Have a short one-chapter
ficlet on how the Gulping Gryffindors were informally founded. It's
just one chapter, a humor fic mostly and it takes place in November of
their fifth year, around the third week in November...enjoy this short
funny piece!
Bottoms Up, Gulping Gryffindors!
By: CNJ
PG-13
Harry:
By late afternoon, we were
tired and sweaty from a vigorous Quidditch practice and it was almost time
for dinner, so we Quidditch players headed in to change and get washed.
The first thing we did once we got to our Gryffindor common room was pick
up jugs of pumpkin juice from the kitchen. Funny how it was actually
a chilly November day, yet we felt grimy and sweaty. It was
a relief to loosen the thick collar of my Quidditch robe and sit down.
Ginny, who is our new Seeker this year, sat across from me and Ron, who's
a Beater like me, had already opened his jug and was sipping away.
More like gulping it down wholesale, I thought as I saw him tilt his red
head back and drink.
"So...if we keep up our
steam, we should be able to beat the Slytherins later on this year," George,
one of our Keepers, was saying. He and his twin Fred are in their
final and seventh year here at Hogwarts. They're also Ron's older
brothers. Ron, Cheria, and I are in our fifth year while Ginny, Ron's
younger sister, is a fourth-year. As we talked more, I could hear
Ron gulping his pumpkin juice. His gulps were noisy; he sounded
like, guuulp...guuuulp...guuuuulp...and they seemed to echo throughout
the common room. I had to laugh. Ron finished his juice and
I guess saw me laughing because he grinned.
"I was listening to you
drinking that," I told him. The others chuckled. Ron grabbed
another jug and noisily gulped that down too. The rest of us by then
were sipping and I too tilted my head back to see if I could swallow as
loudly as Ron. It was hard, though to tell what my own gulps sounded
like, but I could hear some others. I never realized that the simple
act of swallowing could sound so varied. Ginny was nearly as loud
as Ron. Cheria's were quiet. I swallowed one last huge
mouthful and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. We then
each grabbed another one.
"Ready..." Fred grinned.
"Bottoms up..." The Quidditch
Captain, Angelina Johnson announced and we tilted our heads back in unison
and gulped away. It was quite a little orchestra of gulping going
on. Gluuuck, gook, glap, swuuuk, and
giiick, were some of the sounds in the gulping chorus. I wasn't
sure at first, but I think I got the melody of my own gulping, something
like a guuuock with an occasional quish. The quish
sound usually came if I swallowed real deeply. We all laughed once
we finished our jugs. Just then Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati came
in with a few piles of books between them, talking among themselves.
They saw us cracking up and of course were curious, so we filled them in.
"Hey, wicked..." Lavender
sat with us and so did the other two.
"Allow us..." Hermione grinned.
So we pulled out more jugs and bottomed up on our fourth round. The
gulping was more varied. "Definitely, you have a guuock sound, Harry,"
Hermione told me. More Gryffindors came in and they joined us.
By dinner, the entire Gryffindor house had perfected a fine little symphony
of throat melodies, courtesy of the fine human ability of swallowing.
By far, Ron won in the area of loudness with Ginny not far behind.
Cheria and Neville tied for the quietest swallows, while Angelina won for
most unusual with an actual almost squeak and rushing sound. I came
close behind with my guuock-quish while Hermione came behind me
with a sort of guueek. By then, we were howling with laughter.
We headed down to dinner,
still laughing away and a lot of others looked at us in curiosity, then
figured it was some private Gryffindor joke and started eating, except
Draco Malfoy, who is one of the biggest jackasses in Hogwarts history and
belongs to the Slytherin house. As we started eating, Ron poked
me and and some of the others and we whispered, "One...two...three...bottoms
up..." and we grabbed our pumpkin juices and began another gulping performance,
this time for the whole school to see. At first, of course,
kids just peered over at us, puzzled, but then heard our gulps and started
to laugh. We did several rounds and within minutes, almost the whole
Great Hall fairly shook with laughter. Even some of the teachers
grinned, including McGonagall and Dumbledore. Only some of the Slytherins
weren't amused, but so what? Malfoy looked disgusted and lifted a
lip at us, but everyone else cracked up. Once we finished several
gulping round, some kids clapped. The Gryffindors, the Gulping Gryffindors,
stood briefly, bowed, then sat and continued eating.
It took us a good part of the night to slow our cracking up as we did our
homework back in the common room. In addition, all of us kept having
to get up and pee. I know I had to pee at least five times in a three
hour time frame, but it was worth it. So started the Gulping Gryffindors
or the Gryffindor Gulpers. We were proud of it. As I went to
bed later that night after peeing a fourth time, I realized that this was
the calmest I'd felt in so many months. The first Quidditch match
early in November had been a bit scary for me since it was my first one
since Cedric's death last spring, but slowly I was healing from that trauma.
It feels good to laugh again especially since I don't think I've laughed
since last spring, I reflected as I took off my glasses, put my book
on the floor, and drifted off to sleep.
~~Storyline Copyright by CNJ~~