A/n: Hello, my lovely Dragons! I have a couple things to say about this chapter. ONE, If any of you are wondering, the recipe for the alcohol is real. It tastes pretty good too. TWO, any and all French in this chapter is supposed to be bad and not make much sense. THREE, I hope you all enjoy what happened in France, and if you have any questions about my reasoning for why this is the way it is, then PM me and I will do my best to explain.
Also, I apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes. I just had a minor operation on my arm where they had to numb it. Please tell me if you see any so I can fix them.
Enjoy!
Harry grinned in excitement. Finally, the 40 days were up. He would finally be able to see, smell, /drink/ the fruits of his labor. It had taken him days to pick the génépi flowers for the alcohol recipe he'd found, since there was a ten stalk per person per day limit by local law. It had, surprisingly enough, been in the Black Manor Library, in one of the grimoires. He had had to find 40 proof yellow plum brandy, and then soak 40 stalks of génépi and 40 sugar cubes in it for 40 days. Then it would be ready.
As a result of having to pick the flowers in the mountains of France (the only place in the world that they grew), he had decided that the whole operation would be done in France. Although, he was really only doing this for the taste, not for the alcohol. He hadn't been able to get drunk since he had become the Master of Death, because that apparently meant that such things as the effects of alcohol and drugs were shared between them, and it took a lot to affect Death.
He opened a bottle and took a whiff. Mmmm, it smelled sweetly floral, almost like a perfume. He took a sip, and then a larger sip. He looked around to check on the other bottles, absently noting that the room was looking a bit fuzzy. Maybe it had grown fur...fur was soft, so maybe the walls were soft. He leaned against one and verified that no, walls were not soft. It was too bad, because they were getting fuzzier by the second.
He felt a tug on his bond with Death, and pulled back, accidentally summoning Death to his side. Death stumbled as he popped into existence beside Harry. Harry laughed and held out a tall clear glass bottle of the génépi to him. Death took a sip, and then a longer sip. Pretty soon he and Harry were laughing as they bumped bottles and drank. They were only buzzed. That was as far as they were going to go.
And then they got drunk.
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Reborn was used to seeing weird things, he lived with a talking crow after all, but this took the cake. Death was floating in midair and very carefully taking his clothing off and folding it into neat piles that crumpled into messy lumps as they hit the floor. Harry was sitting in the corner snickering to himself and chuckling aloud every once in a while, like someone had just told him the funniest joke in the world. He glanced at Umbra, who appeared to be in the same position as him. Their bosses were drunk, and showed no signs of being sober any time soon.
Death looked up at them as they approached, and then motioned for them to float up to him. Which was physically impossible. For both Reborn and Umbra (in his current form, that is). They shared a glance again. This would be a long night, and it was only just starting.
They sat on the grassy ground and resolved to make sure that Harry and Death didn't cause any major accidents. Like tsunamis, or earthquakes, or walking forests. It was unlikely, but the two of them had never been drunk before, so there was no telling what might happen.
Still, they weren't prepared for when the strangeness started. Harry had finally noticed that Death was stripping. He promptly stopped laughing, stood up, and stalked over to Death. He grabbed what was left of Death's clothes and said, "No, no no no. This not the place to be doing that. Stripping is for... uh...bathrooms! Yeah! And...and bedrooms! And nude beaches, for all I know!"
Death paused, appeared to think it over, and nodded. "I have no bathroom, I have no bedroom, so therefore, we must go to this... this nude beach." Death's words were not slurred, in fact, the more he drank, the more articulate he was. Harry, on the other hand, just talked faster.
Harry nodded so enthusiastically that he nearly fell over and said, "That is the best idea I've heard all day! Allon-something!"
Reborn and Umbra sighed in unison. What the hell had they gotten themselves into?
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Sometimes Umbra really regretted agreeing to be one of Death's helpers. Sure, most of the time it was fun and he got to motivate (torture) his minions with illusions, but things like this just cancelled all of that out in one swell foop.
He watched with utter disdain as Harry (he refused to let them call him Potter) raced towards the ocean, flinging clothes off as he went. It was a very good thing that he had cast a subtle Notice-Me-Not charm over all four of them, because Harry had somehow managed to sprout wings out of his shoulders, and had gotten stuck somewhere between human and crow.
Death was slowly following behind him, folding all discarded clothing into neat piles, which meant that instead of a fairly straight line of crumpled clothing leading to the ocean, there was a meandering line of neat clothing piles.
Umbra glanced out to the water to make sure Harry wasn't drowning, and was met with the sight of a nude Harry Potter standing on the water's surface yelling "This water is freaking cold!" and "Here, fishy, fishy, fishy...". Potter luck struck again. Harry had managed to finally find the /one/ substance in the entire world that could get them drunk. Génépi.
Meanwhile, Death had finished folding the clothing and apparently didn't feel like going swimming. He waved Harry back to the shore and motioned further up the beach where there was a volleyball net. He said something, Umbra was too far to hear, and Harry nodded. They both took off at a run towards the volleyball net, bare cheeks (and other bits) bouncing, and Umbra was once again thankful that Notice-Me-Not charms worked as well as they did. Especially when Harry's wings just suddenly disappeared.
Umbra motioned for Reborn to watch over the clothing and other items strewn across the sand, and went to go 'supervise' the pair of drunkards. When he got there, they were discussing what to use as a volleyball. And then Death had an Idea.
See, the reason most people think of demons as short red people with horns and a tail is because a long time ago, a demon, who just so happened to like that form, went around and convinced so many humans that that was what demons look like, that it just became "common knowledge." See, demons are shape-shifters. When in hell, they take a form of their own choosing, one that is comfortable for them.
However, when a demon is summoned to Earth, he takes the form of whatever the summoner is visualizing, which meant that for the past thousand-or-so years, all that the summoners had been expecting/wanting was short red people with horns and tails.
And then Death got drunk and had an Idea.
Death motioned toward the ground as he and Harry finished their conversation. He did the quickest summoning ritual ever (he was Death after all), and a dark pillar appeared for a moment, the signifier of a demon summoning, before lowering like a curtain. When Umbra saw what form Death had summoned the demons as, all he could do was laugh.
The first time in a thousand years that they get summoned as something other than the stereotypical demon, and they get summoned as miniature demon sheep. Miniature demon sheep! They were volleyball sized fluffy sheep with red horns and demon tails, as well as the red eyes that demons keep, no matter their form. Ha! Miniature demon sheep!
And then Harry picked one up, the sheep frantically bleating, and he and Death moved to either side of the volleyball net after they summoned a fence to keep the 'volleyballs' from running away. Harry shouted, "We're serving sheep! Tu vas quelque part!" and tossed the demon sheep into the air and batted it to Death's side.
Death bounced it back even as he said, "Serving sheep? We're eating them? You can't do that, they're mine! And I want to toss them around like little hackey sacks!"
This went on for a while, until finally the sheep hit the ground, and bounced high into the air before exploding into large amounts of brightly colored confetti. Umbra watched, mouth agape, as the confetti hit the sand and melted into sand that was just as brightly colored as the confetti. It looked like one of those Sand Mandala things some monks made.
He quickly conjured stones in a ring around the area where Death and Harry were playing. He attached a ward to said stones that would prevent any exploding sheep, the resulting confetti, or other magic related things to leave the circle made by them. Well, that was one disaster averted.
Harry and Death quickly ran out of sheep, and then Death spotted him. Death waved at him, and the next moment he was short and fluffy. Fuck. He ran. He had no desire to be treated as a Miniature Bouncing Sheep of Exploding Confetti. So he ran until Death and Harry lost interest in him (five minutes was all it took), and then he found Reborn.
He changed back to his human form and held his hand out. Reborn silently gave him a bottle of génépi, and they clanked bottles together and drank.
He did not want to remember this. Too bad demons didn't forget things...
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Reborn took another sip of génépi, Umbra doing the same next to him. How did things get to this point?
Oh, that's right, Death and Harry had decided that after their impromptu volleyball game, they needed to wash off all the bright colored sand and stinky sweat. So Death decided that since they needed to be rinsed off, he would just call down rain. Why, oh why, did Death have the ability to call down rain?
Reborn wasn't sure that anyone knew the answer to that question. But, the rain had resulted in keeping Death and Harry occupied, at least for a half hour as they cavorted in the puddles. They were currently in a contest to see which one of them could spot the most recognizable shapes in the clouds. Harry was winning. Death took offense to that, and waved at the stormy clouds above them.
One moment Harry was crowing about how he had spotted a perfect bunny cloud, the next thing they knew the bunny cloud was eaten by a giant crocodile cloud. Harry retaliated by sending a snake cloud at the crocodile, and somehow managed to strangle the crocodile cloud until it burst into small, gerbil shaped clouds that scurried to the south in a sudden wind. Death retaliated with a phoenix cloud, including some flaming cloud streamers, to which Harry sent a basilisk.
Soon the entire sky was filled with dark storm clouds, spanning as far as the eye could see. The rain was pouring, and the beach was slowly being washed into the ever growing waves of the ocean. And still, they continued creating clouds. More, and more clouds by the second.
Reborn was more than ready to stop this silliness and go back to the Manor, but Harry was dead-set on winning against Death. And so more clouds were created, and joined in the darkening sky.
It was like a crusade of clouds that was determined that France would not be allowed to see the sun for as long as Death was drunk.
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The next mornings headline read, "Freak Storm Floods Entire Region of France."
P.S. The flooding is minor. Does anyone want to see the Miniature Bouncing Demon Sheep of Exploding Confetti come back? It would probably be in an extra or something, like the Octo-Nut story.
