Author's note: In retrospect, perhaps I should have saved the inside-joke-spotting game until I had a few hundred adoring fans who would gladly reread 51 chapters of my work on the slightest of excuses. Still, a few people have expressed interest in completing it once they find time, so I'll leave it up a while yet for their sakes.
In the meantime, here, as promised, is the long-awaited chapter consisting entirely of thrawnca-spotted Minuets. (If any of you happen to be Young Justice fans, do please go and give that tireless correspondent's lone story a review or two; it's shameful that one so diligent should go unappreciated.)
"But thankfully, rather than dwell on that fact and steer this night onto the shoals of disaster, Lily's giddy attention turned to other unusual faucets of his life." –Tempest Kiro, "The Peace Not Promised"
"What about this one?" she said, pointing to a photo of a long brass specimen that vaguely resembled an oil lamp.
"That was our lavatory faucet when I was seven," said Snape. "If someone left the room without turning off the water, a djinn would emerge from it, chase him down, and jump up and down on his head until he went back and corrected the matter. And the one on the opposite page is the famous Jade Spigot of Ch'a-ku, which on every alternate Thursday ran with lemon-lime Kool-Aid instead of water."
Lily shook her head. "Why did you have so many of these in your life, anyway, Severus?" she said.
"A hobby of my mother's," said Snape. "She developed an interest in unusual magical faucets during a childhood tour of the wizarding American South. Apparently they have public fountains out there that give a choice of white or coloured water, depending on the knob one twists…"
"Voldemort had sought refuse there as he waited for the opportunity to use Harry's blood in the ritual to restore him to his proper body." –Lord Silvere, "Delenda Est"
"Another message from Crouch, My Lord," said Wormtail. "He believes that he will be allowed to carry the Triwizard Cup to the centre of the maze for the last task; once he has made it into a Portkey leading to the graveyard, he will ensure that Potter reaches it before any of the other competitors."
"Good, good," said Voldemort abstractedly, as he swooped and drifted through Little Hangleton's village dump. "Let's see, now; I know that Dot woman threw out some old coat hangers the other day – they must be around here some… ah!" And he emerged from a teetering pile of garbage with a heap of rusty wire in his insubstantial arms, and a broad grin on his ghostly face.
Wormtail's eyes narrowed. "My Lord, do you hear what I'm saying?" he said. "Victory is within your grasp; in a matter of days, you will be able to restore your rightful body and resume your project of magical conquest. Isn't that more important than some Muggle woman's discarded coat hangers?"
Voldemort gave him a long-suffering look. "Wormtail, you wound me," he said. "Of course I want to have a body again and achieve dominion over wizarding Britain – but I also enjoy making junk sculptures, as Quirrell taught me to do. And how am I to pursue that hobby if I don't spend at least some time seeking refuse?"
Wormtail rolled his eyes, and sighed. He knew, of course, that Lily Potter's protective spell had reduced his master to mere shadow and vapour – but, still, there was no need for the old twat to be quite this vapid.
"Nymue flicks a finger, and a large tomb from a high shelf floats down towards Ginny." –Annerb, "The Changeling"
Ginny steps backward to avoid being crushed, and the Great Mausoleum settles down onto the floor in front of her. The shining stone of its Bryaxis façade gleams in the dim light of the staggeringly vast Hall of Wonders, and Ginny catches her breath as the legendary resting-place of the Carian king reveals itself to her in all its grandeur.
"It's beautiful," she whispers.
"Indeed," says Nymue. "For over a thousand years, ever since its mortal form passed into ruin at Halicarnassus, I have dedicated my life to ensuring that its beauty should not pass wholly from the earth – just as Oberon has done with the Colossus, and Rhiannon with the Temple of Diana, and Arawn and Niamh and Glinda with the Zeus and the Lighthouse and the Hanging Gardens." (She gestures to the other high shelves on which these Wonders stand, and to the fairy figures who stand beneath them, superhumanly rigid and attentive.) "But now the time is at hand when I must pass into the next world, and another must take up the mantle of my guardianship. You are the one I have chosen, Ginevra Weasley; if you accept, say the words."
For a moment, Ginny hesitates; she knows that becoming a fairy Wonder-Guardian means the sacrifice of all her mortal joys, and the memories of Harry and her family flit through her mind, pleading with her not to forsake them. But then she looks again at the glorious tomb of Mausolus, and the words fall all but unbidden from her lips: "Spectacula mundi conservanda sunt."
And Nymue smiles upon her new scarlet-haired sister fay, and goes to prepare for her dissolution.
"'We decided to serve dinner Buffett style,' Remus explained." –Books of Change, "A Study in Magic: The Application"*
"Yes, I can see that," said Molly, cocking a wry eye at the table full of margaritas, fruitcakes, conspiratorial peanut butter, and a large tureen of turtle soup with a barometer incongruously sticking out of it. "Any particular reason?"
"Well," said Remus, "the way Dora put it, I'm a 38-year-old Marauder, which isn't so different from a pirate looking at forty, and she's carrying the son of a son of a sailor – you knew my father was in the Navy, didn't you? So the only proper way to celebrate our reconciliation, she said, was to Floo up to Livingston of a Saturday night and invite all our friends to a lavish dinner themed around the songs of Jimmy Buffett."
"Absolutely," said Fred, as he put the finishing touches to a cheeseburger that must have weighed at least half a pound in mustard alone. "What do you think, Mum? Heaven on Earth with an onion slice, am I right?"
"You're not going to try and eat that, are you, Fred?" Molly exclaimed. "You'll be as sick as a dog!"
"Oh, sure," said Fred airily. "For the rest of the evening, anyway – and maybe part of tomorrow, too. But come Monday I'll be feeling all right." And he bit into the burger with a defiantly carefree grin.
Molly forced a chuckle, feeling sure that, if she couldn't laugh, she just would go insane. Maybe, she reflected, she could get away with just nibbling at a few hors d'œuvres, and then hastily excusing herself and going out to some local restaurant. So she went over to the vegetable platter, took a handful of radishes, and reached for the…
"Hang on," she said, glancing around in puzzlement. "Where's the salt shaker?"
*Crossover with Sherlock.
