Thanks for feedback all. May I present Chapter Eleven...

... I just knew the verb "Cruciate" would come in handy, I just knew it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Harry and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

SUBTITLED: Seriously, Are We Ever Going To Give the R/H Cuteness a Rest In This Book?

RON: So these two Death Eaters have been standing outside Grimmauld for twenty-four hours. Evil's a real glamorous life, innit?

DUMBLEDORE'S CRYPTIC GIFTS TO RON AND HERMIONE: Turn out to be, among their other unknown qualities, ideal for maximizing the antagonism between the two.

RON: La la la I'm playing with Dumbledore's device to turn the lights off while my not-girlfriend reads Dumbledore's book why did you say something?

HARRY: *wearily, to the ceiling* C'mon, old man, did you really think you had to manipulate the two of them into sniping at each other until the inevitable resolution? This was one point where you could have let nature run its course!

ENCORE: *of old Dusty*

OLD DUSTY: *is apparently banished just by claiming that you're not Dumbledore's killer. I hope it can detect people who can someone commit murder and lie about it*

SHADOWY HOODED FIGURE IN THE DUST STORM: Don't start hexing; I'm so totally Lupin.

RON AND HERMIONE: *lower wands* Oh okay.

HARRY: Prove it!

LUPIN OR IMPOSTOR: *says the exact same thing as before, only this time with full name and longer sentences*

HARRY: *lowers wand* Oh okay. I'm convinced.

LUPIN: Good job with the vigilance, you brilliant child, you.

FANDOM: ... John?

ROWLING: *glares, daring us, just daring us*

FANDOM: Fine, fine.

READERSHIP: Why are you still calling him "Severus," wolfman?

LUPIN: I admit, I have a problem.

READERSHIP: Just the one?

LUPIN: Death Eaters are staking out everywhere that's got any connection with you, Harry. And presumably I visited all these places too, which is how I know.

HARRY: I'd love to ask for a run-down of all these non-Muggle places besides here and Hogwarts that I've apparently got a connection too, but I suspect you're bearing food, which is more important to me right now.

LUPIN: Well, no food, but alcohol.

HARRY: Give me that stuff, you have no idea how horrible being locked up with their flirting is.

HARRY: Yeah, so. We came here after we ran into a couple of Death Eaters in a café on Tottenham Court Road.

LUPIN: *spills the butterbeer* Context for that statement please?

HARRY: It's not as dramatic as it… oh, hell, actually, it was dramatic as it sounds. Best chapter nine in the whole series. *beam*

LUPIN: *treading into Foreshadowing Territory* It's impossible to track anyone who Apparates, unless you grab hold of them as they disappear. Bear that one in mind, by the way.

HERMIONE: *startles* Oh, sorry. I was too busy taking in Ron's luscious red locks. Did you say something?

DEAD!SCRIMGEOUR: I get to die heroically offscreen. Yay.

DEAD!MAD-EYE: Hey, don't whinge about it! All the best people are dying heroically offscreen these days.

RON: Dude, how is my freaking family? They better not be dying heroically offscreen! I mean, we're main characters, most of us!

LUPIN: Well, Death Eater/Ministry thugs held us for hours and gave Bill and Fleur a lousy wedding night of it…

RON: And what about my masterful "spattergroit ghoul" trick?

LUPIN: It seems this lot had enough Dark-Arts-induced-brain-damage to buy it. Simultaneously, other thugs were burning down Diggle's house—

HARRY: *excitedly* With Uncle Vernon in it?

LUPIN: —no, sorry, Harry, he wasn't hiding the Dursleys there—and they also Cruciated my parents-in-law, which I'm apparently pretty copacetic with, because, seriously, what husband hasn't wanted to do that?

LUPIN: Erm, so I know this is going to be a hard blow, but the Prophet is making libelous claims about you... again... this time reporting that you and not the Sole Object of Your Eternal Ire killed your beloved mentor-figure. Sorry.

HARRY: Surprise surprise. You know, if this was four years ago, I might be mildly upset.

HERMIONE: *pursuing the newspaper* In another shocker, it looks like its notorious secrecy makes the Department of Mysteries easily exploitable for the wrong ends. Like none of the readers have seen that coming.

TRIO-PLUS-LUPIN: So let's talk national politics.

READERSHIP: Civil war and mass murder is evidently a pretty good way to engage the apathetic youth vote, eh?

MIZ PARODY LADY: *should probably not be joking about things like that*

RON: Muggle-borns stealing magic the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and I'm me. If that were possible, why would there be Squibs?

LUPIN: You know by now logic hurts the ickle villains' brains, Ron.

HARRY: *wisely* Dark-Arts-induced brain damage.

HERMIONE: *pouts because she didn't get to explain it first*

RON: Well, that's it! If Muggle-borns are being rounded up, we'll just have to make Hermione a part of the family!

HERMIONE: *goes very pink*

RON: ... by pretending she's a cousin, of course.

HARRY: You do realize that we're in the Noble and Most Inbred House of Black right now? Not that great a save, mate.

LUPIN: Ah, right, before we forget, my hair is still "greying."

READERSHIP: Got it.

LUPIN: So, Harry, I've been thinking. How about I come with you three on this camping-around-Britain mission? It would be totally not pervy, coz that's Greyback's shtick and not mine. And my teacherly magical knowledge could pretty useful to you three dropouts and it would be really fun, just like a bad fanfic! What do you say?

HARRY: Well, I have no idea how we could keep the mission a secret from you in this scenario, but I do like bad fanfic!

HARRY: … (they're the only times I get to be happy and/or badass.)

HERMIONE: Wait, hold up. Anecdotal studies prove that people who think up bad fanfic do so because they are distracting themselves from serious relationship problems. Anything you want to talk to us about, Professor?

LUPIN: No.

LUPIN: Tonks is going to have a baby. Just Tonks. Totally not me. I have no idea how I could possibly be tied to this. Blame it on non-existent Wizarding sex education.

HERMIONE: A baby? Oh, how wonderful!

RON: Excellent!

HARRY: Congratulations.

LUPIN: Yeah, yeah. Just kill me now, please?

TRIO: ...

HARRY: You want to, ahem, abandon your pregnant wife, not to put too fine a point on it. I have to say, that's out of character even by the standards of this book.

LUPIN: *tries to placate and persuade Harry with the dead-parent card*

HARRY: Look, I'm not thirteen anymore.

NARRATIVE: In an abrupt change of literary mood, Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw the shadow of the wolf upon his human face for the first time ever.

NARRATIVE: ... and the last.

NARRATIVE: *whispers* But you didn't hear it from me!

LUPIN: *regrets, morbidity, hypertension, displaced rage, and possibly some inherited Mad-Eye-esque paranoia*

HARRY: Wow, Remus. You never used to be neurotic.

LUPIN: True that. Maybe it started whenever-it-was you lot started calling me Remus.

READERSHIP: Yeah... when was that? The fanficcers want to know.

HERMIONE: *aside* God, it seems like I'm doomed to tear up yet again as I see the psychologically twisted results of Wizarding prejudice.

RON: *aside* Well, you're the chick, it has to be you. Harry can be emo, sure, but right now I think he's busy doing his "temper" thing.

RON AND HERMIONE: *duck*

HARRY: My orphanic angst gives me the moral authority to say this is a suck-ass idea.

LUPIN: Well I will bury you under a landslide of lycanthropic angst.

HARRY THE UNCONQUERABLE ANGSTER: Oh, so this is how it is, huh? Well, I think you're channelling Sirius here. (And yeah, that's right, I managed to drag Siriusangst into this!)

LUPIN: What, now I'm incapable of thinking up stupid things under my own steam? Well—good-bye.

LUPIN: ... And as a parting gift, Harry, here's how that duelling bit is done.

NEXT THING ANYONE KNOWS: BANG!

THE BOY WHO LIVED TO BE THROWN TO THE FLOOR OF THE WALL: Yeah, that was a bit embarrassing…

HERMIONE: *calling after the drive-by dueller* Remus! Remus! Seriously, you could have helped this mission a lot more if you had skipped the kappas and taught us that four years ago…

HERMIONE: Harry! How could you?

HARRY: It was easy.

RON: That explains why we're going to have to patch you up with murtlap.

HARRY: Don't look at me like that!

RON: Don't you start on her!

HERMIONE: No—no—we mustn't fight!

RON: No fighting, right. Bickering still fair game though?

HERMIONE: *misty-eyed* Well, naturally.

HARRY: *feeling lump on his head* Wow, first the Flight of the Prince and now this. Things never seem to go well for me when I go about calling grown men cowards, do they?

RON: Too right, mate.

HARRY: Oh, go bicker-slash-flirt with Hermione. Am still full of heroic rage and so not in the mood.

NARRATIVE: Neither Ron nor Hermione spoke, but Harry felt sure that they were looking at each other behind his back, communicating silently.

NARRATIVE: ... communicating silently by looks. Nothing else. Nada!

HARRY: *somehow starts feeling guilty about being completely right, if rather harsh, in his and Lupin's encounter, despite the fact that it's his head still throbbing from Lupin's magical sucker-punch*

HARRY: Reading Rita Skeeter could not possibly make me feel worse!

SKEETER ARTICLE: Wanna bet?

DUMBLEDORE FAMILY PHOTO: We are so Victorian.

RON: I swear those are the dress robes I had in GoF.

BIG-LIPPED ALLIGATOR MOMENT: Kendra Dumbledore is, or is not, Native American? Who knows? Why'd we bring it up anyway?

SKEETER ARTICLE: We don't know, but, anyhow, Kendra was a total bitch, which somehow casts serious aspersions on Dumbledore's wise-old-sage qualifications.

THE QUOTABLE BATHILDA BAGSHOT: I make homemade Cauldron Cakes! Screw copyright. Also, it seems Ariana's only air and exercise was a single walk around the garden during nights when I was gathering magic plants.

SKEETER: Ominous, no?

HARRY: I'm forced to agree… All of my mentor figures are failing me. Again. *incipient rage*

CRACK: Kreacher has brought thief back for Master Harry to vent on!

HARRY: Just what I needed.

MUNDUNGUS: My hair is still "matted."

READERSHIP: Good, good.

MUNDUNGUS: *cowering* Sheesh, you bail on one bleedin' little saving-the-world mission and cause the death of Britain's greatest Auror and all the sudden people are so testy with ya—

HARRY AND DOPPELGANGER DOBBY: *identical leers*

MUNDUNGUS: Eep. *whimpering fetal position*

KREACHER: Can't Kreacher please hit Fletcherses over the head again with his Acme frying pan?

RON: You know, against all odds, I'm really liking the elf.

HARRY: Yeah, he's pretty pimpin', innit 'e?

MUNDUNGUS: Wait now, that locket is 'orribly cursed? Well, blimey, 'ow was I s'posed to guess that just coz I took it from an 'aunted 'ouse chock-full of Dark Arts? That's for the free market to work out.

RON: *shows a suspiciously shrewd understanding of a criminal psyche*

MUNDUNGUS: Okay, okay, I took the locket! 'ad no bloody idea it was a trinket of purest evil.

HARRY: All right! This day is finally about to get better. Hand it over!

MUNDUNGUS: I sold it, awright? I sold it!

HARRY: Oh. Well, temporary setback, particularly when we have a trigger-happy house-elf at our disposal. Describe your client.

MUNDUNGUS: Eh, she looked like the incarnation of warped feminine evil, that ring any bells?

HARRY: *with dawning despair* Oh hell no.

RON: And here we were so anxious that we would bring this series to a close without running into Umbitch again.

HARRY: I hate today.