Chapter Text
“Oh haha, very funny.” Harry felt stupid; he was not sure if the magical shoes understood him, nor if they would care if they could.
“Hey, Harry! It’s too early for your birthday, what gives?”
“Oh, you know. Just decided to come over for a spur-of-the-moment visit because I missed it here.”
Surrounded by his usual adult friends at the fire station, Harry scowled as he ate his vanilla ice cream and got a free ride around the block in the fire truck, like he did every year on his birthday after the Dursleys attempted to dump him off there. The station Dalmatian, Rorschach, reached over from the back seat and ate Harry’s entire ice cream in one bite, leaving him with a slimy waffle cone tip.
"Thanks, Jamal! Scott! Brenda! Tyrel! Steve! Jonathan! I’m going to leave now!" he said ten minutes later.
“See ya, Harry! I sure hope that cousin of yours doesn’t give you a hard time!”
“Haha, yeah…”
“And tell your aunt and uncle we’re going to serve them a hefty fine the next time they do this.”
“Yep.”
He ran around a corner and tried the spell again;
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”
Click click click
Whooooosh…
He opened his eyes and found himself in the middle of the Dursley living room. Before him, his Aunt Petunia who, undoubtedly believing her son and nephew to still be away at school and her husband at work, stood paralyzed in place out of pure, mortified horror. She held an oatmeal muffin in one hand and a whip in the other, and was inexplicably wearing a cowgirl outfit with short shorts. Standing next to her was a man in a black leather horse costume, too thin to be Uncle Vernon and standing on all fours. By the way they were posing, Harry surmised that he had interrupted them from chasing each other.
It could have been ten seconds, it could have been an eternity of the three of them standing staring at each other.
And as they stared, a million possible responses ran through Harry’s mind.
One way to approach this could be to threaten “Buy me a Nintendo and I’ll never speak of this again.” But it would not erase his trauma.
A stupid response would be “Does the HOA know about this?” because obviously Aunt Petunia had applied for permission to do this beforehand.
He could take out a sugar cube from his pocket and offer it to the horse. But it was in his other pants.
He could also say “I’m not actually here,” and run, run as fast as he could, to nowhere in particular.
Meanwhile, a carrot fell out of the man in the horse costume. Not from its mouth.
“This… this isn’t the grocery store,” Harry finally stammered.
“You’re not that far off,” said a voice from the horse mask which Harry recognized as belonging to the milkman. “Just a couple blocks east should do it.”
“Thanks.”
“How is school then?”
“Great. Great, yeah.”
“That’s good. Very good.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Soooo. I’ll see you in a couple weeks, Aunt Petunia?”
“Y-yes.”
“And the front door is still that way, yeah?”
“Yes. Go on then.”
“I’m actually kind of hungry, can I have that?”
“This… muffin?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright.”
Sitting on the porch and eating the oatmeal muffin (which tasted weird), he realized something.
“Shoes,” he addressed the slippers. “Hogwarts is my home. I think I’ve known for a long time, but really, I have nowhere else, yeah? You hear that?”
The slippers simply glittered in the waning afternoon light. On his left, Mrs. Figg, their batty old neighbor, turned into the sidewalk leading up to the Dursley house. She was dressed as a silver and pink unicorn, with a saddle*. She saw Harry and turned right around to whence she came from. Fortunately, Harry had not noticed.
“We have to go back and stop Voldemort,” continued Harry to the shoes, standing up. “Although… I’ve always wanted to go to Disney World.”
*Was she wearing the saddle? Was she carrying a saddle for later use? You decide!
“I know what I’m doing, Master!”
“I am telling you, that is not how you weave a Dutch braid-”
Whoooshh…
Harry showed up 20 minutes late laden with Donald Duck plushies (he was Self-Insert’s favorite), another dripping ice cream cone, a Mickey ears cotton candy stick, several Mickey ears balloons, a giant shirt over his robes with the caption “I threw up on three rides at Disney and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” under a printed Disney Castle logo, and of course wearing a Mickey Mouse ears hat. His hands were sticky and yes he had thrown up on three rides, but the amounts of serotonin and dopamine his brain produced could have filled at least eight goblets.* *
“Finally – oh shit. Why the hell did I want to come back here?!”
Quirrell (now with hair in elaborate braids – he had been bored) – loomed over him, enraged.
“Get him!” shouted Voldemort’s muffled voice from the rear of Quirrell’s pants.
Harry turned to run, but tripped over his heels on the rough stone floor; he fell forward and sent his Disney paraphernalia flying and his balloons floating away, Mickey hat askew. He turned over to find Quirrell on top of him, wrapping his hands around Harry’s tiny preteen neck.
“Argh-”
“AAAAHHHH!” Quirrell screamed a horrible scream of pain; he looked down at his hands as they burst into flames. “MY WIZARD ECZEMA!”
“Are you- you cannot be serious – HURRY UP AND KILL THE BOY!”
“Master – I cannot touch him-!”
Quirrell’s face twisted in pain and rage, he pointed a burning finger at Harry. “YOU! You’re a filthy, filthy little boy!”
With a thrill of realization and hope, Harry now knew he had a fighting chance, for he was a filthy, filthy little boy.
Harry reached forward and touched Quirrell all over his face with his sticky little child hands; Quirrell howled in pain from the blooming fires.
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
“KILL HIM! KILLLL HIMMMMM- ARRGGGHHHH!!”
-pop-
Quirrell’s left buttock burst, and a yellow-tinged green and brown cloud emerged from behind him and became sucked into the ceiling vent while screaming violently.
It was then that Harry fainted due to a sugar crash.
* *Lost children at Disney parks were often harvested for their brains’ serotonin and dopamine, which were key ingredients in products such as Industrial Lawn Spray Potion and paint primer.
“Harry…”
A pinprick of light hovered over him like a delectable piece of cheese, and he was the raccoon.
Cheese.
“Harry?”
Professor Dumbledore spoke gently over Harry’s sleeping figure, hand on one shoulder while the other dangled a piece of cheese over him.
“Harry, please arise.”
“Mmmm, tickle me with your many legs, Hatsumomo-chan,” mumbled Harry.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Huh?”
Harry jerked awake. He found that he was lying in bed in the hospital wing. Sitting beside him were none other than the Hogwarts Headmaster and Glenda, the Good Witch of the North. Both wearing elaborate glittering tulle robes of pink.
“Professor Dumbledore!” Harry sputtered. “I swear, I was only trying them on-”
“Harry-”
“And then Quirrell showed up and he had Voldemort’s face on his butt and the shoes just appeared on my feet and I started hopping dimensions and-”
Harry-!”
“Hatsumomo means nothing to me, I swear-”
“HARRY!”
“… yes?”
“Have some cheese.”
“Okay.”
Harry snatched the cheese and ran out of bed to sit atop a dresser, crouched like a rat eating his cheese.
“We already have a very shrewd idea of all that happened, Harry,” said Dumbledore with a twinkle in his eye. “Quirrell is dead. And you were the one who killed him.”
“What?”
“You killed another human being.”
“Oh my god.”
“A hundred and fifty points to Gryffindor.”
“Sweet. But Professor?”
“Yes?”
“What about Dorothy’s ruby red slippers? What will happen to them?”
“I can answer that,” said Glenda, smiling sweetly. “Your new friend Harmonica made off with them to pawn them for cigarettes and birth control.”
“Oh no. What about Quirrell’s hair?”
“Donated to you. You are wearing it right now.”
“Sweet. I feel just like Rapunzel!”
“Only far more beautiful.”
“And Voldemort? He’s dead, right?”
Dumbledore laughed. Glenda laughed. They laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Dumbledore wiped away a tear and saw that Harry continued to stare.
“Oh, you were serious?”
“Yes.”
Dumbledore pointed to a pile of snacks at his bedside. “Have some snacks, from your many admirers. Oh look, Berty Bott’s Single Flavor Jellybean (Lemon).” Dumbledore tossed it into his mouth. “Yes, that is indeed Lemon.”
“They change the flavor every century,” said Glenda. “There are rumors that next century they will change it to Lime.”
“My goodness.”
“Indeed!”
“I’m sorry, I have to ask,” interrupted Harry, “but what is Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, doing here?”
“I’m here on a forced cameo because the author wants to bring me back in book 7, and she doesn’t know how to introduce me organically otherwise,” explained Glenda.
“Book 7?! That’s way far ahead! She’ll be dead by then.”
“We’ll find more opossums. Also, I’m here doing a small guest lecture this afternoon on Witch Studies in Auditorium 3, called ‘Witchcraft In The Modern Era: The Duality of Career Focus and Goat Sacrifice.’ Would you like to attend?”
“I can’t, I’m busy that day.” Harry turned to Dumbledore. “Can I ask one more question? How did I get the shoes out of the Mirror in the first place?”
Professor Dumbledore gave a warm smile with but a touch of humble pride. “One of my more clever ideas. I made it so that only someone whom the shoes would fit, could manifest the shoes. Someone with small, delicate feet. I knew that Voldemort’s lingering spirit would never possess a woman; he finds them beneath him.”
“… right.”
Madam Pomfrey insisted Harry stay in the Hospital Wing a few days. Harry got to enjoy his snacks while he recovered from a Disney-fueled mega case of gastroenteritis. He did get a visit from Ron and Hermione, and on his last day Hagrid came too.
“I got yah this present. I wrote to a bunch o’ your parents’ friends and, well, I made you this.”
Teary-eyed, Hagrid handed him a photo album.
“Wait,” said Harry. “My parents’ friends? They had friends? Friends who could have adopted me?”
“They couldn’t take you, they all already got kids. Go on, look through the album!”
Harry flipped through the moving magical photos, his heart filling with a strange, juxtaposed mix of joy and grief. There were his parents, Lily and James, young and happy before they had met their untimely ends.
One set of photos featured some sort of frat party at which James proposed to a visibly heavily pregnant Lily. The photo after that from the same party had him mid-puking on her dress, (an endless loop of a puke fountain in the magical moving image), and the one after that showed him drinking more and Lily crying with her face in her hands.
Then there was another set from a separate frat party in which a beautiful young man with long black hair kicked James in the nether regions while two other boys laughed and cheered him on.
There were some photos showing his parents doing their own things, too. James on a boat and smiling while holding up a small, angry little merman he must have just caught. Lily graduating with honors from Magic Oxford University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism in her hand.
James sitting at a Quidditch stadium and cheering. Lily and some of her female friends smiling, holding goblets of wine, all wearing matching black robes in a cemetery with a frightened-looking priest tied up in the middle of a pentagon pattern of burning grass, all under a gorgeous, full blood moon (likely some kind of girl’s night out).
An older picture of Lily and Petunia, the both of them looking around 8 years old in little princess outfits, in which they were having a tea party with a cheap plastic Muggle tea set. After sipping, there were progressive photos of Petunia holding her throat in horror and slowly turning into stone, and Lily laughing harder and harder until she had fallen off her little chair, princess crown askew.
And of course there were photos documenting his parents’ time at Hogwarts.
Teenaged James playing Quidditch and flying seamlessly. Teenaged Lily posing with her Prefects badge in front of Hogwarts.
Transfiguration class, James casting a spell on a rabbit and turning it into a pair of gloves. Lily clutching the gloves and crying while James shrugged confusedly as Professor McGonagall scolded him while pointing at a nearby cage of rabbits with a sign on it: Bunnies for school use.
James and Lily on a date in Hogsmeade, walking along the cobbled roads and holding hands. Another girl walking up to James, yelling at him, pointing at a puzzled Lily, and slapping him before stomping away. James shrugging confusedly again while Lily reproached him.
James in Potions class brewing something, and the next photo having him offer a goblet of it to Lily, followed by Lily’s face sprouting red fur over every inch of it and James and his three friends laughing hard.
Lily and James on a carnival date, eating cotton candy and crêpes on a Ferris wheel. James- no doubt using his Quidditch skills- playing some ball game at a stall and winning a giant stuffed unicorn plush, and then not giving it to her, just clutching it around the carnival and grinning ear to ear while she scowled. James also playing a fishing game and winning a goldfish in a bag, but it was dead. This he sweetly offered to Lily. She held the bag like a used tissue paper while he hugged his stuffed unicorn harder and pretended to feed it funnel cake.
One photo in the Quidditch girl’s locker room, several uniformed or towel-clad girls beating up an invisible form he assumed was James.
James writing “Lily, will you go to Prom with me?” in smokey letters in the sky with a burning broomstick, and then crashing into some trees.
Lily dress shopping with her mother. Lily in the perfect, stunning golden silk dress in a fitting room, and her mother checking out the price tag and shaking her head No.
James sitting on a toilet, angrily blocking most of the lens with his hand.
Lily practicing some Charm on James in an empty classroom. James’s body disintegrating into several hundred moths, him looking down at his body in abject terror while Lily frantically flipped through the pages of a textbook.
Lily and James at Hogwarts Prom, Lily in a pretty pink dress with her hair up in a beautiful hairdo, but her entire face still covered in fur (but nicely decorated in bejeweled hair berets).
Lily and James on Hogwarts graduation day. Only Lily was on the stage receiving her degree. Later James posing next to her and smiling, her in her graduation robes and James wearing some kind of beaver mascot uniform for a local fast-food restaurant that sold imported leftover beaver nuggets.
18-year-old James in class with a bunch of 12-year-olds, repeating his second year.
Young adult Lily and James first buying their discounted cottage, standing in front of the police tape while paramedics wheeled away some fresh bodies covered in bloody sheets behind them. The whites of their teeth highlighted by silent siren flashes from the moving photos.
And what Harry must have assumed was his own gender reveal party. Lily must have been in for a surprise because the first photo had her blindfolded and smiling at a small outdoor party in a park. Then those three guy friends of James’s opened some large box and an elephant-sized white dragon emerged. Through progressively blurrier and increasingly uneven photos Harry saw it fly off and breathe blue flames everywhere, setting the park and food ablaze and sending everything into chaos, Lily looking horrified while James performed a double fist pump.
Lily wedding dress shopping. Looking into the mirror and wearing a breathtakingly beautiful dress of ruffled silk and inlaid crystals that, based on her expression, clearly made her feel like a fairy princess. Her mother looking at the price tag and shaking her head No.
Lily in another shop, presumably the same day, picking up pink baby clothes and sighing before placing them back on the shelves.
Then there were the wedding photos. Lily in a simple yet beautiful white gown, further along in her pregnancy but smiling. Again a woman showed up, screamed at James while pointing at Lily before slapping him.
Lily going into labor, still at her wedding, her magicked visage visibly cursing up a storm at James who held a slice of cake in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. His figure switched between chugging the bottle and eating the cake in a frenzy as though in a rush to enjoy what remained of his wedding party.
These were followed by extremely graphic birth photos. At one point Lily had apparently grabbed the camera and shoved it down the throat of whoever had been filming. They had a healthy-looking trachea.
And then… James and Lily smiling around a small, screaming baby in a hospital room. Another woman showing up with her own baby, shouting at James while pointing at baby Harry before slapping James.
Some still lifes of baby Harry being put in some quite precarious situations… strapped to the tail end of a moving motorcycle with his eyes and toothless mouth stretched wide in the wind, his little baby fat folds rippling… Hanging over the fence at a zoo enclosure containing a dragon-jaguar by the black-haired man, then blurrily falling into the enclosure with a look of pure panic on the man’s face… James tipping some beer into baby Harry’s mouth while looking away towards the doorway for his wife. Baby Harry sitting inside a cauldron as a prank by James and the black-haired man, Lily turning off the heat and berating the pair. Lily screaming at James for feeding imported leftover beaver nuggets to baby Harry, but then holding up the real reason for her anger; a receipt for a Potion called “Male Fetus Guarantee-us.” And one picture with Lily on the phone in the kitchen while a stray dragon dragged baby Harry out the window behind her.
After a series of these (Harry ages 0-12 months) was a selfie of Hagrid in sunglasses holding a screaming baby Harry under the night sky. Then, a far-away photo of Petunia finding him on the doorstep, then putting his baby basket in the trash with him still in it.
Interspersed throughout the album were random tasteful nudes of the black-haired man in various poses, a few of which featured him blocking his groin teasingly from sight with an indignant, fluffy ginger Persian cat.
The very last photo was of Harry, apparently asleep in the hospital wing and therefore taken very recently, showed Ron and Hermione sharpieing dirty words and doodles on his comatose face while laughing.
“So, whaddya think? Lovely photos, eh Harry?”
“Why do I have the exact same hair and skin color as this long-haired man?”
“Tha’s enough of that, then.” Hagrid gently shut and pulled away the album and instead placed an ice cream bowl in Harry’s hands, like Indiana Jones carefully replacing a valuable solid gold statue with a bag of sand.
“Ooh, ice cream!”
“Tha’s a good lad.”
“Another year, gone.”
After one last look over by Madame Pomfrey by her thermome-wand, Harry was allowed to attend the last meal in the Great Hall the night before they all had to go home. All around the Hall were green and silver banners and streamers of the Slytherin green and silver parakeet mascot.
Before the feast, Professor Dumbledore stood up to address all the students.
“Now, the House Cup needs awarding. As it stands, in first place Slytherin with 560,790 points, in second place Ravenclaw with 48,806 points, in third place Hufflepuff, with 300 points, and in fourth place Gryffindor, with two points.”
The Slytherin table burst into celebratory claps and jeers.
“Yes yes, well done, Slytherin. However, fuck you, Slytherin. Recent events must be taken into account. First, to Mr. Ronald Weasley, 20 points for the best Operation Game Hogwarts has seen in years.”
The Gryffindor table gave their own heartfelt cheers and claps.
“Second – to Miss Hermione Granger, for bringing up our national scores so high, we have been granted a real budget. Now we can afford to de-weed the Quidditch field, the third-floor boy’s toilets, and the hospital wing. 50 points to Gryffindor.”
The Gryffindor table roared. They definitely had more than two points now.
“To Mr. Neville Longbottom, for contaminating our lake with allergy cream after Mr. Potter shoved you into it, I take away 400 points.”
Now Gryffindor were in the negative. They owed the school points. They cheered anyway because they didn’t really know math.
“And lastly to Mr. Harry Potter, for having the most regular bowels all year. One million points!”
Everyone’s heads exploded. Filch groaned loudly at the mess he would have to clean up after the Feast. With a clap of his hands, the décor of the Hall magically changed to feature Gryffindor’s red and gold goldfish.
“The secret is magnesium!” said Harry, grinning ear to ear.
“And another 50 points for facing and defeating Voldemort for the first time.”
“The first time?” Harry breathed, panicking a little but going unnoticed by the other cheering Gryffindors. “What does that mean? Ron? Hermione? What does he mean, the first time? I won’t have to face death again, will I? Guys? Guys?!”
Between running into Voldemort and losing his beloved Crocs, Harry nearly forgot that he had just completed final exams. By some miracle they all passed. Hermione returned their friendship bracelets, having earlier promised she would burn them in the full moonlight if they so much as failed a single class. Harry and Ron did not want to find out what kind of curse that would put upon them.
Before he knew it, they were all packed up for home. Neville’s carp Trevor was found in a girl’s toilet and arrested.
They were given notes for home to remind them not to use magic over the holidays, but also that they would be kicked out of Hogwarts on day 1 of next semester’s classes if they failed to perform magic perfectly.
Hagrid led them back to train via boats again (followed by a brief moment of silence for those newly lost to the Sirens) and they chatted and laughed their ways to the Hogwarts Express.
It did not feel like going home, not really. Harry stayed in a rather crowded train car with Ron, Hermione, Neville, Dean, Seamus, and the Weasley twins. They spent their precious last hours together playing Snapping Explodes and already reminiscing about the school year that had just passed.
“… I really thought we were goners,” said Neville. They had traversed into the topic of their adventurous detention in the Forbidden Forest, during which Harry first met Voldemort and other morbid creatures.
“We got totally lost,” said Ron. “We were going in circles, thought we’d die in there.”
“Remember the mimics?” said Neville with a shudder.
“They weren’t that scary,” said Harry. “Not with the code system and all.”
“Yeah.”
“What code system?” asked Fred.
“Hermione came up with it,” said Ron. “Rather brilliant, really.”
“Yeah, and hilarious,” said Harry. “Tell them what you came up with, Hermione!”
“Hm?” Hermione looked up from the book she had been reading. “What code system? What are you talking about?”
Harry stared at her with huge eyes. “Oh my god, we left Hermione in the -”
Blood spattered the car window.
THE END
CHAPTER EPILOGUE
It was convenient of Madam Promfrey to install a Hospital Car, especially in light of this being Harry’s first year and all. She patched up him and his car mates, however Mimic Hermione (who had ripped Quirrell’s hair donation right off Harry’s scalp) was nowhere to be seen. Harry had had quite enough of alternate Hermiones and vaguely hoped that the real one was safe somewhere.
Covered in bandages, Harry’s sense of emptiness only sharpened when they reached their destination. Ron invited him to come visit over the holidays.
“… but Dumbledore said I have to go to the Dursleys first,” said Harry. “I think he’s a sadist or something.”
“Oh definitely. I hope you still manage to have a little bit of fun there this summer though.”
“Oh I will. They don’t know I’m not allowed to use magic. I’m gonna make them believe I’ve cursed the house and changed the Biege wall paint to Sand.”
The HOA would go batshit.
“That’s hilarious.”
Back through the uncomfortably butthole-shaped portal (not as impressive as the other portals he had gotten to explore, he thought) into the train platform…
Harry soon spotted Ron’s vast redheaded family. His mother Molly Weasley smiled warmly at Harry.
“Did you have a fun year?”
Harry grinned back at her. “Not in the slightest.”
“Ready, are you?” said Uncle Vernon’s gruff voice from nearby. Harry turned. Under Vernon’s arm was a new aquarium for Dudley. If Vernon had not been in the area already shopping, he would not have bothered to pick up his nephew.
“Hurry up!” he continued. Harry tried to hug his uncle but Vernon smacked him down. “Save it for the firehouse!”
“See you in the summer then, Harry!” said Ron. “Hopefully Hermione turns up.”
Harry got up and dusted off his pants.
“Hopefully!”
CHAPTER EPILOGUE PART TWO
It could only be described as a magical fairytale wedding.
During the weeks which the real Hermione had been missing in the Forbidden Forest, she had wandered around alone, cold, and scared, with nobody looking for her. All her book learning and years spent perfecting her penmanship served her nothing to survive in this world. What would she do without a carefully scheduled agenda, without a watch to tell time by the second? Without a chalkboard or a syllabus to tell her what to do? She eventually stumbled into a fairy circle – a clearing encircled by mushrooms and crystals - with a meditating man at the center. But when she approached him, she let out a cry of surprise; he had an antlered deer head instead of a man’s head. She soon learned he was a powerful forest god by the name of Nazru’ba’atheon.
Nazru’ba’atheon hated the humans, but Hermione was different. Unlike other humans, she had no interest in draining the forest of its resources nor hunting its animals, no greed in her heart but for knowledge. He decided to take her under his wing (he could grow wings) instead of just eating her like he normally did with lost students. And she thrived.
No longer did her eyes strain to read heavy text in the candlelight. No longer did she slouch beneath the burden of textbooks and spare inkwells upon her back. No longer would she fuss with her hair or cleanliness or politeness to be accepted by her peers. No longer would the rising or setting sun nor any school bell dictate her life. No longer would she force herself into a bra. No longer would she be a slave to the toilet. And no longer would she be afraid. Her old life was but a flickering star of the past, a dark dream she had awoken from.
She had soon become a child of the woods. She had become free.
Nazru’ba’atheon taught her everything she needed to know to embrace the natural ways of her witch ancestors. How to climb trees barefoot. How to howl at the moon, worship the river, and revere the mountains. How to eat rabbits and fish raw. How to let her hair loose. How to paint rocks and chase chipmunks.
Soon he asked her to marry him, with a simple ring of bronze and moonstone, and she said yes.
Now, walking down the aisle of grass and moss beneath a sun-dappled canopy of trees, she carried with her a bouquet made of dried grasses and several wildflowers including dandelions and baby’s breath all tied in twine. She wore a stunning, asymmetric wedding gown made of pearly-white unicorn pelt (with but a smidgeon of silver unicorn blood artfully splattered on it) and a tiara made of quartz crystal.* * *
On either side of her gathered her new wild family, prey and predator, all eyes on her and ready to welcome this human into their wild, free world. Instead of a buffet of cheese and ham slices like one would see at a regular wedding, it was all wild berries, grains, and worms. The cake was made of honey oat bread and glazed with sweet sap. Ants were already all over it.
At the other end of the weed-and-flower-lined grass path stood her soon husband-to-be. His massive antlers were draped with silk and decorated with flowers and fluttering butterflies for the occasion. And he was prepared to give half his kingdom over to his new love.
“I’m ready to become Mrs. Nazru’ba’atheon Brian Smittington,” she rehearsed in her head over and over again, eyes on him and the dragonbear officiant, and the surrounding family of deer standing on their back legs.
“THERE YOU ARE!”
Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and Snape burst into the wedding.
“Show’s over! Time to come home, Miss Granger.”
“NO! No! Don’t make me go back to society-!”
Sensing her stress, the animal guests squawked, chirped, squeaked, and growled in protest. The fairies shook their fists and admonished them in little voices. The professors shooed them all away.
“DO NOT TAKE ME FROM MY HUSBAND-”
“This is a violation of The Pact and the both of you know it. Come along, now.”
She dragged Hermione along, kicking and screaming curses in a dead language. Several insects, mice, and small birds flitted out of her now extraordinarily bushy hair in a panic.
Nazru’ba’atheon gave a terrible, bone-chilling bellow, but Professor Flitwick distracted him with a bowl of butter.
“Et tu, Fili?” squeaked a mouse family sadly at Professor Flitwick.
“I…I have a pension now,” he replied, turning his tail but looking over his back sadly.
“We cannot lose our top student,” continued McGonagall. “We need the funding.”
Hermione immediately stopped struggling and screaming. “Top student?” she asked. “I passed everything?”
“Yes, with flying colors. Don’t worry about anything. This isn’t the first time a high-achieving student experienced a psychotic break and tried to run away into the woods to marry a deer god. In fact I don’t think Tom Riddle’s Union with Nazru’ba’atheon was ever truly annulled.”
“That bastard told me he was never married!”
“Yes well welcome to the female experience.”
“I want a sandwich.”
“We’ll get you one.”
Hermione was indeed on the verge of hypoproteinemia.
She also had deep, psychological trauma from being thrown into the wild from society and then back into society in the span of a few weeks, and she was riddled with parasites and nutritional deficiencies, but her medical insurance had expired the day classes ended and so all they did was grind down her budding antlers and send her back home for the summer like that.
* * * Self-Insert’s chosen future wedding look
CHAPTER EPILOGUE PART THREE:
Hazelnut made cheerleader, and soon gave birth to seven healthy hamster pups. One of them weirdly had tiny little antlers too because some wires in the universe became crossed or something.
CHAPTER EPILOGUE PART FOUR:
Harry finished his kitten tea party puzzle.
CHAPTER EPILOGUE PART FIVE:
A single tear went down Nazru’ba’atheon’s furry cheek from his large, dark eye. He held Hermione’s wedding ring in one hand, her bouquet in the other, sitting in his mountain cave home late at night. Suddenly, the rock door to his cave banged open; a woman in a loin cloth and fur bra with a doe’s head burst inside in a fury. She pointed at the items at his hands, then to him, and then to herself while bellowing angrily. He threw the items aside and shrugged confusedly.
CHAPTER EPILOGUE PART SIX:
“And in the dark shadows of my soul, the crimson light of my heart beats with the stagnant blood of my dead dreams.”
Angsty Harry had insisted on reading his poetry to the other Harrys. Out of politeness and boredom, they let him read his poem, Eulogy of Silent Screams, even though it lacked any sort of rhyming scheme or metre.
“I reach out with my dying hands out of the river of despair, calling to my dreams with my last, cold breath, and from the dark abyss they whispered back into my ear; ‘Whatever.’ It echoes inside my skull, shattering the remains of my tormented mind. The crows. The crows are coming. Fin.” He folded his paper, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and waited for a response, which came in the form of some forced, lackluster claps.
“That was… good, Angst,” said a Harriet.
“Whatever, I don’t need your approval.”
But to everyone’s surprise, soon followed by unmitigated horror, the poem acted as a Summoning Spell…
Another Harry Potter popped into their Common Room of misfits.
“Wh- Where the bloody hell am I? What’s going on?”
“Welcome, friend, welcome… huh?”
The new Harry was not wearing ruby red slippers.
“Canon,” someone gasped. “That’s Canon Harry!”
There was a deafening silence, immediately followed by panicked screams and miscellaneous sounds of chaos.
“YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.”
“OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”
“EVERYBODY CALM DOWN!”
“AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!”
“EVERY HARRY FOR HIMSELF!”
“GET DOWN GET DOWN!”
"IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S HAPPENING!!"
"THIS IS ALL BECAUSE YOU FUCKERS DIDN'T PRAY!"
“WHO KNOCKED OVER MERMAN HARRY’S BATHTUB? THE CARPET IS GOING TO MOLD!”
“MY WATER JUST BROKE!”
“GET IN THE TUB! IN THE TUB!”
“WAS I FUNNY THOUGH?!”
“’WJKEIHQRP29ENWFVHWROH$$%#@&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
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*Prolonged explosion, followed by credits*