Harry just couldn't wait to get out of America and head on home to Hogwarts for the new school semester. Uusally he approached his studies with a lackadasical flippancy that thoroughly befuddled Hermione's everywhere but this time he was more worried about getting away from Luna and Padma's incessant squabbling than any extra potions homework he was sure to be gangraped by repeatedly through the new year. As soon as the plane doors opened he ducked inside leaving the two young witches to take a few more shots at each other before taking off. The whole ride over, Harry knew, would be filed with that idiosyncratic brand of female bitchery that comes around 12 times a year, yet still they couldn't let the chance to verbally abuse each other on a whole new conitnent go by.
They were at it so long, trading insult for insult and brazen assinuations abounding wildly, that eventually all the other travellers had filed in and where waiting patiently for the loud mouthed teens to work their frustrations out and get aboard so they could leave. Harry watched out the window as the land receded and was reminded of Kraug, laying still and helpless in her massive bed. Paralyzed. He thoughts wondered onto the rest of the Golden Trio and just where they had been all summer. He had been positively everywhere and had not seen a speck of either of them. They hadn't boreded the plane, that was for sure because he had made sure to see if they had gotten on after he had seated. But then again maybe they were already on the plane when he got on it, the two groups of people where so intermingled that he could barely tell.
"Well howdy thar pardner!" A strange yokel popped up from the nearest aisle and began to pump Harry's hand up and down with overt, somewhat shocking, enthusiasm. The strange fellow had on a dip stained white cotton wife better and jean cut off shorts and spoke with a thick country drawl. Padma bounced out ofh er seat and threw heself at the mysterious hillbilly, "oh Ronnie baby, I thought I'd never see u again!" She cried out, hugging him tightly.
"Sure thang lal darlun'" "Ron" responded. The pale skinned and hihgly freckled stranger began to caress Padma all over, it was both of their 18th birthdays and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. The red headed foreigner slipped one of his pale slender fingers up the edge of Padma's skirt, made contact, by the look on her face. Padma squirmed in estatic delight, grinding into the strangers palm saying, "oh god ron just like that" over and over again.
Harry returned to his seat, thoroughly disheleved. It looks like no one can help Harry Potter except for Harry Potter himself. He took a deep painful breath and held it, he held it longer than he could dare, but before he found enough reserve energy to put his plans in motion Luna distracted him by placing one of her pale freckled hands on his arm. Her fingers were long and slender, impossibly pale and skinny. The skin looked painted on to some hyper sheened plastic surface.
Luna and Harry didn't need to speak, they just looked each other in the eyes and let the plane carry them far across the waters of the ocean. Below them lay fathoms of darkness and adventure, a daily struggle on a tectonic scale, life against death, predation against decay.
Finally Luna spoke, "something sure seems strange a bout Padma lately what do you think is going on?"
Harry let his jaw drop, he had not seen this coming at all. This crazy damned world, he thought. "I don't rightly know what you mean," he said, and he meant it too. He was completely confused, what was all this Luna was saying about Padma "Acting Strange"... what does that even mean? Luna has a history of falling into crazy obsessions, Harry conceded, and decided to try and give Luna's strange tale a chance.
After a tense pause she said, "Ever since her twin sister dies she has been acting very weird!" It was like she was just discovery the truth the very moment she uttered it, entralled, she continued, "at first she was normal about it I guess, she would seem to have to go off by herself to use the bathroom a lot and then she would seem to not remember any of the stuff we had been doing or talking about when she came back..." Luna sat down and lit a cigarette, drawing the blue gray smoke in with lazy opulence. "I'm just not sure about her anymore, she's so distant sometimes, and then it's like the other half of the time she is a completely different person..."
Harry figured this would be a good time for him to leave so he dipped out quietly, leaving Luna undistered with her brooding thoughts. Harry paced down the aisle back to his seat, hands clenching and unclenching in odd intervals, just what had he stumbled upon now! As he seated himself yet again he stole a furtive glance at Padma and the country stranger who had suddenly shown up and an torn away her indescretions. He seemed vaugely familiar.
"Damnit!" Harry said aloud and unknowingly, "who are you!" But if he refered to the red headed seducer of the raven haired mysterium he knew not.
Before he had known what was happening to him Harry fell into an uneasy fitful sleep. He dreamt of dementors and Saturnalia waiting patiently for rescue, but he dreamed of now solutions to his current set of predicaments and nothing that even refered to them in any seeming way. Once he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes he stretched out in the aisles and then sauntered down to the restroom. On her way back to her seat, and seeming in a particular hurry was none other than the mystery girl herself, Padma.
Harry attempted to halt her but she kept right ahead walking and soon she was back in her seat and he was standing in the center aisle, hand outstretched, mouth open gaping like a complete jackass, he quickly he shuffled off to the bathroom to get out the hateful glare of the other passengers. Once he had locked himself in and fully calmed down with the help of his trusty Xannax perscription he took a good look around himself checking for clues, and that's when he saw her! Padma Patil wasn't outside in the rest of the plane at all, because Padma Patil was standing right in front of him!
She had been futilely trying to hid herself in the incredibly carmped bathroom compartment, and anyone but Harry Potter would have been fooled, but that's a story for another time.