Harry darted from tree to tree, staying to the shadows, much to their disappointment. They were coming, he knew...he needed to make it to his banana-seat tricycle with the lurid Gryffindor banner.

He dove from the cliff that had ominously appeared and whistled for his trike as he fell.

Splat.

No trike.

The Anglia came trundling up, spotted Harry, and continued on. It did a double-take and came speeding back to his smushed form, screeching to a stop and crushing Harry's fingers flatter, enjoying the slight painful whimpering coming from the ground. With a few pops, Harry had freed his hand and reinflated himself like the poor little cat on Hocus Pocus. He leaped into the car, and in the classic "pursued-by-unknown-pursuers-the-pursued-leaps-off-of-a-cliff-and-climbs-into-a-teal-Ford-Anglia-to-turn-and-look-for-the-pursuers-who-pop-out-off-dark-places-as-pursued-sits-dumbly-in-car" move, turned and looked for his unknown pursuers. As one, the rabid kangaroos bounded from all manner of dark and smelly places (my sock drawer, a can of yams, a pumpkin pie, and the banana stand of a grocery store) and, in all their rabid rabidity, began a rabid pursuance of Harry in the Anglia.

The Anglia, having no particular desire to be forcibly molested in the windshield wipers by the rabid marsupial salivate spew, revved its engine in a desperate attempt to fly off. Harry, however, being an idiot, had his foot mashed firmly against the brake. In frantic blarings of the horn and waving of its virginal windshield wipers, the car hoped to alert Harry to his fatal podiatric position. Harry, the blubbering prat, simply stared slack-jawed and spittle-chinned as the kangaroos neared.

The Anglia, now hysterical to preserve its wiper blades, ejected Harry from his seat and high into the air as it shot away. Harry flew up and up, pelted by malignant papayas hurled by the kamikaze kangaroos as the leapt rabidly from trees to reach the floating Potter. A seagull, seeing the papayas flying in all their malignance through the air, dove after one in the plans of taking it to ram through Clinton's--

Thock.

The seagull struck Harry in the baby toe, causing the blithering idiot to plummet to the earth, in a juicy barrage of tasty, tropical, tumourous papayas, to the mercy of the rabid kangaroos, who screeched and foamed all the more profusely.

**********

"Explain the principles of centripetal force when applied to the square of the second quadrant to the 3 power!"

Harry's head lolled about on his shoulders. Left ear to right shoulder (quite the contortionist, our Potter), Harry looked at the cabbage screaming at him.

"Describe the details and discrepancies of the soliloquies of Shakespeare as compared to Frost!" screamed another of the vicious vegetables.

Harry twisted his head all the way around. He was surrounded by orange cabbages on all sides, much like the kind one would find in a "Cabbage Casserole Surprise with Citrus Sauce" that has been prepared for dinner when one was expecting a bisque and wondering what the strange smell issuing from the kitchen was, wailing at him, spraying him with bits of their leaves and much juice.

"Recount the prosecutor and defendant in the Betts vs Brady case and give a lengthy biographical verbal essay of each!"

"Explain in detail the techniques of contrapposto, sfumato,--"

"Recite the Constitution of the United States of America, verbatim!"

"Define verbatim!"

"Recite the Latin, French, German, and Spanish dictionaries in Pig Latin!"

"Name the capitals and leaders since the formation of such cities of Myanmar, Cameroon, Eritrea, Suriname--"

I would continue verbatim documentation of this episode, alas the time constraints, added to the employment of area on this world wide web and the facilities of such, it is immaterial. Suffice it to say that the tyrannical leaved vegetables sustained unrelenting and perpetual questions of the inane nature and trivial category, of which, of course, a great git as Harry would have not the slightest inkling concerning.

Harry, calling on faculties I had heretofore considered him less than incapable of, called on reserves to persevere this torture of drilling his chronic stupidity into cerebrum, cerebellum, Abdullah oblongata, and tail bone. Soon the sting of the cabbages' words were dulled and the impacting flecks of cabbage bits hitting his flesh with raging force was forgotten. He began to notice some strange behaviors of the screaming, spitting cabbages with a vast knowledge of things no one should really know as well as they. They would take turns howling questions at him, much like the immense thug-ninja groups in movies who dance threateningly around the hero (and, in the better movies, may even have some dooming chant or mantra) as they patiently wait to attack and be defeated by the good guy one by one. While on cabbage was yelling, the others would turn and seem to be reading some sort of magazine. Harry seemed to remember Hermione beating him with a rubber hose and screaming their Herbology lesson in a last ditch attempt for the rock of his head to absorb the minutest bit of knowledge. "CABBAGES ARE MALE!" she had screamed. "YOU GREAT BLITHERING PRAT! THE ZUCCHINIS ARE FEMALE!" At this point Harry had blacked out. He had woken a week later in a dirty public restroom with a severe lack of Charmin, with only apricot cookies to subsist on and a cat with a urinary tract infection for company.

Harry squinted closer at the magazines...it was full of color photographs of orange cabbages in such suggestive poses as in a pot, on the cutting board with a knife nearby, and many other poses.

"Aha," Harry mumbled to himself. "Cabbage erotica. All cabbages are male..."

Harry racked his brains for a weakness for the homosexual vegetables. The only thing he could think, he blurted out immediately, "MY FAVORITE COLOR IS PURPLE!"

The cabbages fell silent and all turned slowly to face him with what Harry assumed were their faces. Harry raised his arms slowly and made a triangle with his fingers above his head.

He had their full attention now; he exercised his advantage and leapt up, kicking them out of the way and tromping on them, as they squealed helplessly and the cabbage juice soaked Harry's shoes. He was safe outside of their secret, evil lair before he stopped gimping along. He looked around wildly.

An evil-looking man on a gray horse came riding up. "Allow me to escort you home!" he cried, swinging from his mount. Just then an infinitely more handsome man drove up in a carriage, bedecked in the red coat of the British Army, a fat cow in a veil in the seat next to him.

"Willoughby!" the cow bellowed, flinging herself from the carriage and at the evil-looking man. She landed on him and his horse, crushing them all to death in an instant.

The handsome man looked sadly at the tragic sight. "It's always the Elizas and the Eilza-look-alikes that are crushed to death. This is the first to actually crush another person to death. Maybe I should just learn to find someone who deserves me..." The man looked at Harry. "I of course keep up my gallant and dashing demeanor...can I give you a ride? The horse is out of danger of killing itself hauling THAT, now."

Harry gratefully climbed into the carriage. The man smiled, and had any women been in sight and alive, they would have fainted in helpless rapture at seeing that gorgeous grin. "My name is Colonel Brandon. Were I narcissistic, I would tell you all about my tragic past. However, since it has been tragic, it has tempered me into the fine man I am today."

This was not boasting, of course, see the movie Sense and Sensibility for the background information. Nothing that man says can be boasting. All men should strive for Colonel Brandon-ness.

They pair rode along in silence, as Colonel Brandon's tragic past had made him the sweet, thoughtful, gently silent type, and Harry had nothing of any use to say. Harry nodded off and awoke abruptly, a group of ferrets around his head, nipping at his ears.

Harry tried to whimper and move his head, but it was stuck, embedded even, in the pile of mud he had fallen into. Harry screamed as the ferrets hauled a carrot into view, the hardened mud preventing him from his neurotic spasms. His eyes rolled back in his head and he drooled and gagged on it.

High above, Snape watched from a window, grinning sadistically at the twitching git, and handed another carrot to his loyal ferrets.