CHAPTER NINE: Silly Fanservice Doomsday Action, That's What
WEDDING GUESTS: Obediently run for their lives, like panicking, Disapparating sheep.
EXCEPT FOR: Lupin and Tonks, who are the first to jump into fighting mode and raise a back-to-back Shield Charm.
MIZ PARODY LADY: *would certainly not object to having a good fanart of that moment either*
ENTIRE WEDDING PARTY: *is complete chaos*
HARRY AND HERMIONE: *desperately fighting through a suddenly very dangerous crowd as they look for Ron*
HERMIONE: I'm half-sobbing, look how emotional and female I am!
HARRY: I have noticed. Hope you aren't going to slow us down.
RON: Here I am, baby, it's all right—
HERMIONE: *tossing back her hair* Of course it's all right, but primarily because I'm crazy prepared and totally the magical equivalent of the getaway driver! Side-Along Apparition time, boys! Yee-haw!
THE TRIO: *is now elsewhere*
RON: Wow… this book is about to get awesome, isn't it?
HARRY: Tottenham Court Road is going to have even more touristy action than before, that much I know.
RON: Hermione, Muggles are laughing at our dress robes and it is totally not helping my already fragile self-esteem.
HARRY: If only I'd thought to get my Invisibility Cloak in the midst of all that festivity and happiness—
HERMIONE: Which part of "I'm crazy prepared" did you boys not understand?
HARRY: But you're just carrying a cute non-functional little dress-up bag—
HERMIONE: Harry, for the last time, you are in a fantasy series. With magic. Now start changing on-stage for the benefit of the fangirls.
RON: *changing on-stage for the benefit of the fangirls* How did you think of all this?
HERMIONE: I just had a feeling. A feeling that we were living in a state of freakin' civil war or something. You know.
HARRY: Now that I'm out of those poncy dress robes, I'm starting to think heroic thoughts about the other wedding guests who didn't Disapparate—
HERMIONE: Not the time for your saving-people-thing, Harry!
MORE FANSERVICE: *in the form of drunks whistling at Hermione*
THE REALLY AMUSING THING: *is that for some reason they seem to instinctively know that she's with Ron, and not Harry. I believe this is an anvil with "Harmonians Ahoy" inscribed on it*
ALL-NIGHT CAFÉ: Sure, we cater to the underage.
THE TRIO: *sitting down in a booth* Phew, what a relief that our murderous enemies are so clueless about 97% of the world that they wouldn't dare follow us in here.
GUM-CHEWING WAITRESS: *this is not the same one Harry hit on in the movie adaptation of HBP, I'm almost sure of it* Here's the nasty-ass thin slop we sell as coffee, which should hopefully help ward off said deadly enemies, because who would come near this stuff?
THE TRIO: Isn't this a good moment to say the name "Voldemort"?
TWO HOODED, THUGGISH-LOOKING MUGGLES COME IN: *well they're just workmen, totally harmless, aren't they?*
HARRY: *whips out his wand just in time*
ALL HELL: *breaks loose*
RON: *slow on the uptake*
HARRY: *takes a Death Eater down*
HARRY: *also Stupefyies the gum-chewing waitress of an innocent bystander, I'm shocked we didn't get more angst mileage out of this one*
HERMIONE: Oh, Ron, you're hopeless; I'll take down the other dude.
THE TRIO: *is victorious. this early in the book, was there ever really any doubt?*
FANDOM: Well, sheesh, at least Voldemort doesn't seem to send his star Death Eaters after Harry Potter and his associates.
RON: Well, the one is Dolohov.
FANDOM: As in Dolohov who almost killed Hermione in OotP? … All right, we take that back, and now we're just wondering how the Trio got so damned good.
RON: The other one, that annoying "big blonde" bloke who's been running around nameless since HBP and driving fanficcers crazy, is Thorfinn Rowle.
ROWLING: *folds arms, glares at fandom, and just dares them to object to the new name-drop*
FANDOM: No, we're cool with that name.
HERMIONE: Why are we talking about this fanservice nonsense? I'm on the verge of hysterics, here!
HARRY: I'll now show my "clear-headed" quality.
RON: So, kill them or what? I vote for killing them. Rumor has it that killing is totally okay in this book.
HARRY: Yeah, but I've still got my innocent heroic heart, plus a specious rationalization on how it would be better to just wipe their memories.
HARRY: … if we even knew how to do that. Not, come to think of it, that we actually know how to kill anyone anyway.
RON: You don't? So when you didn't kill Sirius in PoA, that was just because, I don't know, you actually couldn't, as opposed to that weak-ass "morally couldn't" crap?
HERMIONE: Well, fortunately I've studied the theory. And so, you sons of bitches, obliviate!
READERSHIP: *glancing sidelong at each other* So… who's going to be the one to ask if she also studied the theory of the other spell under discussion?...
RON: Hermione, I know this is an inconvenient time, but I haven't been insensitive and annoying in three chapters minimum, and it's just coming out of me.
HERMIONE: Good, time for some more double entendre.
HARRY: You two! Get your hormones under control! We're on the run from Death Eaters who found us in the Muggle world, how did that happen?
HERMIONE: Um, maybe you've still got the Trace?
RON: No way. The Trace breaks at seventeen, that's Wizarding law, you can't put it on an adult.
HERMIONE: Erm, yeah. And you know what tend to break Wizarding law? ^$*#!ing Death Eaters, that's what!
HERMIONE: Sorry for the snippiness. I didn't mean that, Miz Parody Lady made me. It's impossible Harry has a Trace on him.
HARRY: But what if I have? Look, I've got to do the stupid and noble thing and separate from you two—
HERMIONE: Harry Potter this is so very not the time.
RON: All right, all right, you two are dangerously close to flirting and I can't be having with it. Where's a safe hiding place?
HARRY: Grimmauld Place.
HERMIONE: He said safe, Harry.
RON: Oy!
HERMIONE: Ron, I'll get back to arguing with you in a moment. Harry, Snape can get inside there!
HARRY: My adrenaline is flying way high right now, and wiping the floor with The Sole Object of My Eternal Ire would be the perfect cap to a sucky evening.
HERMIONE: *looks like she wants to argue. presumably her argument would be "What about the Flight of the Prince convinced you that you would be in any way a match for Snape?"*
READERSHIP: *happy dance* Grimmauld Place! Kreacher! R.A.B.! Locket-Horcrux! It's about time.
THE ANTI-SNAPE JINXES SET UP AT GRIMMAULD PLACE: *only go to show that Moody had a really morbid imagination, but I suppose we all knew that*
HARRY: *spluttering, coughing, and totally not tearing-up at figure of decomposing Dumbledore* Geez, Mad-Eye. Sodding bastard, you are.
RON: It's all right, Hermione my sweet, the worst is over—
MRS. BLACK'S PORTRAIT: DID FILTHY MUDBLOOD-LOVING SCUM SAY SOMETHING?
HARRY: *groan* Oh hell no.
HERMIONE: Whew, those were some badass curses Mad-Eye set up.
HARRY: Ye-e-ah, supposing the Sole Object of My Eternal Ire has any actual sense of humanity or shame. Otherwise they're merely morbid and wouldn't stop him longer than it would take him to whip out his wand.
RON: I shall now christen jinx figure old Dusty. And he shall be mine, and he shall be my Dusty.
HERMIONE: Yeah… I'm naming the children.
THE SUBSEQUENT QUIET, SETTLING-DOWN MOMENT: *is as good a one as any for Harry to suddenly have one of his Unoccluded Voldemort mind-link-attacks of much agony and pain*
RON: These things are still really unfamiliar to me after two books, is it You-Know-Who? It is You-Know-Who! Oh hell, is at the Burrow? Info, like now please!
HERMIONE: No, no info! He shouldn't be having these attacks because he should be an Occlumency master!
RON: But I want to know if my family is dead or not NOW.
MR. WEASLEY'S TALKING WEASEL PATRONUS: Soon coming to a circus near you!
IT SAYS: Family safe, Ron, so calm down so that you can at least delay your whiny, treacherous freak-out for a few more chapters.
HARRY: *thinks of Ginny, but not the rest of the Weasleys, as family*
HERMIONE: *shyly* So… can we all sleep together tonight?
RON: Absolutely.
HARRY: *says nothing at all and bolts to the bathroom to retch or something*
ROWLING: Anvils here people, ANVILS.
H/Hr'ers: This book sucks even more than HBP. *sulk*
HARRY: *has one of those mind-melds that lets us into the Missing Moments concerning Voldemort, which are always very sweet and special*
HARRY-AS-VOLDEMORT: I'll talk to you, Rowle, since the readers have to get familiar with your name… shall we feed you to Nagini?
ROWLE: I *gasp* only got a *choke* name this frickin' book, I can't *moan* get a cool death as *yecch* Snape!
HARRY-AS-VOLDEMORT: How dare you let Harry Potter escape? How pathetic is that! And you call yourself a Dark Wizard!
ROWLE: Well *gag* what about you, Dark Lord, you've done it *groan* how many times—
HARRY-AS-VOLDEMORT: Draco! Don't even think of preserving your schoolboy-bully innocence, Cruciate him!
HARRY: Cruciate?
MIZ PARODY LADY: I thought it a useful verb.
TRAUMATIC PSYCHOTIC EXPERIENCES: *finite*
HERMIONE: Oy, Harry! I've brought your toothbrush!
HARRY: Thanks, Mum.
One of my best friends has flown across the entire U.S. to come visit me for a week, so updates may be a wee bit slow. And after that week I'm starting that "employment" thing again (what what?) so they may continue to be slow. Whoops. Sorry. For the time being, though, let's aim for two chapters a week. Cheers!