CHAPTER 9:
ON THE INADVISEDNESS OF EATING BATRACHIAN HYBRIDS
Now, the thing about vampire-detection wards is that they don't detect familiars. The reason for this is that, while familiars are magical constructs based around the absorbed soul of the familiar, they are also meant to resemble the original in every way, and they were impossible to detect, save via Legilimency. Very few vampires, sadly, took advantage of this little loophole because, like wizards, witches, and indeed humans in general, they tended to be stupid, or at least blinkered to thinking outside the square. Oh, they used familiars to infiltrate target households and disable defences, but this was in mundane households as well as those magical ones that didn't have vampire-detection wards.
However, Hermione came up with a plan that had Luna sulking because she hadn't thought about it first. Luna, the best lateral thinker in Hogwarts, hadn't even considered using a familiar to try and disable the anti-vampire wards at Hogwarts. That also meant they could go back to Hogwarts without triggering the wards. And while the three of them had learned more about magic through consuming the Death Eaters than they ever would through Hogwarts, they also knew that sticking it sideways to Dumbledore would be a lot easier if they removed the anti-vampire wards, and thus obtained access to Hogwarts. And thankfully, Luna knew where the wardstones were. In fact, she knew how to modify them so that the anti-vampire wards would only detect vampires who weren't part of the Pudding Club.
So they sent Snape off on his not-so-merry way to report back to his former masters. To both, he would say that the offer was refused, and he barely escaped with his life. Oh, and the recipe for Theobroma Theophany. Two copies, one for Voldemort, and the other for Dumbledore. He did use Fiendfyre, but he couldn't be sure whether the Vampire Queen was caught up in it. He also would say the Vampire Queen concealed her identity.
At least, that was the cover story.
Luna was happy to give Voldemort and Dumbledore the recipe to her cake: she wanted them to feel a zenith of the sweetest joy before she brought them low to their utmost nadir. Plus, if she was lucky, the sugar overdose might kill one or both of them. The fact that she changed the ingredients so that the consumers would hallucinate was just icing on the cake.
"Anyway," Luna said shortly after sending Snape out, "our next order of business: the Umbitch!"
Tonks sighed. "Oh, thank Merlin and whatever deities are listening. Actually, listen, I know you said Hermione could eat her, but trust me, she wouldn't want to. Can I do that?"
"As your once and future queen, I will deign to grant my subject's request, Nymphadora," Luna said with a smirk, which widened at Tonks' scowl. "But why?"
"Payback," Tonks said simply. "Bitch made snide remarks about me and my family, about my father being a Mudblood and my mother being a Blood Traitor. And while I'm not really going to enjoy having her memories inside me, I at least know what I'm in for." Tonks then showed off her fangs in a vicious grin. "Plus, I want to have her as my little puppet."
"…Can I watch?" Remus asked. "I mean, she passed all those anti-werewolf laws."
After a moment, Luna shrugged. "I will allow this."
Remus fished around in his pocket, and handed them a mirror. "It's enchanted, it allows communication with someone holding the other one. Sirius has one, and I had one. We were going to give Harry one later. I mean, I shouldn't really say I would enjoy watching Umbridge get eaten, but…I can't help but see the appeal of her being eaten."
"I'll make popcorn," Sirius said. "And can we have more of the cake? You know, to congratulate Moony on the passing of his worst foe?"
Luna pursed her lips in thought, before shaking her head. "Not a good idea. It's rather addicting. You don't want to turn him into a Theobroma Theophany junkie, do you?"
"Too late," Remus said with a wistful look on his face.
Tonks looked at them. "So, how exactly are we going to get away with eating a governmental official? I mean, don't get me wrong, I want her dead, or turned into a familiar, but she's also Senior Undersecretary to Fudge, as she delights in reminding us lowly peons. She'll be noticed going missing."
"She has a point," Hermione said.
Luna waved her hand. "Details, details. We can just have her in place as our familiar, like with Snape. Then, she can die of an accident. Somewhere in Australia. I hear they kill and stuff toads down there."
After a moment, Hermione said, "Those are cane toads. Ugly looking things. Does she look uglier than a cane toad?"
"No, though not for want of trying," Remus said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she had one in her ancestry."
"You know, it seems like we're sitting around doing a lot of talking," Harry said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "Why is that?"
"Oh, that's just the writer. He loves doing dialogue rather than action," Luna said offhandedly.
The others gathered looked askance at her, before they decided to just roll with it. Sadly, that was far from the weirdest thing to have ever come out of her mouth.
"Of course it isn't!" Luna said. "I have Fourth-Wall Breaking and Surreal Dialogue as standard skills, and my character class is Cloud Cuckoolander! Incidentally, get to the good part, dammit!"
Moving right along…
"I HEARD THAT!"
Ahem. Moving right along, skipping forward to that evening, we have Dolores Umbridge settling down to a nice cup of tea after a day spent kicking puppies. Metaphorically rather than really, but Dolores Umbridge would kick actual puppies if she thought she could get away with it. Not kittens, though. She loved kittens.
Sadly, that is her only redeeming feature. Her uncanny ability to navigate the shark-infested waters of Magical Britain's political system could be considered a skill of sort to be admired, but as she used it for the aforementioned metaphorical puppy-kicking, well…
Anyway, that's when the beautiful Queen Luna and her minions in the Pudding Club made their heroic entrance and ganked the evil Queen Bitch of Toads and…
Luna, get your hands off the bloody keyboard. No! Bad girl! I never metafiction I liked, so stop that! I write at my own pace, goddammit! Do that again, and I won't write any more Lunar Harmony fics, you got it?! Or any Harry/Luna fics, for that matter. Anyway, what more do you want? You're a vampire queen in this story, and in Quoth the Raven…, you're the adopted mother of Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon! How much more crazy shit do you want in your holistic quantum existence?
…All right, but you'll have to wait until I get the manga before I set you up as Homura's Ashikabi from Sekirei.
What, you want Karasuba too? I'd ask if you're crazy, but that seems rather redundant given who I'm speaking to.
Sorry about that. Someone has a bad habit of breaking the fourth wall and leaving me to foot the repair bill. She's been taking too many lessons from a certain Mr Wilson.
Anyway, Dolores Umbridge was sitting at home, having a nice, relaxing cup of tea, and reminiscing about the various horrible things she did today, and the horrible things she had planned for the future. She intended to do to Harry Potter's reputation what 4Kids did to One Piece: slash it to bits, sodomise it, and make it a mangled ruined mess that people would view with disgust and contempt. She was already laying down the groundwork. Harry Potter was someone who rocked the boat, and Dolores Umbridge did not like having her boat rocked. Dealing with that fiasco at the Quidditch World Cup and the mess Bagman and Crouch made of the Tri-Wizard Tournament was bad enough.
Of course, dealing with Harry Potter was a secondary objective. She actually wanted to topple Dumbledore from his lofty perch. Oh, how she despised his self-righteousness and his fame and that appalling taste in clothes. Which, incidentally, was the pot calling the kettle black, considering Umbridge's preference for eye-searing fuchsia cardigans that were less haute couture and more like eldritch abominations in woven cloth.
In some universes, Umbridge's crusade was merely a means to gain personal power by toppling Dumbledore. In others, she was a wannabe Death Eater looking to curry favour with Voldemort. In some universes, like this one, her crusade against Dumbledore was justified, if for selfish reasons, while in some, it was just the self-aggrandizement of a Batrachian Bitch.
And while karma's existence, even as an impersonal force, is yet to be proven, the truth is, it was somewhat karmic that the Pudding Club came a-calling. Umbridge's first notion to it was when the doorbell rang. She blinked, before she headed to the front door, and opened it, finding a young woman with blonde hair smiling, holding a box. She was about to tell this young woman that whatever she was selling, Umbridge wasn't buying any, until the woman said the magic words. "Umm, we have a sale on kitten plates? Collector's edition, super-rare."
Umbridge blinked, before she put on her best, simpering, unctuous smile. The sort that made milk curdle, flowers wither, and, on at least one memorable occasion involving a faulty potion, a man's face melt off. "Why, come in," she said, in a sickeningly sweet tone of voice that could have been marketed as a powerful emetic. Seriously, there were times when her saccharine tones had caused people to vomit copiously.
Umbridge thought she heard what sounded like someone stumbling, a muffled 'Ow!', and another muffled, 'Watch it!' behind the saleswoman. Turning back to her, the saleswoman said, "I have a few other plates. They have enchanted portraits that complain if they're handled too roughly. I can't get them off my hands quick enough."
"I wonder why," Umbridge remarked acidly.
They went into the living room, and the blonde-haired woman placed the box down on the table, opening it for Umbridge to peruse the contents. Umbridge frowned when she didn't see the expected kitten plates. Instead, there was a strange yellow rat or rabbit like thing with red cheeks. "Pika?" it asked, before its eyes widened in horror. "Chu?! Pika-pikachu?!" Which, in Pokémon speak, translated to, "What the fuck is that?! Please tell me that's not a new Pokémon!"
"What is this little monstrosity?!" Umbridge demanded. "This little rat should be poisoned!"
"Pika-pika, Pikachu! PIIIKAAAACHUUUUU!" Which translates to, "Fuck you, bitch! THUNDERBOLT!"
A blast of electricity from Pikachu caused Umbridge to convulse, strobing from positive to negative. She collapsed, shuddering and juddering, into her favourite armchair, which she promptly soiled as she lost control of her bowels. Umbridge fell into merciful unconsciousness.
Pikachu twitched its nose, before remarking in disgust, "Pika."
"Yeah, I know, we can smell it from here," Harry said as he shucked off the Invisibility Cloak concealing him, Hermione, and Luna. Tonks changed her appearance back to her preferred state.
Hermione, meanwhile, said to Luna, "How the hell did you get a Pokémon?"
"My father's a magical cryptozoologist. A Pikachu's easy. It's the Shiny ones that are hard," Luna said offhandedly.
"That explains so much, and yet so little," Harry muttered, bringing out the mirror to let Remus watch.
"And now, I'm not sure I want to eat her," Tonks said, looking a bit green around the gills. "She shat herself. I don't want to eat shit. I have enough of that at work."
"C'mon, Tonks! Just use an Aguamenti, then a Scourgify on her first," Luna said. "That way, all you'll taste is magical suds and not excrement."
Tonks shrugged, and did as she was asked, though she deliberately overpowered both spells, with the net result that Umbridge woke up looking like the proverbial drowned rat. She spluttered, and then glared up at Tonks. "Auror Tonks…I'll see you put into Azkaban for this outrage," she hissed.
"Yeah, no," Tonks said. "You've pissed off the wrong people, Umbitch. Your worst nightmare has come."
"What? The ones with the kittens being eaten by the mutant Bundimun?" Umbridge asked.
"Umm, no."
"The one with the centaurs chasing me down to gang-rape me?"
In the canon Potterverse, the Dolores Umbridge of that timeline sneezed as she fled through the Forbidden Forest, centaurs pursuing her…
"Okay, no. And damn you for putting that mental image into my head. I mean, not that I'd mind YOU getting gang-raped by a herd of centaurs. But I don't want the mental imagery," Tonks said.
"Tonks, focus," Hermione hissed.
"Oh, right," Tonks said. "I'm your worst nightmare in that I'm a disgruntled Ministry employee who is also a vampire who is about to eat your sorry toad-like arse and turn you into a familiar."
Umbridge blinked up at her incomprehensibly. "But…I've only had nightmares about that once! And it was Weatherby doing that! And, ummm…" She blushed slightly. "It wasn't a nightmare."
Tonks, Harry, Hermione and Luna blinked at the thought of Umbridge having a wet dream about sex with a vampire Percy Weasley, and thought, in unison, Oh, HELL no! Tonks, out loud, said, "Screw it, I'm eating you!"
A few minutes later, Tonks was retching. "Oh, and the aftertaste!" she howled. "I need some Listerine! And is there any Listerine for memories? I mean, other than a Memory Charm? I'd rather eat my crazy aunt again than eat that toad bitch! Hell, I'd rather have eaten Snape! I need a Time Turner to prevent me from eating Umbridge!"
Harry and Hermione looked at Luna, who shrugged, and said, "She'll get over it. Give it time. Vampires live for centuries, she's got enough time to get over it…"
CHAPTER 9 ANNOTATIONS:
Okay, so, that was easily one of my crackier chapters, what with the fourth wall-breaking and the cameo of Pikachu. Hell, that's at least as crackier, if not more so, than Final Fantasy VI Abridged, or Nitimur in Vetitum, my crackier fics. Let's face it, having Luna break the fourth wall down is a matter of when rather than if in more humorous fics.
Incidentally, in case you're wondering if I have gone absolutely insane when I did that rant against Luna, well, the jury's still out, but yes, I did make her the guardian of Hansel and Gretel in my Black Lagoon crossover Quoth the Raven… (which, along with another Potterverse/Black Lagoon crossover Disquiet, I recommend, especially if you like to see Harry paired up with Sawyer the Cleaner). And while I may not include Luna in it, I am strongly considering doing a Sekirei crossover in the future, once the manga is republished later this year and I can get an idea of the story a bit better, beyond fanfic, anyway.
Review-answering time! DZ2: I'm glad you enjoyed it. I like a well-done Severitus fic (The Best Revenge and its sequel being my particular favourites of the genre), but canon Severus was a self-centred bastard. But he's not actually that cowardly. If he knew he was going to die, he would go out screaming in defiance and fury rather than fear.
raw666: Alucard MAY make a cameo appearance, but that's up in the air.
No numbered annotations this time.