Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. I also don't own Harry Potter or any of his world, again, I'm just borrowing it from JK Rowling. Also, the 'Fighting Trees' are from the Wizard of Oz, I don't own that either, just to be clear.
Toil and Trouble
AN: Yet another lame attempt at a cross over of sorts. A follow up to 'Rights and Wrongs' and 'Disappearing Departments and Disappointing Reads'. Yes this is silly; I was playing around with ideas for the wizarding community in the US and this is what came out. Sorry.
#######
Pranks were a grand tradition among the magical schools of the Thirteen Magical Districts of the United States.
Most of the UFO sightings from the mid century were the result of drunk Area 51 students trying to take experimental magical mass transit to taunt their rivals.
The Triangle had received more sanctions than anyone can remember for all the trouble their wayward transport portal is still causing after a failed prank in which they'd intended to send a boat to the middle of the desert campus. They'd also been on academic probation for ethical violations for that same transport. Apparently, the board had some issue with the creation of a device that teleported people, boats, and plane to places unknown, and the search for all the poor souls that are still unfortunately being caught up in the lost technology's web is ongoing.
No one even wants to speak about the 'Mothman Incident', which had gotten the experimental breeding departments in every university closed down indefinitely.
Compared to all those rather legendary mistakes, The Salem Witches' Institute releasing gnomes on the campus wasn't that big a deal.
Still…
"They're an invasive species," Gale grumbles. "They nearly killed off the indigenous creatures like them, that's why fairy rings are so hard to come by these days."
And they're highly aggressive. Years have made the gnomes that came to the Americas much more violent than they were originally. Thankfully though, they weren't any smarter.
Madge nods and stirs the cauldron, wrinkling her nose. "Well, at least we know they can't get far."
The gnomes might try to escape the confines of Area 51, but they wouldn't make it anywhere. The desert heat and lack of water would kill them in a day, and even if they made it as far as Vegas they'd be scooped up by the local task force constantly running through the city keeping track of wayward magic.
"Yeah, still, if we don't kill them all we're going to have an infestation. These stupid shits breed like jackalopes," he adds, glancing down at the cauldron. "Counterclockwise for two minutes, then we add the Big Foot hair."
Grimacing, Madge changes her direction, fighting off a wave of nausea as the smell hits her.
It's a concoction Gale's granddad swears by, guaranteed to kill the pests, assuming they could spray it on them. That, Madge had told Gale, was going to be his problem, once she began reading through the ingredients for the poison.
"This looks...disgusting," Madge pointed out. "Maybe we should just wait for pest control to get to our yard."
Gale hadn't been swayed. "By the time they get to us they'll have dug under the house and destroyed the electrical lines."
And considering it had taken most of the eighties to finally get electricity to the entirety of Area 51, letting gnomes gnaw through those seemed a dim choice.
Nasty poison it was then.
It had taken them nearly a full day to gather a couple of the more bizarre ingredients, which had to be procured through what Madge felt were shady means.
"Are you sure your Uncle Levi's, uh, friends, are giving you good people to go to?"
Shrugging, Gale dropped the message asking for supplies into the fire. "Let's hope so."
Positive thinking at its finest.
First there was chupacabra urine, collected on a full moon, which Gale and Madge had to travel by Hellhound Bus to Lubbock to get. It wasn't illegal, not technically, just very difficult to get. Most people weren't too keen on collecting it, and those that were weren't the most sensible individuals.
The man lived in an old silver airstream in the middle of nowhere, pens of strange animals all around, and he smelled like a wet dog.
"Follow me," he'd told them, waving for them to walk with him toward a small hatch behind his trailer.
It turned out to be an old fallout shelter. The man apparently stored his wares, which included mason jars of various species of rattlesnake rattles, pickled frog eyes, skunk stink, opossum spit, and something she greatly suspected was blue ox tongue.
"Those are illegal," she hissed in Gale's ear. Blue oxen were an endangered species.
While Gale had eyed the jar warily, his desire to kill gnomes won out and he simply gripped Madge's hand tighter as they ventured deeper into the shelter.
"Alright, collected on a new moon, crescent moon..." the man shifted dusty jars around in search of one procured at the proper time.
Finally, he shoved his arm deep into the dark of the shelf and emerged with a filthy jar.
"Full moon," he tells Gale, holding it out to him. "It's a good vintage too. Fermented. Nice and strong."
While Madge excused herself to keep from gagging over 'good vintage' urine, Gale had paid.
Their next stop had been via portkey to some strange wooded area in Washington for Big Foot hair. Also, not illegal, but again, not so easily acquired.
They'd barely made it a few steps in the direction the map the hag they were to meet had told them to go when Madge was hit in the back of the head with an apple.
She'd looked up expecting it to have fallen from one of the trees, only to be hit by another, and then another...
"Damn it!" Gale yelled as he pulled out his wand and cast a protective charm around them, causing the now wildly flying apples to fall harmlessly to the ground. "She sent us right through a Grove of Fighting Trees."
The trees had shouted insults at them for half an hour as they trudged through the detritus of leaves and half rotted apples until they came upon the hag's house.
She had a good ten minute laugh at their expense before giving them the bag of Big Foot hair free of charge since they'd given her so much entertainment.
After that, Gale had soured a little on the poison.
"Not sure how your Pawpaw ever got his hands on this stuff," Madge muttered as they ate their dinner of dry meatloaf and macaroni at a small roadside diner in Reno while waiting to catch the next portkey home.
"He's a moonshiner," Gale simply said. "He knows a lot of disreputable people."
He'd then complained about the portkey system, and how once his department figured out the glitch with time turners they'd be obsolete.
Once they'd gotten home, finding the gnomes had destroyed their AC unit already and that the university's containment crew was stuck in the botanical garden because the pests had begun destroying the calico cattail grove, Gale's resolve came back.
"Let's kill the little bastards."
The rest of the ingredients were easy enough to get. Cougar meconium, the tail of a fur-bearing trout, and crushed thorns from a cactus cat, all found at the Magical Mega Mart on campus.
Still, mixing the poison is almost too unpleasant for Madge to handle. It puts off a foul odor that Madge sincerely hopes she'll be able to purge from the walls, and plumes of sickly yellow curl up to the ceiling of the garage, staining it terribly. She blames the 'fermented' urine.
"The neighbors are going to complain." They're going to be banned from on campus housing. No, she thinks, the university is going to kick them out completely. This poison has got to be lethal to more than just gnomes.
"They won't say a word once they see the gnomes are dead," Gale assures her. "Trust me."
Putting a clothespin over her nose, Madge blinks the tears from her eyes. She loves him dearly, but she isn't sure she trusts him anymore.
Katniss and Peeta arrive just as they drop in the hair, causing the poison to hiss and bubble, turn an electric yellow.
"Smells delightful," Peeta tells her, pinching his nose. He holds up a box and grins. "These ought to do the trick."
Katniss and Peeta had been out of town for Peeta's brother's wedding shower, and so Gale had given them the duty of finding something to use to spray the poison with since they were 'less than useless' for gathering other supplies.
The box in Peeta's hand is labeled 'deck sprayer' and shows a plastic cylinder with a hose jutting from the top with a nozzle attached and the words 'less pumping' and 'improved head' across it. Peeta taps the words and snickers. "Get it?"
Gale makes a garbled noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, but when Madge shoots him a glare, he fixes his features into a look of deep disapproval.
"Oh, grow up, you two," Katniss grumbles, dropping her box and pulling it open. "Let's go kill some gnomes."
#######
They end up killing all the gnomes in not only their yard, but also the ones in the neighbors', as well as getting a visit from the police.
"This poison is highly caustic," the cop, his badge says Darius, tells them. "You melted the tires on a car."
"The gnomes are dead though, aren't they?" Katniss asks, crossing her arms and glaring.
"You put a hole in the street-"
"To be fair, there were already holes in the street," Peeta points out. "Our tax dollars at work, clearly."
"-and chupacabra urine is a controlled substance."
"I have permits," Gale tells him, pulling a 'caustic substance transport' card from his wallet.
Madge almost asks why he has a permit to transport controlled substances such as chupacabra urine across state lines, but after a moment of thought, decides she doesn't want to know.
"This is all perfectly legal," Peeta quickly says.
Or at least technically legal.
Officer Darius looks dubious.
"We'll pay for the tires," Madge tells him, hoping acknowledging the mistake and offering to fix it will gain them some leniency. "And the holes."
She'll have to call her parents for the money, but pride is a small price to stay out of jail.
In the end, they get a rather lengthy citation as well as having what's left of their poison confiscated.
"Good thing we used almost all of it," Gale tells Madge as he pulls off his shirt and tosses it into the garbage, he'd gotten splashed chasing a one of the wayward gnomes.
Wrinkling her nose, Madge nods. If nothing else, the smell will keep every kind of magical pest away. It'll certainly keep visitors away.
Pulling out a spray bottle of air freshening potion, Madge spritzes the air, holding her breath for a moment and hoping when she takes a breath it'll smell better.
It does, but the faint scent still lingers, and after a second she's horrified to find it's clinging to her.
"I need a shower." She needs to marinade in disinfectant potion. Between the smell of the poison and her own sweat from the lack of AC, she's lucky to not be attracting flies.
"Good idea," Gale agrees, following her toward the bathroom.
Getting in the cabinet, Madge pulls out dozens of pale colored vials and begins dumping all of them in the tub before turning on the water.
The air around them cools instantly, filling with a calming mixture of mint and linen, forcing out some of the unpleasant odor hanging around them. "That should do it."
Gale examines the water, now a soft lavender in color. "What's in it?"
Smiling, Madge shrugs. "None of it has to be collected during a full moon from a wild animal, so don't worry."
They're going to have to set in it for hours to purge their skin of the smell, but that's okay. Madge thinks the grand tradition of pranks needs to continue, and she can use the time to plot revenge against The Salem Witches' Institute.
Maybe they can concoct a non-lethal version of Gale's Pawpaw's smelly poison. Then Gale's department's experimental transport could send it to their Quodpot field...
Slowly, Gale slips his arms around her middle, kissing a line down her neck, wrecking her train of thought. His dedication to physical affection even in the face of overwhelming stench is both admirable and impressive.
Maybe revenge can wait.