----

The next morning was bright, cheery, and extremely difficult
for Harry -- between the indecision about his homework and
the actual writing of same, he'd gotten almost no sleep. Still,
he dragged himself out of bed and began dressing.

"Harry," Ron said drowsily, "what the hell is that?"

"That," Harry replied, "is my assignment for Professor
Jimison."

Ron sat at the end of Harry's bed and peered at the manuscript
laying there. "Don't know if you noticed yet, Harry, but it's
three inches thick."

"Yeah. Wrote it last night."

Ron yawned. "You'll have to get a new notebook, you
know."

Ron was used to this sort of thing. Neville came over and
looked at the manuscript. "You," he said, looking at Harry
questioningly, "wrote that?"

Harry nodded. "Yep."

"Last night?"

"Took me a bit to tidy it up, I don't mind telling you."

Neville rubbed his forehead. "Bloody hell, I've only got two
pages, and I've been working on it since lunch yesterday."

Ron nodded sagely. "Some blokes," he said, poking Harry,
"get too many leg-ups from certain authorial Powers That
Be." Ron started to leave, but looked back to Harry with a
smile. "Mark my words, one of these days the authors that
contribute to your good fortune will up and leave you, and
_then_ what will you do?"

"May the day never come. Hey, Ron--" Harry said,
shouldering his book bag and heading out after his friend,
"what did you write about this time around?"

"Me? Inferiority complexes again. Strange, eh?"

Gryffindor students flooded the stairs to head down to
breakfast. There was oddly empty feeling about the
corridors, though, which Harry couldn't quite pin. Until he
reached the Great Hall.

Harry hadn't seen this sort of configuration since the old
Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Gilderoy Lockhart
tried to start the Dueling Club. There was the huge stage
where the High Table usually was, and there were the floating
candles giving light from above. Seats for spectators now
stretched out where the house tables usually were, and instead
of friendly faces filling those seats, Harry saw row upon row
of... not precisely happy students.

"Hiya, kiddos." Professor Jimison stood center stage. She set
down a microphone stand, and then waved her wand -- a
bright spotlight shone down on her. "I told you yesterday that
you'd have to participate in a sort of open-mike session
today." Her smile turned evil. "This is your mike, and this is
your audience -- tired, hungry, and ready to mock you cruelly
if you waste their time. I'll be grading random members of
class _immediately_ after they finish--" She looked
thoughtful for a moment. "And maybe I'll throw in some
comments before they finish too. Everyone will be given
written commentary in addition to whatever I may say here."

"But Professor," cried out someone who sounded
suspiciously like Hermione, "how will we _all_ read today?
I've got a scroll and a half to go through!"

Jimison waved the question away. "I've put the great wizard
Montoya's _Summarian_ spell on this microphone. It may
not seem so to all of you, but I've been speaking for about
two hours now. You'll all have a chance to read _everything_
you've written."

"My God," Ron muttered into Harry's ear, "she's mad."

"Worse," said Hermione, having just nudged several people
aside to join her two friends, "she's unstoppable."

Professor Jimison took out a long roll of parchment and
looked it over. "Since I don't believe in the false sense of
security brought upon by knowledge of the alphabet, I'll be
choosing which students will read in what order." She rolled
up the scroll, set it aflame, and used it to light one of her
cigarettes, which seemed to have Apparated from some
undisclosed location straight into her waiting fingertips.
"And first goes to... Harry Potter."

"She's worse than unstoppable," Harry said in a panicked
whisper--

"--She's another bloody Defense Against the Dark Arts
teacher trying to kill me." Harry audibly gulped. He was on
stage. And that last sentence had wheezed itself out over the
entire sound system.

"Um," he said. The microphone whined. Harry cleared his
throat and lifted his manuscript. The audience groaned.
"Sorry," he muttered. "_The Horrid Pain of the Artiste_, by
Harry Potter. *In the beginning of the summer months--*"

"Harry?"

Harry broke off. "Um, yes, Professor Jimison?"

"Two things. One: Suck ass title. Find another. Two: Do
you have any... warnings, maybe? For content?" Jimison
waggled her eyebrows. "I remember your essay, Flyboy."

Harry searched his brain for any warning that would cover
everything. He reverted to looking through the author's mind
as well, and finally settled on, "This story is slash. That
means there will be relationships of a sexual and/or loving
nature featuring people of the same gender. So if don't want
to hear about that, bugger off. Um. So to speak."

Dead silence. No one left. Jimison nodded. "Go for it, kid."

And then off he went. He had some difficulty at first --
public speaking was so utterly _not_ his thing that, had there
been a contest for things that _were_ his, public speaking
would not even be allowed in the vicinity of such award
winners as, say, his moldy gym socks, his used tissues, or the
Dursleys.

*The calendar passes through each day without pause for
reflection...* Harry was really getting into the swing of things
by then. He didn't go so far as to change voices, or even act
out much of the action, but he was feeling the power of his
own words, the way they flowed easily from him once he
stopped feeling nervous.

The nervousness came back in droves when he saw Malfoy
sitting in the front row.

*There comes a day in every child's life -- a moment, a
fragment, a dream -- when they must throw off toys of
plastic, and take up toys of flesh...* As often as Harry could,
he looked over at Malfoy, gauging reactions, watching for
acceptance, rejection, _something_... The rest of the audience
was listening as well, of course -- had Jimison made any
more comments during this reading? He couldn't remember -
- but they didn't really matter. Only one person did. It was
uncomfortable, it was embarrassing, and, as mentioned a few
scenes back, it would never work in canon. But Harry
needed something, and only Malfoy could give it to him.

Harry realized something was... off... with the rest of the
school somewhere around chapter eleven. *'But why are you
here?' I whispered. 'Haven't you figured that out yet,
Johnny?' Tom replied, and closed the door behind him...*

By midway through chapter twelve, there was definitely
something wrong. *Like nothing else I had yet experienced -
- like nothing else ever -- like fire, water; pain, surcease;
love, honesty -- there he was...*

The audience... his friends, his classmates, the best people
he'd ever known... they weren't happy.

Only five chapters to go, thought Harry. He continued to
read, and continued to watch Malfoy.

But there was something wrong there as well. Something
Harry couldn't figure out. So he kept going.

*And I had come to the end of the journey -- the road
untraveled was blocked by boulders -- or were they
emotions? Both, because Tom smiled at me, and said we
were going home.* Harry cleared his throat again. "The
end."

And _that's_ when the negative criticism started. But it didn't
come from Jimison.

"Ew! ewewewew," said someone from third row back. "you
made Harry gay!! That is SO WRONG."

As horrible as that was, Harry felt confused more than
anything else. Last time he'd checked, his peers had been
capable of decent punctuation. And while there had been a
multitude of sex/violence between the characters, that wasn't
the point of the story. Well, not much anyway. Why did this
person concentrate their critique on that?

Someone else yelled out, "U R gay UR goig to h-ll."

"Ur?" Harry asked, bewildered. "Who's Ur? What?"

Another: "I relly think you need to get you're priorities
straight. Get it?? *STRAIGHT*? Figure it out. Oh yeah,
you are gross and J.K. Rowling is going to sue you I wrote to
your ISP and reported you that's what you get for beign a
pervert."

"What the hell does my internet service provider have to do
with _any_ of this? I don't bloody _have_ an ISP!"

There was one more shout ("Everyone knows its
HARRYANDHERMIONE4EVER!!!! so don't write this sick
s--- anymore, it's digusting and wrogn and Draco would never
do that anyway.") before an overwhelming wall of flaming
sound surrounded Harry.

It hurt. Hadn't anyone been _listening_ during his content
warning? And was this what the next generation felt had to
be said about homosexuality? I mean really, thought Harry,
if this is what parents are teaching their children today about
acceptance of all lifestyles, I sincerely fear for the world of
tomorrow. Can't these people recognize irony? The
Muggle/Wizard conflicts? Gosh, it's so wrong to pick on
Muggles just because of the way they are, but it's all right to
completely bash an entire sexual orientation? Might as well
bring Voldemort back from the dead and start over -- far as I
know, he didn't give a fig who I wanted to shag.

But it doesn't matter, Harry thought. None of it matters if
Malfoy understood what I wrote.

So then Harry looked down. And Malfoy slowly met his
gaze, and then, just as slowly, he turned away.

Oh.

Harry swallowed, looked around at the angry faces, and ran.

---

Several things happened after Harry left. Foremost of all
were the two short, angry women who stormed the stage.
One was Professor Jimison. The other was Mary Sue.

"Quiet!" Jimison yelled into the mike. Her voice amplified
much louder than the sound system could be blamed for, but
it didn't seem that magic was powering the sound either --
pure righteous anger was on her side. "What the _hell_ do
you think you people are doing?"

Crickets. The dark faces still hadn't lightened up, though.

"Didn't you hear a _word_ of his inner monologue? Idiots!
Fools! Do you have any _idea_ how difficult it is to write
something you feel passionately about, and share it with
equal passion to the uncaring world?"

Mary Sue suddenly jumped in. "Screw that! Even if it
sucked, so what? It _did_ suck. Harry really needs to let go
of the metaphors and figure out his pronouns. A helpful hand
with his action scenes would also not go amiss. Why didn't
you complain about _that_?" Mary Sue pulled herself up to
her full height, and her eyes, usually so friendly, so helpful,
so attentive and trustful, turned ice. "Flame a person for their
lack of talent. Flame a person in revenge. Flame a person
because you're bored, and you've got a few minutes before the
bell rings for third period History. But there is no reason
_whatsoever_--" and every syllable of that kicked ass and
took names -- "for you to degrade yourself, your generation,
and the Harry Potter universe itself by becoming bigoted
hypocrites."

There was a stunned silence. No one had tried to invoke
canon in this story as an actual excuse not to do something --
not until now, anyway. Jimison cracked her first smile in
hours. "That, and flames are very rarely intelligent,
humorous, or even very original. Tomorrow we will begin
work on the subtle science and precise art--"

A faint voice from the back of the hall, where the professors
stood, said, "Stealing my line!"

"--and _precise art_ of insightful, painful, and deliciously
addictive critique. But for now..." Jimison raised an
eyebrow. "I think it's Draco Malfoy's turn for the guillotine."

Mary Sue smiled and bounced offstage. Jimison smiled and
resumed her seat, likewise offstage. Malfoy just swallowed,
clutched his papers in one sweaty hand, and made his way to
the microphone.

----

(cont. in 6/7)