CHAPTER 9
The Fiasco With Water Carpets
Just as Harry's hand was about to close over the snitch, he felt a piercing pain in his scar, as though the dentist had missed his teeth by a few inches. And then he heard it: music. It sounded like the tune used in the "Harry Potter" movies, except higher and more jingly. Harry looked down to see that the music was coming from the ice-cream truck! Harry felt as though… as though………. um… well anyway he fainted and fell off his broom, okay? Malfoy grabbed the snitch and waved it back and forth above his head like an idiot.
"Noooooo…." Katie Bell cried in despair.
The Slytherins cheered loudly and swung their scarves over their heads like desert bandits twirling their swords, while everyone else stared at the Gryffindor team's fallen seeker. Eventually someone had the sense to go to Professor McGonnagal and report Harry's condition.
Harry awoke in a brightly lit room with Ron standing over him.
"Oy, Harry!" said Ron enthusiastically. "Guess what Harry, we lost!"
"And it's entirely your fault!" Hermione added cheerfully from her own bed. She was sitting up, having made a quick recovery from being smashed with a runaway bludger. "So anyway, how're you feeling Harry?"
"Like a moth that's just smacked against a windshield."
"Have a Berty Bots Bean." Ron offered Harry a box, and Harry took one.
"Where am I anyway?" Harry said rubbing his head.
"St. Michael Gerber's Hospital, at Beach World." Hermione said. "At 9:02 in the morning," she added.
"Anyway Harry," Ron flicked a bean into the air and caught it in his mouth, "the Slytherins are still use--uhugg, horse-raddish--yech. Anyways, the Slytheirns are using the field for practice, so we were wondering if you'd like to join us and some of the other Gryffindors for some water carpeting?"
"Some what?" If he had a heypenny every time he learned something new about the wizarding world from Ron and Hermione, Harry thought, he'd be wealthier than J.K. Rowling herself.
"Bloody hell mate, you've never heard of water carpeting?" Ron said, amazed.
Harry shook his head.
Ron grinned. "Well then I can be your trainer!"
Speaking of trainers, a short scene of a Quiddich match between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, back at Hogwarts.
Madam Hootch stood on the Quidditch field and went over the rules about fair play and whatnot.
Cho Chang leaned over to Terry Boot, who was a chaser this year. "Isn't it a bit early for a Quidditch match?" she commented.
"I hadn't noticed," Terry answered. "I was too busy trying to remember the last time that we and Hufflepuff played against each other rather than Gryffindor or Slytherin."
Hootch continued. "…and if the match winds up lasting longer than a month, Beaters, that does not give you the right to pass time by…well there aren't any Slytherins here, so I suppose I'm really wasting my breath. On with the game!" She blew her whistle, and the players took off.
"And …the game is, like...on…n' stuff…" mumbled Winston, the green-haired, un-enthusiastic commentator.
Cho Chang searched frantically for the snitch. She knew she was far cleverer than Hufflepuff's new seeker Kenny Burpgood, but this was the first paragraph Cho had ever had all to herself and she was going to make the best of it by playing up the dramatics. She zoomed around the perimeter of the field on her broomstick, her long black hair whipping behind her. At last, she spotted it! Small, fluttering, golden surface gleaming in the morning sunlight, it's wings flapping like mad, it could only be… the Golden—
SMACK!
Cho screamed as she was knocked off her broom by a bludger! Down she fell, but being the Ravenclaw that she was, Cho had bewitched her broom to catch her if this sort of thing happened.
"…and it-yawn-yaaaawn-grunt-um..it looks as though Miss Drama Queen… I mean Miss Chang, has fallen off of her broomstick but…oh my, look at that. She's back on her broom, but seems to have lost the…er, that little golden thingy with the wings 'n stuff.
" …And Elijah Woodman makes a truly remarkable move…. I mean score for Hufflepuff. So it's now one point for Hufflepuff and zero for Ravenclaw. So Hufflepuff's winning. Yeeey."
The Hufflepuffs in the crowd cheered.
"Yes! We're winning!" Hannah Abbot cried, bouncing in the stands next to her friend Ernie McMillan.
"The game's only been going on for a few minutes. Don't start counting your chickens, Hannah." Ernie pointed out.
Justin Finch-Fletchley turned to some of the Ravenclaws next to him. "Ha ha, you're losing," he said jokingly.
"Who cares?" said Cho's friend Marietta. Unable to get rid of the SNEAK pimples that Hermione's spell had given her the previous year, Marietta had added a EY at the end and covered them all in permanent silver glitter, so it looked like a kind of fashion trend. "So long as Potter's not here to hog the commentary, I'm going to make the best of this game!"
All the Ravenclaws cheered when Terry scored, except for Luna Lovegood, who was busy watching a fight between two dragonflies, and Maggie Gingerlings, who kept insisting that they were all in horrible danger. The other two Ravenclaw chasers, Anthony Goldstein and some guy named Carl, high-fived each other. The Ravenclaw teachers cheered and clapped, Flitwick so excited that he fell backwards into Professor Sinistra's bag of peanuts.
The two houses were indeed excited about their Quidditch match. However, the reader of this story is probably sick and tired of hearing about Quidditch, at least for the moment. So back to Harry Potter.
"So what exactly is a 'water carpet'?" Harry asked.
The three friends were riding their broomsticks again to a place where they would rent their water carpets. Hermione had borrowed a broom from Ginny. They landed in front of an old wet shack that was crawling with snails. Around it fluttered pixies dressed in the petals of tropical flowers. The three of them entered the shabby hut, leaving their brooms locked to a broom-rack outside. The shop was filled with towel racks that displayed what appeared to be colorfully designed rugs. At the end of the shack was a wooden counter where sat a cash register and a small orange soda bottle. As they approached it, orange suds began to rise from the bottle, and a purple genie wearing an orange Hawaiian flowered shit and a jeweled turban appeared.
"How may I serve you?" the genie boomed.
"Could we rent three water carpets please?" Hermione asked politely.
"Three water carpets… that'll be eight sickles each," he said.
Harry treated. They then went to pick out their water carpets. Ron chose a red one with gold decorations of mermaids on it. Hermione took a plain purple carpet with a large picture of a pineapple. Harry gingerly pulled out a dark blue carpet with an elegant silver border.
"Have fun, children," the genie called as they left the shack.
They gathered up their brooms and flew to the beach, which was swarming with Hogwarts students and wizard tourists. They came to a palm tree where Parvati, Lavender, Seamus, and Neville were drinking slushies.
"Hey guys!" said Lavender. "Dean's not here yet, so we just got some slushies and stuff. We didn't want to go without him, so we were wondering if you wanted to just hang out here until he gets here."
"He said that he had detention for mooning Professor Snape," Seamus said. "He'll be here at about ten or so."
"Well," said Harry, "I guess that'll give me some time to buy some beach stuff."
"Great!" said Hermione, "You know, now that I think about it, I should probably help Ron on that assignment thing…"
"Oh yeah, we should." Ron nodded. "I mean you shoul—whatever!"
"All right. See you later," Parvati waved.
Finding a beach store was easy. The town of Beach World was small. It somewhat resembled Diagon Alley, but it was much sunnier, had far more ice-cream joints, and it was absolutely packed with vacationing wizards, many from the United States (or as Mr. Weasley liked to call them, wizard-Yanks).
Harry spotted a large stone building shaped like a castle tower, entitled "Buy Beach Supplies Here. We Are Also Open to Any Suggestions for a Name." From the outside, the entire building looked about the size of one-car garage. He entered to find himself in a medieval-looking warehouse, easily larger than the Quidditch patch at Hogwarts. Harry stared admiringly at the pirates and mermaids on the stain-glass windows, until he realized that he was making them feel self-conscious.
He proceeded then to the towel section. He realized much of the merchandise bore symbols and logos of Hogwarts houses, as well as houses of other wizarding schools around the world like Beubatons and Durmstrang. He picked out a red towel with a gold lion on it. He also got a pair of enchanted swimming trunks that changed colors according to the mood of the wearer, and instructions to an anti-sunburn spell. While he waited in line at the counter, Harry pulled over a chained quill and a notepad on the counter where customers had written down suggestions for the store's name. He finally settled on The Castle Beach Bum, paid for his things,and left to find his friends.
Hermione and Ron didn't lie when they said that they had an assignment to finish. Professor McGonnagal had specifically told them a few days ago that their homework for the week included having fun at Beach World, and that was exactly what they planned to do. They were only a few blocks away from the shop Harry was at, looking for an ice-cream store.
"Oy, Hobbits! I hear good things about that place," Ron suggested.
"All right, let's go there then," Hermione said.
Hobbits was a small out-door ice-cream parlor. It looked like a big wooden deck, with bench tables and a round kitchen/counter in the middle, where workers in the huge Doxie costumes made ice cream and punched cash registers. As Ron and Hermione entered, Dean Thomas nearly choked on his sushi shake.
"What is it?" Lupita Culebra asked from across the table.
"Gryffindors!" Dean said.
Culebra swore, perhaps a bit too loudly. A blond witch at the table behind them glanced up at them for a moment, then went back to writing in her journal.
"I guess we'd better get outta' here," Culebra said in a low voice.
Holding their milkshakes, they walked as low as possible underneath the wooden tables, bumping into a few legs, both table and human. It was then that they bumped into the Weasly twins, under a four-year-old witch's birthday party.
"I know you!" Fred whispered loudly to Dean. "You're the soccer kid!"
"Though I don't believe we're acquainted with your lady friend," George said politely.
"Are you da toof faiwy?" one of the four-year-olds asked, looking under the table.
"Sorry, no time to chat!" Dean said quickly. He grabbed Culebra by the arm and they dashed out of the restaurant.
"That was odd, but I think it may actually work," Fred commented.
"Fred, brother, this has to stop. Now!" George finished with a fierce nod.
"We don't have a choice George! We can't just leave Oliver to his de—"
"What are you two doing in there?"
The two schemers looked up to see Hermione and Ron looking down at them, holding chocolate beetle-eye cones with Bertie Botts Beans sprinkled on top.
"Well you know it's interesting you should ask," Fred began.
"Cookie Monster!" said the four-year-old.
"You see…"
However, the adult supervisor of the party had taken notice of their presence and threatened to tie their tongues to the tail of a wild water basilisk if they didn't leave her daughter's party that instant.
"That woman really should learn to control her temper," Fred said as he and George followed Ron and Hermione to an empty table.
"So when are you going to tell us what you two are doing here at Beach World?" Hermione asked as they sat down.
"Yeah, don't you guys have a joke shop to attend to?" Ron said, taking a piggish bite of his ice cream.
"Actually, that's where this all started." said Fred, "We were at our joke shop, closing up, just a few months ago, on a lovely day near the end of August—"
A blond woman a few tables away, whose face was hidden by her journal, loudly cleared her throat to the tune of the French national anthem.
"Sorry, gotta run!" George said quickly.
"Indeed!" added Fred.
The two through the gate of the out door ice-cream parlor, bumping into a palm tree. Ron raised his eyebrows.
"Normally I'd say that was extremely abnormal, but for Fred and George…"
"Ron, we didn't come her to talk about Fred and George," Hermione said giving her ice cream a quick lick before it could topple off its cone.
"Oh, right," Ron said, lowering his voice a bit. "Well anyway, what was it about me that, oh well you know…what is it you see in me? Other than my 'cute red hair', I mean?"
"Well I know we've had our disagreements," Hermione said, "but first of all you're not nearly as, well, obnoxious as I've made you out to be. I mean sure, you can be quite careless in what you say sometimes, and maybe a bit rash too, but it's really no secret why you're a Gryffindor." She smiled.
Ron loudly munched some Bertie Botts Beans off his fingers. "Really?"
"Sure! You're so loyal to everyone, the way you defended me when Malfoy called me a mudblood second year and got yourself a mouth full of slugs. And you were quite brave during that giant chess game back in year one, letting yourself be knocked out cold and everything."
"Well sure, but you were awfully smart when it came to those potions. Harry told me all about it! You figured that riddle out, and I'll bet even my parents couldn't have done that! You're so trustworthy too," Ron said, making Hermione giggle like a Disney princess. "I mean, if I had been given a time-turner, I would definitely have blabbed. I'd've wanted to tell everyone in Gryffindor about it! And rub it in Malfoy's face, too!"
"Well, everyone is good at something," Hermione commented.
"I know, but I still think you could probably have out-smarted that Dark Lord all by your self." Ron said stuffing the remains of his cone in his mouth.
Hermione blushed. "Oh thank you Ron. I seriously think you could have out-chess-dueled him. Or at least one that immature lemon-haired git Malfoy."
The young lovers laughed at the stupid insult.
"L-Lemon-haired!" Ron was choking on his ice cream from laughter. "That's great, Hermione! I'll have to use that on him sometime."
Hermione sighed. "Realistically of course, neither of us could defeat any one with that spot-light hog Harry always saving the day."
"We're not here to talk about Harry any more than we are about Fred and George," Ron said, with a slight tad of jealously in his voice. An awkward silence followed.
Neither of them was sure whose lips puckered first. All they knew was that one moment, they were staring each other down, and the next minute their tongues were Sumo wresting. This was the finest moment of this school year so far for either of them. Hermione wondered how she could ever have wanted that bloke Krum rather than Ron. And Ron couldn't believe that he had ever wanted to spend time with such snobs like Fleur when he had Hermione this whole time…
"Ah-ha!"
Frozen in mid-smooch, their eyes swiveled to the left. Harry was standing on the out side of the restaurant's wooden fence, holding a large shopping bag and wearing dark blue sunglasses.
"H-Harry!" Hermione was really blushing now.
"I knew there was some thing about you two," Harry said. "But you didn't have to keep it so secret. I won't tell any one if you don't want me to."
"Say Harry, where'd you get those funky sunglasses?" Ron said, hoping to change the subject.
"I just tinted my real glasses using a spell from this book," Harry held up a huge mint-green hardcover book titled Beach-witched! "You can even give your self a tan with this one spell! You've got to be really careful with that one though. A lot of people who try it wind up making themselves look like candy canes the first time, give themselves green and red stripes I mean. You know, because they don't get the brown color mixing right—"
"You've had some caffeine too I see," said Hermione.
"Well yes! I never thought of it happening but I guess I should've known that even the Wizarding World isn't immune to the expansion of Starbuck's coffee shops!"
"Well how about if we go back to the beach and do some water carpeting?" Ron suggested urgently; Harry looked like he might take off like a rocket any second.
"Great idea!" Harry agreed.
The three of them hurried over to the beach. They waved to Ginny, who was sitting on a rock with some other Gryffindor fifth-year girls, watching a group of mermen play volleyball though Omnoculars. Harry could see Seamus, Parvati, Neville, and Lavender sword-fighting with his, Ron and Hermione's broomsticks. Harry ran over to them.
"Ah-HEM!"
Within minutes, their brooms were retrieved, and the seven teens were now in the water on their water-carpets.
"All right," Ron instructed Harry. "Now there's loads of different ways to sit on your water carpet, but the best way if you're a beginner is probably to sit on your knees, like this, and hold on to the front corners, like it's a flying carpet. 'Kay?"
"All right," Harry did as Ron told him.
Parvati and Lavender got tired of waiting, so they zoomed away to splash some Slytherin swimmers with their waves. Hermione, Neville, Seamus, and Dean stayed to watch.
"Now to make it go, just insult it. Remember, the bigger the insult the faster it goes, so you better just say something mild for now. Call it a muffin-head or something. You turn left by tugging the left side of the carpet, and vise-versa. So let's get started." Ron leaned over on his rug and said, "You are the biggest pansy on this beach." The rug was soon moving away from Harry and the beach at a slow, steady rate. "Come on Harry!"
"Um, insult, right, uh, you look like a dragon sat on you!" The water-carpet vibrated a bit.
"Try calling it a cockroach-infested kitchen mat!" Seamus suggested, accidentally setting off his own carpet. "Whoooa!"
"No," said Dean "say that it looks like a, a big pile of dragon dung!"
Hermione, who was looking pretty good in her red two-piece bathing suit (which was not a bikini though), made a weird "What the heck was that?" sort of face at Dean, who shrugged.
Harry sighed with frustration. "Come on, you giant handkerchief!"
Surprisingly, that insult worked. Harry caught up with Ron in a matter of seconds.
"Great Harry!" Ron congratulated his buddy. "Now try steering like I told you."
Harry grabbed the left side of his carpet and began ridding circles around Ron.
"This piece of (Harry said a swear word) is worth something after all!"
"Yes! YES! THAT'S IT!—" Ron's triumphant moment was interrupted when he realized that Harry's carpet was out of control. The whirlpool they had created began moving through the water, Harry gripping his carpet for dear life as he spun around the outside of the waterspout and around Ron, who was yelling for help from the inside. Dean and Neville exchanged glances, and then water-carpeted as far away from the fiasco as possible.
"Oh dear," Hermione reached for her wand, which she had wisely brought with her just in case this sort of thing happened. Right as she was about to utter a spell that could undo the water-twister, somebody snatched her wand away! Hermione turned around quickly. Sitting in an inflatable pumpkin-carriage, dangling her wand over Hermione's nose, and wearing a very tiny hot-pink string bikini, was Pansy Parkinson. Pansy's two Slytherin cronies, Millicent Bulstrode and Hydra Evergreen--a girl with most un-natural bleach-blonde hair--giggled nastily.
"Looking for this, Granger?" Pansy snickered.
"Return that at once, you…"
Another girl behind Hermione finished her insult with something that would have been covered with a beep on T.V.
"She even looks like one too." Lupita Culebra said to her friend Morgana Schmo. "Look at her, she looks like a bloody pug."
Schmo laughed. "Even a mudblood like me can see that!"
"Oh please. How old are we?" Hermione was not taking sides.
"So who shall we hex first Culebra," Schmo asked, tossing her light curly hair. "The Gryffindor ham, or Parkinson?"
"The way I see it, we could let the Gryffindor watch what we do to the bimbos and then she can go warn anyone who's thinking of messing with us!"
"Look, I just want my wand back." Hermione was really getting angrily.
"But why don't we curse them all? Then everyone will know anyway!" Schmo said to Culebra.
"No, my idea was much better. We'll get your wand, Gryffindor, after you watch what we do to these snot buckets. On the count of three, Schmo. One…"
"You'd better not," Pansy squealed, pounding both fists into her pumpkin.
"Three!"
"Dracooo!" Pansy wined.
Schmo and Culebra aimed their wands over their heads and shouted, "Boodius Maximus!"
In a flash of purple light, Pansy and her two friends were knocked over in their seats. When they stumbled back up again, they took short horrified glances at each other, felt their own backsides, and shrieked like banshees. Malfoy surfed over on a black-and-red-flamed water-carpet. If it weren't Malfoy, Hermione might've admitted that he didn't look bad, wearing nothing but a dark green Speedo and a blue bandanna tied around his left forearm. All of the gel in his hair spoiled the image anyway though. Hermione thought of the "lemon-haired" comment she had made earlier, and she began to chuckle to herself.
"Something funny, Mudblood?" he snapped, glaring at Hermione.
Pansy shrieked again, and they all looked to see her and the other two girl's rear-ends, which had grown about three times their normal size.
"WHAD'D YOU MUDBLOODS DO TO THEM?" Malfoy demanded.
Schmo suddenly vanished under the waves. She reappeared behind Malfoy, to stuff a live lobster in his Speedo, while Culebra swiped Hermione's wand back from Pansy.
"Really, aren't you a bit old for toilet humor?" Hermione said, snatching her wand back.
"Speaking of toilet…" Culebra said, dodging an uncontrollably squirming Malfoy as he skidded past her on his carpet, "…look out behind you!" She and Schmo made a frantic attempt to swim away.
Hermione was afraid to look behind her, but she had to after she heard Ron's voice yelling "LOOK OOOOUUUUT!!"
The whirlpool was a story tall now, and spinning like a clay pot on a wheel. It had picked up some new passengers, including Seamus, two nine-year-old girls with their dog, a baby palm tree, a mermaid and some small sea creatures. Hermione pointed her wand to stop the liquid monstrosity, but she was swept up before she could open her mouth.
"Hey, you're Harry Potter!" one of the little girls yelled over the sound of the whirlpool, and pointing at the swirl of peach, black, and white that was Harry. (White being his swimming trunks, reflecting his fear.)
Their dog, an enormous black mop with a tongue, was busy licking Seamus to death while Ron tried to catch Harry.
"Harry?" Ron reached across the twister's funnel and pulled a white stingray from the other side. "Nope!" he threw it away just as it was raising its stinger.
Hermione searched frantically for her wand, trying not to be hit by the baby palm tree.
"Is—this—yours?" the dark mermaid said, holding up Hermione's wand. They all spun so fast now that even talking had become next to impossible.
Hermione quickly grabbed her wand and pointed it at the center of the twister.
"Neo Pinkellus—no wait that's not it." She had just changed the surprised mermaid's hair from black to hot pink.
Malfoy had abandoned his water-carpet and jumped into the balloon pumpkin with Pansy and the other snotty girls. He tried paddling them away from the whirlpool but the waves it was causing knocked the float over.
"Harry!" Ron yelled. "If you can hear me Harry, you have to compliment your rug! Complimenting it will slow it down! The bigger the compliment…"
Harry could see nothing but blurry colors now. He heard Ron's voice though, telling him to compliment the rug. He tried to think of one, but a lifeguard's chair broke his concentration when it was sucked into the funnel and hit him in the back. Think, he told himself.
"Okay rug you win! You're obviously WAY more powerful than that purple rag from 'Aladdin'!"
The whole thing stopped: the water-carpet, the whirlpool, the spinning. And it also, as you've probably predicted, sent everyone flying in different directions. Hermione crashed into Gryffindor first year Charlie Buffit's sand sculpture of Buckingham Palace.
"Scandal!" Charlie exclaimed. "Shenanigan! Outrage! Do you have any idea how many long minutes of perseverance were put into that work of art, woman?!"
The answer he got was to have Seamus land right on top of poor Hermione. Seamus in turn ended up being a landing pad for the two little girls and their dog. Ron landed somewhere in the shallow part of the water.
Harry on the other hand flew high over the island, his mood-trunks still bone white. He could see such a lovely view from this spot, once the clouds had drifted out of the way. He saw the town, the Happy Trees Hotel, the jungles, the beach…he saw sharks frolicking in the sapphire waves, and the beautiful jagged rocks jetting up the water…and it all was starting to come closer to him. I suppose this is the end now. Harry thought. Too bad I found out who was driving—
His thoughts were rudely interrupted by a loud smack.