Chapter Fifteen: One Month Later
Author: captainraychill
Beta: dormiensa
A/N: See end of chapter.
Ministry of Magic, Defense Subcommittee Record ZZYAB.1205267.LL8
Chapter 455, Section 12, Subsection Q, Paragraph 3
Status: Uber Secret (Or Else)
“The power of the radical Weaponized Cheese experimentations of Doctor Diggidus Harvarti-Flume cannot be harnessed. The end result cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated, and all records concerning it expunged. The Fantastic World of Make Believe will be destroyed. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.”
Hermione didn’t believe they'd actually use salt, but they had.
The entire amusement park was gone, eradicated from the planet and most memories, both Muggle and magical.
The Triwizard Dragon of Doom and the Tricorn Maze of Maize. Gone. Her pirate ship and the cheese-shoppe-turned-charming-French-bakery. Gone. Opening day floats sailing down rivers of golden vomit. Gone. Flatulent spider monkeys and sinister pandas with their sick, twisted, ineffectual porn. Gone.
In their place was a vast, empty meadow sprinkled one inch thick with charmed salt from the Dead Sea. Hermione stood next to the only object in sight, a wooden sign that read “Go Home!”
One thing that wasn’t gone was her spontaneously-generated baby bump, and all this salt gave her a powerful craving for her favorite treat: bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter. She shivered with pleasure at the thought.
“You’re thinking about bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter, aren’t you?”
Another, different shiver went through Hermione at the sound of Draco’s voice. He had Apparated soundlessly behind her. She composed her face into a cold mask of I-Don’t-Give-A-Bleep and turned. She hated that her heart skipped a beat at the sight of his champagne-starlight-platinum-sugar-vanilla-butter-ivory hair. He looked dashing in jeans and a jumper that matched his silver-pewter-moonlight-storm cloud-mercury-gray eyes.
Stupid git.
“It’s 2:00 p.m., not 2:00 a.m.,” she snapped, “so why are you in my presence?”
Draco smiled. “Though I wouldn’t mind a piece of your delectable booty, this isn’t a social call. I was summoned. Same as you, I reckon.”
“By Regulus?”
“Yes.”
The message she’d received by owl from Regulus was predictably black and ominous with spidery, white lettering. It used words like certain doom and humanity’s last hope. However, it was in Kreacher’s handwriting, and since she’d seen words like rutabaga and Master Harry's dandruff shampoo on the grocery lists at Grimmauld Place, she found it difficult to get worked up about the threat of certain doom. Regulus was prone to melodrama.
A month had passed since the disaster of Opening Day. Seconds after her baby had morphed into being, Aurors wearing black leather uniforms and posh, reflective sunglasses had swarmed the park. Since Aurors normally wore red uniforms with sissified gold braid, Hermione had known the men and women in black were something different. Something dangerous and elite.
“Protect Asset Granger!” one of them bellowed. “Take her to St. Mungo’s!”
All over the park, people were disappearing en masse, as if some sort of wide-ranging Portkey had been activated. An Auror in black grabbed her arm.
“Agent Malfoy,” the commander said, “begin the cleansing!”
Agent Malfoy?
In shock, she watched her husband transform. As he ran into the fray, his pirate costume and eye patch became a black, leather uniform and posh, reflective sunglasses. He whipped out his wand, shouted an incantation and sent a gigantic fire dragon roaring into the sky. His control over the volatile Fiendfyre was phenomenal.
Where was her silly Draco who swung from ropes like a monkey and called the ship’s main mast a wooden pole thingy?
This man flashed mystifying hand signals. He was a stranger to her.
Hermione watched the fiery dragon consume her pirate ship in one gulp. It burped flame and then flew toward the Happy Unicorn Carousel. Seconds later, she was Apparated to the hospital.
Her classified debriefing was long and complex. In brief, the entire Fantastic World experience-from beginning to salty end-had been a government experiment to study the potential benefits and dangers of weaponizing Diggy Flu’s magically- and molecularly-enhanced Super Cheese. They had all been rats in a maze. Except for Draco and Greyback, who had been moles among the rats. Undercover spies. It was their conversation she’d overheard in the bushes that day. They’d been recruited out of Azkaban to serve as agents for H.O.T.T. Hermione had no idea what H.O.T.T. stood for, and no one would tell her, so she settled on “Holey Old Testicle Turds”, which made her feel a bit better. All the other Death Eaters had been hauled back to prison, with the exception of Pansy, whose sentence had been reduced to probation for good behavior and excellent driving skills.
Somehow, Diggy’s mutant cheese had accelerated Hermione’s pregnancy from zero to seven months in seven seconds. Although all pre-natal tests were reassuring, she still wondered if her healthy bundle of fetal joy would morph into a cheese monster and destroy all London. Draco had been at her bedside when she’d woken up the next day. He’d apologized for deceiving her, and she’d told him to stick his head up his arse. When he hadn’t attempted to obey her, despite his amazing flexibility, she realized her One Ring had been confiscated. Damn it.
To make matters worse, Draco had looked so scorching hot in black leather with soot and blood on his sexy face that she’d Floo-called him five days later for their first booty call. By now, they’d met a dozen times. In that time, his pelt of soft, gorgeous chest hair (aka, her Fuzzy Wall of Lust) had turned from mottled grey to pure white to a pale, pretty lilac. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care as long as he gave her orgasms. She liked it when he shagged her wearing his big, black Auror boots and nothing else.
But she didn’t like him. On the contrary, she hated him with a burning passion. He would divorce and abandon her as soon as their little cheese monster was born. She knew it, even though he’d shown up for every healer’s appointment save those first ones when he’d been torching the theme park. Even though he grinned like a besotted fool every time he said the Malfoy heir, which he said all the time.
Hermione hardened her heart to him and kept her fears secret.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones,” he said as Harry’s Prius zipped through the salted meadow toward them. Only Pansy and Neville climbed out of it.
“You, too?” Neville asked.
“Yep.”
“What’s going on?”
“Who knows with Black,” Severus Snape said as he flew down from the sky like a great, smoky bat. His left leg was a wooden peg from the knee down. Soon after, Greyback arrived by dog-shaped balloon-animal Portkey. His fur was a pale, pretty lilac. Regulus and Kreacher appeared next to him with a loud crack.
Regulus stared at Snape's peg leg and raised one eyebrow. Snape nodded almost imperceptibly in answer. What the heck was that about? Mysterious bastards.
“Eight of the nine chosen warriors have been assembled,” Regulus announced in his customary, dark tones. “As foretold by prophecy, we must now travel to meet the ninth warrior under cover of darkness in Fiji.”
“Fiji?” Draco whispered. “Hey, Granger! Granger!”
“What?”
“It’s 2:00 a.m. in Fiji. Ooty-bay all-cay!”
“Shut up,” she murmured, blushing.
“Ex-say on the each-bay. Et-lay me ouch-tay your oconuts-cay!”
“Shut up!” She turned to Regulus. “Harry’s in Fiji?”
“Harry James Potter was not chosen for this task,” Regulus answered.
“Yes!” Neville cried out, fist-punching the air. “I mean, uh... really? That’s surprising, cocky Chosen One and all. Who’s the ninth warrior?”
“The Dread Pirate Queen.”
“I’m the Dread Pirate Queen,” Hermione said.
“No, Hermione Jean Granger,” Regulus replied. “You’re a bright witch, a cheese addict and a failed amusement park manager who’s heavy with child.”
“Hey!” Draco protested. “Watch it!”
Hermione refused to let his outraged defence affect her resolve to loathe him forever. Mostly.
“Fenrir Wyatt Greyback,” Regulus continued solemnly, “is the Pacific Portkey ready?”
“It is now that < i>someone has stopped speaking in Pig Latin,” the werewolf growled. He held up a yellow balloon animal, shaped like an octopus, and grinned proudly.
“Oh, hell, no!” Pansy snapped. “An international Portkey fashioned from something that can pop if a brat screams at a birthday party? And you have claws? I don’t think so, Ugly.”
“I assure you, all agents of H.O.T.T. are master Portkey engineers,” Regulus said.
Draco nodded.
“Testicle Turds,” Hermione muttered, too quietly to be heard.
“Mr. Black, are you an agent of H.O.T.T.?” Neville asked. Everyone turned to stare at Regulus, who remained absolutely silent.
Kreacher laughed. It sounded like a dusty, old clarinet playing a sad, Hungarian folk song about death. “They don’t knows anything, Master,” the grim elf wheezed. “How canz they face such fearsome enemies?”
Greyback ignored Kreacher’s gloom-and-doom, holding out his cheerful yellow octopus. “Everyone take a tentacle. Don’t be shy, kiddies.”
“Ewww,” said Pansy, but one by one, they each took a tentacle in hand. Everyone except Hermione.
“Who are our fearsome enemies?” she asked.
She had figured out Regulus’ speech patterns by now. He always waited four, long seconds before answering a question, if he answered at all, to build ultimate suspense. (Also, as a point of interest, Severus Snape spoke at a rate of 1.75 words per second when he was trying to intimidate others due to his own insecurities. Once a wearer of graying underwear, always a wearer of graying underwear.)
Four... three... two... one...
Regulus spoke.
“The enemies are Doctor Diggidus Harvarti-Flume who has refused the Ministry of Magic’s edict to abandon his Weaponized Cheese experiments despite wildly unpredictable results. Also, Bellatrix Lestrange, the Lovers Crabbe and Goyle and ten other Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban last night. They took with them an estimated thirty-four neutered but very amourous Dementors.”
Draco shivered with revulsion while Greyback giggled.
“And,” Regulus said. The conjunction hung, suspended like a guillotine for precisely four seconds. “All the pandas of the Chinese Pandaemonium, under the command of General Pan Tzu. As you know, their species is endangered, so we estimate they only have an active army of 500 or less.”
“Oh, is that all?” Pansy sneered.
“No,” Kreacher wheezed. “Pandas has wandless magic almost as goods as a house-elf. Almost.”
Could this get any worse? How on earth could they fight such insurmountable odds? There were only eight of them. Well, nine, if you counted the Dread Pirate Queen, whoever she was. But what did one more matter? It was impossible. And I'm eight months pregnant, for Merlin’s sake! I should be home, with my feet up, eating bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter! Bacon...
But then Hermione thought of Harry facing Voldemort and triumphing despite seemingly insurmountable odds. He’d done it because he’d had to. Sometimes, you had no choice but to be brave and fight for what was right. Sometimes, the alternative was just too dreadful to ignore.
“What if we fail?” she asked.
Four... three... two... one...
“Imagine the Fantastic World of Make Believe. All the world over.”
A wave of nausea rolled through Hermione as she saw a horrible vision of the future. Rivers of golden vomit flowing into the sea, a tropical island on the far horizon, humanity in chains, a dead parrot singing “Waterloo” as throngs of animals fornicated and howled and wept tears of blood. Above it all, on a throne carved of jade, sat a mighty panda in red armour, his eyes burning as black and terrible as an eclipse.
Oh. Hell. No.
They had to save the world.
Hermione grabbed the last octopus tentacle so fast that it squeaked. Draco twined his free arm around her waist and pulled her close. Her heart started to race. In fear of their imminent battle, of course. Not because his scent made her think of glorious, hot, sweaty, exciting sex with nothing but boots on.
She struggled to control her breathing as Regulus spoke the name of their destination.
“Where?!” Draco cried out.
With a swirl of blue light and a sickening hook behind the navel, they were transported to the beautiful paradise of Lucius Bay, Fiji.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Opening quote inspired by this quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
“The demons cannot be harnessed. The end result cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated, and all records concerning it expunged... The Initiative itself will be filled in with concrete. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.”
I spelled “Pandaemonium” based on Milton’s name for the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost. “Pan” plus “daemon” equals “all demon”.
To be continued…
Continue or ToC
Beta: dormiensa
A/N: See end of chapter.
Ministry of Magic, Defense Subcommittee Record ZZYAB.1205267.LL8
Chapter 455, Section 12, Subsection Q, Paragraph 3
Status: Uber Secret (Or Else)
“The power of the radical Weaponized Cheese experimentations of Doctor Diggidus Harvarti-Flume cannot be harnessed. The end result cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated, and all records concerning it expunged. The Fantastic World of Make Believe will be destroyed. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.”
Hermione didn’t believe they'd actually use salt, but they had.
The entire amusement park was gone, eradicated from the planet and most memories, both Muggle and magical.
The Triwizard Dragon of Doom and the Tricorn Maze of Maize. Gone. Her pirate ship and the cheese-shoppe-turned-charming-French-bakery. Gone. Opening day floats sailing down rivers of golden vomit. Gone. Flatulent spider monkeys and sinister pandas with their sick, twisted, ineffectual porn. Gone.
In their place was a vast, empty meadow sprinkled one inch thick with charmed salt from the Dead Sea. Hermione stood next to the only object in sight, a wooden sign that read “Go Home!”
One thing that wasn’t gone was her spontaneously-generated baby bump, and all this salt gave her a powerful craving for her favorite treat: bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter. She shivered with pleasure at the thought.
“You’re thinking about bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter, aren’t you?”
Another, different shiver went through Hermione at the sound of Draco’s voice. He had Apparated soundlessly behind her. She composed her face into a cold mask of I-Don’t-Give-A-Bleep and turned. She hated that her heart skipped a beat at the sight of his champagne-starlight-platinum-sugar-vanilla-butter-ivory hair. He looked dashing in jeans and a jumper that matched his silver-pewter-moonlight-storm cloud-mercury-gray eyes.
Stupid git.
“It’s 2:00 p.m., not 2:00 a.m.,” she snapped, “so why are you in my presence?”
Draco smiled. “Though I wouldn’t mind a piece of your delectable booty, this isn’t a social call. I was summoned. Same as you, I reckon.”
“By Regulus?”
“Yes.”
The message she’d received by owl from Regulus was predictably black and ominous with spidery, white lettering. It used words like certain doom and humanity’s last hope. However, it was in Kreacher’s handwriting, and since she’d seen words like rutabaga and Master Harry's dandruff shampoo on the grocery lists at Grimmauld Place, she found it difficult to get worked up about the threat of certain doom. Regulus was prone to melodrama.
A month had passed since the disaster of Opening Day. Seconds after her baby had morphed into being, Aurors wearing black leather uniforms and posh, reflective sunglasses had swarmed the park. Since Aurors normally wore red uniforms with sissified gold braid, Hermione had known the men and women in black were something different. Something dangerous and elite.
“Protect Asset Granger!” one of them bellowed. “Take her to St. Mungo’s!”
All over the park, people were disappearing en masse, as if some sort of wide-ranging Portkey had been activated. An Auror in black grabbed her arm.
“Agent Malfoy,” the commander said, “begin the cleansing!”
Agent Malfoy?
In shock, she watched her husband transform. As he ran into the fray, his pirate costume and eye patch became a black, leather uniform and posh, reflective sunglasses. He whipped out his wand, shouted an incantation and sent a gigantic fire dragon roaring into the sky. His control over the volatile Fiendfyre was phenomenal.
Where was her silly Draco who swung from ropes like a monkey and called the ship’s main mast a wooden pole thingy?
This man flashed mystifying hand signals. He was a stranger to her.
Hermione watched the fiery dragon consume her pirate ship in one gulp. It burped flame and then flew toward the Happy Unicorn Carousel. Seconds later, she was Apparated to the hospital.
Her classified debriefing was long and complex. In brief, the entire Fantastic World experience-from beginning to salty end-had been a government experiment to study the potential benefits and dangers of weaponizing Diggy Flu’s magically- and molecularly-enhanced Super Cheese. They had all been rats in a maze. Except for Draco and Greyback, who had been moles among the rats. Undercover spies. It was their conversation she’d overheard in the bushes that day. They’d been recruited out of Azkaban to serve as agents for H.O.T.T. Hermione had no idea what H.O.T.T. stood for, and no one would tell her, so she settled on “Holey Old Testicle Turds”, which made her feel a bit better. All the other Death Eaters had been hauled back to prison, with the exception of Pansy, whose sentence had been reduced to probation for good behavior and excellent driving skills.
Somehow, Diggy’s mutant cheese had accelerated Hermione’s pregnancy from zero to seven months in seven seconds. Although all pre-natal tests were reassuring, she still wondered if her healthy bundle of fetal joy would morph into a cheese monster and destroy all London. Draco had been at her bedside when she’d woken up the next day. He’d apologized for deceiving her, and she’d told him to stick his head up his arse. When he hadn’t attempted to obey her, despite his amazing flexibility, she realized her One Ring had been confiscated. Damn it.
To make matters worse, Draco had looked so scorching hot in black leather with soot and blood on his sexy face that she’d Floo-called him five days later for their first booty call. By now, they’d met a dozen times. In that time, his pelt of soft, gorgeous chest hair (aka, her Fuzzy Wall of Lust) had turned from mottled grey to pure white to a pale, pretty lilac. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care as long as he gave her orgasms. She liked it when he shagged her wearing his big, black Auror boots and nothing else.
But she didn’t like him. On the contrary, she hated him with a burning passion. He would divorce and abandon her as soon as their little cheese monster was born. She knew it, even though he’d shown up for every healer’s appointment save those first ones when he’d been torching the theme park. Even though he grinned like a besotted fool every time he said the Malfoy heir, which he said all the time.
Hermione hardened her heart to him and kept her fears secret.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones,” he said as Harry’s Prius zipped through the salted meadow toward them. Only Pansy and Neville climbed out of it.
“You, too?” Neville asked.
“Yep.”
“What’s going on?”
“Who knows with Black,” Severus Snape said as he flew down from the sky like a great, smoky bat. His left leg was a wooden peg from the knee down. Soon after, Greyback arrived by dog-shaped balloon-animal Portkey. His fur was a pale, pretty lilac. Regulus and Kreacher appeared next to him with a loud crack.
Regulus stared at Snape's peg leg and raised one eyebrow. Snape nodded almost imperceptibly in answer. What the heck was that about? Mysterious bastards.
“Eight of the nine chosen warriors have been assembled,” Regulus announced in his customary, dark tones. “As foretold by prophecy, we must now travel to meet the ninth warrior under cover of darkness in Fiji.”
“Fiji?” Draco whispered. “Hey, Granger! Granger!”
“What?”
“It’s 2:00 a.m. in Fiji. Ooty-bay all-cay!”
“Shut up,” she murmured, blushing.
“Ex-say on the each-bay. Et-lay me ouch-tay your oconuts-cay!”
“Shut up!” She turned to Regulus. “Harry’s in Fiji?”
“Harry James Potter was not chosen for this task,” Regulus answered.
“Yes!” Neville cried out, fist-punching the air. “I mean, uh... really? That’s surprising, cocky Chosen One and all. Who’s the ninth warrior?”
“The Dread Pirate Queen.”
“I’m the Dread Pirate Queen,” Hermione said.
“No, Hermione Jean Granger,” Regulus replied. “You’re a bright witch, a cheese addict and a failed amusement park manager who’s heavy with child.”
“Hey!” Draco protested. “Watch it!”
Hermione refused to let his outraged defence affect her resolve to loathe him forever. Mostly.
“Fenrir Wyatt Greyback,” Regulus continued solemnly, “is the Pacific Portkey ready?”
“It is now that < i>someone has stopped speaking in Pig Latin,” the werewolf growled. He held up a yellow balloon animal, shaped like an octopus, and grinned proudly.
“Oh, hell, no!” Pansy snapped. “An international Portkey fashioned from something that can pop if a brat screams at a birthday party? And you have claws? I don’t think so, Ugly.”
“I assure you, all agents of H.O.T.T. are master Portkey engineers,” Regulus said.
Draco nodded.
“Testicle Turds,” Hermione muttered, too quietly to be heard.
“Mr. Black, are you an agent of H.O.T.T.?” Neville asked. Everyone turned to stare at Regulus, who remained absolutely silent.
Kreacher laughed. It sounded like a dusty, old clarinet playing a sad, Hungarian folk song about death. “They don’t knows anything, Master,” the grim elf wheezed. “How canz they face such fearsome enemies?”
Greyback ignored Kreacher’s gloom-and-doom, holding out his cheerful yellow octopus. “Everyone take a tentacle. Don’t be shy, kiddies.”
“Ewww,” said Pansy, but one by one, they each took a tentacle in hand. Everyone except Hermione.
“Who are our fearsome enemies?” she asked.
She had figured out Regulus’ speech patterns by now. He always waited four, long seconds before answering a question, if he answered at all, to build ultimate suspense. (Also, as a point of interest, Severus Snape spoke at a rate of 1.75 words per second when he was trying to intimidate others due to his own insecurities. Once a wearer of graying underwear, always a wearer of graying underwear.)
Four... three... two... one...
Regulus spoke.
“The enemies are Doctor Diggidus Harvarti-Flume who has refused the Ministry of Magic’s edict to abandon his Weaponized Cheese experiments despite wildly unpredictable results. Also, Bellatrix Lestrange, the Lovers Crabbe and Goyle and ten other Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban last night. They took with them an estimated thirty-four neutered but very amourous Dementors.”
Draco shivered with revulsion while Greyback giggled.
“And,” Regulus said. The conjunction hung, suspended like a guillotine for precisely four seconds. “All the pandas of the Chinese Pandaemonium, under the command of General Pan Tzu. As you know, their species is endangered, so we estimate they only have an active army of 500 or less.”
“Oh, is that all?” Pansy sneered.
“No,” Kreacher wheezed. “Pandas has wandless magic almost as goods as a house-elf. Almost.”
Could this get any worse? How on earth could they fight such insurmountable odds? There were only eight of them. Well, nine, if you counted the Dread Pirate Queen, whoever she was. But what did one more matter? It was impossible. And I'm eight months pregnant, for Merlin’s sake! I should be home, with my feet up, eating bacon slathered with crunchy peanut butter! Bacon...
But then Hermione thought of Harry facing Voldemort and triumphing despite seemingly insurmountable odds. He’d done it because he’d had to. Sometimes, you had no choice but to be brave and fight for what was right. Sometimes, the alternative was just too dreadful to ignore.
“What if we fail?” she asked.
Four... three... two... one...
“Imagine the Fantastic World of Make Believe. All the world over.”
A wave of nausea rolled through Hermione as she saw a horrible vision of the future. Rivers of golden vomit flowing into the sea, a tropical island on the far horizon, humanity in chains, a dead parrot singing “Waterloo” as throngs of animals fornicated and howled and wept tears of blood. Above it all, on a throne carved of jade, sat a mighty panda in red armour, his eyes burning as black and terrible as an eclipse.
Oh. Hell. No.
They had to save the world.
Hermione grabbed the last octopus tentacle so fast that it squeaked. Draco twined his free arm around her waist and pulled her close. Her heart started to race. In fear of their imminent battle, of course. Not because his scent made her think of glorious, hot, sweaty, exciting sex with nothing but boots on.
She struggled to control her breathing as Regulus spoke the name of their destination.
“Where?!” Draco cried out.
With a swirl of blue light and a sickening hook behind the navel, they were transported to the beautiful paradise of Lucius Bay, Fiji.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Opening quote inspired by this quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
“The demons cannot be harnessed. The end result cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated, and all records concerning it expunged... The Initiative itself will be filled in with concrete. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.”
I spelled “Pandaemonium” based on Milton’s name for the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost. “Pan” plus “daemon” equals “all demon”.
To be continued…
Continue or ToC