Fanfiction Can Be a Scary Thing
A/N: OK, this is the first parody I've ever done, so bear with me. I know it seems really slow at first, but it's going to pick up speed as it goes on. Now, just to warn you, the purpose of this fic is to make fun of fandom. I will try to include mockery of every style of HP fic I know of, including my own style. If you think you may be offended if I make fun of your style, please don't torture your nerves by reading this.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or places you see in this fic. All of them belong to Ms. J. K. Rowling. I also do not own Microsoft or any sort of computer technology. I just make fun of it all.
Six months after the debut of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the four Marauders and Lily are in crisis. It seems that the Marauder Era has more fans than anyone knew. Because with just that one chapter in the book set within it, the Marauders and Lily are still answering fan-mail about it. The atmosphere is tense, and the Marauders and Lily don't know how much longer they can deal with everything.
Mid-morning on December eighth, 2003 found the four Marauders and Lily spread out as always around the Potters' spacious sitting room, their unofficial fan-mail answering base. This would be the twelfth day in a row of doing nothing but reading and answering the mail of the thousands of crazed fans who wrote to them. Needless to say, the five energetic young adults were getting rather weary of this activity, despite the fact that it was only nine o'clock A.M.
As always, Sirius Black was lying casually on his stomach on the floor, reading yet another letter from a hysterical fan who could not accept the fact that he was dead. He sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his dark hair, really not caring why this girl liked him, what she looked like, or why she thought he couldn't be dead. He shut his eyes, repulsed by the idea of writing another reply full of insincere condolences and vague answers to questions he did not actually know the answers to.
James Potter was sitting on the couch next to his wife, Lily, hardly able to keep from nodding off as he read some little brat's letter about the fact that he shouldn't have been so mean to Snape. He had gotten more letters like this than he could count; he was by now seriously considering asking J. K. Rowling to write another edition of the book, emitting the fact that he had ever teased old Snivelly at all. Not that that would help very much by now, though, he thought glumly: he would probably just receive more letters yelling at him for trying to erase the past.
Peter Pettigrew was sitting in a squishy armchair near the couch. At the moment, he was not actually reading at all. He was sleeping. He had spent the past two weeks like this as well: reading until he became bored and fell asleep, then waking up an hour or so later to start reading again. It was a tedious cycle: he never got enough sleep, but he never got anything done either. But he didn't really mind. Ever since his appearance in the third book, he had gotten almost nothing but hate mail from fans. And honestly, what was the point of answering that? He was much happier while he was in the sleeping phase.
Remus Lupin was sitting in a chair facing the couch, gazing thoughtfully at his current letter and starting to feel very appreciative indeed of J. K. Rowling, just for having gotten far enough in her writing even to have been able to include him by now. He had only gotten a taste of this terrible fate known as Fame. How, he wondered, had she kept writing when she knew it would plunge her deeper into this? It was very noble, he decided, for her to have cared more about her fans' entertainment than her own sanity. He made a note to ask her whether she had been a Gryffindor in her days at school.
Lily Potter was sitting next to her husband, hardly paying attention to the letter her eyes were skimming. It was another letter congratulating her for standing up for Severus Snape against the guys, and rambling on about women's rights and such. At first she had been quite delighted with receiving these kinds of letters, and she had spent almost two days gleefully showing James letter after letter concerning the subject. It was good to know people cared, not to mention amusing to watch James's ego being bombarded for his past sinning. But by now, it was getting a bit repetitive, and the sense of joy had long faded from reading and answering these letters. Now all she wished for was a rest from all this.
A sharp tapping sound on the window next to the couch made her jump and look up. It did not take her long to notice the tawny owl flapping in place outside the window, rapping on the glass with its beak to be let in. To her horror, the owl was holding in its talons three more crisp white letters. 'Oh God, more of them? You have got to be kidding me…' she whispered despairingly.
Sirius suddenly jumped up, eyes wide, looking slightly maniacal. 'No. This has gone way too far!' he said, his voice somewhere between a shaking, horrified gasp and a yell. 'This is insane! We'll never be done with this, not if we sit here writing for the next century! We can't just sit here and write endlessly anymore, it's driving me crazy! We've got to take a break, now!'
Immediately the terse, irritable atmosphere dispersed into one of relieved enthusiasm: no one wasted any time in jumping up and abandoning their work at the prospect of some fun. Even Peter woke up enough to realize what had happened. He leaped out of his chair with a squeal of joy, pleased with himself for not having missed anything important.
'Great, OK let's get out of here!' said James, striding quickly towards the fireplace, suddenly seeming quite his regular, confident self again. Depression never did have much of a lasting hold on James Potter.
Of course, sense never had much of a hold on him either, as Lily had always noticed. Pulling him back a step to make him look before he leapt had ceased to be anything more than an instinct long ago for her, so she herself hardly noticed when she grabbed her husband by the collar and held him still. 'James, hold on," she said. "Why don't we figure out what we're doing to do before we leave to do it, alright?'
'Oh, right,' said James, turning around but still moving restlessly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. 'So, where do we want to go?'
Peter looked thoughtfully around him for a moment before saying, 'Well I don't know about any of you, but I'm getting kind of hungry. We could always go out to get some food…'
'It's only nine in the morning!' replied Sirius exasperatedly. 'And besides, we need something that will actually feel like a good break from monotony. Eating just isn't a very exciting thing to do.'
'Unless I eat something really exotic…' muttered Peter reproachfully.
A long moment of pondering silence passed after this statement was made.
'Hey, I know something exciting we could do!' said Sirius suddenly, his face brightening. 'We could go check up on the new computer!'
'The new what?' asked Peter, looking puzzled.
'You know, those new Muggle machines like typewriters, only they do a billion other things besides writing papers for you! I got one a couple weeks ago, but I haven't been able to do much with it yet.'
'Sounds interesting enough to me,' declared James, stepping toward the fire again.
'Wait, hold on a moment. You bought something that uses electricity?' asked Lily, looking suddenly very apprehensive.
Sirius's mouth formed a devilish grin, and his dark eyes were suddenly as full of sparks as any electrical appliance might be.
Lily was by now looking quite terrified indeed. 'I am going near nothing with the capacity to explode unless you four stand as far back as–'
'Oh come on Lily, do you really think Sirius would do anything that might in any way hurt you?' interrupted James, who was presently taking a pinch of Floo Powder out of the jar on the mantle over the fireplace.
'Yes I do!' Lily tried to answer, but her words were drowned out by James's cry of 'Hogsmeade, Sirius's flat!'
Sirius took a pinch of the sparkling powder for himself and moved toward the fireplace before turning back to Lily. Upon seeing her face, he couldn't help but give her a laughingly remorseful grin. 'Should I even attempt to apologize for suggesting this?' he asked.
'No,' Lily replied simply.
Sirius sighed and stepped into the fire, having already been in possession of the knowledge that arguing was going to get him nowhere. A few shouted words and a quick swooshing noise later, and he was gone.
Peter hurried forward and, blushing slightly around the ears for what he knew was a foolish act, followed Sirius and James into the fire. He did not dare look back before departing, knowing that he would surely lose his resolve and gain back his common sense if he looked Lily in the eye one more time.
Remus watched the other three go without saying a word, then turned to look very wearily at Lily. 'Looks like we're the only sane ones left. Do you suppose we should stay and wait for them to come back so we can mend their wounds, or should we go and try to keep them from getting blown up completely?'
Lily shook her head and stepped toward the fire, looking resigned. 'What's done is done. Best to keep them alive while we can.'
'Good,' said Remus, smiling. They each tossed a bit of the emerald Floo Powder into the fire and soon found themselves being whisked off to Sirius's flat.
* * *
'Well, this is it!' said Sirius, proudly standing next to the large system of plastic, glass, and cables set up in the corner of his flat.
'That?' asked James rhetorically, staring, perplexed, at the array. It did not look very impressive or exciting at all at the moment. It was an old, worn out computer, with small lights shining here and there along its surface, its wires weaving in and out in a boringly confusing-looking mess. On the monitor, the screensaver showed 'Windows '95' in red block-letters that moved at an agonizingly sluggish pace across a plain black screen.
'Yep. Incredible, isn't it?' Sirius smiled dreamily at the machine, apparently unaware of the others' less-than-amazed first impressions of it. He bent down slightly and tapped the off-white-coloured mouse with a finger. The red letters of the screensaver crawled a few more steps on their path toward the other side of the screen before freezing entirely. Everyone present save Sirius tensed up, positive that an enormous explosion was about to occur.
After a moment however, they were happily surprised when there was no explosion at all. Instead, a plain, royal blue background appeared on the screen. When nothing else happened after a few more seconds however, Peter spoke up. 'Er, Sirius… what exactly are we supposed to be looking at?'
'Give it a moment and you'll see!' answered Sirius, still appearing quite enthusiastic.
A few more moments passed, and just as Remus was about to helpfully suggest they think about doing something else for the day, a tiny picture shaped like a computer appeared in the left-hand corner of the screen. In the next moment three more of the icons appeared. A pause, and then the whole left side of the screen was filled with different icons.
'Here we go, this is the one I wanted to test,' Sirius clicked a blue icon shaped like an 'E' with a ring around it near the bottom of the screen. 'They call this little thing "the Internet". Supposedly, it's the biggest thing since the wheel for Muggles.'
Lily, although she had heard of this special programme from some Muggle friends of hers, was quite confident that this statement was no more than hyperbole as she waited for countless moments that stretched into minutes for anything remotely stimulating to happen.
Quite suddenly, things went from intensely boring to bewilderingly exciting. The screen went from the royal blue of before the white as a smaller screen appeared within the main screen. Pictures and text blocks appeared one by one. Then, there was a loud slurping sound, and all five people felt the distinct feeling of being pulled forward as forcefully as if they were being sucked into a huge vacuum cleaner. They all stumbled into the source of this force, which seemed to be the computer itself.
Peter's terrified squeak could be heard distantly as the Marauders and Lily fell straight through the computer screen, which closed up behind them like water swallowing up a handful of pebbles.
A/N: Oh, what terrible fate has befallen our heroes! How will the Fabulous Five survive this strange incident? Well, you'll just have to wait and find out in the next chapter, won't you?! Mwhahaha…