"(Story much better than summery)" –Vampyres, summary to "The Riddle Triplets"

"'Later the dog whined loudly,'" Tom Riddle intoned, turning the final page of the Muggle volume as his three children listened with wide-eyed attention. "'And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky; then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers.'" And he shut the book with a broad, sinister smile.

Nadia shuddered with delight. "That was beautiful, Father!" she exclaimed.

"You can say that again," said Niklaus with a grin. "The way the stupid Muggle kept trying more and more desperately to build a fire, with more and more of his body growing numb and frozen and useless all the while… and then how it finally dawns on him that he's really going to die, and there's nothing he can do about it, and the fear seizes him and he starts running wildly down the trail…" He sighed, deeply affected.

"Yes, it was pretty good," said Nathaniel. "Definitely better than the one Mother read us last night, about the lady who lost the lottery. That one had a good ending, but it wasted too much time at first describing the cheerful villagers and the bright June morning."

"Oh, I agree," said Nadia. "Wintry stories are much better than summery ones."

"Naturally," said their father. "Well, now, everyone hop into bed – and tomorrow, if you're very good, perhaps you'll get to hear about the whole civilisation that got driven mad by nightfall."

"Oooooh!"

"Angie is a whizz with numbers, so she spends most of her time dealing with the admin side of business and watching the kids…" –GingerWitchWriter, "Final Moments"

The small brass chain glinted on Angelina's wrist as she wearily typed up the Undersecretary's latest letter to the head of the Nimbus Corporation, and she scowled down at the figures engraved upon it. ZZ-16670-78 – yes, that was all she was now. Not Angelina Johnson, not senior Gryffindor Chaser, not the best transfigurator in her year, just… ZZ-16670-78.

She couldn't blame Professor Dumbledore, she supposed. After all, she was technically the product of Dark magic – and a rather outré form, at that; her mother must have been truly desperate to have a child, to cast a spell on herself to make a baby form in the toilet the next time she urinated. Of course Dumbledore would discover that – and of course, being a law-abiding wizard, he would insist on her being registered and numbered before she entered his school. But she was sure he hadn't intended that to lead to her summary dismissal from Hogwarts, to serve as unpaid administrative assistant and nursemaid to the Junior Undersecretary for Broom Regulatory Control. Nostradamus himself couldn't have foreseen that the Ministry's respect for human rights would disintegrate so far in a mere seven years.

But you're not really human, Johnson, she reminded herself sardonically. You're just a numbered whizz your mother took eighteen years ago, and there's no good wasting your strength moping about it. Come on, now, finish up the paperwork so your master can take you home; those little gremlins he calls children are probably wondering what's happened to their favourite animate punching bag.

"Damn you, Umbridge," she muttered as she bent over the typewriter again.

"After seven hours of wandering – [during] two of which he had been forced to climb a tree to escape [a] group of bears that were fighting, matting and eating in the area he had wandered into…" –Jayan phoenix, "Harry Potter and the Peverell Legacy"

"All right, whiz-kid," said Thistlehair, munching a pawful of berries as he lumbered over to Bluntpaw's visual-effects console. "What's the problem now?"

"I'll tell you what the problem is," Bluntpaw snarled, his claws tapping at the computer keyboard with angry vigour. "Your bloody assistant doesn't know the first thing about how compositing works. 'Oh, we don't need a human actor for this scene; old Blunty can just matte a picture of James Dean over Tumblefur's body double, and nobody will ever know.' Just the kind of crack-brained idea I'd expect from the likes of him."

"Well, what would you suggest?" Greymuzzle snapped. "We can't very well just cast a bear as the young King Arthur and expect the public to take it lying down, can we? Terribly sorry if I'm asking too much of your vaunted talents; perhaps I wouldn't have to, if certain casting directors had actually done their job…"

"Oh!" said Wispfur, in the acid tone her colleagues knew so well. "So it's my fault, is it, that all the wizards on this island have gotten too high-and-mighty to take a job working for magical beasts? Let me tell you something, Mister Greymuzzle – yes, and all the rest of you, too: if half the bears on this crew would work a quarter as hard as my assistants and I have done…"

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by half a dozen roars of protest, and a lively quarrel ensued of which Harry, hidden in the boughs of an elm tree overhanging the set, could only make out the merest fraction. Not that he tried very hard; he merely clung tighter to the limb beneath him, praying that he wouldn't be noticed. The last thing he needed was photographic evidence of where he'd been this afternoon playing in magical cinemas around the country – and, if the bears spotted him, he didn't see how he could decently (or healthily) avoid that.

"All right, everyone," came Thistlehair's voice over the din at last. "Let's just settle down, break for lunch, and come back in half an hour with fresh minds. If worse comes to worst, we can always just rewrite Arthur out of the scene, right, Gnarlclaw?"

"Oh, sure," muttered the screenwriter. "Why not? Every other scene in the original script is unrecognisable by now; why not this one, too?"

"That's the spirit," said Thistlehair, slapping him on the back. "Come on, let's go get acquainted with that sweet-looking trout stream we saw on our way in."

"Malfoys were not supposed to be effected by women like this, especially a woman like her." –piscesclio, "My Light"

"You got Hermione Granger pregnant?" Lucius exclaimed.

"Hermione Malfoy," Draco corrected him sharply.

Lucius waved that aside. "Have you no pride left in your heritage, Draco?" he demanded. "In all the centuries since the family's founding, no Malfoy has ever seen the inside of a woman's womb – least of all a woman of such lineage. For thirty-three generations, each of our ancestors has carried on the line in the same way: by taking the Animagus form of a slug, casting Limacovorax on himself and mating with his own upchuckings, and letting the resulting infant live as a parasite in his abdomen for nine months. And would you break this glorious tradition – this supreme symbol of our invincible self-sufficiency and manhood – this…"

"Oh, come, Father," said Draco airily. "You're living in the past, and you know it. In these modern times, Malfoys may be effected by any means their fathers wish: by the Rites of Mapreg, certainly, but also by parthenogenesis, fissiparation, pollination, sporogenesis… and, yes, even the fruitful love of a man and a woman." And he kissed his wife elaborately on the forehead, bringing a charming blush to Hermione's cheeks.

Lucius groaned. "Oh, great Ilmatar," he said, "how did I conceive such a pervert?"