Chapter 3
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"Where IS he?" a little redheaded girl in the front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom moaned, her eyes filling up with tears and her little dragon tail standing up on end with her sheer anger.
"Relax, Mink," the little blonde girl next to her said easily. "We know that there's a tall, good-looking blond man teaching one of the classes here, right? It's GOT to be him!"
"But, Lufa, we've been to almost every class!"
"All the more reason that this'll be the one he's teaching!" Lufa turned to the girl with rampantly curly brown hair and several more books than anyone could possibly need piled on the desktop in front of her, directly behind her. "Excuse me, does a tall, blond, good-looking man teach this class?"
"Oh, he certainly does," the girl sighed, clasping her hands, her eyes growing shiny.
"Rrr." growled the redheaded boy beside her.
"Thank-you!" Lufa chirped, turning back around. "See, Mink? Everything will be alright."
"Yeah, I suppose so," Mink sighed, offering her friend a small smile.
This was as far as the conversation between the young Dragon-half and her trusted best friend was allowed to go, as the next instant, an ecstatic squeal of 'here he comes!' brought an effective end to the hush in the room, which was instantly replaced by the excited chatter of at least a dozen young females and a little silver-haired boy in the corner. But then, little Kuja had always been odd...
"It's him!" Mink exclaimed.
Both Mink and Lufa turned around and gazed expectantly at the door. At the first flash of blond hair, both were out of their desks and to the door in an instant.
"Waay! Waay! Saucer's so great! Waay! Waay!" they both chanted, dancing in giddy circles around a very befuddled Gilderoy Lockhart, their Hogwarts robes flapping merrily behind them.
"Well! This is a warm welcome!" Lockhart grinned down at the two girls, who promptly stopped their skipping and chanting, and looked at each other in baffled disappointment.
"It's...not Dick Saucer..." Mink whispered brokenly.
"I'm sorry, Mink," Lufa crooned comfortingly to her friend, rubbing her back soothingly. "Tell you what: I think I know where ELSE he might be. Why don't we go look for him?"
"You're the best pal ever, Lufa!"
"I know," Lufa grinned. "Come on, Pia!"
"O-kay!" a tiny girl, at least five years younger than anyone else in the room, chirped, bounding toward them. "Come on, Mappy!"
A little ball of fur rolled reluctantly to its feet and leapt onto the top of little Pia's head.
And with that, three girls and a hamster darted from the room under the watchful and confused eyes of thirty students and a professor.
"Well, that was a little unexpected, wasn't it?" Lockhart commented smilingly to the class.
"A little unexpected?" Ron echoed quietly to Harry. "I think those girls were barking mad!"
"I know!" Hermione agreed emphatically. "Even if they were looking for someone else, it was just plain rude to leave before they'd even got a chance to know him!"
"Rrr..." Ron growled again.
"Ron, you've already said that," Harry snickered.
"Ah! Harry Potter!" a voice called from behind him, and, horrified, he turned slowly to meet his doom head-on.
His doom, he reflected as he stared into Gilderoy Lockhart's smiling face, was rather a letdown. His doom from the first book had been much more impressive...
"Heard about your little stunt last night, Potter," Lockhart grinned, slapping him on the back. "I blame myself, of course."
"But how-" Harry began desperately.
"Well, it's simple, really. Once I gave you a little taste of fame, you wanted more. That's why you flew the car into the tree-"
"But that wasn't why at all!"
"-wearing a blinking yellow tiara."
"Well, maybe a little," Harry grinned, recalling with great fondness the flashing headgear he had stolen from Dudley. It always made him feel like a star when he wore it...
"Just as I thought, lad. Just as I thought. Just mind you don't make this sort of thing a habit," Lockhart warned gently, patting him on the top of the head.
"Well, I suppose not," Harry conceded reluctantly. "But I'll be awfully sorry to give up my tiara. Hermione, you'll take good care of it for me, won't you?"
"Hmm?" Hermione hummed absently, eyes slightly glazed.
Ron grit his teeth at the little hearts dancing around her head as she gazed at Professor Lockhart in rapt attention. He snatched up one of the little hearts and hurled it at the blond man at the front of the room.
"Owie!" Lockhart whimpered, clutching his arm where the tiny projectile had struck it. "Who threw that?! Whoever it was, I commend you on your excellent throwing arm-"
"I didn't even try," Ron admitted to Harry with a shrug.
"-but now I'll have to take an emergency trip to the medical tower! I think honest damage has been done!"
"Wimp," Ron and Harry muttered together.
"Will you be alright to get there on your own?" Hermione asked anxiously. "Should some of us accompany you?"
"No, no, I'll be alright," Lockhart assured her with a dazzling smile.
"He's so brave," eighteen little girls sighed together, hearts dancing around their heads so thickly that it was a wonder anyone could see.
"But before I leave, I'll give you all your first hands-on lesson. This is, after all, Defense Against the Dark Arts. You will learn, over the course of this year, to defend yourselves against the vilest creatures imaginable, against things too horrifying to imagine. I have here a cage full of just such creatures."
"If it's Pippi Longstockings," Harry announced, his voice shaking slightly, "I'm quitting Hogwarts and starting a career as a shoe-shine boy!"
"Pippi Longstockings?" Professor Lockhart laughed. "No, my dear boy, it's worse. Far, far more terrifying."
"It's not...the Sweet Valley twins, is it?" Neville Longbottom gulped.
Lockhart stiffened in horror.
"Young man, don't even joke about such things!"
Neville blinked.
"I was just asking," he muttered to Hermione.
"I know, Neville," she said consolingly. "I know."
"No," Lockhart was meanwhile continuing, "the creatures are simply...this!"
He yanked a blue wool blanket off of a large birdcage to reveal a multitude of flapping, squawking little blue people with wings.
"Cornish pixies?!" Seamus exclaimed incredulously. "What's so scary about them?"
"Oh, you'll see, my boy," Lockhart chuckled, unlatching the cage and quickly scampering from the room. Then he poked his head back in.
"You three," he called. "Take care of these little devils, would you?"
"What three's he talking about?" Neville asked.
"Who d'you think?" Seamus snorted. "The story's called Harry Potter and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe, isn't it? If anyone else were supposed to take care of them, it'd be called Someone Else and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe."
"Y-yeah, but that only explains Harry. Who else?"
"Neville, who spends every waking second around Harry?"
"Collin Creevy," Neville answered instantly, and from his desk, Harry shuddered at the thought of his newly self-appointed stalker.
"Besides Collin Creevy," Seamus replied, patience starting to slip. "Try someone in this class."
Neville thought very carefully.
"RON AND HERMIONE, YOU IDIOT!" Seamus howled.
Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione had figured this out for themselves, and were busily aiding Harry in the round-up of thirty insane Cornish pixies.
"Noooooo! My tiara!" Harry howled as one particularly cruel pixy buzzed about the room, waving the glittering headpiece, procured from his half- open backpack, and laughing smugly.
"Noooooo! His tiara!" Hermione howled. "He was going to give that to me!"
Harry wheeled on her.
"Only to look after until the end of the year!"
"Right, right, of course," Hermione sighed, bidding all fond dreams of playing the fairy queen at home this summer good-bye...right before she recalled that she had had little interest in dress-up since growing from a child of nine into a mature and sedate young woman of twelve.
While she was busily coming to perhaps the first logical conclusion anyone had had that year, Harry, by now seeing red, was out for the blood of the cruel tiara-thieving Cornish pixy. It looped merrily through the air, as though drunk on whatever it is that pixies drink to escape the doldrums of everyday life, or at least to dress it up in the pleasant glow that always comes with alcohol. Eyes narrowing, Harry aimed his wand at it, and the next moment, it dropped, squawking, to the floor, at which point he picked it up by its now leaden wings, and threw it into the cage.
"Hmph!" he exclaimed, placing the tiara gingerly back in his book bag. "Teach you to steal MY dress-up things!"
"There are some things I'd rather not think about," Ron muttered to the pixy he was currently poking back into the cage, "and this is about ninety- three percent of them."
"Oh, come now, Ron," Hermione chided. "I thought Harry looked rather cute in his tiara."
"Rrr..." Ron growled for neither the first time that day, nor the last.
"Although, not quite so cute as Ginny did when he let her borrow it for the afternoon," Hermione continued, completely oblivious of her friend's less than efficient state of thinking, nor to the slight blush on the face of her other friend after he nodded his agreement a little too emphatically.
"N-not that, y'know, I was really LOOKING, or anything," Harry hastened to assure both Ron and Hermione, neither of whom were by now listening as the threat of Cornish pixies once again drew them out of their meandering side- rhetoric and back into the plot.
"Hey!" Ron bellowed as a pixy got hold of his snapped in half wand and yanked the Spellotape off of the fracture. The pixy then tossed one half of the wand to another pixy, and the two little creatures began a very obviously choreographed bow staff fight.
"How cute," Hermione giggled.
Ron glared at her.
"Hey, it's not your wand they've got hold of."
"Oh, lighten up, Ron," Hermione implored in a great show of irony as one little blue creature poked Seamus repeatedly in the side of the head and the other attempted to shove its half of Ron's wand up Neville's nose without his noticing. "Honestly!"
"Glad you feel that way, Hermione," Ron grinned. "Because it looks like that one's got your copy of 'Voyages With Vampires.'"
"DIE, DEVIL PIXY!" Hermione shrieked, hurling Ron's copy of 'Voyages With Vampires' at it.
One unconscious pixy and two copies of 'Voyages With Vampires' fell to the ground with three thuds.
"Urk!" the pixy squawked as first one, then the other book struck it squarely in the head.
Batting away the pixy busily poking him in the head, Seamus gingerly picked up the unconscious fairy and stuffed it back into the cage.
"Oh, lighten up, Hermione," Ron implored mischievously. "Honestly!"
"The bloody creature was bending the pages!" the little brunette exclaimed, close to tears.
"Yeah? And that one's getting Neville-bogies all over my wand," Ron said with a philosophical shrug. "But at least this is better than taking notes."
And with that, both friends joined Harry in the task of rounding up the remainder of the pixies before they could do further damage.
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Fifteen grueling minutes later...
"Well! Thank goodness that's over with!" Hermione chirped breathlessly as she sank wearily into her seat next to Neville.
"Yeah," Neville agreed miserably, carefully rubbing his nose and shooting Ron an apologetic look in response to the redheaded lad's murderous one as he carefully wiped the end of his wand clean. "You think Lockhart's coming back?"
"Oh, I do hope so!" Hermione exclaimed, twisting around to look anxiously at the door. "I hope he wasn't hurt badly!"
"Rrr..." said Ron pleasantly.
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The next morning, Harry woke with a start from a terrifying dream of being Fay Wray in the clutches of King Kong to the equally terrifying reality of being Harry Potter the Exhausted Gryffindor Seeker in the clutches of Oliver Wood the Psychotically Obsessed Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.
"Er, Oliver," he began in a frightened whimper as the burly sixth year boy threw a pile of clothes at him and hoped for the best, "what are you doing?"
"What d'you think, Potter? I'm getting you ready for practice!"
"At three in the morning?" Harry murmured in disbelief, wondering if there was some way he could break his leg quickly, and thus be left to a few more precious hours of sleep.
"Three in the morning?" Oliver repeated, frowning as he glanced at the clock. "Oh, buggeration...I'm doing it again."
"Doing what again?"
"Well, have you ever been so worried about sleeping in that you kept getting up at weird times during the night and getting ready?"
"Uh...no," Harry replied hesitantly. "Usually when I get up in the middle of the night it's to roast an ox for Uncle Vernon or Dudley because they're feeling peckish. So, what're you worried about sleeping in for?"
"A new Quidditch season is upon us, Potter," Oliver began in a grand voice. "We will win the cup this year, or we will die trying!"
"Oh, buggeration," Harry whimpered.
"Anyway," the older boy continued brightly, "we're practicing at six this morning, but I've been so worried about sleeping in that I've already been up to get ready about three times! Don't you remember the other times I've dragged you out of bed and thrown you in the shower?"
"Er, no..."
"You really were dead to the world!" Oliver laughed, slapping Harry on the back and sending him pitching forward to the ground, where he proceeded to simply curl up and go to sleep, cuddling a sock thrown carelessly to the floor the night before.
"Sleep..." Harry droned.
Oliver chuckled, shaking his head helplessly.
"Well, see you at six, then, eh, Potter?"
"Sleep..." Harry droned again, drooling slightly on the ever-unfortunate Neville's sock.
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The next thing Harry became aware of was that he was on his feet, propped up against a wall, with a shoe shoved into his mouth, wearing a backwards shirt and a pair of inside-out pants.
"Rise and shine, Potter!" Oliver's voice boomed, shaking him out of his half-dozing state.
"Come back at six," Harry groaned, spitting the shoe from his mouth in disgust and entertaining brief, shining images of hurling it at Oliver.
"It IS six," Oliver informed him, staring at him oddly. "Now, c'mon! The rest of the team's probably already at the pitch!"
With that, he seized Harry's arm and dragged him bodily out of the room, still partially dressed and with mussed up hair.
"Sleep..." Harry whimpered mournfully.
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End Notes: My word, this took a long time to churn out! Or rather, it took me a long time to get at it. Once I had sat down with my copy of 'Harry Potter Blah-Blah-Blah Secrets,' it came almost on its own. I guess that's what happens when you're just re-telling the plot with your own strange twist... [Rubs the back of her head sheepishly]
Anyway, sorry it took so long, and thank-you to whoever's still reading! ^_^
Oh, and I do hope that the reviewer who mentioned the Sweet Valley twins in their review doesn't mind that I've worked them into the story. The opportunity just presented itself, and you're very right: they ARE endlessly frightening.
And as for Harry/Ginny-ness, I think it shall appear in here, albeit less blatantly than Ron/Hermione-ness. As it turns out, Harry and Ginny are my third-favourite Harry Potter pairing, after Percy/Penelope and, of course, the cutest pairing in the world, Ron/Hermione. ^_^ Harry/Ginny thus far seems to be tied with Arthur/Molly (the older Weasleys) after recently reading a lovely bit of smut with the two of them, set during one of Molly's pregnancies. I can't recall the author or title at the moment, but it was beautifully written, and insanely sweet. ^_^
Oh, one more thing: I don't own Mink, Lufa, Pia, Mappy, or the mention of Dick Saucer. Those all belong to the guy who created the anime, 'Dragonhalf. They're his drug-induced creations, and I wouldn't dream of trying to take credit for them. ^_^ Anyway, I promise that this is the last obscure anime reference I'll do. ^_^
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"Where IS he?" a little redheaded girl in the front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom moaned, her eyes filling up with tears and her little dragon tail standing up on end with her sheer anger.
"Relax, Mink," the little blonde girl next to her said easily. "We know that there's a tall, good-looking blond man teaching one of the classes here, right? It's GOT to be him!"
"But, Lufa, we've been to almost every class!"
"All the more reason that this'll be the one he's teaching!" Lufa turned to the girl with rampantly curly brown hair and several more books than anyone could possibly need piled on the desktop in front of her, directly behind her. "Excuse me, does a tall, blond, good-looking man teach this class?"
"Oh, he certainly does," the girl sighed, clasping her hands, her eyes growing shiny.
"Rrr." growled the redheaded boy beside her.
"Thank-you!" Lufa chirped, turning back around. "See, Mink? Everything will be alright."
"Yeah, I suppose so," Mink sighed, offering her friend a small smile.
This was as far as the conversation between the young Dragon-half and her trusted best friend was allowed to go, as the next instant, an ecstatic squeal of 'here he comes!' brought an effective end to the hush in the room, which was instantly replaced by the excited chatter of at least a dozen young females and a little silver-haired boy in the corner. But then, little Kuja had always been odd...
"It's him!" Mink exclaimed.
Both Mink and Lufa turned around and gazed expectantly at the door. At the first flash of blond hair, both were out of their desks and to the door in an instant.
"Waay! Waay! Saucer's so great! Waay! Waay!" they both chanted, dancing in giddy circles around a very befuddled Gilderoy Lockhart, their Hogwarts robes flapping merrily behind them.
"Well! This is a warm welcome!" Lockhart grinned down at the two girls, who promptly stopped their skipping and chanting, and looked at each other in baffled disappointment.
"It's...not Dick Saucer..." Mink whispered brokenly.
"I'm sorry, Mink," Lufa crooned comfortingly to her friend, rubbing her back soothingly. "Tell you what: I think I know where ELSE he might be. Why don't we go look for him?"
"You're the best pal ever, Lufa!"
"I know," Lufa grinned. "Come on, Pia!"
"O-kay!" a tiny girl, at least five years younger than anyone else in the room, chirped, bounding toward them. "Come on, Mappy!"
A little ball of fur rolled reluctantly to its feet and leapt onto the top of little Pia's head.
And with that, three girls and a hamster darted from the room under the watchful and confused eyes of thirty students and a professor.
"Well, that was a little unexpected, wasn't it?" Lockhart commented smilingly to the class.
"A little unexpected?" Ron echoed quietly to Harry. "I think those girls were barking mad!"
"I know!" Hermione agreed emphatically. "Even if they were looking for someone else, it was just plain rude to leave before they'd even got a chance to know him!"
"Rrr..." Ron growled again.
"Ron, you've already said that," Harry snickered.
"Ah! Harry Potter!" a voice called from behind him, and, horrified, he turned slowly to meet his doom head-on.
His doom, he reflected as he stared into Gilderoy Lockhart's smiling face, was rather a letdown. His doom from the first book had been much more impressive...
"Heard about your little stunt last night, Potter," Lockhart grinned, slapping him on the back. "I blame myself, of course."
"But how-" Harry began desperately.
"Well, it's simple, really. Once I gave you a little taste of fame, you wanted more. That's why you flew the car into the tree-"
"But that wasn't why at all!"
"-wearing a blinking yellow tiara."
"Well, maybe a little," Harry grinned, recalling with great fondness the flashing headgear he had stolen from Dudley. It always made him feel like a star when he wore it...
"Just as I thought, lad. Just as I thought. Just mind you don't make this sort of thing a habit," Lockhart warned gently, patting him on the top of the head.
"Well, I suppose not," Harry conceded reluctantly. "But I'll be awfully sorry to give up my tiara. Hermione, you'll take good care of it for me, won't you?"
"Hmm?" Hermione hummed absently, eyes slightly glazed.
Ron grit his teeth at the little hearts dancing around her head as she gazed at Professor Lockhart in rapt attention. He snatched up one of the little hearts and hurled it at the blond man at the front of the room.
"Owie!" Lockhart whimpered, clutching his arm where the tiny projectile had struck it. "Who threw that?! Whoever it was, I commend you on your excellent throwing arm-"
"I didn't even try," Ron admitted to Harry with a shrug.
"-but now I'll have to take an emergency trip to the medical tower! I think honest damage has been done!"
"Wimp," Ron and Harry muttered together.
"Will you be alright to get there on your own?" Hermione asked anxiously. "Should some of us accompany you?"
"No, no, I'll be alright," Lockhart assured her with a dazzling smile.
"He's so brave," eighteen little girls sighed together, hearts dancing around their heads so thickly that it was a wonder anyone could see.
"But before I leave, I'll give you all your first hands-on lesson. This is, after all, Defense Against the Dark Arts. You will learn, over the course of this year, to defend yourselves against the vilest creatures imaginable, against things too horrifying to imagine. I have here a cage full of just such creatures."
"If it's Pippi Longstockings," Harry announced, his voice shaking slightly, "I'm quitting Hogwarts and starting a career as a shoe-shine boy!"
"Pippi Longstockings?" Professor Lockhart laughed. "No, my dear boy, it's worse. Far, far more terrifying."
"It's not...the Sweet Valley twins, is it?" Neville Longbottom gulped.
Lockhart stiffened in horror.
"Young man, don't even joke about such things!"
Neville blinked.
"I was just asking," he muttered to Hermione.
"I know, Neville," she said consolingly. "I know."
"No," Lockhart was meanwhile continuing, "the creatures are simply...this!"
He yanked a blue wool blanket off of a large birdcage to reveal a multitude of flapping, squawking little blue people with wings.
"Cornish pixies?!" Seamus exclaimed incredulously. "What's so scary about them?"
"Oh, you'll see, my boy," Lockhart chuckled, unlatching the cage and quickly scampering from the room. Then he poked his head back in.
"You three," he called. "Take care of these little devils, would you?"
"What three's he talking about?" Neville asked.
"Who d'you think?" Seamus snorted. "The story's called Harry Potter and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe, isn't it? If anyone else were supposed to take care of them, it'd be called Someone Else and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe."
"Y-yeah, but that only explains Harry. Who else?"
"Neville, who spends every waking second around Harry?"
"Collin Creevy," Neville answered instantly, and from his desk, Harry shuddered at the thought of his newly self-appointed stalker.
"Besides Collin Creevy," Seamus replied, patience starting to slip. "Try someone in this class."
Neville thought very carefully.
"RON AND HERMIONE, YOU IDIOT!" Seamus howled.
Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione had figured this out for themselves, and were busily aiding Harry in the round-up of thirty insane Cornish pixies.
"Noooooo! My tiara!" Harry howled as one particularly cruel pixy buzzed about the room, waving the glittering headpiece, procured from his half- open backpack, and laughing smugly.
"Noooooo! His tiara!" Hermione howled. "He was going to give that to me!"
Harry wheeled on her.
"Only to look after until the end of the year!"
"Right, right, of course," Hermione sighed, bidding all fond dreams of playing the fairy queen at home this summer good-bye...right before she recalled that she had had little interest in dress-up since growing from a child of nine into a mature and sedate young woman of twelve.
While she was busily coming to perhaps the first logical conclusion anyone had had that year, Harry, by now seeing red, was out for the blood of the cruel tiara-thieving Cornish pixy. It looped merrily through the air, as though drunk on whatever it is that pixies drink to escape the doldrums of everyday life, or at least to dress it up in the pleasant glow that always comes with alcohol. Eyes narrowing, Harry aimed his wand at it, and the next moment, it dropped, squawking, to the floor, at which point he picked it up by its now leaden wings, and threw it into the cage.
"Hmph!" he exclaimed, placing the tiara gingerly back in his book bag. "Teach you to steal MY dress-up things!"
"There are some things I'd rather not think about," Ron muttered to the pixy he was currently poking back into the cage, "and this is about ninety- three percent of them."
"Oh, come now, Ron," Hermione chided. "I thought Harry looked rather cute in his tiara."
"Rrr..." Ron growled for neither the first time that day, nor the last.
"Although, not quite so cute as Ginny did when he let her borrow it for the afternoon," Hermione continued, completely oblivious of her friend's less than efficient state of thinking, nor to the slight blush on the face of her other friend after he nodded his agreement a little too emphatically.
"N-not that, y'know, I was really LOOKING, or anything," Harry hastened to assure both Ron and Hermione, neither of whom were by now listening as the threat of Cornish pixies once again drew them out of their meandering side- rhetoric and back into the plot.
"Hey!" Ron bellowed as a pixy got hold of his snapped in half wand and yanked the Spellotape off of the fracture. The pixy then tossed one half of the wand to another pixy, and the two little creatures began a very obviously choreographed bow staff fight.
"How cute," Hermione giggled.
Ron glared at her.
"Hey, it's not your wand they've got hold of."
"Oh, lighten up, Ron," Hermione implored in a great show of irony as one little blue creature poked Seamus repeatedly in the side of the head and the other attempted to shove its half of Ron's wand up Neville's nose without his noticing. "Honestly!"
"Glad you feel that way, Hermione," Ron grinned. "Because it looks like that one's got your copy of 'Voyages With Vampires.'"
"DIE, DEVIL PIXY!" Hermione shrieked, hurling Ron's copy of 'Voyages With Vampires' at it.
One unconscious pixy and two copies of 'Voyages With Vampires' fell to the ground with three thuds.
"Urk!" the pixy squawked as first one, then the other book struck it squarely in the head.
Batting away the pixy busily poking him in the head, Seamus gingerly picked up the unconscious fairy and stuffed it back into the cage.
"Oh, lighten up, Hermione," Ron implored mischievously. "Honestly!"
"The bloody creature was bending the pages!" the little brunette exclaimed, close to tears.
"Yeah? And that one's getting Neville-bogies all over my wand," Ron said with a philosophical shrug. "But at least this is better than taking notes."
And with that, both friends joined Harry in the task of rounding up the remainder of the pixies before they could do further damage.
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Fifteen grueling minutes later...
"Well! Thank goodness that's over with!" Hermione chirped breathlessly as she sank wearily into her seat next to Neville.
"Yeah," Neville agreed miserably, carefully rubbing his nose and shooting Ron an apologetic look in response to the redheaded lad's murderous one as he carefully wiped the end of his wand clean. "You think Lockhart's coming back?"
"Oh, I do hope so!" Hermione exclaimed, twisting around to look anxiously at the door. "I hope he wasn't hurt badly!"
"Rrr..." said Ron pleasantly.
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The next morning, Harry woke with a start from a terrifying dream of being Fay Wray in the clutches of King Kong to the equally terrifying reality of being Harry Potter the Exhausted Gryffindor Seeker in the clutches of Oliver Wood the Psychotically Obsessed Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.
"Er, Oliver," he began in a frightened whimper as the burly sixth year boy threw a pile of clothes at him and hoped for the best, "what are you doing?"
"What d'you think, Potter? I'm getting you ready for practice!"
"At three in the morning?" Harry murmured in disbelief, wondering if there was some way he could break his leg quickly, and thus be left to a few more precious hours of sleep.
"Three in the morning?" Oliver repeated, frowning as he glanced at the clock. "Oh, buggeration...I'm doing it again."
"Doing what again?"
"Well, have you ever been so worried about sleeping in that you kept getting up at weird times during the night and getting ready?"
"Uh...no," Harry replied hesitantly. "Usually when I get up in the middle of the night it's to roast an ox for Uncle Vernon or Dudley because they're feeling peckish. So, what're you worried about sleeping in for?"
"A new Quidditch season is upon us, Potter," Oliver began in a grand voice. "We will win the cup this year, or we will die trying!"
"Oh, buggeration," Harry whimpered.
"Anyway," the older boy continued brightly, "we're practicing at six this morning, but I've been so worried about sleeping in that I've already been up to get ready about three times! Don't you remember the other times I've dragged you out of bed and thrown you in the shower?"
"Er, no..."
"You really were dead to the world!" Oliver laughed, slapping Harry on the back and sending him pitching forward to the ground, where he proceeded to simply curl up and go to sleep, cuddling a sock thrown carelessly to the floor the night before.
"Sleep..." Harry droned.
Oliver chuckled, shaking his head helplessly.
"Well, see you at six, then, eh, Potter?"
"Sleep..." Harry droned again, drooling slightly on the ever-unfortunate Neville's sock.
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The next thing Harry became aware of was that he was on his feet, propped up against a wall, with a shoe shoved into his mouth, wearing a backwards shirt and a pair of inside-out pants.
"Rise and shine, Potter!" Oliver's voice boomed, shaking him out of his half-dozing state.
"Come back at six," Harry groaned, spitting the shoe from his mouth in disgust and entertaining brief, shining images of hurling it at Oliver.
"It IS six," Oliver informed him, staring at him oddly. "Now, c'mon! The rest of the team's probably already at the pitch!"
With that, he seized Harry's arm and dragged him bodily out of the room, still partially dressed and with mussed up hair.
"Sleep..." Harry whimpered mournfully.
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End Notes: My word, this took a long time to churn out! Or rather, it took me a long time to get at it. Once I had sat down with my copy of 'Harry Potter Blah-Blah-Blah Secrets,' it came almost on its own. I guess that's what happens when you're just re-telling the plot with your own strange twist... [Rubs the back of her head sheepishly]
Anyway, sorry it took so long, and thank-you to whoever's still reading! ^_^
Oh, and I do hope that the reviewer who mentioned the Sweet Valley twins in their review doesn't mind that I've worked them into the story. The opportunity just presented itself, and you're very right: they ARE endlessly frightening.
And as for Harry/Ginny-ness, I think it shall appear in here, albeit less blatantly than Ron/Hermione-ness. As it turns out, Harry and Ginny are my third-favourite Harry Potter pairing, after Percy/Penelope and, of course, the cutest pairing in the world, Ron/Hermione. ^_^ Harry/Ginny thus far seems to be tied with Arthur/Molly (the older Weasleys) after recently reading a lovely bit of smut with the two of them, set during one of Molly's pregnancies. I can't recall the author or title at the moment, but it was beautifully written, and insanely sweet. ^_^
Oh, one more thing: I don't own Mink, Lufa, Pia, Mappy, or the mention of Dick Saucer. Those all belong to the guy who created the anime, 'Dragonhalf. They're his drug-induced creations, and I wouldn't dream of trying to take credit for them. ^_^ Anyway, I promise that this is the last obscure anime reference I'll do. ^_^