Magical Mystery Tours (Crack Fic, Crossovers)
Title: Magical Mystery Tours
Disclaimer: Harry Potter owned by J.K. Rowling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies, X-Men owned by Marvel. Beatles owned by themselves, and certainly unrelated to their fictional counterparts here.
Summary: Three fictional universes the Beatles didn't end up in, or: how they fared at Hogwarts, who the Vampire Slayer of the 60s and 70s and her Watcher were and why Timothy Leary was so sure the Beatles were mutants.
Rating: PG 13 solely for swearing, discussed drug use and discussed adultery.
Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey, Chris O'Dell and Brian Epstein.
Spoilers: Some for the Harry Potter books (and Dumbledore's backstory), basic ones for X-Men: First Class (the movie, not the comic), and only premise ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Author's note: Started out as a meme reply and got away from me. Considering the sheer silliness and gen-ness of the premise, I think even utter objecters to RPF are safe to read it.
I. Sorted
In some years, the Sorting of the new students did not proceed as smoothly as in others, but the summer of 1952 proved to be extraordinarily difficult even when compared with the legendary precedent of destined-to-be-Ravenclaw student George Bernard Shaw insisting on being sorted into Hufflepuff to demonstrate his solidarity with the working class.
The most harmless case was that of young Richard Starkey, who actually should have arrived at Hogwarts the previous year but had been unable to due to lengthy illnesses. Dumbledore offered him private tutoring so he could catch up with the other students his age, but to his surprise, Richard declined and cheerfully declared he didn’t mind “hanging out with the younger blokes”, as he put it. His penchant for wearing jewelry made Dumbledore, ever on guard, wonder whether some of it had been put to ill spying use by Tom Riddle. Knowing Tom, it was entirely possible that poor Richard could end up as an unwitting human sacrifice, but a discreet spell did not reveal anything suspicious about his rings, to Dumbledore left it at that, and Richard with the first years.
By contrast, young George Harrison was actually a few months short of the right age to receive his Hogwarts letter, but had shown up anyway in the company of a friend who had received the latter, furiously declaring that he was only nine months younger, and that it wasn’t fair he should be made to wait a full year. “He can play Raunchy all the way,” his friend helpfully added. Dumbledore was tempted to reply that Muggle music was not a subject taught at Hogwarts, but then again, maybe it should be, and besides, George looked as if he had barely escaped starvation. Memories of Ariana and his own neglect of her haunted Dumbledore, and he knew that if he left George at a home where he was so underfed that he might not make it into the next year he would never forgive himself. So George was sorted into Ravenclaw, and Dumbledore thought this would be the last case requiring his attention, until disaster struck in not one, but two cases.
The Sorting Hat could be whimsical and that was charming, to be sure, but when it first yelled “Slytherdor” and then “Grytherin“, Dumbledore felt the beginning of a headache arising. The “Slytherdor” student was the underfed George’s nine-months-older friend, one Paul McCartney, while the “Grytherin” was called John Lennon who like Richard Starkey was a year later but unlike Richard declared he didn’t want to be here at all, and his aunt had forced him to, what kind of elitist crap was the House system supposed to be and why did the Sorting Hat have such lousy verses anyway?
“Which House does your own heart lead you to?” Dumbledore asked wearily, being reminded of the Shaw incident immediately.
“I told you I’m against that crap,” John said, arms crossed.
“Maybe you should organize a regular House exchange program,” the Slytherdor Paul suggested diplomatically to Dumbledore, “with the two of us as the pioneers.” He eyed the Sorting Hat and added: “Also we could write new songs for the Sorting Hat, y’know. Does that get points?”
“Teacher’s pet,” sneered John.
“Are you saying you couldn’t do it?” challenged Paul. “Because I could.” And proving his claim, he grabbed the guitar his friend George had been playing ‘Raunchy’ on without bothering to ask George first, and started to tinker with it. John stared, produced a pair of glasses that gave Dumbledore an eerie sense of precognition, and squated down next to Paul.
“You are not using ‘cute and gruff’ as a rhyme to Hufflepuff, that’s just wrong,” he said, and when Dumbledore left them, they had started to suggest harmony singing to the Sorting Hat.
He still had no idea which dormitory to put them into, though.
II. That's Why The Lady Is A Champ
The year after she got divorced from Ringo was hard for Maureen. Which was why at one time, after getting really drunk with her friend Chris O'Dell, she finally slipped up and revealed the truth. Thankfully Chris was so full of booze and cocaine that she didn't believe a word, but it was a close call.
"What I don't get," Chris had said, "is why you keep insisting that you didn't have sex with George. I mean, come on, Mo. You two kept disappearing into locked rooms together in Pattie's own house. George even said he loved you in front of everyone. And it's not like Ritchie didn't cheat on you all the time. And I mean, it's George, so, well, I get it. So what gives?"
Maybe it was the "Ritchie" that got to Maureen. She was the only one who still called him that. It was one thing for Chris to have had sex with Maureen's former husband, because frankly, that made her one of many, and another to use his real name. Chris probably wouldn't have done it if she'd been more sober, but still.
"George wasn't my bloody lover," Maureen exploded. "He is my Watcher!"
Chris blinked. Before she could stop herself, Maureen ranted about the whole mess her life had turned into ever since she had turned sixteen and had been told she was the Chosen One, the one girl in a generation to fight the vampires. Her original Watcher had been Brian Epstein, and that was the stories of what brought him actually to the Cavern where he had discovered the Beatles were so inconsistent and contradictory. In truth, he'd been backing up Maureen who had staked a particularly vicious vampire that day, but of course they could never tell that to the press. Unfortunately, the boys had spotted her that day, all but John who was blind as a bat, and Brian more or less had to come up with the manager idea in order to keep them quiet. As it turned out, playing the fangirl turned rock star wife was the perfect cover. Nobody paid much attention to her, least of all the vampires and demons who swarmed around musicians because of the easy victims surrounding them, and Maureen became one of the most successful Slayers of the 20th century. Moreover, her cover became real; she actually fell in love with Ringo, and for a while, it looked like everything was perfect.
Then Brian died in the line of duty, though his death had to be covered up, and she didn't even have the comfort of telling the world he had died a hero. None of Brian's employees had known the truth, so none of them could take over as Watcher, and a newcomer from the Watcher's Council would have never fit into the close Beatles circle. Then George, the only one of the boys to be genuinenly interested in the supernatural world, volunteered, and arranged the trip to India so he could train with the Maharishi, one of the most experienced Watchers worldwide, in discreet seclusion. Which was when everything had started to go wrong. John had started to become involved with a demons' rights activist called Yoko Ono and was increasingly beginning to doubt the entire mission, George's constant absences and lengthier and lengthier "meditations" (well, they had to use some excuse for their training schedule) were starting to destroy his marriage to Pattie, and Paul was bit by and subsequently got married to Linda the werewolf, at which point the group simply had to split up.
The aftermath was even worse, because George's solo career took off, which meant it was harder and harder for him to find excuses to spend time with Maureen. At last, they decided to use the affair as a cover. They told Ringo, of course, and would have told Pattie, except for the problem of Eric who as it turned out was a succubus on the lookout for the Slayer.
"What are you on, and how come you didn't share it with me?" Chris asked when Maureen had arrived at this point. It sobered Maureen up a bit, and she decided to skip the part about how her being the Slayer had at last even cost her her husband, though if Chris hadn't such a coke-befuddled brain right now she'd have figured out there was a reason why Ringo had taken to wearing sunglasses at all times and had stopped aging. If Chris had still been involved with him, Maureen would have warned her, but as it was, the point was academic. Ringo swore he would only drink animal's blood, and that might even be true, but the risk for the kids was simply too high, so divorce had been the only safe and responsible course, even if it did break Maureen's heart.
"Never mind," she said to Chris. "I'll tell you one more thing, though. Whoever the next poor cow ending up as the Chosen One will be, her life will be boring next to mine."
III. The Importance of Being Groovy
It all started in Hamburg during their third time there, when two individuals of dubious nationality who pretended to be Americans tried to hire them for the CIA, and rambled on about mutation while they were at it.
"Look," Paul said. "Our manager just sent us a telegram. He got us a record contract. A real, genuine record contract. Do you have any idea how long we've waited for something like this?"
"You could help us save the world," the smaller of the two not quite Americans, who had introduced himself as Charles Xavier, said with a winning smile and a twinkle, but Paul was rather good at both himself and thus wasn't impressed. Brian Epstein had tried to hide it from them, but he knew that every record label in London had turned them down. Parlaphone was really their last chance, and if they gallivanted off to the States on some bonkers mission just because the Yanks and the Russians were waving their dicks at each other again, they'd never make it out of the clubs.
"We'll save it our way, mate," Paul said, returning the smile and the wink. "One song at a time."
"Well..." the other began, but that was when they noticed Charles' friend had taken objection to John doing one of his Nazi parodies on stage again and every amplifier they used started to shake while John and Mr. Tall, Dark and Toothy hissed insults at each other. Given that John had been in an extra bad mood ever since they arrived here and heard about Stuart's death and had no survival sense at all, whereas the amplifier next to him rose in the air and looked like it would move towards John's head any moment now, Paul decided intervention was called for. Charles gave him a look as if he could read Paul's mind and sprinted towards his friend as well, murmuring something about "Erik" and "they don't know, they don't understand".
Paul never quite remembered how they parted, only that Charles and Erik were gone by the time their break was over and they were due for another rendition of Long Tall Sally.
The next time they heard from Charles and Erik was after Timothy Leary outed them. Not many people took Leary's "I declare the Beatles to be mutants" literally, but those two did. This time Erik showed up, in some dorky helmet and cape, calling himself "Magneto", and gave them some spiel how it was their duty to mutantkind to help fighting off the oppression by the homo sapiens. By that time, John had worked out Erik was a concentration camp survivor and felt terrible about the whole Hitler salute in his face thing back in Hamburg, plus the combination of being told he was a homo superior and someone whom everyone else was oppressing and persecuting really appealed to him, so he gave Magneto huge cash donations for the cause, thus ensuring the survival of the Brotherhood in style and expensive lairs for another decade. He even took to wearing "Magneto is right" t-shirts until Erik called Revolution No. 9 "pretentious" in John's hearing. Which was the end of the t-shirt, though not the donations.
"Look," Paul said wearily to Charles who showed up at Apple ever so casually under the pretense of being another artist hoping to get financed by the Beatles, "if you want donations as well..."
"Not at all," Charles replied mildly. He had lost some hair since Hamburg, and his voice had dropped a bit, plus he sat in a wheelchair, but the twinkle was still in his eyes. "We're safe and sound financially, thank you."
"I'm not wearing 'Xavier is right' t-shirts, either" Paul said. The situation with John was strained enough as it was.
"I wouldn't ask you to."
"So - what do you want, then?"
Charles Xavier leaned forward, fingers steepled. "Do you still believe in saving the world one song at a time?"
One of the curses of being a Beatle, Paul decided, was that people took every little quip from you and remembered it for all eternity.
"As opposed to Erik," Charles said, "I believe in progress through subtlety. Let's talk about sublimal messages on your records, shall we?"
In retrospect, the most amazing thing was that they actually pulled it off. Oh, there were a few missteps, the whole Paul-is-dead mess among them, not to mention the "we'll fuck you like supermen" disaster when what that record, played backwards, was actually supposed to say was "mutants are your fellow men". Still. Slowly but surely, people started to change their minds about the mutant situation.
"What exactly is his power?" asked the attractive redhead who was with Charles when the later visited Paul after the Live Aid concert. "And if you realized he and the others were mutants in 1962, why didn't you recruit them then?"
Thankfully, Charles didn't get into details about the Hamburg encounter. Instead, he said: "My dear, writing earworms isn't the ideal weapon against supervillains with nuclear devices at their disposal. But in the long term, it might be the most useful power of them all."
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/722928.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter owned by J.K. Rowling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies, X-Men owned by Marvel. Beatles owned by themselves, and certainly unrelated to their fictional counterparts here.
Summary: Three fictional universes the Beatles didn't end up in, or: how they fared at Hogwarts, who the Vampire Slayer of the 60s and 70s and her Watcher were and why Timothy Leary was so sure the Beatles were mutants.
Rating: PG 13 solely for swearing, discussed drug use and discussed adultery.
Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey, Chris O'Dell and Brian Epstein.
Spoilers: Some for the Harry Potter books (and Dumbledore's backstory), basic ones for X-Men: First Class (the movie, not the comic), and only premise ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Author's note: Started out as a meme reply and got away from me. Considering the sheer silliness and gen-ness of the premise, I think even utter objecters to RPF are safe to read it.
I. Sorted
In some years, the Sorting of the new students did not proceed as smoothly as in others, but the summer of 1952 proved to be extraordinarily difficult even when compared with the legendary precedent of destined-to-be-Ravenclaw student George Bernard Shaw insisting on being sorted into Hufflepuff to demonstrate his solidarity with the working class.
The most harmless case was that of young Richard Starkey, who actually should have arrived at Hogwarts the previous year but had been unable to due to lengthy illnesses. Dumbledore offered him private tutoring so he could catch up with the other students his age, but to his surprise, Richard declined and cheerfully declared he didn’t mind “hanging out with the younger blokes”, as he put it. His penchant for wearing jewelry made Dumbledore, ever on guard, wonder whether some of it had been put to ill spying use by Tom Riddle. Knowing Tom, it was entirely possible that poor Richard could end up as an unwitting human sacrifice, but a discreet spell did not reveal anything suspicious about his rings, to Dumbledore left it at that, and Richard with the first years.
By contrast, young George Harrison was actually a few months short of the right age to receive his Hogwarts letter, but had shown up anyway in the company of a friend who had received the latter, furiously declaring that he was only nine months younger, and that it wasn’t fair he should be made to wait a full year. “He can play Raunchy all the way,” his friend helpfully added. Dumbledore was tempted to reply that Muggle music was not a subject taught at Hogwarts, but then again, maybe it should be, and besides, George looked as if he had barely escaped starvation. Memories of Ariana and his own neglect of her haunted Dumbledore, and he knew that if he left George at a home where he was so underfed that he might not make it into the next year he would never forgive himself. So George was sorted into Ravenclaw, and Dumbledore thought this would be the last case requiring his attention, until disaster struck in not one, but two cases.
The Sorting Hat could be whimsical and that was charming, to be sure, but when it first yelled “Slytherdor” and then “Grytherin“, Dumbledore felt the beginning of a headache arising. The “Slytherdor” student was the underfed George’s nine-months-older friend, one Paul McCartney, while the “Grytherin” was called John Lennon who like Richard Starkey was a year later but unlike Richard declared he didn’t want to be here at all, and his aunt had forced him to, what kind of elitist crap was the House system supposed to be and why did the Sorting Hat have such lousy verses anyway?
“Which House does your own heart lead you to?” Dumbledore asked wearily, being reminded of the Shaw incident immediately.
“I told you I’m against that crap,” John said, arms crossed.
“Maybe you should organize a regular House exchange program,” the Slytherdor Paul suggested diplomatically to Dumbledore, “with the two of us as the pioneers.” He eyed the Sorting Hat and added: “Also we could write new songs for the Sorting Hat, y’know. Does that get points?”
“Teacher’s pet,” sneered John.
“Are you saying you couldn’t do it?” challenged Paul. “Because I could.” And proving his claim, he grabbed the guitar his friend George had been playing ‘Raunchy’ on without bothering to ask George first, and started to tinker with it. John stared, produced a pair of glasses that gave Dumbledore an eerie sense of precognition, and squated down next to Paul.
“You are not using ‘cute and gruff’ as a rhyme to Hufflepuff, that’s just wrong,” he said, and when Dumbledore left them, they had started to suggest harmony singing to the Sorting Hat.
He still had no idea which dormitory to put them into, though.
II. That's Why The Lady Is A Champ
The year after she got divorced from Ringo was hard for Maureen. Which was why at one time, after getting really drunk with her friend Chris O'Dell, she finally slipped up and revealed the truth. Thankfully Chris was so full of booze and cocaine that she didn't believe a word, but it was a close call.
"What I don't get," Chris had said, "is why you keep insisting that you didn't have sex with George. I mean, come on, Mo. You two kept disappearing into locked rooms together in Pattie's own house. George even said he loved you in front of everyone. And it's not like Ritchie didn't cheat on you all the time. And I mean, it's George, so, well, I get it. So what gives?"
Maybe it was the "Ritchie" that got to Maureen. She was the only one who still called him that. It was one thing for Chris to have had sex with Maureen's former husband, because frankly, that made her one of many, and another to use his real name. Chris probably wouldn't have done it if she'd been more sober, but still.
"George wasn't my bloody lover," Maureen exploded. "He is my Watcher!"
Chris blinked. Before she could stop herself, Maureen ranted about the whole mess her life had turned into ever since she had turned sixteen and had been told she was the Chosen One, the one girl in a generation to fight the vampires. Her original Watcher had been Brian Epstein, and that was the stories of what brought him actually to the Cavern where he had discovered the Beatles were so inconsistent and contradictory. In truth, he'd been backing up Maureen who had staked a particularly vicious vampire that day, but of course they could never tell that to the press. Unfortunately, the boys had spotted her that day, all but John who was blind as a bat, and Brian more or less had to come up with the manager idea in order to keep them quiet. As it turned out, playing the fangirl turned rock star wife was the perfect cover. Nobody paid much attention to her, least of all the vampires and demons who swarmed around musicians because of the easy victims surrounding them, and Maureen became one of the most successful Slayers of the 20th century. Moreover, her cover became real; she actually fell in love with Ringo, and for a while, it looked like everything was perfect.
Then Brian died in the line of duty, though his death had to be covered up, and she didn't even have the comfort of telling the world he had died a hero. None of Brian's employees had known the truth, so none of them could take over as Watcher, and a newcomer from the Watcher's Council would have never fit into the close Beatles circle. Then George, the only one of the boys to be genuinenly interested in the supernatural world, volunteered, and arranged the trip to India so he could train with the Maharishi, one of the most experienced Watchers worldwide, in discreet seclusion. Which was when everything had started to go wrong. John had started to become involved with a demons' rights activist called Yoko Ono and was increasingly beginning to doubt the entire mission, George's constant absences and lengthier and lengthier "meditations" (well, they had to use some excuse for their training schedule) were starting to destroy his marriage to Pattie, and Paul was bit by and subsequently got married to Linda the werewolf, at which point the group simply had to split up.
The aftermath was even worse, because George's solo career took off, which meant it was harder and harder for him to find excuses to spend time with Maureen. At last, they decided to use the affair as a cover. They told Ringo, of course, and would have told Pattie, except for the problem of Eric who as it turned out was a succubus on the lookout for the Slayer.
"What are you on, and how come you didn't share it with me?" Chris asked when Maureen had arrived at this point. It sobered Maureen up a bit, and she decided to skip the part about how her being the Slayer had at last even cost her her husband, though if Chris hadn't such a coke-befuddled brain right now she'd have figured out there was a reason why Ringo had taken to wearing sunglasses at all times and had stopped aging. If Chris had still been involved with him, Maureen would have warned her, but as it was, the point was academic. Ringo swore he would only drink animal's blood, and that might even be true, but the risk for the kids was simply too high, so divorce had been the only safe and responsible course, even if it did break Maureen's heart.
"Never mind," she said to Chris. "I'll tell you one more thing, though. Whoever the next poor cow ending up as the Chosen One will be, her life will be boring next to mine."
III. The Importance of Being Groovy
It all started in Hamburg during their third time there, when two individuals of dubious nationality who pretended to be Americans tried to hire them for the CIA, and rambled on about mutation while they were at it.
"Look," Paul said. "Our manager just sent us a telegram. He got us a record contract. A real, genuine record contract. Do you have any idea how long we've waited for something like this?"
"You could help us save the world," the smaller of the two not quite Americans, who had introduced himself as Charles Xavier, said with a winning smile and a twinkle, but Paul was rather good at both himself and thus wasn't impressed. Brian Epstein had tried to hide it from them, but he knew that every record label in London had turned them down. Parlaphone was really their last chance, and if they gallivanted off to the States on some bonkers mission just because the Yanks and the Russians were waving their dicks at each other again, they'd never make it out of the clubs.
"We'll save it our way, mate," Paul said, returning the smile and the wink. "One song at a time."
"Well..." the other began, but that was when they noticed Charles' friend had taken objection to John doing one of his Nazi parodies on stage again and every amplifier they used started to shake while John and Mr. Tall, Dark and Toothy hissed insults at each other. Given that John had been in an extra bad mood ever since they arrived here and heard about Stuart's death and had no survival sense at all, whereas the amplifier next to him rose in the air and looked like it would move towards John's head any moment now, Paul decided intervention was called for. Charles gave him a look as if he could read Paul's mind and sprinted towards his friend as well, murmuring something about "Erik" and "they don't know, they don't understand".
Paul never quite remembered how they parted, only that Charles and Erik were gone by the time their break was over and they were due for another rendition of Long Tall Sally.
The next time they heard from Charles and Erik was after Timothy Leary outed them. Not many people took Leary's "I declare the Beatles to be mutants" literally, but those two did. This time Erik showed up, in some dorky helmet and cape, calling himself "Magneto", and gave them some spiel how it was their duty to mutantkind to help fighting off the oppression by the homo sapiens. By that time, John had worked out Erik was a concentration camp survivor and felt terrible about the whole Hitler salute in his face thing back in Hamburg, plus the combination of being told he was a homo superior and someone whom everyone else was oppressing and persecuting really appealed to him, so he gave Magneto huge cash donations for the cause, thus ensuring the survival of the Brotherhood in style and expensive lairs for another decade. He even took to wearing "Magneto is right" t-shirts until Erik called Revolution No. 9 "pretentious" in John's hearing. Which was the end of the t-shirt, though not the donations.
"Look," Paul said wearily to Charles who showed up at Apple ever so casually under the pretense of being another artist hoping to get financed by the Beatles, "if you want donations as well..."
"Not at all," Charles replied mildly. He had lost some hair since Hamburg, and his voice had dropped a bit, plus he sat in a wheelchair, but the twinkle was still in his eyes. "We're safe and sound financially, thank you."
"I'm not wearing 'Xavier is right' t-shirts, either" Paul said. The situation with John was strained enough as it was.
"I wouldn't ask you to."
"So - what do you want, then?"
Charles Xavier leaned forward, fingers steepled. "Do you still believe in saving the world one song at a time?"
One of the curses of being a Beatle, Paul decided, was that people took every little quip from you and remembered it for all eternity.
"As opposed to Erik," Charles said, "I believe in progress through subtlety. Let's talk about sublimal messages on your records, shall we?"
In retrospect, the most amazing thing was that they actually pulled it off. Oh, there were a few missteps, the whole Paul-is-dead mess among them, not to mention the "we'll fuck you like supermen" disaster when what that record, played backwards, was actually supposed to say was "mutants are your fellow men". Still. Slowly but surely, people started to change their minds about the mutant situation.
"What exactly is his power?" asked the attractive redhead who was with Charles when the later visited Paul after the Live Aid concert. "And if you realized he and the others were mutants in 1962, why didn't you recruit them then?"
Thankfully, Charles didn't get into details about the Hamburg encounter. Instead, he said: "My dear, writing earworms isn't the ideal weapon against supervillains with nuclear devices at their disposal. But in the long term, it might be the most useful power of them all."
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/722928.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.