The College Years of Wizardry: Wet Carpets

Hogwarts is junior high and high school condensed for wizards... but what about college? Oyster, Janet Starlight, and Keith had their own plans, but a new batch of students and a new batch of problems sets everything on its ear...

Rating: PG-13

Plot: shh!

REWRITTEN

Prologue

Well we had a lot of dreams when we were younger

They thought we were crazy but we had the hunger

We made a lot of friends, skipped a lot of class

Been on top of the world and knocked on our ass

We lost touch, we lost in love

We lost our minds when things got touch

But beating time is a losing fight

and I guess I'm doing alright.

- Jo Dee Messina, "I'm Alright"

Minerva stalked down the corridors of Hogwarts, her seething mind in the turmoil of confusion. She had been taken out of her bath by an urgent note from Dumbledore, and was currently experiencing an emotion she had rarely felt with the astute old wizard – anger. He had never disrupted her so unexpectedly before, and curiosity warred with disbelief, irritation and her primary sentiment, which was currently being displayed on a contorted face.

Right out of the middle of her own damn bathtime. He never did this. Unless the Chamber was bloody well open or Voldemort was resurrected, it had better not be anything less severe than a rampaging vampire.

"Lemon drops," she spat at the gargoyles, her strides bringing her level with them. If the password had been changed since last Tuesday (as it well may have; Dumbledore, above other things, was a whimsical man) they said nothing of it, taking the vexation on her face as their cue to spring aside.

She ascended the stairs with ancient majesty, nervousness beginning to chew at her posture. Catching her reflection in one of the glossy phoenix feathers, Minerva winced. Crow's feet and the pale, sagging skin of one who was becoming old gazed back at her. Drawing herself up, she adopted an air of self-confidence and bitchiness. No use being an old witch if she wasn't going to be a damn well respected one.

The stairs opened onto Dumbledore's office. She blinked. It was surprisingly dark.

"Albus?" she quavered, and was appalled at the sheer pitch in her voice. Fear was gnawing on her. Something was definitely not right. Especially when the quaver brought no response.

Her hawk eyes picked out the hunched figure by the window. His long, bony fingers were steepled as he stared over the grounds, totally unaware of his surroundings.

Minerva crossed the room in three strides and touched his shoulder urgently. "Albus!"

His blue eyes swerved up to her face, then away. "Ah, Minerva," he said softly. "Thank you for answering so quickly."

"What's wrong?" Screw the rampaging vampire. She was preparing for a whole migration of basilisks to come swarming out of the shadows. "Albus, it's okay, don't break it to me gently, I can handle it, are the students in danger, what's wrong?"

Now he just looked amused. The Transfiguration teacher felt her fingers itching to slap him. "Well?" she demanded, expecting the worst.

He sighed, sat up, and began with an old touch of his boyhood vigor. "Remember Oyster? And Janet Starlight? And Keith?"

Minerva froze. She hadn't expected it to be this bad. "Uhm, yes," she said cautiously.

"Do you recall their ambitions?"

The witch suddenly looked older, haggard, resigned. "Yes. Usually in the dark hours of the night, when I wonder what I have unleashed upon the wizarding world."

At last, the headmaster relaxed back into his normal playful mood. "Any recollections of Career Advice?"

Minerva closed her eyes and pressed her wrinkled palms against them. When Albus waited, she became aware that he was serious and began to strain her old memory.

They had insisted on coming all at the same time. It didn't matter that she had said, over and over again, to choose separate counseling times. No, Keith had arranged matters so that the three of them arrived at her office when she had prepared herself mentally for one.

Therefore, she was completely unbalanced that entire hour of torture.

Oyster had entered first, smiling with plain impertinence at her. She had wanted to slap his cheeky face, smack those freckles right off his pale skin, twist her fingers in his coppery-red hair and just rip it away. Dancing with mirth, his brown eyes slid away from her own, looking back at his two companions.

Janet stepped in on his heels, her long, lustrous blond hair falling into her laughing eyes. Minerva knew without looking that Keith would be right behind her. It wasn't right. They shouldn't be allowed to gang up on her like this... they...

"We want to open a wizard's college."

"You what?" she sputtered. Goddamn it, where were those house-elves when you needed them? She had begged them for Muggle sedatives earlier that day.

"A wizard's college." Keith picked up where Oyster had left off, leaning forward, his black eyes serious, his shaggy, dark hair falling forward as he looked up at his Transfiguration professer.

Oyster nodded to him and went on. "It's our fifth year – we were told to decide, and we have. We've taken every class in this school. If I haven't done it, Janet has, or Keith. We want to start planning for our own classes now."

If she had a cardiac arrest now, she would come back and haunt these cursed three until the end of time. Already she could feel the stroke bucking and clawing its way up her throat.

It emerged in a squeak.

"How – how –"

Minerva closed her lips, feeling faint. They couldn't. They mustn't. Their students would go mad, insane, just like these three were. If they opened a bloody college – oh, hell take the world, where were those DAMN sedatives??

Janet stood, her blonde tresses swinging to and fro as she paced. "I want to help people," she told Minerva, her voice for once devoid of its disparaging quality. "I'm not exactly in the best mindframe to do so, but Oyster and Keith..." The two traded looks, looks that said Here we go again! "I love them. I want to work with them for the rest of my life, and with students, and with laughter and craziness and magic... Can you understand?"

Minerva met her eyes. She would have screamed Never! in an instant, but her voice seemed to have run away, out of stark terror. Dizziness was chewing at her vision.

"I know you can," Janet Starlight said. Her famed silver eyes seemed to glow as she smiled. "I know you understand, because you had the same dream when you were my age, didn't you?"

And Minerva McGonagall found her voice.

"Like bloody hell I did!" she spat, on her feet before she realized that she had regained the ability to move. "I wanted to keep my students sane, and successful. You three will make yours positively mad! I don't know where I failed with you, but you will not go on to make others as insane."

Oyster was standing too. His voice grew in volume, matching hers. "You agreed to support our dreams when you took us into the Great Hall five years ago!"

But it was Keith who looked her in the eye, whose voice did not sink above its dry murmur, whose voice would haunt her at night for years to come. "You cannot stop us, my dear Professor. We are combining our savings to bid for land. We are beginning to receive applications. You see, we wanted to be famous when we entered this school; but we will be famous when we enter our own."

Minerva had stared from his composed face, to Oyster's fury, to Janet's shock. And she could find nothing to say.

Minerva opened her eyes to find that they burned. "They didn't," she whispered. "They never spoke another word to me about it. I thought they had all gone off and married bankers. They never..."

"They did."

She wanted to weep. Those three had been unbearable during the seven years she had fought them. Oyster's mind was filthy in its perverseness (worse, he had no qualms about sharing nasty images with his teachers). Janet challenged her every word, her tones sharp with anger, with malice, with a classic sarcasm that not even time could sand away. And Keith was bizarre, the level of oddity just enough to put up with, even assist their insane plans.

"I never thought they would have the gall..." she murmured, her throat choked with shock.

Dumbledore handed her an envelope silently.

Instinctively she looked at the seal. Two painfully bright colors got inside her eyes and started playing jump-rope with her optic nerves. Even the third color, gray, seemed to have a distinctly bright hue when coupled with the peachy pink and a purple that should be illegal.

When she had gotten control of her eyesight again, she squinted at it.

It was circular, and divided like the peace symbol. On the left larger segment was the eye-smarting purple, which formed a blobby shape that looked oddly like a koala. Purple koalas... And opposite this, a pale mosquito against the shifting gray.

"The House of Utter Insanity," Dumbledore supplied, pointing at the purple koalas. His forefinger moved to the mosquito. "And the House of Annoying Jerk-Offs, also known as The Cynics."

Minerva peered at the third section, down at the bottom. It was the peach. She squinted until she was cross-eyed and only managed to make out what looked like a long cylinder.

"And the House of the Filthy Minded," Dumbledore continued, carefully staring at the ceiling.

She fought it, she really did, but a huge snort of laughter spurted out of her nostrils anyway. "That would definitely be Oyster's House."

"Probably."

Still chuckling slightly, Minerva slit open the letter.

My dearest Dumbledore,

I hope this finds you in good health. It would be most distressing to find that my memory of you is no longer valid. Your memory of me, however, is quite likely still valid. I am as prime as ever.

To get quickly to the point – an old fart like you has no time to spare, in all likelihood – I must make a request... British wizard applications to our college are becoming fewer and fewer. Wet Carpets is quite distressed by this, and while we have been taking applications from all over the world, I am disturbed by the lack of enthusiasm from my native country.

Janet says they must remember what I was like, but I don't believe her.

Please coax some of your seventh years into applying. We can hardly be choosy, can we?

Also, send for my dear Minerva the instant you receive this. I have a message for her. She was the only one who really hated us as her students. Now, as her colleague, I offer words of condolence: our school motto.

Et tout le reste est litterature.

Love as always, though only paternal –

Oyster.

"The fear of it," Minerva sighed, and slumped against the wall. "What do we do now, Albus?"

"We humor them."

"But-!"

The ancient wizard held up a palm, blue eyes sparking with amusement. "The experience will no doubt be memorable. And this might take care of another problem I've been considering." He took the letter from her, read its Latin phrase with amusement. "Et tout le reste est litterature."

Minerva was too exhausted and horrified to strain her memory of Muggle languages. "What does that even mean?" she demanded wearily.

Albus was silent so long that she began to wonder if he had heard. Then the old wizard's shoulders began to shake with laughter.

"It's Verlaine. Eighteenth century. Oh, Binns would be proud..."

"What is it?!"

Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Order of Merlin (First Class), and Founder of the Order of the Phoenix, repeated the phrase in wry amusement.

"'All the rest is mere fine writing.'"

Minerva sat back, and mulled over that for a moment. "That is going to be one mad school," she commented.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled behind his half-moon spectacles. "I'll fill out the recommendation forms at once."

"Is that wise?" His transfiguration professor became instantly alert, watching him shuffle for papers.

"Not at all, my dear. But we have been forewarned. Your seventh-years are going to have to read the application sheets very carefully indeed."

Minerva waited a few moments before she trusted herself to speak calmly. "Are you sure this is a good idea, Albus?"

He glanced at her with somber eyes. "The safety of our students has always been most important, Minerva."

"How is sending them there 'safe'?"

Dumbledore sighed and put down the letter, glancing one last time at the brilliant seal. Hesitantly at first, and then with growing confidence, he began to explain his idea. And Minerva had to admit it certainly was a good one.

Thanks for reading my beautimous prologue! I have a few comments to say before I steer you in the direction of the review button:

Technically I had this idea two years ago. I wrote my own American version of Hogwarts, in a leather journal that nobody will ever see. I then wrote and discarded a series of short stories involving my friends and I in another Hogwarts spinoff.

But now I have the right cast.

Ethan, dear, I lied when I said your birthday present would be a LOTR crossover. It was too much of a struggle. You ARE Oyster, that much is plain. I even stole his looks from you.

Janet was born from the series Artemis Fowl. Guess who.

And Keith... I don't know who Keith is. I'll find out eventually. Something about him reminds me of the star from 10 Things I Hate About You.

Well, I don't know if this story will go anywhere. It's very fun to write though, or at least, these past five pages have been. Review to help me decide!

See you in the maybe-perhaps of Chapter Two, and leave me your name and a brief description if you want to be a student in Wet Carpets! Ethan, or Oyster I should say, happy birthday!

Love, all,

Tessa