A/N: Hello again! It's been...5 or 6 months? Sorry? Here's the chapter, enjoy!
Chapter 4: The Plural of 'Elk' Is Not 'Elkses'
"Professor Dumbledore! Something has happened!" barked Professor McGonagall.
Dumbledore looked pleasantly surprised at being barged in upon. "Whatever is the matter, Minerva?"
"Potter, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew here were covered in Time-Turner dust that a girl had somehow procured from the Ministry. Mr. Pettigrew is here to tell you exactly what happened."
Peter's knees shook as he slowly raised his eyes to meet Dumbledore's bright blue ones. Dumbledore smiled kindly at Peter.
"Mr. Pettigrew, if you would kindly explain what is going on, and why you are covered in dust, it'd be greatly appreciated."
And so, in a much higher voice than usual (with many pauses and excessive amounts of lip-wobbling), Peter told the whole story. When he had finally made his shaky way to the end of the tale, Dumbledore nodded ruminatively. He didn't look at all fazed by the news, and instead said quietly, "Thank you, Mr. Pettigrew."
"Now," he continued calmly, "if you would please show me the place where this occurred?"
Professor McGonagall nodded and said, "This way, Headmaster," sweeping out of Dumbledore's office without bothering to check if they were following.
In McGonagall's office, Sirius and Remus stared at the girl crouching next to James.
Sirius was the first to speak. "Uh, hello?" he said, tentatively. The girl didn't reply, but merely gawked at him in shock, one hand still clutched around James's own in what looked to be a death grip. Remus nudged James with his toe in an effort to wake him and somehow procure from him information on who the girl was. Unfortunately, he didn't stir, leaving Remus alone with an unconscious mate and a strange girl.
"So... hi," said the girl awkwardly.
"Hey," replied Remus.
A herd of reindeer dug under thick, white, fluffy snow for (they hoped) bountiful tufts of shriveled grass. A loud bang interrupted their silent foraging, and they immediately tensed in anticipation of deranged, cold-hardened hunters waving guns. After the reindeer nearest the source of the noise were reassured that the newcomer was no threat, the herd relaxed and went back to their hopeful snow-shoving. The newcomer, a human boy with a ridiculous mane of blackish-colored fur and (it seemed to them) nothing else, slowly got to his feet (he had fell about three feet from the air and landed on his face in the deep snow) and surveyed his surroundings.
"What the…," he muttered, spinning on his heel to try to figure out where he was. After staring for a few seconds, he started muttering some rather vicious things, the words "stupid girl" and "fucking Time-Turner" popping up in almost every sentence. He kicked at the snow that the reindeer had so carefully shifted and then, feeling as if that wasn't violent enough to express his emotions, started to make a snowball. His fingers were stinging from touching the snow, but he continued until he had a nice big snowball. Taking aim, he threw the snowball with all his strength at the nearest available living target (with perhaps the exception of the grass, which was nearly dead anyway), which happened to be a most unlucky bull reindeer. The reindeer merely snorted at this sudden, unexpected shower and shook the snow out of his fur. The boy growled as he realized that the snowball had done nothing to the reindeer, though it had frosted it with an attractive coating of white.
"Where am I, anyway?" raged the boy, known in politer company than reindeer as Sirius Black. "Don't suppose you know, elky? Or whatever you are?" This last part was addressed to the reindeer he'd just thrown snow at. Said animal had now become bored with the human and turned itself so that its backside was facing Sirius. With a splat, the reindeer relieved itself onto Sirius' shoes.
(It was quite warming, but at that point Sirius wasn't in a state to notice.)
A look of horror appeared on Sirius' face, and he immediately started swiping his feet along the white snow (dirtying it and flinging it at all and sundry reindeer within ten feet) to clean them off. When it soon became clear that his attempts were futile, he made a strangled noise (they were his favorite shoes) and aimed a kick at the guilty reindeer. The reindeer, this time feeling the impact, gave a loud snort, and kicked back promptly with his left hind leg. The limb made square and forceful contact with some of Sirius's most vital bits, and he let out a strangled "hup" sound-it was all he could manage, really.
Clutching his crotch, Sirius moaned into the snow, "Owwwww fuck fuck fuckity fuck owwww fucking elk, that HURT!" The effort to speak also hurt, but somehow spewing expletives helped him feel a little better. And so, for about ten minutes, half-buried in freezing snow, quickly-freezing reindeer dung and (he was sure) his own draining lifeblood,
Sirius concentrated on breathing and letting loose his entire colorful vocabulary to the skies. He hoped that maybe a stray word could maybe be powerful enough to strike the stupid reindeer down or something.
While Sirius was occupied by his throes of agony, the reindeer trotted off to find another place to forage, and left the prone-but-moaning human in the snow. After a period, Sirius' nether regions felt slightly better (numb, but better) but a loud bang signified his disappearance from the snowy field of reindeer. Silence returned to the land, and if it weren't for the imprint of Sirius' body, it was as if nothing had ever disturbed it.
At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Professor Dumbledore, Peter, and Professor McGonagall were turning the corner into a corridor when a loud bang followed by a crash startled them. The headmaster and professor exchanged worried glances, and rushed towards the noise, which came from Professor McGonagall's office. They entered to a scene that would have been funny if they had not been so shocked. An unknown girl was crouched next to a slowly stirring James Potter. Remus Lupin, who was usually a very calm, reasonable, and above all non-violent boy (excluding one or two days every month, of course, but he couldn't really be called a boy, then, could he?), was pointing his wand directly at the girl with a threatening scowl on his face. The thing that stuck Professor McGonagall as the most peculiar was Sirius Black, who appeared to have crash landed onto her desk, gripping firmly at his crotch and howling in misery. His clothing was soaked and there was more unmelted snow in his hair and on his shoulders. Overall, he looked painfully pathetic, very much unlike the usual carelessly carefree Sirius Black that she was used to seeing.
"What is going on here?" cried Professor McGonagall. Realizing that no one was paying attention to her, she raised her voice. "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" she roared. Everyone swiveled their heads towards her (except Sirius, who was still too engrossed in his own little personal drama to notice). Feeling a little flustered now that everyone was staring so gormlessly at her, she continued in a softer voice. "Mr. Lupin, why are you pointing your wand at…" she trailed off, not knowing who the girl was. "You, what's your name, girl?" she asked in a kind voice, as the girl looked absolutely terrified.
"Er… Jane," she started, a little hesitant. "My name is Jane," she stated again, this time sounding quite convinced that it was her name.
"Really? Miss Jane, I am afraid I do not believe that that is your name," came the gentle rebuke from Dumbledore. The girl stared at Professor Dumbledore for a second, feeling as if his twinkling blue eyes behind the half-moon spectacles could see into her mind.
"My name is actually Ja-oh fine-Bianca," she corrected herself.
Professor McGonagall smiled benignly (she usually left that sort of thing to the Headmaster, but desperate times called for desperate measures) at Bianca. "Well, Bianca, do you know how you came to—MR. BLACK,would you stop groping at yourself?" Sirius started and blushed crimson as his hands moved slowly upwards to a more genteel position.
"I—it's just that…I mean…my, er, thing…kicked by a moose you know…bunch o' elkses in the stupid field…shi—er, relieved himself…my favorite shoes! Snow…numb…loads of blood-burning pain…" Sirius stumbled through words, trying to explain to his Head of House why exactly he had until recently been gripping his crotch.
"The plural of 'elk' isn't 'elkses.'"
Sirius looked up at Remus in disbelief. "You're correcting my speech?"
"Well…yeah, it's abominable," said Remus, not at all smugly.
"For your information, I just went to SIBERIA."
"Not necessarily. Elk-if that's what you really saw, since we all know how bad you are at Care of Magical Creatures-don't live in Siberia."
"What do you mean, not necessarily? THERE WAS SNOW AND ELKSES ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE!"
"Plenty of places have snow and elk all over the place," Remus retorted, placing an emphasis on 'elk.' "For example, Canada."
"All right, so not necessarily Siberia, but still, I'm freezing, and I just got kicked by an elk."
"So? At least get your terminology right."
"What are you, my governess?" muttered Sirius; during his childhood, he'd had many exciting and short-lived episodes with a whole array of various nannies, nurses, and governesses. None of them lasted long; the record had been three minutes and a clever bit of toy-broomstick flying.
"No, I'm merely pointing out that the plural of 'elk' is not 'elkses.' And that you might have been in Canada or Estonia or something. Not necessarily Siberia."
"You two, back me up," said Sirius loudly to the other Mauraders (one was looking distinctly confused and the other was still attempting to wipe drool from the corner of his mouth), fully intending to battle out the matter of the habitat of large four-legged mammals.
He was, however, interrupted from further orders by two consecutive loud bangs and the disappearance of Remus and Peter. "OI! YOU CANNOT JUST DISAPPEAR! WE WERE HAVING AN ARGUMENT!" He roared at the space where Remus had just vacated. Professor Dumbledore looked bemused at Sirius' indignant tone, but yelling kept Sirius's mind off of the angry pain still lingering in his bits, and so he was prepared to keep doing so for as long as possible.
"Mr. Black, I fear Mr. Lupin cannot hear you from whenever and wherever he went. And as, regrettably, Mr. Pettigrew can no longer answer any questions, perhaps you could finish your argument at a later point?" Sirius blinked a bit, and then nodded sheepishly.
"Now," said Professor McGonagall briskly, "Miss Bianca, how did you come to arrive here?"
"Uh…Gail hit James-he is James, right?-with a frying pan, and, uh, I thought he had a concussion so I went to help him, so I was about to administer CPR-" Bianca, seeing McGonagall's skeptical expression, hastily said, "Not that it would help, now that I think about it. I'm pretty sure CPR isn't going to help with a concussion…But, uh, yeah. So I was trying to help him because he was out cold, and then there was this loud bang, and, well, I ended up here. By the way, where exactly is here?" By this point, everyone was staring at her with surprise. (She thought it was because of the CPR, though she didn't think she'd done anything wrong.)
Professor McGonagall managed to pull herself together and answer Bianca's question. "You are in my office, at Hogwarts." Now it was Bianca's turn to stare, a little disconcerted.
"Ha…you mean like, at Universal Studios? That's…really cool…but I'd really prefer a warning next time you guys do this whole thing, because I was really freaked out when this guy," here, she gestured at James (who had collapsed again in the meantime with a little sigh), "broke into my house and mentions HARRY POTTER stuff. I mean, if you had told us, Gail wouldn't have had to hit him over the head with a frying pan." James gave a pained moan at the mention of cooking utensils.
Professor McGonagall took a little time to gather her wits (and glance at James to make sure he wasn't too badly hurt; she also gave Sirius a hard look, for his hand had been straying southwards again) before saying, "Miss Bianca, you seem to be under the delusion that this is merely a dream or a hallucination. I assure you that everything that is going on right now is perfectly real, and you have somehow been transported to this time and place. I suggest you tell us where and when you come from so that Professor Dumbledore can try to assist you back home." Professor McGonagall looked at Bianca expectantly.
"Y'all are serious?" Professor McGonagall nodded, and Bianca's mouth dropped open. "Ohhhh my god…" she breathed, "I'm in a loony bin. They're all psychos. I'm stuck with people who take Harry Potter way too seriously…GAIL, HOW COULD YOU ABANDON ME LIKE THIS?" she wailed the last part, conveniently forgetting that she was the one had left Gail behind.
A bang and a crash startled Bianca. She was about to turn around and see what it was when a voice interrupted her. "ABANDON YOU? WHY WOULD I BE HERE IF I WERE ABANDONING YOU?" came a loud screech. Cringing at both the volume and fury of the voice, Bianca decided to delay turning around. "I AM NAUSEATED FROM THE WEIRD TRIP HERE; THIS LUNATIC CLAIMS HE'S PETER FRIGGIN' PETTIGREW AND THAT YOU WERE AT HOGWARTS AND I JUST FELL ONTO A STONE FLOOR SO MY KNEES HURT! I SWEAR TO CHRIST, IF YOU DON'T START EXPLAINING WHAT SORT OF DEMENTED TRICK THIS IS, I WILL-I will-SERIOUSLY INJURE YOU!"
Bianca's head finally made the trip around her neck to see the person who was yelling. With a shriek, she rushed towards the brown-haired girl that had a death grip on both Peter's arm and a formidable cast-iron frying pan. She threw her arms around Gail and hugged her like crazy.
Meanwhile, Gail was still busy ranting. "You just disappeared! I was freaking out, and I couldn't exactly call the police, 'cause, well, what was I going to say? 'Hey, I hit a burglar with a frying pan, and my friend tried to help him, but they both went poof, yes, Officer, with sparkles and everything. Help?'"
Bianca sighed and ceased hugging, because it didn't seem like she was going to get hugged back with both of Gail's arms still occupied. "I'm sorry I disappeared. I had no idea I was going to disappear. How'd you get here?"
The other girl looked a bit guilty for a second, and before she could say anything, Peter groaned with pain, attempted to clutch his head, found that the limb generally used for head-clutching was itself being clutched, whimpered, and then sat down heavily, with one arm still connected to Gail's fist. The girl glanced at him and then ducked her head.
"Gail…what'd you do to him?" asked Bianca warily.
"Er…nothing much…"
"NOTHING MUCH?" rasped Peter, "you probably would have throttled me to death if you hadn't realized I wasn't of 'much use if the bastard weren't alive'! And then you started to shake me, I felt like my brains were going to fall out! If it weren't for the fact that I don't hit girls, I would have slugged you!" Bianca giggled a bit, but shut up when Peter turned to her.
Gail looked vaguely uncomfortable, and rubbed her nose with a finger, something she did when she felt awkward. "Er…" she mumbled, "I may have done something…close to…that…"
A/N: Ha...School's started, and I really don't have time to write. I have crew, APUSH, AP Bio, and a whole slew of advanced classes and things to do, so I thought I'd just upload the chapter I wrote over the summer (well...part of the summer). The next update...might take a while. Say, November? Okay? I mean, that's less time than the interval between this chapter and the last one . Hehe...
Hope you liked it, please review!
~weyrmage