Harry Potter and the bad medical news
Harry and Ginny sat in the white waiting room, blinking at the flickering light above, grasping warm hands and offering the other nervous smiles of uncertain courage.
The surgery of Doctor August Nicapopolis was unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon. The good Doctor was a busy man, and held his practice in the heart of London. The whole room should have been teeming with drunken groans, the plip of falling blood and the muffled yelp of throats clogged with so many used condoms. But all he had were mister and misses Potter, and the smooshed housefly still twitching away on the crumpled Sun gathering dust in a corner.
"It'll be fine." Ginny nodded, and not for the first time. "I don't know why we're even so worried. This doctor's the best there is. Treats all kinds of people. Even a few big celebrities."
"Yeah?" Mumbled Harry, a black brow jerking up.
"E! never lies." She tried to laugh. "Did you know it was Doctor Nicapopolis who perfected the Gere-Pump? Now, whenever an actor finds a nice gerbil, they don't have to worry about it getting lost up there. He was also the first doctor to try and remove Nash Grier's head from his anus."
"Whoa. The whole head? Really? Did he manage it?"
Ginny's hand simply teetered back and forth. "Tests are ongoing." She said. "The point is, this man's dealt with worse. Far worse. We shouldn't worry."
Harry nodded along with her, but felt his stomach cramp again. Skilled doctor or no, the head remained trapped up Nash's backside, Mel Gibson's career could not be resuscitated, and Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was still plagued with a most unusual malady.
When had it started? It was hard to tell. The signs had been there for a while, but, in true English fashion, he had simply not wanted to make a fuss. It went all the way back to Voldemort, and the fateful fight inside Hogwarts. Harry had died, literally died. Dumbledore looked like Michael Gambon, a dead hobbit was under one of the train-station benches. Hell was real, and he was going there.
With that knowledge, it was only natural that he shat himself.
The problem? The shit was neither firm, nor brown, and had nary a speck of yellow corn to be found. Instead, it was white. White as the cliffs of Dover, white as the UKIP party conference, white and sloppy and speckled with clumps of green and grey.
Embarrassed, with nowhere to turn, he turned to the only authority he had ever truly trusted: Molly Weasley. With a cloth to protect his facial orifices, and smelling salts to retain consciousness, Harry had ducked beneath the mouldering threshold and entered the cawing strumpet's wretched hovel. Inside, puddled urine sat uncleaned, and an army of stray cats huddled in earnest around the children who periodically plopped out from between her legs - seeing in the damned babes a free meal. The peasant woman did not even rise to greet him, being so blackened with diabetic sores that she could no longer stand on her own two legs, and so clearly riddled with opiates that she could but grunt at the no-tipping John sneaking out the kitchen door.
Smiling at the charming whimsy of the simple underclasses, Harry offered the scarlet woman a weak wave and explained his problem.
She, in turn, asked for five quid for some baccy and a copy of the Daily Star. So, no help there.
Years passed, and more odd faecal matter drained down his leg and into his sock, disappearing like deviant, inbred chavs into a piss-stained underpass, waiting for fresh grannies to shank. Yet it was not until the pain began that he decided on a visit to the doctor.
Harry had been passing an afternoon as he often did, performing random acts of cruelty on unsuspecting muggles. Being genetically inferior subhumans with an inferior culture, he felt no shame at all in resurrecting Rasputin to fondle the flowerbed in Hyde Park, and was similarly apathetic when - with spiteful relish - he replaced every Starbucks storefront with the familiar blue and gold of Blockbuster Videos, laughing wildly as the hairless, bipedal apes rushed in to huff deep on their own nostalgia, only to emerge seconds later, slavishly sipping on mucus-specked lattés.
Whilst pissing on a gravestone of some muggle nobody, the ache had begun, casting his tangy spray onto two bouquets of lilies and a toy truck. It was pain beyond any he had ever known, pain beyond literary illegitimacy, pain beyond needless character deaths, pain beyond even the soulless gaze of Daniel Radcliffe as ihavealoadedgun lambastes Horns on an internet movie database.
White, watery shit he could handle, but when his recreational grave-pissing went awry, it was time to take action.
The doctor emerging to greet them smiled the way sharks did, and extended a hand as oily as his black hair.
"I don't trust this man." Harry thought, giving the outstretched eel a limp shake. "A gold tooth? A medallion? Either he's a pimp, or's got a two-way mirror in here for his home movie collection."
"Hiya! Howyadoin'?" The pimp greeted them, his voice all old Noo Yoik. "Name's Mickey. Mickey Bubble, nice ta' meetcha."
"Wait, what?" Flustered Ginny. "Mickey Bubble? Where's the doctor? Where's August Nicapopilis?"
"Oh, I'm him, too."
"Ah." She frowned.
"Um." Harry grunted.
"Just a tax thing, I swear!" He promised, lifting high the gold-trimmed Papal portrait hanging from his neck. "Either you two wearing a wire?"
"What?" Snapped Harry.
"Tax thing." He repeated. "Well. Are you?"
"No." He glowered.
"Cause it's cool if you are. I just need to know."
"We're not." He spat.
Eyes, dank and bleak as a weekend spent picnicking in Basildon, eyed them both from head to foot. "Well, come in, come in! We sell everything here. Rolex, Gucci, that shit Madonna uses to keep her face from peeling off. You name it, we got it."
"You're a doctor." Ginny reminded him.
"Right. Right." He remembered, scratching uneasily at a the zebra-striped brim of his fedora.
Inside his quarters, there was no doctory beddy-tably-thing, no stethoscope, or even a computer. And the only medicine he seemed to possess laid in white stripes on an unfurled 50. All around them were lava lamps, beaded curtains and breeze-blocks in cardboard boxes - soon to be exported to Japan as the Dreamcast 2. Outside, some guy called Jimmy was finding out what happens to loud-mouthed rat fucks, as the Doctor fondled himself and sniffed, again and again - until his own septum, withered and bloodless, blew out on the rug.
Being a Lone Wolf Renegade Maverick With a Problem With Authority™, Harry had barely studied at school - seeing teachers, friends and fellow students alike as drains on his individuality. Whilst others worked hard, and became well rounded people, he was busy being standing out on his own, laughing at all the sheeple as he donned his black mascara, filled his parchments with Green Day lyrics and told everyone, far and wide, that he didn't care about what they thought - b-b-but if you could, like, maybe reblog this, that'd be kewl ;) kthxbai!111!111!
So, when the Doctor heard his symptoms and told him to drop trou and bend over, he thought nothing of it. And when he heard the first click and clack of a digital camera, that, too, did not seem unusual. Not even when Nicapopolis began narrating for some medical journal called 'Twink of the Day', did Harry ask questions. He was no doctor.
"Okay," the medical professional sighed, "I got all I need for the PPV crowd, you're gonna' be a big star, kid! Might as well have a poke round, myself, though, test the wares."
Two fingers, slime-soaked breadsticks, found his shoot and dug in, not stopping at Ginny's cry or Harry's shriek, not stopping until they hit something hard.
"Holy shit!" He exclaimed, already fussing about, setting up an elaborate mixture of clamps and torches to better inspect the obstruction. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, wudja look at that?!"
"What?" The Wizard cried. "What is it?"
"An egg."
Harry's mouth clamped tight. His face flushed of all its blood.
"Egg?" His wife whispered. "What? What're you talking about? Harry, what's he - oh, fucking Christ on a pogo stick, there's a nest! Harry, there's a fucking birds nest in your fucking arse. Harry, what the fuck's going on?"
Oh, he knew. Oh, yes, he knew.
It had all started with a boy and his owl. Hedwig was its name, and Hedwig had not been like those other owls, so snooty and up themselves. Hedwig had been magical, with a mind, and reproductive system, unlike that of any common mouse-catcher. The two had grown up together, and in the early hours of the morning, often enjoyed the bland delights of warm beer and stale pizza.
Who was he fooling? Hedwig was his first love. So witty, so intelligent, and full of the raw animal magnetism of John fucking Goodman. Hedwig was the kind of owl you just wanted to pet and pamper, and go sailing with along the endless blue waves of Ibiza.
But just like those trips to Ibiza, Harry had brought something back with him. Some magical, burning, shitting, clawing and cooing ailment. And it had been growing ever since their first tryst in the Gryffindor commons.
Now, all that remained was to bite his lip, look his wife square in the eye, and confess.
"Ginny." Harry whispered, his voice a death-rattle. "I fucked Hedwig."
Her pale face became a ghostly mask, her lips parted in anguish, and eyes - dulled by a failed life - glazed over at last with the utter abandonment of hope and joy. Harry could but watch, frozen numb with horror, as Ginny Potter's mouth filled and burst with warm vomit - disgusted with the man she had sucked off in the McDonalds car park.
FIN