Chapter Seventy: Anecdotes
Once upon a time, in the early nineties, to be exact, a somewhat sadistic Muggle Studies teacher decided that it would be enlightening to force an entire class of pre-Aurors to form the cast of a Muggle musical, which she intended to then produce and direct herself. Unfortunately, her class was entirely guys, so she dragooned four female students into joining in the little experiment with the promise of a full quarter's credit. Two of the girls who agreed to it –almost nobody did- were Muggle-born, so it was a bit of a pointless venture for them, but they could sing on pitch, so the teacher decided it would be best to risk them wasting a little time relearning than to have the production turn into a total disaster.
It was thus, that in what was arguably the third worst production of 'Godspell' ever done, Katie Scarlett Beauregard and her best friend Cassie Alcott were subjected to the most disturbingly effective flipped-gender casting in Corey Academy's dramatic history. Katie Scarlett, for the reason that not a single guy there could hit the notes properly, played a weirdly Southern Jesus, and the eccentric Ms. Alcott was both an effective John the Baptist and a rather scary Judas Iscariot. (In that particular play, the same actor always performs both roles.) The same sadistic Muggle Studies teacher felt that it would be apropos for Judas to actually play the guitar for a certain number and provided a fairly horrible old acoustic 'piece of crap' for her poor actor, who, fortunately, had played since she was quite young. Ms. Alcott felt that Judas Iscariot, being, well, Judas bloody Iscariot, would never touch such an appalling instrument, and promptly abducted it over the one-week spring break –to 'practice.'
It was therefore thus that Cassandra Alcott utterly rebuilt the warped, third-hand, foreign-built disaster of a guitar, replacing virtually every part and making somewhat free use of the Carnegie Mellon University's wood and metal shops. The majority of the guitar's body became metal, she added an electric piezo pickup, a humbucker, a dimebucker, an internal shred switch, and a host of other decidedly un-'Godspell'-esque improvements. She even devised a switch system whereby she could use either pickup, humbucker or dimebucker, or any combination thereof, the likes of which had never been seen on any guitar in the history of mankind. The effect of this innovation was that she could make the damn thing sound like as many as three guitars playing at once. She could also play it unplugged, whereupon it sounded merely acoustic, if a far sight better than it had before.
When the Muggle Studies teacher saw what Cass had done to the wretched instrument, which to her looked like a bit of sanding, some paint, and a couple of knobs glued on, she was impressed and offered to let the young pre-Auror buy it for what it had cost her: three dollars and twenty-six cents. Cassandra eagerly paid it and rehearsed the show acoustic for the remaining two weeks.
On opening night, she plugged the guitar in to an antenna jack, which connected it to one of the largest amplifiers money could buy and professors' daughters could borrow. A young professor, in fact, one who had graduated but the preceding year, was playing the keyboards in the pit, and he suspected that John/Judas/Cassie might be Up To Something. After all, he was a canny fellow who knew Ms. Alcott fairly well –better than anyone else, some said. Even he was not prepared for the wild electrical storm the pre-Auror let out of the seemingly acoustic guitar in the middle of the crucifixion scene. Katie Scarlett was expecting it, fortunately, and writhed in appropriate tune. In 'Godspell,' Jesus is 'crucified' on a chain-link fence, and most actors play it as more electrocution than slow extermination. Katie Scarlett followed tradition, and with one of the actors surreptitiously casting sparkler charms and Cassie's guitar, the mostly Muggle audience was suitably terrified as well as moved.
And that is how Cassie Alcott was banned forever from Muggle Studies class at Corey, how John Tyler came to find guitars impossibly sexy, how Katie Scarlett Beauregard won the school Dramatic Award that season, and how the unfortunate Muggle Studies teacher developed her paranoid fears of chain-link fences, guitars, electricity and people from Pittsburgh.
Once upon another time, the year 2014 to be specific, a sixteen-year-old werewolf and her band, Serpents' Heir, played at a charity concert in Bulgaria to benefit the Josef Wronski Foundation. Instead of the Squier Werewolf she usually used, said real werewolf decided to take her mum's old guitar, a custom acoustic/electric job with a mostly metal body and a longer neck than was really necessary for even a bass. The thing was covered in autographs, scratches, a few blood stains on the upper and lowermost frets; and generally looked like what rock stars had in mind when a guitar was first called an 'axe.' It was also incredibly sexy when played by an attractive female, but the dear girl did not realize this.
The preceding act was a female chorale called something unpronounceable and even harder to spell in Bulgarian, which performed many folksy, traditional tunes, all of which sounded somewhat like drinking songs. The chorale, being mostly elderly witches, bored the audience a bit, and when the British, French and American girls took the stage, there was thunderous applause.
This was due to two factors. One, the girls were considered by many critics and teenage boys and even grown men of the period to be well on the pretty side. Two, their long-suffering road manager had forgotten to pack their 'suitable performing clothes.' Rather than play in their street clothes, which were all flowery dresses chosen by the drummer's mother, they simply played in their school uniforms.
Hogwarts school uniforms for girls, in case the reader has never had the distinct pleasure of seeing them, consist of shirt or collar, school tie, knitted or buttoned vest, and a pleated skirt, with black robes over. By some accident of unpacking, either the girls failed to entirely unshrink their clothes or they had outgrown last year's uniforms to a greater degree than they had realized.
It was thus that a lot of what could easily be mistaken for Catholic schoolgirls got up and played some of the most decadent rock n' roll ever heard in that particular corner of Bulgaria. Michelle Tyler singing 'Back in the U.S.S.R.' was bad, but Jen Weasley singing a sinful little Tori Amos ditty called 'Leather' resulted in no less than twelve Bulgarian gentlemen making donations in excess of a thousand Galleons on the spot. Once the frontman, Ms. Tyler, realized what was going on, she hastily conferred with the band and began to charmingly bait the enthralled males for higher donations. When some audience members ran out of money, belts and jewelry began to wind up in the collection baskets. A few even donated their pants, which were, by then, much too tight anyway.
And that is how Severus Snape nearly used an Unforgiveable on some two hundred innocent, if horny, Bulgarian wizards.
Once upon not so strange a time, unless you consider the kind of thing that was going on, which most people assume kind of stopped happening by the late 1930s –there was a girl named Elena Marie Catesby.
She had a little sister who was eleven years younger and therefore no help, an older brother who was twenty-some years her senior and therefore very little help, a mother who up and killed herself when her little sister was only six, which wouldn't have been so bad, except she accidentally did it in a place where said six-year-old little sister was the first one to find the still-bleeding body, and a horrible 'pureblooded pole-up-arse sonofabitch,' to use the colorful language of a contemporary, for a father. Her brother had the questionable but ultimately good sense to fall in love with a Muggle-born witch and married her instead of his vaguely eccentric arranged intended, who was actually rather pleased, as it meant she could marry the man she had in mind, who was also Muggle-born and frankly a lot more fun. And so it was that Andrew Catesby, Jr. changed his name in two ways, taking his wife's surname and shortening his first name to merely 'Drew (when we say a horrible 'pureblooded pole-up-arse sonofabitch,' we effing mean it,) so that he became Drew Morgan, and that Andromeda Black married Ted Tonks. Drew and Andromeda, who, while distinctly pleased they weren't married to each other, were somewhat good friends, and they remained so for many years. In fact, Andromeda and Ted had a baby girl the same age as Drew's new sister and he prevailed upon his mother to let him watch Elena while Andrew senior was away on, again, questionable business. Little Nymphadora and Elena were never close, but they did meet a few times before Hogwarts and were somewhat more cordial than other Gryffindor-Slytherin pairs of little girls.
Since Drew had been rather spectacularly disowned by his father, half being kicked out of the family and half leaving it with a thumbed nose and a hand gesture, that left Elena and eventually, Maria Elaine Catesby to continue the family line.
Alright, we the editors feel the need to explain a point. Two sisters named Elena Marie and Maria Elaine seem a bit…odd, don't you think? There's a reason. Lady Catesby was not only clinically depressed since sometime before her (arranged, as if you couldn't guess,) marriage, but she was also addicted to Dreamless Sleep potions and laudanum. That sort of dissolute lifestyle really takes bites out of creativity. And Andrew Catesby didn't really care what his daughters were called. They were daughters, after all, and his main goal for them was changing their last names, not giving them nice first ones. Okay? Everyone on the same page? Spiffy.
The chosen mate for Elena was one Davon Bole, elder brother of Derrick Bole and general horse's ass. She, to put it mildly, did not like this idea. One evening in the Slytherin females' dorms, while she was reading a book the ever-so-kind 'Dora Tonks had lent her for Muggle Studies and contemplating particularly bloody suicide, an idea struck her. And it was a good idea!
…Well, to a seventeen-year-old girl, maybe, but we digress.
The very next day, she went with her Muggle Studies class on a field trip to see a new Muggle film, which impressed her greatly and added some modern color to the idea.
She never returned from the field trip.
The book? 'Gone With The Wind.' Professor Snape gave it to Professor McGonagall, who read it and cried rather a lot over certain chapters before returning it to Tonks. The movie? 'Pretty Woman.'
We don't think we need to pursue the implications of that, now, do we?
While wandering –no, walking the streets of London one fine midsummer's evening, now eighteen-year-old Elena (who had changed her name in spirit to Melanie Watling for reasons we can only blame on Margaret Mitchell and a little bit of that laudanum leaking through, perhaps,) got caught in the rain. An enterprising and elderly pimp by the name of –you know what, it's really too obscene to list…
In any case, said pimp took her in, offered her shelter and a job, and since she only looked fifteen, decided to keep the cops out by putting her in charge of the books for one of his Fleet Street establishments. He had one of the other 'girls' teach her the rudiments of Microsoft Office-
Oh, what? Pimps can't use Microsoft Office? Everybody uses Microsoft Office. Don't be ridiculous.
In any case, Mel showed a natural, or, more specifically, unnatural aptitude for all things computer. The aforementioned elderly-but-powerful pimp kept most of his books with carbon paper and fat ledgers, but when he saw how rapidly his new acquisition designed clever Excel spreadsheets, web sites and credit-card swipe systems, he turned all the old hard copies, accounts information and receipts over to her for data entry. After the 'working girl' who had gotten her started left the business to start up her own franchise-
Yes, they call them franchises. It's an industry, after all.
-in another quarter, Mel began to overstep her bounds. She cleverly encrypted a program, which skimmed a modest, barely noticeable 0.3% from every incoming transaction and placed the funds in a new account, which only she controlled. Said account was used to invest in an up-and-coming little software developer, a clever coffee-shop entrepreneur, and a host of other small stocks. It was thus, that with a modest income of about £3 for every third trick turned in the greater London area and a series of intelligent investment decisions, Mel quickly earned three times her employer's net worth. She also owned stock in several very prominent companies. Since she had largely automated the finances of her boss's business, made more than enough to not require an income beyond what her stocks and embezzlements made, and didn't fancy turning tricks quite the way a few of her coworkers did, she had quite a good bit of time on her hands. She read, mostly, and eventually turned to fanfiction, internet RPGs, chat rooms, and even erotic web mastery to keep herself happily occupied. Mel made a great many friends in this way, and eventually linked up with a few other witches and wizards who also dug Muggle technology. She began to take more of an interest in the world she had abandoned, especially when a fanficker she met at WIKTT called Lady Cat began emailing her anecdotes about Aurory.
It was at the age of twenty-one that she made her move. She pulled out three things and showed them to her lecherous old boss. One was a CD-ROM she had burned with enough information to convict him not only of vice conspiracy but also tax evasion, another was a nice leather bowling bag, and the third was her wand. She showed him the first one first. As he goggled over the terrifying disc of hard evidence, she informed him quite coolly that she had duplicates hidden in lockers at every London tube and train station. In the event that she failed to call several friends each day at about ten o'clock with the password, they would take the CDs straight to the Proper Authorities.
Her boss asked her what she wanted.
"Total control and ownership," Mel purred.
"Of the Wet Beaver on Fleet Street?"
"Don't be stupid. I want all of it." Mel then handed him a printed contract. "I give you my solemn word, either your signature or your brains will be on this momentarily."
"You've been reading 'The Godfather,' I see." The old lecher chuckled. "How about this? I'll place you in control as my caporegime, will everything to you except what's necessary to keep me in peanuts, gin and women for the rest of my life, and when I die, you can have it all. I'll even tell my nephew not to challenge you."
"Oh, that wouldn't be necessary," Mel replied airily, setting a two-tone leather bowling bag on his desk. The pimp opened it and stared at his nephew's head.
No, dear readers, Mel did not kill the nephew. He was riding his motorbike behind a lorry loaded with steel plates, one of which wasn't secured, and when it fell off, it worked as neatly as a guillotine. Mel happened to be passing the fruit stand the disembodied rider crashed his Vespa into, recognized his rather fag-a-licious jacket, and took the opportunity to acquire both a Prada bowling bag from an adjoining shop and the ultimate paperweight.
In any case, the sight was more than enough to unnerve her boss.
"You can't do this."
"Honey pie, Ah jes' did." The Southern accent was another weird side effect of the 'Gone With the Wind' fixation, and she had cultivated it lovingly. "You ah gonna sign that contract, or I'm gonna do the verah same thing ta you, savvy?"
With rather unseemly hurry, the pimp signed, initialing every page, made twelve copies on his deskside Xerox, placed them in envelopes addressed to his employed madams, licked them, sealed them, tucked them in the outbox, and promptly dropped dead of a heart attack.
"Aw," Mel observed, disappointedly fingering her wand. She had intended to use a minor hex to produce much the same effect.
And that is how come every third hooker in England works, indirectly, for Dumbledore.
A/N: My staff felt that some readers might be confused about the guitar terminology earlier in the chapter. Considering my staff consists of my editor, my little sister, and my pet cats, I think I can explain it a little. Looking at an ordinary electric guitar, such as those one sees on magazine covers, behind the strings you will notice a thick, wide plastic plate with six metal dots that look like buttons. That is a pickup. The button-looking doohickeys are what pick up (hence their name,) the vibrations from the strings and take them to the amplifier. Pickups come in three kinds: the humbucker, the piezo, and the dimebucker. Humbuckers are the kind you see on most electric guitars. Most have two. Piezoes are pickups usually added to acoustic guitars. The dimebucker is a relatively new invention. Instead of six little round doohickeys, a dimebucker has one long, thin one that picks up all six strings. It takes its' name from the guitarist who popularized it, Dimebag Darrell of Pantera, which gives you some idea, perhaps, of what the thing sounds like.
Another question I am bound to get is, is all that even possible? Three pickups are definitely hard to miss on any guitar. It would be very complicated to have all three work at once. Could any acoustic body support three different, interconnected pickup systems? Here is the answer: noone's really sure. I have an uncle who does experimental, crazy things with guitars, and he's only succeeded in getting a simultaneous piezo and humbucker onto an old piece of garbage I got him at a garage sale. There wasn't much space left when we closed the body back up, but then, we didn't have a dimebucker to add. Those things are expensive, and since they're so new, it's unlikely you'll find one on an old, destroyed axe from the seventies. However, whether just out of misplaced faith in one's eccentric relatives or sheer wanting to hear what it'd sound like, I think it is. And of course, if one has a wand at one's disposal, a lot more is possible.
Which begs the question, why hasn't Arthur Weasley's department made rules about magicking instruments? Oh…wait…
-J. McN.