Disclaimer:
There was an old Hermit who lived in a mine,
Who had a dead author who's work had declined.
He kept her one ice,
and she didn't smell nice,
But it's all J.K.R.'s, not mine!
Harry was forcefully awoken from his nightmares by Neville frantically shaking him. "Harry, Harry! You've got to get up." Harry groaned and blearily gestured for Neville to politely sod off.
"Harry… you're going to be late for the first task!" Neville said, ignoring the sleepy boy's subtle hints to go bugger himself.
That woke Harry up. "Ah shit," he said as he tore out of the bed, grabbing his glasses and wand.
He promptly tripped on… something. It hurt worse than he'd expected. Groaning, he looked up at Neville who was gaping at him with the kind of expression Harry would only expect to see on the pudgy boy's face if Snape suddenly dropped to one knee and proposed to the lad in the great hall.
"Err… Nev, what's with the look?" Harry asked.
Neville pointed at the floor with a shaking finger. Harry looked down. He promptly wished he hadn't.
Instead of his expected Harry Jr., an elephantine appendage appeared attached. Its length dangled to the floor, was coiled into two loose loops before continuing its way back up the four-poster bed and disappearing into the mess of covers Harry left on the bed.
"I… am going to bloody kill Ron," Harry grumbled. "Hey, Nev, you got any idea how to undo this?" Neville shook his head. "Great. Just great. Any ideas on how I'm supposed to get to the field?"
Neville simply pointed his wand at a nearby stool, and transfigured it into a medium-sized wheelbarrow – the kind used to haul around large bags of fertilizer.
"... that'll work," Harry said as he proceeded to reel in the offending member and loading it into the wheelbarrow as Neville grabbed a spare robe from his trunk.
"Neville," Harry said softly as he stared at the wheelbarrow and his bed in despair, "I think we're gonna need a bigger wheelbarrow."
Pale as an Eskimo's arse, Neville nodded.
Hermione paced frantically at the base of the stairs to the boys' dormitory. "Oh no," she mumbled, "he's definitely going to be late. Honestly, I can't believe Ron didn't even try to wake him up! I know they're having a little spat but this is-" Her monologue was interrupted by the dormitory door opening. Neville came out first, shaking his head. "Neville!" Hermione exclaimed. Whatever she was going to say next vanished from her mind as she saw a very large wheelbarrow with a couple robes tossed over top emerge from the dorm, evidently being pushed/levitated by a rather unhappy Harry. The robes seemed to be concealing some great lump, as the edges barely made past the rim.
"Harry?" She asked. "What… I mean… um… wheelbarrow?"
Harry shook his head. "I really don't want to talk about it," he mumbled as he brushed by her. "I'm going to kill him, or the twins. Maybe both. They better be able to bloody well fix this before I compete or by Merlin I'll…" Harry's angry rant was interrupted by Hermione's hand moving to life up the edge of one of the robes.
"Hermione, don't!" Harry exclaimed a moment too late, judging by her sudden squeak and massive blush.
She suddenly had the uncanny desire to grab an oboe and try her hand at snake-charming.
…
The crowd milled about, obviously wondering where the fourth champion was. Dumbledore calmed the fretting judges, not once betraying his own anxiety. Suddenly, a great deal of confused exclamations erupted from the stands as people noticed Neville and Hermione running towards the converted Quidditch pitch, followed by Harry pushing some sort of over-large wheelbarrow in front of him. The murmurs only grew louder as Barty Crouch Sr. hurried over to Harry's position. They noticed that the two were having some sort of heated exchange before Crouch Sr. took a quick peek under the robes nearest to Harry.
"… Bloody Hell!" Crouch's shout of shock was heard over the crowd. Everybody fell silent as they tried to listen in on the conversation.
"… so it's attached?" Crouch asked. Harry nodded. "Well, there's not helping it. I'm afraid …against the rules …to take the time …Madame Pomphrey." Crouch said. Harry replied with something unintelligible. Crouch shook his head. "…sorry …you've still got to …at least we know none of the …just do your best."
Crouch jogged over to the tent and poked his head in. A moment later, Ludo Bagman appeared. The two men had a quick conversation. Ludo looked utterly flabbergasted, then horrified. Crouch shrugged and said something to the man. Bagman returned to the tent while Crouch walked away, slowly shaking his head as Harry (plus wheelbarrow) made his way towards the tent. Dumbledore met Barty Sr. at the judge's stand. The two had a quite conversation. Dumbledore looked as shocked as Crouch, but turned to the crowd and gestured for silence.
"It appears," the Hogwarts Headmaster said solemnly, "that somebody has decided to play a most inappropriate prank on Mr. Potter. Fortunately, none of the other champions were punished for breaching the contract, so we know that it wasn't intentional sabotage by the other contestants. Unfortunately for Mr. Potter, he will have to compete as-is." Dumbledore shook his head for a moment, before crying out "Let the first Trial begin!"
Harry made his way into the champions' tent. Fleur, Krum and Diggory looked at the robe-draped wheelbarrow.
"Err… isn't that against the rules?" Cedric asked before anybody else could. Ludo looked rather put-out, and a bit frantic.
"I'm afraid to say that Harry's managed to get quite the…" the man paused, searching for the right word, "handicap. Yes, that's it. Anyhow, there's… err… nothing in the wheelbarrow that he wasn't born with… well, I mean, there is but not in the way you think… I mean, ah… oh Hell, this really is quite the pickle, isn't it Harry?"
Harry groaned. The other champions looked at him. "I got cursed." Harry said shortly.
Krum scowled. "Vat kind of curse vould make you haf to haf a veelbarrow? I see all of your... vat is vord? Limbs? Limbs are normal."
Fleur coughed politely. "I zink zat per'aps it iz a bit more of a… perzonal problem, no?"
Harry blushed tomato red.
"I haf not the understanding of your vords," Krum grumbled.
"Why don't you take a quick look, zen?" Fleur said with a mischievous smile.
"No!" Harry quickly shouted.
"Vy not?" Krum asked, glaring at the young man.
"Err… well, ah… it's not the sort of thing that I want another bloke poking about with, alright?"
Cedric blinked. "You don't mean…"
"Yeah." Harry said.
"Wow. All of that?" Cedric asked.
"Yeah."
"Damn," Cedric replied.
Krum scowled. "Still I am not understanding."
Cedric smirked at the glowering Bulgarian while Fleur daintily whispered something in his ear.
Krum's eyebrows tried to launch themselves into orbit. "All of…" He waved his hand at the robe-covered lump.
Harry groaned, but nodded.
"Vell shit," Krum replied.
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Cedric said.
"I zuppose I zall not be calling you… little boy, no?" Fleur said while waggling her eyebrows obscenely.
Harry groaned. The rest of the conversation was cut off by Ludo pulling out a bag. Each of the champions withdrew an animated statue of a dragon. Harry's, of course, was a big nasty Hungarian Horntail with the number four painted on its side.
Cedric's comment summed up the day/year/lifetime perfectly.
"Man, it sure sucks to be you."
Finally, it was Harry's turn. His stomach no longer held rabid chipmunks on Meth. Instead, it was a giant lump of lead. With no small amount of trepidation, Harry pushed his burden out of the tent. The crowd was silent as Harry emerged. He looked up at the stands. Hermione was standing next to Neville, who was next to Ron, her worry obvious even in the distance. Neville was still pale as a ghost. Ron looked confused. And rather hungry.
At least some things were normal.
Harry glared balefully at his former best mate. "If this is your fault, there won't be another generation of Weasleys," Harry swore. He looked at the dragon, who was eyeing him hungrily. "Well, my original plan's pretty much bollocks now." He shrugged. "Still, I suppose I've got to try something." He scratched his head, trying to come up with something on the fly.
"Bugger it. Accio Golden Egg!"
The egg didn't budge.
"Didn't think so," Harry said with a shrug. He turned towards the judges' podium. "Well, that's it. I guess I'm going to have to-"
His words were cut off by a thunderous roar. Absolutely not wanting too look, Harry turned and faced the dragon. It was really pissed. Harry swallowed. The dragon took a lumbering step towards him. Harry started to sweat. It lurched forward, snapping the chain attached to its neck. Harry swore.
The dragon roared once more as it prepared to lunge towards the tasty snack in front of it. The crowd gasped while the dragon handlers rushed forward to subdue the beast. With a single pump of its wings the dragon blew the puny mortals onto their backsides.
Harry swore the beast smirked as it roared its intensions once more. He silently prepared to see his parents again. At least he couldn't right well piss his pants.
He wasn't wearing any.
Then the impossible happened.
The crowd gasped in horror as the great beast prepared to turn the Boy-who-lived into the Boy-who-didn't-quite-make-it. Hermione screamed as she gripped her face in terror, her fingernails digging crescent wounds into her cheeks.
"I can't look!" Ron gasped out as he hid his face in Neville's bosom. Neville automatically wrapped the cowering red-head in a comforting embrace.
Unlike Ron, Hermione couldn't bear to look away, hoping beyond hope that somebody, something, anything would save Harry.
Then the impossible happened.
Dumbledore swore into his beard as the dragon lurched free of its restraints. Although the methodology was certainly… unorthodox, to say the least, this whole chain of events just screamed Voldemort. Well, not the overlarge body-part bit, but certainly the irate dragon trying to fry his student was indicative of one of his former student's overly complicated plots.
Albus just couldn't quite get over the overlarge penis. A small part of him wondered if perhaps Riddle knew of his predilections, and was attempting to make some sort of statement. He pondered a moment on the theory. Unfortunately, his hesitation was going to cost Harry his life, unless a miracle occurred.
Then the impossible happened.
Under the concealing robes, something roared back.
In the small part of his mind that wasn't screaming, Harry felt a strange sort of stirring in his crotch. A great deal of crotch, and a fair bit of stirring at that. For the briefest of moments, he almost hoped that the dragon would hurry up and fry him; if only to prevent the utter humiliation he was sure to undergo.
Another roar erupted from the wheelbarrow. The dragon paused, peering down at the small two-legged snack, as if it were attempting to suss out exactly what the walking meal was trying to do.
With a motion that could only be described as a saurian shrug, the dragon roared again.
Harry felt the weight of impending doom, and not of the draconic variety.
Suddenly, like the Kraken emerging from the abyssal depths, his Todger arose from the wheelbarrow. It towered over the Quidditch pitch, casting a great serpentine shadow across the makeshift arena.
In the small part of his mind that wasn't screaming, Harry couldn't help but have flashbacks to his second year. Well, aside from two small facts. First was the thankful lack of a phoenix coming to claw at the phallic monster's eyes… erm, eye. The other was that the thousand-year-old basilisk would have felt positively inadequate next to his gargantuan Shaft.
In the small part of her mind that wasn't screaming, Hermione noted that the long-standing question amongst the girls of her year about whether or not Harry was circumcised was finally answered with a definite no.
Somehow, without lungs, Harry's Johnson roared again. Then It lunged for the dragon.
The dragon, being a quite reasonable member of the saurian species, took a great deal of offense at being assaulted by a fleshy man-worm and let loose a humongous gout of flame.
Evidently Wang studied under the great kung-fu master Hung Lo. With a speed that belied Its size, Wang whipped about, avoiding becoming grilled bratwurst. It reared back, as if accepting the challenge.
Deep in the bowels of Hogwarts, an ancient elf bowed its head.
"And so it begins. He has arrived," the wizened creature rasped.
"Whos has arrived, your great and venerable geezerness?" A much younger elf asked of his elder.
"The Legendary Overfiend." The antediluvian elf whispered.
Harry closed his eyes. He just knew what was coming next.
In the small part of his mind that wasn't screaming, Harry groaned at the unintentional pun.
In order to preserve their sanity, everyone involved immediately purged the memory of the two titans grappling in mortal combat.
Well, almost everybody.
Before the wave of dragon's blood and… something else splashed against the shields that protected the audience, Hermione was struck with the sudden urge to learn Japanese.
In the stands, a young girl was heard saying "Itadaki-masu!"
In the professors' section of the stands Hagrid hugged himself while rocking back and forth. "I shouldn't have seen that," he mumbled over and over. "I shouldn't have seen that."
Harry wanted to cry with a combination of relief and horror as his Rod released the mangled remains of the Hungarian Horntail before delicately picking up the golden egg with Its… erm… mouth and dropping it into his arms. Then, It gently coiled itself back into the wheelbarrow, not forgetting to carefully reposition the robes over It.
He turned to the judges' stand. He saw Ludo Bagman, Headmaster Karkaroff and Crouch Sr. staring down at him in mute horror. His Headmaster and the Headmistress of Beauxbaton were nowhere to be seen. He couldn't quite bring himself to care.
"Can I go see Madam Pomfrey now?" Harry asked.
Crouch seemed to nod. At least, he twitched in a vaguely nod-like fashion, which was good enough thank you very much.
Harry took his Todger to the tent.
Hopefully she'd cancel… whatever it was, and he could forget all about It.
After a long and most suspenseful hour (during which people heard Madam Pomfrey saying the most indelicate things in the most indelicate manner), Harry emerged from the tent sans wheelbarrow. Hermione pushed her way out of the crowd and ran towards Harry. She was about to fling herself at him in a desperate embrace when she stopped short about a foot away.
Hermione blushed. "So, um… Madam Pomfrey fixed your little… um, big… err, I mean… your, err, guy problem. Yeah, that's it. Your guy problem." She sounded rather proud of the turn of phrase.
"Yeah… I mean, isn't it a bit obvious considering…" Harry said.
"Well, you can't be too careful," Hermione replied.
Harry nodded. "I guess not. Um… it's, uh, back to normal."
Hermione let out a sigh of relief. "Oh. Good." She looked down at her shoes, abashed. "Well, um, I'm really glad to see that you are alright."
"Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing is, um, wrong with me or anything. Guess I should be happy about that." He grinned. "Well, I guess that's over with. So how did I do? With the points, I mean."
Hermione shook her head. "Ah… well, you see there's been a bit of a delay."
"Hmm?"
"Evidently two of the judges were incapacitated due to massive nasal hemorrhaging." Hermione said.
"Wha?" Harry asked.
Hermione shook her head and huffed. "Honestly Harry, it wouldn't hurt you to read a bit more. Your vocabulary is woefully stunted."
"Right, right. So…"
Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed. "They passed out from a really big nosebleed."
"Huh. That's pretty strange. Who passed out?" Harry asked.
"Madame Maxime and Headmaster Dumbledore," she answered.
"That's strange," Harry commented.
Hermione shrugged. "Well, I suppose we'll find out later. So, do you know what the next Task is going to be?"
Harry pulled the golden egg from his robes. "Something to do with this."
"Ah. You know I'll help you out as much as I can, right?"
Harry smiled. "Yeah, I do."
"Good."
"And now I have something very important to do." Harry said darkly.
Hermione delicately raised an eyebrow.
"I'm going to hunt down the twins, and I'm going to kill them. At first I thought maybe Ron had something to do with it, but…" Harry said.
"There's no way Ron could have pulled something like that off," Hermione finished.
"Pretty much," Harry said. "Um… you aren't going to try and stop me, right?"
Hermione shook her head. "Of course not, Harry. I'm going to help."
Harry grinned.
Ron was still up in the stands trying to wrap his mind around the last hour or so. It was akin to attempting to coil a two-foot-long ribbon about a three-thousand-year-old redwood.
'I mean, he really could have died…' Ron thought, 'so maybe he really didn't put his name in the cup… but he's got a great big magical dick… so am I happy because he's alive… or mad because he can slay dragons with his dong…' One could almost hear the gears grinding against each other in his skull.
'Seriously though, he's my best mate… and he could have died… but he killed a dragon with his pecker! Why can't I kill a dragon with my pecker? I mean I could probably squash a bug if I really tried, or it was kinda slow, but that's not the same. Then again, I wouldn't want to worry about morning wood punching a hole through the ceiling.'
Unfortunately for Ron (as well as the house-elves tasked with cleaning the stands) the still-coated shielding finally gave out – and a great wave of gooey… stuff splattered down onto the almost empty stands, leaving Ron as stuck physically as he was mentally.
"Bloody Hell!" He screamed while trying to shake off the… mixture.
Translation: Itadaki-masu – Japanese phrase said before eating. Means "Thank you for the food."
More to come… err, follow. Yeah, that's it. Follow. Well, not really. I depends, I guess.
For those of you who read the first draft in the yahoo groups, you might have noticed a few things are different (and not just spelling/grammar cleanups). I removed the extra bits because, honestly, they didn't add anything (except cliché).