Previously on Hipshit Sparklepuff...
Lockhart and Edwardmort face off in a duel of epic proportions, spewing death curses, girlish screams, and worst of all – bad hair-day jinxes. Just as the balance seems to tip in our protagonist's favour Edwardmort delivers an insult so terrible, so bitchy, that Lockhart is left wide open to his glittery rays of death. The future defence professor is struck with the killing curse. Not that he lets that affect him...
"Your powers are no match for mine, I'm afraid," Lockhart declared. "I will destroy you-"
And then he was cut off by Hagrid's cry of "Zombie!", and the sound of Hagrid pulling the arrow out of his face and throwing it like a javelin, the projectile whistling through the air and directed at Lockhart's face.
It hit dead on, throwing Lockhart's head backwards as the bolt buried itself through the man's cheek and stuck halfway out through the other side. Lockhart, however, didn't let that stop him from letting everyone know just how painful a bolt to the skull was. The guy didn't even fall over.
"My face!" he protested, looking scandalised.
Hagrid squealed in fright and shot another few bolts into him. Each thudded softly into his skin.
"I say," he tried, but was interrupted by another crack of the crossbow and the man winced as he was struck in the calf. "That's terribly rude, you know."
Harry blinked at the man who'd just stood up again from being hit with the killing curse, and who was now still talking with a dozen crossbow bolt holes in him.
"Zombie!" The half-giant continued shooting frantically, ignoring Lockhart's annoyed expression as he lost an ear.
"Well," he huffed. "If I'd known this is how I'd be treated when I got here, I wouldn't have bothered coming." With a wave of his wand, the skin around the wound reverted back to its usual lustre – except that Lockhart still had huge fucking crossbow bolts sticking out of him.
"Blemish-removing charm, of course, Harry." The new blonde ponce – not to be confused with Draco, but who knew where the fuck he'd gone off to – said with a saucy wink at Harry. Harry shuddered slightly.
Hagrid was still squealing and trying to shoot Lockhart in the way a terrified six year old might try to crush a spider or swat a fly.
"Hagrid, stop shooting him and let's just get the fuck out of here!" Harry commanded.
The half-giant blinked at him with wide eyes. "Zombie!" he protested.
"Hagrid," he warned. "Who am I?"
The giant man rumbled uncertainly, blood spraying out of his mouth from the crossbow wound. "Yer a wizard, 'Arry."
He raised his eyebrows. "And?"
"Yer a thumpin' good on' at tha'."
"That's right, Hagrid. Now listen to the good wizard and stop shooting Lockhart."
The man lowered his crossbow, looking chastised.
There was a cough from across the clearing. "Why aren't you dead, man?" Edwardmort interrupted, sounding annoyed. He sparkled gently in the soft dawn light. Harry was disappointed: he'd vaguely been hoping that the sunlight would hurt him. Not so, it seemed. He just sparkled more.
Lockhart honestly seemed surprised. "Why should I be dead?" Then, ignoring them, he conjured up a mirror and tutted at the reflection. The crossbow bolt was wedged firmly through his cheek bone. "Honestly, it took me weeks to get this cheek right, and now you've ruined it!" He gave a little tug on the wooden shaft but it didn't budge.
Harry checked him for signs of sparkling. "(future) Professor, please don't tell me you're some kind of immortal."
"An immortal?" the man asked, genuinely confused, and looked up from his mirror at the boy. "What are you talking about?"
"The, uh, hit with the killing curse thing. Probably the arrow wounds too."
"Don't be silly, Harry." he scoffed. "It would take something greater than that to do away with the most esteemed man in Witch Weekly!" Absently he cast a spell at the bolt lodged in his face. It didn't remove it, but it certainly did polish the wood up until it gleamed – Lockhart didn't just have a crossbow bolt wedged in his face, he had a fabulous crossbow bolt wedged in his face. "Incidentally, I was wondering if, if it's not too much of a bother, you could possibly lend me your, ah..." He gave a huge, almost orgasmic shudder, "braaaiiinnnss?"
At that exact moment in time, somewhere in the Gryffindor tower, Hermione Granger suddenly decided that she was A-Okay with necrophilia.
Harry backed away. "Oh. Bugger."
"Er... that's a no, then?" The man asked, sounding disappointed. "It really wouldn't hurt that much, you know. Just a quick nibble and you'll be back to your veritable celebrity self in no time!" He smiled brightly. "And appearance charms do wonders for all that rotting skin business."
Edwardmort grit his teeth. "Why does everyone seem to get hold of the immortality gig before me?" he asked frustratedly.
Lockhart swirled around to face him. "Oh yes, I was in the middle of defeating you, wasn't I?" He raised his voice dramatically, "PREPARE TO DO BATTLE, FEIND!" With that, he started walking stiffly towards the possessed vampire with his arms outstretched, groaning softly about grey matter.
Edwardmort squealed.
As Harry watched the two run around, Lockhart chasing and Edwardmort looking like he was trying to avoid cooties, he briefly thought of how much easier this situation would be if he actually knew any spells.
There was body bind curse, but that one had already been severely overused and frankly everyone was bored of it. He knew how to make a light, but that wasn't exactly useful if one wanted to smite some shiny vampire ass, and he knew how to turn a matchstick into a needle. He cursed: if only he was older and knew more spells!
He would have used the stunning curse, like he did in an earlier chapter, but he hadn't actually learnt that one yet; as soon as he had the thought to cast it anyway, since he'd already cast it in the story, the thought left his head and he was left to blankly wonder what he'd been thinking about – continuity sucks like that.
He looked around for anything he could transfigure into a needle or something. Maybe he could get lucky and poke Edwardmort's eye out.
"Avaara Kedaara!" Edwardmort shrieked while maintaining Robert Pattinson's signature half-grin on his face ruining his pronunciation. Voldemort was apparently resorting to his standard reaction to things that annoyed or upset him: killing the shit out of them. The green light whizzed around in circles in the air for a second or two, probably tracing the shape of a butterfly, and hit Lockhart in the chest, knocking him to the ground. It did this because J.K. Rowling could never decide what the hell the killing curse actually did when it hit someone, so the writers can take liberty with this sort of thing. If we say the killing curse draws butterflies before it hits it damn well does, and you had better remember that.
Lockhart, naturally, got back up again from the butterfly curse, and moaned about brains and hair-care products before going after Edwardmort again, who screamed girlishly and kept shooting the killing curse, bereft of all logic that something different would have been more effective.
It's habit: hard thing to break, really. No-one's gotten around to setting up self-help courses to combat one's addiction to the killing curse either. Those sort of things tended to end badly.
Suddenly there was a rustle from across the clearing: everyone froze, and turned to it.
A silver horn appeared from the trees, and then a horse's head covered in fine silky hair came into view, and the unicorn strode proudly out of the trees.
"A unicorn," Lockhart breathed, actual fear tinting his voice. "Nobody move: they're vicious buggers. They'll attack anyone who isn't a virgin – horrible thing to watch, they literally gore their victims and tear out their internal organs while they're still alive. That's why they have the horns, you know."
The unicorn started wondering into the clearing, apparently oblivious of what it was interrupting. Everyone there held perfectly still and waited for it to pass.
"Er," said Harry. "Aren't I safe, though, professor?"
Lockhart looked at him incredulously. "You mean... you haven't?" Harry blinked at what he was implying.
"I'm twelve."
"But... you're a celebrity!"
"I'm twelve!"
The zombie professor looked pale. "You never handled it...?"
"Why should I have-"
"Handle it, Harry! I can't believe you've never even tried."
"I haven't even hit puberty yet!"
Lockhart's reply was interrupted by the unicorn nudging closer. He froze; not that the guy would die from unicorn goring, probably, but then again it wouldn't be pleasant. Harry looked at Edwardmort, who was watching the unicorn with consternation, a cold sweat on his face.
Harry grinned.
Abruptly he charged towards the unicorn, which flicked its tail delightedly when it saw him. The creature tried to nudge its head closer to him, but Harry gave it a firm push towards Edwardmort, who tried his best to scramble away without attracting attention, a look of terror on his face.
Harry moved it close to the possessed vampire, who was now hurriedly trying to run away. Edwardmort was too late in his retreat: the unicorn spotted him and charged over with a whinny, stomping its hooves on the forest floor.
Harry waited for the inevitable goring to happen: Edwardmort tripped over himself while trying to get away, and the unicorn brought its horn down menacingly on the vampire, who couldn't get away in time-
...and nuzzled him.
Harry gaped at it. He looked between the delighted unicorn and the very uncomfortable-looking Edwardmort.
He burst out laughing. "You mean-" he said between chuckles, "You mean the most feared man in Britain, the Dark Lord, is-"
Edwardmort blushed bright red. "It's not what it looks like, Potter." he tried, the unicorn cuddling up to him affectionately. "This must just be a faulty unicorn."
Harry didn't stop laughing.
The vampire grit his teeth. "See? This is why I kill the bloody things!"
Harry gigglesnorted.
"Ava kedaa!" The man snapped, aiming at him. Harry watched the curse draw a smiley face in the air and neatly sidestepped it when it came towards him again.
"Crucio!" he cast, but the unicorn nudged him dotingly in the side, causing his spell to fly completely clear of Harry.
Oh, crap. Edwardmort was angrier than ever now, and was focusing his attention entirely on him. Harry ducked behind Lockhart, dodging Edwardmort's furious curses and screaming obscenities.
He looked around for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. He was getting desperate. Edwardmort needed to be stopped before he managed to curse him. But in the body of the vampire, Voldemort was too fast, too strong and too sparkly to land a hit on. The solution: Harry needed to exorcise Voldemort from the vampire's body.
Yanking two crossbow bolts from Lockhart's leg, and ignoring the girlish shriek of pain from his future professor, he slapped them together into a makeshift cross, tied them together with a few blades of grass, and avoided a killing curse that spelt out 'lol' in the sky (although the denizens of the internet were more prone to pointing out that it looked like a drowning man, these days, so maybe it wasn't lol at all).
With his crudely-constructed cross in one hand and his wand in the other, he attempted to do what he'd done earlier and transfigure the wood into silver, completely oblivious that doing so would again be more transfiguration work then would ever be accomplished in his time at Hogwarts.
It worked: the silver melded together somewhat more, and he was left with a passable silver cross with odd-looking fletchings on two ends. He crowed in triumph at his creation.
"Voldemort!" he called, brandishing the silver cross at him. "I banish thee, demon! Begone!"
Edwardmort blinked at him for a second, before hissing in pain as he spotted the cross. He backed away until he was pressed up against the unicorn.
"Begone!" Harry repeated, grinning like a madman and starting to sprint after his nemesis. Edwardmort howled in pain as Harry came closer, shying away from the cross like it was a radioactive light.
"Av kedav!" he hissed, silently cursing the half-grin that made him look like a stroke victim; the Lolcat-shaped curse was easily avoided and he had to scramble to get away from Harry's Voldemort-specific weapon. He managed to touch the sparkly fiend with the tip of the cross, once: where it touched the skin blistered and burned.
The possessed vampire screamed in agony from the silver bite and retreated to jump onto the unicorn. He kicked it into motion, and suddenly Edwardmort, in all his glittery glory, was galloping away into the sunrise on a sparkly silver pony. It wasn't raining over the forbidden forest, but evidently was raining elsewhere, as across the clouds a rainbow sprang forth and framed Edwardmort's sparkling retreat.
Maybe he should have quit while he was ahead, but Harry finally had the advantage and wasn't about to let that go.
"Hagrid!" he snapped as the unicorn trounced away. "We're going after them!" He lifted his arms up to indicate he wanted to be picked up. Hagrid complied, dropping his crossbow to scoop the boy up and settle him on one of his gigantic shoulders.
"Charge!" Harry ordered. Hagrid faltered, however. He looked back over to the clearing, where Dumbledore lay, possibly near-catatonic from Edwardmort's fangirl-attracting charms.
"Grea' man, Dumbledore." he said. Harry rolled his eyes.
"Fine. You can take him with us too. But just this once, mind! I don't want to lug Dumbledore around everywhere we go."
Hagrid gave him a sunny smile, and scooped Dumbledore up to throw him across his other shoulder. With that, they bounded away.
You might think a half-giant is as slow as his mind tends to be: not so. As Forrest Gump once demonstrated, mindlessly running is actually a talent of the slow thinkers. Hagrid's giant legs covered ground with ease, and as they bounded through the forest at full sprint they started to catch up to Edwardmort's glittering trail.
"There he is – faster, Hagrid! Faster!" Harry cheered as they spotted the unicorn and rider at the edge of the trees.
They burst out of the forbidden forest with a battle-cry, and Edwardmort looked behind him in terror as he rode away on the poncy horse. Suddenly it was a chase across the open grounds of Hogwarts, and as Edwardmort neared the lake in the soft morning sun he could no longer outrun them.
Hagrid barrelled into the unicorn, knocking it and them clear into the water. It slipped with a loud horsey shriek and they hit the water with a crash.
Harry felt like he was being tossed around and battered with a club by the impact that drove him under the water, and he surfaced again, gasping and still clutching onto the makeshift silver cross for dear life.
He splashed around again to see Edwardmort similarly thrown from his ride, coughing up water. Hagrid was apparently standing on the lake bed, although the water was up to his neck, and the unicorn was furiously trying to kill him.
Harry stared at the half-giant. "You aren't a virgin." he stated.
Hagrid smiled toothily at him as he battled the unicorn away with one hand. "Grea' man, Dumbledore..." He made a vulgar thrusting motion with his hips in the water.
Harry vomited in his mouth a little, and hoped that Dumbledore had found some half-troll – maybe one of Millicent Bulstrode's relatives – for Hagrid to love.
"Right. I don't want to know." Harry said, slightly sickened by the thought of it.
"Potter!" Edwardmort cried, looking like a drowned puppy. The water glittered in the sun and the vampire shone brighter. "I'll get you for this! Avara Keravda!" Even attempting to enunciate, the spirit-wraith of Voldemort could not manipulate the mouth of the fabulous vampire well enough to pronounce his curse properly.
Harry splashed around helplessly in the water as he tried to avoid the curse. Ignoring the shape it was carving into the air above them – a small cartoon dong – he frantically paddled towards Edwardmort and thrust the cross at him.
And suddenly something wrapped around his leg.
Harry's scream was cut off as he was roughly pulled into the water and he was jerked down like a ragdoll and suddenly was surfacing again, choking and wheezing in the delicious air as a long tentacle wrapped itself around his waist and held him suspended in mid-air.
A large pink blob surfaced the water and then he was looking into the single giant yellow eye of the giant squid.
Harry couldn't help it: he squealed.
Another tentacle surfaced and dragged Edwardmort up into the air, spluttering with water as Harry did. The man caught sight of Harry, and kicked out in his bind.
The tentacle reached farther up Edwardmort's leg. In Gryffindor Tower, a moan erupted from the First Year Girls Dorm, as a lustful smile broke out on the sleeping Hermione's face. "Oh, yes!" She cried out, to the confusion of her roommates.
"Potter!" Edwardmort screamed as he surfaced momentarily. "I'll kill you!"
"I know, I know." Harry muttered in reply – he had surmised that much himself, from all the evil green light that was being shot his way.
Edwardmort wriggled a hand free of the squid's grip, and attempted once more to shout the incantation for the killing curse. It formed a perfect picture of the Cockmongler's face before striking. Edwardmort's aim, however, was thrown off by the squid jangling him around, and the curse hissed into the water, superheating it and producing a fuckton of steam, because if the curse can propel people out of a building it can certainly also superheat water.
The squid caught the entirety of the steam that hissed up full on the face, and recoiled with a screech, thrashing its many limbs – with people still in them – around wildly.
Harry and Edwardmort were tossed around like puppets, and the motion rattled them, leaving Harry feeling horribly nauseous and Edwardmort feeling not so fabulous.
But in the brief confusion Harry got close enough to thrust the silver cross at Edwardmort, where it latched onto his boiling skin which hissed like a spitting cat, causing the black misty vapour that was Voldemort to seep out.
Edwardmort screamed as he was exorcised, an honest to god scream of unholy agony and rage, and the blisters turned to goo. The squid thrashed, tossing Harry completely clear of the lake to land with a thud on the grounds of Hogwarts, right in front of the main entrance to the Great Hall where the population of Hogwarts was likely just starting to trickle down for breakfast.
The dazed Edward, free of Voldemort and the blemishes on his skin that he'd obtained – after all, a vampire's only power is to look fabulous, it seems – eyed the Giant Squid as he found himself in its clutches. Looking down at the thick, meaty tentacle, he nodded, eyes wide with excitement, and didn't resist as the squid pulled him under.
Harry got up on shaky legs, feeling sore all over – but not as sore as Edward would be, if the squid's giant eye was conveying the emotion Harry thought it was conveying.
He was finally away from it all.
Finally fucking away.
(written by Palindrome)