Note: So, I've been obsessing over Beauty and the Beast ever since the new movie came out. I've gone and seen it twice already and can't get the soundtrack out of my head, and since I've been in the mood to write Harry Potter parodies, this story was the result. Naturally I could have used Hermione in the starring role, but a different idea popped into my head, and I'm actually quite pleased with the way it turned out.

As anyone who's familiar with the original music will probably see, my version of "Belle" is not an exact rendering of the original. I did omit a few lines (mainly the one-liners sung by the villagers), but for the most part, I stayed faithful to the original song.

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. I can't lay any claim to Harry Potter, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, or the original songs I based my parody on. I did come up with my own versions of the lyrics, though.


BEAUTY AND THE GREASE


Part One

The sun shone down upon the quiet streets of a peaceful village, while a red-headed girl walked alone with a wand in her hand. Several people stared as she passed an apple tree and made several apples levitate in the air, though levitating objects were not an unusual sight in this particular village. The girl, whose name was Lily Evans, attracted stares wherever she went because she was the only witch in the entire town whose family possessed no magic. She was a mystery to her neighbors and a spectacle in the eyes of her Muggle sister, who watched the apples float through the air with a sour look on her face.

Ignoring the stares, Lily continued down the street and sang:

"Little wand
Casting so much magic
All these spells that I've learned to try
Little wand, casting all this magic
Perhaps I'll charm—"

"—Stupefy!" cried a village boy, halting the ball his brother tried to throw at him.

Lily watched their antics for a moment, then transformed a leaf into a teacup while her sister Petunia watched in disgust. Lily caught sight of her and sang:

"There goes my sister with a scowl like always
She's come to glare at me some more
I wish that she'd just see
That my strange abilities
Signify that I'm a witchand not a whore!"

Petunia muttered, "Freak!" before turning on her heel and stomping away.

A troupe of Pureblood wizards, Lucius Malfoy included, came strolling down the street and turned up their noses at Lily.

"How does she do it when her folks are Muggles?
Plain and common, you can see
Not a drop of magic blood
She's descended from the mud
Can't believe that she's as magical as we."

Lily went on her way, wandering through the village with her wand in her hand, making flowers dance around her as she walked. She was unaware that Remus Lupin and Sirius Black stood watching her with longing looks on their faces. Sirius sighed and sang:

"I just don't understand why she won't have us
Are we not good enough for her?
Remus, you're a handsome one
And I'd show her so much fun!
She's a challenge to us men, that is for sure."

Ignoring Remus and Sirius, Lily paused in front of a shop that sold spellbooks. She pressed her face to the window, gazing with delight at all the books that promised expertise in various charms, hexes, and potions. Bathilda Bagshot, the owner of the store, stepped out of the shop and greeted Lily.

"Our only Muggleborn in town!" said Bathilda. "What an oddity you are, dear. Have you come to read up on the history of dragons again?"

"Actually, I was hoping to find a biography on Newt Scamander," Lily replied. "Lately I find him fascinating!"

"I'll see what I can find for you!"

Bathilda disappeared inside the shop and soon returned with a leather-bound volume in her arms. Lily took it from her and eagerly turned the pages.

"Oh, look at all this knowledge
From the most amazing shop in town
I only wish my sister
Could explore these shelves and browse them without a frown."

Lily walked away from the bookstore, thanking Bathilda over her shoulder for the latest piece of magical history. Petunia lurked behind, casting furtive glances through the windows of the shop, and raised an eyebrow at all the strange titles she found inside.

Keeping a safe distance behind Lily, Petunia sang:

"Most people wonder how we can be sisters
We're quite as different as can be
She's an awful little freak
I'm the one who's much more chic
Always wasting time with all those spells
She's wasting time with all those spells
Yes, casting all those foolish spells is she!"

Petunia sniffed and took off in the opposite direction, no longer interested in following her sister. Somebody else in town was keeping an eye on Lily, though. A young man with untidy black hair named James Potter was seated astride his broomstick, hovering in the air while Lily continued her walk. Peter Pettigrew, James' chubby sidekick, hovered rather uncomfortably on the broomstick beside him, trying his best not to slide off the handle.

"Are you really going to ask her on another date, James?" Peter wanted to know.

James ruffled his hair, making it look more windswept and dashing. "Of course, Peter! And again if she won't have me this time."

"But she turns you down every time. You've been asking her every week for months!"

"And eventually she'll have to get tired of saying no," James said with confidence. He shot off on his broomstick, zipping through the streets while Peter struggled to keep up with him, and declared:

"Time and again that girl has shunned me, scorned me
But I must have her and I will
I may fail to get a date
But I know it's not too late
'Cause I swear to you that I will marry Lil!"

A group of girls stood gathered outside Madame Malkin's shop, all of them gazing at James with identical expressions of admiration. He waved at them as he flew past and the girls nearly fainted dead away.

"He flies so well
Can you just see him?
He flies so fast
Look at him go!
He'll win that Cup
I guarantee it
He's such a speedy, strong, athletic pro!"

James kept Lily within his sight, pausing now and then to do a complicated trick in the air for anyone who might be watching. Lily never noticed. She reached the front yard of her house and sat down on the steps leading up to the front door. She set down her book and looked up at the sky, watching the clouds form their shapes, and amused herself by making her own wisps of cloud come out of her wand.

Narcissa and Bellatrix Black, two Pureblooded sisters who lived across town, went strolling by and shook their heads at Lily.

"I can't believe
That girl is one of us, sis
How did she ever come to be?
Though she's wearing a nice skirt
Her veins are filled with dirt
She ought to be a Muggle girl
A simple little Muggle girl
Deep down she's just a Muggle girl
You'll see!"

The morning sun rose higher in the sky and Lily stood up, prepared to go inside and pore over her collection of spellbooks. Before she could open the door, though, James Potter came swooping by on his broomstick and halted in the yard. A girl across the street giggled and sighed at the way his hair had gotten ruffled from his flight.

Lily also sighed, but for a different reason. "Potter," she said through gritted teeth. "What do you want now?"

"Only an hour of your time, Lily," said James, stepping off his broomstick. Peter had landed awkwardly nearby and tried to pull a splinter out of his backside. "What will it be?" James continued, climbing onto the bottom step to Lily's house. "A nice dinner? A picnic by the river? A stroll through the town—"

"None," Lily cut him off. "When will you realize that it's never going to happen, James? I will never go out with you!"

James grinned at her. "You keep saying that, but I don't believe you—"

SLAM!

Lily had rushed into the house and shut the door behind her, leaving James with an unfinished sentence. Peter managed to pluck his splinter and flicked it aside, then looked hopefully up at James. "Maybe it's time to find another girl?" he suggested.

"I don't know, Peter," said James, heaving a lovestruck sigh as he gazed up at Lily's bedroom window. "It seems the more she refuses me, the more I've got to have her! Come on, let's go get some butterbeer and I'll think up a new tactic!"

And the two of them climbed onto their brooms and zipped away again.

Lily stood at her upstairs window, watching them fly through the town. Her hands were clenched into fists and sparks came bursting from the tip of her wand. She shook her head and cried:

"Mrs. Potter—
I couldn't bear it!
Mrs. Potter—
I'd rather die!
No James, you'll see, I couldn't stand it
A man like you could never satisfy!
I want to go where I can practice magic
Where no one cares about my blood
It's so difficult to be
Such a curiosity
In this town with no one else like me…"


Mischief was brewing while Lily sat up in her room with a spellbook perched on her lap. A few streets over, James and Peter sat in the Three Broomsticks with their own brooms parked outside, enjoying two mugs of butterbeer. Petunia stood outside the tavern, her breath held as she stared at the glossy broom that belonged to James. It wasn't fair that James and Lily and other freaks like them got to turn teacups into roses and zip around in the air as free as a bird. It wasn't fair! She hated magic, but oh, it would be so nice to do something extraordinary just once, just to show them all that Petunia Evans was more than a sour-faced busybody.

Creeping ever closer to the brooms parked outside, Petunia glanced up and down to make sure she wasn't being watched. At last, she grabbed the broom belonging to Peter and felt foolish as she held it between her legs, but to her surprise the broom actually hovered above the ground. Like a horse waiting to be mounted.

So Petunia mounted.

And ended up with much more than she bargained for.

"Oh!" Petunia cried, unprepared for the swift, jerking motions of Peter's broomstick. It carried her high in the air, much higher than she intended to go, and all her attempts at control fled as panic filled her. "Stop! Stop! I command you to stop!"

But the broom didn't listen. It flew Petunia over the village, traveling over rooftops and chimneys and ignoring her pleas. Soon it was hurtling past a dark stretch of wood known to the villagers as the Forbidden Forest, where nobody had dared to venture for many years. Unknown to the villagers, an abandoned castle lay on the other side of the forest; abandoned except for the lonely man who lurked in its dungeons.

A man named Severus Snape, who had once been a Half-Blood Prince with the darkest, softest, and silkiest hair within a hundred miles. Snape had a fondness for potions and dark arts, but most of all, he enjoyed brewing up hair remedies that could bewitch tangles and ensnare the senses with their beautiful, flowery perfumes. His hair potions could bottle anti-dandruff, brew moisturizers, and even put a stopper on pesky gray hairs. For miles around, witches and wizards came to him with their hair-related woes and came away satisfied with his tonics and shampoos.

But one fateful day, Snape had been mixing up a powerful potion that would make his hair smoother and shinier and free of tangles forever. It was his most difficult concoction yet. Everything seemed to be going fine, until a tremendous boom! caused his cauldron to explode and soak every inch of him with the potion.

It was sabotage. A cruel trick played on him by the major shampoo companies who were jealous of his brewing talents. But the prank was taken a step further, because it actually contained a great and powerful curse. When Snape washed off the potion and tried to continue with his normal life, he discovered that the mixture contained a terrible side effect that could only be reversed by the magic of True Love.

The side effect was grease.

Cursed with the greasiest hair ever known to mankind, Snape fled to the abandoned dungeons of the castle beyond the Forbidden Forest. He tried to wash it out, but nothing worked. All his soap and shampoo were transformed into sticks of butter and jars of oil, and even the cleanest water couldn't rinse out the grease.

And it was straight into this terrible dungeon that Petunia found herself unintentionally flying…