HP Widdershins, Part 10
Hey, whatdya know, this is no longer a Work In Progress. It is, in fact, The End.
HP Widdershins.
An illustrated, alternate universe, OOC fanfic by Didodikali.
Part One, in which Harry Potter grows a brain.
Part Two, in which Dudley Dursley grows a personality.
Part Three, in which Hermione Granger seizes the reins.
Part Four, in which Harry Potter speaks softly.
Part Five, in which Dudley opens packages.
Part Six, in which Hermione plays with fire.
Part Seven in which Hermione is screwed, blued, and tattooed. NC-17
Part Eight in which Dudley takes a call.
Part Nine, in which Hermione goes to ground.
And now, Part Ten, in which Dudley goes home.
The party was over, all Hermione's aunts and uncles and cousins had gone home, and even her parents had stopped peering out the windows at us. We were alone in front of her house. She pulled me down against the side of my car, plunged her chilly hands inside my coat and groped me thoroughly. I kissed her and gave back as good as I got. Eventually she let me go and we leaned against my car, panting. "They're going to give me a medal, you know," she told me.
"Platinum. Yes. So you've said." Repeatedly.
"I'll take you home now." She wrapped her arms around me again and then her knees buckled and she slid down my front. I caught her around the waist and she giggled helplessly. At least she was a happy drunk. But, considering that Ms. Contingency Plan had arranged to forget to have any Sobering Potion on hand, I suspected she was more nervous about the midnight ceremony than she was letting on.
"You can't even walk. Can you teleport like that?" I asked.
"You never know till you try."
"How about we don't try it. They'll be here to pick you up any minute anyway."
She woke up a little bit then. "Oh, but you can't drive. You drank much more than me."
True, although I wasn't that drunk; she was only a little bit of a thing and it wasn't hard to drink more than her. Lots more than her. Nevertheless... "We've already had this conversation. In the house, if you recall? I'm going to leave my car here and call a cab."
"Oh, yes." She nodded, remembering. Or pretending to remember.
"Call me tomorrow," I said. "Come get me. We'll go for a drive. I'll look at the map. There must be somewhere nice between your house and mine. I don't know. A picnic. Or what have you. All right?"
"That sounds lovely," she said happily and as if these vague plans might even stick in her head right through till morning. And perhaps in the morning I might find leftover turkey and things in my Mum's fridge and, if I hinted what I was about, Mum might let me take enough for two without much pestering.
There was a soft popping sound. "They're here," I said, but when I looked, it was my cousin Harry. And yet I wasn't wrong; I felt the air over our heads whoosh apart. The lift that Hermione had been awaiting emerged silently from above us. It seemed to be an invisible UFO except that the windows were unrolled and there were six or seven girls visible in the back seat. One of them called out the window, "No more room, Harry. Sorry!"
Harry smiled at them. "It's all right. I have the address, I'll meet you all there. I was just seeing that Hermione had a ride."
Hermione wasn't paying any attention to Harry. She kissed me one more time, disentangled herself from my clothes, and stepped over to the UFO. She pressed herself in with the other girls and the car rose a few feet in the air. The girl next to Hermione hung over her lap and looked down at Harry and me. "Is that him? Oh, my. I see what you mean," she said.
What has Hermione been saying about me? "Um. Hi," I said.
Hermione's friend's dress shimmered and sparkled, stars winked in her hair. The beautiful girl turned gravely to Hermione. "Do you share?" she said.
"Millicent!" said Hermione and she raised her hand as if she might smack her friend, perhaps lightly on the hand. Unfortunately Millicent's hands weren't within Hermione's reach. Hermione contemplated Millicent's bum, which was, but then Hermione seemed to decide that was too dangerous and she put her hand down.
Millicent burst out laughing. "Your loss, Hermione." She waved down at Harry and me. "Bye, boys. It just wasn't meant to be. I'll have to go console myself with some Weaselys." Hermione shoved her back into the car.
Harry, next to me, said, "I can not believe Millicent, using a glamour like that on her dress."
"What does a glamour do?" I asked. "Make her dress all sparkly like that?"
"No, it makes her look like a goddess, like the most beautiful woman in the room. That charm is so completely over the top."
I surveyed him carefully. His owl had moved from his head to his shoulder, and my cousin looked mostly normal, not ensorcelled at all. "Eh? She just looks sparkley to me. Are you certain it's a glamour whatsit? Maybe you're in love. Is she nice?"
"Millicent? Nice? Not a bit."
"Yeah, I like the mean girls best myself, too."
"Oh, shut up," said Harry.
Hermione and Millicent managed to get the door shut and then Hermione leaned out the window. "Harry, take him home for me, will you." She jerked her chin towards me.
"What?!" said Harry.
Hermione widened her eyes at him. Harry sighed. "Fine, fine, whatever," he said. And then Hermione grinned at me, waiting to see how I'd react. Obviously she'd sobered up enough to get her twisted sense of humour back. She'd no doubt stop staggering and be just slightly relaxed by the time her wizarding celebration really got started in an hour.
I didn't mind taking a cab and I was in no hurry to go home, but I'd not seen Harry in months. I shrugged. "All right. I suppose." And Hermione and the girls rose up into the air in their UFO. They waved their arms out the window at us and faded away into the clouds.
I looked down and found Harry staring at me, narrow-eyed. He inched closer. "How does she pick you up? A leviosa? Does she make you jump up in the air?"
"Um. No," I said, backing away. "Look, maybe this was a bad idea. I can just call-," I said, but I was drunk and slow and Harry slipped under my arm, an inside fighter just like you'd expect, and he grabbed me- and he dropped me three feet and thirty miles onto wet grass.
It was the most unspeakable teleportation jump I'd ever experienced, worse than Hermione's earliest unpracticed attempt, worse than her sudden emergency grab that took me out of the house. I sank to one knee as excruciating stomach paroxysms bent me over, and I waited for my disorientated insides to catch up with the outsides.
"Ohhh, you are terrible at sidelong apparition. And I thought Hermione was bad the first time she tried it. You're much worse. Do you even have a license?" My entrails shook me into silence then while my brain kept on whirling and I thought it'd be rather too bad if my last words ended up being whinging about licenses. But I'd not been killed by being turned inside out and the pain started to recede and I took a deep breath. And another. Almost there...
"Get up, you faker." Harry shoved his knee against my shoulder and toppled my barely gained equilibrium.
I went down on my hands and knees and lost the last three hours of my evening, all the drinks that'd been handed to me, all the pretty little chocolates, cakes, and trifles- at which point I suddenly felt a whole lot better. I jumped up blazing angry and laid hands on Harry. He smiled. A familiar smile. The one I'd seen on my own face when I watched the taped videos of my championship matches with the chaps that I'd known I would outclass, but who hadn't yet had the chance to discover that interesting fact for themselves. Right. Cold sense returned and I let him go.
Emptied of sugar, alcohol, and adrenaline, I stumbled back and sat down on the low brick wall that surrounded the playground. "I should have called a cab. There's no way that the strongest wizard in Britain can be a worse teleporter than Hermione. You did that on purpose. I notice that you are fine."
Harry diffidently pressed his wand against my throat and then pulled it away and looked at it. "You, too," he said and he gingerly sat down next to me. "Meh. It's not like you needed to keep that- What was it? Raspberry torte? I did you a favour really."
"You did not. Gah." I wiped my mouth and then washed my hand off in the freezing wet grass.
"I thought you were trying to lose weight?"
I stared at him in disbelief. "I did. I have. I am. But now I'm on holiday, you fucking shit. And if my idea of a good holiday is being fed sweets by pretty ladies, that is my own fucking business. Before you showed up I'd been having a great time."
It had, in fact, been more than a great time. There had been dinner. And then Hermione and her mother and Hermione's aunts and assorted pretty cousins had spent another couple of hours passing around little flowered plates and pressing endless little crystal glasses into my hand. And there'd been stealing kisses with Hermione in the kitchen and the taste of the cordial on her lips had still been on mine when she'd gotten in that invisible car. All gone now. And, since I'd made it onto the boxing team, that meant six months till my birthday and my next lovely time.
"I hate you," I told him.
"Right back at you," he said, with such real venom that I was disconcerted.
"Why?" I said plaintively. "What'd I ever do to you?" Harry rolled his eyes at that, looking for a moment just like my father. "I mean, recently," I said. And then I gave up. "Enh. Nevermind."
My best coat jacket, which buttoned easily at the beginning of an evening and while standing, did not button so easily while sitting after a three hour dinner, even a dinner ruined by Harry Potter, and I didn't yet feel up to standing, buttoning it and walking off. I shoved my hands in the pockets, pulled the thin wool of my jacket mostly shut and shivered. Could have had a nice, quiet, relaxing, warm cab ride right to my front door, but instead-
"Are you cold?" asked Harry. The owl sitting on his shoulder said nothing.
"Nope,'" I lied. "Are you cold?"
"No, but that's because I'm a wizard. Best in Britain," he said.
Right, best except for your dodgy sidelong apparition talents. "Bully for you. Also, fuck off," I said and then noticed how our encounter had turned to complete hash. Which was not at all how I'd imagined it when I'd agreed to go with him. And it was all his fault. On the other hand, he hadn't left yet, he was still sitting there, glaring at me. I ignored his stink eye and said, "So... How have you been getting on."
"...Fine."
As usual, pretending to talk civilly with him was all uphill. "Doing anything interesting these days?" I said.
He chewed the inside of his cheek and then said, "I'm having my biography written."
"Your biography? You're only seventeen years old. That'll be a quick read."
"No, it won't. The notes and transcripts alone are this thick." He held out his arms. "It'll have every detail, magically pulled straight from my memory."
"Every detail? That will be thick. Dear diary: today I used magic to wash my hair. Then I had dragon eggs for breakfast. I attempted to turn my essays in, but I'd accidentally used invisible ink, and I got sent sent to detention where I spent six hours rewriting essays and wanking under my desk. Then I had tea. ...Let's see, 24 hours in a day, call it 2500 days, that'd be sixty thousand paragraphs of magical hair-washing and wank. What fun."
"Well, of course I have an editor. Gilderoy is the best in the business and he'll make it much more exciting. ...You're in the story, by the way."
"Yeah? How do I die? In the exciting story version, I mean."
"You don't. It's all going to be true."
"Ahahaha. Even the part with DumbleFawkes? Brilliant!"
Harry winced. "Not that bit. For security reasons we'll be editing that bit out."
Security of your manly reputation, I reckon. "How much security? Do I get to read it?"
"I don't know why you'd want to. You don't die but you don't come off at all well."
I made a half-hearted attempt to brush some of Crookshanks' hair off my trousers. "I don't? So no mention of Hermione and me?"
He smirked. "None whatsoever."
"Any mention of Draco and you?"
"Any mention of WHAT?"
Ah. Still not out yet. "Forget it. ...Well, I imagine Hermione's battle scenes will be worth reading, assuming I can stand skimming through a minute by minute replay of my ickle cousin's adventures in puberty to get to them. When will your wondrous tome be available?"
"Do you really want to read it? Wouldn't it just make you jealous?"
"Oh, please. Why would I be jealous of you?"
"Because I've got magic. Obviously." The owl on Harry's shoulder dribbled white goo down his back, but the magical owlshit rolled down his magical coat and vanished into the grass behind him. Magically. Eeeeew.
"I'm not seeing the obviously. Do you think all trumpet players yearn desperately to play electric base? I'm very happy with the hand I was dealt, thanks. My life's great."
"But you were a fucking nasty bully and that means you must have been jealous."
I laughed. "You think? I could have been just a big, stupid kid with no empathy or morals who enjoyed being horrible for fun."
"That's worse. I was at least trying to make excuses for you. But if you insist on being evil, far be it from me to-"
"-I don't insist on it. How about you? You going to be the next Dark Lord?"
"Gah! Everyone asks me that these days."
"Do they really? And what do you tell everyone?"
"I say I haven't decided yet."
"How does that go over?"
"Not too well." He grinned. "What's wrong with not having decided? These things should be thought over carefully. They ought to be glad I have no plans. Yet."
"Wait a minute. Yes, you do have plans. I was going to give this to Hermione to give to you, but it wasn't the right... um, time." I went through my inside jacket pockets, pulled out Harry's plans, and handed them to him.
"Oh, yes! God, yes! Christmas is not complete until I've received my traditional crappy Dursley present. What the fuck is this? An electric bill you pulled out of the rubbish?"
The envelope was crumpled and stained with coffee grounds and actually I had pulled it out of the bin that very morning. "Open it," I said.
"It's already open," he said, but then he noticed that the grotty open envelope had his name on it. He shot me yet another dirty look. "You read my post?"
"Or," I said, "You could notice the part where I delivered your post. Come on, read it."
He pulled out the letter and unfolded it and read the results of the exams that he'd apparently taken some time ago. He stared at it and read it again. "What? How? When?"
"I can't imagine. I don't suppose you've got any particularly pushy, education-mad friends who happen to have access to timeturners and could make you level up like that?"
"Is this real?" He flipped the envelope over and checked the postmark, which was from four months back. I didn't know how the envelope had known to wait to arrive until I was home to rescue it, but the Charming style was rather familiar.
"Did you know that I've picked up Divination?" I waggled my fingers at him. "I see in your future a whole lot of untimely learning experiences. Hope you enjoy swotting. Those are some impressive marks you're going to earn. Ha ha!"
"Bloody hell! How did Hermione do this?"
"Never mind how. I want to know when she'll get the idea. Will she get the idea tonight? Or tomorrow when the envelope shows up on her doorstep? Is it cheating if it happens like that? Does she have to get the idea before her marks arrive or else cause some sort of time paradox? How many months do you suppose you'll be away in a time bubble revising?"
Harry glared balefully down at his letter. "I am so fucked. Truly, a used toothpick would have been a better present."
"Oh, I say!" I said, "You could apply to my school. We could-"
"-No."
"I could introduce you to people. You'd like my friend, Patrick. He taught me to make curry. You could come over one night when I'm cooking. I've got the colour just exactly right, and the flavour is getting kind of close-"
"-You know what? You are seriously deranged. Or maybe you've been hit in the head a couple hundred times too many and your brains have turned to tapioca. Never. Never. Never in a million years..." And he went on in that vein for a while, but when you know a teleporting girl with a timeturner, 'never in a million years' means next month.
"Brilliant," I said. "So, curry night. I'll buy you a pint after."
He blinked at me. "No. No, you won't," he explained slowly.
"All right. Thanks for the lift. See you." I waved at him.
"Aaaaaagh! No! You! Won't! You will not be seeing me! Aaaaaaagh!"
And then, poof, he disappeared.
I turned and walked through the park back to my parent's house, wondering what time in the morning Hermione would call and come pick me up properly so we could go retrieve my car.
The End.
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HP Widdershins.
An illustrated, alternate universe, OOC fanfic by Didodikali.
Part One, in which Harry Potter grows a brain.
Part Two, in which Dudley Dursley grows a personality.
Part Three, in which Hermione Granger seizes the reins.
Part Four, in which Harry Potter speaks softly.
Part Five, in which Dudley opens packages.
Part Six, in which Hermione plays with fire.
Part Seven in which Hermione is screwed, blued, and tattooed. NC-17
Part Eight in which Dudley takes a call.
Part Nine, in which Hermione goes to ground.
And now, Part Ten, in which Dudley goes home.
The party was over, all Hermione's aunts and uncles and cousins had gone home, and even her parents had stopped peering out the windows at us. We were alone in front of her house. She pulled me down against the side of my car, plunged her chilly hands inside my coat and groped me thoroughly. I kissed her and gave back as good as I got. Eventually she let me go and we leaned against my car, panting. "They're going to give me a medal, you know," she told me.
"Platinum. Yes. So you've said." Repeatedly.
"I'll take you home now." She wrapped her arms around me again and then her knees buckled and she slid down my front. I caught her around the waist and she giggled helplessly. At least she was a happy drunk. But, considering that Ms. Contingency Plan had arranged to forget to have any Sobering Potion on hand, I suspected she was more nervous about the midnight ceremony than she was letting on.
"You can't even walk. Can you teleport like that?" I asked.
"You never know till you try."
"How about we don't try it. They'll be here to pick you up any minute anyway."
She woke up a little bit then. "Oh, but you can't drive. You drank much more than me."
True, although I wasn't that drunk; she was only a little bit of a thing and it wasn't hard to drink more than her. Lots more than her. Nevertheless... "We've already had this conversation. In the house, if you recall? I'm going to leave my car here and call a cab."
"Oh, yes." She nodded, remembering. Or pretending to remember.
"Call me tomorrow," I said. "Come get me. We'll go for a drive. I'll look at the map. There must be somewhere nice between your house and mine. I don't know. A picnic. Or what have you. All right?"
"That sounds lovely," she said happily and as if these vague plans might even stick in her head right through till morning. And perhaps in the morning I might find leftover turkey and things in my Mum's fridge and, if I hinted what I was about, Mum might let me take enough for two without much pestering.
There was a soft popping sound. "They're here," I said, but when I looked, it was my cousin Harry. And yet I wasn't wrong; I felt the air over our heads whoosh apart. The lift that Hermione had been awaiting emerged silently from above us. It seemed to be an invisible UFO except that the windows were unrolled and there were six or seven girls visible in the back seat. One of them called out the window, "No more room, Harry. Sorry!"
Harry smiled at them. "It's all right. I have the address, I'll meet you all there. I was just seeing that Hermione had a ride."
Hermione wasn't paying any attention to Harry. She kissed me one more time, disentangled herself from my clothes, and stepped over to the UFO. She pressed herself in with the other girls and the car rose a few feet in the air. The girl next to Hermione hung over her lap and looked down at Harry and me. "Is that him? Oh, my. I see what you mean," she said.
What has Hermione been saying about me? "Um. Hi," I said.
Hermione's friend's dress shimmered and sparkled, stars winked in her hair. The beautiful girl turned gravely to Hermione. "Do you share?" she said.
"Millicent!" said Hermione and she raised her hand as if she might smack her friend, perhaps lightly on the hand. Unfortunately Millicent's hands weren't within Hermione's reach. Hermione contemplated Millicent's bum, which was, but then Hermione seemed to decide that was too dangerous and she put her hand down.
Millicent burst out laughing. "Your loss, Hermione." She waved down at Harry and me. "Bye, boys. It just wasn't meant to be. I'll have to go console myself with some Weaselys." Hermione shoved her back into the car.
Harry, next to me, said, "I can not believe Millicent, using a glamour like that on her dress."
"What does a glamour do?" I asked. "Make her dress all sparkly like that?"
"No, it makes her look like a goddess, like the most beautiful woman in the room. That charm is so completely over the top."
I surveyed him carefully. His owl had moved from his head to his shoulder, and my cousin looked mostly normal, not ensorcelled at all. "Eh? She just looks sparkley to me. Are you certain it's a glamour whatsit? Maybe you're in love. Is she nice?"
"Millicent? Nice? Not a bit."
"Yeah, I like the mean girls best myself, too."
"Oh, shut up," said Harry.
Hermione and Millicent managed to get the door shut and then Hermione leaned out the window. "Harry, take him home for me, will you." She jerked her chin towards me.
"What?!" said Harry.
Hermione widened her eyes at him. Harry sighed. "Fine, fine, whatever," he said. And then Hermione grinned at me, waiting to see how I'd react. Obviously she'd sobered up enough to get her twisted sense of humour back. She'd no doubt stop staggering and be just slightly relaxed by the time her wizarding celebration really got started in an hour.
I didn't mind taking a cab and I was in no hurry to go home, but I'd not seen Harry in months. I shrugged. "All right. I suppose." And Hermione and the girls rose up into the air in their UFO. They waved their arms out the window at us and faded away into the clouds.
I looked down and found Harry staring at me, narrow-eyed. He inched closer. "How does she pick you up? A leviosa? Does she make you jump up in the air?"
"Um. No," I said, backing away. "Look, maybe this was a bad idea. I can just call-," I said, but I was drunk and slow and Harry slipped under my arm, an inside fighter just like you'd expect, and he grabbed me- and he dropped me three feet and thirty miles onto wet grass.
It was the most unspeakable teleportation jump I'd ever experienced, worse than Hermione's earliest unpracticed attempt, worse than her sudden emergency grab that took me out of the house. I sank to one knee as excruciating stomach paroxysms bent me over, and I waited for my disorientated insides to catch up with the outsides.
"Ohhh, you are terrible at sidelong apparition. And I thought Hermione was bad the first time she tried it. You're much worse. Do you even have a license?" My entrails shook me into silence then while my brain kept on whirling and I thought it'd be rather too bad if my last words ended up being whinging about licenses. But I'd not been killed by being turned inside out and the pain started to recede and I took a deep breath. And another. Almost there...
"Get up, you faker." Harry shoved his knee against my shoulder and toppled my barely gained equilibrium.
I went down on my hands and knees and lost the last three hours of my evening, all the drinks that'd been handed to me, all the pretty little chocolates, cakes, and trifles- at which point I suddenly felt a whole lot better. I jumped up blazing angry and laid hands on Harry. He smiled. A familiar smile. The one I'd seen on my own face when I watched the taped videos of my championship matches with the chaps that I'd known I would outclass, but who hadn't yet had the chance to discover that interesting fact for themselves. Right. Cold sense returned and I let him go.
Emptied of sugar, alcohol, and adrenaline, I stumbled back and sat down on the low brick wall that surrounded the playground. "I should have called a cab. There's no way that the strongest wizard in Britain can be a worse teleporter than Hermione. You did that on purpose. I notice that you are fine."
Harry diffidently pressed his wand against my throat and then pulled it away and looked at it. "You, too," he said and he gingerly sat down next to me. "Meh. It's not like you needed to keep that- What was it? Raspberry torte? I did you a favour really."
"You did not. Gah." I wiped my mouth and then washed my hand off in the freezing wet grass.
"I thought you were trying to lose weight?"
I stared at him in disbelief. "I did. I have. I am. But now I'm on holiday, you fucking shit. And if my idea of a good holiday is being fed sweets by pretty ladies, that is my own fucking business. Before you showed up I'd been having a great time."
It had, in fact, been more than a great time. There had been dinner. And then Hermione and her mother and Hermione's aunts and assorted pretty cousins had spent another couple of hours passing around little flowered plates and pressing endless little crystal glasses into my hand. And there'd been stealing kisses with Hermione in the kitchen and the taste of the cordial on her lips had still been on mine when she'd gotten in that invisible car. All gone now. And, since I'd made it onto the boxing team, that meant six months till my birthday and my next lovely time.
"I hate you," I told him.
"Right back at you," he said, with such real venom that I was disconcerted.
"Why?" I said plaintively. "What'd I ever do to you?" Harry rolled his eyes at that, looking for a moment just like my father. "I mean, recently," I said. And then I gave up. "Enh. Nevermind."
My best coat jacket, which buttoned easily at the beginning of an evening and while standing, did not button so easily while sitting after a three hour dinner, even a dinner ruined by Harry Potter, and I didn't yet feel up to standing, buttoning it and walking off. I shoved my hands in the pockets, pulled the thin wool of my jacket mostly shut and shivered. Could have had a nice, quiet, relaxing, warm cab ride right to my front door, but instead-
"Are you cold?" asked Harry. The owl sitting on his shoulder said nothing.
"Nope,'" I lied. "Are you cold?"
"No, but that's because I'm a wizard. Best in Britain," he said.
Right, best except for your dodgy sidelong apparition talents. "Bully for you. Also, fuck off," I said and then noticed how our encounter had turned to complete hash. Which was not at all how I'd imagined it when I'd agreed to go with him. And it was all his fault. On the other hand, he hadn't left yet, he was still sitting there, glaring at me. I ignored his stink eye and said, "So... How have you been getting on."
"...Fine."
As usual, pretending to talk civilly with him was all uphill. "Doing anything interesting these days?" I said.
He chewed the inside of his cheek and then said, "I'm having my biography written."
"Your biography? You're only seventeen years old. That'll be a quick read."
"No, it won't. The notes and transcripts alone are this thick." He held out his arms. "It'll have every detail, magically pulled straight from my memory."
"Every detail? That will be thick. Dear diary: today I used magic to wash my hair. Then I had dragon eggs for breakfast. I attempted to turn my essays in, but I'd accidentally used invisible ink, and I got sent sent to detention where I spent six hours rewriting essays and wanking under my desk. Then I had tea. ...Let's see, 24 hours in a day, call it 2500 days, that'd be sixty thousand paragraphs of magical hair-washing and wank. What fun."
"Well, of course I have an editor. Gilderoy is the best in the business and he'll make it much more exciting. ...You're in the story, by the way."
"Yeah? How do I die? In the exciting story version, I mean."
"You don't. It's all going to be true."
"Ahahaha. Even the part with DumbleFawkes? Brilliant!"
Harry winced. "Not that bit. For security reasons we'll be editing that bit out."
Security of your manly reputation, I reckon. "How much security? Do I get to read it?"
"I don't know why you'd want to. You don't die but you don't come off at all well."
I made a half-hearted attempt to brush some of Crookshanks' hair off my trousers. "I don't? So no mention of Hermione and me?"
He smirked. "None whatsoever."
"Any mention of Draco and you?"
"Any mention of WHAT?"
Ah. Still not out yet. "Forget it. ...Well, I imagine Hermione's battle scenes will be worth reading, assuming I can stand skimming through a minute by minute replay of my ickle cousin's adventures in puberty to get to them. When will your wondrous tome be available?"
"Do you really want to read it? Wouldn't it just make you jealous?"
"Oh, please. Why would I be jealous of you?"
"Because I've got magic. Obviously." The owl on Harry's shoulder dribbled white goo down his back, but the magical owlshit rolled down his magical coat and vanished into the grass behind him. Magically. Eeeeew.
"I'm not seeing the obviously. Do you think all trumpet players yearn desperately to play electric base? I'm very happy with the hand I was dealt, thanks. My life's great."
"But you were a fucking nasty bully and that means you must have been jealous."
I laughed. "You think? I could have been just a big, stupid kid with no empathy or morals who enjoyed being horrible for fun."
"That's worse. I was at least trying to make excuses for you. But if you insist on being evil, far be it from me to-"
"-I don't insist on it. How about you? You going to be the next Dark Lord?"
"Gah! Everyone asks me that these days."
"Do they really? And what do you tell everyone?"
"I say I haven't decided yet."
"How does that go over?"
"Not too well." He grinned. "What's wrong with not having decided? These things should be thought over carefully. They ought to be glad I have no plans. Yet."
"Wait a minute. Yes, you do have plans. I was going to give this to Hermione to give to you, but it wasn't the right... um, time." I went through my inside jacket pockets, pulled out Harry's plans, and handed them to him.
"Oh, yes! God, yes! Christmas is not complete until I've received my traditional crappy Dursley present. What the fuck is this? An electric bill you pulled out of the rubbish?"
The envelope was crumpled and stained with coffee grounds and actually I had pulled it out of the bin that very morning. "Open it," I said.
"It's already open," he said, but then he noticed that the grotty open envelope had his name on it. He shot me yet another dirty look. "You read my post?"
"Or," I said, "You could notice the part where I delivered your post. Come on, read it."
He pulled out the letter and unfolded it and read the results of the exams that he'd apparently taken some time ago. He stared at it and read it again. "What? How? When?"
"I can't imagine. I don't suppose you've got any particularly pushy, education-mad friends who happen to have access to timeturners and could make you level up like that?"
"Is this real?" He flipped the envelope over and checked the postmark, which was from four months back. I didn't know how the envelope had known to wait to arrive until I was home to rescue it, but the Charming style was rather familiar.
"Did you know that I've picked up Divination?" I waggled my fingers at him. "I see in your future a whole lot of untimely learning experiences. Hope you enjoy swotting. Those are some impressive marks you're going to earn. Ha ha!"
"Bloody hell! How did Hermione do this?"
"Never mind how. I want to know when she'll get the idea. Will she get the idea tonight? Or tomorrow when the envelope shows up on her doorstep? Is it cheating if it happens like that? Does she have to get the idea before her marks arrive or else cause some sort of time paradox? How many months do you suppose you'll be away in a time bubble revising?"
Harry glared balefully down at his letter. "I am so fucked. Truly, a used toothpick would have been a better present."
"Oh, I say!" I said, "You could apply to my school. We could-"
"-No."
"I could introduce you to people. You'd like my friend, Patrick. He taught me to make curry. You could come over one night when I'm cooking. I've got the colour just exactly right, and the flavour is getting kind of close-"
"-You know what? You are seriously deranged. Or maybe you've been hit in the head a couple hundred times too many and your brains have turned to tapioca. Never. Never. Never in a million years..." And he went on in that vein for a while, but when you know a teleporting girl with a timeturner, 'never in a million years' means next month.
"Brilliant," I said. "So, curry night. I'll buy you a pint after."
He blinked at me. "No. No, you won't," he explained slowly.
"All right. Thanks for the lift. See you." I waved at him.
"Aaaaaagh! No! You! Won't! You will not be seeing me! Aaaaaaagh!"
And then, poof, he disappeared.
I turned and walked through the park back to my parent's house, wondering what time in the morning Hermione would call and come pick me up properly so we could go retrieve my car.
The End.
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