The Lunacy of Lupin

A/N: Ok, Discombobulated, I've got at least one more chapter planned out after this one. So here you go...have fun and be gentle with it, it's skittish around strangers...

Chapter 8: Uncle Remus

Hermione sat waiting in the library. It was 9:30 and she was beginning to wonder what time Harry had meant when he said "tonight." Just as she was gathering her books and bag to leave, she saw the library door open and heard an invisible somebody say softly, "Hermione?"

"Over here," she replied. Harry pulled off the Invisibilty Cloak and sat down at the table where Hermione was putting her books back beside her chair.

"Losing faith, were you?" he asked, mock hurt. Hermione smiled. Getting down to business, she opened one of the books to a page she had marked. Smoothing down the corner that she had folded, she said," This spell sounds really similar to whatever's happening to Professor Lupin."

Harry peered over at the demonstration drawn on the page. What looked like a construction worker with a nametag that said "JoeBob" across it was standing in the first box. The caption read, "Perfectly Normal JoeBob." In the second box of the diagram, JoeBob was wearing a skimpy bikini swimsuit with the little hair that he had put up in a swimming cap. This caption read, "JoeBob is transforming..." The third box depicted JoeBob in a tutu with the same caption.

"See what I mean, Harry? Harry? Harry!" Hermione said, slapping Harry across the nose. Harry was lost in the various transformations of JoeBob. He looked up at her.

"How do you get rid of it, though?"

"That's the catch," Hermione said grimly. "There's no spell to reverse it. The book says you just have to let it run its course. It says usually ten trials. We've only been through five." She sighed.

Harry grinned. "So you mean we just get to sit back and enjoy the show? There's nothing really bad going on?"

"Nope."

Harry smiled wider and laughed. "This is great! C'mon, Hermione. I want to be rested for tomorrow's theme." He out the Invisibility Cloak over himself and held it up for Hermione, who was still sitting. Sighing again, she stood up.

"Hurry up, Ron, Snape's about to call time!" Hermione urgently began slicing up dried roots and plopping them into the potion. Harry sat on her other side, lazily stirring and, like Ron, watching her haste with a smirk on his face. Snape was standing over her, breathing down her neck and closely monitoring her work.

"Time!" he snapped in her ear. Hermione jumped and looked scandalize as he strode to the front of the room.

"What's up?" Ron asked her.

"He just messed our potion up. He said that right when I was putting those roots in, he knows he made me dump too many!"

Harry smiled. "It's okay, Hermione..."

At the front of the room, Snape announced, "Give me a flask filled with your potions. If you didn't finish, you're out of luck. We will be testing these tomorrow." He looked ferocious. Harry sat up straight, alarmed. Snape shook his head and the vicious tiger look dropped off of it. It was a still quite disconcerted Harry that followed Hermione and Ron to Lupin's room five minutes later.

Ron laughed at the DISCOMBOBULATED (A/N: haha!) look on his face, but abruptly stopped laughing at the sight of a hideous mange-infected hound sitting by Lupin's door. It growled and stood guarding the entrance.

"Aw, heck, let 'em in, hound!" Lupin came sauntering to the door. He had a massive straw hat on his head and a weed sticking out of his mouth. He was wearing three-inches-too-short overalls with nothing underneath them. Hermione noticed with a disgusted wrinkle of her nose that one of the overall straps was hanging loose, unhooked. He wore no shoes. When Lupin stepped a few feet closer to them they all noticed the he smelled strongly of body odor and swamp. Gagging and coughing, Harry thrust past Lupin into the room to get away from the smell. Immediately he stopped, then felt Hermione and Ron bumping into him as two successive thuds.

"Like what I've done with the place?" Lupin said around the weed in his mouth.

"It's...er...original...,"Harry said, dumbfounded. Ron and Hermione, mouths wide open, nodded slowly.

They were standing in three inches of water. Pieces of bulrush and algae came floating by, gathering around their feet. Cypresses not only lined the walls of the room, but were also stuck in random places. Neville desk had a tree growing through the surface. The ceiling looked like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and over in the far corner, among many squealing girls, was an alligator in a cage, jaws snapping.

"You'd think he'd feel downright cozy in his own envirymint but he still seems purty dadgum ornery to me!" Lupin declared.

Harry shook his head in disbelief. They learned a score of new vocabulary words that day, beginning with 'envirymint' and ending with 'datburn doohickey with the horns.' Lupin waded around his classroom, banjo in arms, giving them their leeson in song (unless of course he couldn't think of a rhyme; in that case, he simply skipped the line and moved on to another topic.)

After class was over Harry picked up his sopping things and as he was leaving the room, Lupin struck up another song, this one about the hound dog at his door.

So there you go...Review if you feel like it. This one really hit home for me, being from Texas and all...peace out psychadelic style--uraniumbombz