"He couldn't quite read the meaning behind her facial tick." –aestel, "Yes, But"
"Well done, Miss Tonks," said Snape, returning her bottle of Spasming Solution to her desk. "A few more potions like this, and you just might scrape an O after all."
"Much obliged, I'm sure, Professor," said Tonks with a grin. "Won't you thank the nice professor, Sulpicius?" And she gave a nudge with her wand to the magically engorged tick that squatted on her left cheek.
Snape rolled his eyes. Nymphadora Tonks baffled him in many ways, but this business of her facial tick was the worst of all; he always had a sense that, by coming into all his classes with an overgrown parasitic arachnid so conspicuously feeding on her life-blood, she was trying to convey a definite meaning to him that he could never quite read. He had even confronted her about it once, and she'd just looked at him with wide-eyed innocence and said, "Don't know what you mean, I'm sure, sir. He's quite harmless, according to Professor Dumbledore – Kettleburn, I mean."
Well, Snape thought now, with a resigned sigh, I never did claim to understand women.
"This work was a little something that poped in my head this morning." –AngelAmore, author's note to "The Injured Ferret"
"With a sincere heart, therefore," The Injured Ferret recited, "and with unfeigned faith, I detest and abjure every error, heresy, and sect opposed to the said Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Roman Church. So help me God and these Gospels, which I touch with my hand."
The Bishop smiled, and motioned for the work and its sponsor to come forward. Lies Bathilda Bagshot Told Me placed a reassuring hand on its younger friend's shoulder, and led it toward the altar rail. "Your Excellency," it said, "may I present Colossians."
The Bishop nodded in approval of this choice of confirmation name. "Colossians," he said, dipping his finger in chrism and reaching toward The Injured Ferret's forehead, "be sealed with the Holy…"
At this juncture, AngelAmore awoke with a start, and the surreal image of a work of fiction "poping" from Protestantism to Catholicism vanished like the mid-morning dream that it had, in fact, been. Only the solid reality of the Durmstrang dormitory remained, the Dark beasts carved into its walls leering overhead as though to sneer at all such dreams of repentance and grace.*
"Well, that settles it," the young author murmured, rolling over and snuggling back under the blankets. "I have got to stop eating Chocolate Cauldrons so late at night."
"After a drunken one night stand, Minerva tells Tom that she's pregnant. Plans for world domination are derailed somewhat. Set in 194647." –Vivien B, summary to "A Beneficial Arrangement"
"You're sure?" Tom demanded.
Minerva smiled wanly. "Pregnancy tests have come a long way since our day, Tom," she said. "Yes, I'm sure. And it's no good groaning that way," she added sharply. "It was your idea for me to have that drinking contest with Nar Z'Pee…"
"Yes, of course," said Tom irritably. "I thought it might loosen his tongue, make him drop some hints about the nature of magic in this era, maybe even show us the way into the Palace of Green Porcelain. It didn't occur to me that you could possibly get sloshed enough to want to have a subterranean ape-man's love child."
"No, I suppose it didn't," said Minerva. "But I could, and I did, and now I will. So I'm afraid our little scheme to become the Emperor and Empress of Time is going to have to be put on the back kettle for a while; I'm not putting any baby of mine at risk with another time trip, whether it's half-Morlock or no."
Typical, Tom thought, scowling to himself. I should never have turned her in the first place; I should have known that she'd end up slowing me down somehow. Whether it's the 20th Century or A.D. 194647, some things just never change.
"I heard you damming us" –LucyLuna, "A Warning"
At first, it was just a vague rumble far to the north – nothing that the Narcissa River thought worthy of her attention. But then, as the days passed and it failed to subside (indeed, if anything, it got louder and more persistent as time went on), she decided that it couldn't hurt to cast her consciousness downstream a ways and see what was going on.
So she poured herself out along her pure, glistening current, expecting to find a human erecting some bridge or riverfront hostelry a decent distance from her surface. Words were inadequate to her surprise and horror when she saw the reality: an immense hydroelectric dam, in the early stages of construction, being thrown up about a mile past the point where she joined with the Bellatrix and the other tributaries to form the majestic Black Nile.
She glared up at the engineer in charge, as though demanding an explanation of this monstrous outrage – and then her liquid eyes widened in understanding. Yes, there was no mistaking that face, that figure, that insufferably insolent carriage; it was none other than her former tributary the Sirius, who had once irrigated a whole southwestern corner of the continent – who had betrayed their whole river system when offered the form and power of a man – whose bank now stood, dry and barren and studded with the bones of his fishes, as a testimony to his shamelessness. Of course, only he would dare to dam the Black Nile – and, in his scorn and envy of the life he had left behind, of course he would try to do just that.
All right, little cousin, she thought, roiling in her depths from source to delta. All right, little man. You want to challenge the waters of Tujurpur? You want war? Then war you shall have.
*No, of course AngelAmore isn't actually a Durmstrang student – but I had to make the scene into Harry Potter ff somehow, didn't I?
