Chapter 20 - Corruption, Lies, and The Unknown
Rincewind woke up next to Ron. Not in the same bed or anything gay like that. They were just in the same room. "Where are we?" asked Rincewind who did not have his glasses and struggled to see. "We're in the bathroom" said Ron, who was in the bathroom. "What happened to us? I don't remember needing to pee" said Rincewind who had the bladder of several oxen combined. "Shit dude, do you not remember? We were kidnapped just there, before we passed out" said Ron, who could remember this. Both Rincewind and Ron knew exactly who would have been doing this sort of thing. All the signs were there. This would have been Draco's doing. With his father's vice-head campaign going strong, and his hatred of Rincewind and Captain Arr, added to his love of bathrooms, it was sooooo obvious that he was the person that was doing this. "You are being held hostage by request of Candidate McGonnigle" said a voice from behind them. "Draco, is that you" sad Ron. "No! I am not a friend of Draco's, nor do I support Snape in any way" said the voice. "Are you sure? You sound a lot like Draco" said Captain Arr. "No, I entirely deny that" said the voice, who got pissed off by all of this and knocked the two of them out again, like a pussy. Once they were both knocked out the man picked up his phone out of the urinal where he had placed it and made a call. "Hey boss, what's cracka lackin" he said. "Yup, they are dealt with, they won't be causing any issues with your campaign now" he said. And as he hung his phone up he started to laugh hysterically for a few minutes, until he realised how awkward this was and stopped to go off for lunch, locking the bathroom behind him.
"Are you okay there?" asked Esk as she sipped from a glass of pinot noir. "Yeah, I just want to get everything back to normal I suppose. It's been a crazy few months and I miss the brief period of time that we had where things were quite boring but nice" said Luna. She had been through a lot recently, what with being kidnapped, the luggage attack, her boyfriend being a psycho, and the exams and the monolith. This was not a regular year for her. "I feel you" said Esk with sympathy for her friend. "But I need to know the truth. What really happened with you?" said Luna, pleading for her friend to cut through the shit. "Okay then, I'll be honest with you" said Esk "I have been hiding something from you for the past while. It's…". She paused as Luna leaned in close in anticipation. "Your birthday party!" exclaimed Esk. "OMGWTF" said Luna "I never got to have a birthday party before!". Her parents didn't really celebrate birthdays but they did celebrate anti-birthdays, which were the days exactly half a year between your birthdays. This was traditional in Ireland and nobody really questioned it. "Well, you'll have one this year in a few days!" said Esk with a big cheesy grin. "Cool, I can't wait. Also thanks bbz for remembering my birthday" and then they gave each other a cool headbutt like the bffs they were. Luna was settled then at this, it explained that things were being weird with Esk and she was just finishing her pepsi cola and about to leave the room when she realised that she had forgotten something. "Oh, that was the other thing. What happened with your wand? I found a broken bit" asked Luna. "Oh THAT" said Esk, as she took a big long sip from her glass. "I was out trying to get you a pet badger as a birthday present, but it got really angry and attacked me. But this was ages ago and my new wand arrived today. I can't afford Amazon Prime so I had to wait a few days for it to arrive, but oviously that meant that I couldn't attend classes until recently which conveniently coincided with my return to the story so I just kept to myself and worked on your party" explained Esk. It was a very crazy story but comepared to the rest of the stuff recently itseemed quite natural so Luna beliveved it and went back to her room, excited for her party.
On the way back she thought about all of the cool things that would have to happen for her birthday party. She thought about the food. Luna was a big fan of catered events, not as much as Ginny though who loved a good meal. She wondered if Esk had spoken to Ginny about who to hire for the catering as she knew everything about food. She pictured sausage rolls, haggis balls, cheesy biscuits, and cooked breakfasts. She wanted all that food so much, it was much better than the plain old sandwhiches and baguettes that she had to have every day. There might also be alcohol! This thought interrrupted her previous thoughts about food. Luna had never had booze before, but she knew that Esk had, and that Esk was technically older and could buy some with her ID. She knew then that she'd be drunk, and eating food, and dancing to cool old music. But she also knew that she wouldn't be alone. All of her friends would be there too. Captain Arr and Hermione would be there and having the best time of the year. Captain Arr would be drunk and trying to show off his mighty strength, and Hermione would try and act embarrased for him but would also be turned on and it would be funny. She then thought of the other people who would be there and be drunk. She thought of Seamus being all careless and getting himself set on fire. Ginny eating all the food, Harry telling all his stories about his crazy adventures. Maybe Harry would drunkenly ride on his broomstick, he could challenge someone to a race and it would be so funny and they would both end up crashing and end up in hospital or something. Luna giggled at this idea. She thought that Percy and Filch and his stupid cat would probably try to do something about it, but she knew that Esk knew this as well so she wasn't too worried. She was looking forward to everything so much, she was skipping up the stairs and through the corridoors. Luna was so lucky to have the friends that she had. Once she got back into the Gryfindoor common room she knocked on Rincewind's door to tell him that everything was Okay with her now that she's spoken to Esk, and to see if he wanted to get a late lunch as he wouldn't have eaten all day. "Knock Knock!" she said as she knocked on his door. There was no response. "Rinceiwnd?" she called. There was still no repsonse. Then she realised that he probably knew all along that Esk was hosting a birthday party for her. The sneaky devil. She thought that he would probably be making drinks and doing cool adult stuff like that. A party like this would be just up Rincewind's street, he used to go about drinking all the time and would know all the fun games to play. So Luna went back to her bathroom and started daydreaming about the big day. She pictured games of darts and pool, and trivia games and stuff like that. She imagined all the drinking games over the course of the night until everyone was drunk at the end. She thought that Hermione and Captain Arr would be winching away once Hermione was so horny for Ron's muscles. She thought that Harry and Ginny would be as well, they always got that way. So did Seamus and his GF, and same with everyone. Neville would be with anything that moved as Neville was a bit of a slut like that. It was always funny to see who he ended up with. Esk would have called it an early night as she would have been arranging everything and would be tired, plus she had a vitamin deficiency so she would be extra tired anyway. So Luna pictured herself around all the couples and temporary hookups, alone, for the first time in a long time. At first this seemed horrible, she enjoyed a good winch, but now that Crabbe was in Hull for being a prick she wouldn't have anyone to get with. At least she wouldn't be alone, she thought, as Rincewind would also be winchless for the night, so she could spend that time hanging out with him.
Rincewind, she thought. He was such a nice person, without him, she would have had a much shittier few months than she had anyway. He had constantly been there for her, and not just in the bad times that tended to be the ones to make the novel. The lunch banter had been amazing. It turned out that Rincewind was great at impressions, and he had loads of cool stories about the other novels that he had appeared in and they were all really cool. She had also told Rincewind her stories about dead animals, and all of the books that she read, and the puppets that her dad made, and her mum and her family. She confided a lot in Rincewind. She was thinking about breaking with Crabbe anyway because of the advice that Rincewind had given her. He seemed to dislike him right from the start, even though he barely knew him. At first she thought that this was cuntish, but then after he kidnapped her and ran off with someone else it seemed like a fair judgement. So it would just be them at the end of the night, Luna thought. Everyone else would be tongue deep in each other and they could laugh at how ridiculous it all was. They would be sitting at the bar chatting away, laughing at Neville going out on the pull, in the most considerate way imaginable. "Here's to a happy birthday" said Rincewind, "and to a drunk and horny Neville" and Luna raised her toast and jam, and her drink and clinked glasses with Rincewind and laughed. "What a night" she cortled. Just then, a song would come on over the juicebox. You Don't Know Me by Craig Charles. "OMG" said Luna "this is from my favourite film ever, Groundhog day! I prefer this to Ghostbusters and I fuckin love that!". Then she would remember that scene in the film and get sad. "What's wrong with that" said Rincewind. "Well, it's just that this is the song that Phil and Rita dance to and it's so nice." explained Luna. "What's wrong with that?" asked Rincewind. "Well, I don't have anyone to dance with, and all the rest of them do" said Luna, with a small glimmer of hope in her voice as she would raise her hed and met eye to eye with Runcewind. "Well, howabout we have this one then" said the bearded man as he would stand up, take her by the hand and lead her to the dancefloor. Her friends would all be cheering for her initially before getting back to their winching as she danced with Wincewind. The thought of being in his bearded embrace made her happy as Luna presently lay in the bath smiling away. Then she suddenly stopped daydreaming and took in the whole situation. What were these thoughts going through her mind? Rincewind was such a good friend and was clearly not interested in her, she was too quirky and Irish for him. The last thing she would want to do was to make things awkward and ruin their friendship. So she would have to just forget all about these brief thoughts and move on. But as Luna lay awake at night she couldn't make these thoughts go away.
The next morning she got up from bread groggilly, like a sleepy mongoose that had a busy night. As she went through to the common area to get her breakfast cereal she noticed the newspaper on the table that everyone else had read when they got up. The headline on the front read: "Rincewind and Captain Arr Missing! McGonnigle Suspected". Luna lost all appetite.