Chapter Four

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"I had almost hoped that Hogwarts would be exempt from this," Dumbledore said after a long moment. "Previous Headmasters, as well as myself, have taken precautions against... ah... Mary Sues, as you put it." He tilted his head slightly in Dean's direction. "There are numerous protective enchantments on the school - I daresay, too many at times. Yet it seems that someone has found a way around them."

"Dude," Dean began incredulously, then seemed to catch himself. "Umm... sir... Professor... With all due respect..."

Dumbledore waited patiently while Sam struggled to hold back laughter at the unadulterated "Oh crap" look on his brother's face.

"It's just that Mary Sues aren't exactly known for abiding by any sort of rules... they just sort of do what they want, and it doesn't look like any kinda spell can hold them back. I mean, in My Immortal, Good Charlotte was apparently able to find Hogsmead... and, well..."

"Yeah, that shouldn't have happened. Among other things," Sam put in. He winced for a moment, remembering just how terrible that particularfanfiction had been.

"What's Good Charlotte?" Harry wondered aloud, glancing between them.

"A... band."

"A Muggle band," Kate put in helpfully.

"Yes, indeed," Dumbledore said his eyes darkening slightly as if he too were remembering the horrible creature known as Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. "Out of the 453,684 – and counting mind you – fanfiction's that our particular fandom has inspired you would very well shudder at the sheer amount of horror that has befallen our beloved school."

Harry Potter turned a sickly green color and muttered something about 'crossovers' but all else was incoherent. The narrator is personally very relieved at that.

"Yeah, well," Dean said sighing heavily. "What do we do with this one?"

"Yeah," Kate chimed in. "How do we fix this mess?"

"Fix?" Dumbledore repeated, looked at her over the rim of his glasses.

"Yeah. Er... yes, sir."

"I regret to say that you fail to recognize the severity of the situation, Miss...?"

"Devon. Kate Devon."

"Miss Devon, there is no simple solution to this sort of problem."

"Sorry, sir?" Harry sat forward. "There's... not a solution?"

"Not one that I've found, no, Harry," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "We have very little say in the matter. Either the... ah... crisis, if I may be so bold... will eventually go away on its own, or an outside force will remove it. I'm sure you remember the sudden, troubling disappearance Miss Way."

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure she tried to kill Voldemort or something, and vanished into thin air... then things went back to normal. But, sir, how did that-"

"It's a mystery of the most perplexing sort, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "I can only speculate that her author grew tired of the story and moved on to more intellectual pursuits."

Dean made a noise that was halfway between a scoff and a laugh. "So it... went away on its own?"

"They all do, in time. Much like a bout of the flu."

"And everything will just go back to normal when it's over?"

"That seems to be the trend."

"How long does it take?"

"Anywhere from days to years, with The Girl Who Lived currently holding the record for most enduring."

"Years?" Dean choked out. "We don't have years! We can't stay here-" He turned sharply toward Sam. "What did L suggest earlier? That we salt and burn it? That could work, right?"

"As she is not a ghost or apparition of any sort, I doubt that," Dumbledore said gravely. "However," and suddenly the twinkling had returned to his gaze. "I have heard that if a Mary Sue is defeated within her own story, the shock and horror will have her spontaneously combust. Or turn to a pillar of salt, depending on the Sue mind you."

"Salt and burn it is."

Harry was silent for a moment, seeming to struggle with words. "How would we... defeat a Mary Sue? I mean, I remember that Snape-"

"Professor Snape, Harry."

"Professor Snape... tried to kill Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way about three times..."

"I doubt that he was sincerely trying to kill one of your classmates."

"He slipped monkshood into her daily glass of 'bluud'! Look, it doesn't matter, the point is that she drank it, and didn't die. There's no way to defeat them, they're invincible."

Dumbledore nodded. "There is no universal solution, I'm afraid. It varies greatly depending upon the Sue. The only method that has thus far been discovered - and it's still in the experimental stages - is to trap the Sue within its own rules."

"Huh?" Dean asked, looking as if Dumbledore had begun speaking Arabic.

"For example, Miss Way established that she was a vampire, despite the Ministry regulations against vampires attending Hogwarts."

"Yeah, but c'mon, we just said that they don't listen to those rules."

"My point, if you would allow me to make it, was that later on, Miss Way claimed to have 'slit her wrists and waited for the bleeding to subside', which is quite an impossible feat for a vampire. The theory is that if someone had pointed out to her, at that precise moment in time, that she could not possibly be bleeding, the shock of having fallen into one of her own plot holes would lead to the aforementioned combustion."

"Wait, Professor - you're telling me that we could have ended that load of rubbish before the forty-fourth chapter... if we'd just pointed out a few flaws in her reasoning?"

"It's a very recent idea, Harry, but yes."

"Great," Harry muttered. "I'll just go... antagonize a hungry troll, or taunt a blast-ended skrewt now..."

"Wait a sec," Dean interrupted. "And what if that doesn't work? What if she just breaks the laws of physics and doesn't care? Or finds an unrealistic loophole to explain it so that, in her world, her logic is sound?"

Sam muttered in agreement, his eyes darkening. There was no telling what the Mary Sue could do.

"There are a number of risks involved... but from studying the termination of one Mary Sue, whose name I cannot disclose, it seems that if they have not previously established a loophole, then they cannot create one after the fact. It may take some time and several attempts, but eventually, she will make an unquestionable mistake, or otherwise let her guard down."

"What do you mean, 'some time'...?"

"I suggest you make yourselves comfortable."

"Just bloody brilliant."

Edward Cullen had never met anyone quite like B. Of course, that is to be expected… B was just that kind of person. One of a kind. He stood hunched over in a slightly predatory posture, thorns of black hair falling into wide bright crimson eyes that could be as innocent as a child or hold the haunting inhuman appearance of the serial killer that – in actuality – he was. At the moment he was staring at Edward Cullen, with such intensity that it was suddenly possible to bend items with just your mind. He was also grinning widely with one of those creepy stalker smiles that sent you running for your life.

"Do you ever blink?" Edward Cullen asked suddenly.

B made some sort of unintelligible shriek that sounded ecstatic with joy.

Edward listened for a moment and furrowed his brow in confusion, as he – no doubt – read the thoughts forming in the young killer's mind. The narrator assumes they were something along the lines of, "Holy wolf! Edward Cullen just spoke to me! His voice is so musical. I wonder what he does to his hair. He is so HAWT! He's looking at me. Squeeeee….." and other such gibberish. But Edward Cullen does have nice hair. And eyes like Amber. Which are very pretty. Apparently.

"Yuz shood bwink! Tooo mucho intesuity on mah Edwar!"

"It's Edward."

iz wat mah siad!"

"It's Edward Cullen," B repeated, enunciating each symbol with some sort of silvery reverence. He turned his gaze to Lilac for a moment, as if daring her to butcher his idol's name again.

She didn't take the hint. "Wat I said!"

"No, you didn't. You said-"

"Look... ah, B, it's not a big deal, really-"

This was apparently the wrong thing to say. B made another of those odd noises he was becoming so proficient at and began leaping up and down again. "Edward Cullen! Just! Said! MY NAME!

Edward Cullen cringed. He was a hundred-seven-year-old vampire. Super strong, super fast. Super sparkly. Super pretty. And he found himself terrified of the two mortals he found himself entertaining at the moment. One of whom could apparently breathe fire. The other just stared a little too much for anyoneto be comfortable with.

"Look," he said finally, loosing a bit of his carefully cultivated patience, "I don't know who you two are. I don't know how I got here, and I don't know what you've done to my girlfriend. But I'm... willing to negotiate. If you let me out of this room, and promise not to hurt Bella, I'll... sign your copy of Twilight... give you a strand of my hair... er... whatever other mildly disturbing request you have."

"o mah kgawd!"

"That's the most masochistic, self-sacrificing thing I've ever heard," B announced. His stare was still unwavering. "I like that." He paused for a moment before looking at Lilac abruptly. "Edward Cullen is probably very hungry."

"I'm fine, actu-"

"Lilac, you're the most sickeningly sweet person ever to grace the planet, aren't you?" Lilac didn't seem to catch the insult, and just smiled broadly, apparently under the impression that her 'influence' had reached B as well. He continued, "You know what? I bet your blood tastes just as sweet as you look, isn't that right, darling?"

Lilac beamed. "of coars iy deos!"

"Wouldn't it be the nicest thing ever if you could give poor, sweet, beautiful... sexy... Edward Cullen your blood, Lilac? All of your blood?" B smiled, pulling a knife from his pocket and turning it over in his hands. "That would be the best thing you could do. It would make Edward Cullen happy. You could make Edward Cullen happy... and when Edward Cullen is happy, he gives that little crooked smile that just makes me want to cover him in strawberry jam and lick it all off... Mmm..."

Lilac had, up until that point, seemed half-convinced. But at the last phrase, she abruptly jerked away, staring at B, her sparkling blue eyes wide with what one could only assume to be horror.

"...Hypothetically speaking, that is."

Edward Cullen's eyes - which, for the sake of variety, the narrator will describe as 'chagrined' - darted back and forth between his captors. "You're going to kill me, aren't you?" he asked at length, then seemed to amend himself. "No, because you know what I think? I think I died long ago, and my fans are my eternal punishment."

"O! Ur Noot Ded!" Lilac said giggling and she practically ballet danced over to were Edward Cullen was standing, immobile and petrified. She took one of her porcelain coloured hands and ran it slowly along Edward Cullen's long, broad, muscular... chest. His chest people. Seriously, the narrator knows exactly what you all were thinking as it wrote that sentence.

"Um..." Edward Cullen paled if that were even possible. "That's worse."

There were some things in life that one took for granted. That the sky would be blue, the sun would rise, and that touching Edward Cullen in B's presence would trigger an unstoppable rage, the likes of which the world had never witnessed before.

"Get in here."

"Why, what did I do?"

"You know what you did. Why did you attack Lilac?"

"C'mon, Sammy, why would I NOT attack her? I mean, I'm crazy, you know that, right? I've been insane for most of my life, and I've been annoying you for two years. How can you even be surprised right now...?"

"Do you think that maybe in the future you could work to control your outbursts? Especially around her! She's a friggin' Mary Sue! She breathes fire! You realize that she could, you know, attack BACK one day?"

"Meh."

"Do you feel at all bad about what you did, bearing in mind that she was crying when they took her to the hospital wing?"

"How about... no."

"Well... then I hope that she wasn't horribly traumatized... for your sake." He sighed heavily and turned around, running a distracted hand through this hair. "Dean is getting a tour of the Defense Against The Dark Arts room," he said nonchalantly.

B of course couldn't care less. "Did you see Edward Cullen? See his hair...his eyes... his beautiful sexy-"

"Yes, B. I did. Shut up."

"I mean... I knew that he was going to be gorgeous. You could see that just by reading the book. But..." a dreamy sigh, "he's just so much more perfect in real life... you know?"

Sam stared at him for a few seconds before promptly turning around and leaving the room.