HP Morgendorffer Ruskin Quinn Pentagon
Daria is the creation of Glenn Eichler and is the property of MTV Viacom. Harry Potter is the creation of JK Rowling and is the property of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers. I own neither, and neither expect nor deserve financial compensation for this story. I am writing for my own amusement and for ego gratification.
What if Minerva McGonagall had been able to persuade Professor McGonagall to place baby Harry Potter with different blood relatives instead of with Petunia Dursley and her husband: the Morgendorffers from MTV's Daria?
Harry Potter Morgendorffer*Harry Potter Morgendorffer*Harry Potter Morgendorffer
A New Baby Sister
The big change came when both HJ and Daria were too young to understand what was going on. HJ had been living with Helen, Jake, and Daria for half a year now and had settled in as a member of the family. He and Daria had both learned to walk, they could speak complete sentences, and they were just too young for pre-school. But they still missed a lot of the big stuff.
"So Helen, how did your trip to the doctor go?" said Jake.
His wife Helen smiled. "The home test was right. I'm pregnant!"
"Great!" said Jake. "Do you know if it's going to be a boy or a girl?"
"It's too early to tell," said Helen. "We'll know when I'm further along."
"Do you have any guesses, Honey?" asked Jake.
"I think," Helen said thoughtfully, "that it's going to be a girl."
At first, neither Daria nor HJ realized that Helen had gotten pregnant. They had learned that Helen had gone to the Doctor and that the Doctor had wanted to run some tests. They only learned that she was pregnant after a family meeting when Helen told them that she was expecting a baby. HJ was still confused at first, he thought that babies were delivered like packages, and kept an eye on the front door to see if the Post Office delivered a new baby sister or brother. Later they learned that Helen meant that she was pregnant. Neither Daria not HJ knew just how Helen had gotten pregnant; when Daria asked, Jake shut up, Helen blushed, and then Helen told them that she'd tell them when they got older.
For a while it seemed like Helen's pregnancy would go on forever and ever. Helen was pregnant, and she was getting bigger. Some things changed; Helen's friends came over and threw her a baby shower. Mom had gotten bigger and sometimes she was cranky. Sometimes she was so cranky that she'd yell at Jake or he'd drive off to the store to buy her something. As the months went on, Helen and Jake unpacked and repainted some of the baby furniture they'd used for Daria and HJ at the old house. They did learn that the new baby would be a girl, which made Daria happy; HJ not so much.
Helen and Jake did share the news with other members of the family. Helen called her mother and her sisters. Jake called Grandma Ruth, tried to call his brother Ben, but did manage to pass on the news to his sister Evie. The various Barksdales and Morgendorffers extended their congratulations and offered their hopes and prayers for Helen and the baby that was growing inside of her.
Aunt Amy came to visit while Helen was pregnant. HJ had never met Aunt Amy before. Helen and Jake made a special effort to look over the living, dining and guest rooms to hide any magical objects Helen had been given at work or paper from MACUSA. Harry and Daria did have to hide a couple of magical toys, but a couple of others could stay out: those had dummy battery packs and fake on-off switches.
Helen told HJ that he shouldn't show off his stuff, even if he thought it could cheer her up. HJ rolled his eyes; he'd been visited by Mrs. Kettler, the lady from MACUSA, who'd told him the same thing. Helen was impressed with her sister's reaction when she met HJ; aside from Aunt Amy's raising her eyebrows when she saw HJ'd scar, the two of them were on almost as good terms as Amy was with Daria. Quite unlike her grand-niece, she thought dourly.
Finally, the day came when Mom went to the hospital. Dad joined her. HJ and Daria had spent the night at Mrs. Haines' while Dad and Mom were in the hospital.
Jake called them from the hospital. Both HJ and Daria waited nervously while Mrs. Haines talked to Jake, and then handed the receiver after announcing "HJ, Daria, your Mom has delivered a new baby. It's a girl."
Helen came home a couple of days later. She held a small, squirming thing that looked even smaller than the baby figures they sold at the stores and wore a big smile.
"HJ, Daria this is your new baby sister," she said. "Say hello to Quinn." HJ looked at baby Quinn, smiled and said "Hi!" Daria looked at the new baby girl in the household. They locked eyes with each other. The baby looked back at her and smiled.
This kid is going to be a pain in the butt, thought Daria.
"You want the truth about just when Quinn and I realized that we were going to be rivals?" Daria said much later. "I think it was when I saw her for the first time she came home from the hospital. I was three then. We took one look at each other and that's when it started."
-(((O-O)))-
It took a while for HJ to get a feel for Quinn's personality. He did know that she cried a lot; he not only heard her when he was home, but he also overheard Aunt Helen saying that she was noisier than Daria and he had been. He soon learned that Quinn loved being the center of Helen's and Jake's attention.
If Daria wasn't the center of Mom's attention anymore she did discover that there was some action with Dad and HJ. It was fun but sometimes scary to watch Dad use power tools and then listen to him yell when something went wrong. Still, sometime his garage projects did work out. By the time they moved into the big house, both of them had book cases. Daria's book case soon began to fill with picture books and primary readers. HJ's book case began to fill too, just more slowly. HJ's tastes ran towards adventure books; Daria's more of an intellectual bent.
Both of them discovered early that life with Quinn could be trying. Quinn did a lot of crying at first; she either wanted or needed attention and if Helen was doing anything with them while she thought Quinn was sleeping, she'd have to get up and run for the nursery. By the time they were both ready for pre-school, both saw that Quinn not only wanted to be the center of attention, she already had started to form her own circle with other toddlers who'd been invited over to play together. She sometimes got jealous of how close Daria and HJ were and cried when she felt she'd been left out.
"The party isn't complete until the Princess arrives," said Daria, rolling her eyes.
Levitating the Pentagon
As HJ and Daria grew older, Helen and Jake began to share about their past. HJ learned about Buxton Ridge Military Academy and soon shuddered at the thought. Daria learned that Helen turned down a chance to attend a girl's private school like her sisters and chose instead to go to the local public high school. They learned that their parents met each other at Middleton College and had gotten married shortly after they graduated. They then moved to Iowa and spent a couple of years living on a commune. Neither of them knew what a commune was, but Helen and Jake told tham that it was something like a farm.
HJ and Daria found out more about the commune, or at least some. One of Helen's friends from their commune days, Jillian, had come over to visit a few times, admire HJ, and talked about older people they used to know and sometimes about what happened to them after they went their separate ways. HJ learned that Jillian lived at one of the other communes, not the one where Jake and Helen lived. HJ was surprised to learn that Jake had some car skills, and had helped someone named Ski fix the tractor and seed drills.
Not many of Helen's and Jake's friends from the commune or college lived near Ruskin. That changed one afternoon Helen and Jake welcomed a stranger into their living room. He was a little fat, with red-faced, and a short hair cut. He was wearing a dark green sports jacket with a loud necktie.
"Daria, HJ, Quinn," said Jake. "This is Wapiti. We call him Wye. We knew him from college and our hippy days."
Quinn enthusiastically said "HI!"Daria and HJ gave guarded hellos.
Wye looked aroung the Morgendorffer house with amusement. "So selling out to the Man has its rewards," he said. "A big house and one, two, three kids." Both Helen and Jake grimaced.
"HJ isn't ours," said Helen.
"He's adopted," said Jake.
"So how did that happen?" asked Wye. "Some old girlfriend had a rug-rat she couldn't handle?"
"No," said Jake.
"I learned I had some English cousins a few years ago and that HJ was an orphan, and we took him in," Helen finished.
"Ooh, bummer," said Wye.
Wye noticed HJ holding a new baseball that Jake had given him for his birthday to complement the one he'd gotten from the Mad Dog and Grandma Ruth as a Hanukah present.
"So, Jake, are you grooming HJ to be a football star?" said Wye.
"I don't think he's got the build for it," said Jake. "Besides, I think he'd be more interested in baseball anyway." Jake and HJ sometimes went out and played catch using tennis balls and catcher's mitts. At other times they had batting practice using hollow plastic bats and whiffle balls. HJ had great reflexes and good eye-hand co-ordination. The Mad Dog had given him a real baseball for Hannukah and Aunt Evie had given him one of her son's old catcher's mitts. Jake planned to give HJ a softball when he was bigger; HJ was five and a half and softballs were still a little heavy for kids that size.
"I didn't think that he'd see an incoming fly ball with the glasses," said Wye.
"You'd be surprised," said Jake. Harry was not only good at catching the whiffle ball, but was already showing a knack for catching tennis balls, even when Jake used sent them in HJ's direction using tennis serves. As a lark, he'd even tossed a few golf balls at HJ and had been surprised at how good HJ was at catching them.
"Remember the time when we tried to levitate the Pentagon?" said Wye. "There were six of us."
Helen gave Jake The Look.
"Yeah, you, Dawn, Helen, me, Willow, and Coyote," said Jake. "Are you and Dawn still together?"
"No, we split up," said Wye.
Helen, Jake, and Wye had gone their separate ways after trying to levitate the Pentagon. Helen and Jake had moved to the commune; Wye had tried to live the hippy life in small exurban towns, gave it up, and became a roving manager for a chain of computer stores.
They went out to dinner that evening, a country restaurant on the road to Wimberley. Wye kidded Helen about the cooking and suggested that Jake could get a job as a cook if his job at the ad agency didn't work out.
Wye presented them with a gift at dinner. He insisted that they open it up at the restaurant. Jake and Helen opened it up and discovered that Wye had given them a plaster model of the Pentagon.
"Like old times," said Wye, laughing.
"Yeah, like old times," said Jake.
Jake and Helen put the plaster model of the Pentagon on the coffee table. Wye left shortly afterwards. He was in the area on a business trip and had to travel to San Antonio afterwards.
"That's Wye," said Jake.
"Wye is an ass," said Helen. "He tries to be sensitive, but there's something missing inside."
"Uncle Jake," said HJ, "What does levitate mean?"
"It means to make an object rise off the ground without using cables or rope," said Jake. "Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering," said HJ.
The plaster Pentagon was still on the coffee table a couple of nights later. HJ knew that sometimes Aunt Helen and Uncle Jake kept things, but sometimes they threw them away, too. He suspected that the plaster Pentagon was one of the latter. He looked at Wye's plaster Pentagon and had an idea.
Daria came in a short time later and saw HJ studying Wye's present.
"OK, what are you thinking?" asked Daria.
"Let's see if we can levitate the Pentagon," said HJ.
"Seriously?" said Daria.
"Yeah," said HJ. "Helen and Jake tried it. I bet we can."
HJ and Daria set Waipiti's plaster Pentagon on the floor.
"This is nuts," said Daria.
"Let's try it," said HJ.
"I think it's a waste of time," said Daria.
"We gotta try it once," said HJ.
"Whatever," said Daria.
They both stared intensely at the plaster Pentagon for a minute. It refused to budge.
"We have to close our eyes so we can concentrate," said Daria. "Otherwise something will distract us and we can't do it."
They both looked at the plaster Pentagon, then shut their eyes and concentrated. Their eyes now closed, both children concentrated on levitating the Pentagon.
HJ opened his eyes first. What he saw made him grin. "Daria, look," he said. Daria opened her eyes and then stared in amazement. The plaster Pentagon was no longer on the floor, but now floating two feet off the carpet.
Quinn came in to see what HJ and Daria were up to. She did not like what she saw. HJ and her sister were doing something that didn't include her.
That evening, HJ and Daria decided to show off.
"Mom, Dad, (HJ sometimes called Helen and Jake Mom and Dad), Daria and I have something to show you."
"Remember when you told us that you tried to levitate the Pentagon when you were young?" said HJ.
"Unh, hunh," said Jake.
"Well, Daria and I managed to levitate Wye's model Pentagon."
"OK," Jake said warily.
HJ picked up the plaster Pentagon and set it on the floor. He and Daria then sat on either side of it and closed their eyes. Quinn looked at them skeptically from her place by Helen's side but said nothing. The plaster model's flight path was a little jerky this time, what with the television and other distractions, but it did rise off the floor.
Jake looked at Wye's dreadful plaster model and stared open-mouth. So did Helen.
They. Levitated. The. Pentagon," he said.
"They did indeed," Helen said slowly. She knew that HJ was a wizard; he sometimes had bursts of accidental magic, but she'd never seen him do anything with deliberate intent before. This was a whole new ball game.
"Very good, HJ, Daria," said Helen, although she doubted that her older daughter had much to do with HJ's success. "But remember what Mrs. Kettler says."
"Yes, Mom, not in front of strangers."
That night Jake snuggled up to Helen and said "Honey, maybe we should have practiced with something small like Wye's model before we tried to go for the big time."
Helen swatted him with her pillow.
-(((O-O)))-
Author's note: According to Daria canon, Jake, Helen, Willow, and Coyote DID try to levitate the Pentagon back in their hippie days. Their attempt was mentioned in the Daria episode "That Was Then, This Is Dumb."