A/N: Hello all. First of all, I'd like to say that I am in fact a HUGE fan of the Harry Potter books and this story is NOT meant to be offencive or disrespectful to the boy-who-lived or the marvellously talented (don't you just HATE her sometimes) J.K.Rowelling. I just couldn't resist. If you like it - Huzzah! My first parody worked! If you don't like it ... well, please try not to be TOO scathing with your review :p
Enjoy, or don't :D
On with the pointlessness...
Andaren xxxx
Chapter One - The Questionable Start
Doublebore, headmaster of the only - and therefore rather overcrowded - school of witchcraft and wizardry in Britain, checked his watch as he paced tge rather ordinary and slightly dull road of Privet Drive. It wasn't a very good watch; it had no hands, or even numbers, and told him nothing except that he had a rather unsightly ink stain on his nose - it did, however, look rather impressive with its pretty little planets and moons whirling around its face like so many fireflies. If there was one thing that Doublebore prided himself on, it was looking impressive - it kept the wizarding world in constant awe of him and handily distracted everyone's attention away from all the niggling little things that kept going wrong at the school - like the occasional, and usually accidental injury of students due to the escape of dangerous creatures or the fact that the school toilets were rather unhygeinically emptied into the lake across which all students were required to sail in their first year.
Doublebore took a moment to silently congratulate himself on keeping that rather disgusting secret for so long, tried and failed to scrub off the ink stain from his nose, then took something that looked like a cigarette lighter from the inside of his robes and clicked it open.
At once all the lights in the street extinguished. Completely went out. Total darkness.
"Wow!" said a cat sitting on a nearby fence, "that was impressive, but won't the muggles wonder why all the lights have gone out?"
"No," said Doublebore, "for I, headmaster of Half-Bored school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, have cleverly made it so that everyone will belive that it is a perfectly ordinary, if rather inconvenient, powercut."
"Why will they think that?"
"Because it is a perfectly ordinary, if rather inconvenient, powercut - I just thought it sounded impressive to let you believe that it was down to me."
"But the put-outer!" said the cat.
"What's a put-outer?"
"You're the greatest wizard of our time," said the cat incredulously, "and you don't know what a put-outer does?"
Doublebore shrugged.
"Can't you even guess?"
Doublebore shrugged. The cat sighed and rolled its eyes. Doublebore shrugged some more, looking incredibly gormless and not at all like someone we should be trusting with the charge of our children in a field as volotile as magic.
"All right," said the cat slowly, "I'll explain, but I want you to listen carefully, because I am not going to say this more than once."
"Ok," said Doublebore.
"A lighter," said the cat in the most patronising tone it could muster, "is used for lighting candles and fires and those nasty death sticks that humans call cigarettes. Hence it is called a lighter. It lights things. Maybe in the past it may have been used to light street lamps, had it been invented. Now do you understand?"
"Err," said Doublebore.
"Therefore," the cat continued, obviously unwilling to let Doublebore any time to confuse himself further, "we can conclude that a put-outer does the opposite of a lighter, which is ...?" it waited hopefully. And waited. And waited. Doublebore just continued to stare at the vexed animal in a rather vacant fashion."
"It puts things out you nit!" the cat exploded.
"Ahhh!" said Doublebore, enlightened, "what does it look like?""
"You are holding one," the cat said acidly, "in your hand at this precise moment."
"This?" Doublebore asked, holding up the thing that looked somewhat like a lighter.
"Yes," said the cat.
"This thing that looks somewhat like a lighter."
"Yes!" said the cat, finally feeling as though it was breaking through.
"It's not a lighter..."
"Finally!" the cat was elated.
"It's a sweet-dispenser."
"Yes, exactly! It's a ... what?"
"It's a sweet dispenser," Doublebore said, tipping two yellow sweets into his palm, "sour lemon - want some?"
The cat slumped, feeling as though it had let itself in for a very long night.
Just then the cat was spared the indignity of trying to strike up further conversation with the witless professor by the arrival of something very stange, unexpected and - for any muggles who may have happened to see it - somewhat alarming. A motorbike, far bigger than anything that had ever been seen racing down muggle roads at break-neck speed ridden by teenagers with a weird taste for danger, was currently racing towards the cat and Doublebore at breakneck speed ridden by something very large and very hairy. It was not, however, on the road. It was in the sky. It was flying. It was far noisier, and, in the cat's mind, far scarier than a full passinger jet that was about to crash on a hugely-popular outdoor festival, killing millions.
"What," shrieked the cat, "is THAT?"
"It's Hybrid," said Doublebore.
"It's what?"
"It's Hybrid, the groundskeeper at the school," said Doublebore calmly, "he's late."
"Late?" shrieked the cat, incenced, "LATE! He's flying an oversized motorbike over a muggle area! He can't bring that thing here! There'll be panic! There'll be riots! The secret will be out!"
"Relax," Doublebore said calmly, "no one will notice."
"No one will notice! Look at it! Listen to it! The only way the muggles won't notice is if they are all deaf, dumb and currently residing on the other side of the planet!"
"No one will notice," Doublebore said, "because the writer does not want them to notice ... it would ruin the story entirely. Therefore we are going to ignore the fact that Hybrid's motorcyle is both huge and noisy and assume that the residents of this street are, for the purposes of this scene, all deaf, dumb and currently residing on the opposite side of the planet."
"But isn't that kind of...?" the cat spluttered.
"I guess that's why the story's called 'Harry Plot-Holes' said Doublebore, "I guess a lot of things aren't going to make sense."
"But that's just plain lazy!"
"Sh!" said Doublebore, "remember that we're fictional characters, entirely at the mercy of the writer. One wrong word and we could be killed in the next keystroke for ticking her off!"
"Oh right," whispered the cat, looking nervously around incase the writer was watching, "sorry!"
Doublebore turned away as the rather large and hairy thing that had been riding the rather large and scary motorcycle came towards him, carrying a bundle in his arms. He was also covered in soot.
"Got 'im Mr. Doublebore, sir!" said Hybrid.
"Ah, good!" said Doublebore.
"Who is he?" the cat asked, craining its neck to see the baby Hybrid was holding.
"Harry Plot-Holes," said Doublebore, "the only person to face Lord Moldyshorts and live to tell the tale!"
The cat and Hybrid winced.
"Don't say his name!" the cat hissed, "say 'He-who-must-be-shamed', will you!"
"What?" said Doublebore.
"I can't say the other title," said the cat, "the writer will be sued to high heaven - why do you think we all have stupid names?
"Oh, right," said Doublebore, "No, I don't think I will say that - saying that takes longer than simply saying the name, and I simply can't be bothered doing it, sorry."
The cat ignored this and looked at the baby instead.
"That's a nasty cut he has there - that's going to scar," said the cat, "but ... no! It looks like ..."
"Yes," said Doublebore, "it's a question mark - kinda neat, don't you think?"
"No," said the cat, "can't you remove it? The child doesn't want to go through life with a questionmark on his head! Imagine how much he'll be bullied over it!"
"No, I can't remove it and even if I could, I wouldn't."
"Why?"
"Mostly because I don't want to - and also because scars are manly. I have one over my knee that is an exact map..."
"Oh do stop!" the cat begged, "I can't standpeople who boast about their scars! It's a blemish, a wound, an ugly mark left by some traumatising and probably painful event! Boast like that again and I may just have to scrath your eyes out!"
"Ok, ok!" Doublebore said, "keep your fur on. I'll just leave Harry here. then we'll go back to the castle and have a party."
"Party? Why?" asked the cat.
"Everyone's doing it, thanks to Harry here. Moldyshorts is gone. No one has to put up with the stench any more!"
"I see," said the cat, "why are you leaving him here?"
"'Cos this is where his aunt and uncle live. They'll treat him like dirt, but there is a fabulously important reason why he needs to be here, so don't even bother to ask why he hasn't been put up for adoption!" With that he placed Harry on the doormat and turned to leave.
"Hang on!" said Hybrid, making everyone jump because no one had noticed that he was still there, "yer jus' gonna leave 'im on the mat all nigh'? In this weather?"
"Yep," said Doublebore.
"Why?"
"'Cos the writer said so."
"Ah righ'" said Hybrid, "Jus' one more question. Who the 'eck is this cat?"
"Well, that's simple, " said Doublebore, "it's none other than professor Mac-moan-at-all, the transfigartion teacher at Half-Bored! Ok, professor, you can change back now!"
The cat stared at him.
"No, really - change back."
The cat stared.
"Professor Mac-Moan-at-all?"
"Sorry I'm late!" said professor Mac-groan-at-all, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, "What have I missed?"
Doublebore and Hybrid did a double take.
"But if you're here..." said Doublebore slowly.
"...Then who's the cat?" Hybrid finished.
"What cat?" asked Mac-moan-at-all.
The cat was gone.
Doublebore gaped.
Hybrid gaped.
Mac-moan-at all looked extreamly confused.
Baby Harry woke up and started crying at the pointlessness of it all.
And, above them all, the lights suddenly came back on.