A Visit To Gryffindor Tower:
Escape From Paradise
By lone astronomer
Summary: Can Harry and the rest of the gang escape from egroups.com? This one's more of a… sort of MST for Draco Sinister 9… but it's still pretty close to the original two. And it's the end. And it's the best one of the series. I'm so proud.
Disclaimer: Unless I'm much mistaken, Lori, Cassandra Claire, Penny & Carole run the PoU e-group thing; Cassandra Claire wrote Draco Dormiens and Draco Sinister (Yay!); I believe it was rave who drew 'Beach Blanket Hermione'; and Harry Potter (and all that the name entails) belong/s to J. K. Rowling.
Warning: Still stands. More (plot-)holes than my brother's gym socks.
On with the show…
It took a moment for Draco's news to sink in. Finally, Hermione spoke. "You mean… we're stuck here," she said finally, eyes wide with fright.
"Gee, Hermione," Draco said, "you're real quick on the uptake today."
Hermione glowered at him. "Shut up."
Neither of them noticed the huge, dark shadow looming above them until it was too late. Harry looked up and gasped, an expression that reminded Draco of two eggs, sunny-side up, and a sausage, on his face. "Uh oh…"
Draco, too, looked up just in time to see a huge confabulation of text slam down on top of them.
Sirius rubbed his head, flinging the letters from his hair, and stood up. "Where are we?" he asked, looking around. "This doesn't look like one of the astronomer's fics."
Remus, too, surveyed the landscape. "Looks like-" he started. "Ow! Owww!! Ouch! Hey, watch it!"
Sirius regarded him. Evidently the trip to fanfic-land hadn't done much for Remus' lingering sanity. "What?"
"It feels like someone is trying to pull me through a Portkey," Remus explained, "only, slower and with more pain." (A/n for Cassandra Claire- Is that what the Calling feels like? I don't know.)
There was another conspicuous lightning-strike, and a voice seemed to whisper, Morphinio. Remus immediately straightened and waved to the air. "Thanks, Janine!"
Sirius scowled. "How come Janine likes you?" he asked.
Remus shrugged. "It's a girl thing. They like to take care of people."
By that time, Harry, Draco, and the others were beginning to pull themselves on top of the HTML file so that they could see it better.
Remus examined the scene. "Um," he said. "That's me, isn't it?" And he pointed to a large sleeping wolf. Sirius nodded. "Why am I a wolf in broad daylight?" Remus looked worried. "Oh, wait, I know!" Magically, a script popped up before him. He scanned through it at superhuman speed. "Apparently it's the Calling." He got out his camera. "Fascinating…"
Hermione and Ron exchanged looks and took a giant collective step back from the werewolf. "What's with the professor?" he asked.
"Morphine and Janine don't mix," Sirius answered.
Ron nodded sagely. "I noticed."
At that moment, the scene changed, and everyone took huge steps back.
Hermione, strangely enough, was the first to gain her voice. "Ron… what are you doing?"
Ron, incapable of speech, didn't answer.
Draco, however, seemed quite interested… in a disgusted kind of way. "Disgusting. Am I dead?" he asked. "No way I would let him do that if I were alive." He took a step closer, holstering the sword (which was still out from part two), and suddenly wasn't surrounded by the rest of the Hogwarts gang anymore, but by people who were…
Dead, Draco realized suddenly. Fanfiction hell.
Limbo, another voice corrected him, and he nearly jumped out of his skin as he noticed- well, himself- only in spirit form this time, talking with people that seemed oddly familiar. Just like the people in the rest of the fic, they couldn't see him and didn't take any notice of him whatsoever. Draco became thoughtful as he wondered how on Earth he was going to get out of there, when he had an idea. Since he was, after all, supremely powerful in the fic…
Draco raised his hand and commanded, "Accio script!" There was a short delay, then a startled shout from somewhere above him- way above. "Thanks, Professor!" he yelled.
"Who is he talking to?" the muffled voice of Sirius Black asked, before the scene changed again.
Ginny suddenly found that Draco had reappeared beside her. "Would you Malfoys please stop dying?" she asked, shaking her head.
"Sorry," Draco muttered, glowering. "Next time, you can kick the-" He didn't finish, mostly because his eyes had about dropped out of his head. "What is going on here?!"
Ginny had taken the script from him and was flipping through the pages like there was no tomorrow. (A/n: That expression doesn't work well in the past tense! Ah well.) In front of the outcasts, images were flying by at an incredible pace- scenes from the Ministry, from the Burrow, and from someplace eerily akin to Hell- 'You can't kill me, I've got magic aaargh…' Ginny laughed- and then her eyes grew wide as saucers and the look on her face reminded Hermione of Peeves on April Fools' day.
"What is it?" she asked, but before Ginny could answer, the scene materialized.
Ginny's eyes glued themselves to the scene.
Draco was, once again, speechless.
Ron would have been livid, if Harry hadn't been distracting him by laughing so hard.
Sirius and Lupin both turned around and faced the other direction.
Hermione didn't dare blink. "Wow," she breathed. "This is better than television. Can you rewind and play that again?"
Draco finally found his voice. "Imagine that," he said sarcastically. "I'm an Internet porn star. Why do I have to be so sexy?"
Even though it was his sister in bed with Draco, Ron started laughing.
Embarrassed, Ginny let the script run by itself again.
Remus and Sirius turned their attention back to the events taking place, and soon were quite involved. Remus conjured a couch and Sirius popped popcorn out the end of his wand, and all members of the cast sat and watched their soap opera.
"You know," Harry said, a few hours later, "this is wonderful and everything, but shouldn't we be… um, killing Voldemort or something?"
Draco laughed. "Speak for yourself. Aren't you enjoying the scenery in fanfiction-land?"
One of many Hermiones walked by, this one dressed in a skimpy bikini, and sat herself between Harry and Draco. Harry shrugged. "Well, I can't really complain." (On his right side, Ron and Herm- the 'real' one this time- were engaged in some activity which I'll not describe for its rudeness.) "Or maybe I can," as Hermione's (the one on his right) foot hit him in the face. "Ouch! Hey!"
Ginny, quite busy watching Draco (and sketching his profile into her notebook), pointedly ignored her brother's activities.
By this time, the fic had run its course, and Sirius and Remus were involved in a discussion that wasn't too intellectual.
"I'm telling you," Sirius insisted, "she's Lily reincarnated! Look at her for goodness sake! Are you blind?"
Remus sighed patiently. "Lily's eyes are green."
"So? James' are brown, but you agree that the guy next to that hot Muggle-born chick is James."
"No, I don't," Remus said, running fingers through his hair in exasperation. "Look- we were in Gryffindor Tower, right? So why didn't we recognize anyone else? Who's the redhead with the Muggle-born? And- What is Malfoy doing with that sword?"
Sirius turned, eyes wide. "This is bad," he said finally. "This is very, very bad."
Remus nodded. "How do you plan on getting us out of this situation?"
Padfoot snorted. "Oh, leave it all up to me, Planmeister Sirius…"
"I came up with the plan last time!"
"What last time?"
"How to spray-paint Simon orange and hang him upside-down from the ceiling in the Great Hall!"
About twenty characters behind the sofa, Draco had given up on fanfiction-land for a while. He wanted to go home to his father's Veela plantation and relax. Thus, he hefted his nifty-cool sword and plunged it into the fifth dimension, ripping the text block open and creating a swirling vortex in the middle of the floor.
Ginny blinked and stammered (mostly because of Draco's unrivaled good-looks), "Wha-t is that?"
Draco gave her an irresistible grin. "A plot-hole."
"A plot-hole?" Harry asked, green eyes glittering. "A plot-hole! Brilliant, Malfoy- everyone in…"
They circled the plot-hole and, joining hands (except Draco, who was stubborn as a 65-kilogram Rotweiler), stepped into the yawning abyss.
The seven of them landed with a muffled thump on a huge pillow in the middle of what appeared to be nowhere. That illusion was probably given because it was very, very dark.
"Ouch," Harry said, voice inexplicably muffled. "Ginny, would you mind not sitting on my face?"
"I'll move, once Hermione gets off of my leg."
"Who's foot is shoved up my-"
It took them several minutes to straighten themselves out. Finally, they stood up straight on the cobblestone floor of the dungeon.
Except that it wasn't the Slytherin dungeon at Hogwarts at all. Instead, it was quite unfamiliar to the motley crew of students. "Um," Hermione said. "Where are we?"
Draco shrugged. "You're the know-it-all. You tell me."
"You mean you brought us here, and you don't know where here is?"
Draco retorted, "Would you rather I waited until the next HTML file showed up and you were faced with the dilemma of whether or not to kill your best friend, Black?"
Sirius shut up.
There was a crack like a whip, and a resounding, "Ouch! Bugger off," and then there was silence. Or, there would have been if not for the infernal tapping sound that was getting on Ron's nerves.
"What is that racket?!" he exclaimed aloud.
The tapping stopped, and something whimpered in fear. "Someone's here…"
The whip cracked again and a voice spoke. "Back to work! I'll investigate."
The seven misplaced copyrighted characters exchanged worried looks and backed into the shadows of the dungeon just in time. The footsteps after 'investigate' could be heard getting closer and closer to the area in which they stood, with the gigantic pillow in the middle. Into the circle of light stepped…
Janine.
Sirius hissed in vexation, Remus cowered in horror, Draco tried to hide behind Ginny, and Ron frowned deeply and pulled out his wand. "That," he said, enunciating clearly and taking two giant steps forward, "is my brother's jacket. I challenge you to a duel!"
Janine smiled darkly and reached into her (Charlie's) pocket. When she withdrew her hand, everyone took three steps backwards until they were up against the wall.
"Run!" yelled Harry, who was made quite nervous by the acid-green quill.
The seven of them ran down the passageway that the astronomer made another plot-hole for and vanished from Janine's sight.
Out of sight, out of mind, thought Janine, and tucked away her quill again, satisfied that she'd prevented those sexy but meddling teenagers from distracting her slaves.
Forty paces (really long paces) down the corridor, Harry came to a dead stop. Instead of being red in the face from the face from running, though, he was very pale. His complexion had taken a turn for the worse when he noticed what he'd been passing-
Cells. Hundreds of them, and above each a name. The one to Harry's immediate right held "Sarcastic Draco" and, directly across from it, "Depressed Ginny." Then there was "Pedophile Krum" (and Remus, and Sirius, and Snape, and McGonagall) and "Suicidal Remus," then "Repentant Wormtail," "Vengeful Sirius," "Daredevil Sirius," "Serious Sirius," "Sirius does New York," "Mafia Sirius," "Sirius and His Bike™," "Sirius in Leather," and "Leather-pants Draco™." There were also some that Harry didn't even want to think about, let alone meet, such as "Gay Ron," "Naked Draco," "Draco with Unzipped Leather Pants (pants not included)™," "Perfect Sue," "Draco is Sexy," "Mary Slut" (well, okay, he was a teenager; he wouldn't actually mind meeting her), "Remus Eats Someone," and (Harry shuddered to think, "Professor Snape Gets Some."
"This," said Hermione quietly, "is sick."
Some of the cells were empty- Harry wondered where they were. Suddenly, inspiration struck him. "Oh, no!" he said. "I know where we are."
"Great," said Draco. "Where might that be?"
"We're behind the scenes of every Harry Potter fic ever written."
Everyone stared at him. Well, that wasn't true. Hermione's mind was muddled with Mafia Sirius and Ginny's lingered around Leather-pants Draco, while Harry was pondering Perfect Sue.
Finally, Remus spoke. "We have to do something!"
"Agreed," Hermione said, snapping out of her trance. "Alohomora totalus!"
The cells opened and each and every character filed out in a very non-orderly fashion. None of them seemed distressed to see carbon-copies of themselves, which was probably because they lived behind the screens of fanfiction.net.
Everyone turned to Good Plan Draco™, because Harry's plans all sucked and Good Plan Draco was wearing leather. "Okay, everybody," he said. "Here's what we're going to do…"
It was amazing how one could get so used to the irritating tapping noise, Janine thought. In the computer room, numerous hands, callused from the rough keys, typed their owners' ideas.
Suddenly the sounds of thunder filled the room. Janine jumped, startled. "All right, which one of you is using that cliché?" She surveyed the room, hard stare penetrating each of the slaves' gazes.
But it wasn't thunder, and it didn't stop. The door to the slaves' room broke open, and a flood of duplicated characters rushed in, led by Fearless Leader Charlie™ .
Many of the authors were shell-shocked at meeting the people they'd created and/or twisted, and so didn't move. The smart ones headed for the nearest window while Janine was distracted, standing on one another's shoulders to reach the bars and start filing madly away at them. (They were allowed to have nail-files to wear away the calluses on their fingers.)
Fearless Leader Charlie pointed at Janine and yelled, "Get her!"
But Janine was too fast. She Apparated away, with the great special effect of a big popping sound and a flash of lightning.
"Damn," said Likes To Swear Draco. "What the f*** are we going to do now?"
"Ha ha!" said a sinister laugh from behind the dense crowd. Janine, apparently, had either spliced herself or hadn't gone very far. "Now I have you!"
"Fat chance," said someone. "Avada Kedavra!" It was Merciless Killer Voldemort.
Janine should have been dead before she hit the floor, but as she didn't really exist, she only evaporated.
"About time," spat Nastily Moody Draco. "Now how do we get out of here?"
Brainy Hermione laughed. "That's easy." She gestured to the power bar in the middle of the floor. "Just switch it off."
Nobody moved for almost thirty seconds. "Any takers?" asked Shirtless Ron™.
"Oh, for Heavens' sakes," Hermione said. "I'll do it." Moving forward slowly, she reached out and flipped the switch-
And then there was only darkness.
The lights flickered back on in the Gryffindor tower. Hermione looked around. "Did it work?"
Harry rubbed his scar. "I think so… I'm not sensing any evil Janines or Janine-slaves…" His voice seemed to echo.
Astonished Ron, facing Harry, looked like his eyes were going to fall out of his head. "Um, Harry…"
Harry turned around, afraid of what he was about to see.
Behind him were Idiot Harry, Bad Plan Harry, Harry is Jealous, and Harry with Firebolt ™.
"Oh, no."
THE END