All right, I'm back again, this time with a chapter fic. (Cue cheers…NO, I didn't pay people to act excited!)
I know there are a thousand Mary Sue parodies out there, but this one is much, much different. Mostly because it isn't a one-shot, and also because my character isn't really a Mary Sue herself, but a writer of one: she's just about to learn the consequences of creating such evil, by seeing firsthand just how hard life at Hogwarts really is. There could be no perfect character in that setting – it would just ruin the fun of it all, as Zoe will discover. Anyway, it's kind of random, but I promise it has a plot and that Zoe is as human as can be. Perfectly harmless, so don't worry about packing Anti-Sue spray or anything. ;)
But enough rambling! Read and see for yourself. Harry Potter and the associated characters are the property of J.K. Rowling. Zoe is mine…someone has to own her. Enjoy!
Certifiably Frightening
Follow The White Rabbit
Zoe Walker sighed as she watched the credits roll to the haunting, beautiful music at the end of the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She had bought the movie that morning and had watched it three times back-to-back. Never mind the fact that the movie was completely different from the book – she hadn't exactly read them all. She'd gotten halfway through the third book, but then the movie for it had come out and…well, who wouldn't like just watching it instead?
Regardless, the movie had inspired her, and as Zoe switched off her DVD player she made her decision.
"I am going to write a fanfic," she declared to the room at large, which happened to be empty except for herself, her furniture, and all the junk lying on the floor. She strode over to her computer, switched it on, and waited impatiently for it to boot up. As she waited, she spun around a few times on her rolling chair and considered the masterpiece that was taking shape in her head.
It would be a romantic story, this was obvious. And who better for the starring female role than, well, herself? Who didn't love a self-insert? And she was fairly confident in her writing ability. After all, she'd written a few stories before, and everyone had practically begged her to continue.
Except for the people who criticized her grammar and said her character was too perfect and two-dimensional, but who listened to them, anyway? They obviously had no lives if they spent them looking for run-on sentences.
Finally her background popped up on the computer, and she opened a Word document. She paused for a minute before launching into the first paragraph, which quickly grew to a page as Zoe described her character (who was really herself, just a little…enhanced). Her character's name was Zephyra, she had waist length curly blonde hair and beautiful, royal blue eyes that carried the shadows of a haunted past. Her porcelain skin was fair, and her body was slender, but appropriately curvy.
Since Zoe wanted it to be more of an adult fiction, and stories with fourteen-year-olds didn't have the amount of romance she wanted, she made it so that they were all in their fifth year. It started out with Zephyra sprinting through the corridors, almost late for her Charms class. But look! The staircase she was on had started shifting when she was just halfway up! It was no problem for Zephyra though, who, besides being extremely beautiful, intelligent, and all-around nice, was a terrific athlete.
The lovely blonde sprinted up the rest of the staircase and leaped, landing as gracefully as a cat on the landing the stairs had just shifted away from entirely. She flipped her hair out of her eyes and smiled a little to herself before starting off for her class again…
Zoe smiled happily to herself. This was an awesome start – who else could put suspense into something like going up the stairs? No one, that's who. Save for herself, of course.
The afternoon dwindled away as she wrote and wrote, going into details about Zephyra's tragic past, which consisted of abusive, neglectful parents, who made her life miserable despite the fact that she lived in a gorgeous mansion with an enormous pool, dreams about Death Eaters (and Zoe made a mental note that they would be prophetic dreams – she liked the idea of Zephyra being a Seer), and a distant threat from Voldemort, for reasons Zephyra wasn't sure of.
But Zoe knew exactly what it was, since she was the author. Harry (who Zoe pictured as Daniel Radcliffe, because he was, in her opinion, extremely hot) would fall in love with Zephyra, the beautiful Gryffindor outcast, and Voldemort knew that this would be. The Dark Lord, therefore, planned to get to Harry through Zoe – or Zephyra, rather – so the poor girl was in constant danger. Only in Hogwarts was she even a little safe, because Death Eaters watched her every move, waiting for the right moment to capture her and draw Harry to them.
"It's perfect," she said aloud. "No one's ever thought of something like this before."
She finished her first chapter and got on the internet, going straight to a fanfiction site and posting the story under her penname, PinkZoe84, without bothering to proofread, since that would delay the appearance of her great work of art.
The story appeared under her penname almost immediately, and Zoe left the window up so that she could see the moment she got any reviews. In the meanwhile, she tried to distract herself, when really she was glancing eagerly at the screen every five seconds to see if anyone had read the story yet.
Soon she grew bored, and a little frustrated.
"Doesn't anyone appreciate genius?" she muttered, seeing that she still had no reviews. She refreshed the screen, but to no avail. So she refreshed the screen again. And again.
And then, to her immense delight, she saw that she'd gotten her first review! With a wide grin, she went to the review page to see who'd sent it, but there wasn't a name. Shrugging, she read the review, and then her brow furrowed in confusion.
'Follow the white rabbit.'
What?
What?
Her first review and it's some idiot's idea of a joke? Wasn't the whole point of a review to comment on some aspect of the story? Whoever left this had to be a real –
Her jaw dropped.
There, in the middle of her computer screen, was a rabbit. Not a real rabbit, but a white cartoon one, that was blocking half the screen and hopping up and down on the spot.
"Oh, great!" she sputtered, when she tried to move it out of the way only to find that it wouldn't budge, and that now she couldn't click on anything else, either. "It's probably a virus. Some idiot went and stole lines from 'The Matrix', and then gave me a white rabbit virus!"
She slapped the rabbit on the screen in irritation.
And that's when it got interesting.
Instead of a 'thunk' and the sensation of hitting her solid screen, her hand slipped right through, the edges of the rabbit shimmering oddly. And then it wasn't a rabbit anymore, but a white blob that expanded until it filled her entire screen, and then beyond. And it was pulling her forward.
"Hey…hey!" she yelled, trying to scoot back, but it was as if she was being sucked into a massive, powerful vacuum. Her forearm disappeared, and then her entire arm, and soon her entire upper body was being drawn into the…well, she wasn't sure what it was, but it was definitely scaring her.
She tried to scream, but the sound seemed to be sucked in along with everything else. Soon she was all the way in and was falling, falling, clawing at the air above her, staring in the direction she'd come from, the air rushing around her petrified form into an endless chasm swirling with color…
Until a hard, stone floor rushed up to meet her.
-
An indeterminable amount of time later, she woke up. She was aching badly all over her body. Her head, in particular, seemed like it was about to explode, or at least fall off because of all the throbbing.
"Owww…" she moaned, lifting a hand to the top of her skull and kneading it gently. It only increased the pain, so she stopped and settled for cradling it carefully.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," an amused voice said, and her eyes snapped open.
At first she was blinded by the light all around her, a harsh opposite of the darkness she'd been swimming in until now, and then things started to come into focus. For the first time she noticed she was lying on something warm and soft – a bed, upon closer inspection – and that there were rows of beds extending quite a distance back towards a stone wall, which was lined with shelves that were stacked with vials and plants.
Then she turned her gaze to the other side, where an old man was seated in a chair and was watching her, his blue eyes twinkling behind half-moon spectacles. Well, that was nice, that someone was watching her until she woke up…wait.
Her computer! The bloody, damnable thing had sucked her right into it! And she was only waking up in this bed because she'd been knocked unconscious when she experienced unwanted, forceful contact with a stone floor!
Was that a hallucination? Was she insane? And where the hell was she? Oh, God!
She was hyperventilating, her hands were clutching spasmodically at the white blankets on the bed, her vision started to blur as her mind continued to fill with horrified thoughts and more and more mysteries.
"Miss Walker, I'm sure you have plenty of questions. But please, do attempt to calm down."
"Calm down? What do you mean, 'calm down'MY COMPUTER JUST ATE ME!"
She paused. All things considered, that was a really, really stupid thing to say. This didn't look like a computer's stomach…er…not that it had one.
"I assure you that is in no way what happened," the wizened man said, a hint of laughter in his voice. Laughing. At her. When she had a migraine and she was probably hallucinating. The nerve! But he was continuing to speak, seemingly blithely unaware of her indignation.
"What did happen is that you've been brought into the very world that you had just written about," he told her, looking pleased with himself. "It took an extraordinary amount of energy and a strange spell indeed – something involving a white rabbit – but, that aside, here you are."
"Wha…?"
Her head was spinning again, and he seemed to notice her utter lack of comprehension.
"I mean, dear girl, you've been brought into the world of Harry Potter. This is the result of your…I believe you call it 'fan fiction'? You see, in writing a story in which you more or less inserted yourself, you've opened the barrier into what you had always imagined was a fictional realm."
"You mean…I'm in Harry Potter?"
"More accurately, you're in the infirmary. You were found lying unconscious in the corridor. Of course, it was obvious what had happened."
"It was?"
"Oh, yes. I can tell you, I know my students. I would have recognized you instantly had you always been here."
"But how did I open the barrier here?"
"As I've said before, it was self-insertion. What else could happen but this world be forced to accommodate you?"
Ah.
"How'd you know my name?"
"Your profile," he said promptly, and flicked a long, flexible wand. Two sheets of paper appeared, which he handed to her, and on inspection she found that everything she had written in her bio on was there. She was more startled by the wand and the appearance of the papers, however, than the information they contained.
"I have to be dreaming," she muttered, but Dumbledore – it had to be Dumbledore, if she was in Harry Potter – shook his head firmly.
"No. I imagine your pain seems quite real enough. If you had been hallucinating, or dreaming, you wouldn't be able to feel the after-effects of such a rough landing."
He smiled benevolently at her, and she clutched the sides of the mattress in a rush of dizziness.
"Then I'm really…really here?"
"Obviously," the headmaster said with another small smile. Zoe felt a grin stretch across her face, straining the muscles due to its size.
Oh my God! I'm in Harry Potter! Oh, sweet Fate! You've chosen to side with me at last! YES!
If she hadn't been so sore, she might have actually got up and danced. Dumbledore watched cheerfully as her exultation unfolded on her face. She put her hands to her head and laughed, then winced at the needles of pain it sent through her skull.
Then she noticed her hair. She stopped grinning, a bemused frown taking over her expression.
"What the…?"
Instead of dirty-blonde and stopping at her shoulders, her hair was now much, much longer. It hung to about her waist, and the shade had turned to a much lighter yellow than it had been before. She held up her hands in front of her face – her fingers were much more slender, and her skin was oddly smooth.
"What's going on? What happened to me?"
For the first time a small note of fear made its way into her tone. Dumbledore conjured up a mirror for her, which she looked into anxiously.
She screamed and thrust it away from her, hands flying up to the sides of her now unnaturally smooth face.
She was…she was…
"I might have mentioned that you've taken on the appearance of your character. She is you, although you seem to have made a few adjustments," Dumbledore told her calmly. Zoe's suddenly deep blue eyes were widened in amazement. Now that the shock was wearing off a bit, she found she was even more excited than before.
She wasn't just an average-looking fourteen-year-old anymore. She was gorgeous! She was like a model, without all of the airbrushing and alterations!
"Wow!" she exclaimed happily, holding out a long lock of hair and examining it happily.
"Yes, your appearance has altered, although not so much as to make you look older than you actually are."
Zoe noticed that her chest and hips weren't quite as…developed as she'd imagined Zephyra's being. Dramatically less, in fact. Still, it didn't bother her all that much, not when she looked like this.
"This is awesome!"
"I might also add that while you are a witch, you haven't gained any extraordinary talents or intelligence. You're as informed as you would have been had the real you been here for four years, working as you would in an ordinary school."
Zoe shrugged. Whatever, just having a wand and all the other stuff was fine with her. She frowned in sudden realization, though.
"Wait, what about books and things?"
"The majority of your supplies are in your dormitory; the rest are in your bag," he said, indicating the black, one-strapped bag by the side of the bed. Zoe pulled it eagerly onto the bed and gasped at the things that were inside. There was the Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4, A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, and Defensive Magical Theory, along with parchment, quills, and a bottle of ink. She was grinning like a maniac again.
"I'm really going to be taking classes!' she squealed. "I can't believe it!"
Dumbledore patted her shoulder and stood.
"I think it's best if you stay here overnight," the headmaster told her while staring at her over the top of his spectacles. "Madame Pomfrey will be delighted to give you a potion that will ease the soreness from your fall, and tomorrow morning Professor McGonagall will show you to your dormitory and you can gather your things."
The headmaster turned to leave, and Zoe blurted out, "What should I tell everyone else?"
The headmaster turned and gave her a quizzical look.
"What do you mean?"
"Won't everyone wonder why I've just shown up out of nowhere?"
"It's been seen before," Dumbledore said, waving a hand dismissively, "Although almost all of your predecessors have left by now."
"Left?"
But he was gone. She shook her head in confusion. Who would want to leave Hogwarts? This was a chance many would die for, if they only knew that it was possible! What a bunch of wimps!
"Well, I'm staying," she said aloud, and Madame Pomfrey smiled grimly at her as she handed her a vial of blue liquid, which Zoe imagined was to ease the pain left over from the her hard landing in the magical world.
"That's what they all say, dear," the mediwitch told her flatly. "Well, drink up."
-
a/n: Just a few things – first, I made up the penname PinkZoe84. Although it doesn't appear that anyone on this site has this name, I just thought I'd say that I'm in no way pointing anyone out. Also, and I'll be saying it in the second chapter too, Zoe is in her fourth year, and Harry and crew are in their fifth. So this will be taking place in the fifth book, although I can safely say that this is dramatically AU. Hopefully this will be enjoyable anyway.
And, just a random observation, there's a lovely little button down there that you could push to tell me what you think. I appreciate constructive criticism a lot, people, so if you told me what you liked and didn't like I'd love you forever. Thank you!