Harry Potter and The From Of Running
By FurryNemesis
Chapter One
Rincewind liked the cellar. It was a good cellar. It was, for example, a lot better than his boring office, which due to a nasty accident involving the Bursar, a badly-aimed snooker ball from the Archchancellor's office and a resultant unresolved burst of temporal flux from his still-unfixed window had become quite exciting in the space of a few short seconds.
There were some quite unspectacular pieces of mould next to him, and a few fragments of stone where the room had started crumbling quietly into dust. The most exciting thing in the room was the wine rack, which was empty save for a few intrepid cobwebs. He nodded happily to himself in the way that only people who have spent the last few minutes in a state of total terror can. He felt safe. There were, for example, no trays of rocks ready to fall on his head, no sharp and unfriendly slate-shards to cut him open. There was no chance of a deadly, intense, and above all very personal shale slide. As for the sand, well, at that velocity it was just abrasive. All the cruel and unusual geography was striving to fulfill its description several floors above to other people, and, from the thumping sounds and screams, was spreading rapidly around the university. He sat back, closed his eyes and madly hummed a desperate little tune, sanity once again having been abandoned along with whatever was left of his badly-shredded dignity.
At least, he thought to himself, I still have my hat. He pulled it down around his ears and curled up into a ball, just to be sure.
Meanwhile on the first day of term at Hogwarts, things were also not going quite according to plan. The Hogwarts Express had been delayed due to the wrong kind of leaves on the line, four of the first-year boats had been attacked by the giant squid due to a mistimed and very badly misplaced oar stroke from Hagrid and the Sorting Hat had shrunk in the wash and refused to be un-shrunk, claiming that it felt fine like this, thank you very much. The Thestrals all had explosive diarrhoea (the horizontal fountains of excrement from nowhere had sent quite a few upper years into hysteric shock), the stone hogs on the gates of the school had come to life and gone truffle-hunting of their own accord and the front doors were firmly stuck shut due to excessive damp. This was because it was pissing down with rain.
In short, and for no discernible reason, chaos abounded.
It was also clear that something had to give. The odds were on that it was going to be the plot.
Back at Unseen University, some kind of dynamic equilibrium had been established between what remained of the faculty and the former contents of Rincewind's study. Fourteen assorted junior wizards were busy casting shatter spells at any rocks that penetrated the perimeter of the Great Hall while the senior faculty were busy doing what a senior faculty does best: namely, arguing.
"This is all Rincewind's fault! I've told him time and again to keep that damned door shut!"
"But Archchancellor, the fireball..."
"Snooker ball, Stibbons. Snooker ball."
"Same effect by the time it hit the storage racks..." the junior wizard mumbled. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say here, Archchancellor, is that we've seen this before. Remember all that trouble we had with Death and things coming to life a few years back?"
"We don't want any more, but I'll have some custard if you please."
"Oh, heck. Not now..."
"With extra sprinkles on top."
"Damn it, did someone forget to give the Bursar his pills this morning?"
"I think it was your turn, sir...
"It was the Dean's turn. WASN''T IT, DEAN?"
Stibbons winced. The Dean glared.
"...anyway, I think this might be the same thing. But I have an idea. We can get rid of them."
"How?"
"Remember how we sent Rincewind to the Atagean Empire, sir? Hex can do the same thing with anything. All we have to do is get the target into the magic octagon."
Ridcully tossed a fireball at a type 4 granite block (sparkly, friendly but abrasive) that had escaped the attention of the containment squad and turned back to Stibbons. "Are you sure, Mr Stibbons?"
The pudgy wizard stopped trying to brush steaming gravel off his robes, hesitated, thought briefly about the consequences of explaining "No" to the Archchancellor and then said, "Yes."
"So we send them away. Where to?"
"Somewhere... ah, not here. Somewhere else."
"Quirm? I never really liked Quirm. Could do with some falling rocks over there..."
"Er. Right. Not quite what I had in mind, sir. Maybe if we could make it to the HEM building..."
"Right. Oi! You fellows! Pay attention! Form up and follow me!"
"Yo!"
"Damn it, Dean, what did I tell you about the "Y" word?"
"Hut!...?"
"No huts either."
As he gathered up his robe, Ridcully turned to Stibbons, who was muttering ominously under his breath.
"Maybe somewhere from where they can't get back at all... We might have enough power..."
"So, not Quirm?"
"No, sir. Ready? 1,2,3, go!"
"HUT!"
"Dean!"
Shortly afterwards from far across the quad drifted the sounds of much running and righteous zapping.
Dripping wet, clutching various bits of themselves and generally covered in shit, the pupils of Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry eased themselves onto their house benches. A few of the older students cast cushioning charms, while the rest tried to make do with the odd cleaning spell. All eyes were firmly focused, somewhat resentfully, on the High Table, where various seated members of staff were also dripping wet, although not caked in aforementioned excrement. Dumbledore, looking thunderously annoyed, rose and tapped his glass with a knife to absolutely no effect at all.
This is a time - honoured way of attempting to get attention the multiverse over and it usually takes about seven seconds, or whatever the local equivalent is, for one's prospective audience to quiet down. It is, however, considered seriously bad form to do what the by-now-highly-irritated Dumbledore did next (wherever this is possible), which was to cast a sonorus spell at the glass and drag his wet fingertip in short, sharp arcs around the edge.
There was a sound like a panther going reluctantly backwards down a slate roof during the slipping season. Several tortured groans on the general theme of "Aaargh" indicated those students who had failed to cover their ears, apart from Luna Lovegood, who had struck a pose on top of her bench and was conducting with her wand.
Silence reigned. Dumbledore stood up and smiled. Tried to, anyway.
"Welcome, one and all, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We are experiencing a period of magical malaise at the moment. Please be patient. The staff and I will resolve things as quickly as possible."
He turned to the faculty and whispered in a voice of dread, "Weasley twins?"
There was a reluctant collective shaking of heads. He turned back towards the students. who were now sniggering. He'd forgotten to cancel the sonorus spell.
Rallying, he continued. "Before the sorting, I have two announcements to make. Professor Slughorn will be our new potions master this year..." Slughorn, drenched and recently arrived, bowed "... and whilst regretting the untimely resignation" (the smile became a little fixed) "of our Defense teacher last year, I am pleased to say that our former potions master had agreed to take over the role."
At this, horrified whispers, groans, and at least one cry of "Nooo..." from the student body.
"I believe you all know Severus Sn..."
Crack.
Covered in cuts, bruises and gravel, the senior faculty stared at Hex. It looked like an explosion in a glass-making factory that had collided with the contents of a watchmaker's bench. Things twinkled and flashed. Ants scurried around inside glass tubes and there were several beehives within the almost-carnage. In the middle of the mess, Ponder had chalked out a magic octagon. The Roundworld project, recently rescued from Rincewind's study, stood in its own smaller glyph off to one side. Ponder explained.
"The rocks, Sir, are attracted to any human morphic signature, but they're especially attracted to Rincewind's. He was their keeper and they've been in his study for years, you see. He categorised them all. Now they're alive and they want revenge."
Ridcully's brow furrowed. "A bunch of rocks want revenge on MY lecturer in cruel and unusual geography? Bugger that!"
"Sir, these aren't normal rocks. They're cruel and unusual, and now they're flying around the place looking for blood. They don't like being filed, especially not" he squinted at a blackened label rescued along with the Roundworld project. "under Friendly."
The rest of the wizards gave him a blank stare as if to say "get on with it."
"Ahem, anyway, what we need to do is get them inside this magic octagon here" he indicated the central badly-chalked glyph "and then Hex will activate the sequence. If everything goes to plan, the rocks will end up in the Roundworld project over here" he pointed at the little globe "and by that time our bait – that is, Rincewind – will be safely out of the main circle on the other side and not harmed in any way at all. In theory."
There was a rumbling sound from the Dean. "And in reality, Mr Stibbons?"
"Well if it all goes wrong the rocks end up splattered across up to fifteen dimensions - although technically I'm not sure that rocks actually can splatter – causing no great harm to us anyway."
There were various mutterings from the faculty as they remembered what had happened before. "What do we get back in return, then?" queried the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It was a sore point in the memories of everyone who had been previously present that they had been subjected to, amongst other things, a shower of marsupian entrails. The intended trade mass had arrived within the circle at close to the local speed of sound and, for want of a better word, had splashed copiously over the walls and most of the onlookers.
"Well, I've instructed Hex to pick out an object of similar mass and density, so essentially Modo will be getting that new rockery he's been pestering us about."
Ridcully nodded decisively. "Right, that's settled then. Someone get Rincewind up here."
"Ook."
Rincewind was just starting to get the hang of being successfully hidden and was starting to feel relatively safe when for absolutely no reason at all something hairy and orange swooped out of the darkness and snatched his hat off his head. The response was Pavlovian.
"My hat!" he screamed. Then, without a second thought vis-a-vis the several tons of killer masonry that was after his blood, he started running after the Librarian who was now knuckling his way at high speed through the cellars, aforementioned hat perched atop head. At length primate and wizard shot through the Great Hall and out into the quad, a stream of swearwords following the ape across the courtyard.
Some distance behind, but rapidly gaining velocity, a cloud of rocks and gravel was ripping up the turf and giving the ancient cobbles an impromptu sandblasting. This unexpected sound caused Rincewind to break rule 2 of running away from things (Don't Ever, Ever Look Back), whereupon the swearing doubled in volume, vitriol and pitch. Robe flying, the hapless wizard accelerated, and, following the Librarian, crashed straight through the doors of the HEM building. Fear and rage in equal measures powered him up the stairs and through a doorframe, whereupon the Librarian promptly tripped him up. He managed to snatch his hat in mid-air before landing, badly winded, on the floor.
"Ready, everyone?" said the voice of the Archchancellor.
The cold sweat of dread met the shiver of terror half-way up Rincewind's back as he took in his surroundings. He was in the middle of a circle of wizards. Worse, he was in the middle of a magic octagon. No good had ever come of that. He tried to scramble out just as several tons of vengeful masonry blew out the doorframe and most of the wall and bore down on him.
"NOW!" shouted Stibbons.
The world went white.
The world went black.
Rincewind vanished into space, pursued by a small and highly personal asteroid belt.
Snape stood up, cleared his throat, and dematerialised. Just as the shock registered, he was pummeled nearly unconscious by, in approximate order, a screaming man in red robes, several tons of high-grade shale and a flying trunk with hundreds of little legs, all of which kicked him in the gonads.
He flew across a room filled with glassware, and, for some reason, a stuffed alligator. Just after he had fainted, having hit the wall upside-down and gone crashing head first to the floor he, someone poked him with a stick and said, "It looks a bit greasy, Runes. What is it?"
Meanwhile, the entire population of Hogwarts watched bewildered as their new Defense teacher disappeared with a look of extreme surprise on his face.
He was replaced by a scraggly, badly-bearded man in a washed-out red robe who promptly curled up into a ball on the floor and screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Sorry, chaps. The old "fingernails down a blackboard" analogy just isn't going to cut it here.