Somewhere deep in the heart of a dark random forest in a place that is most probably in England and most probably relatively near Hogwarts, a bunch of guys sat huddled around a campfire. They wore long black robes, each of them sporting a charcoal colored tattoo on their left forearms, each of which featured a dark skull and a snake. Their faces were concealed in shadow, but their voices cut through the night like a sharpened knife through something that is not quite so sharp as the knife. In their hands they held something given to them by their dark master, the vilest person to ever live. Lord Voldemort. These as yet unknown objects of such sinister origin were so horribly terrifying, so terribly horrifying, that it is difficult for one to describe just how extraordinarily BAD they were. They were…
Marshmallows.
Ah, my naive little ones, these were no ordinary marshmallows. They were marshmallows that rested on long pointed sticks! Haha. And you thought the Death Eaters were a bunch of fruit loops, didn't you? HAH!
"DAMMIT! THE STICK'S ON FIRE!" yelled Crabbe, Vincent Crabbe's father, the one with the undetermined first name. He shook the pointed stick on which rested his vile marshmallow until the flames that occupied the burning stick finally gave up on their futile quest to convert the elder Crabbe into smoldering ashes for the common good of all intelligent beings, and wistfully disappeared into the wind.
Goyle, the father of the other Goyle who's first name is forgotten and unimportant (not to mention uninteresting and irrelevant), threw the stick on the ground and stomped on it for good measure, just to make sure it wasn't possessed or something like that. These things happen.
In the midst of all of the stick-stomping, a man by the name of Lucius Malfoy stood up and cleared his throat. The other Death Eaters listened intently for two reasons. One of them was that he may have possibly been choking on one of the god-awful marshmallows supplied to them by Lord Voldything (or so he is known as by a certain Vernon Dursley), in which case each and every one of them were prepared, at a moment's noticed and at duty's call, to not care at all and let him choke to death so one of them could fight to occupy the would-be recently vacated spot of leading and most popular Death Eater. The other reason, and most likely of the two, was that he was about to talk, in which case they were to make absolute sure they heard, and ignored, every word that he said so somewhere the plan to rule the wizarding and not to mention ENTIRE world would be ruined so that Harry Potter could save the day for the sixth time running and keep the Harry Potter gravy train rolling, upon which they would be sure to purchase first class tickets. Or maybe they would settle for coach. Hell, do trains even have classes?
Lucius opened his mouth, with the intention to welcome the Death Eaters to the annual Death Eater's "How shall we try but fail to kill Harry Potter this year?" picnic. And he did just that.
"Welcome, Death Eaters, to the annual Death Eater's 'How shall we try but fail to kill Harry Potter this year?" picnic," he said, somehow simultaneously making himself sound both as if he would be happy to be your personal slave forever, and cut your head off and feed your internal organs to a rabid hamster as well. He continued in a tone of voice that more suggested the hamster part was a little more accurate:
"Now, how shall we try but fail to kill Harry Potter this year?"
Rookwood spoke first between thick bites of burnt generic marshmallows.
"Maybe we should sneak into his dormitory somehow by disguising one of ourselves as his best friend, that Weasley kid, and kill him in his sleep."
"No," said Malfoy. "That would be too easy. We need something complicated and unexpected, something that no one will see coming, and no one will understand when they DO see it coming."
"Maybe," suggested Bellatrix Lestrange, "we should pretend to kill someone close to him to lure him into a trap, really kill the person he cared about, and then attempt to kill Harry himself."
"We did that last year," Lucius reminded Bellatrix. "And it was your idea, too. Let's get some fresh material."
"We could," mused Nott, "put the Imperius Curse on Harry and have him subsequently kill Dumbledore and then himself."
"But he can fight off that curse, remember?" snapped Malfoy, angered by the stupidity that surrounded him.
There was a loud pop followed by a shrill laugh from a voice that continued to say:
"Or perhaps we could wait until the Master has come to approve the plans?"
The Death Eaters, including the older creepy Peter Pettigrew who had Apparated shortly after Voldy, bowed to the Dark Lord and murmured several things that sounded suspiciously like something about three-legged chickens and faulty firecrackers.
"Ah, very well," said Voldemort, waving off his supporters. "I am glad to see you all have escaped Azkaban…" He looked around. "Now, here is my plan to try but fail to kill Harry Potter this year." Voldemort then proceeded to explain his plan.
"Why, Master, Lord, Sir!" squeaked Wormtail. "How delightfully evil, complicated, and totally inconceivable! Nobody will ever see it coming…"
"And nobody will ever understand it when they DO see it coming," interjected Malfoy.
Voldemort rubbed his hands together in evil delight.
"Then, my Eaters of Death…" started Voldemort. The group grumbled as they did not like the way that made them sound conspicuously homosexual. "Let's get to work!"
Somewhere deep in the heart of another forest, that was definitely near Hogwarts, though a few hours in the past, we left Foaly and Commander Root alone with a disembodied voice and a buttload of suspense.
"Buttload?" asked EDE, while her muse psychically controlled her typing.
"I didn't say buttload," replied the muse, without looking up from her magazine. "I said ASSload." She turned another page. "Fix it."
And so the confused author did just so.
Somewhere deep in the heart of another forest, that was definitely near Hogwarts, though a few hours in the past, we left Foaly and Commander Root alone with a disembodied voice and an assload of suspense. I believe we were about to reveal that by an ironic twist of fate, the creature who had in fact been rustling the leaves and talking to the Commander and Foaly, just happened to be… A centaur. But, as we are making all things in this chapter interesting, I will say that this was no ordinary centaur (well, technically it WAS, but I am trying to find a way to elaborate), and was in fact Bane, that one mean centaur who didn't like Firenze in the first book. Being the odd paranoid beings they tended to be, the centaurs of Hogwart's Forbidden Forest were always suspicious of potential attackers. However, when Bane saw Foaly, he felt as if he should reconsider his instinctive hostility, and try to make peace with one of his fellow centaurian brethren.
"Brother!" said Bane to Foaly. Foaly blinked.
"I'm not your brother…"
Bane sighed. Most people were either incurable smartasses or took things too literally. This strange horsey-dude was definitely one of the two, if not both. Bane sighed again to emphasize his point.
"Yes, I understand…"
"What's your name?" asked Foaly suddenly.
"Bane."
"Haha, that's a stupid name."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because, when you spell it backwards…" Foaly paused for a chuckle.
Bane prompted Foaly to continue.
"Yes?"
"When you spell it backwards, it spells ENAB!" Foaly suddenly doubled himself over in hysterical laughter, beating the ground with the metric wrench he was holding. Why a centaur from a FAIRY city had a metric wrench, nobody knows. But he clearly did, and it was fulfilling its sole purpose in the story by being pounded against the mossy ground that was the forest floor.
Bane blinked. Then he just sort of wandered off without saying anything, thinking to himself how worthless some things could really be sometimes.
Foaly then commenced throwing lemons at trees and yelling accusations at them about breaking the ship and/or stealing his socks. Even though he didn't wear socks, as they don't fit over hooves very well.
Commander Root stared for a moment, blinked, and then decided to pass out, as it would be just easier to not have to deal with the random weird nonsensical things he had just seen and heard (mostly consisting of the fact that a metric wrench had somehow ended up in Foaly's possession).
"And since the paths of matter and antimatter are inversely identical when produced by the introduction of gamma-ray photons to a bubble chamber of superheated liquid hydrogen, matter and anti-matter should be equal in the universe, if the Big Bang was truly what it is thought to have been," said Ela, drunkenly. "However, the decaying rates of both matter and anti-matter are slightly different, true, but too small to explain the over-abundance of matter in the universe unchecked by anti-matter that should destroy it."
She was answered only by the occasional hiccough of a snoozing dorm-mate. But, since she was too intoxicated to realize that nobody was listening, or in fact even conscious, she continued babbling to herself until she finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion of her alcohol-weakened mind.
Harry Potter woke up in the morning with a dull throbbing in his scar. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. He had just had the weirdest dream. He had been jumping up and down in some green Jell-O, completely minding his own business, when a broom in a spaceship came and told him that he had eaten all the pizza and must now die, and then Harry ran away and the world exploded and then Voldemort was yelling something at his conspicuously homosexual minions which was the point where Harry woke up. He shook his head again and got dressed in his school uniform, having accidentally managed to slip on his pants inside out and backwards, put each shoe on the wrong foot, and wear his socks on his hands, while successfully failing to notice. He almost tripped over the limp body of his friend Ron who had fallen asleep in the doorway. Harry kicked him awake and then ran, tripping a few feet further ahead.
Harry looked down at his feet and realized what had happened.
My feet must have randomly switched places last night, he concluded, then shrugged and walked off.
Downstairs in the common room, the young and refreshingly un-creepy Peter Pettigrew was amusing himself by running up the stairs to the girls' rooms and sliding down when the stairs reverted themselves into a steep ramp that was meant to, of course, keep stupid annoying boys out of the girls' dormitories. That demographic just happened to be the exact one that Peter fit into, so the stairs, naturally, rejected him.
Saint Dane had somehow ended up on the common room floor in his sleep and was now just waking up to discover that fact.
All of the girls were in the Great Hall, eating their breakfasts early, though none of them had very large appetites after the previous evening's engagement with Firewhiskey. It also did not help that the food was revoltingly bad, as the House Elves had reluctantly agreed to let Gollum try his hand in cooking breakfast for once, which was a horrible mistake on their part. But Gollum wasn't blamed, since most people didn't even know he was there, indeed, nor did many even know the House Elves were there in the first place.
Eventually all of the hungover students from Gryffindor had to prepare for class. The non-hungover sixth years from Gryffindor, many of whom had been petrified the day before by the Mandrakes and were still resting in their dorms when the Firewhiskey incident took place, looked at their tired faces and bloodshot eyes oddly. Ela noticed this and started laughing insanely, making the other sixth years wonder exactly what she was high on, and where they could get some.
Well, to make a long story short, the Gryffindors, not to mention all of the other students at Hogwarts, attended all of their classes that day. Eventually time passed on, until it came time for their next Defense Against the Darks Arts lesson. With, yes, you got it, Ms. Luna Day… Ah screw it. Professor Bell.
"Class, take out your wands," said Luna in her annoyingly sweet voice, perching on the edge of her desk, flaunting her crimped hair and crimson robes. The boys unconsciously leaned forward, looking very wide-eyed and… Just like guys who have got the serious hots for the woman talking to them. Which was, incidentally, the case. Ela snatched out her wand in a huff, as did all of the rest of the girls. Holly managed to fling her stuff all over the floor at the same time, causing what she hoped would be enough distraction to break the trance the guys were under. It didn't.
"Now…" started Luna, tapping her wand on the edge of the desk. "Today I'm going to show you all how to…"
Suddenly the lights went out leaving behind an impenetrable blanket of dark darkness. There was the loud crash of shattering glass, several shrieks from the students, a couple of "Moo"'s from God knows where, and a very loud scream that sounded very much like Luna. The darkness left as soon as it had come, leaving behind a trashed classroom and a bunch of kids wondering where their DADA teacher had gone. Yes, Luna, Miss Perfect, was missing.
"Professor Bell?" cried out Dean and Seamus. "Where are you?"
"Who cares?" mumbled both Parvati and Lavender.
Amongst the mixed reactions of the students, the door to Luna's office opened and Luna Bell stepped out unharmed. She put of a pair of sunglasses and addressed the class.
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you all remember this…"
She took out a neuralyzer and flicked a couple of the switches. She pointed it at the class and pressed a button, expecting the bright blue flash that usually happens when neuralyzers are activated. But nothing happened. Luna shook the small metal tube.
"Damn batteries!" she yelled, beating the neuralyzer against her desk.
"Actually," said Hermione, standing up, "the batteries aren't DEAD, it's just that, as page 4,782 of Hogwarts, A History states, electronics cannot be used here because magic is so abundant around us."
"DAMN!" yelled Luna. "Er, I mean… Class dismissed. Go read a book or something."
"But I've read all the books in the world!" complained Hermione, Artemis, and Remus, simultaneously.
"I don't care!" shouted Luna. "Leave!"
Not wanting to piss off their already pissed off teacher any more, they followed her instructions.
"That's was oddly strange," said Manga to Rachel as they left the room.
"Yes, yes it was," Rachel agreed.
Oooooh, what oddness! You will have to wait until chapter 11 to find out what that was all about. And I'll try as hard as I can to get the next chapter posted in a few days. As this one was horribly delayed. =) As you wait, I advise you to read my friend Red's fanfic. It is random and funny. Here's the link: Well, until next time… =)