A/N- This story is kinda random, and it has some LOTR in it (you've been warned). Beware self-insertion. My throat hurts.

Elyse3- Thank you! I actually didn't have the Valjean thing in my original draft (which I wrote during French class). I was done with the story and I thought, "What kinda crappy ending is that?" and shoved that in there. Glad it worked.

eponine-meliara- Hurrah! Except... not hurrah... I hope the flying toothpaste didn't harm your computer. Well, at least you weren't laughing and drinking something, cos then it would come out your nose, and that HURTS.

Mlle. Verity le Virago- That brings up the ever popular question... who's stupider: Marius or Cosette? No, seriously, I love them both. I really do. We just have an... abusive relationship.

La Epster- Yes, poor Marius. He's not too quick on that sort of thing. But I'm glad I made you laugh. Yeah, Eponine's having trouble dying... but so does Catwoman.

A Fanfic Carol

The Authoress pulled the covers up under her chin. It was awfully late. She had just written the final chapter of a ficlet in which Marius and Cosette fight crime by night. She was proud of it, despite the fact that everyone was OOC.

She had also just posted the second chapter of her fic called Legeo and Gimliet, a marriage of stupidity, boredom, Tolkien, and Shakespeare that featured more OOC-ness than she had thought possible. It was rather an insult to Tolkien's great work.

Just as the Authoress closed her eyes, she heard a strange sound in the hallway. A sort of rattling... there it was again! The Authoress slowly opened her door and was highly shocked to see a tall, sideburned man wrapped in chains and floating a few inches above the floor.

"LesMisLoony..." he whispered hoarsely.

"In- inspector Javert?"

"You have defiled great works... see your punishment?"

"No..." she answered blankly.

"You shall be forced to dwell in a world of miserable characters for all eternity... unless you change your ways..."

"Will Montparnasse be there?"

"Change your ways..." the inspector repeated. "You shall be visited by three angry characters tonight... three visitations... expect the first character at midnight..." Javert disappeared.

"O... kay. No more of that delicious Vanilla Coke™ that Elyse3 sent me for my birthday... it has some weird side effects. Wait...should Coke have side effects?" Confused, she closed the door.

The clock on the table read 11:49 when the Authoress climbed back into bed. "Eleven minutes... maybe it'll be Sam Gamgee..." were her last thoughts as she drifted off to sleep.

The Authoress awoke with a start. Her clock read 11:59. "I only got ten minutes of sleep? Alright, where's my next character?"

No sooner had the question left her lips than she saw something standing by the window. "Who's there? Is that Parnasse? No... you're too small. Sam? Pip?"

The figure stepped out of the shadows. It was a little girl with large, haunted eyes and dark hair. She wore a brilliant white gown that gave her an appearance of floating.

"Allouette?" the Authoress asked. "Young Cosette?"

The little girl nodded. "I have come to show you visions of Writers Past."

"Why aren't any Lord of the Rings characters here?"

"If you wish it, they will co-"

"I wish it!" the Authoress interrupted.

"But first you must come with me," the window flew open and Cosette held out her hand, "or chains will someday bind you."

"Oh! I saw this on A Muppet's Christmas Carol!" the Authoress cried, taking the child's extended hand.

As expected, the two were immediately flying above North Carolina, and then over the Atlantic Ocean. The Authoress's attempt to sing A Whole New World was hushed by Allouette.

"I don't know the words anyway," she huffed.

They finally landed in the backyard of a massive estate. At a word from Young Cosette, they were inside a room where an older man was asleep at a table covered in papers. "Read the papers," Allouette said quietly.

The Authoress grabbed the nearest one. It said "Javert" at the top, followed by several lines scrawled in French. The Authoress, being at the end of her first year of French class, didn't understand much. The words that she saw first were LA LOI! in large capital letters. "The law?"

"Character maps," Allouette explained.

Sure enough, the table was covered in character maps for everyone from Montparnasse to the bishop. The Authoress turned her attention to the sleeping man. "This... this is Victor Hugo?"

The child nodded. "You see, LesMisLoony, how hard he worked to keep his characters the way they were meant to be?"

"Yeah, but-"

The room changed and Hugo was gone. They were in a similar room, but this man was still working at his desk. The Authoress and the Lark remained silent for a while, watching him.

The man was writing furiously. He suddenly stopped, shook his head, and threw his entire manuscript into the wastebin. Grabbing another clean sheet of paper, he wrote, "Chapter 1." The man stared blankly at this page for a while, threw his hands up in disgust, and left the room.

"That dude just threw away, like, a hundred pages!"

Young Cosette nodded.

"Was that Tolkien?"

Another nod. "Monsieur Tolkien was almost halfway finished with the first part of his trilogy, but he decided it wasn't quite right and started all over again."

The Authoress's eye twitched. She blinked a few times, and when her eyes refocused she was back in her own room.

"I leave you now," Cosette said dreamily. "Expect another visit at one in the morning."

"Can it be a Lord of the Rings character?"

Allouette was gone.

The Authoress sighed and climbed back into bed.

Again she awoke one minute before the hour.

"I hope this is a guy from Middle Earth... LIKE SAM!"

The Authoress became aware of a door in her wall that hadn't been there before.

"Oh, I remember this part!" she said, hopping out of bed, crossing the room, and pulling open the door.

It seemed that she had interrupted a song, for the man inside was in the middle of shouted "Hey, ho-" He was indeed a character by Tolkien, but he sure as heck wasn't Sam.

"Who're you? You weren't in the movie!"

"Hello there!" the jolly man cried, shoving a bunch of grapes into his mouth. "I know I wasn't in the movie! They left me out, much to the annoyance of some fans."

"Well, I didn't miss you, and I don't want you in my room! I want Sam or Pippin!"

"And we all want you to stop writing OOC fics!"

"I don't ca... all? Even Sam?"

"Well... no. Mainly just me and Merry and Legolas and Gimli and Elrond and Gandalf and Arwen and Thranduil and..."

"So... everybody except Sam, Frodo, and Pippin?"

"...Did I already say Legolas? Cos he's not happy... and- what? Oh, yeah...that's about right."

"Well," the Authoress sighed, "I don't care about all of you. Just Sam and Pippin... and Frodo's pretty cool... I mean, it takes guts to drool all over the place on camera like that... Merry, not so much... he's trying to be Pippin or something... Oh, I like Bilbo! But I don't like Rosie Cotton! Grrrrr!"

The second spirit blinked.

"Can we just get on with it?"

"Do you even know who I am?" he asked warily.

"Uh... Santa Claus?"

"No..."

"Hagrid?"

"Not quite. I'm-"

"Tom Bombadil?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, that's settled. Let's go," the Authoress demanded.

In a puff of jolliness, the two arrived at a graveyard.

"What the... this isn't until the third spirit!"

"It's not about you, ya idiot!" Tom shouted un-jollily.

"If it's not about me, then why are you non-Sam and non-Montparnasse freaks bugging me when I'm trying to sleep, eh?" the Authoress shouted back.

Tom Bombadil had no answer to this question.

"Alright, why are we in a graveyard?"

"Listen," Tom answered, a bit of his jolliness returning.

The Authoress listened. She became aware of a vague thumping noise coming from a big tombstone nearby. "What? Somebody's buried alive? What does that have to do with my fanfiction?"

"Be quiet! It's not alive! This is the sound of-"

"Oh, I see!" the Authoress interrupted, pointing to the tombstone. "This is Victor Hugo's grave! He's rolling around in his grave, just like Alteng said Tolkien would be! So I guess that means Tolkien's doing the same thing! Cool!"

Tom Bombadil smacked himself in the forehead. "You're supposed to feel bad! They can't rest in peace because of your fanfiction!"

"Awesome!"

Beyond annoyed, Tom Bombadil exploded into a thousand pieces.

"Neat!" the Authoress shouted. "Wait... how do I get home?"

She heard a clock strike two.

"Oh yeah! The last spirit meets me here!"

And indeed, she became aware of a tall, dark figure coming toward her.

"Well, that sure as heck ain't Sam," the Authoress sighed. "Maybe Montparnasse?"

The cloaked figure stood in front of her. She couldn't see his face, but a pipe emerged from his hood.

"I guess the pipe means you aren't a Nazgûl. Are you Pippin sitting on Sam's shoulders? Ooh... that would rock!"

He didn't answer, but slowly stuffed another pinch of weed into his pipe. Upon seeing a ring on his finger and a fingerless glove on his hand, the Authoress squealed. "Stridagorn! Yay! A character from the movie who's actually on my List!"

Aragorn threw back his hood. "You are far too cheerful, Miss LesMisLoony!"

"Eek! You're quoting the movie! Sorta! Yay!"

Strider buried his face in his hands.

"Oh, sorry. I mean... why won't you spea... um... never mind."

"Let's just go."

"Do you still want me to be afraid of you?"

"Don't bother," he said stiffly.

They stood in a room with a computer.

"Whatcha want me to do?" the Authoress asked.

Strider slowly raised his arm, pointing at the Internet Explorer icon on the computer's desktop.

"Good job being scary," she said as she logged onto the internet. "Let me guess – you want me to go to fanfiction.net?"

Strider nodded, and the Authoress did.

An error message surfaced on the screen.

"What?" the Authoress cried, her voice going up an octave. "I typed the address right!"

Strider nodded.

"You mean... fanfiction.net no longer exists?"

He nodded again.

"Take me away from this place! Please, Stridagorn, send me home! I can't take it! The horror!" the Authoress sobbed.

She rubbed her eyes and looked around. "I'm back!"

Indeed, the Authoress was in her own room again.

"What have I learned from those characters?"

She thought for a second.

"Well," the Authoress sighed, "I don't know what they've taught me, but that sure will make a great ficlet!"