Disclaimer: The author does not claim ownership of any copyrighted material. The Hogwarts School Song is from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, chapter seven, page 128, written by J.K. Rowling. Used without permission. The Camptown Races was written by composer Stephen Foster. Used without permission. Quotes from the movie Blazing Saddles are used without permission.
Racist, crude, and sexist statements and attitudes are those of the characters and are not shared by the author.
Rated PG-13 for crude frontier language and some mild sexual innuendo in chapter six. No slash occurs, although Remus Lupin and Severus Snape do form a highly unlikely friendship
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Wands a-Blazin' by Rae Roberts
Chapter 1, De Camptown Ladies: In which Remus Lupin finds himself trapped in the American Olde West, and Draco Malfoy and "Slytherin Boy" are forced to don cowboy hats and play along in the roles of Taggart and Lyle.
Remus Lupin wiped the sweat from his face with a dirty bandanna and rolled his aching shoulders. "Merlin's beard. It's hot."
Dean Thomas set his heavy sledge hammer aside and grinned at Remus. "Yeah, but at least it isn't raining. Remember, Remus? That's what you said when we left prison... 'At least out West, we'll see the sun again'."
Remus rolled his eyes and smiled at his former student, now a fellow lycanthrope and convict on the railroad work gang. "True, Dean, but I think I've seen enough of the sun to last a lifetime." He pulled his broad-brimmed hat lower over his eyes and hefted his pickaxe once more.
Just then the foreman and his gang rode up to the work site on horseback. "Come on, boys," shouted the former Death Eater. "The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them picks and them shovels, you'd think it was a hunnert an' twenty degrees." He laughed coarsely. "Can't be more than a hunnert an' fourteen."
The convicts did their best to simply ignore the foreman. Remus glanced up from under the brim of his hat, trying to remember the young man's name. He'd been a student at Hogwarts too, in Slytherin, back in the Old World. Back then, he'd been a nonentity, tagging along in the looming shadows of Crabbe and Goyle. Remus sighed. The lad's life might have turned out so differently, if not for Voldemort.
It was hard to maintain any sympathy for the nameless Slytherin when, just up the line, one of the centaur laborers collapsed from the heat. "Dock that damn mule a day's rations fer nappin' on th' job," the foreman chortled. Dean and some of the other werewolves dragged the once-proud creature into the sparse shade of a boulder. The other centaurs on the line hung their heads dejectedly. "Don't look so down, boys," the grinning foreman yelled. "Show some spirit. Sing one of them work songs like the nigra slaves used to do."
Dean and Remus exchanged a look of pure disgust. The gang of thugs on horseback was waiting expectantly for a song. Remus was struck with inspiration. "Hogwarts, Hogwarts, hoggy warty Hogwarts," he began in a hoarse baritone, "teach us something please..."
Dean frowned in concentration. "Hey, I kinda remember that song, only the tune went like this... 'Whether we be old and grey or young with scabby knees'," he joined in to a completely different tune. Other Hogwarts graduates began to sing along tentatively as vague memories of the old school song came back to them. The centaurs exchanged grins and drummed their hooves to the beat.
Remus smiled; sometimes he could still make his friends recall glimpses of their former lives. The group of convicts was in full swing, roaring out "teach us things worth knowing, Bring back what we've forgot, Just do your best, we'll do the rest, and learn until our brains all rot!"
"No, no, no, that's all wrong!" the foreman yelled, cutting through the din. "I wanna hear a song, a real song, you know, like," he paused for inspiration. "Like this! Swing low, sweet char-i-ah-ot," he sang in a surprisingly pleasant tenor.
The laborers feigned bewilderment. "Sweet cherry what?" asked Dean.
"You know, one o' them nigra spirituals," the Slytherin cried, "like, 'De Camptown Ladies'."
"De Camptown... Ladies?"
Clearly the ignorant convicts needed an example set for them. The foreman and his gang all struck up the tune, singing in exaggerated dialect as they stomped their feet and clapped their hands. "De Camptown Ladies sing dis song, doo-dah, doo-dah! De Camptown racetrack five mile long, oh, de doo-dah day!"
They were too busy with their impromptu minstrel show to notice Draco Malfoy ride up on his black stallion. "What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin' on here!" He pulled his gun out of his holster and began to pistol whip the hapless foreman. The singing came to a stop as the convicts clutched their sides with laughter. "I hired you people to get a little track laid, not jump around like a bunch o' Kansas City faggots!"
Remus had to stifle a laugh; the sight of the scion of the oh-so-aristocratic and pure-blooded Malfoy family dressed in a ten-gallon hat, bolo tie and cowhide chaps never failed to amuse him, even though it really wasn't the young man's fault. Like everyone else, he'd been forced to adapt to life in the New West.
The New West... It was an alternate dimension, a pocket of not-quite-reality that had been discovered shortly after the war that had decimated the wizarding world. The Ministry of Magic had claimed the space in the name of Great Britain and populated it with settlers eager to make new lives for themselves. Amnesty was offered to those who, like Draco and his father Lucius Malfoy, claimed to have been under the influence of the Imperius Curse during the war. The homesteaders of the New West had been promised an idyllic life of peace and prosperity, far from the sad memories of the Old World and the prying eyes of Muggles. Convicts such as the rag-tag band of werewolves, warlocks, centaurs and hags that Remus was part of, had been shipped off to the new dimension to provide cheap labor and to alleviate the crowding in Azkaban.
Remus wondered now if the new utopian society would have ever worked out as planned. The Ministry of Magic had no way of knowing that once the settlers arrived in the new dimension, the West would begin to exert its own subtle, insidious influence on them all. Within five years, none of the homesteaders remembered their former lives as citizens of modern-day wizarding Britain. Instead, they'd taken on the personalities—and prejudices—of American settlers, circa. 1874. All contact with the Old World had been cut off—for all Remus knew, wizarding Britain had forgotten the New West completely as well. For some reason he alone seemed to have been cursed with the memory of whom he'd been before... Remus Lupin, member of the Order of the Phoenix and trusted friend of both Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. A werewolf, true, but one who was innocent of the atrocities he'd been accused of.
Meanwhile Draco informed the foreman of the reason for the interruption. "Surveyors say there might be quicksand up ahead."
"I'll send a couple men on horses to check it out," the foreman said eagerly.
Draco swung his pistol at the man. "You dummy! Horses? We cain't afford to lose no horses. Send a couple o' werewolfs."
"You heard the man," the foreman leered at Remus and Dean. "Get on a hand cart and go check the rails up ahead."
Remus ducked his head and pretended to be intimidated. "He asked for werewolves. Truth be told, sir, I'm not really a werewolf. I'm an Episcopalian."
"Shut up and get goin'!"
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Dean was still chuckling as the handcart rolled along the desert landscape. "Gwine to run all night, gwine to run all day," he sang in falsetto, mocking the foreman.
"At least the cart stirs up a breeze," Remus laughed and joined in, "Bet my money on de bobtail nag, somebody bet on de bay."
The two friends didn't notice their peril until the cart abruptly began to sink. "Hey, Remus, what isn't exactly water, and isn't exactly earth?"
"Quicksand!"
Alerted by the two men's cries for help, Malfoy rode up, followed closely by the nameless Slytherin, who showed more presence of mind than Remus would have thought to credit him with. He drew his wand from the leather holster at his belt and cried, "Accio handcart!"
Remus and Dean watched in disbelief as the cart floated out of the quicksand to safety. "Dang, that was lucky," Malfoy said. "Doggone near lost a four hunnert galleon handcart!"
"Remus, they're going to leave us to die!" Dean cried.
"Stay calm, Dean," Remus said. "This is similar to being lured into a bog by a hinkypunk. Don't flail. Just lean back and try to float."
"Hinkypunk?" said Dean. "Remus, sometimes the things you say make no sense." Nevertheless, he did as he was told and soon rose to the surface.
"Good, now paddle—slowly—to the edge." With great difficulty, they managed to free themselves from the mire.
"I think we can re-route the track over there to the left, around that hill," said Draco, pointing. He glanced down to where the two exhausted and filthy werewolves lay at the edge of the pit of quicksand. "Break time's over, boys." He tossed them a shovel. "Don't just lay there, get up an' put that there shovel t' good use."
"Oh, I will," Remus said grimly. He grabbed the shovel and pulled himself up.
"Remus, don't do it!" Dean pleaded.
But Remus had taken all the abuse he could stand. "I have to."
Dean could only watch as he advanced on Draco, holding the shovel like a baseball bat.
Draco had his back to him, giving the foreman instructions. "Send an owl to the main office, and tell them that I said—" Remus struck him as hard as he could with the shovel. "Ow!" yelled Draco as he dropped to the ground.
Oblivious, the Slytherin flunky took down the message verbatim. "Send owl, main office, tell them you said, 'ow'. Gotcha."