disclaimer: No, I do not own Harry Potter -- not even a single Chocolate Frog to my name.
"But on the edge of town," Sirius bellowed on, seeming oblivious to the inappropriateness of this activity during the dead of night, "drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn't bear the people who dressed in funny clothes -- the getups you saw on young people!"
James, Sirius, and Remus exchanged puzzled looks. Here, in this stray little paperback, was an almost flawless description of wizards from a Muggle's point of view. What did it mean? Peter tugged urgently on each of their robes in turn, demanding to be let in on the joke: he had no idea why they should find the book's words curious at all.
An awkward silence ensued, broken by Remus, who finally said, "Let me read that, Padfoot."
The book changed hands, and the James heaved a sigh of relief -- Remus, at least, would not read in the annoyingly dramatic and overly loud manner that Sirius had.
After a few uneventful paragraphs, James snatched the book away and started flipping through it idly.
"What are you doing!" Remus demanded, looking shocked.
"I'm looking for an interesting part, we're not going to sit here the whole night reading the entire book out loud," James said.
"You can't do that!" Remus exclaimed, looking at James as though he'd uttered an unspeakable sacrilige. "Books are to be read from cover to cover!"
"Wait a bit," said Sirius, frowning. He'd been looking over James's shoulder. "Go back a few pages, will you, Prongs?"
"Look, it says 'Muggle'. Right there." His eyes widened, and he read the disturbing passage out loud:
"He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon and when he left the building at five o'clock, he was still so worried he walked straight into someone just out the door.
"'Sorry,' he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr. Dursley realized the man ws wearing a violet cloak. Me didn't seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passersby stare, 'Don't be sorry, my dear sir, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!'
"And the old man hugged Mr. Dursley around the middle and walked off."
"You-Know-Who," James repeated, thoughtfully. "The Rowling can't mean Voldemort, can she? If the Muggles know --"
Beside them, Peter jumped and looked around wildly, as if Lord Voldemort would suddenly appear beside them at the very mention of his name.
"Don't be stupid, James," Sirius scoffed. "The book's obviously mislabled; there's no way a Muggle could've written this. Look at the chapter titles," he said, seizing the book and turning to the table of contents. "Chapter Five: Diagon Alley; Chapter Six: The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-quarters; Chapter Seven: The Sorting Hat; Chapter Eleven: Quidditch; Chapter Fifteen: The Forbidden Forest." Sirius trailed off, looking expectantly at his friends.
Peter's eyes grew wide. "It's a story about Hogwarts!" he exclaimed excitedly, looking immensely pleased with himself for having caught on.
"Why, so it is!" Remus said in an exaggeratedly surprised voice, keeping an absolutely straight face. Sirius and James sniggered.
Sirius scanned the book, spitting out disjointed words at random: "Mrs. Dursley, Mr. Dursley, owls, Potters, Privet Drive," he muttered. James frowned. "Would you mind telling us what's going on?"
Much to the collective dismay of all the occupants of Gryffindor Tower, Sirius started reading again in the same obnoxious voice he'd used earlier.
"...the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness," he said, while the other three struggled to catch on after being forced to skip ahead some ten pages of so, "It was sitting a still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn't so much as quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all."
James muttered something under his breath that sounded strangely like "McGonagall".
Author's Note: Oop ack. Again, major apologies for not updating. Sorry for skipping some stuff, there really wasn't alot to comment on, and typing up the story is surprisingly hard. Kudos to J.K. Rowling. Anyways, I know it's not quite as humorous as the last chapter, plus my writing style's evolved/changed quite a bit since when I wrote the last chapter. Yeah. Um, hopefully it won't be another year before I update this thing again. Review please!
Much love.
sinnamonkat
