Rated: Fiction T - English - Humor - Chapters: 75 - Words: 74,437 - Reviews: 125 - Favs: 81 - Follows: 79 - Updated: Dec 16 - Published: Jan 18, 2016 - id: 11739934
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"Then they ducked into an ice[-]cream parlour to have some ice cream and butter bear before they returned to the house where they were staying." –Lord of mystics, "Hadrian Potter-Black and the Gauntlet of Gryffindor"
Harry swallowed the last piece of richly marbled steak with a sigh of intense satisfaction. "Ron, that was amazing," he said. "And to think, I'd never even known it existed before. What is a butter bear, anyway?"
"Oh, you know," said Ron. "A magical relative of the honey bear, only it raids dairies instead of beehives. That's why its meat is so rich and luscious, and goes so perfectly with hot-fudge sundaes."
"It certainly does," Harry agreed. "We'll have to do this again sometimes."
"Sure," said Ron. "If you can afford it, that is."
Harry blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Well, they have to import it fresh from India, you know," said Ron. "So it can be a little steep."
"How steep?"
"The bill, sir," said the waitress, appearing suddenly beside their table and handing Harry a scrap of parchment. He took it from her hand, glanced at the scrawled figure, and abruptly turned pale green and let out a little strangled croak.
"That steep," said Ron.
"His mother had never told Brittany she was not aloud to spend time over with a friend." –Mizu Kai, "Wanting Something More"
"You know, Blaise, I have to give Mum credit," said Brittany Zabini. "Here she is, with her best friend from Hogwarts permanently imprisoned in an inaccessible tower on the moon, and she knows perfectly well that she can go visit her for an hour, any time she wants, just by telling me aloud that I don't exist. And I wouldn't even mind, because I'd know that she didn't really mean it – but she's never done it, because she doesn't think it's a proper thing to say to one's daughter. Forget sacrificing your life and destroying Dark Lords: that's what real mother-love looks like, I think."
Blaise nodded. "Yes, Mum's a class act," he said.
"She certainly is," said Brittany. "Apart from the whole killing-her-husbands thing, that is."
"Well, yes," said Blaise. "Apart from that."
"Why not put some tents into the Chamber? . . . I had planned, theoretically, to blast my way inside to get at the caracaras anyway." –Jeanelle1910, "Three Times Is the Charm"
"There are caracaras in the Chamber of Secrets?" said Hermione.
"Oh, sure," said Harry. "That's what the basilisk ate, all those centuries. Apparently Salazar Slytherin had heard that gazer-killing monster snakes thrive best on polyborine carrion hawks, so he went out to Patagonia to collect some eggs and started a stable population down there."
Hagrid nodded approvingly. "Tha's the righ' spirit," he said. "Mebbe I've bin misjudgin' the fella, all these years."
"And so I was going to go down and bring them up," Harry continued, "but then I thought, why not just leave them down there, and set up a little spot for people to observe them? It could be a major tourist attraction: the only feral caracara population in the Old World."
Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully. "It's an idea, certainly," he said. "I'll have to run it past the board of governors, of course, but, for my own part, Harry, I think I'm very much on board."
"Then Mr. I'm-Too-Sexy-For-You-None-Pureblood-Freaks (a.k.a. 'Malfoy') is stupid and gets hurt." –Caitlin-and-Emily, "Harry Potter and the Ethnic Rainbow of Wonder"
"O Lord our God," Ernie read aloud from his tattered breviary, "gather us from all the nations of the world."
As the little knot of young witches and wizards at the edge of the Forbidden Forest chorused the response ("That we may glorify Thy Holy Name"), a loud snort sounded behind them, and Draco Malfoy sauntered up with a broad sneer on his face. "So it's that time of day again," he said. "The time when the degenerate offspring of once-proud wizarding houses come out to pray the Hour of Sext like a bunch of simpering Mudbloods."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "In the first place, Malfoy," she said, "if you ever bothered to look in the library's Rare Section, you'd see a whole shelf full of old Books of Hours owned by impeccably ancient families back in the very period your hare-brained ideology cluelessly romanticises. And in the second place, this is None; Sext is at midday."
Draco smirked. "Well, for some of us, Weasley, sexed is all the time," he said. "But you lot wouldn't know about that. That's what all this religious rot is about, isn't it? Building dream palaces in the sky to console yourself for not having the nerve to get real action here and now." He tossed his hair, making it gleam voluptuously in the sunlight. "Take my advice, kids, and give it up. It's midnight liaisons in the Owlery that are the real paradise, and even the Fat Friar knows it deep down. Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in – AAAAUUUUHHHH!"
The others gazed impassively as he dropped to his knees, clutching his suddenly punctured and copiously bleeding side. "You'd think he'd know better than to boast of his unchastity in front of a forest full of unicorns," Luna commented.
Ernie sighed. "Well, I suppose I'd best get him to the hospital wing," he said. "Greengrass, be a sport and take over for me, would you?"
"Sure," said Daphne, taking the breviary from his hand. "Let's see, where are we… ah, yes. Father, Thou sentest Thy angel to Cornelius to show him the way to salvation…"
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