The Hunting of the Sue – A Harry Potter/ Thursday Next Fanfiction


Special thanks to Tierney Beckett, who explored the impact of fanfiction on the BookWorld before I did, and proofread this story for me even though she doesn't like Harry Potter and is not yet acquainted with Miss Next.


Beware the Mary-Sue, my son,
the hands that catch, the eyes that burn
Beware her pretty looks and shun
T'desire to return!

– Doggerel attributed to Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat (Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire) after finding a MarySue version of Alice snooping around inside the Looking Glass

If the Great Cosmic Bookkeeper was taking bets on whether this day would be one of the more interesting days of Mr. Harry Potter's life, there was no indication so far that the day's activities would be anything but normal. Of course, when one defines 'normal' one has to remember that Mr. Harry Potter is a wizard, and thus his normal is quite different from yours or mine. But apart from that, the day was starting as Mr. Potter's days always did -- Harry had risen from bed, washed, dressed and sat down to breakfast, kissing his wife on the cheek and shouting for all three of his children to get up and come and get breakfast. He then remembered that he did not need to shout, for the older two had been dropped off at King's Cross yesterday and the sole remaining Potter child, Lily, hardly needed to be reminded to get up.

Despite her husband's unneeded bellow disturbing the relative early morning peace of her kitchen, Mrs. Harry Potter remained as good-natured as a mother whose house has been rid of her more bellicose children tends to be, spooning eggs onto Harry's plate while at the same time Summoning her toast from the toaster so it could sail across the kitchen onto her waiting plate.

"Just toast again, Gin?" Harry asked, tucking into his eggs with relish.

"Yeah, I'm not feeling well. A bit woozy," Ginevra Potter, more oftentimes known as Gin or Ginny, admitted, sitting down and Summoning the butter from the icebox. "And I still don't know why. Perhaps it was that meat we had last night for dinner."

Harry nodded in a vague, uncommitted way and went back to his Daily Prophet, trying to look as uninvolved as possible. He knew exactly why Ginny wasn't feeling her best, and it had nothing to do with last night's dinner or any of the other usual suspects women tends to look into when she wakes up several days in a row with nausea and an upset stomach. Ginny was suffering the after-effects of a medium strength Confundus Charm, and unfortunately for her husband's over-developed sense of responsibility, it was largely his fault.

"Big day planned at the office, Harry?" Ginny asked, spreading a very thin layer of butter on her toast, looking at it and quickly rethinking her culinary choice in toast-toppings.

"Oh, just the usual. Kidnappings, Muggle relations, new recruit training," Harry said. "I tell you it's hard work being the Head of an Office, Gin, you haven't got time to tell your right hand from your left. Your dad always made it seem so easy."

"That's because my dad wasn't head of the Auror Office, Harry," Ginny said fondly. "You'll say hi to my brother for me, won't you? I don't think I'll go into work today."

Harry forced a chuckle behind his paper. "Of course, Gin, he works right down the hall," he said, forking the remainder of his eggs into his mouth and heading for the door to retrieve his coat and hat. "And if you're not feeling up to it, don't go into work."

An adolescence spent breaking the rules in the pursuit of evil had given Harry an uncanny ability to tell lies when the occasion warranted. Once a teacher had tried to break him of this habit by having him carve the sentiment that he should not tell lies into the back of his hand (an occasion sparked, interestingly, when he was attempting to tell the truth) but even this had done little to curb the habit. In truth, most of the last five minutes had been filled with lies, but lies with very good reason behind them. You see, Harry wasn't going into the Auror Office today. In fact, he no longer even worked there.

When Harry Potter Apparated out of his house in Godric's Hollow, he Reapparated not to the Ministry of Magic in London, but rather to the edge of the Forbidden Forest outside of Hogwarts, near a sky blue canopy sheltering half a dozen other people from the first rays of sun peeping over the lake.

"Morning, Potter!" A middle-aged woman in slightly rumpled khakis and a leather blazer shouted, waving at him as Harry approached the tent. "Busy day ahead of us -- we're SueHunting today!"

"Morning, Bellman," Harry said by way of greeting to the woman, clipping the shiny badge onto his workrobes that read "Harry Potter, Jurisfiction Agent."

Jurisfiction. Seldom has any organization been so awe-inspiring and so celebrity-character ridden. Among its numbers are such illustrious figures as Vernham Deane, the star of the celebrated Daphne Farquitt novels and Miss Havisham, the frightening spinster of Great Expectation fame. Now, of course, Harry Potter and several other upstanding characters from his world had joined the Jurisfiction ranks, mainly Order of the Phoenix members and ex-Aurors who had been killed in Harry's seventh and final adventure and as such, found themselves out of full-time employment when the seventh book was being Read. (Harry's parents, for instance, had been Jurisfiction agents for years, using the time between their intermittent appearances in their son's saga to apply their magical skills in other books in their genre.)

But one cannot forget the fearless leader of the Law Behind the Library, as Jurisfiction was sometimes called: Thursday Next, the middle-aged woman in the blazer. Booksplorer, crack Jurisfiction Agent, and sometime-breaker of Literary Law herself, now the Bellman of the prestigious institution. The prestigious institution that today was dealing with one of the BookWorld's growing pest problems -- the character known as the Class FF, Subclass MarySue.

Class FF characters were the BookWorld's other -- characters that should have been in the Well of Lost Plots, unpublished as they were, but who instead, for reasons the BookWorld had yet to discover, were forcefully shoved into the Great Library, often with little idea about who they were or where they were going, often eternally adolescent. Many of these Class FFs were playing characters meant for Class A Generics and wouldn't have passed a Class D Generic Exam at St. Tabularasa's, which all good (and quite a few villainous) characters hold as their alma mater. They would have been Boojumed immediately had they been true residents of the Bookworld and thus subject to the license and control of plots and characters that Text Grand Central enforced upon its residents. Alas, such a thing was impossible, given their numbers. They had to be hunted down and Boojummed by artificial means instead.

"Right, troops, gather round. Potter, you know Frank Cheeryble, my secretary, of course, Vernham Deane, and Commander Bradshaw," Next went on. The Dickensian Cherryble shook hands with Harry after he shuffled his fountain pen into his pocket, smiling broadly. Deane nodded tactfully, his shotgun open and waiting for ammunition.

"Sporting to see you again, old chap!" The Colonel, a lead character from the late 19th century adventure novels, said, his formidably mustachioed upper lip moving in that characteristic way only upper-class British males of the Victorian era seem to have mastered. Harry smiled and said something about it being wonderful to see Bradshaw again, the words lost in Bradshaw's bluster.

"I don't remember if you've met Marlowe," Thursday was saying, gesturing to the rest of the Jurisfiction agents at the table, "But you know Cyrano, I think, and Penelope." The sunburnt European narrator of Heart of Darkness nodded silently to Harry while the flamboyant musketeer doffed his plumed hat and Odysseus' wife nodded in greeting. If Harry hadn't worked for Jurisfiction for so long he would have wondered why so many classical characters had been pulled for this mission. Sue Hunting was best undertaken by those characters well acquainted with the writing world -- the longer, the better. And it helped if their own books seldom had Sues written into them, for that meant that the adolescents who produced the rapidly multiplying pests wouldn't be wreaking havoc in their homes.

"Jurisfiction outposts have detected Class FF activity in the forest here," Next said, pointing down at the map and drawing a wide arc through the forested area with her finger. "We think they may be sneaking in via a Vanishing Cabinet plot device someone left lying around in Book Seven. We'll need to round them up and determine if they're MarySue Subclass before we destroy them. Has everyone got their approved list of Rowling-verse STOGEs? SueMeters? RealityRounds?"

The assembled agents all held up their SueMeters and their copies of the STandard Origin Genre Exam. Should a Class FF prove uninformed about the operating procedures of the canon they were inhabiting, they would be terminated immediately, causing whatever teenage girl was creating the character to suffer a massive case of writer's block or develop either a sudden desire to visit her local library to learn about character development or a strong urge to re-read her chosen fanfiction canon again. As for the SueMeters, they had been a recent departmental acquisition, designed by Thursday's Uncle Mycroft, now living a quiet existence in Sherlock Holmes as the sleuth's eccentric brother and doing occasional contracting work for JurisTech.

"Good," Thursday announced. "Marlowe, Deane and the Colonel will all be armed with RealityRounds. Use is at your discretion, gents, but remember what happened to Alexei Karenin the last time he let a Sue get too close without pacifying it first."

Grim nods all around. No agent liked to think about the fact that the once young and amiable son of one of literature's more famous suicidal lovers was now living in the BookWorld Asylum for the Mad, housed in Act Three of King Lear in another house on the famous moor and supervised by the ever-compassionate and understanding Edgar. Karenin was suffering from delusions of the MarySue he had been exposed to (an overly buxom barmaid inspired into the Pirates of the Caribbean novelization) and spouting verse very similar to Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." It was a fate wished on no one. Even Vernham Deane, who had seen his share of improbably beautiful women and lived to tell the tale, was leery about confrontations like this. Everyone was at risk.

"I remember when we didn't have the SueMeters," Bradshaw was saying. "Used to be we shot first and asked questions later. Destroyed a few good Original Characters that way. Had to chalk it up to computer failure or a sudden fire."

"Yes, those were always hard to get out of the author's head. Especially the 'left the cigarette next to the writing desk device," Penelope said. "Most of them weren't even old enough to smoke."

"Children these days," Marlowe said loftily, loading a RealityRound into his gun and passing the box of bullets to Bradshaw. "When did they stop teaching Character Development in the Real World?" It might have been a joke, but with Marlowe, one was never sure. At any rate, no one laughed, and Harry turned his mind to the somber gray cartridges the riverboat captain was loading into his gun. The RealityRound, Harry remembered from his training, is a bullet designed to push the full force of Canonical Reality onto the alien character, overwhelming and overpowering the opponent. Harry could still hear his supervising agent, Mrs. Tiddlywinkle, shouting over and over again, "These are NOT used in the case of PageRunners, Potter!"

"I didn't know they ever taught Character Development in the real world," Harry said, returning back to the BookWorld and attempting to break the silence, which was making the somewhat hot day feel even more muggy. "Speaking of children, how is yours doing, Penny?" he asked conversationally. The Ithacan queen, still glancing over the map, shrugged.

"Oh, Telemachos is doing well. Thinking about getting married and settling down, but I keep telling him the maids Circe continues sending to bring my husband back aren't a good choice. And he's having an adolescent crisis about how to spell his name. Sometimes it's with an O, sometimes a U. His father tells me he had the same problem as a kid."

Harry nodded in commiseration -- Translation was always very hard on a character, especially one as overworked and overread as the son of the famous Odysseus. He double and triple checked his equipment as Thursday glanced at her watch and said, "You all know the drill -- Bag 'em, tag 'em, and move on! Sweep crews will come through afterwards to clean up. Let's go, people!"

The Forbidden Forest was still dark, despite the daytime sunshine beyond the foliage. Harry had spent more time in this forest than he probably should have as a student, but even so, the shadowy paths of Hogwarts' least explored bit of campus still gave him the shivers sometimes. And when hunting Sues it was doubly frightening.

Harry Potter had had far too much experience with the Class FF character known as MarySue, so much exposure, in fact, that he had been forced to requisition a second space in the Grand Library for all the created material that went along with his book. It was better for all involved -- the fans got their "Fanon" to muck around in (where he knew there were at least five thousand lower quality FF versions of himself running around with 213 Ginnys, 173 Hermiones, 796 Original Characters of varying descriptions and a handful more sleeping around with either Draco, Ron, or Snape. It was this last category, unsurprisingly, that he lost the most sleep over.) It was for his sanity, but also for Ginny's -- since the end of the seventh book had declared at the end that they were indeed married, these intrusive FFs had slowly been ruining his marriage and his wife's nerves. She had been heavily Confounded, the Mary Sue FFs were removed to their new home via the promise of an 8th, entirely fan created book in which all of them would have a starring role, and life had gone basically back to normal. Ginny would be waking up nauseous for a few more days, but at least she wouldn't be finding him in bed with another outrageously named tart from the Auror Department -- or worse, her brother.

True, some of the fan-created characters had requisitioned to stay, giving readership numbers and original plotlines as grounds for approval, submitting pages upon pages of complimentary reviews as Character References. And some had been approved, provided they kept to the background while the story was being Read, and didn't interfere too much with the main plot. Harry had approved none of these characters (and there were hundreds who submitted to him, more than several with offers of marriage or at the very least, mistress-ship.)

But now the unapproved FFs were starting to creep back in at the seams of HP V.1.0, and that was why Harry was here, in the forest, with a taciturn late 19th century riverboat captain and a gun full of RealityRounds. They had gone into the woods in parties of two, flanking out to cover more ground. If one pair missed a Sue, either it would run into another Jurisfiction agent or a Centaur, who had low tolerance levels for the often fractious and flippant Sues.

"This reminds me of the Jungle in my book," Marlow remarked, slowly and silently advancing into the undergrowth with the air of a big game hunter hot on the tail of some African beast.

"We're not looking for Kurtz, though," Harry said with a bit of a forced laugh.

"Shh," Marlow said, touching a finger to his lips and moving behind a fallen log. "I think I hear something."

Harry ducked down behind the log quicker than you could say "Fright!" And sure enough, from deeper into the woods came the unmistakable sound of singing. It was a beautiful voice, to be sure, but Harry was pretty sure pop songs weren't meant to be belted in semi-operatic soprano. Stupid songfics, the wizard thought to himself. I wish authors would be more careful with who or what they stick a 'beautiful singing voice' or a 'voice like an angel' into.

"Let's talk this over

It's not like we're dead

Was it something I did?

Was it something you said?

Don't leave me hanging

In a city so dead

Held up so high

On such a breakable thread

You were all the things I thought I knew

And I thought we could be..."

Marlowe motioned Harry to move in closer, the pair proceeding as close as they dared to without disturbing the Sue, who had continued singing. Marlowe aimed and fired -- The Sue stopped singing, toppling ungracefully off the stump she had been sitting on as Marlowe and Harry moved in on their target.

"State your name and business," Harry ordered, Marlowe keeping the gun trained on the Sue's face. Another benefit to the RealityRound was that it forced any character to answer direct questions.

"I'm Noelani Vindella Locke," the Sue said earnestly, blinking her amber-yellow eyes at Harry in what was probably supposed to be an alluring fashion. It came across looking like she had gotten some of her copious eyeliner under her eyelid instead." And I'm looking for my true love, Ronald Weasley!"

"If Ron went for girls like you, I would have slapped him," Harry murmured under his breath, holding up the SueMeter to get a good reading off the FF-- 300 parts per character. Grounds enough for Destruction under the recent Legislation for the Control and Capture of Class FF Characters authorized by the Council of Genres. After that there was Intent to Interfere with Canon procedure and plot. And if that hadn't done it, her outfit (straight black with an odd assortment of chains, spikes and that thick slime of kohl-black eyeliner) certainly would have been grounds for some kind of Fiction Infraction. Or a Fashion Infraction, come to that. He gave a curt nod to Marlowe, who had loaded another RealityRound into his gun. Leveling the weapon at the Sue, he discharged the cartridge straight into her heart. The result was sadly predictable, like the story that had created her -- the hole gave off a puff of silvery glitter and the Sue slowly evaporated, her eyes glazed over, Boojumed out of existence.

"Have you ever wondered why they do that?" Harry asked, glancing down at the pile of remaining glittery dust and scooping it into a bag. "You know, turn into piles of glitter?" Trashed FFs were somewhat akin to magical hazardous waste in the BookWorld. Left to break down into their component words and seep back into the soil, all sorts of strange Alternate Universe things could start happening. The Sweep Teams would make sure that all of this leftover went back to the Text Sea for recycling.

"It's what they're made of -- Adolescence Female Fantasy and Hopeless Dreams," Marlowe said. "Although we are seeing a few more that materialize into red glitter -- I think those have more Lust involved."

"But still," Harry said skeptically, "Glitter?"

Marlowe shrugged and, shouldering his gun, trudged on into the wilderness.

When they returned to the temporary Jurisfiction HQ for Lunch, the reports were fairly standard -- a half dozen MarySue FFs, one of whom had been speaking in stICkyCaPs, much to the chagrin of Thursday. "Lowest of the low BookWorld languages, stICkyCaPs. I thought we were through with that nonsense when the other authors started responding negatively!" she ranted. "Worse than CourierBold, if you ask me." There had also been two non compatible Cross Genre splices (Rowling and some sort of Japanese-style animated TV show and a very confused Transformers/ Indiana Jones splice who seemed to have wandered in through a crack in Adventure Books) as well as one Grammatically Unsensitized Class FF who had terrible pronunciation of her Hs and an utter lack of verb conjugation.

"I think she 'ad got a permanent mispeling vyrus," Cyrano explained in his Gascon burr. "Certainly the lack of the 'aash sound was not French!"

"Wouldn't dream of suggesting it, Cyrano," Thursday said diplomatically. "Those writers on loan from the French Branch of the Grand Library are usually better than some of the Native Speakers we have creating the FFs. Has anyone seen where Penelope and Bradshaw went? They were supposed to check in a half an hour ago."

"Have you tried them on the Footnoterphone?" Harry asked. Cheeryable shook his head.

"No answer. I'm wondering if we get reception out here -- the text is awfully sketchy about this part of the Forest, I think," the secretary explained, holding out his MapBook to show Harry all the description of the Forest. Harry glanced at it and then looked away -- looking at the text of his own story for too long was a bit like a cross between déjà vu and a bad hangover. You remember everything and really don't want to.

Suddenly, a shot rang out and a lone figure, pursued by two others (one of whom, with pith helmet and mustache, was certainly Bradshaw) came pelting out of the forest, making a mad dash for the castle and the rest of the HPV1.0 world at large. "Catch that FF!" Bradshaw bellowed, dropping down to one knee and taking aim. Another shot rang out, and the character dropped to the ground on the cropped grass, another recipient of a Reality Round.

"She wasn't registering more than 100 ppc on the SueMeter, Bellman," Penelope said, addressing Thursday while trying to catch her breath. "And she led us into a whole den of them back in the woods. We bagged about five or so before we realized she might be with them -- thought she was a teacher up at the school, out for a walk or something, before the meter registered and she bolted. I don't know that she's a Sue," she finished, taking a glass of water from Cyrano and sitting down on a camp chair.

Thursday nodded, looking over the woman as Marlowe and Bradshaw dragged her prone body back to the tent, setting her limply on a chair and keeping their guns trained on her. "What'd you say her parts per character was again?" Thursday asked, taking a needle and vial from a nearby test kit and rolling up the FF's sleeve to prick her arm and draw off a string of tiny letters from a vein, the descriptive text that no character could live without in the BookWorld. With this 'blood' they could get a GenroType and determine whether they had a Class FF on their hands or just another PageRunner. Inserting the vial into a complicated looking machine, Thursday turned on the portable centrifuge and watched the screen, waiting for the GenroType results.

"Close to a hundred ppc or so, but the reading wasn't solid," Penelope offered, taking another large gulp of her water.

"I've got Cross-Genre Splicing here," Thursday said, peering intently at the screen giving her the readout from the GenroTyping as the FF struggled to wake up. "Genretic Young Adult Rowling with strains of some ScienceFiction/Fantasy sequencing here. Brooks? Jordan? It's hard to tell. Where are you from?" she brusquely asked the FF.

"Tolkien," the FF replied, looking a little woozy but sincerely sorry about the whole business. "On alternate Thursdays I have my own story in the back scenes of the Hobbit, but it never gets Read anymore, so I've stopped going and just decided to live here instead."

"A Two Storied FF in different Canons?" Marlowe asked, impressed. "I didn't know they existed."

"And who are you in this Tolkien-verse story?" Next inquired. There were quite a few characters who traveled between books, but very, very few who were shared between authors. And of course, the growing problem of fanfiction and the resulting fanverse was only blurring those lines further. The Council of Genres had been forced to convene a new subcommittee to deal with all of it. There was even talk of commissioning a new branch of the Booksplorers to investigate it all -- and very murky, frightening territory it was going to be, too, if the denizens they had seen creeping into the rest of the book world like stICKyCaPs speaking Class FFs were any indicator.

"An elf of Mirkwood, and daughter of Thranduil." came the reply. "My mother's people were from Doriath."

"Ernest in town and Jack in the country, mm?" Thursday mused.

"Lucky for me I'm not carrying around a cigarette case," the FF quipped. Thursday seemed impressed -- the Wilde reference might have been lost on the creation of a younger author.

"So you just thought you'd stay here in our world?" Harry asked angrily. "Why didn't you leave with the others when we created HP V2.0?"

The FF shrugged. Evidently she was waking up quicker to her surroundings – her responses were becoming more animated, better calculated. "My creator doesn't really care about me anymore. I doubt she noticed the changeover. She's too busy with other things now, like college and an absolute giant of a story on the 12th century. And besides, even if I wanted to leave, I can't -- her computer's crashed. Usually it's very easy for me to change between stories -- just a quick jump across the hard drive and I'm safe and sound. With the crash I can't leave," she explained. "And if it would make you happy, Mr. Potter, I would."

The sincere response made Harry pause-- RealityRounds made you tell the absolute truth, even if it was against your will. "Who did you say you were again?" Harry asked, watching his own SueMeter.

"Gabrielin Malfoy," the FF said, meeting Harry's eyes. The resemblance to Harry's longtime foe was apparent -- but any amateur could replicate blonde hair and cold gray eyes.

"A DracoSister?" He asked, remembering far too many bad run-ins with those over the rise in popularity of his books. Why anyone in their right mind would think he would go after the younger sister of his most hated enemy was beyond him, but teenagers, as many of the older adults in his story were fond of reminding him, love a good drama. And of course there was the matter of whether Draco had a sister or not – Narcissa Malfoy, his mother, was fond of complaining in the pre-V.2.0 days that if she had given birth to as many of Draco's sisters as the fanverse thought she had, she would have either throttled all of them in their sleep or given up on having Draco in the first place. (Mrs. Malfoy was actually a very sensible woman outside of the storyline, and often came over for tea with Mrs. Weasley when she had the chance to discuss their children and their more recent narrative woes.)

"No, an Aunt," the FF said, sounding miserable about it. "And sometime turncoat on my family, while we're talking about it," she added. The SueMeter's needle wobbled a little towards 110 ppc. "My brother adores me but his wife can't stand me and my nephew hates me -- funny story involved about changing him into a squirrel as a kid, actually," she added, smiling a little bit in reminiscence.

"What did you do to gain this turncoat status?" Thursday asked, probably mentally noting, as Harry knew he himself was, that rebellion of any kind was a strong hallmark of the MarySue Subclass.

"I work for a living," Gabrielin offered, somewhat icily. Harry had to admit that this might be a very legitimate reason for the pureblood Malfoys, who often acted like wizarding nobility, to dislike her.

"And what did you do for work in this story of yours?" Harry asked, now firmly taking the reins of the interrogation into his own hands.

"I was a Defense against the Dark Arts Professor," the FF, Gabrielin, stated. "Though I've had to give it up after the sixth and seventh books came out."

"Awful lot of those running around in this Book," Thursday explained. "Not very original at all. I suppose you fell madly in love with a canon character?" she asked, keeping an eye on Harry's SueMeter.

"No!" the FF said defensively. "There was a bit of back-story about an arranged and thoroughly loveless marriage with Snape, but that fell through when we found out he wasn't a pureblood in book six."

"Gets points for knowing her canon," Thursday said. "We can't destroy her on SueMeter counts or Non-Compatible Cross Genre splicing -- Tolkien is clearly outlined in an example as a Semi- Compatible Same Genre Splice in Article Twenty. We didn't find her in possession of an illegal plot device and her grammar's certainly better than a lot of FFs we've seen today." Council of Genres legislation was very specific on grounds for Class FF destruction. A register of 200 ppc on the MarySue meter, any noncompatible cross genre splicing, to be determined by the most senior agent present (Harry had been out on a hunt with Miss Havisham once who shot a Meyer/Austen splice at point blank range because, as one of the other agents had termed it at the time, "That's just wrong.") Interference with the original canon procedure and plot was taken into account, as well as standard Fiction Infractions like unlawful possession or possession with intent of an illegal plot device. Then there was failure to past the STandard Origin Genre Test from St. Tabularas and finally, irregular or nonexistent grammar. It always surprised Harry how many of these MarySues were running around with a permanent Grammasite infestation, using some kind of minimalist, reductionary English or the hated stICKyCaPs.

Yet with all these ways to an end, Harry still wasn't finding a legitimate, letter of the law reason for destroying this FF, and it was making him angry. What right did anyone have to interfere with his story? What gave them the right to stick their noses where they didn't belong, making more work for him because of a supposed plothole or a scene they thought should have been a different way? "Did someone fall madly in love with you?" he asked angrily.

"I was a Tolkienesque Elf in a human world, of course someone fell in love with me!" the FF exclaimed in such an authoritarian and obvious tone Harry was reminded of Professor McGonagall for a split second, sans somber attire. "It was more of a schoolboy crush, really, and it was Ron. He was predisposed for it anyway -- veela come from the same Generic stock and I play a mean game of Quidditch."

The SueMeter's needle trembled again, moving ahead a few points towards the Sue side. Yes! Harry shouted internally. Yes, come on, just a little bit farther…

"I suppose you're fluent in several languages?" Thursday asked, remaining extremely calm.

"English, and Elvish," the FF answered. "Not much call for anything else in either story." Much to Harry's disappointment, the meter's needle fell back again towards the Non-Sue side.

"Right," said Thursday, taking a final look at the SueMeter and jotting down the reading on a clipboard. "Well, Ms. Malfoy, under Article Three, Subsection Twelve of the Legislation for the Control and Capture of Category FanFiction Characters, it is my duty to inform you, and your right to know, that in my professional opinion you are not a MarySue," she began, launching into a thoroughly scripted and well-rehearsed speech. "Should you wish to stay in this part of the Grand Library, you will need to submit paperwork to both the Council of Genres subcommittee on Class FF affairs for registration and identification as well as sponsorship applications to any characters and their next of kin you may be affecting or displacing by your permanent transfer here. Should you be approved by both the Council subcommittee and your sponsor -- I believe that would be Mr. Draco Malfoy in your case, he's higher on the list than his parents -- you will need to go through mandatory Book Training and a Jurisfiction course on remaining below Read Level."

Sponsorship applications went to the highest character affected by the change, the ones with the most Read Time, or participation in the story. The Council Subcommittee kept very precisely calculated lists of Read Times -- Ron, for instance, was just a smidge higher in Read Time than Hermione, a fact that he reminded her of as often as he could. Even though this FF was applying to be Lucius Malfoy's sister, Harry reasoned out, Draco would have to sponsor the application since his part in the book was larger than his father's.

Gabrielin Malfoy was nodding through all of this, very somberly taking it all in. She asked several questions about where the paperwork could be obtained, whether a certain number of reviews were necessary and whether the relative strength of the grammar and content in those reviews would be considered ("I haven't got many, you know, since it's not well Read and the HP Fanon's quite large," she explained.)

Thursday answered all her questions, gave her the necessary paperwork and dismissed her with Bradshaw to go back to Norland Park (Jurisfiction's headquarters were located in Sense and Sensibility's main manor house for reasons of security and space, among others) for processing and holding until her application was either approved or denied.

"Potter, come with me. I've got to jump over to the Ministry for a chat with Kingsley Shacklebolt about possibly setting up a Character Exchange program hostel in Diagon Alley and I'd rather not have to read myself there, if that's possible. And you'll need to pick up some paperwork from the Auror office, I assume?" the Bellman asked, smiling when Harry smiled wanly for her crack about the Auror department. "When are you planning on telling Ginny about the changeover?" she asked softly as they moved away from the rest of the agents, who were now coordinating with the sweeper team to clean up the morning's mess.

"I don't know. She's still a bit suspicious of inviting Luna over for dinner with her husband, but I think in a few weeks we should be right as rain again." Luna Lovegood had been one of Harry's friends that fanfiction authors had occasionally snookered into sleeping with Harry – the Confundus charm was attempting to make Ginny forget this, and obviously her memory might need to be modified again if Harry wanted to keep his friend and his wife on speaking terms.

"Good," Thursday began saying as they headed for the Hogwarts gates and the edge of the anti-apparition charm. "This whole Fanfiction business is putting a lot of strain on Jurisfiction. PageRunners everywhere we look, authors inadvertently infecting their Class FFs with mispeling vyrus…not to mention the strain it's putting on the storycode engines. Mind you," she added as they headed through the gates, one of the metal dragons on the top arch sticking his tongue out irreverently at them as they passed, "There have been some good bits. Readership numbers have been on the increase and some bloopholes have been solved in ways we never thought of. But sometimes it just gets out of hand. The HP V. 2.0 was better for all involved. I have a feeling a few more books will be applying for one soon. Right, the Ministry," the Bellman said, laying her hand on Harry's shoulder. Harry nodded, closing his eyes and thinking, very hard, of the polished stone hallway of the Ministry of Magic. With a slight pop, there they were, stone floor beneath them and a crowd of chattering Class D Generics in the same general dark colored rooms rushing about to give the appearance of a bustling center of government.

"I don't know I'll ever like that feeling," Thursday admitted as they made their way through the crowd of Ds to the elevators. Several memos and a few class Cs joined them in the elevator, nodding significantly to Harry and looking inordinately pleased with themselves that they were riding in an elevator with a Class A.

"Level Seven," the magically modified voice of the elevator chimed, "Department of Magical Games and Sports, including British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters, Official Gobstones Club, and the
Ludicrous Patents Office."

This last announcement brought a smile to Thursday's lips, but she said nothing more than "It's Level Five, isn't it, Harry?"

The lift went on up, making a stop on Floor Six before heading up to "Level Five, Department of International Magical Cooperation, containing International Confederation of Wizards, British Seats, the International Magical Office of Law, and International Magical Trading Standards Body."

Harry held the door as Thursday exited the elevator. "We were thinking about changing the announcement or putting up a sign saying "Jurisfiction Liaison Offices" but we didn't want it getting Read accidentally. And everyone knows where it is."

"Probably wise," Thursday remarked sagely. "You could put that in the next version of STOGE – Where are the Jurisfiction Liaison Offices in this book?" She allowed herself a little chuckle and glanced down the corridor. "Ah, Mr. Malfoy! Just the man Harry needed to see," she exclaimed, spotting Harry's sometime nemesis heading down the corridor in the direction of the unmarked Jurisfiction offices. Draco was carrying a large suspicious box and wearing a slightly furtive expression – he started when he heard Thursday's voice and tried to make the box he was carrying a little less obvious. It didn't work – Thursday, being from the Real World, noticed everything. "Well, be seeing you, Harry!" she announced, heading off down the corridor in the opposite direction.

"Potter," Draco said tersely, falling into step beside Harry. "Something you needed to see me about?"

"Err, yes," Harry said, "Had a run- in today with several interesting Mary-Sues, one of them claiming to be – I hate to pry, Draco, but what is in that box?" He asked suddenly as the box began shouting in German and the sound of several guns being fired escaped the cardboard prison.

Draco looked at it with annoyance. "Illegal plot device – found it in Dad's bureau when Asteria and I were cleaning in between Reads. He swears it wasn't bought on the black market, but we know he's been hoarding them for a while. Going to change the family fortunes, he thinks."

He lifted the lid back a hair to allow Harry to peer in. Inside was a miniature version of a 1940s era truck with several large boxes strapped to the back. One of them had been pried open, revealing a pile of gold bars. Next to the truck, seven men in snappy military uniforms were peering up at the large face above them, still shouting in German and waving their pistols in Harry's direction. The Jurisfiction agent shut the box lid before any of them managed to get a round off.

"Oh, so that's where Bradshaw's missing "Lost Nazi Gold" conceit went! We were wondering who finally bought it. Not a lot of call for Nazis and gold anymore," Harry explained. "Do you know how he was planning to work Nazis into the wizarding world, by chance?"

"I have no idea," Draco said blithely. "But I think he got a rotten deal, seeing as how he appears to have bought both the Nazis and the gold. They've been trying to escape ever since we found them in the dresser – the glass on the ball was cracked, so I think that's why they look…actualized. But really, what's the point in buying a plot device if you're going to buy the counterdevice at the same time?" he shook his head. "I thought I'd turn it in before the Ministry goes on another raid in book six and accidentally reports it to the Daily Prophet."

"Jurisfiction thanks you for your prudence," Harry said, using the standard response for such an action, surprising himself when it came out sounding more like an automated recording than he had meant it to.

"Now what did you want to tell me about a MarySue?" Draco asked as Harry held the door to the Jurisfiction office open. "Please don't tell me it was another sister! My mother actually wanted to adopt some of them when we got the applications for sponsorship."

"Oh, no, not at all. Listen, how would you feel about another aunt?" Harry proposed flatly, hating every syllable. Please say no, please say no…

"On the Black side or the Malfoy one? I think Black's pretty much shuttered up at the moment – not a lot of space for a fourth Black sibling, I understand. And I'd rather not have another Bellatrix running around, if that's possible," Draco trailed off.

"Malfoy, actually. Father's older sister, family miscreant who works for a living and isn't quite on the Dark Magic bandwagon, plays Quidditch…turned you into a squirrel as a kid, bit of a bad marriage with Snape when she was younger." Harry ticked off these points on his fingers, trying to remember something else.

Draco's usually sneering face turned into a bit of a smile. "Say, that bit with the squirrel's pretty good. Would make sense with my nasty reaction to the ferret bit in Book Four. And you say this was a Class FF? Sounds pretty well actualized to me."

"You'll have to complete the paperwork once she's filed it, of course, and all that, but they'll send you particulars with the forms," Harry said, feeling a little defeated inside.

"And Dad doesn't have any family at all," Draco was musing, "Not even in the Notes and Annotations. He'll be pleased. Might give him something to do besides shop around for plot devices in Knockturn Alley." He leaned closer to Harry and was about to murmur something when the angrily shouting in German again. "Oh, enough already!" He shouted, temporarily deafening Harry, whose ear had been rather close when Draco shouted. "I'd better get this to Plot Device containment," he said with a sigh, giving the box and the Nazis inside an exasperated rattle. "But we'll see about the Class FF! A squirrel…" he repeated to himself. "That's original…"

"Thanks for the tip about the black market imports," Harry said in reply, waving as Draco hurried down the hallway muttering something very angry and German to the Nazis inside the box.

Harry filed his reports, passed Draco's tip on the Plot Devices to the Containment Unit and stopped by the Auror office to pass Ginny's greetings on to Ron and pick up some scrapes of what had happened in the office that day. "Nothing big, but then nothing big ever happens when we're not in the Narrative," Harry's best friend said unhappily. "Built a wonderful paper airplane, though! Is Ginny doing any better?"

"Well, I think if you were to come over for dinner tonight she wouldn't go off at you or Hermione for trying to sleep with me, so that's progress," Harry offered. Ron shook his head sadly.

"Of all the chaps she had to get stuck with, Harry, she had to pick the one with a million rabid fans."

"Ah, well, I wouldn't have some of those fans if it weren't for my incredibly brave and dashing best friend," Harry offered. Ron allowed himself a moment to preen exaggeratedly.

"You shouldn't, really… Any idea what she's cooking for dinner?"

Harry smiled. Some things never changed, even in a book series as long as his, and Ron's appetite was one of them. "Why don't we find out together?"

Somewhere in the great Other…

"Damn!" the Great Panjandrum said sadly, tossing the betting slip to the floor and adjusting his rounded frame glasses before tousling his unkempt black hair a little more. "And the Great Cosmic Bookkeeper was offering such great odds on today being interesting!"

FINIS

I was re-reading the first three TN books the other day and started wondering what fanfiction would do to the book world, and this occurred to me. Fforde mentions fanfiction in First Among Sequels –

" "We get a lot of this in classics," he said with a shrug. "this is the third P-squared [Pride and Prejudice] refit I've done in the past fifteen years- but it's not as bad as the Lord of the Rings trilogy; those things are always in for maintenance. The fantasy readership really gives it a hammering- and the fan fiction doesn't help neither."" (bold my own)

So I began wondering -- what does Fanfiction do to the storycode engines and the characters in Fforde's BookWorld? Where do OC characters come from if they're not created for a legitimate story? I had also just finished re-reading the HP series, so that's why Harry and my own OC Gabrielin got top billing. (Speaking of Gabrielin, if you'd like to go and read that story in the back story of the Hobbit that gets read on alternate Thursdays, it's on my profile page.)

Anyway, please tell me what you think. I know it's not perfect, but I did take copious notes on the BookWorld just for this piece.