"Michal settled down next to the portrait of the Fat Lady to wait, lost in thoughts of Ginny's body." –the Wolf at Bay, "Harry Potter and the Witch of Destiny"

"Knut for your thoughts, Princess?" said the Fat Lady.

Michal roused herself, and assumed an air of attempted carelessness. "Oh, I was just thinking of Mrs Potter," she said. "How blessed she is – only five years married, and her third child already on the way…"

"Ah," said the Fat Lady knowingly. "Jealous, are we?"

Michal flushed. "Well, why not?" she demanded, her father's notorious temper flaring in her eyes. "Even the accursed of the Lord may yearn for what He has seen fit to withhold."

The Fat Lady, who shared with the Almighty the distaste for prudishness that had gotten the Hebrew princess struck barren, swallowed back the reply she would have liked to make. "No doubt, no doubt," was all she said. "If you'll take my advice, though, you'd do better to think of what you're going to say to the Headmistress when Mrs Potter gets back here with her. It isn't every day that someone falls out of Bible times into Godric's Hollow; I daresay she'll need a very complete description of the process in order to undo it."

Michal cocked her head. "Falls out of what kind of times?"

The Fat Lady hesitated, then shook her head. "Never mind, dearie," she said. "It's a long story."


"'I need new friends[,]' Malfoy thought, sighing as he tramped down the isles, looking for an empty booth." –OhHeyWassup, "And So the Search Began"

"Attention, giant!" came the voice through the bullhorn. "This is Her Majesty's Coastguard! Cease your attacks on British soil, or prepare to be shot down!"

Draco swore under his breath. "Listen, you stupid Muggles," he said, "I'm not pulverising these isles just for the fun of it; in fact, between you and me, these jagged rocks of theirs aren't doing my feet any favours. But Flitwick says that the only way of reversing that idiot Crabbe's Engorgio charm is hidden in Merlin's old booth from one of the Wizards' Fairs of Scilly; it should still be buried under one of the Isles, only nobody seems to know which. If you object to my lack of finesse, you might offer to come and help me look, instead of…"

"That sound like surrender to you, Mr Gore?" said the captain of the Coastguard vessel.

"No, sir," said his first mate. "Sounds like downright insolence to me. I'd say old Rumblebuffin needs to be taught a little lesson."

"Agreed," said the captain. "Mr Markham! Fire anti-aircraft guns!"

I really need new friends, Draco thought.


"Dudley and Pierce just fell into the cage and the snake escaped somehow." –I Ate Your Muffin, "Potter"

"Really?" said Dumbledore mildly. "Dear me, your cousin created a regular sea of troubles when he stowed away on the Time Zoo, didn't he? I do hope he's learnt his lesson."

"But what are we going to do, Professor?" Harry insisted. "That thing hasn't been fed since we left the Palæocene, and we know how much it likes the taste of primates. I don't want to have to explain to Aunt Petunia that Dudley was eaten by a prehistoric super-snake a hundred years before he was born – and I really don't want to have to explain to the Americans of 1856 how their Vice-President got promoted."

"Not the Vice-President," Dumbledore corrected him. "That office has been vacant for several years now. If the Titanoboa should devour Franklin Pierce, the U.S. presidency would devolve upon the president pro tempore of the Senate – a Mr Bright, I believe it is at the moment.

"But your essential point," he added, "which I take to be that we must intervene, is, I concede, quite unassailable. Wand out, Harry; this may prove a ticklish business."


"He noticed the little tip of an ear poke through pitch black hair, pointed instead of rounded the way Tom's were, and he thought suddenly that this must was one of the fabled little folk." –This is your Heichou speaking, "Lust (Tastes a Little Like Madness)"

"Something wrong, Tom?" said Acte with a sigh.

"The must!" Tom babbled, pointing to the floor where his glass of fresh grape juice lay spilled and shattered. "It wasn't really must – it was a fairy in disguise! When I held it up to the light, I saw it – in the glass – pointed ear – black hair…"

Acte raised an eyebrow, and glanced up past the Slytherin table to the spot, right across from Tom's seat, where Emily Montgomery sat – Emily, the raven-haired Hufflepuff first year whose oddly shaped ears had been a persistent subject of comment ever since she'd entered the castle. Typical Tom, she thought. Honestly, how do I get stuck with all the dotty ones for beaux?

"Well, then," she said aloud, "in the future, maybe you'd better stick to pumpkin juice like the rest of us…"