Joanne's Unexpected Adventure
It was the first day of the summer holidays and Joanne was bored, not a good thing to be really when you have another month and a half off school but that's the way it was. She'd done everything she could to get into the school kid on holiday mood; staying in bed 'til past twelve, throwing all her school uniform into a corner, shuffling downstairs in her dressing gown to pinch the dog's place on the sofa after baiting her into the kitchen by kicking her bowl up and down it a few times. Her mother, trying to clean the dining room but failing because Joanne had migrated from the TV to sitting in front of the computer, said, the first of which would to turn out to be many times, "I'll be glad when you go back to school!" Joanne grunted and tuned out the rest of her mum's whinging about going outside and to stop sitting there with the curtains closed, ignoring her until she just waited until she left to go and laugh at Philip Schofield on This Morning. Her eyes never left Jelly Blobs of Doom on Neopets where she was manoeuvring around a particularly slow-moving blob of orange goo.
After finishing the game, she sat and attempted to think of something to do. Fanfiction? She hadn't read anything on there for ages because the stories were always so long and after looking through the latest entries and finding nothing of interest, she was even more bored. Then her eyes fell upon a parody of the first Harry Potter book. Hmmm, what if she was to write a parody with everything thrown in?
That afternoon, after spaghetti hoops and cheese on toast as brain fuel, the project began. Her plan was as follows – Draco, often portrayed as an evil little scruff with very nice hair, was going to turn out to be a good guy after all. He would defy his father and Voldemort and join Harry Potter's little gang even though for the past five years he has absolutely loathed them, hurling abuse at every possible moment, saying mean things about Harry's friends and generally being a pain in the bum. Even more strangely, everybody was going to just accept this personality change as thought they were expecting it all along. Hermione, originally the bookworm and voice of reason turns into Mione the Super Tramp, complete with short skirts and belly button piercing and immediately begin working her way through the male population of Hogwarts, including the teachers. Ron suddenly stopped being a bit of a berk and became buff over the summer holidays, deciding to work his way around the female population of Hogwarts whilst maintaining a tempestuous on/off relationship with Mione which would often involve screaming matches in the Great Hall over who had slept with who. Harry, fed up with being dumped at his Aunt's every year decided to leave and become a wizard on the edge, withdrawing large amounts of money from his vault and suddenly being able to learn hundreds of really complicated spells and living somewhere where even Dumbledore couldn't find him. He gets sucked into another universe to become a Dragon Master because it is his destiny, where he gets bullied at the school for being a pathetic human but turns out to be more powerful than them because he's Harry Potter, boy genius. Eventually he is let back into his own world where with his new skills he triumphs over Voldemort and gets a nice girlfriend, more often than not Ginny Weasley, heading for Super-Trampness but not quite getting there. She also performs Bat Bogey hexes at every conceivable opportunity.
Neville is ignored; Dean and Seamus are ignored because they're not important and are there for the sole purpose of filling up the Gryffindor Common Room and Great Hall at times of festivity, much the same as Lavender and Pavarti. Cho Chang has mostly been banished to a life of sobbing in the girl's toilets over Cedric and wandering about aimlessly so she and Harry can have the occasional uncomfortable glance when passing in the corridor.
Joanne was really getting into the story and had just started on a juicy love story between Draco and Hermione, including plenty of Mudblooding and Evil-Gitiness, when the computer stopped working. She hit it a few times and got it going again but the interruption had broken her concentration and she gave up, leaving her story for another day. That night she lay in bed and looked at the ceiling, new plot ideas swirling around her head. How about Dumbledore and McGonagall getting it on? She was going into the final details, which involved Snape walking in and being far more open-minded than you'd expect when a blue mist began seeping underneath her door.
She ignored it.
The blue mist became a blue torrent.
She still ignored it.
The blue mist swirled and grew to the height of a person, pulsating with an otherworldly light.
Joanne snored.
Finally giving up on a dramatic entrance, a hand materialised from the mist and slapped the sleeping girl around the face. Joanne sat bolt upright and stared around, seeing the bright light she growled.
"Mum! The security light out the back is on again!" (She had tried to stop this light by taking the bulb out but evidently they had replaced it.) She then lay down and went back to sleep.
Furious with this lack of screaming, OMG-ing and 'please-don't-hurt-me-ing', the mist dissolved to reveal a tall, beautiful woman with hair like rippling moonlight, and a face as terrible as the darkest winter. Joanne woke up.
"Puny mortal!" The woman cried; her voice like thunder, "I have come to rid thee of thy evil ways!"
"Eh?"
This threw the woman, usually they were begging for their lives by this time.
"You have been writing a parody of all the imaginative talent displayed by thousands on fanfiction, and I have come to reveal your punishment!"
Joanne finally sat up and did a category one strength sneer at the woman. "Who are you and what are you doing in my room?"
"Who am I?" she shouted, "I am the muse of fanfiction, the spark of an idea within a reader's mind, the force of -"
Joanne interrupted, "Yeah, whatever. Now go away."
The midnight-blue robes of the woman swirled as a wind suddenly blew through the bedroom, knocking over chairs and sweeping all the books and paper on Joanne's desk to the floor. The woman pointed an accusing finger at the girl and proclaimed,
"You will spend a year in the world of the book you choose to mock, then you will learn that disrespect comes at a price! We will meet again, and you shall bow down to me with the reverence I deserve. You have been warned." And with a flash the muse was gone. Joanne put it down to some dodgy baked beans and went back to sleep.
The following morning dawned bright and clear. Birds were singing, the guy next door was cheerfully hoovering his car as loudly as he could and somebody couldn't be bothered turning the burglar alarm off in the next street. All this noise didn't wake Joanne up though; nothing short of revving a motorbike next to her bed could wake her. The postman came and delivered his letters then walked off up the close, sprinkling elastic bands as he went. Joanne's mum brought the post in and frowned at a thick envelope addressed to
Miss J Fitzpatrick,
The Back Bedroom,
7 Harbury Close,
Long Marston,
North Yorkshire
She went upstairs and threw the letter at Joanne, being unable to open the door due to all the rubbish on the floor but being unable to get into Joanne's room was a regular occurrence so her mum didn't think anything was strange.
"Joanne, you were talking in your sleep again. Who were you yelling at?"
The radio suddenly burst into life, drowning out Joanne's reply of;
"Hmph."
Joanne listened to her mum going back downstairs and the sounds of This Morning filtered up through the floorboards. After listening for an hour to a mixture of Century FM's early morning breakfast show and what the latest summer fashions were from downstairs, Joanne suddenly became aware of the letter stuck to her face. Reaching up and peeling it off, she brought it close to her eyes and studied the wax seal, a shield with a lion, a badger, a bird and a snake on it. Turning it over, the sloping green ink spelled out her name and address. She was excited, after reading about it in Harry Potter; she'd always wanted one of these. Ripping the back open, out spilled two sheets of parchment. As she'd hoped, one told her she had been admitted for a year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the other was a couple of books and stuff. She sat up, random thoughts from the previous night filtering through. Tall woman… smoke… lots of yelling. Nope, she couldn't remember the rest of the dream, a pity because it sounded like a good one to have written in her dream diary.
She got out of bed and threw the letter onto the desk, wondering who could have sent it. Charlotte? No, she was in Majorca. Emma? Not the practical joke type. Peter? She was only going out with him because he smelt nicer than a lot of the other boys in her class at school; he probably found it on EBay and thought it would be a funny thing to send her. She'd have to ask him where he got the seal from though because that was seriously cool. What she didn't notice though was the lack of a stamp on the front.
Joanne went out shopping to Tesco with her mum and tried to slip a four pack of Mars bars in when her mum wasn't looking, but it didn't work as well as she'd hoped and had to go and put them back again. Arriving home again, she went to open the front door and found two letters in the porch, identical to the one she had received earlier. Picking them up, she put them on the table in the sitting room for later, not noticing that they fell down the back when her mum plonked a bag of library books on there.
The following morning, her mum found seven identical letters amongst the usual bank statements and offers of a free blender if she ordered from the catalogue within the next three weeks. She asked Joanne who was sending them when she appeared at around three in the afternoon, but Joanne didn't know. Perhaps Peter had gotten a bulk pack of replica Hogwarts letters and gone a bit overboard on the joke. She texted him saying thanks but ten letters was enough. He texted back asking what on earth she was talking about. Joanne decided he was being deliberately vague and ignored it.
The next day was a Saturday and when her dad opened the front door, twenty letters were in the porch and later in the day when he opened the back door, several more were jammed into the windowsill outside. Joanne rang Peter and asked why he was sending all the letters, he replied that he hadn't sent her any letters and would she like to come round and watch his Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD. She said no she wouldn't and to pack it in with the Hogwarts letters.
Sunday morning revealed a porch full of letters and a whole line of them wedged in the windowsill outside, causing her dad to start ranting about the sealant coming loose and people breaking into his back garden at night. Joanne decided to read them all to see if they were all identical. After managing twenty-three she gave up and took for granted that the next forty or so were probably the same. She also began thinking that it might not be Peter after all, though her sister had said that she often wondered about that boy. Joanne was reminded of Harry not replying to his letters and entertained the ludicrous thought that the letters might actually be real. Nah, surely not.
Whoever was sending these letters either had decided to give up or had run out of writing paper because no more letters appeared between then and the end of August, when Joanne was getting ready for her first day of college. On the morning of September the 1st, Joanne was doing what she usually did in the morning, lying in bed until she became hungry enough to get up and make herself breakfast. What she wasn't banking on was a flash of blue light, an explosion of smoke and a tall woman suddenly looming menacingly next to her. The Muse had decided that the gradual building of dramatic tension was wasted on Joanne, and had speeded things up in a shot at scaring her senseless. Unfortunately this tactic didn't work as the atmosphere was ruined when Joanne's radio came on with an advert for a furniture sale at Dovetail Mills, on until next Friday. Joanne sat up and glared at the woman for ruining her morning lie-in, a poor category two glare because it was too early for the effort required for category one. The Muse, outraged that her entrance was ineffective once again, just grabbed Joanne by the arm and they both disappeared with a bang. Joanne's mum called up from the living room,
"Joanne! Stop that banging!"
And that was that.
The muse and a scantily-clad Joanne spitting blue murder appeared in the middle of King's Cross Station. Several men and women in business suits looked over at the commotion then seeing a girl in a nightdress swearing to thin air, decided that the hadn't had enough coffee and ran for their trains. Joanne was livid, how dare this, thing, haul her into a train station when she wasn't wearing anything. The Muse smiled smugly, congratulating herself on having eventually annoying this girl who was so unimpressed before. After ten minutes of being yelled at though, she gagged her with a wave of her hand and dragged the struggling Joanne, who was doing an alarming job of working her way into a previously-unrecorded category of apoplectic rage, over to a brick wall. She bound Joanne's arms to her side and began speaking.
"You ignored my warning, and the letters, so now, through your own fault, you will be entering the magical world completely unprepared. Here are your things, seen as you couldn't be bothered getting them yourself and if the uniform doesn't fit that's your own fault too, and here's your wand, a temporary wand of course as it will only work for the year that you attend Hogwarts."
Joanne had stopped struggling and was thinking up a whole range of nasty things she would like to do to this woman, starting with clawing her eyes out.
"You will walk through this wall here onto Platform 9 ¾, unfortunately you'll have to do it by yourself so you get the full experience of being a student at Hogwarts otherwise I would have tied you to the front of the train and let you get there that way."
She unbound Joanne and neatly sidestepped the death-lunge, laughing evilly.
"Now, off you go, the clocks have stopped and won't start again until you get on that train, so you can take as long as you like whinging and stamping your feet, and you can't leave the station either."
Indeed, as Joanne looked around from her vantage point on the floor, (she'd tried going for one of the Muse's legs but the Muse didn't have legs and she'd slid straight through her), all the people had been frozen in time. Spinning around she was going to have a last go at stabbing the woman with a biro she'd found when she realised she was alone. Luckily for the readers of this story, Joanne wasn't the stamping, whinging or gazing tearfully up at the ceiling and wondering what she'd done to deserve such punishment type of girl and instead sent an all round sneer/glare combo at nothing in particular, promising revenge on that woman if it was the last thing she did.
Joanne opened up the trunk and pulled out a set of black robes, she pulled them on and rooted about until she found the one thing that might be good about this whole stupid business- her wand. It was around ten inches long made of a dark brown wood and she had no idea what was in the middle of it. Waving it produced nothing whatsoever which dampened her enthusiasm and she stuffed it in her pocked instead. There were a couple of books, parchment, ink and quills as well as a selection of her clothes from home. Joanne wasn't pleased to find that this included a bright green jumper she was given three years ago and had successfully hidden in the back of her wardrobe never to see the light of day again, or so she had hoped. Looking round and realising what was missing, she yelled,
"What! No owl! How am I supposed to be a witch without an owl?"
There was a period of silence then a birdcage suddenly dropped out of mid-air, containing a bad tempered Little Owl. Joanne stared at it and it turned its back to her and started preening angrily.
"That's it?" She asked. "What a stupid little bird. I bet it couldn't pick up a post-it note, never mind a letter."
The owl turned around again and growled, rattling its bars and giving its new mistress the evil eye. Joanne hitched up an eyebrow back and picked up the end of her trunk with one hand and the cage in another, the owl vainly trying to bite her arm off, then she strode forward through the brick wall and into her new world.
She stalked down the frozen platform, sparks from the trunk trailing in her wake. The owl emitted threatening noises until Joanne banged the cage into a garbage bin, knocking it out. As soon as she dragged her luggage onto the train, the door slammed behind her and the whistle blew. The compartments she came to were all full of chattering kids, but she at last found an empty one and left her stuff in the doorway as she couldn't be bothered moving it. Debating whether to throw the owl out of the window, she sat down and considered her position. First of all she'd need some friends then she'd need to learn enough magic so she could seriously hurt that old bag wearing the blue tablecloth next time they met. So deep within the musing was she that she didn't realise that somebody wanted to sit with her until a blond-headed boy tripped over her trunk and landed facedown on the seat opposite. Realising whom this was, Joanne perked up a bit. Draco Malfoy might be a malicious little toe rag but he was very fit too. Draco straightened up.
"Who are you?" He asked, "This is my carriage."
"Does it have your name on it?" Joanne replied. She was disappointed that the real Draco wasn't nearly as good looking as Tom Fenton. Draco sneered, "I'm a prefect, I don't need to put my name on it."
"Well goody for you and I don't care if this is your carriage or not because I'm staying."
Crabbe and Goyle who had been scaring first years both fell over Joanne's trunk as they came in. Joanne declared,
"Ooh look, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum have arrived!
Draco looked furious, "Right, that's twenty points off for cheek, thirty for obstruction, and ten for having the ugliest bird ever."
The owl had woken up again and now was slightly cross-eyed as well as being a bit mangy.
"True about the bird, but I'd like to know how you're going to take off points seen as I'm not even in a house yet."
Draco looked her up and down.
"Where are you from then?"
"Mars."
Draco glared. "Don't get smart with me, after you've been sorted I can take as many points off as I like."
"Well, it isn't exactly hard to be smart around you is it seen as you've got Dumb and Dumber for friends."
Crabbe and Goyle cracked their knuckles menacingly. Joanne cracked hers back, daring them to start. They didn't. Draco, fed up with not being able to intimidate her, stood up and sneered, "I'll be keeping an eye on you." He then motioned for his henchmen to move the trunk out of the way, eventually getting impatient and striding over it just as they eventually got it moving, tripping him up and knocking him into the compartment opposite where he was immediately mobbed by his Slytherin fan girls from the fifth year.
Joanne stared out of the window, recognising the Yorkshire moors. So she had to go all the way down to London to get a train that went back up north again? Why couldn't there be more stations? She thought that she'd better go and find Harry, Hermione and Ron seen as the books were mostly about them after all. Wandering up and down the carriages, she finally found their compartment and opened the door. They looked at her strangely as she sat down.
"Err, hello," said Ron.
"Hi," replied Joanne hardly glancing at him, instead studying Harry's scar. "It looks more real than in the film."
Hermione looked confused, "Pardon?"
"His scar. I'm Joanne by the way; some stupid woman dumped me here and said I have to spend a year in the magical world so I could write proper stories about it."
"So you're a journalist?" asked Ron suspiciously.
"Not really."
Hermione butted in, "What woman?"
"Your hair isn't very bushy."
The ensuing silence lasted a long time.
"Right," said Hermione slowly.
"Do you mind if I call you Super Tramp or would you prefer Mione?"
Before Hermione could curse her, time froze again and Joanne slouched in the seat, crossing her arms and waiting for the Muse to turn up again. After a flash and lots of smoke she gracefully swirled into view.
"Do you have to do that every time you turn up?"
The Muse glowered and instead produced a roll of parchment.
"The rules say that you are not allowed to tell the other characters anything about your real purpose for being here as it would disrupt the cannon behaviour, and in the circumstance of the subject failing to produce a convincing alter-ego as it were, a past shall be created for them." She looked pointedly at Joanne over the top of the roll. "I have to erase the information you just gave them now. Do anything like that again and I'll erase yours too!" With an even bigger flash she disappeared. Joanne yelled,
"Can I have another owl? This one looks weird!"
The only answer she got was a rasping noise as the owl attempted to file its way out of the cage. Time suddenly started and the other three looked slightly unfocused for a second before Ron said,
"Err, hello."
Joanne sighed. "Hello, I'm Joanne and I didn't get kidnapped in any way shape or form and forced to spend a year in the wizarding world so I could find out how the characters really behave."
"Okay," Said Harry slowly. "So what are you doing here then, I haven't seen you around Hogwarts before?"
"That would be because I haven't been at Hogwarts before."
Harry looked slightly offended and Hermione swelled like she was about to tell Joanne to get lost but sensing that it would be best if she got on with these people, Joanne elaborated.
"Sorry, my stupid owl has been getting on my nerves and Draco fell on me earlier."
Harry raised an eyebrow, Hermione looked amused and Ron burst out laughing. There was a clang as Joanne's owl tried to throw the file at her.
"So are you in our year then? How come you didn't start Hogwarts in the first year?"
Joanne thought up an answer quickly, "I went to Durmstrang, but we moved back here. I didn't like Durmstrang much, too much Goulash."
This seemed to satisfy them, though Joanne privately suspected that the Muse was having an input with that one. They spent the rest of the journey telling her all about Hogwarts, which amused her as she probably knew more about what was going on than they did, and it was dark as the Hogwarts Express hissed into Hogsmead Station. Joanne got off and was about to follow Harry, Hermione and Ron into a carriage, not being able to see the Thestral which annoyed her in the aspect that she'd quite like to have seen a skeletal horse, when Hagrid called over the crowd.
"Joanne Fitzpatrick! Over 'ere! Come on, ger a move on will yeh!" Joanne glared. She was being forced to enter the castle with a bunch of first years. Sitting in the damp boat with three other kids, all half her size and scared silly by Draco telling them they were going to be fed one by one to a giant newt and the ones it coughed up again were the ones who would be allowed in, Joanne resisted the urge to push them in the lake so she would have more leg space. After getting to the far side and congregating in the entrance hall waiting for the sorting they were eventually ready and told to get in a line. Joanne looked ridiculously out of place and decided to take this out on the eleven-year olds nearest to her by elaborating on the giant man-eating newt idea by giving it thousands of sharp teeth and telling them that it chewed them whole, and really slowly and because she was in sixth year, she didn't have to do it. After successfully making most of them cry and one boy wet himself, McGonagall led them in. Sniggers immediately started as Joanne stomped in but withering looks from her shut several of them up. The Sorting Hat started singing and Joanne sighed again, choosing to look at the cloudy ceiling instead of those staring at her.
"The past years have brought much unrest,
And hope is hard to find,
But though the evil manifest
Good and light can darkness, bind.
The four houses, though far apart
Can as one, resist defeat
Kindness, Friendship and the Heart
Can spill Hatred from its seat."
"Who comes up with these poems?" Joanne muttered to herself.
"Gryffindors, the brave, the fighters
Defenders of the light,
With their swords of justice, smiters,
Striving to keep hope bright."
Joanne rolled her eyes, "Somebody pass me a sick bag."
Hufflepuffs, the quiet but strong,
Working tirelessly and loyal,
Steadfast when the evil throng,
And modest of their toil."
"They look a bit gormless to me," sniffed Joanne, wondering where the toilets were.
"Ravenclaw, the clever, the wise,
Strategy and learning are friends,
The slothful are in their eyes,
Failures in the end."
"Well I hope I'm not in that one then," thought Joanne, thinking of her morning lie-ins.
"And Slytherin, proud of mind,
And ambitious in deed,
Take care not to cross this kind,
They are a resourceful breed."
"That sounds more like it!" Declared Joanne, but when she spotted Draco smirking at her she changed her mind, it would be more fun to annoy him if she was in another house. The loud applause told her the hat had finished and she watched as one after one the kids in front of her were sorted, a couple of whom she was pleased to see, still looking wildly around for the giant newt.
"Joanne Fitzpatrick." McGonagall called. Joanne stepped forward and sat on the stool, the hat being placed upon her head by the Professor. Joanne sat in silence for a couple of seconds, waiting for the voice like it happened in the movie but the voice she heard wasn't the one she wanted to hear.
"Well, how do you like this world so far then?" Asked the Muse, amusement clear in her voice. Joanne snarled, "Oh, I'm just having a wonderful time, standing there like some kind of alien, a foot taller than all the rest of the little sprogs, listening to some old hat wittering away and now I have to listen to you!"
"Now, now," said the Muse, "Be nice or I'll put you in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff and you can miss out on all the interesting stuff."
"But I thought the point of me being here was to find out what the characters were really like."
"I can change the rules especially for you see as you are so irritating." The Muse seemed quite taken with the idea.
"Fine, everything is just amazing now will you stick me in a house already, people are starting to stare."
Indeed, Professor McGonagall was about to tap the hat and ask what was taking so long when Joanne suddenly stood up, giving the old dear a bit of a shock.
"Gryffindor!" Bellowed the hat. Joanne dumped it back on the stool and stalked to the Gryffindor table, which was cheering. She sat down next to where Hermione had cleared a space, rolling her eyes at the blatant overacting. "Hmph!"