Harry Potter: How I Met Your Mother
A Frightful December Part One
DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter, its characters, its plot, and its background are the creation of JK Rowling and are the property of JK Rowling, Wizarding World, and Warner Brothers. I do not own them. I do lay claim to my original characters such as Tristan Woodbine, his family, Camilla Sanscouer and her roommates. I also claim Connall MacRae and the non-Harry Potter-canon school where he teaches.
I am writing this story for my amusement and ego gratification and because I don't like Dramione pairings. If you are enjoying this story, please write and post reviews.
This story has NO relation whatsoever to the How I Met Your Mother television program.
Harry Potter: How I Met Your Mother*Harry Potter: How I Met Your Mother*Harry Potter: How I Met Your Mother
The attack on little Colin Creevy put the wind up most of us, save for those aligned with Draco Malfoy and other Old Family blockheads. We began traveling from our dorms to the Great Hall and our classes in small groups instead of alone, avoided darkened and lightly-used hallways and wondered where whoever or what-ever-it-was would strike next. In our dorm, it gave urgency to the textbook project. We not only wanted the books as study material for our DADA exams, but also to better our odds of survival just in case some of the things we'd heard about the Chamber of Secrets were true.
You may have heard Weasley family stories about Fred and George Weasley being the premier merchants of contraband at Hogwarts while Ronald and Ginny Weasley were growing up. Well, they were highly successful, so much so that even I had some dealings with them. And no, I'm not going to tell you what I bought from them. But as successful as they were, the Weasley brothers weren't the only black marketeers operating at school that year. We had a couple in Slytherin.
Being good Slytherins and house loyalists, we first approached them about buying American Defense Against the Dark Arts textbooks. We told them that we needed something accurate, currently in-print or recently out of print, and in English. Unfortunately, "John" and "William" showed surprising difficulty wrapping their minds around the concept. We wanted legitimate textbooks? We wanted ones that had recently been in use or were still in use by American schools? We wanted ones that were bought and delivered by legitimate means, by owls or hand-delivered either in the Great Hall or during someone's trip to Hogsmeade? It took a while for "John" and "William" to comprehend that were looking for something straight and above-board. Unfortunately for them, they were not able to set aside their black-marketeer mindset, they decided that it had to be something dodgy, and they proposed prices that were far too high. We informed them that we'd think about it, then began to search for another solution.
I proposed that we look among our house for folk near our age group to find somebody with connections to the Americas. It was Aiden and then one of Camilla's roommates who came through for us. Aiden had a cousin whose family had moved to Canada during the last war; his cousins attended Ilvermorny. Veronica Lake, a girl I'd thought was not only Camilla's roommates but also one of her best friends, not only had a cousin about her parents' age who sold old, rare, and collectible works out of Victoria as well as a cousin who attended the Cascadia Institute for Magical Studies. Veronica was dubious about asking her cousin to send her a textbook, but we assured her that we'd support her and reimburse any expenses.
A couple of weeks later, Veronica's cousin wrote back and told us that he'd assist us with our request. He was not only a bookseller who sold both old, rare and obscure texts to Muggles and Wizards, but he also had a small, profitable sideline of selling magical textbooks to students who attend Cascadia and other North American schools. Her cousin's offspring had attended Hogwarts for a few years just before the worst of the First Wizarding War and the father was as aware of the jinx plaguing the DADA professorship as any of us. He took pity on us and mailed us a torn, marked-up copy of a textbooks formerly used by Cascadians in our year as a sample. It arrived at the end of November.
I had the privilege of being one to open it, which I did. Some of the pages were missing, but not the title or the table of contents. I started reading and smiled. The book had been written by a Connall MacRae. I remembered both the name and the teacher. I remembered that the Yanks and the Canadians had a holiday around this time of year. Maybe our Thanksgiving had come.
Three years before, Aiden, Veronica, and I had all been little second-years attending our Defense Against the Dark Arts class and MacRae had been our professor. MacRae had been a big, burly Scot and spoke with a thick Highlands accent peppered with Scottish dialect. The Scottish witches in our class swooned as hard for him as some of the younger girls were swooning for Lockhart although we lads were less enthusiastic. We were dubious as to how good a teacher he was, but as the year progressed and as we learned to decipher what he was saying, we realized that he only knew his stuff, but he was also a good teacher. I'd learned more from MacRae than I did as a Firstie or in the three years since he'd left.
I began reading his text, then started smiling.
"What do you think, Woodbine?" said Edgar.
"He still knows his stuff," I replied. "What do you think, Veronica?"
Veronica started reading MacRae's text and also smiled.
"He was good teacher," she said. "I'd forgotten how much I liked his classes. I think I might buy it even if he was as vapid as Lockhart." She handed the book to Aiden.
Aiden started reading, then smiled. "The book uses a lot of Yank idiom, but it's spelled properly," he said.
"A minor quibble," I interjected. "I could live with it."
Aiden stood up and bowed to Veronica. "Lady Lake, I thank you. You may have saved us from disgrace and failure when we face our OWL exams. Let's start discussing shipping arrangements and payment."
I saw very little of your mother at that time, which puzzled me. I suspected that she Was Up To Something. Just what, I didn't know. She wasn't haunting the library as much as she normally did. She was upset about little Creevy's attack, but not enough to cause me to let McGonagall know that I was concerned with her.
I also kept an eye on Titus. To my relief, he was not only adapting but flourishing among the Eagles. Even though the House of the Eagle has almost as many students related to the Old Families as Slytherin, the Ravenclaws didn't make a fetish of Blood Purity like ours did. I did pass along word that Aunts Muriel and Caroline had discovered that we were related to the Grangers. He smiled and nodded, then told me that Mum had sent him a letter with the same information. So we Woodbines were related to the Muggle Grangers and their extraordinary daughter? As far as Titus was concerned, that was interesting but not earthshaking news. We were already related by blood to other Muggle and wizarding families: no big deal.
As the days went by, there was a shift in atmosphere in Slytherin. Little Draco Malfoy hinted that he knew all about the Chamber of Secrets and I was again tempted to hold him over the side of a staircase and make him tell us what he knew. He did hint that his father had told him that the Chamber had been opened and that something had attacked Mudbloods. Malfoy used the Pureblood bigots' definition of Mudblood—anyone who had Muggle ancestors within the last few generations. A few of his friends among the Sacred 28 were impressed; those of us who had less-illustrious pedigrees looked at him with narrowed eyes. If there was a monster in a Chamber of Secrets, we doubted that he'd be selective when chose his or her targets.
The first week of December gave way to the second week of December. Most of us were beginning to think of the upcoming Christmas holidays and what we'd be doing. Camilla and I were still on the outs. I soon learned that I wasn't the only one she was on the outs with. Veronica Lake informed me that Camilla was spending less time with her and more with Clotilde. I was feeling depressed and regardless of risk, made my way to the Music Room. There was still a piano there. I remembered playing it when I was younger. It had been a long time.
When I was a wee lad, my Mum insisted that I take music lessons. For some reason or other, I was drawn to the piano, despite the fact that pianos weren't all that popular in the wizarding world. At first I hated it, then I hated and loved it, then gradually I came to love it. By the time I was old enough to get my Hogwarts letter, I was actually on the way to getting good.
I'd stopped playing at school when I was a first year. I was an eleven-year-old, and the music room was in a different part of the castle from where the Frog Choir and the student band gathered and practiced. After falling prey to bullies, I stopped practicing at school, telling myself that I would resume at home. I didn't, and I'd gradually set aside my interest in the piano and stopped playing.
Could I still play? The piano was still there, dustier, and probably out of tune. I drew my wand from its holster and Vanished the dust that covered the bench and keyboards. I flicked the bench back and took a seat, then set my fingers to the keyboards. It's been too long, Tristan, and you probably can't play worth a d_n, said a voice in my hand. I told the voice to shut it.
How did I do? Well, I won't lie to you. I was definitely out of practice. But my fingers found the keys I was searching for more often than not and I began to feel that I was reconnecting with a part of me that I'd allowed to slip away. I told myself that I'd come back: the hulking bullies that had terrorized little Tristan Woodbine had either graduated or seemed less menacing now that I'd become a large, hulking Fifth-Year myself.
Author's notes: Connall MacRae is a character I created for my Daria Ravenclaw universe and I saw no reason to believe that he might have a counterpart in a universe that closely resembles canon Harry Potter.
For my Daria Ravenclaw fans, I wish to inform you that Harry Potter: How I Met Your Mother is set in another Harry Potter universe, a universe where neither Helen Morgendorffer, the Morgendorffer children, not Beavis and Butthead came to be. In this universe, Highland, Texas is a small Texas city named Big Spring, and Lawndale, Maryland is named Westminster, Maryland.
Author's notes: Professor MacRae is an OC I created for my Daria Ravenclaw stories. This is not the same one who is in those stories, but one from this universe. MacRae had taught at Hogwarts two years before the Golden Trio arrived Hogwarts. Like his counterpart on the Daria Ravenclaw timeline, he was a popular, competent teacher. Tristan remembers him as one of the better DADA teachers he'd had, and if he did have trouble with MacRae's lapses into Scots dialect, found his written stuff quite readable.
