Hari Rabbit: A Potter's Tail.
Disclaimer: If you can recognise it as part of Harry Potter or any Looney Tunes or Disney movie, cartoon or comic, I don't own it. If you don't recognise it, but it bears a lot of similarities to some mix of the above, I don't own that either. The only things I could claim are the plot and two characters from the Toon-town side of things (Rocket & Roxy: Flying Foxes!) and I'm not getting anything for them (except the enjoyment of telling a story). Now that that's out of the way, please enjoy.
Some speech conventions:
"Normal speech".
"SHOUTING!"
"Thinking..."
«French»
§Parseltongue§
Chapter 2: Anything Bigger has Right of Way.
As she wandered towards the Leaky Cauldron, Hari mused over her experiences here in Britain. The weather was colder than she was used to, but then, she wasn't really bothered by it. She kept her ears tucked into her hair as best she could, her tail and fur hidden beneath her full-length coat and a pair of red woolen gloves. She couldn't do much about her feet, though. They just weren't suitable for any footwear that wasn't custom made. It was somewhat of a hassle, but it wasn't like anyone who saw her couldn't tell she was a toon. One of the few in all of the UK. She was here to meet the person who'd be taking her around to get her school supplies, one Rubeus Hagrid, according to the reply she'd gotten to her return letter. Dashing across the road, she had to keep an extra-cautious eye out for traffic. One of the downsides of being a Rabbit and a toon was the extremes of Narrative Causality, loosely meaning, 'because it was funny'. The sudden onslaught of vehicles on the road, for instance.
Dodging, spinning, jumping and narrowly evading collisions was almost second nature to her, and she would have made it across safely, except for the 'Public Transportation' clause. There was a bus. Therefore, she would be hit by it. As her eyes bulged out to three times their size, and her jaw dropped to her chest as she screamed, the bus driver hit the brakes. It didn't help, and she wound up buried in the Hari Rabbit-shaped hole in the grill as the bus screeched to a halt. Onlookers poured out of the surrounding buildings, including a few from the inn that had been her destination. A large man, at least ten feet tall, an older woman in an outfit that would have been the height of fashion fifty years ago, two contemporary mundanes (a man and a woman, their clothing gave them away as- what was that word, muggles?), and a girl with bushy hair who blended the features of the adult muggles so well she had to be their daughter. The bus had lost a hubcap, which rolled to the front of the vehicle and spun to a halt with the distinctive sound such things possess in a cartoon.
As the onlookers watched, a white-furred arm, with a red-gloved hand at the end, peeled itself out of the indentation in the vehicle's grill. Shaking the sleeve of her coat down the arm, Hari began a speech largely muffled by copious amounts of bus.
"Nothing up my sleeve," she declaimed. "Now watch me pull a Rabbit out of a bus!" So saying she began to suit word to deed, reaching into the hole in the bus and dragging herself out by the ears with a horrendous sucking sound that ended with a resounding POP! Holding herself up by the ears, with her legs tucked up to her fluffy tail, the toon rabbit-girl proceeded to show herself off to the crowd, and bowed at applause. As she did, she noticed she was two feet off the ground. She had enough time to think "I HATE the first Law" before she belly-flopped against the bitumen. The following silence was broken by the sound of a young girl, laughing until the tears poured down her face.
The oversized man turned out to be Rubeus Hagrid, who muttered something about needing a good stiff drink, to the agreement of the elderly witch, one Minerva McGonagall. As the two of them wandered over to the bartender to place their orders, Hari turned to the girl and her parents. The adults were both Doctor Granger, dentists from London, although Rick Granger was a fair bit older than his wife Evelyn. Their daughter was Hermione Jane Granger, and like her mother, an avid scholar. Unlike her parents, she was also a rabid fan of cartoons. All cartoons. Discovering that one of her future classmates was a toon was a dream come true for the bushy-haired child.
As the Hogwarts staff members returned, drinks in hand, discussing something about tasks and duties in low voices that they thought wouldn't be overheard, although they hadn't accounted for the way Hari's left ear tripled in size as she became interested. Hagrid sat on the floor, putting him at the right height for the table, while McGonagall took a seat next to Hermione's parents as the little witch pelted her new friend with question after question about what toons she knew. Amused by their daughter's non-stop queries, which hadn't even allowed Hari a chance to get a word in, Evie Granger reached over the table and placed a hand on Hermione's shoulder.
"Hermione, dear," she said. "Manners. You have to let your new friend introduce herself, don't you think?" The chocolate-brown eyes of her daughter widened.
"Oh my..." Hermione gasped. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking, please go ahead..."
Hari grinned. "My name is Angharad Rabbit, from Toontown. Pleased to meet you. I'm supposed to be starting at Hogwarts this year." McGonagall and Hagrid looked at each other.
The witch was the first to speak. " I don't recall anyone of that name on the list, and I'm the Deputy Headmistress. I'm here for the next week or so to escort the first-time muggle-born students around Diagon Alley."
"Don' look at me," said Hagrid. "Professor Dumbledore tole me I was s'posed ta meet Hari Potter here. I hafta wait for her." The girl-toon laughed.
"I'm sorry," she chuckled, "but I haven't gone by that name since I was four." Hermione giggled at the befuddlement on the adults' faces.
"So humans can become toons?" the bushy-haired girl asked. "How? What happens when they do? Does it hurt?" She stumbled to a halt as Hari laid a red-gloved finger across her lips.
"Whoa, girl," she replied. "It wasn't something anyone expected, you know. When Mom and Dad got me away from my relatives, they decided to adopt me, but they didn't know what to do, so they took me to Grandpa's and he told them about this ritual that would adopt me, but it required the mingling of blood. Well, ink in their case. Not even Grandpa thought I'd actually become a toon. Yes, it hurt, a lot, but it was worth it. If I wasn't a toon, I'd never have survived the bus outside. Of course, I probably wouldn't have needed to. Stupid Narrative Causality..."
It took the better part of twenty minutes for the adults to tease the full details of Hari's story from her. When she'd finished, Hagrid's faith in Dumbledore had taken quite a hit, and the Scottish witch was positively incensed on the child's behalf.
"I told him!" she ranted. "I said they were the worst sort of muggles!" Realising her current company, she hurried to correct any false impressions. "Don't worry, I know not all muggles are bad, but good luck convincing most of our society of that. But having heard young Hari's story, I am forced to wonder if she'd not have been better off with Sirius Black!" This last statement startled a gasp from the oversized gamekeeper.
"Sirius who?" asked Hari, her long ears twitching forwards, and her nose wriggling with curiosity. "Who's he?"
They were suddenly nervous then, the two adult magical folk at the table. It was a nasty silence, one that seemed filled with reluctance to speak. Finally, Professor McGonagall spoke. "Sirius Black was your father's best and most trusted friend, back when you were but a wee bairn." Her accent grew thicker as her emotions climbed in intensity. "I was there when yuir da asked him to be yuir godfather, an' when they performed tha ceremony that bound him as such, they were a' so joyous. But that Halloween, he betrayed them. He was their secret keeper, beholden tae guard their dwelling tae his dying gasp, enforced wi' a magic tha' wou' protect it sae only he cou' speak its location. An' when they were murdered, by a madman seeking yuir death, although on'y a bare han'fu' o us know why, sorry, but I'm nae one o' them. It had tae be him, there was naebody else they'd trust sae much." Minerva McGonagall broke down for a while then, weeping into her Firewhiskey. Hagrid had tears in his eyes as well.
"Are you sure?" Hari's soft voice was, strangely, easily made out, and caused her to be the instant centre of attention. "Grandpa told me about the various guardian bonds before I was adopted. Is this Black fellow still alive? Because if he is, then either he wasn't my godfather, or he didn't betray us. The godparent bond would have his magic pull him apart from the inside if he did."
Minerva was barely containing herself. "And who, lass, is this much vaunted 'Grandpa' o' your'n, tae know these things? Who is the man to gainsay Albus Dumbledore? The auld fool has made mistakes, aye, but he is still tha greatest wizard our world ha' seen since Merlin."
Confusion seemed to be the order of the day at this table, with Hermione and her parents watching like spectators at a tennis match, as an almost villainous smirk decorated Hari's face.
"What do you mean, 'since Merlin'?" she asked. "Grandpa's still going strong. Okay, so he's a toon now, but still..." There was a gleeful squeal as Hermione glomped the living daylights out of her new best friend.
"You have got to introduce me! Mum, Dad, is it okay if I visit Hari over the holidays? Do you want to come? Can we plan for it now? What about Disneyland, Warner Brothers, and Maroon Cartoons, can we go there?..." Hari quietly made plans to enlist Rocket and Roxy to help curb Hermione's enthusiasm, at least a little bit.
The first stop for all of them, once they'd settled Hermione down, was Gringotts. The goblins stared at Hari, apparently unable to reconcile her with any of their previous experiences and customers. Aside from a brief argument with Hagrid over the possession of her vault key, the girl-toon had no issues about the bank. While the Grangers were at one teller exchanging their currency with the assistance of Professor McGonagall and the goblins, not incidentally earning a good deal of respect for treating the short warrior-race as at least equals, Hari and her enormous escort travelled to her vault, then made another, more secretive stop at another vault, numbered 713. Here, Hagrid acquired a small package, a lumpy thing wrapped in old brown leather, before they returned to the lobby of the bank.
From there, the group proceeded to Madam Malkin's, where they were to procure the children's uniforms and robes. It was here that they (reluctantly) made the acquaintance of a platinum-blond boy who was receiving the final fittings on his robes. He was complaining about the fit as they entered. One look at Hermione's clothes had a sneer on his face as he drew in his breath to speak.
"It seems they'll let anyone shop in here, even mudbloods," he said. Outside, McGonagall and Hagrid stiffened at the horrid word. The Grangers, not knowing they were being insulted, failed to react in the desired manner.
Hari stared at the arrogant little snot. Grandpa Merlin had explained to her the phrase, and she stepped up to the brat, who reacted with a glare,and then startlement, as he noticed her toon features, and rabbit-ish traits. While he was somewhat gobsmacked at what looked to him like a drawing that had escaped its canvas, she measured him against those she knew.
"Excuse me," she said, more or less politely, "but could you please say 'consarn-ed fragnabbit varmint'?" When the befuddled pureblood scion did so, she shook her head, waving her ears behind her. "Nahh. You're not a Sam, you're a Marvin. Try 'where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom'."
Hermione was having a hard time controlling her laughter, and cracked up. The sneering blond, finally figuring out he was being mocked, threw down his new robes.
"Come, mother," he huffed. "This store is obviously not worthy of the patronage of the Malfoys." So saying, he stormed from the shop.
Flourish and Blotts was no great hassle, as filling out the booklists was a fairly simple task, although convincing Hermione that she didn't need the Hari Potter series of books, none of which matched the new Hari Rabbit, and were thus obvious works of fiction, was the hardest task they faced there. Hari did, however, suggest picking up the books for second year students so they could at least read ahead. Hari also had seen the list's allowance of one pet of certain prescribed types, and put her fuzzy little foot down. "If they're not a toon," she stated vehemently, "then I'll have trouble with an owl or cat, and I flatly refuse any form of toad." Hagrid seemed a little disappointed. After that was the apothecary and potion supplies store, and finally off to Ollivanders for their wands.
As they entered, the two adult magicals reminisced for a moment of the first time they'd set foot here, which had been on the same day, strangely enough. They remembered Garrick Ollivander's odd peculiarities, and weren't surprised when the old wandcrafter stepped from the shadows behind the girls with a creaky-voiced "Welcome to my store."
They were, however, extremely startled by the reaction of one Hari Rabbit, who launched straight up from a standing start. As Hermione broke into laughter again, from far above them, clinging to the rafters, they heard the girl-toon's complaints.
"I HATE the Fifth Law!"