Disclaimer: I love, like, adore, enjoy, am a fan of, obsessed with, incredibly amazed with, am delighted with and craving for more Harry Potter, but none of it belongs to me. It's all from the wonderfully-equipped imagination of J.K. Rowling.
A/N: I'm sorry about all the delayed updates, I have recently gotten addicted to some teenage-chaptered fics, and I have been destroying both my eyes and finger mobility for typing in the rest of my own fic. My apologies also if the fic is starting to sound childishly shallow as well, as it isn't as easy to place characterizations and emotions to babies who are still less than capable of understanding that much. =^) By the way, I just noticed that the babies' mispronunciation of words makes the fic look a little sloppy, but please don't mistake them for grammatical errors. I just thought that having them pronounce everything perfectly would make this less believable than it already is. =P Please bear with me! ^_~ Thankideedoo! ^_^
*I had several misspellings in the last few paragraphs... for one, the oddly-dressed woman was turned to "man"... ':^)
It's All in the Diapers
+_+_+_Chapter Four_+_+_+
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Hermione's eyes were wide, and her hand was clasped stiffly onto her mouth. She scrunched her forehead out at Draco, looking at him like he had just committed a grave sin. "Your daddy? You could've told us sooner!"
"Oh, I'm incredibly sorry, Haymon," Draco replied sarcastically. This...girl--- these little babies—they were just getting on his nerves! "It's not like I knew that before I actrually saw his face!"
"Well he could've helped us get out!" Hermione exclaimed, to which she followed an equally stubborn muffle, which Draco caught to have contained the words 'bald boys'. "And it's Hermrione!" Her face was turning red from frustration.
Ron looked mildly baffled. "But that's what he said—Haymon---"
Harry, seeing where this conversation was leading to, held an arm each to both disgruntled faces. "Okay, okay, stop. Now, stop fighting. The firstest thing we needs to think about is how to get out of this big room. Now, Draco,"—he looked at the pale-faced baby firmly—"I want you to tell me extactly where the growed-ups went out."
"They were just gone," he stated clearly, intimidating his soon-to-be archrival with disinterested grayish eyes.
"Just gone? No doors or anything?"
"Just gone. I've seen father do it many times already."
Harry clapped a hand to his forehead and ran a hopeless hand through what little, though distinctly scattered hair he already had, shaking his head lightly. How could anyone disappear just like that? And in whose coffee would he be able to find his lost parents? This was too much to think about, even for a growing one-year-old. He paced across the delicate patterns of the carpet subconsciously, only pausing at the startled sound of Ron's voice.
"Hey!" he exclaimed, blue eyes fixed on Harry's forehead as if he had only noticed it now. "What's that on your head?"
"Where?"
Ron pointed a finger at the spot. "There! You have a boo-boo on your head!"
"Ron's right, Harry," Hermione cut in, looking at the same place. "It looks like—like a lighty bolt."
"What's a lighty bolt?" Draco interrogated roughly.
"Oh, honestly, don't any of you know anything?" She asked this like it was a mere, proven fact that when lines for the intelligence quotient of human beings were made, females were purposely placed at the very front. "As I have read in 'Reading Mr. Weatherman' by Sun E. Dei---"
"You can read???"
Hermione blushed. "Well—no, but my mummy's read the story to me many times...I—I'm learning, okay? Anyway, it's a yellow stick, and it cuts—oh, never mind!", she said, giving up upon seeing the confused expressions on their faces. "You don't want to hear about it anyway, it's--"
"That's it!" Harry exclaimed suddenly, snapping his fingers in the air. "I was asking you a while ago, the want! We have to use it now!" He stretched an arm over to Draco and looked at him eagerly. "May I borrow the want, please, Draco?"
Draco snorted rudely. He took the slender, magic stick carefully out of his diapers, up through his oddly-designed sweater, and cut maze-like patterns across the air with it lazily. Then, without a warning, he pointed it suddenly at Harry, which made the rest of the babies gasp. "What if I don't want to give it?" His eyes glinted with mischief, making Harry feel like he was about to melt inside his diapers.
Without any sort of warning, Ron thrust himself in between the two, and made a sudden snatch for the want. Draco's lips were pressed into a tight, pursed line, but his extremely light eyebrows were fused together at Ron. His grayish eyes looked dangerously threatening in spite of the hint of fear that hid somewhere within them. Harry, on the other hand, looked very much relieved, even grateful, while Hermione had her jaw agape, shifting her hazel eyes from Ron to Harry to Draco.
"You wouldn't dare," Draco snarled, looking at Ron as if he had just stolen his own bottle.
Ron gave him a rather unconvincing self-satisfied smirk. "Oh—oh yeah?", he mused, trying to look brave. "I've seen my mum, dad and big brothers use this before, too!" It was true, really, except he had only realized that they had been using a want like Draco's just now. "And I can do just about as much as you can!"
Hermione set her gaze on Ron. "Ron, don't!"
"Try me," Draco sneered.
Ron raised the stick into the fire-warmed air, and swiveled it around slowly. Quite honestly, he barely had an idea of what he was going to do. "Erm—teddiweeseldiapiebotdle!"
The want in Ron's hand paused in a hover over Draco's shiny head, but other than two gasps from Harry and Hermione, nothing else happened. Ron's legs were starting to feel like mashed Jell-O.
Draco snickered shamelessly. "What was that?"
"Feddi-gorjiperci!" Ron tried again, mentioning as much as his little vocabulary could offer. "Mooladooloo-mosidoobee!"
A faint light appeared instantly at the tip of the wand. Whatever it was in Ron's words that had created this, it worked, and it worked beautifully in Ron's surprised eyes. It glowered over their faces, staying in Ron's raised hand as the light grew stronger. It grew until it spread out into the already fire-lit room, giving light to Draco's angrily surprised face, Harry's widened green eyes, Hermione's worried face and Ron's satisfied and equally surprised grin.
"Wow," Ron uttered softly, marvelling at the light he had just created.
However, just as Draco was about to tear off his abashed gaze from the want, the light bounced off so suddenly at the walls that Ron fell backward, grip still tight on the magic stick. He couldn't have expected it to last, of course, considering that the want was supposedly broken in the first place.
But still, it was capable of some magic. From how things looked now, it was as if every cluster of light had constricted into a fist-sized ball of brightness, tearing around inside the room they were in until it broke into a space in the wall and vanished into a handful of ashes. The babies' eyes fell on the large hole it had caused at a former empty space in the wall right of the couch.
Draco looked speechless, though angry. "You—you--"
"You broke the wall open, Ron!" Hermione exclaimed in half-admiration. "You did it!"
Harry's green eyes suddenly brightened up. "You guys, I've gots an idea!" Draco sneered, but kept silent nonetheless. "We can use the hole to escape, and maybe I can find my mummy and daddy there, too! They'll take us back to the nursery, that's for sure... or even bring us home!"
Draco's eyes gleamed with mild anger. "Now, listen here, boo-boo head," he snapped at Harry, pointing a finger at his chest. "Let's not forget that I'm the one with the ideas here. It was me who thought of looking for your nasty mummy at all, and it is me who owns that want! And you're all going to follow me once we get out of this place!" He took a sharp glance at Ron. "Hand over the want."
Ron looked at him stubbornly. "No."
Draco pierced him with a steely glare. "Give it!"
"Not when a bald poop-head like you's gonna use it!"
"Alright then," Draco said, hiding one hand behind his back. "If you--"—he stretched the same hand out almost immediately at Ron, tossing in a tiny, black thing—"—say so!"
Ron dropped the want in a panic, and ruffled his red hair ecstatically. He didn't have to observe the black object to find out what it was—a nasty, blood-curdling, hair-raising, freckle-vanishing... spider. He whisked it off himself immediately, shivering slightly as it crept away on eight, nasty legs.
Hermione stepped on the end of the want quickly, but it was too late. Draco had already grabbed the other end forcefully into his tiny, mischief-making hands. He pointed it threateningly at the other three, eyes piercing them like a silvery serpent. "Move out."
The babies helplessly walked towards the blown-up hole. It hadn't revealed much more than a blocking, green bush, but the distinct sound of chattering people drifted into the babies' little ears. Harry led the trio, pausing as he faced the cluster of leaves at the opening. "What now?"
"Walk on," Draco drawled, still pointing the want at them.
Harry shut his eyes along with the rest as they parted the leaves with their hands, letting a good amount of sunlight pass through. Carefully, they placed one foot after the other out of the room, and stopped to listen to the now completely audible chatters.
"Whoa," Draco's voice sounded beside them.
The babies opened their eyes slowly, and marveled at the sight before them.
They were standing on a plane of inexplicably smooth cement, over which stood countless little shops of near indistinguishable items. Tons of people of all ages were scurrying around them in various-coloured robes. Some of the things looked very much out of place and unreal, and many of the said objects were inconsistently vanishing and reappearing all over the place; it was as if everything in this place was run by magic.
"Where are we?" Harry asked nobody in particular, amazed at the sight before him. Far across, he saw one boy collapse into a fit of giggles as another kid Harry presumed to be his brother floated in the air, really floating, right after he had chewed on a whitish piece of candy.
Ron and Hermione couldn't answer readily; they were too absorbed in taking in their astonishment, never having been able to see such a place. But Hermione's trance was quickly broken as she caught a glimpse of the only baldish baby in their little pack.
Draco still had the want constricted tightly in his hand and looked to be ready to threaten the babies at anytime, but his eyes were stating otherwise. He was absent-mindedly staring at a rather oddly-dressed woman in what seemed to be purple and yellow velvety robes. Hermione, being the more observant of the group, found this odd for Draco to be looking at her like that when he himself was wearing an equally odd match of garments, but the oddness soon began to fade away when she saw the real magnet of Draco's attention. The aforementioned lady was carrying a smooth, cream-colored stick in her hands, and it looked incredibly similar to the one Draco had been holding. She had another want.
Hermione broke the silence between them. "They—they have---"
"Wants," came Draco's sudden reply. "Wants just like mine."
Harry turned to Draco immediately. "That's great! Now we can have lotsa wants to find that coffee! If your little want can't do it, we can just ask one of the growed-ups for help since they have wants, too! Anyone here know how to talk to them yet?"
Draco rolled his eyes. This baby needs a good whack on the head, he thought irritably. "Doesn't anything enter your little, baby head? If anybody among us can already talk to growed-ups, Haymon would be bald!"
"Hey!"
"Then maybe we can just cry and say 'mama'," Ron suggested innocently.
Draco placed a hand on either end of his hairless head hopelessly and shook his head. "Yeah, like that's gonna work. These growed-ups are just too simple to understand how we talk!"
"Well, it's worth a try," Harry commented. "Let's try it." He squinted, trying to fill his bright green eyes with convincing tears as he pressed his hands into fists. "Waaaghhhh! Maama! Aaghh!!! "
For a moment, the other three babies simply looked at him oddly, but Ron Hermione soon gave in. "Waaagghhh!!!"
"Hey—hey, stop it! Stop--"
But Draco couldn't help it any longer, either. He felt the tears escaping his eyes angrily, and he cried as loud as any of them. "Waaaghh!!!"
All their visions suddenly turned blurry with tears. They didn't know what they were doing anymore, and after realizing that they really were completely lost and actually had a very good reason to cry, they cried even louder. People were soon scuttling towards them in the streets, letting like 'poor things' and 'ignorant parents' escape into the babies' ears. Nobody seemed familiar, nobody at all, and all of them were feeling extremely helpless. That was, of course, until someone—they couldn't even be sure if it was a man or a lady through their tears—went up to them in a hurry with two other boys trailing behind the figure.
"Oh heavens," the someone cried, rushing hurriedly to the freckled baby of the crying lot. "Ronald!"
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A/N: Yikes, sorry if this story's getting a bit messy! I really have to work on my organization... it's just that whenever I come up with a plot, I usually give in to sloth when it comes to actually planning out the events. I end up typing my fics on the fly all the time, and I have to type in whatever comes into mind just at the moment instead of being nice and organized. I just have to deal with making up the story as I type. It's like a mere collection of strung-up words, I swear, and I keep on forgetting about the importance of a well-planned plot! :^| Heh, I guess I need to work on that.
This goes for Across the Barriers of Friendship, which I had absolutely no planned plot for. It's think and type, and then disappointment. I'm not even sure if we'll be seeing the continuation of the said fic in about year, perhaps... unless of course something good crosses my mind. Drat, I'll try writing everything down for my next fic, honest! ^_^ Anyhow, please don't forget to review!
By the way, I'm sorry I can't answer all the reviews at the moment, as I need to finish uploading before around midnight. :^) My mom just planned something out regarding sand dunes early in the morning and I have to do a lot of things before getting a bit of sleep in my hands. Anyway, a huge thanks to my beloved reviewers!: Lela Potter, alecatg, Cecilia Orechio, sissy-6, chocolate malfoy, Cho_Chang, phoenixflames121, Avlyn, Godric Gryffindor, sk8tereagle, E.K. Kropp. Thanks and keep reading! ^_~ Here are the very few I can answer at the moment:
phoenixflames121: No, it isn't one of those James-and-Lily-come-back-to-life fics, and perhaps this will be the first time Harry learns to deal with being disappointed. I'm glad you found it rather sweet, though, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter just as much as the previous ones. Thank you! ^_^
Avlyn: Glad you found it funny! I hope this chapter answered your question, but Draco basically acts as their wannabe-leader in this fic. He's a constant attention-seeker, really. ^_^ Thanks!
