Author's notes: Well, since I found a few more ideas in my cranium and I've joined a couple of new fandoms since writing part 1, (and because my friend who requested the story in the first place wouldn't shut up) I decided to write a part 2, in which Zaphod gets kicked, Commander Up gets clouted and Harry gets slapped. Oh, and Sherlock makes a deduction.
It's also worth mentioning that this story could potentially go on forever, depending on how many more cracky brainwaves I have. This is why it is not, nor shall ever be, labelled as "complete."
If you get my three REALLY obscure Harry Potter references (or just any references at all) I will love you forever.
"Right!" declared the girl, turning towards Harry and Draco. "Seeing as you two are the most recent additions to the crew, you get to decide where we go next."
"Nawwwww," whinged Zaphod, pouting. "I really wanted to visit the Mystic Kettle of Knackledirk."
"STUFF YOUR KETTLE! I WANNA SEE CHARLIEEE," the girl bellowed, giving Zaphod a swift kick in the shins and eyeing Draco in particular with an impatient air.
"Now, now, boys and girls," articulated a deep voice with an American accent, as the gargantuan man with a moustache Draco had walked in on having a bath emerged from the bathroom wearing a kilt and a poncho. "Why can't we all just get along and let our new hitch-hikers decide our next adventure?"
Zaphod and the girl froze, startled, as Harry jumped to attention. "I want to see Bugworld!"
The man gave a small yelp and hid behind Zaphod's companion. "I ain't goin' back there in a bazillion years, mister," he shrieked, as the girl clouted him on the head and he fell to the floor.
"Fine then," Draco verbalised. "I've always wanted to visit Pigfarts."
"Ooh, why would you want to go there?" Zaphod yawned. "It's not like Pigfarts is anywhere near as great as the famous sight of the Pillar of Storgé..."
"Pigfarts it is, then!" declared another character, a five-foot tall pink and lilac caterpillar whom Harry hadn't noticed due to the fact that the bug had been skulking around under the controls.
"Hmph. Fine, then," conceded the appallingly-attired President of the Galaxy, turning one of his heads to the cylinder stretching towards the ceiling. "Though I think Bugworld might be a little more apt for you."
The caterpillar gave an expression that could only be described as a scowl as Zaphod seized what appeared to be every knob on the round dashboard of the police box simultaneously ("It's called a TARDIS, and I incorporated the infinite probability drive I stole from the Heart of Gold into the dash!" he yelled unhelpfully, as Harry pondered what on Earth that could mean). At once, two circles in the cylinder in the centre of the "TARDIS" started oscillating, up and down, up and down, and the noise of what sounded like an elephant's reversed trumpeting screeched from the very walls. Harry suddenly became aware that the floors were vibrating beneath his feet and grabbed hold of the control panel, noticing that the entire structure seemed to be rocking back and forth, reminiscent of a vessel at sea in a force nine gale only with rather more unpredictable kinetics.
As Harry considered this, the two-headed man's companion lost her grip on a metal pole and went careering into Harry, while Draco looked on in astonishment.
"How dare you run into me?" the girl demanded, adding insult to injury by giving Harry a powerful slap to the face. Harry pondered this at great length for a second, before the TARDIS gave a huge lurch and everybody was flung against the back wall, which had apparently just become the floor.
"What the spell is going on?" Draco stipulated, clinging to Harry and staggering to his feet. Zaphod seemed rather animated.
"I haven't the foggiest, my dear lady, so I suppose we'll just have to find out," he explained. He too got to his feet and clambered up the now horizontal control panel, jumping to reach the wooden doors. They flew open quickly, and Harry caught a glimpse of a completely black sky framed by the familiar constellations, and what appeared to be the side of a bizarre, glittering green building with a picture of a lion on the wall.
Harry was suddenly startled by the sight of a tall, lean man in a long woollen coat falling from the sky into the TARDIS, his limbs flailing as he plunged into the small crowd of spacetime-travellers huddled on what had previously been the back wall. Fortunately, before he could land Zaphod trod on the Big Button on the TARDIS dashboard (the Infinite Probability Drive, Zaphod had called it,) and a selection of rather comfortable-looking pillows appeared for the man to fall on, in addition to the sudden reappearance of the cadaver of Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, complete with arrow still sticking out of her head, in the corner.
"Fantastic!" the man who had just fallen into the TARDIS declared, standing and turning his collar up, which made him look cool and mysterious. "A murder! Oh, it must be my birthday!" This was such a bizarre statement that all Harry could do was gape at the man, whom he was now noticing had scarier cheekbones than Bellatrix Lestrange and piercing blue eyes reminiscent of Dumbledore's. The man sauntered over to the goff's corpse, produced a magnifying glass from a pocket in his coat and started examining the cadaver in minute detail. Zaphod's companion coughed.
"EXCUSE ME?" the man screeched, "NOBODY INTERRUPS THE GREAT SHERLOCK HOLMES WHEN HE IS DEDUCING. I take it you haven't picked up Molly on your travels to do an autopsy?" he asked, rapidly calming down to address Zaphod, who shook his head. "I suppose that means it's my job, then," Sherlock sighed in an exasperated fashion, as though the entire crew of the TARDIS were being incredible thick.
"f you carefully observe the uncomfortable-looking positioning of this girl's limbs, one can deduce that she fell after her attack. We can see it was an attack by the fact that her palms are completely open and her arms unbent, so she was holding her hands out in front of her to protect herself. Also," he continued, giving the motley crew a knowing look, "the weapon sticking out of her body is a dead giveaway."
"Well, he finally got there," Draco muttered in Harry's ear.
"I must conclude from the evidence available that this girl died from taking an arrow to the knee!" Sherlock finished, as Draco facepalmed.
"That's brilliant! It's fantastic!" Zaphod's companion declared, as Sherlock cocked his right eyebrow and gave a small bow. "One thing nobody has mentioned: WHERE THE FLIP ARE WE?"
The majority of the crew looked worried, and Zaphod nervously glanced outside, but Sherlock softly cleared his throat and everybody turned back to him.
"Good grief girl, I'd have thought that was obvious? Do the reddish hue of the soil a couple of dozen yards beneath this machine, the absence of the Sun of the size that humanity is used to and the images of Rumbleroar all over the place not make it apparent that we are, indeed, at Pigfarts?" he demanded, glaring at everybody in the room. "Oh," he added. "As much as I would love to join you all on your adventure, I really must get back to my Jawn and convince him of my death. I'll be needing that," he said, pointing at a small navy rubber ball by the Infinite Probability Drive.
Zaphod clambered back up, threw the ball in question to Sherlock and started the TARDIS.
"I assume you'll want to go five minutes into the past?" he asked, pointing at the monitors on the dashboard which were showing a short man with the face of a hedgehog on the ground underneath them, cradling the head of a man who looked remarkably like Sherlock in his arms.
"Please," Sherlock said, grinning. "I want to be with my Jawn again."
"Right you are," Zaphod's companion decreed, climbing up to the controls herself and elbowing the President of the Galaxy back down.
"OI!" he yelled, as the TARDIS suddenly turned itself the right way up and everybody fell in a heap at the bottom of the back wall, crushing Zaphod. In all the confusion, nobody noticed Sherlock placing the navy ball in his right armpit and putting liberal amounts of a red liquid in his hair and across his face. When the TARDIS came to a complete stop, Sherlock pushed his way to the TARDIS doors.
"It's been a pleasure meeting you, my comrades!" he said, raising his left hand and waving at them in farewell as he darted out of the door and took his place lying by the side of the building. Harry caught a glimpse of the hedgehog-man running over, seizing Sherlock's right wrist, collapsing into sobs and saying something about "no pulse... no pulse...", before taking Sherlock's head in both of his hands and cradling it as the party had observed through the TARDIS monitor.
A lion emerged from the building Sherlock had jumped off and apparently started talking to the man who looked like a hedgehog, and while his head was turned Sherlock gave the TARDIS a quick wink.
"Right, best be off," Zaphod said as Draco started to protest. "We've done our good deed for the day and now we need to get out of here. How does the Toenail of Icklibörg sound?"
Draco opened his mouth to protest but before he'd got any sound out Zaphod had pressed the Big Button and the TARDIS had started rocking again.
"But now I'll never get to properly visit Pigfarts!" Draco uttered in disappointment.
"It's alright, my love, I'm sure we'll have plenty of adventures you'll love out here anyway," Harry responded, gesturing towards the TARDIS monitor which was now showing a young man with floppy red hair and a guitar floating past through the voids of space.