Disclaimer: I own no ducks. I have a cat. These statements are connected. Can you guess how? Oh…and I also don't own Harry Potter, the books, the series, or anything else that might belong to anyone else which I might mention.
AN: For anyone who missed the memo, this is actually a short from The Lesser of Two Evils. For anyone who hasn't read the first eight chapters yet, here's what you need to know for this to make sense: Harry is in his first year at Hogwarts and can summon any god or goddess from any religion in the world. He has been rescued from the Dursleys and placed into the custody of his godparents, Sirius and Remus. They are friends with the Malfoys-who were neutral during the first war-, and the Malfoys are friends with Snape. The five find out about how the Dursley's treated Harry and decide to wreak vengeance in a method that won't get them sent to Azkaban.
Now on to (sound of a trumpet blaring):
A Very Dursley Christmas
Number four Privet Drive was decorated in the best of taste for the holiday season. There was mistletoe woven in and out of the Christmas lights, cherubim dancing around a nativity scene upon the front lawn, and an omnivorous giraffe craning her neck over the back fence. Wait…sorry…just Petunia…
Moving on…
Stockings were hung from the chimney with care-and from the sides of the TV, down the entire staircase, off of every available picture frame, the Christmas tree, the backs of chairs, and the oven doors. They would have been hung from the fridge as well, but the Dursley's had quite run out of socks (although Dudley was putting up such a fuss that they would soon have to go out and buy more). There were presents stacked under the tree, as well-buried under Vernon's socks, of course-and Vernon Dursley had to set up a twenty-four hour guard over them to keep his enthusiastic son away.
Fortunately, tomorrow was Christmas.
Unfortunately, none of the Dursleys were going to care by that time.
The trouble started off at the back fence around three pm. A dull thrum was heard, slowly increasing to a roar, and then the fence posts spontaneously changed to six-foot tall plastic elves, each holding the Jamaican national flag. In the front yard, the nativity scene had become a KISS concert complete with blaring guitar riffs of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". The mistletoe became Venus fly traps, the Christmas lights were firecrackers.
The omnivorous giraffe was untouched for the moment-if untouched discounts running into the house shrieking like a wounded antelope. "VERNON!! THOSE FREAKS HAVE DONE SOMETHING!!! MY POSTS! OH, MY PRECIOUS FENCE POSTS!!!"
The Dursleys did what any well-bred English family would do in a similar situation: they piled in the family car and went to the mall to buy socks.
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From the shadows of a neighboring building, a large black dog watched the proceedings with wonder. Who in the name of Merlin though up those?! the grim thought, amazed.
Then he picked up the rope to a heavily laden children's sled and dragged it to the Dursley's house.
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Across the street, an amber-eyed man watched the grim with confusion. I was so sure that front yard stunt was his… The werewolf shook his head, slightly disturbed that someone other than the grim might have that peculiar sense of humor. One's enough.
Three brown owls sat behind him on a fence post, holding a large package. The man gave them a brief nod, and the three dropped the package down the chimney…where it promptly lodged halfway down. The werewolf grinned and checked his watch. Midnight was going to be entertaining…
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In the backyard, two men under disillusionment charms bumped into each other.
"For the sake of decorum, Severus, let's pretend that never happened," the regal looking blond said.
"I concur completely," the Potions master replied. The two men alohamora'ed their way into the house and went their separate ways.
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Narcissa Malfoy sat in her manor, checking the arrangements over once more. It was set for 3:00am. The charms were in place, and the movers were ready.
She had to repress an urge to laugh maniacally.
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At the mall, the Dursley's bough thirty pairs of socks and five new presents for Dudley. They were confident that everything was returning to normal as they made their way out of the toy store.
Then, Petunia pulled on a tutu, a pair of fairy wings, and a pink star wand, and Dudley pulled on a bunny costume. Vernon grabbed a top hat and a cane and began belting out a song in a voice worthy of Luciano Pavarotti while Petunia and Dudley acted out the lyrics behind him.
Little Bunny Foo-Foo
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the he-ad!
(Dudley hopped out in front of the gathering crowd, picked up a stuffed Mickey Mouse, and punched it in the nose. In the crowd, a five year old started crying.)
Along came the Good Fairy
And said to Bunny Foo-Foo
"Little Bunny Foo-Foo
I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head!"
(Petunia danced out in front of the crowd and began shaking her wand at the Bunny Dudley. Then, she used the wand to whack him between the ears and danced away.)
Little Bunny Foo-Foo
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the fire trucks
And bopping them on the he-ad!
(Dudley hopped out again, grabbed a fire truck, and began mimicking the panicked screams of the beleaguered fire-men. "No! Help me! Aaaahhhh!!! Then he punched it on the plastic Dalmatian.)
Along came the Good Fairy
And said to Bunny Foo-Foo
"Little Bunny Foo-Foo
I don't want to see you
Scooping up the fire trucks
And bopping them on the head!"
(Petunia danced out in front of the crowd, armed with a frying pan. Bunny Dudley looked alarmed as she once again began shaking her weapon at him. He attempted to use the fire truck to block the frying pan, but it only got him an extra whack on the tail from the disgruntled fairy.)
Little Bunny Foo-Foo
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the fairies
And bopping them on the head.
(Dudley hopped out in front of the crowd with an expression of pure vindictive pleasure and picked up a fairy doll, but rather than bopping it, he ripped its head off and began jumping up and down on it. The five year old screamed in abject horror.)
Along came the Good Fairy
And said to Bunny Foo-Foo
"Little Bunny Foo-Foo
I am going to kill you!
That was my third cousin!
You just stepped on her head!"
(Petunia was armed with a cap-gun, and she had a camo-scarf wrapped around her head. She stomped up to Bunny Dudley and shot him in the head, all the while silently screaming at him. Dudley, of course, clutched his heart and dragged out his death scene to last for a full minute, including twitching feet and little gasps. Petunia's expression turned horrified and she began to wail and weep. Then she took the cap-gun and off-ed herself. The five year old was traumatized and silent. Vernon's song became a funeral march.)
Weep! Weep for Bunny Foo-Foo!
Weep for the murderous fairy!
Life isn't fun
And when it's finally done
Their legs were both uncomfortably hairy!
The crowd was stunned, torn between laughter and outrage-the five year old would need years of therapy to get over the experience. The Dursleys could feel something around them relax, allowing them to realize exactly what they had just done.
So they did what any well-bred English family would do: they fled home with their tails between their legs.
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When the Dursley's reached Number four Privet Drive, their visitors had already left. The three muggles approached their house with a growing sense of unease, which only grew when they looked behind them to see the car sink to the tops of the tires into the asphalt of the driveway. Everything that was left exposed was pink and pig-shaped.
"We'll just go in, grab the presents, some clothes, and leave," Petunia said reasonably. "We'll go somewhere they can't find us."
"HOW?! THE RUDDY CAR IS A PIG!!!" Vernon roared.
"We could call a taxi," the omnivorous giraffe offered tremulously.
Vernon calmed down immediately. "Oh, right then." He let them into the house. "Go and pack, Dudders."
As soon as they were inside, the doors and windows all shut and locked. The muggles panicked, banging on the door. Vernon threw his considerable weight against it, but it refused to budge. Then he strode into the living room, picked up a chair, and attempted to smash the large front window.
The chair shattered, but the window held together perfectly.
It was 5:00pm.
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Five adults were gathered in a hidden room in Malfoy Manor around a set of three mirrors, each charmed to show a different Dursley. The three muggles were currently seated in their living room sporting white-faced tight-lipped expressions.
"Did you get the cameras set up, Siri?" Remus asked.
"They're set and hidden in every corner of the house!" Padfoot was practically wagging.
"Which one of you turned the fence posts into elves?" Narcissa asked the two Marauders curiously.
Sirius and Remus exchanged glances. "We didn't."
Lucius raised an elegant eyebrow at his wife's gaze. "You know me entirely too well to believe that I would do something so…odd, Cissa."
"Don't even imply it," Severus snapped before she could ask. "I should think the solution quite obvious, particularly after your mention of the mall incident."
The eyes of the other four present went wide. "But…I thought they could only be called when Harry was present!" Sirius stammered.
"They've been affecting the known world for thousands of years, Black," Severus sneered. "Surely they are strong enough to influence sections of it without having to draw upon the power of an eleven year old boy!"
"Particularly when they have a certain amount of motivation to do so," Narcissa added thoughtfully.
In one of the three mirrors, Petunia Dursley stood and walked into the kitchen to prepare dinner. "Now watch and learn, Black," Snape said with an evil smirk. "True vengeance is about to be enacted."
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The Dursleys sat down to a large dinner half an hour later. It featured a large ham, pumpkin pie, salad, potatoes, three-bean casserole, and fizzy drinks. The food tasted blissfully normal, and the drinks were wonderfully ordinary.
Then Petunia jumped on the table and began singing "Jailhouse Rock."
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"That's your revenge?" Lupin was confused.
"How was I supposed to know her innermost desire was to be an Elvis impersonator?" Severus looked ready to murder anyone who implied that his plan had been less than brilliant.
In the mirror, Dudley began to impersonate a hamster.
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Vernon hated rodents. They were filthy, unclean things. Ever since he was a little boy, he had always wanted to be an exterminator. So the sight of a whale-sized hamster on his kitchen floor was exceedingly upsetting.
Fortunately, the butcher's knife was still in the ham.
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In the mirrors, Vernon Dursley was chasing Dudley around house with a butcher's knife. Petunia had moved on to a stirring rendition of "Blue Suede Shoes."
Lucius was trying very hard not to laugh. "How long does the potion last, Severus?"
"Twenty minutes," the Potions Master was also fighting back laughter. (The sight of a crazed maniac with a knife is always innately funny to the elite.)
Lupin was worried, however. "What if Vernon catches him?"
"They're headed toward the second floor," Sirius said simply. "The traps I laid will slow them down enough to let the potion wear off." Severus silently handed him a restorative draught. "I can say something intelligent without being sick, you know!"
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Hamster Dudley was tired from climbing all the stairs, but his tiny brain knew that stairs were better than the knife-wielding maniac behind him. The overgrown rodent rounded the corner and headed towards the open door of his bedroom. The fat man seemed to be gaining on him. Hamster Dudley put on a last desperate burst of speed and jumped through the doorway.
He immediately felt like he was encased in molasses. Then aborigines in grass skirts wrapped ropes around him and lifted him onto a platform to carry him to a volcano.
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"Your prank is to make them think they're sacrificial offerings?" Narcissa was staring at her cousin as if he had grown a second head.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Sirius shrugged.
In the mirror, Vernon and Dudley were being lugged up the side of the volcano while the aborigines chanted and strew flowers in front of them. Severus' potion stopped working halfway up-easily seen by Dudley's abrupt lack of twitchiness and Vernon's switching of rant topics from overgrown vermin to "Oh my God! We're going to die!"
In the kitchen, Petunia stepped down from the top of the kitchen table self-consciously and went in search of her husband and son. When she found them, the aborigines were poised at the top of the volcano and ready to throw them in.
Petunia screamed, the illusion crumpled, and the three Dursleys were covered in red ooze.
"Mature, Black. Very mature."
"This from the Elvis impersonator." It took several minutes for Lucius and Remus to separate the two men.
By that time, the three red muggles were huddled in the middle of the living room surrounded by boggarts. Oddly enough, the boggarts were all in the form of poor reproductions of Ronald McDonald, and they were all singing "The Song that Doesn't End."
"Are those yours, Lucius?" Remus asked as he applied an icepack to Sirius cheek.
"Yes, but I wonder when the muggles let them out of the cupboard?" Lucius was forcing Severus to drink a calming potion. "Undoubtedly while we were subduing these two." Severus' glare was notably weaker-"Stun" rather than "Kill slowly."
"Actually, I believe the woman let them out while she was making her initial search for the two whales," Narcissa supplied.
In the mirror, the Ronalds were closing in on the three muggles. Vernon, however, still had his butcher's knife. That's when a little known secret about boggarts was discovered: depending upon the form of the person's fear, a boggart may be vulnerable to muggle weaponry.
Vernon Dursley let out a wild jab at the nearest Ronald…and nearly fainted with shock when the knife connected solidly with clown-flesh. Emboldened by her husband's success, Petunia grabbed a stick of wood and began viciously bashing the second Ronald. Dudley sat on the third.
It was a McDonalds Massacre. The time was 8:00pm.
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At 10:00pm, another god decided to enact a bit of vengeance upon the beleaguered Dursleys.
It started when a pair of ravens swooped through the picture window leading a larger flock of birds in an attack straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. The flock circled and herded the muggles around the house for half an hour before the humans escaped into the cupboard under the stairs.
Then the ravens locked the cupboard doors and shut the grate.
From the vantage point of the mirrors, the five wizards could see that the Dursleys seemed to be asleep and having nightmares. When the three muggles emerged an hour and fifteen minutes later, they were shaking and covered in feathers.
"What do you think He did to them?" Sirius asked quietly.
"Probably something so completely brilliant we would never have been able to imagine it as a punishment," Remus answered. "It makes me feel a bit guilty for what's about to happen."
"Just remember what they did to Harry for ten years, werewolf," Severus said. "That should rid your conscience of any qualms."
And indeed when the chainsaw wielding Santa Claus leapt out of the fireplace yelling, "You've been naughty!" Remus felt much better.
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The Dursleys were exhausted. Their house was in shambles, their reputations among the neighbors were undeniably ruined, Santa had been chasing them for over an hour, and nothing seemed to be slowing Saint Nicholas down. The three had split up to hide in separate parts of the house.
Dudley was the first to be found, hiding in the back of his closet (which was thankfully devoid of aborigines). Santa reached out to him and grinned maniacally. "You've been a very naughty boy, Dudley!" He pulled a piece of taffy out of his pocket. "But since you've suffered so much, I'll forgive you! Ho, Ho, Ho!"
Dudley ate the taffy.
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"So how long is Dudley going to be a hippo?" Narcissa asked-she was the only one of the five still capable of speech.
"Two weeks," Remus managed between laughs.
"I can't…believe…he ate…the candy!" Sirius was in hysterics.
Severus was gesturing desperately toward the mirrors. "P..Petunia!"
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Petunia Dursley was hiding in the kitchen under the sink. Santa looked amused when he found her. "Now Petunia," Saint Nick said gently, "if I see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake, do you really think you can hide from me?" He pulled out a vial of blue liquid. "You've been a very naughty girl," he said as he splashed it on her.
Petunia became a donkey.
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"She always seemed more like the giraffe type to me," Lucius mused.
"Are you kidding?" Sirius was incredulous. "Compared to Lily, Petunia was a complete mmph!"
Remus carefully kept his hand over Padfoot's mouth. "What have we told you about puns, Siri?" the werewolf admonished.
Sirius continued to pout until Santa found Vernon.
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Vernon Dursley had managed to squeeze himself into the downstairs closet-although how he had managed to do so was something that would astound modern physicists for years to come. However, as soon as Santa opened the door, the fat man popped out of there like a buttered onion in a monkey's paw.
"Vernon, Vernon," Santa chided gently, "you should be more careful. You might have damaged your cleaning supplies, you naughty man." Santa poked the fat man in the back with a pickle fork, and Vernon Dursley became a walrus.
His job done, Saint Nicholas took one last swipe at the remnants of the sofa with his chainsaw before he disappeared in front of the fireplace. It was 2:23pm.
At 2:30, the earth opened up and swallowed the three Dursley/animals.
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"That wasn't yours, was it Cissa?" Lucius asked hopefully.
"No, mine hasn't started yet."
"I feared as much."
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The earth spat them back out ten minutes later into a corral made of vines. It was set up in the far back corner of their backyard so that the elf-flag holders made up two sides. The three animals were almost entirely covered in mud.
Inside the house, a little vine grew up the side of one wall and turned on the Christmas lights. Except that the Christmas lights had become firecrackers.
The resulting explosion sent every sock in the house soaring over three hundred feet high. The house burned down in a pillar of orange and red flames fed by the poly-cotton blends that drifted down like oddly-shaped snowflakes to join the blaze, but despite the size of the fire and the large noise created by the blast, no fire trucks arrived.
Instead, ten dump trucks with Merlin's Magical Movers on the side arrived at 3:00am and dumped ten truckloads of elephant dung directly on top of the burning house.
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"Well, that wasn't exactly what I had intended, but I suppose it will do," Narcissa said.
"What precisely were you intending to do with that?" Severus asked curiously.
"It was charmed to permanently stick to the house."
"I can see where the lack of a house would present a problem," Remus said reasonably. "On the bright side, it did put out the fire…"
"And smoldering dung is verryyy stinky," Sirius added helpfully. "I'd say you just made the world's largest dung bomb!" Narcissa looked horrified at the thought.
"Sirius stop helping!" Lucius snapped. "Malfoys do not make dung bombs! Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to call animal control and have the Dursleys shipped to the London Zoo."
Remus grinned. "Ask if it's open on New Years while you're at it."
"Has anyone else realized that the cameras were still inside the house?" Severus said mildly.
Sirius smirked evilly. "One word, oil-head: Pensieve."
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Whew! That was long! Remember reviews are very welcome! (I.e. Was it funny? Was it weird? Should I cut down on my caffeine intake before coming within ten feet of a keyboard?) Also, I highly recommend that you all read my other story The Lesser of Two Evils if this didn't make sense to you-yes, that was a shameless bit of self-promotion. :)
Merry Christmas, and I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!
Also, I'd like to thank athenakitty for unintentionally providing me with the idea for the Dursleys new quarters during one of her reviews. Hope you liked the Christmas special! :)