WHAT, A PARODY?
I wish I owned Harry Potter.
( I know the story is probably a bit OOC, but! review, and no flames, please. Most likely a H/Hr story. )
Platform 9 + 3.14
The summer holidays were drawing to a close, and Harry Potter, winding his way through the crowded platform of 9 + 3.14, was filled with a kind of distaste as he boarded the Hogwarts Express. Honestly, the school could do with some funding so as to upgrade the condition of the train; it had become creakier and rustier since the last time he saw it. Seven years of experience at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, however, told him that he was lunatic to think that way; Dumbledore had always maintained that having an 'ancient' train added much more to the schooling experience.
Ronald Weasley, a fellow Griffin Door housemate and one of his best friends, was pumping his arm energetically and waving to the world. Ron was over two hundred years old this year and still lapping life up; strangely enough, he still looked every bit the seventeen-year-old hormonal teenager. Ron only started his official schooling at the same time as Harry (before that, there were the days when the name 'Ronald Weasley' was synonymous to box office success). The Weasleys were the only known possessors of an elixir of life known as the Philosophical Rock, and true enough, Harry spied the red rock clutched tightly in Ron's hand as he approached.
"Yo, mate," Harry grinned.
"Howdy!"
Close-up, though, Harry noticed that Ron looked rather fed-up, and was quite surprised to see streaks of silver lightly running through Ron's sea of red hair.
"Don't ask," Ron started, when he caught Harry staring at him. "Our darling rock here has been boring me with long conversations about the true meaning of life, and I must say it got quite pissed when I wasn't listening, so it decided to dye my hair white—"
But what was truly, seriously white was the face of Ginny Weasley looming in front of the both of them, dressed in an odd get-up of sea-green kimonos and black sandals.
"Geisha," Ginny said simply, smiling indulgently at the both of them.
Ron started muttering something under his breath about the warped ideas of eighty-nine-year-olds, and how he was way past that stage.
A look of mounting irritation was lining Ginny's face.
"Ignore him, dear one," She fluttered her eyelashes at Harry flirtatiously, oblivious to his gagging, and giggled. "I couldn't find the shoes, see, but my sandals match prettily! Like, oh my gosh!"
When Harry turned aside to politely hide his faux vomiting, he came face to face with Hermione Granger, his other best friend, who immediately lauched into a long-winded description about the current book she was reading.
It was Memoirs of a Geisha.
"Shit, not again." Harry tried to mask his horror (the rapidly ticking time bomb in his head told him that between Hermione's rambling and Ginny's dressing, it would only be a matter of five seconds before he exploded) but must have failed, or he might have spoke his thoughts out loud by accident; Hermione was narrowing her eyes at him in a way that reminded him horribly of McGonagall.
"Oh, don't be so racist," she snapped.
Harry protested, "I'm not! Geishas are perfectly fine, but Ginny…"
He left the sentence hanging, and watched with satisfaction as a similar kind of horror marched past Hermione's face. Her mouth fell open for a few seconds, but that was against her principles of Intellectual Behaviour, and she shut it almost immediately.
"What's the matter with her?" For once, Hermione Granger was awestruck as she watched Ginny shuffle her way into the next carriage towards a bunch of first-years, who were looking terrified already.
Without even looking at them, Ron answered, with a rather resigned tone, "She's been like this for weeks. Mom calls it 'Nostalgia of the Nineties'. Just last week, she was a gay cowboy."
The rest of the journey passed in a rather awkward silence, which they later blamed on Ginny's odd behaviour. Frankly, Ginny was very much turning into a second Dudley Dursley, and that was saying something. Over the course of the summer holidays, Dudley Dursley (Harry always thought of his cousin as some kind of cross-breed between a pig and a human) did nothing but laze on the couch, watching American Idol reruns and crowing painfully to the lyrics the contestants were singing, and mimicking their actions. The whole process was a horrible and damaging one that Harry preferred to steer away from, even in his thoughts; it had ended with a blown-up television and a sulky Dudley that he had to endure with for weeks.
When the train finally arrived at Hogwarts, after a record timing of three and a half hours (it got slower every year; the name 'Hogwarts Express' was fast becoming an annoying kind of exaggeration), the entire school population dragged their way to the Greatest Hall.
Dumbledore was beaming fondly down from the staff's table.
"Everyone," he cleared his throat, "take your seats! I have an announcement to make."
The Hall began buzzing again, and the silence between the trio was broken by a snort from Ron, "Who d'you think it will be this year?" Echoes of this same statement found themselves being repeated over and over again by the students, and the guesses of "McGonagall!" "Yeah, Sprout!" were halted by Dumbledore tapping on his glass.
Peering through his half-moon spectacles at the curious faces of the Hogwarts students, Dumbledore said serenely, "Before the feast begins, I request you Griffin Doors, Huff and Puffs, Raven Claws and Sly the Rims to give me your fullest attention. This is a rather important piece of news that will most probably change Hogwarts History.
"Winky the house-elf might not be recognisable to you all, but she is a regular fixture in my life. Tonight I announce my engagement to Winky, my on-off girlfriend since the 1980s, and promise to love her forever more!"
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