The Addams Clan, Hermione, and Joel Glicker spent the rest of their time (thus far) in the Harmony Hut plotting ways to help at least SOME of the Addams escape in order to stop the wedding. Joel, because he was too nice for his own good, and Granger because she a.) hated her aunt and uncle as well as b.) Debbie was just like them, so the curly topped brunette disliked the woman on principle. They ended up deciding that Wednesday, Harcourt, and Eddie would go, since the Addams Twins were the better ones at sneaking (and Edgar and Ellen had some pranks lined up) and Eddie because he was reacting the worst to the disgusting place.
The three each dressed in dark long sleeved shirts and slacks, making sure their shoes were charmed to be silent. They had just gotten to a free bit of fence when things skewered.
"Hurry up!" Wednesday hissed.
"English!" Harry muttered, pulling on her arm to make her go faster. Wednesday elbowed him but hurried, repeating herself to Eddie, just not in Parseltongue this time.
"I'm coming!" Eddie called, bounding over a tree root.
"SHHH!"
"Wait!" The three cousins whipped around to see Joel coming with wire clippers, which Wednesday vaguely recognized from Emily's box of medical equipment. Catching up to them, Joel panted, "Be careful. Tetanus."
He started cutting the fence for them when Wednesday grabbed it from his hand and started attacking it instead. She got about one side done before they heard sirens and whistles, and flashlights were then shone on them.
"There they are!" Amanda (she would regret this . . . ) called out smugly. "I thoughtI saw them sneaking out."
Gary gave them pitying looks. "Children, what do you think you're doing?"
Eddie glared at the man, taking a step in front of his relatives. "We have to see our family. It's very important."
"More important than a summer of fun? More important than making new friends? More important than sharing?"
The cousins and Glicker looked at the Grangers in disbelief. "YES."
The other children scoffed and laughed at them. "Oh, it's important, is it? So important that you can't, that you can't have fun in the sunshine, doing archery, or canoeing, or arts and crafts?"
"Yes." This time it was only Glicker that answered, the cousins were too busy rolling their eyes and snorting.
Amanda raised her voice. "I think they should be punished. Punished! Punished!" She started chanting. Soon the other campers joined in. Harry could just make out a few of the kids in the back being hit over the head with sticks by suspiciously Alp-shaped figures.
Becky looked affronted. "No! No! We are not here to punish. We are here to inspire!" She ground out harshly.
"Campers, you know what I think our little ninja friends here need? Know what just might turn their sad and potentially wasted little lives right on around?" Gary asked the group at large. A few more kids in the back dropped. No one else had noticed yet. Eddie wondered if there would be banana cream pie involved.
Before he could ponder that highly serious matter further, Joel asked, "What?" He sounded rather like a wuss.
Gary started strumming his guitar, and the camp began singing.
"Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya…"
The four preteens looked at one another, and Wednesday began muttering the version of the song she and Harcourt had come up with as children under her breath. 'Kumbaya My Dark Idiot' did not help. At all. She backed up against the fence, gripping it for dear life, but trying to keep enough control over her magic so as not to accidentally Apparate or something similar.
"Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya…
A wolf howled. It must not like the song either. Well bully for it.
"Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya… Oh, Lord, kumbaya."
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Addams Mansion: Fester and Debbie's Engagement Party.
Severus watched impassively as he stood by the punch bowl with Carnation. Damn Morticia for forcing him to get a date. Debbie was being introduced to the Family by Morticia, and at the moment, Itt's wife Margaret was showing off their brat; Whatt. Severus liked Margaret, he decided; she was slightly eccentric, but quite normal overall. She was good for Itt, and would be a good mother to Whatt. Debbie, however . . . Severus prayed that the disgusting little scut would have an Unfortunate Accident before the wedding.
"Do you like her?"
Severus jumped and turned to Carnation. "What?"
"Debbie, do you like her? You've been glaring in her general direction, so I wondered if you were jealous."
Severus looked at the brunette in shock. "I assure you, Carnation, I am as far from fancying Miss Jellinsky as it is possible to be."
Carnation didn't look like she quite believed him, but said nothing.
The recovering anorexic was worse than Po- Harry, at times. Like now.
"You want to dance?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you want to dance? Come on, please Sevvie?"
"Don't call me that. I already get it enough from Grandmama."
"Oh, come on . . . "
"No."
"I won't call you Sevvie for the rest of the night!"
"I . . . fine."
He WAS going to regret this later, he was sure of it.
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Fester's Bachelor Party:
"For he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny!" the Addams men rang out, Itt's squeaks standing out amongst the din.
Fester smiled at them all. "You guys are the best bunch of friends a fella could hope for. What a party!"
"And now, for the pièce de resistance!" Gomez exclaimed as Lurch, on cue, wheeled in a giant cake. Severus couldn't help but think of the girl that had jumped out of Gomez's Bachelor Party cake.
"Ta-da!" Nothing happened. "TA-DA!" Goose Eggs. Gomez lifted the top off of the cake and white steam billowed out. "That poor girl. Lurch, was she in there before you baked?"
Lurch groaned a yes. The men all groaned disappointedly, and Gomez replaced the lid.
"C'est la vie!"
Then they all laughed.
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Hogwarts School: Headmistress' Office - Meeting with Fudge.
"They must come back to Hogwarts, McGonagall! I simply won't allow it, for the Boy Who Lived to choose a school in the Coloniesover a proper English Hogwarts education! You had them attend last year - get them back!"
Minerva sighed at the Minister of Magic, Fudge. "Minister, if I learned anything about the Addams clan last school year, it is that one cannot force the Addamses to do anything. You'd be better off forcing a horse to drink!"
"Are you going against the Minister, Headmistress McGonagall?" Deloris Umbridge asked sweetly.
Minerva gave her a cold glance before turning back to Fudge. "Minister, I did not realize that you were a puppet to be played with by your secretary. If you can give me an honest opinion of your own, I will gladly speak with you. But I will not tolerate making deals with a marionette, much less one that is so far beneath you in personal or familial rank. She doesn't have the personal rank to have tagged along behind you to address me, so why is she even here?" She glared at Umbridge, "Merlin, man...don't tell me you have been taken in by this, this...social climbing little want-to-be Peer? You are aware she did not attend Hogwarts herself because her power is not enough to warrant a superior education such as we provide to truly gifted students?" She noted the shock on Fudge's face and presumed not. "When you learn to research your employee's references and situations, we will speak again...provided you leave the lower classes behind. Good day, Minister." She said at last, ignoring Umbridge's unattractively gaping mouth.
Thank God for the Hogwarts Charter. She thought as she watched them remove themselves from the grounds. Idly, Minerva wondered if it had been Slytherin or Ravenclaw that had conned the infant Ministry at it's Founding, into making Hogwarts politically neutral. She wondered if they were even aware that the current Head could move the school to any country or locale, once every thousand years...and it had never been moved.
She was seriously considering moving the school to the Rocky Mountains of North American and not the Canadian side, either. That was why Hogwarts was politically neutral...it had to be.
...
On the way back to Hogsmeade, Fudge was silent, pondering Minerva's words, it was true that Delores wasn't really of a rank that should allow her the privileges she currently enjoyed within the Ministry and he wasn't precisely sure when she had been awarded many of them. But he knew what to do about it though he said nothing until they'd apparated back to his office. He called his personal secretary in as well as Madame Bones to stand as witnesses to his next act.
"The Headmistress was correct on all counts concerning your status, Delores." He began, not noticing Amelia's alertness. "I do not actually recall promoting you, though I've been considering it, and as you know, my political training was such as I would recall such a detail. Therefore, not being able to account for your presence, I must assume you used a memory deletion charm of some sort on me, which is an act of treason. Amelia, if you would investigate? We do need to get to the bottom of how she got here and why she assumes herself indispensable. And send me Shacklebolt and four more Aurors of his choosing. I have an undercover mission for them in America. The Addams children must attend Hogwarts, not that crate of a school in Salem. Potter in particular must be seen by the world as a product of our superior British Education."
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Camp Chippewa:
Harcourt watched as his twin sister and that Glicker boy sat on a stone bench by the dock. Adding in the sunset, and it made a sickeningly sweet picture.
"Are you really allergic?" Wednesday asked the boy.
"Uh-huh. To almost everything."
"No you're not."
"Am too! I can't have dairy products, or wear wool, or drink fluoridated water. You know what happens if my mom uses a fabric softener?"
"What?"
"I die."
Wednesday moved closer to the boy, and Harcourt moved away quietly, debating what to do about this crush. He didn't mind Wednesday liking a girl - on the contrary, he was happy that she did. But he wanted her to like Neville! He trusted Neville, but this Glicker boy - well, he didn't know him.
His mind made up, Harcourt went to find Edgar and Ellen. If this Glicker could stand them, Harcourt would allow him to fall for Wednesday, so long as Wednesday wanted him to. After all, he had to defend her honor, didn't he? It was expected of him as an Addams.
Especially since he actually cared for his sister.
If he, raised as an American, had known what Fudge thought of Americans, Fudge would have been in a lot more trouble. As it was, though, Harcourt had decided to put Gary out of commission for the foreseeable future. He slipped away, after a quiet word to his sister that made her smile cruelly, searching quietly for the obnoxious idiot. When he found him, he was instructing some of the 'Normal' boys in swimming. Harcourt grinned, slipping into then under the water of the pond where the swimming lessons were taking place.
It didn't take much to locate Gary in the deeper water where he was showing one of the older lads how to tread water. He murmured a spell that would allow him to breathe underwater, then grabbed Gary's ankles and dove. He didn't kill the man, but he came close. The fool was only 9/10 drowned, instead of all the way by the time Harcourt let him surface long enough to spit up some water and start screaming about some kind of water monster that had hold of him. Harcourt was irritated at having to miss the ensuing panicked rush out of the water, so he dove again dragging the idiot muggle all over the pond before finally letting him go in some bullrushes. The typically long fingernails of his family had scratched and gouged Gary's legs deeply in several places. He swam to the other end of the pond unseen under the water. He'd leave the man's wife to Wednesday to deal with. He was sure that between his efforts and her's they could get the camp closed down early by several weeks.
AN/AR: Hope y'all like it, and I'm off to sleep!
11:54 PM 9/9/2010 Anno Domini.
M.