/* AN: Sorry this chapter came out so late, I lost the flashdrive that had this chapter on it. But I found it! Huzzah! The last update I dropped was just some cosmetic changes to chapter five, so sorry it wasn't more substantial. Anyways, new content! Yayy!
*/

Harry, Remus and Sirius reappeared in Denver, Colorado. Immediately, they were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. In fact, it looked like the entire city was shrouded in a cloud of the very memorable scent. In between coughs, Remus managed to ask a nearby man what was with the clouds.

"Whoa dude" the guy answered him, "like, you didn't know that Colorado just legalized weed, man? It's been like this all week dude, the dealers are starting to run dry. You wanna buy?"

Sirius and Remus passed, content with just their contact high, but Harry bought an eighth from the man and proceeded to pack the piece the Pi Sigs had given him before he left Miami. He got a weird look from Sirius and a slightly disapproving one from Remus.

"What? Don't look at me like that Moony, this is legal here. Ahh, god bless America."

With that Parthinian shot, he wandered away, working on his high. Sirius and Remus eventually caught up and the three wandered around the city for a little bit. Eventually, Sirius and Remus left to get ready for the full moon that night, telling Harry to enjoy himself in the city.

As he wandered, he eventually encountered a large stadium, apparently named Mile High Stadium. Intrigued by the loud shouts and air horns inside, he wandered inside and onto the field (AN: Not viable, I know, just go with it). He wandered around the field, trying to figure out what was going on and talking to random people.

As he eventually figured out, this was the Denver Broncos preseason training camp, and they were taking a first look at the free agents and draft picks. Harry eventually made his way over to a handful of scrawny-looking dudes and two beefy guys standing around doing nothing. As he talked to a guy named Matt, a man who turned out to be the special teams coach came up to them.

"Alright ladies, you're up! Kickers that way, punters with me, we currently have no punters, so we're looking for someone to step in and play day one! Kid, what the hell are you doing not in uniform?"

Harry, assuming the coach was talking to him, answered. "Coach, I'm not here for a tryout, I just wandered in to see what was what and wound up talking to these guys. I'll get out of your hair now."

"Hold up there young man, you have exceptional muscle tone in your legs, have you ever played football before?"

"Yeah, every day when I was younger, why?"

"Go to the locker rooms and grab a pair of shorts and a pinney from the grunts in there, suit up, then come back. You're trying out for punter!"

Harry just kinda nodded and went to do what the coach told him to. As he walked out of the locker room wearing the royal blue shorts and orange pinney, he walked back to the coach, who had a strip of tape ready to write Harry's name on it and put it on the back of the pinney. As expected, the coach snorted at Harry's name, but went with it.

As Harry spent time watching the drills he'd be doing, he made a terrible conclusion.

"Umm, coach? I have no idea how you play football. When you said football, I thought you mean our football. What you guys call soccer."

"Oh shit. Well, bottom line for a punter is you kick the shit outta the ball. Long and high. That's all you have to worry about for now. If you make it past the first round of trials, then we'll talk about other stuff."

With a gulp and a nod, Harry watched the last few punts of the guy in front of him, some free agent named B.J. Sanders. Harry realized that Sanders was just god-awful, and most of his punts were only going 20-30 yards in the air. Bolstered by the knowledge that he couldn't be any worse than Sanders, Harry stepped up.

As he ran through his warm-up kicks, he started getting a feel for how the football came off his foot as opposed to the soccer ball he was used to from his youth, and his punts started getting better and better. By the time he was done, he was easily booting the ball 70 yards a pop.

By this time, the special teams coach was nearly jizzing in his pants with excitement. Through the next couple of drills, Harry stood out more and more. Directional punting, pinning the ball inside the 20 yardline, sacrificing distance for hangtime, whatever the drill, Harry just seemed to have a natural knack for it.

By the time training camp was done for the day, the coach had dragged over the head coach and demanded he sign Harry. At this point, Harry had to cut in.

"Whoa there coach, I can't play for you guys. I'm on a trip around the world with my uncles this summer, and I'll be busy during the year. As I told you at first, I wasn't planning on trying out, you just told me to change and try out, so I did. I've had fun, but I gotta go and meet my uncles. Thanks for the opportunity coach, and if I had time to do so, I'd love to play for you guys here."

As he talked, the coaches' faces fell more and more. When they asked if he could just show up for the games and play then, his mind, incredibly influenced by the massive amounts of second-hand marijuana in the air, told him to go for it. So, with a shrug, he told them, "Sure, fuck it. Why not? However, if you do find someone else to take the job, drop a letter with Harry Dresden in Chicago, he'll know how to get it to me."

So Harry followed the coaches up to the front office, where he signed a four-year contract to play punter for the Denver Broncos. He even managed to sign for a few million dollars a year, including a hefty signing bonus, all for showing up to 16 games a year, plus the pre- and post-season games as necessary.

As Harry left Mile High with a half million dollars in his pocket (figuratively, the money was actually sent to the American Gringotts office to be transferred to Harry's main vault in the UK), he thought about how, for once, his luck was working for him. No fights to the death, no random baddies after his blood, but he managed to find a job with a steady income for the next few years, plus bonuses for getting that job and depending on his performance during his job.

"Yes," he thought to himself, "this is all working out nicely." So he did the logical thing to do with a shit-ton of money burning a hole in his pockets and on his way to meet a werewolf and run with him during the full moon. He went and bought drugs, a few ounces of shrooms to be exact.

Thus, when he made it to Rocky Mountain State Park, where Sirius and Remus were warding off a sizeable chunk of land for the trio to run around in, he was feeling pretty blitzed between the constant contact high and the few shrooms he'd snacked on while heading out.

When he found them, he passed the bag of shrooms to each of the men, who were quick to grab and partake, each of them having wanted to try shrooms during the full moon. Remus knew a few American weres who swore that the experience of running as a were on the combination of shrooms and Wolfsbane was life-changing, and Sirius was just excited to find a new form of debauchery for him to indulge in.

So the three men found themselves sitting in a circle in the middle of a forest late at night munching on psychedelic shrooms, waiting for the full moon to rise and transform one of them into a mindless slavering beast. Harry quickly explained his day during this time, and Sirius and Remus were beyond impressed he'd managed to land a job as a professional athlete in a single day's try-out.

Eventually, the moon rose, and they all started to change: Remus into Moony, Sirius into Padfoot, and Harry decided to transform into his manbearpig form, just for the lols. After they finished their transformations, the shrooms kicked in even harder than they had already been kicking, their animal senses making the experience even more trippy. So the three ran around the State Park, indulging their tripping inner animals.

MEANWHILE

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

As the alarm went off in the Al Gore cave, he was instantly at the computer.

"Quick boys!" he said to the four boys he'd been planning an expedition to find manbearpig with, "the manbearpig alarm has gone off! Someone's seen manbearpig! I'm super serial! I knew he existed! I've narrowed the signal to Rocky Mountain State Park. Let's suit up and roll out!"

He swiftly outfitted himself in his patented manbearpig-hunting suit, complete with shoulder camera and shotgun, and headed out to Denver, bringing the boys with him.

As the two Marauders and their young Padawan finished their transformations the next morning, they came back to themselves in the middle of Rocky Mountain State Park, nearly late for their next stop with the Apache tribe. So they all made sure they had all their things, and Sirius turned a nearby branch into a Portkey to the Apache reservation, and just like that they were gone, not knowing the chaos a rampaging Al Gore after manbearpig would bring to the Denver area.

/* AN: Fin! Short chapter, I'm sorry. In case I haven't said it already, this story takes place in current times, it'd be too much work for me to scale it back to the 90's. For those who didn't pick it up, Harry was hanging around with Matt Prater (the Broncos kicker), the punter hopefuls, and two long-snappers. If none of those things mean something to you, you call soccer the wrong thing.

Another sizeable crossover at the end there, this time with South Park. If you haven't seen the Manbearpig episode, you have to. Right now. I'm super serial. It's hilarious. I saw a story a while back where the author joked about having Harry's animagus for be manbearpig, and I borrowed the idea. I can't remember which story, but whoever the author is, if you're reading this, thank you for the idea.

Next chapter will probably be short again, it covers Harry's next animagus transformation with the Apache. Good news is, it'll come out real soon after this chap, since they were both close to done before I lost my flashdrive. So you'll get another update soon, I promise. Don't say I don't love ya'll. See ya on the next one
*/