In Which Spells Go Wrong, a diana wynne jones fanfic

DIS: I expect to get in trouble from someone soon for putting holes in a shelf. I found a hammer and three nails, all of different heights, so I pounded them in the wall like on that cell phone commercial, so the biggest nail was first, the medium second, and the smallest last. Thus, inspiration for this story.

Title: In Which Spells Go Wrong

Rating: K and Up

Genre: Humor

Summary: Peter and Charmain, after getting in trouble for nearly destroying Great-Uncle William's study, are ordered to fix the shed by hand. Peter decides to use a spell on a hammer and chaos ensues. One shot.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of Diana Wynne Jones's works.

Notes/Warnings: Implied Charmain/Peter; one shot; second attempt in this fandom

In Which Spells Go Wrong

Peter was supposed to be finding Charmain so that they might start on a Spell for Good Luck. Wizard Norland – or Great-Uncle William to Charmain – had explained to them that he had had occasion to use this spell himself and that it was quite useful when one was about to do something rather dangerous. When the wizard had given Peter the task of finding his second apprentice, Peter's expression immediately turned surly. He and Charmain, although they could be considered friends at times, had huge disagreements that were not always reasonable. Indeed, they often argued over the most trivial things. He had wanted to tell the wizard just what he thought about his great-niece.

Presently, Peter's mood was becoming blacker than it had been a moment ago. There were too many doorways to far too many places for him to check all of them and discover where Charmain was. He had figured she would be in the den, being lazy, with her nose stuck in a book. As she was not there, he checked Wizard Norland's study and then her bedroom. She was missing, along with Waif, her small dog that followed her virtually everywhere.

This was turning out to be a very unpleasant morning.

Only that morning had Peter and Charmain gotten into a heated argument. After breakfast (in which the two grumbled to each other about their sleep pleasantly enough since they were half asleep,) she flounced into the study where he was peering into a book, declaring that she was going to spend her morning reading. He had made a sarcastic remark to the effect of how that was so different from every other morning, also mentioning that it was the only thing she could do without messing something up.

Typically, they began to rag on each other before Wizard Norland came in and quite politely kicked them out of his study. As Peter and Charmain stormed down the hallway, exchanging rude insults, Waif came out of the bathroom and Peter ended up stepping on her paw. The small dog yelped and then began a series of infuriated yaps. Above that was Charmain accusing Peter of getting to her through her dog. He attempted to redeem his good name – as she repeatedly said he was an animal abuser – but it was hard to do so when both the dog and female were overriding him indignantly. He eventually threw his hands up in disgust and stormed outside, leaving through the enchanted doorway. At the time, he suspected he only lost that particular row because he had both a female dog and a female human on him. It would have been easier if Waif was yet a guy.

No doubt she is purposely avoiding me, he reflected grimly. She probably knows that I am trying to find her... This did not cheer him in the least.

Feeling defeated, and in a foul temper, he eventually went in the kitchen and slumped in a chair, glowering across from him at the fireplace. Just then, the door sprung open and in came the person he had been looking for, with her vengeful pet on her heels. Waif stared at him, an unholy female temper riding behind her eyes. Oh, yes. She had certainly not forgotten about how he had trodden on her tiny paw.

"Where have you been?" Charmain demanded, coming to stand beside him. "I have been looking all over for you! Great-Uncle William wants us to start on a Spell for Good Luck today!"

"He sent me to look for you!" He countered, daring her to challenge his claim. Instead, a tiny, worried line appeared between her eyebrows and she put a finger to mouth, chewing on the end of her nail vacantly.

"Oh...He did?" She sounded guilty. "Oh, dear. Well...You must forgive me, Peter." She lurched forward a bit, grasping his arm. "He had me look for you and after I couldn't find you, I told him and he said that was fine, he would. But then I left and started looking for you again. We must have been going in circles around each other."

A tiny smile lifted her lips. He shook her hand off as he stood up from the chair, averting his gaze. The second irritation in his life was that Charmain had taken to touching him. It was infrequently, but every time she did a tiny frisson would run up his spine and it was more than a bit unnerving. He could not know that Charmain did it because of that; she saw his uncomfortable look and had wondered at it, as well as the heat in her hand every time she touched him. Her curious mind had lit up with interest and she continued these experimental touches, even though it caused her as much discomfort as him.

"Let's go and start the spell, shall we?" Peter suggested. "Or else Wizard Norland is sure to kick us out of his house."

"We will have to go to the study to get the spell," she pointed out primly. He shrugged and followed her to the door, whereupon she opened it and turned left so that they arrived in the corridor. They trotted to the study only to find that the door was open and it was quite empty. "Oh, joy!" She exclaimed happily. "We can do the spell right here. It should take hardly any time." Peter cleared a space on the floor where there were papers and books while she snatched The Boke of Palimpsest. She settled beside Peter on the floor and they both slumped down on their stomachs, Charmain flipping pages to the desired spell. "Let's see...A sheet of paper, a quill pen, two gray feathers, a hydrangea (of any colour,) rosemary, and sugar. Well, that is the most ridiculous list of ingredients I have ever seen."

"Come on!" Peter moaned. "I don't want to be stuck on this spell for ever! It's only good luck. I want to get to the better and more useful spells." She scowled at him and split the ingredients. The paper and quill pen were already on the desk, so Charmain had to get a hydrangea and rosemary while Peter got the feathers and sugar. They split up and left the room. Very slyly and purposely, the pages slipped so that the heading was now "A Spell for Fortune."

Naturally, when they returned with the ingredients, neither of them noticed what the heading was, as both were reckless and eager to finish with the spell. They went through the instructions, turning this way and that and dashing about so that several times The Boke of Palimpsest flicked through spells.

"Stage Five," Peter cheerfully announced some time later. "Almost finished!" Charmain huffed, pushing her ginger coloured hair from her face petulantly. They finished the last stage, saying the word, 'key' as it dictated. Everything vanished and an odd wind began to whip up through the study. Waif, who had backed out into the corridor and had been peacefully laying there while they performed the spell, began to yap wildly and anxiously. Charmain and Peter exchanged nervous looks as Waif disappeared, her high voice chirping away as she abandoned them. "Do you suppose something went wrong?" He asked as the room got darker. She edged towards him, her eyes wide.

"Do you honestly think that good luck is supposed to engulf us in darkness?" She demanded angrily. The problem with Charmain was that once she became frightened, she got angry. It was a horribly indirect way of expressing her emotions.

"Well," he bawled as the wind began to howl ominously, "some spells can be viewed as puzzles! Maybe we were misinterpreting it?"

"HOW DO YOU MISINTERPRET SOMETHING WITH STAGE BY STAGE INSTRUCTIONS AND A LIST OF INGREDIENTS?" Charmain fairly screamed as the wind became louder. Peter shrugged and cast a wary look to the wind. They could literally see the currents of air and no longer could they see the doorway. Only then did they come up with the notion of hiding under the desk.

"Great-Uncle William did say that one of us should keep a watch on the book at all times," Peter belatedly said to Charmain when they were under the desk.

She wanted to hit him.

"Do you have any idea what you might have done?" Peter and Charmain raised ashamed, guilty eyes to Wizard Norland. Waif was sitting at Charmain's feet, trembling as though she could feel the wizard's anger as surely as his two apprentices could.

Waif had fetched the wizard, sensing that the spell had gone terribly wrong. He managed to stop it before it tore the entire house apart, let alone his study. He put his study back together and now the two were seated in front of his desk as he loomed over it with bright, flashing eyes. They had never in their life seen him angry. This was quite a frightening experience for them. Both were thinking that they would prefer the dark wind over this.

"Did I not tell you that The Boke of Palimpsest will change pages every time you look away? Did I not say that one of you would have to keep an eye on the book while you did a spell? Eh? Didn't I?" Neither replied, as it seemed he wasn't really expecting an answer. "I am ashamed that you two were so careless and hasty. Apparently all you wanted to do was get through it and so you paid not any attention to any warnings I had given, nor any education I have delivered to you." Both flinched as if he had struck them.

"Great-Uncle William, I am so sorry," Charmain blurted in the silence that had taken hold in the study. "We had already spent so much time looking for each other that we weren't paying attention. Oh, please do not be angry any longer. I promise it will never happen again." She sounded near tears, so wounded was she by her neglect of the book. She should have watched it.

The wizard seemed to soften at her heartfelt apology and he heaved a sigh. "You two will have luncheon and then go out to the shed. It is falling apart, thanks to the powerful winds blowing from the house. I'm going to give you a hammer and some nails and by hand will you nail the holes on the roof." He nodded to the doorway. "Go on."

After a silent luncheon, they were given their equipment and trudged across the yard to the shed. Glumly, Charmain said, "If you had said something before hand – "

"Oh, be quiet!" Peter snapped back. She sent him a dirty look that he quite easily ignored.

"Bother you," was all she said in return. The ladder was set up for them, propped against the shed. Peter started towards it; Charmain was frozen in place, staring aghast at the ladder. "You expect me to climb up that rickety old thing? It will fall apart and I shall die!" Peter rolled his eyes at her dramatic announcement, returning to her and shoving the tin of nails and two hammers in her hands. "What am I to do with these?"

"You're going to hold onto them while I go up the ladder. Then, you'll hand them to me and come up yourself. And you are coming up to help me," he added with a threatening tone. She feared what he might do if she didn't.

"Bother you!" She said again, but in a resigned sort of manner.

After her had climbed the ladder and she had stepped up a bit to hand him the equipment, she followed, slowly and carefully. She paused in the middle and glanced down to the ground, her face pale. Although she was only a few feet up from the ground, as Peter watched from above, he worried that she may faint. After a few minutes in which she collected herself while staring at the ladder she was clutching to, she brought herself to the top and Peter politely helped her onto the roof. One glance at how unstable it appeared and she was clinging to Peter as a life support.

"I shall die!" She proclaimed. "I shall die and Great-Uncle William will regret sending me up to this awful roof! He will never forget for the rest of his life that he was the reason I died!"

"You are a riot," Peter sighed, pulling her huddled form away from him. "There are only a few holes. We shall be quite safe." After a while of them crawling around – Peter even standing up to assure her that they would not fall through and die – Charmain began to help with fixing the roof. There was wood stacked on the roof in which to use for the process.

"Have you done this before?" Charmain asked him as they settled beside each other with the tin of nails between them.

"A little," was his vague response. As they began to nail, he hit his thumb hard with a hammer. He let out a string of rather foul language while Charmain continued to knock on a nail with her hammer. "How do you manage to do that without hitting a finger?"

"People are always hitting thumbs with a hammer in books," she responded, tilting her head back to cast him a smug look over her shoulder. "So I know better. Books do teach you things, thank you very much." He chose not to respond to that. A few seconds later, with the subject of books still in their mind, he told her about the book he had been perusing when she burst into the study that morning. It was at times like these when they could speak without arguing that one might assume they were close friends.

They occupied themselves by talking while fixing the roof to keep boredom at bay. Once they ran out of conversation material – which was easy, seeing as how they lived in the same house and rarely went anywhere without each other – they relentlessly hammered at nails, their eyes turned downward in concentration. When they took a break to straighten and crack their stiff backs and wring their sore hands, Charmain muttered, "We still have so much to do!" Peter's doleful expression made it apparent that his opinion was similar. Suddenly, his face lit up hopefully.

"Wizard Norland can't have been watching us the entire time. I doubt he is now. If I bewitch the hammers..." He sent her a cunning look, thinking that this could only be the most intelligent idea ever implanted in his mind. Charmain, however, had her misgivings about it. Peter's spell casting was not always perfect. As he said a few words and the hammers gave a slight tremble, she knew instantly that her foreboding had been correct.

The hammers began to violently crash into the roof, appearing to try and break it down. Peter's expression turned to horror and he looked to the house in dismay. "Stop, stop, stop!" He wailed pleadingly to the hammers. "Charmain! Do something!"

"Stop this!" She instantly commanded the hammers. "Stop this at once!" She expected the hammers to stop their beating upon the roof, but they continued to go. She thought she heard a crack underneath all the noise, but could not be sure. She and Peter tried everything they could, mildly surprised that Wizard Norland did not come charging out in a righteous rage.

There came a large crack and Peter and Charmain's voices halted instantly. They listened carefully and heard more cracks. Looking down to where their knees were, they saw rows of tiny cracks beneath them from the hammers. They exchanged one, petrified look before scrambling across the roof towards the ladder. Louder cracks sounded from their movement and the shed's roof began to give in. They slid downward, towards the raging hammers. If they got too close, their legs would be broken from it. Peter, ahead of Charmain, grasped her arm and hauled her up beside him, putting his arm round her waist. The two of them wriggled to the edge, catching it just as the wood gave a series of momentous cracks before the wood crashed downward.

"Oh, bother..." Charmain sighed as she and Peter both hung painfully over the side. The hammers had miraculously stopped their incessant pounding; when she looked down, they were lying limp in the grass by the wreckage. The two of them had to drop down, as holding onto the edge was trying. They tumbled into the pieces of woods and they laid there, not much wanting to face Wizard Norland when he saw what other problems they had caused – or more like, what Peter had caused.

As soon as they stumbled out of the wood to stand in the grass, Wizard Norland was standing there, staring at what was left of the shed with a baffled expression.

"You know," he said with faint, dry amusement, "I shouldn't be surprised that everything would go wrong with the day you two are having."

Embarrassed, Peter and Charmain exchanged a helpless glance at his honest observation.

Finis

DIS: I hear that Diana Wynne Jones is currently working on another book in which Howl is featured. I shall look forward to it, if she ever does finish it. In any case, please leave me a review, telling me how you liked it. I would appreciate any kind of feedback. Ciao!