his imagined dastardly feet and thumbs, he sees that the cake is indeed rotten, black and toppled. Obviously forgotten over the years, and adopted as a hat for reasons unknown to such a first year as Harry. The daydream is a weak attempt to stay amused during these Idiot Guide style classes.
As HP comes out of his revere, he is amazed to realize that his friend Upfish has had some sort of serious accident. And upon leaving, Professor Catface Meowmers, gingerly escorting Upfish out into the school nursery zone, the kids begin to rustle with wild nerves, having been awarded time away from a teacher.
It seems that Mouthoyle has Upfish’s beloved blood ball, and is threatening to crash it.
“Ah, fuck this,” says Harry, and he all but punches Mouthoyle right in the head and face. But Mouthoyle, being in the same little bad boy mood, defies Harry, and takes the battle of limits up into the lower stratus. Will Harry defy Catface Meowmers for a chance of totally burning Mouthoyle? The wretched Harmony tries to restrain our Harry, but he is deaf with rage.
Their skill is immediately deft. All the other boys and girls feel like lower organisms in the wake of their god-like abilities. In a dazzling aerial combat, Harry totally burns Mouthoyle quickly. He gets Upfish’s sphere, and for good measure, crashes Mouthoyle’s head into the bricks of the castle over and over.
After letting off some steam, Harry does a few victory tricks and flourishes on his standard school issue broom for the kids below. As he descends, he descends on a crowd of homies and newly converted homies who congratulate and pat him. Only to be plucked away from his moment by that asshole Hardcastle McCormick! Arrgh! What a horrible day!
Professor Hardcastle leads a sulky and punishment expecting Harry down the hallways to the Defense of Black Arts classroom. She asks a lizard hugging, stuttery professor Queerman if she can see the student known as Major Wood.
Wood is the captain of the Quidditch team, and Harry sees him as a Greek statue, an Adonis in witches’ clothing. Clearly someone that Harry can relate to.
Now, dear readers, imagine that song ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ Yes, for Harry is the new seeker of Gryffindor. His buddies fall in behind him as they strut through the halls. This is a procession of cool kids, and every student dreams of knowing them. But, cavalierly, Harry and the effin Bear decide to break away from their homies entourage and discuss personal business. But soon, they are accompanied by the Wretched Harmony and cannot go into details about their thoughts.
But Hello! The usefulness again shows through, as she decides to take Harry and Ronnie to the trophy case of honors.
“Behold!” she manages out of her horrible mouth. “Your dad was also a badass.”
Chapter 16
As the three are making their way thorough the stairwell, naturally one of those buggering staircases shifts its course and sets them on a peculiar level. The kids, having nothing else to do tonight, their potions mixed, histories read, frogs destroyed, they decide to follow fate’s lead.
But soon, the three are able to deduct that they are indeed in the forbidden third floor corridor, and if found they will be killed on sight, no questions asked. Before they are able to decide whether to continue their investigations, the three turn around to see the blood-eyed cat, who indeed sees them too. They make haste through the cobwebbery and darkness, only to meet another dead end.
“Freakin’ door!” HP declares. “It’s locked!”
Ronnie the Bear quakes, but the Wretched Harmony casts a spell so badass that the lock falls apart and becomes a gas of rose petals that go up their noses like a baby’s challenge. They are in! And just in time. The blood-eyed cat must have summoned its manservant, Dazzler, who idles like a van whose destination is being reconsidered.
They are indeed in, but not away from danger, dear readers. Because lo! Lying before them is a super-sized portion of God’s freakshow creations. A three-headed, giant dog, and it’s getting up from a dream, a dream of eating kids, one for each head! And hurrah for the dog, the dream comes true! Obviously it’s still sleepy, for our three heroes are able to bar the door and get away safely.
Harry puts up with the Bear bickering with the Wretch over the practicality of a hungry, three-headed dog in a school full of tasty kids, when the Wretch points out that it had to be guarding something.
Harry takes note of this, and out of respect for her detective like prowess, lets the Wretch vent a little while before he decides to take his leave with the Bear.
Both he and the Bear are hoping to score a few bottles of red wine to go with the olives they pinched from the kitchen earlier.
Chapter 17
Harry can hardly keep his heart in his clothes as he walks out onto the Cribbage field with Major Wood. His first lesson in the sport that could give Harry an outlet for his gathering rage and power.
Major Wood’s accent is so thick Harry only hears it as a sort of music, a music from a shiny, muscular horn. A music of brotherhood and balls.
Harry doesn’t care much about the game’s history and specifics, but his ears perk up when Wood comes to what Harry is supposed to do. He hands Harry an ancient, leathery club and Harry forces down a nervous throat lump. Next, Wood releases a ball that seems to have a will of its own. With all questions of what to do dissolving, Harry becomes the club and crashes it out of the park. Wood is obviously impressed, and Harry feels a relaxed joy.
Harry knows that passion needs a vehicle, and chasing balls and wielding clubs seems pretty sweet, but Harry doesn’t feel totally lost in these elements of the game. He still feels like the Harry without a home. A home where he may go wild is still not a home for him.
It is at this moment that the Golden Snitch is produced.
Harry is immediately nearly out of his skin with excitement over this ball. His destiny is here in this orb. He can feel it like someone just kicked him in his fruitstand.
“Catch this ball, Harry, and we win the game.” Harry’s face explodes into a smile. The Snitch does a clockwork striptease, and it licks and beckons lasciviously on the wind. Harry is at home.
Among totally what-the-fuck styled faces, professor Augnaught starts off a class on levitation. All the kids sit, bored out of their asses in what looks like a courtroom. Feathers in front of them, wands firmly brandished, every child is going through the movements of the levitation spell, but their minds are on that weirdo teacher. What the fuck is he? He is just so weird! They all try very hard to pay attention, but his voice chirps out of his little bundled up body in jerky attacks at normalcy.
Every child thinks this but Harmony. Harmony being so wretched herself, she feels quite at home with the hideous creature and is able to levitate her feather with no trouble.
The bear, being so disgusted with Augnaught, turns his attention to Harmony. She seems to think that Ronnie can’t do a simple levitation spell, and makes a big to-do of her quick-witted abilities.
Her spell is a delight for the professor. His head looks like a pizza, left in a chicken house. Covered in feathery bird sweat and oily discharge. Yuckers.
Harry only sits there in a stupor. He is overwhelmed with the wretched Augnaught.
After class, Harry, Ronnie and the boys walk together, doing impersonations of the wretched Harmony when the desperate creature herself bustles by, obviously hurt deeply. H.P. knows he’s got to make it right, even though it feels so good to make it wrong.
Chapter 18
Halloween! Yes!
Glorious floating jackeos in the cafeteria and every student is feasting. The spread is beautiful. Apples, candied apples, appled candies, candied whiskey, apple fritters, anything you could ever want. Upfish informs H.P. and the Bear that Harmony has locked herself in the bathroom. She’s been crying all day. Harry feels guilt pangs but Ronnie, Ronnie the Bear, he could give a fuck.
Just then, Queerman busts in, rambling incoherence, but just then, everyone makes out that he’s warning them of a horrible troll, loose in the school. Everybody freaks out. Apple chunks hit the floor, floating jack-o-lanterns fall from the sky onto kids’ heads and they run around like cartooned chaos.
The near dead Dumbledore commands everyone’s attention with a mighty roar. “Don’t panic,” He says. “Teachers: grab your spell bags, and we will find this fucking troll and we will fucking kill his fucking ass.” He means business, and everyone takes it seriously. Snake, however, scared out of her bloomers, slithers out the side door in cowardice.
As the Gryffindors more to their rooms of safety, H.P. and the Bear realize that Harmony doesn’t know about the troll, and is in certain danger. “This is the perfect way to make up to her. We’ll save her, and maybe sneak a peek at Dumbledore’s chops.”
Then, running through the hall, they see the troll-sized, giant shadow going into the girl’s crapper. Jesus Christ! Harmony’s in there!
Harry doesn’t think, he knows what he must do.
Through teary eyes, Harmony looks up… and up… and up and up and up again upon a troll, huge with pineapple legs and a giant turkey club drumstick. Wisely, she slowly backs away and tries to hide in a toilet. But the troll will not have it. He swings like a drunken Major leaguer. But triumphant! Music appears, and H.P. and Ronnie the effin Bear bust in on that troll. They start selflessly defending the wretched girl by straight away barraging the troll with spells that even mountains could hardly weather. The troll is so stupid, though, that he does not even register the pain, but always dead-set in destroying Harmony. He goes at her again, crash and whoosh with the drumstick.
Crazed with fists of fury, Harry brandishes the crap out of his wand and up onto the troll’s head, no problemo. He shakes that troll back and forth, and rams his wand up into the nose, poking over and over what has to be the smallest frontal lobe in existence. But that troll gets lucky, and holds Harry up by his leg. He’s about to bash him with his stupid drumstick. Whoosh, whoosh! He’s nearly missing.
But then, who but the brave Ronnie whips out the old levitation spell and hovers the troll’s club overhead. Only to command it like a god right down on that troll’s grody face. “Thank God for that hideous little professor who taught me that move,” says Ronnie.
The giant stumbles in near defeat and falls into the conquered position. The kids stay on their toes but wipe their brows with nervous moisture. Harmony peels herself away from the wall and Harry retrieves his wand in its most boogery, boogery state.
Just then, Hardcastle McCormick and a gaggle of teachers, Snake included, bustle into the bathroom. She’s pissed over the kids’ safety being compromised and on the edge of a spastic dookie when she sees the troll’s body.
But Harmony steps up to bat and lays it on the dotted line. “I was here, crying like an idiot, and these badass new-gods came in and saved me. If it weren’t for them, I would have been in that troll’s stomach, for sure.”
Harry then, dear readers, notices a tear and blood all over Professor Snake’s leg. Snake notices Harry, and he notices that he noticed, there’s a trade of noticing going on that’s bewildering.
Hardcastle scolds Harmony and demerits her a hard twenty points. Ouch.
(end of CD one)
Chapter 19
Lunchtime. Harry and the Wretch are eating with the Bear when, out of the blue, Snake appears at their table.
“Nice work on the troll thing,” she says, eyes shifting, “I wish you luck today in the Cribbage match.”
Harry responds with “I wish you luck on not hating your parents for mixing up such an unthinkable person.”
She hobbles off. Harry notices the limp and tells his friends that he thinks Snake let in that troll last night, as a diversion, so she could get whatever that three headed dog is guarding. Whatever Snake wants is probably the thing that Hagar got from the vault. Harmony’s brainworks burn at a mean rate. She says that whatever is in that vault is important enough for Snake to possibly form an alliance, if she hasn’t already, with Valmart.
Just as it all is coming together, a special delivery for Harry is dropped by a post office bird. The package is looked on dubiously, but soon the three tear away the paper, wondering at its contents. “Willikers! The broom I wanted way back in Kalgon alley! The Necromobenambrosalaphasagoso! Who could have done this?”
Well well, maybe, maybe it was Softcastle McCormick. Wink wink, Harry, wink wink.
Now imagine a music, dear readers, heavy with cellos at a rapid staccato. Cellos held between thighs in a dark room. The little room of Harry’s chest as he walks with his teammates to the opening gate of his first test of Cribbage. They are a rag-tag group of champions, this bunch, and with Harry the near-perfect new god, they know they will dominate the day.
Harry is a world laced with rivers of wizardly blood. He is ready.
He throws his leg over his steed and rips the air a new one. As his teammates and he swim through the air, testing out the space of the enormous field of play, as the announcer squawks a fact that begins to drive the blood up in all of the chilled spectators: Slytherin vs. Gryffindor. The autumn air puts up an icy fight, but the heat off of Harry alone warms the airy field of play.
Whoosh and whoosh, the players take their positions. All of Harry’s worries and hang-ups and personalities are left in the locker room. Here it is only the seeking machine that is Harry Potter. He is so ravenous; he can hardly keep from flying over and chomping the fingers off his opponents in a gesture of what’s to come.
“Just blow the fucking whistle!” he growls.
Soon, Professor Catface Meowmers is on the field and releases the balls. That Snitch brings the animal in Harry right up to his eyeball skins. That Snitch is Harry’s desire, his fucking life. Harry knows what he has to do, and I’d warn God himself not to get in the way.
The big ball is hauled around the court by a beautiful girl from Gryffindor who, without hesitation, crams a few points up Slytherin’s bum with an effortless play. She will indeed be an asset for the few years that she will attend Gryffindor.
High five, claps, and the ball is back in play, Slytherin’s favor.
The crowd is half frozen and unresponsive. I guess they need blood splattered on their faces to keep them from yawning.
The most hideous boy in the world has the ball. He has a lumber pile in his mouth that he is calling teeth, and he is a mean S.O.B. He goes for some points, but is denied by our bloodthirsty Major Wood.
Swarm, swarm, swoosh and swarm, the ball goes back and forth again.
Beautifully powerful, earnest warriors of Gryffindor handle the ball and release it as a team past the obviously inexperienced Slytherin goalie.
“Fuck yes!” Harry releases a primal yalp. Surprisingly again, the crowd seems sedated in the presence of such history-making titans.
The ball is again Slytherin’s, but is denied again by Major Wood. Joey Lumbermouth, though, pounds the ball right at our goalie and blamo! He’s down on the sand, out cold. Harry positively ignites with rage and Lumbermouth shows his namesake as Hardcastle McCormick worries under her muffed ears.
The game proceeds and Slytherin decides that they will just burn a few points without the watchful eye of Wood. “Fuck!” Harry snarls.
The game proceeds again. Harry could kill everyone for this. Woodpile and Ernie play rough and unclean on a beautiful Gryffindor player. Those boys are just fucking awful. They railroad her into the bleachers, and down she goes.
“Fuuuuuck and sssshiiit!” says Harry. He is all but Hulking out at this point. Everyone is outraged as Slytherin scores again.
[Chapter 20]
The game is tied at Chapter 20, and Harry is a pensive, hungry falcon. Once the Snitch twinches into Harry’s view he is off in a meteoric streak of red. But just as H.P. zips after the Snitch, his broom starts freaking out. It’s as if someone had a hold of the broom and is trying to shake H.P. off. “Is he a bad Seeker?” the crowd asks. “No, I think his broom is cursed.”
Harmony, though her ocular enhancing spell, spies Snake. Snake! Oh my God, of course! She’s putting a spell on Harry! Ahh! Something must be done! Ronnie the Bear curses that Snake a good one as Harmony creeps away. Harry continues to flomp and roll in the air, like a doughnut of sorts. Oh no! His big break may break him! He’s barely hanging on. Mouthoyle is overjoyed, Snake continues her magical broom shaking, and Harry yells fuck-word after fuck-word.
Harmony, though, like a phantom, creeps up the darkened backside of Snake’s bleachers. She is so worried Harry will die – he’s the only person who is nice to her! So, she conjures up such a hotfoot spell that Snake will have to remember it until she is in the grave, where no more hotfoot spells will ever tread. Eh! Yes! Snake is so distracted she wrecks all those around her. Queerman, Monster Mash, Zoomacroom, they’re all pissed at Snake for tossing herself about so wildly. Queerman is queerly intent on the game’s proceedings.
But Harry, Harry has gained control and is after that Snitch like a fucking rocket. Ziff! The Slytherin seeker has been after it for a while but I feel bad for him, ‘cause he is stupid, and Harry is a rocketized animal who will stop at nothing. Yes, they crash each other as the Snitch leads them down, straight down into certain doom. Yes they’re going to crash but Harry loves death, he says “Bring it on.” Harry is like a demon long dead with nothing else to lose. The weak-ass Slytherin turns away, but Harry pulls up just in time. He is standing on his broom like it’s an extension of his body. He reaches out, almost having the Snitch, and falls.
Oh my God! Is Harry going to vomit? Of course not! Like a leopard, Harry used his voracious mouth as his catcher. He’s got the snitch in his animal belly, and pop! It’s out! They’ve won! One hundred thousand points for fucking Gryffindor!
The crowd goes absolutely bezonkers! The champions in red and yellow are the victors. Harry is spent. The crowd is destroying its throats, calling Harry’s name. Harry feels right with himself. He’s down there, a new god who has found his calling.
He holds up the Snitch and bellows: “I am a beautiful animal! I am a destroyer of worlds! I am Harry Fucking Potter!” And dear reader, at last, the world was quiet.
Chapter 21
Obviously, our friends have explained to Hagar their fears about Snake. Hagar won’t have it, even when Harmony explains the spell she saw Snake doing, and the bloody leg, and the hotfoot she gave him. All this does nothing for Hagar.
Hagar tells each of them to bugger off. Then, in his rage, he accidentally drops the name of Nicholas Flannel in association to Dumbledore and the vault.
“Fuck!” he yells so loud that the birds rattle out of their trees. “You fuckers made me spill the beans.”
The kids are unmoved by his outbursts. They press on with questions. “Who’s Nick Flannel? What’s in the vault? Are we to die in our beds, Hagar?”
Hagar has obviously had enough and turns to leave. Harry notices that he leaves with the face of a leaving father, a father that leaves forever, if you know what I mean.
Christmastime snowiness flakes the castle gently. The scene opens with Hagar the Horrible dragging through the snow the largest Christmas tree available. High, happy music follows him in, there is a busy bee atmosphere, but not your typical busyness you find at the holidays, but an exodus of students packing and groveling as a few gross looking professors dick the halls of the school.
Harmony makes her way through the mostly empty cafeteria and sits down with our heroes who are testing their strategical wits with a thunderous game of chess. Although Harry is Ronnie the bear’s superior in most fields, it is strategy and planning that the Bear is known for; among other traits I’m sure.
Harmony feels small in their presence and decides to split hairs with the bear.
“Say, Ron, you look tired, have you ever been tested for diseases?”
Ron replies “At least I’m not a hideous fucker.”
She says “Are you going home for Christmas, I’m going home. I’ve got money.”
He says “No. We’re staying here. We’re going to find out who that fucking Nick Flannel is and rule the fucking school. So run home and open your presents, I hope you get a new pillow to cry into. Shit.”
Christmas morning.
The snow of Christmas morn falls like angels’ shit as Harry fumbles through his last dream and into yet another chink in life’s impenetrably armored secession of days.
But behold! Ronnie the Bear has assembled a fine morning’s fire to take the edge off. He’s wearing a sweater that he himself has made out of a dragon’s hide. “You’ve got a strange bag down here with your name on it, H.P.!”
Harry overtakes the stairway like an oiled gazelle and in moments is scrutinizing the gift’s card like a detective. Alas, it yields no real clues as to who may have sent it. Ron watches on in boredom. He wonders what evils he could be slaying right now. But he thinks of Harry, who needs this simple joy of Christmas. Ron, for a moment, is thankful for his own gigantic family.
Harry, from the bag, displays a sick looking cloak. Ron jokingly demands that Harry has to model it.
But lohoho readers! It is a cloak, a cloak indeed, a cloak with a cloaking device! An Invisibility Cloak!
Our two heroes stand for moments, pondering its uses, their dastardly juvenile minds running wild before a practical plan presents itself.
Chapter 22
The scene opens in the school’s library and a mysterious floating lantern is making its way alone in the darkness. It is our velveteen Hamlet, tipping on toes towards the restricted portion of the library. Once he is in, he is scanning and scrutinizing the spines, looking for two words: Nick Flannel.
Impeded by its heaviness, and feeling like a ‘fraidy cat, Harry casts off the cloak, feeling brave enough to challenge anything. Once visible, he draws a random book off the shelves, just to sample some of this over talked about restricted content. But – Waaaaagh! Just as Harry was about to demand of the face book the whereabouts of Nick Flannel, the screeching voice of Dazzler issues through the halls such a horrible tone Harry’s handbones rattle and he drops the lantern to the ground. It breaks loudly. Harry knows he could easily take this weenie Dazzler, but now is not the time nor place. Invisibility on.
Hunching through the library, Dazzler unknowingly grazes by our hero, who is stealth as a kitten in mittens. Dazzler is a man who obviously has never heard the laugh of a lover, never heard the phrase “You are fine” from a doctor.
Harry exits the library as his heart goes out to the man who is servant and friend only to a cat with bloody eyeballs, when, speak of the Devil, the cat, the blood-eyed cat, sees Harry! Obviously the cloak doesn’t work on animalia!
Harry quietly treads ‘round the corner, and dear readers, he stumbles onto Snake and Queerman, having an excited talk up against the wall, very close and breathy, and in the dark, romantically arguing heatedly. Snake is demanding loyalty from Queerman, and Snake seems to hear Harry, oh no, Harry you’re breathing too loud! Breathe into your sleeve for God’s sake! Harry backs away just in time.
Snake finishes her conversation; their eyes display nothing and everything. Dazzler is now upon the professors, and displays the still hot lantern. The gig is up! There were kids in the adult books! Snake is off, and Harry creeps like an icy ghost through the halls.
Chapter 23
He leads himself into a room he’s never entered, just in case they look for him where he usually goes. The room is huge and empty, and Harry’s eyes take a while to adjust to the darkness. As they begin to focus he asks himself: “What could that be way in the back, up against the wall? Is it a king’s mirror, a giant’s mirror? Why not take a look,” thinks our hero. “Why not take a deep, telling look?”
The mirror is warm and perfect, the reflection has no warbles, the form stays true when you move. But as Harry gazes, the mirror activates his magic eye to reveal a secret image.
“Oh my God. Could it be? Are those my parents?” Harry asks. Harry knows they’re dead, but could heaven be here in this cold, cold reflection? The parents animate and respond. “This is heaven’s entrance.”
He reaches out to feel the blue face of his world’s perimeter. He wonders what it would be like, what it would have been, if these people would have remained. His mother is beautiful. The guy seems pretty cool too.
Harry feels his trapezius along in time with his mother. “This is mine,” they say in scary unison. “The shrugs are working.”
Next thing you know, Harry is busting into Ronnie the Bear’s chamber, disturbing him out of a beautiful slumber. If this is indeed the gate to heaven, he and his champion must enter it together. They swiftly navigate the castle’s hallway and cast away the invisibility cloak once into the room of mirrors.
When Ron the Mighty has stood in front of the gate of heaven he begins to denounce it. He cries, “Heaven is for those too scared of nothingness! I will go no further than my mortal flesh will carry. This mirror is the sick bed of heaven, Harry! The eternity of pansy lives!” Ronnie will have nothing to do with the mirror. He is only concerned with the flesh and the blood of the now.
This destroys Harry. Ron leaves him to contemplate his stupid mirror, and the design of the cosmos verses the terminal beauty of being a wizard.
For forty-three days straight Harry sits in front of the gate of heaven, waiting for either God to appear or for Ronnie to come back and apologize. To Harry’s surprise, neither show up. Only near-dead Dumbledore stumbles upon the vigil. Harry is considerably weakened, and actually taken surprise by Dumbledore’s presence.
Dumbledore starts in: “Don’t you want some soup or cocoa, Harry? Come away from the light of heaven’s easy life. We need such a valiant, beautiful warrior as yourself here to live and to hack the serpents of evil in two, hell, into two, into threes and fours! Your life will be the very envy of heaven and its slobbery inhabitants. No, Harry. You were meant to stride with us, the living! To course with us and our blood. You are meant to end when your share of that blood turns brown on the rocks of glory! You and I shall drink tonight, Harry. We shall drink to life’s confines, to life’s pearly end, which is the nothingness of death, NOT the perpetual pansyness of heaven!”
Dumbledore is shaking with passion. He is beckoning Harry to enter into the sphere of manhood. Harry is all but wrapped in a buffalo skin, dancing and shaking a bow and arrow around a ceremonial fire. His rite of passage is here, now. He’s like a young Native-American, preparing to answer the question of life. Dumbledore is all aquiver, awaiting Harry’s answer, and Harry answers “Yes.”
Chapter 24
It’s a perfect, clear morning, as Harry steps out into the muffled crunch of snow of the courtyard. Harry looks like a man just married. He does a few ponderingly paced laps around the frozen fountain, and then decides to proceed. He sends his owl up into the clouds, then he enchants the bird with a spell. The rarely used Winter-Be-Gone spell. Harry is eager to get back to life as it was at Hogwarts. He is eager to have the story return to its tracks, so he and everybody else can find out what’s in that fucking vault.
A spring sun shows Pledge streaks on a dark, wooded library where kids once again bustle about. Harmony strikes gold in a giant hardbound atlas. While she was at home she worked a temp job playing piano in a jewelry store. Wisely, she wore a hood as not to distract the customers with her hideous visage. But, while she was in the store, she kept hearing, coincidentally, Nick Flannel’s name. It was then that she began to formulate her hunch, which, in this atlas, she confirms.
“Nick Flannel was the inventor of the Sorcerer’s Stone, a rock with enormous powers, such as: lead into gold, horses into gold, immortal life, giving ghost to restored body, frag trolls, trolls into gold, et cetera. The stone is being guarded by the three-headed dog! The stone is what Snake must want! She wants it so that she may live forever with a stockpile of gold!”
Holy shit. It makes total sense.
Our heroes walk briskly through the night, making their way secretly towards Hagar’s shanty. This guy is hoarding secrets, they think. But once he sees who is knocking at the door, he slams it right in the kids’ faces.
The kids start to yell out: “Hey! What about the Sorcerer’s Stone? Does that ring a fucking bell?” The giant knows they mean business.
They start in on Snake, and Snake’s needs again, but Hagar gets testy. He explains that every teacher is protecting the stone, including Snake, with spells and dogs and flying hatchets and cats and ancient pendulums et cetera. He seems to be in pain. Hagar continues to be distracted with something behind him. After a while Ron gets sick of the game and demands to know what’s wrong with Hagar. Why does he look so haggard and why is he hiding something?
Hagar breaks down and lets it all loose. “One day a few months back I was hunting in the forest alone. I’d shot a stag and was tracking its blood trail through the forest. As I got deeper and deeper I felt I was being followed, so I turned around and shot my crossbow, but my arrow only went through the ghostly form of Valmart. He demanded that I give him the Sorcerer’s Stone, and I told him that I couldn’t. He then pointed his want at my stomach and struck me with a mighty spell. Next thing I know, I’m feeling kicking and clawing down in my gullet. This goes on for weeks. I knew I was becoming a mother, but to what?
“Later on, after a boating accident in shark infested waters, me and some friends were stranded, treading water while sharks feeded on us. One by one, we disappeared in a cloud of blood. I alone survived. The reason is this: my baby inside me was screaming and making such a riot in my belly the sharks were afraid to open me up. So they let me live, and I was found later by some fishermen.
“A week ago I finally birthed this egg. Apparently I am the mother of a dragon. Now kids, don’t tell anybody; it’s illegal to have a dragon in here.”
After the story’s confusing conclusion, who should appear in the window but that panda cub Mouthoyle, spying! After his fucking ass!
Our heroes walk through the halls, talking of plans of trapping Mouthoyle and torturing him, when they are stopped dead in their tracks by Hardcastle McCormick. She takes them into her office and dons her demerit costume, hat and all. This must be serious.
“Fifty points deducted for each of you! It is forbidden to be out at night, all of you have detention, even you, Mouthoyle!”
Mouthoyle tries to protest, but soon he is overrun by her barrage of degrading talk.
“Spies and thieves!” she spits. “Spies and thieves!” Her spittle becomes acid and lands on each of their cheeks, burning little pockmarks as reminders of their transgressions. They will never forget.
Chapter 25
Later that night, Dazzler leads the four kids out to their duty of detention. It turns out they have to hang with Hagar in the old forest all night long. Yeauck! Soon, they are up around the crossbow fire where detention always gets started. Hagar speaks of his dragon flying away and how he’s sad.
“Dragons have no heart,” he blubbers.
The cat’s whore, Dazzler, winces and grinds out words as he does, but no one cares, not one fucking soul. But he goes on to grind out sentences on werewolves and the like, blah. His voice is as hard to listen to as a dying loved one calling out to you for help while you are restrained. He gives up on using his words and tries to communicate using only his eyes. Oh how they bulge and struggle to convey unthinkable meaning. He’s trying to say that the kids will surely be destroyed in the forest, so it’s just as well that he is indecipherable to the children.
Hagar finally breaks up this stream of incoherence and signals that it’s time to go. He grabs his crossbow and his scabbard full of arrows.
Leaves are even scared of this cold evil place and never settle, but try to ride wind out from among the trees that have dropped them.
Hagar kneels down to a shimmery pool of unicorn urine. He explains that a prize-size unicorn is nearby and with their help he will kill it with his crossbow and win a prize in a local contest. The kids seem truly interested in the hunting lore Hagar bestows. Unicorns travel in pairs, unicorns are white, unicorns like apples, et cetera. Hagar seems put off and talks like he’s halfway there. His dragon’s runaway stole his heart.
Hagar decides to split up the group and everyone is eager for the hunt. Harry and Mouthoyle are teamed up together. Now Hagar only does this because Harry is an enormous threat and even though Mouthoyle is a son of a fuck, he is a powerful little prick. So the two are put together, seeing how they’ll probably do fine, even without the help of Hagar and his crossbow.
Harry and Mouthoyle take the northern part of the forest. The other people take the rest, the south and the west. Harry and Mouthoyle talk of nothing, their hatred curls about their temples like Caesar hats.
Their dog has found the unicorn’s sent, and they make their way to where they think it’s bedded down, into a grove of cool dirt and shade, an inviting nap place indeed. A wasp of smoke hags low.
But Ahh! They are too late! Their prey has already fallen under the hand of some Dracula. Harry’s scar hurts him intensely and Mouthoyle vanishes. He leaves Harry alone, but Harry boldly stands his ground against the Dracula. Harry totally hates detention and this prize unicorn is his. If he’s got to get a little dirty to get what he wants, then fine. Harry valiantly stands his ground against the impeding battle that will ensue. The Dracula is a formidable presence. He is not at all afraid of Harry and Harry has to back his way up against a giant root to gain substance from the tree to make a larger spell.
But lo! To Harry’s aid jumps a badass man-horse who is kicking and threatening wildly against the prince of blood-drinkers. The Dracula rushes away knowing too well his odds are way off in this battle. A man-horse and Harry Potter? No way.
This man-horse knows Harry Potter, of course, and like all the creatures of the forest, Draculas and werewolves excluded, would gladly die with him in combat. Now the man-horse explains quickly that the Dracula was in fact Valmort, the scar-artist, and that he, Valmort, is trying to get the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Harry Potter puts to the man-horse a few well-chosen detective questions like, “I thought it was Snake who wanted the stone?”
“No,” says the man-horse. “Snake may be evil, but it’s Valmort who’s really after the stone.” The horseman leans in close and blows the doors off our hero’s reality. “Valmart is your father. That other guy is your step-dad. Your arch enemy, the guy who tried to slay you, the guy who slayed your mama, is your dada. Your dad is a Dracula.”
Harry just goes ahead and vomits right there. Tears mix in with the puke, and Hagar offers to call detention off early, seeing the trouble.
Chapter 26
Gathered around the fire, four or five cognacs down, our threesome unwinds and works out the details. Neckties loosened, robes unbuckled, they are relaxing. Yes, they were sort of wrong about Snake. She wants the Stone, but not for gold, but to resurrect the Dracula Valmort, so that he can have a new body and stage a rematch with Harry. The three know that Harry is a bad-ass, godlike new animal, but if Valmort gets the Stone, he may kill the near-dead Dumbledore and take over the school.
Harmony takes a giant swallow of cognac and says, “He was never a dad to you, Harry. You’re going to have to fight him. You’re gunna have to beat him.”
Harry knows this is true.
Finals! The courtyard looks like an anthill. Our three stroll confidently, but Harry seems to be nursing a head that dealt with one too many cognacs. The tests are pretty easy compared to the shit these guys are doing in their free time, and Harry sometimes wishes his life was as simple as Upfish’s.
They talk of lunch and break out onto the common ground when a child-summoning tone spills over them and they are helplessly compelled to Hagar’s hut. Hagar has done a little head work lately and decides to confess that last night he told a Dracula-looking dude in a bar that the three headed guard dog falls asleep easily when he hears music. Hagar had to summon the young detectives to get this off his chest.
Harry is inconsolable. “What? What could have made you say that? What do you think this is a fucking free for all of facts? Why don’t you go and get on the school PA and tell everyone my dad is Valmart and I’m half Dracula! What fucking good are you? Why don’t you learn to keep a god damned secret, you hairy piece of shit!” Harry is ragged. He has had a long day and good manners are secondary to his cause.
Harry and his team rush into Hardcastle’s class, all gangbusters. They start explaining that the Stone is in danger, and that they have to get Dumbledore in order to protect him. Hardcastle is flabbergasted with all of this news. She informs the kid that Dumbledore is in London for the weekend.
“Crumbs and carrots!” cries Harry. “The stone is doomed! You better be up there guarding that Stone personally, Hardcastle, because if it’s gone, and Dumbledore gets hurt, I am going to hand you your ass when this is all said and done! Fuck this!”
Out in the hall, just as the three detectives are beginning to form a plan, who but Snake arrives and darkens the hallway with her black robes galore.
“What are you kids doing here?”
“We fucking go to school here.”
“You will be schooled here.”
“You are so fucking stupid,” says Harry, and a staring match ensues. A staring match of silent restraint. Of course, Harry is the victor.
As Snake takes her leave, Harry turns to his brother and sister in arms and declares “I will fucking feel her blood on my hands TONIGHT!”
Chapter 27
A disturbingly meaningful fog hangs cataracts all over Hogwarts. As our heroes walk down into the Gryffindor common room, they see the frog reclining in the armchair that can only be owned by Upfish.
Upfish, in a foolishly loving gesture, tries to keep our heroes from tasting victory tonight. He puts up his hands and sucks in his stupid quick breaths. He is sweet, but he is being a nuisance. So Harry, wasting no time, dispatches Harmony on Upfish. A quick popsicling spell, and Upfish is out. They decide to just leave him there, without a blanket, so maybe he can think about what he’s done, and what brotherhood really means around here in the Gryffindor School.
Soon, under the cloak of invisibility, the three make their way up to the chamber of secrets, where the dog lies and where the trapdoor to all adventures begins. Again, Harry lets Harmony take the lead. She is so much faster with the lock spell than he is. The lock is dissolved into a dove, and the door is slowly advanced open. But the children are disgusted to see that the dog is already fast asleep. Snake has beat them to it and has set up a magical harp.
Our heroes sadly begin to set to work moving the dog’s hoary paws off the trap door. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, for they have to do it noiselessly and they try their best to silence their grunts and to keep all of their efforts inaudible. Harry notices a strangeness. It’s too easy, it’s too quiet, and oh shit, the music has stopped.
Just then, the giant dog awakes itself and is much faster than last time. It goes right ahead and takes a big chunk out of Harmony. He bites what is most of her head off. She is dead in an instant. Harry is horrified. Out of him comes powers he didn’t even know existed. He turns the dog inside out and then dissolves it into a pudding, where Harmony is laying there in two pieces. He then, with eyeballs turned completely white, recapitulates her form and makes her whole again. She is full, she is Harmony of old, and is acting like nothing ever even happened. It’s a true marvel and Harry doesn’t know what to think about it.
So they go ahead and jump into the trap door, but they land on what I guess is a wad of leathery roots that seem hell-bent on rending the wizard kids limb from limb. Their bodies become ensconced in the wet black leather, sinking like quicksand into the wads of captivity. Harry can’t help but notice the coincidence that last night he ate spaghetti. It’s funny to him that what’s trying to kill him on the outside is just like what’s nourishing him on the inside.
Harmony has escaped with some sort of shrewd spell. She tries to explain it to the others, but they cannot understand. She casts a release spell on Harry and he is freed, and she tries also on Ronnie, but it just doesn’t work. Why won’t it release Ron? Does it know that it can live on the substanance of such a warrior for years and need not worry about eating anything else? Well, whatever the spaghetti is thinking, Harmony again proves herself and blinds the wad’s hidden eye with some crazy sunburst spell and it soon releases Ronnie the Bear. He is freed, and they are able to go after the Stone.
Harry is thankful, and for the first time, actually voices his opinion of Harmony. “You are amazing,” he says.
Chapter 28
Harry is totally disinterested in the next challenge. He runs through this problem like a set of crunches as his mind’s eye daydreams. He sees himself dressed as a conquistador, crashing in the phases of werewolves and bigfoots with an enormous telescope. He then goes on to envision himself arriving on the coast of an undiscovered America. He mingles peacefully with the natives, and trades secrets of magic with their shamans. He makes friends, blending bloodlines of greatness. He teaches them wizard spells, and they in turn teach him how to fly across the continent at ridiculous speeds. He learns to slay deer with laser beams from his eyes, and how to make all things around the house out of buffalo parts.
Harry could live with a woman who had strong, magical jet-black hair. She’d be enchanted and almost a giant. She’d carry Harry around on her shoulder as she walked through the forest, and he’d hold onto her perfect ear, smiling. They’d fly off into the clouds and spend weekends up there, dictating the North American weather patterns. He’d not worry about clothes, because he’d wear one of those strappy skirts that were popular back then in America.
But then, that world of America, of light and natural beauty, of those people, who were so one with the perfect ecosystem, that world dissipates, and Harry is back in the dark, hoary bowels of storm-ridden England, trying to save all of wizard-dom from his crazed, Dracula-ghost father. Harry almost sobs, but moves on. He is a true champion.
As the three traipse through the dark hallways of hell, they come upon a challenge fit for only a bear. Giant, sculptural figures stand in lines of two, opposing one another. This could only mean one thing. It is the famous chess board of Ragmorock.
The Bear enters out onto the board like a World Series winner going for one more World Series win. The board is illuminated then by magical florescence. The deal is this: Harry and the gang cannot pass without winning this game. It is a raw deal in red heat: if you lose, you die.
Soon, it is apparent who should take charge of this part of the challenge. Ronnie the Bear begins to dictate how the next couple of moves will happen. “I will take charge and make all of the moves. You guys keep your mouths shut and try not to get in my way. You act as a bishop, Harry, and you, you act as, well, I guess a rook.”
Harmony farts a nervous fart, but no one cares. Every one of Ronnie the bear’s atoms are focusing on the task at hand. Imagine God creating, and then you would have a beginning of an understanding of the Bear’s massive cerebral cortex at work. This invisible opponent must have invisibly shat himself after Ronnie’s first move, knowing the challenge he was about to face. Every battle the earth has witnessed looks like a Three Stooges scene compared to this. Patton, Macarthur, Custer and Charlemagne look on as astonished ghosts, stuffing their mouths with popcorn and jujubes.
The game goes on like Napoleon on Ice, a perfect mix of speed and precision. The pieces explode and crumble and move into position by the will of one, one Ron Weasel, AKA Ronnie the Bear.
There are struggles and losses and pursuits and beheadings. All of the pieces crumble, all of the pieces turn dastardly, but nothing happens that is not the consent of the Bear.
We get down to where the pieces are only a few.
Chapter 29
Here now in the rubble of the last portion of the game, sacrifices have to be made in order to gain the checkmate. The Bear’s face is a phosphorescent mask of jelly. He is at the last stands of sanity; his mind is swollen, invisible behind his retinas. He is mad with the satanic desire to win at all cost.
“I will die for this!” He is a milkshake of all of the generals past’s strategical centers, and he takes out a flask and sips a bit of peach schnapps.
He yells out to Harry, “You can keep all of my stuff, if I don’t survive this!” and he moves himself into position out into danger.
He is putting himself up to the king and putting him in checkmate, knowing full well that the queen will have his balls for this. It is a move that everyone knows, and everyone has to do, but when you’re not riding a giant horse out there, and it’s just a little piece in your hand, it doesn’t feel quite so heroic. But believe me, here, it is.
Ronnie steadies himself and gazes right into the slit of the helmet, looking for some sort of eyes, but there is none, and Ronnie is felled. Chunks of his horse spray-paint Harry and Harmony. She almost goes to him
“Don’t fucking move! We finish this now! It’s how he would have wanted it!” Harry screams. He then moves like a bishop right up to the face of that king, and takes out a glove, and slaps the king right in the face. “Checkmate, you asshole. That was my best friend.”
The game is finally over.
The two run over to check on the status of Ron, whether he’s breathing or not. Harmony nags Harry, “Why’d you let him fall?”
“One more complaint out of you and I will erase your ass! Sorry. It’s just the pressure talking.”
Harry then goes on to tell Harmony to stay with Ronnie. Make sure that his vitals are clean, and to call the president if he’s not back in an hour. He knows what is coming, and he is ready for the challenge.
Chapter 30
As Harry walks down into his fate, he comes to realize that this is the moment beyond games, the moment he has been waiting for. Whatever happens, he is where he should be.
Before him, down in the cellar, standing before the gate of heaven, why, it isn’t Snake at all! It’s Queerman! Queerman! Queerman tried to kill Harry in the Quidditch match! Queerman unleashed the troll! Queerman is in league with Draculas and wolfmen! Queerman wants the Stone! It’s all been an act! Harry is bowled over, he cannot believe he didn’t see this coming. Queerman this whole time has been Harry’s dad’s gopher. Snake was unfairly suspected, and is probably a lovely woman.
Harry stands before the babbling Queerman and readies himself for combat. He puts on his lucky headband and pops his knuckles. All the while, Queerman converses wildly with the air.
Harry knows that his dad is a ghost, a ghost Dracula, but he doesn’t see him flying around anywhere and wonders who Queerman is talking to. The air, then, miraculously becomes thinner, and Harry’s forehead aches. The air tells Queerman to retrieve the Stone using our champion, using HP as a vehicle, for only innocence can retrieve the Stone from the gate of heaven. The Stone is locked inside heaven’s gates and only a pure soul may enter.
A spell is cast, and Harry is forced to walk up and look into the dreadful threshold of heaven. He cannot help himself. He looks into the mirror, and Queerman demands to know where the Stone is. “Put your hand in there, boy!”
Harry says “Fuck this,” and reaches into his pocket. The Stone somehow manifests in his sweaty hand. “Ah, God this sucks,” says Harry. He just decides to back away with the Stone, and maybe he can get out of here, and hide it somewhere else so he can decide what to do, once talking with Dumbledore. He makes some small talk about how he can’t get the Stone because once he killed somebody, you know, a few weeks back, and that prohibits him from going into heaven.
Queerman then begins to take his turban off slowly, and even though Harry should be making his way for the steps, he’s always wanted to see what Queerman’s head looks like.
Just then, AAAAAAAAAAAGH! Holy fucking shit! There’s a sick ass face on Queerman’s head! Harry almost vomits all over Queerman. Harry’s dad’s face begins to move, like a baby just out of the womb. He calls to Harry to join him, and how they could use the Stone together and live in a golden castle. Harry’s scar begins to vibrate so hard and fast it causes a tone that almost makes Harry explode. He cannot believe what is being proposed to him.
Chapter 31
That crazy, sick ass face is burning everything. He wants that stone bad. He wants to paddle Harry so hard. He starts telling Harry all sorts of fake shit, like that Harry killed his own parents, and that Dumbledore eats babies and Harry is confused and scared. This is his dad talking. He doesn’t know what to believe and what to hate. He wants to run off. He imagines that that man horse would come in here and take him away, and Harry could ride off on the man horse, and maybe they could catch a movie, or make dinner or something. Something fun. But finally Harry comes out of this revere and holds the Stone and absorbs some of its power and waits for the right moment. The flames are licking all about and driving him crazy. But that sick face is still talking. It wants that stone so bad! Harry can’t believe it. He’s never seen such rage.
“This is not me. I am not my father. I could throw this stone into a gutter and not give one shit.”
So, just then, Queerman whooshes at him, he can’t take it any longer and lashes out on Harry, choking him and spitting in his face, trying to kill our champion. But, Harry gives a ferocious growl and burns that fucker with a flaming hands spell. Queerman recoils, but that sick ass face on the back of his head just won’t have it. He continues to press Queerman to, “Get the Stone, get the Stone!”
Queerman reaches for the stone but Harry valiantly lays his magnificent hands on his face, and instantly turns the entire body to crumbling ashes.
At long last, Harry is given the opportunity to cry out, “I am gigantic! I am important and unavoidable! For anyone that shall traverse this world, I shall be what they have to go through!” Harry yells down into the empty neck hole, “This game is over when Harry says it’s over, and no one else! Harry is the one who kills around here, and Harry has killed you! I killed you, Dad!”
Harry picks up the stone just in time to turn around and feel his dad blow through him just as everyone has their dads blow into them like a kite, a kit of chromosomes blowing on the wind of inheritance. The stream of the ghostly Dracula exits and Harry falls asleep.
Harry then dreams of nothing. It is the most pleasurable slumber ever.
Chapter 32
Next thing Harry knows, he’s waking up in the student infirmary. There are flowers and cards from presidents and queens and diplomats, and Harry yawns and collects his glasses. He seems pleased, like a man can seem pleased.
In walks Dumbledore. Near dead, and beautiful. He talks about Ron, and Harmony, and the Stone, and Nick Flannel, and Valmart, and fathers and the way fathers can show up on the back of people’s heads even when you least expect it, but Harry is way beyond that. He just wants to kick back a few cold ones and get through finals.
Harry is eager to move on, and he asks Dumbledore if he’s seen that man horse around, and Dumbledore says no, but Harry, sees a glimmer in his eyes. Harry seems to guess that God would be happy to know that Dumbledore would try to keep Harry from such a union, but for Harry, God is no thing to worry about.
They continue to chat about death, and stones, and next year, and whether or not they plan to replace that one teacher that turned into ash, and then Dumbledore leans in.
“Your dad and I, we go way back. He was an evil bastard, but I loved him. I loved him so much. He proofread my novel. He liked it. He was the only one.”
This information seems to set right with Harry. Even though he knows his dad is pretty much the quintessential evil person, he doesn’t like feeling disconnected from his ancestors. He then goes on to wonder and worry about his mother, and whether or not his mother will return to the earth in the form of a gas and show up on some lady’s head and go crazy for obtaining some powerful stone. But anyway. He decides not to worry about it, and Dumbledore begins to pick over what is left of Harry’s candies. Nurses scuttle about and make little actions that Harry decides would be the perfect thing to fall asleep to. Dumbledore, the scavenger, takes his jelly beans. Harry just doesn’t care.
Chapter 33
After a while, Harry decides to leave the infirmary and put back on his cloak and tie. He walks out and encounters his playmates who have been anxiously awaiting him. They quickly compare notes on their adventures and exchange shit-eating grins. They all feel great.
The cafeteria is a crazed sea of almost vacationing students. The only thing that stands between the kids and summertime is the terrible, Hardcastle McCormick’s hokey points awards show. Dumbledore laments another year closer to heaven, then begins the telling of the points.
“Gryffindor has a measly 312 points.”
The students, well, their morale is very low.
“Hufferpuffer has 420 points. That’s pretty good. Viacom, well, this year Viacom has earned 480 points. And Slytherin has 6,000 points. Coming in first, they are, the champions. But however,” says Dumbledore, “Last minute points are thus.”
Snake is seemingly on the edge of her seat.
“For the Wretched Harmony, in aiding some unmentioned titans and knowing your spells, you are awarded 300 points.”
Everyone claps, and she feels welcome amongst her peers.
“Ronnie the Bear. Ronnie the Bear Weasley, you are bravery, you are courage, you are chess. 1,000 points.” The applause begin to increase.
“And of course,” Dumbledore goes on. “The keeper of our hearts, and the true magician who has bewitched us all, the Adonis, Harry Potter, receives six million points for vanquishing the Dracula!”
The crowd goes apeshit, clapping and clapping. This means that Gryffindor is now the champions of the year. They get to hold the Stanley Cup, and no one can say otherwise.
The entire cafeteria, Mouthoyle, Snake, and Pitstains included, join in, supporting Harry. The applause are gigantic. The universe accepts only love today, everyone is in accordance. Dumbledore sings a little pleasant song that sounds like a flute, a flute that was designed by Jesus Christ.
Gryffindor destroys the other schools in points, and a totally beautiful glance and wink is shared by all. The hats begin to fly and now thoughts of summertime are rampant. Everyone who does not suck begins to clap each other on the back and smile.
Chapter 34
Everyone is packed and has emptied out their dorm rooms, and is boarding the Hogwarts Express; summer vacation is about to commence.
Harry must have a word with Hagar the Horrible before he leaves. He tells his friends to hold up and make sure the engineer doesn’t leave him behind. But before Harry can say one word, Hagar produces a beautiful portable television with a clip of Harry’s parents already queued up for Harry’s delight. This is the first time that Harry actually looks upon himself as a baby.
“This feels really weird,” he says, and Hagar nods knowingly.
They hug awkwardly and talk about next year’s problems, whatever they may be. And then Hagar tells Harry that he’s got to go trim some hedges and make things right for the summer, you have to put seed down for tics and stuff. And Harry says “Well, I’ve got to go home to Privet Drive and all, so, um, I guess I’ll see you.”
It turns out that they do like each other, and it all wasn’t just out of obligation. Harry thinks he’ll come back next year, he’ll come back, and Hagar will be there waiting for him.
The End. {Jesus Christ.}
Yeah, wave, wave, wave, wave and good bye. Yes.