((A.N. Well, this is really the last chapter of our blasphemous, horribly written, angsty, dramatic, iambic-pentameter riddled, Shakespeare-filled, celebrity laden, Greek-mythology centered, barely comprehensible, and of course, muffin-speckled tale. Any assorted Queen lyrics, Star Wars quotes, Shakespeare allusions, and Greek references are not our original ideas. We don't want to claim ownership of the Star Wars script. It was so . . . good and all that we don't deserve that . . . erm . . . honor. So good night and good luck.))
Chapter 10; Galileo figuro
"Tequila!" shouted Lucius, and the army of Mariachi bands began playing upbeat music. Streamers came down from the ceiling, and more than one good wife hung out her laundry to dry.
Harry Potter was dead. The world could celebrate.
Lucius hooked Harry's body up to a random chariot and dragged it around the hospital wing, grim expression fully intact.
"Never forget your predecessors, Wormtail," he muttered in satisfaction, alluding to Achilles dragging Hector's body around.
Ron and Ginny performed ritualistic necromancy in a ring of fire. Ron frothed at the mouth, happier than he had ever been in his somewhat dysfunctional life.
"It is done," Draco said with a dramatic sigh, dropping his miraculously bloody sword.
"I am glad to be with you Draco," Hermione schmoozed dramatically, "here at the end of all things."
"I feel . . . cold," Voldemort said desolately.
"You're always cold," Snape pointed out sardonically.
This uproarious celebration went on for about two minutes. For that miraculous, beautiful two minutes, the universe was in perfect, harmonious balance.
There came a voice from the doorway. It was an impossibly familiar voice. It snaked into their brains like an off-key note.
"Did someone say 'tequila?'"
Harry stood there, leaning against the doorframe, his green eyes mocking every one of them individually.
"It's not possible," Draco said slowly.
"Two Potters . . ." Lucius considered.
"How can it . . . be?" Voldemort insinuated quietly.
Snape's eye twitched convulsively.
He had never appreciated unauthorized resurrection.
Silence.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" came Ron's earsplitting roar.
"YOUBASTARDPOTTERGODDAMNITWHATTHEHELLIKILLYOUANDTHENI'LLBYING YOURANDTHENEAT APILEOF!$DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEBLEHBLAHBNLOOOOSLIJGFDAKLJFKLDSUJKLADJDIIIE!"
"That's not possible either," Draco piped in, "but it certainly sounds painful."
Harry smirked insolently and pushed himself off of the doorframe.
The only remaining intact wall blew open and Ashton Kutcher leapt out into the fray. His sideways hat, diamond necklace, and pimped glasses shone in the overhead light.
"You got PUNK'D!" Ashton said, huge grin splitting across his face.
Someone shot him.
"Then who's that guy?" Hermione asked incredulously, pointing to the mangled body on the bed..
"Stunt double," Harry said with a wave of his hand, as if this made everything okay.
At this point, everyone ignored Ron completely, and yet he still went on with his tirade. "KINSSNOTPOSSSSSSSSIBLEANATOMICALLYINACCURATEPIECEOFSCUMYOULOADOFSLIMEGETBLASTEDOFFOFTHEFACEOFTHEEARTHANDALLTHEWAYTO$#&($(#!"
"Ron, Ron," Harry said condescendingly, in much the same fashion as his predecessor Lockhart, "we all know you love the spotlight, but shouting expletives at poor Ashton Kutcher over there is just not going to get you the kind of attention you so desperately crave. It's good to have a hero, Ron, and I know you look up to me (everybody does), but you should never try to surpass me. Is that champagne you're drinking? Not a lot of people know this about me, but I do enjoy a choice expensive alcoholic beverage every now and then. Anyone have a corkscrew? Anyone?"
He looked around expectantly.
Multiple types of weapons were aimed at him from all sides, but there seemed to be no corkscrew in sight.
"Guess I'll just have to use my own, then," Harry said cheerfully, and pulled out a bottle of champagne and a corkscrew from his pocket.
Pop.
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Ron screamed until he was wildly consumed with his own demonic flames. Moments later, nothing remained but a small pile of ash.
Snape had never believed in spontaneous combustion.
Good Ginny leapt in front of Harry suddenly, a look of determination on her valiant face.
"Don't kill him," she said desperately. "He never did anything."
"He lived," Snape countered slowly.
"But what of our morals, our values, our-"
Someone shot Ginny too.
"Aim for Potter!" Voldemort cried, his voice a high frequency nightmare. " This is a crisis! We're low on ammo, here, people! Who shot that? Step forward!"
No one moved.
"Alright then!" Voldemort roared. "Cowards! Worms! Insects! I don't need you! I'd be better without you! Yeah, you better walk away..."
The army deserted him.
"No," came a sadistic hiss from the corner. Evil Ginny shrieked at the sight of her dead twin on the ground. "It cannot be. If she dies, I go with her..."
"Any last words?" Draco asked furtively.
"We are all . . . lost," Evil Ginny said with her final gasp.
"Isn't that a little obvious?" Hermione asked taciturnly. "We've seen alien spaceships, giant squids, grenade-wielding mariachi bands, four foot muffins, Ashton Kutcher, the UN, an army of clones, at least ten horrific death scenes, and it's past two an we're STILL being served free alcoholic beverages."
"You're right," Draco said quietly.
"You guys are getting a little tipsy," Harry commented through another mouthful of champagne. "Best you all turn in for the night, eh?"
Someone tried to shoot him. They were out of ammo.
"Everyone's out of ammo!" Voldemort cried in despair.
"Wormtail . . ." Lucius hissed in what he believed to be an inconspicuous voice, or else Wormtail hoped he never would have used it.
"What?"
Lucius "snuck" over to Wormtail and whispered in his ear.
"I have but one shot left, Wormtail. One shot to kill Harry Potter."
"Use it," Wormtail hissed immediately, surprised at their luck. Harry loitered unsuspectingly near the door. It was the perfect opportunity.
"No," Lucius said slowly.
Wormtail stared at him blankly, too afraid to ask why not.
"Because I have a plan, Wormtail. A good plan."
"Like the crocodile plan?"
"Better," Lucius said, with an absolutely insane look in his eyes.
"No!" Wormtail wailed in despair. "All is lost . . ."
"Stop it! You're blowing our cover!"
"You have no cover," Snape pointed out from across the room.
"Never mind that," Lucius said angrily. "Never mind that at all. Here's the plan. We wait for the dawn."
"What?"
"The dawn, Wormtail. We wait for it. Then the heroic pose will go down in history, will be carved in stone for all the ages."
"No comprendo," said a random mariachi band figure.
Wormtail shared this sentiment entirely.
"The dawn will come soon, Wormtail," Lucius whispered. "You will see."
"It's 2am," Snape pointed out sardonically. Lucius aimed his gun at Harry, unfazed.
"What now?"
"We wait."
Two hours later . . .
"I'm not waiting any longer!" Voldemort roared. "This is crap! Why isn't he dead? Why isn't he dying?"
"Calm down now, My Lord," an attendant said quietly. "Just kill the Potter brat . . ."
"POTTER!" Voldemort cried in rage.
"It's quite late," Harry said with a smile, "and if I don't go to bed soon, I'm going to have a hangover. Oh, wait . . . I don't get hangovers. Silly me."
"Where is the justice in this?" Draco asked no one in particular.
"POTTER!" Voldemort said again, "POTTER! . . . POTTER! . . . POTTER!"
"Alright, alright," Harry told him as he pulled out his wand. "I suppose we could do a quickie. I think I remember some good spells . . . let's see . . . Avada . . . Kedavra?"
Harry shot a green light toward Voldemort.
"NooOoOoOoO!" came a disembodied voice, and the camera froze and rotated 360 degrees as Dumbledore jumped valiantly in front of Voldemort.
It was over in an instant. Dumbledore had fallen.
"WHHHHYYYYY!" Voldemort sobbed pathetically at Dumbledore's fallen body. "Oh Dumbledore, Dumbledore, wherefore art thou . . . Dumbledore."
"Isn't that obvious?" Snape quipped.
"Tempt not a desperate man!" Voldemort roared at Snape. He grabbed a knife. "I loved him, damn you! A secret love!"
Snape raised an eyebrow.
"OH HAPPY DAGGER!" Voldemort wailed, and plunged the blade into his tormented heart.
"The sky lightens, Wormtail," Lucius said from his conspicuous position.
"Screw that!" Wormtail cried. "Just shoot him already!"
"The dawn, Wormtail. Patience, I say. Patience."
"Why are you doing this to us?" Wormtail asked forlornly.
Lucius turned his attention away from the horizon. "How many times have I told you, Wormtail . . ."
"No!"
"Harry Potter's Great Uncle Eulfrid led a splendid expedition to Kyrgtzstan where he uncovered an ancient El Salvadorian Easy Bake Oven, where inside he discovered the Amulet of Destiny. But he found that a Bajak Flux Capacitor had disintegrated the Amulet so he went back to the city bus but it was all in vain . . . but that wasn't even the beginning. It was the end. Because he traveled back in time . . ."
(An hour later)
"And that, Wormtail, was how the Sri Lankan brigands found him curled up in a ball dicing onions in his ex-girlfriend's apartment."
At this point everyone present sat around a makeshift bonfire "toasting" marshmallows and listening avidly to Lucius's story.
"But wait," said Hermione, "what became of the silhouetteo of a man who did the fandango with
Scaramouche?"
"Galileo."
They leaned forward. "Galileo?"
"Galileo figuro."
"Mama mia," Wormtail said. "Very, very frightening."
Lucius suddenly leapt up. "But, soft! What light in yonder window breaks? 'Tis the east, and Potter is the sun!"
"You're correct, Lucius," Harry replied, stroking his chin. "The poetry of my lips and nose do recall the features of the sun god, Helios."
"I am blinded," Snape notified them.
Lucius faced Harry and raised the gun, trying and failing to shield his eyes from the sun.
"Lucius, shouldn't you be facing the other direction?" Wormtail asked apprehensively.
"It is time!" Lucius announced, and cocked the trigger.
Suddenly Harry bent down. "What's this? A golden box . . . perchance, a chest. 'Tis Uncle Eulfrid's treasure, I daresay. But 'lo, am I mistaken . . .? Could it be?"
Lucius twitched. "Treasure? Eulfrid? Hark! Salvation's mine!"
Wormtail cried, "The dawn! Your plan! The trigger! Pull it now!"
"I'll see him finished, this I surely vow," Hermione claimed.
"For Potter is a large, unsightly cow!" Draco added.
Snape blinked. "You fools, I'm sick of this iambic shit."
Lucius snapped out of it. "The treasure, Potter! Hand it here, I say!"
"Well, technically," Harry drawled, "it is my treasure."
"Not for long," Lucius announced dramatically. He pulled the trigger.
In slow motion, the bullet traversed the sunlit landscape and sailed between toward Harry Potter.
Impossibly, yet somehow believably , the bullet changed course and instead headed between Harry's feet. It ricocheted off of the corner of the golden chest and reversed direction toward the origin.
It met its mark in Lucius's chest.
"Wormtail!" Lucius cried, eyes aglow. "Immortality is mine!"
Snape rolled his eyes. "No one reads the Evil Overlord List these days."
Lucius collapsed promptly.
"I was a fool to think we had to kill Potter, Wormtail," Lucius gasped. "I was a muffin."
"We were both muffins!" Wormtail sobbed, dropping to his knees beside Lucius.
"The treasure's ours, Wormtail. Hand me the chest, Wormtail. Let me feel it on my skin. Let me taste it. LET ME BATHE IN ITS GLOW."
Wormtail attempted to pull the treasure from the ground, but he realized he would need a shovel. And a shovel he did not have. So instead he handed Lucius the nearest maraca and handed it to Lucius.
Lucius stroked it with unseeing eyes. "Yesss," he sighed. "Yessssss."
"Lucius," Wormtail said desperately, "you need a hospital! You need medical aid."
"Never mind that . . . Wormtail," Lucius smiled absently. He closed his eyes. "Never mind that at . . ."
"All," Snape leered, and finished the sentence rudely as Lucius died.
Silence.
"Bury the treasure with him," Draco sniffed. He chugged some vodka to ease his emotional distress.
"Yes," Hermione added, "that would have pleased Lucius."
"Diego," Wormtail pleaded, "bury us both. . . together."
"Si."
Diego knocked Wormtail insensitively upside the head and dragged the bodies into a sewage containment ditch. Diego snatched the treasure and ran off.
"Someone should say a few last words for dear Lucius," Hermione said desolately.
"He was a pervert," announced Snape pitilessly.
He dropped a bouquet of flowers into the sewage containment.
"He was always so. . ." Hermione dropped a violet rose in the ditch and walked off.
Draco approached his father's body.
"You never understood me! You never loved me! It is all your fault that I became the worthless piece of scum I am today! I hated you! My enemy! My nemesis! My father!" Draco continued dragging this useless scene out even longer. He kicked dirt in the sewage and stormed away.
"No."
Out of the shadows stepped Severus Snape, clad in a long foreboding black cape.
"I am your father!" Snape revealed, pointing his finger accusingly at Draco, then Harry.
Draco and Harry exchanged horrified glances. It was all so obvious. The handcuffs. The video tape. The sandwich! Snape had had an affair with Lily. Snape had had an affair with Narcissa. Snape had had an affair with Trump!
"This is getting complicated," Draco acknowledged.
"Yes it is," Snape agreed. "Too complicated."
Harry decided at that point to forsake all moralistic or social values that had once been embedded into him by his surrogate grandfather and somewhat unhinged godfather who had met a slow and admittedly comical demise. Killed by drapery. Always a shame.
"Alright, alright, the game's up," Harry announced with an indulgent smile. "I know why you're all here."
"You've finally realized that no one actually likes you?" Draco asked, an expression of wild hope fleeting across his face. "You've finally realized that we've all come here to get reve . . ."
Harry spread his arms wide. "Autographs." He flashed a blinding smile.
They stared at him for an entire fifteen and three quarters seconds.
"I am beat," Snape concluded. He walked decisively off of the edge of the tower. They heard a distinct splat.
Harry's facial expression didn't change at all. He merely shifted his gaze toward Draco and Hermione.
"Next?" he called casually. "How about you, Malfoy? I may be your worst enemy, but my autograph is probably worth more than your entire estate. So what do you say? I'll do you the favor, I suppose . . . I'm a nice guy, after all."
Draco turned to Hermione, the only other survivor. "Remind me why he's still breathing."
"Does it matter?" answered Hermione. "Let's just kiss him."
Draco whirled around, his eyes narrowing. He pulled out a light saber. "What did you just say?"
"I said let's just kill him," Hermione corrected hastily.
Draco pointed his light saber at Harry. "You turned her against me! Don't make me kill you!"
"Draco," Hermione pleaded, "it was a typo, on the author's part! I meant 'kill,' not 'kiss!'"
" . . . Author?" Draco questioned softly. "What is this devilry you speak of?"
He suffocated her with the Dark Side of the Force.
Harry watched these events unfold as he would a mediocre opera. Then he looked at Draco. "Still up for that autograph?"
"You were like a brother to me!" Draco screamed. "You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them! You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!"
"Well that's too bad," said Harry, "because I have the higher ground, my young padawan!"
"YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER."
Draco leapt toward Harry and miscalculated as he realized that he wasn't actually a Jedi. Harry side-stepped and Draco fell over the edge of the tower and into a chasm of lava.
He died.
"That was a bad movie anyway," Harry ruminated. "Well . . . anyone still want an autograph?"
He looked around. Everyone was dead.
"Saves me time, I suppose," Harry muttered offhandedly.
As he walked away from the scene of the crime, his zipper caught on a protruding branch and he was revealed to be not Harry Potter the Wizard, but Harry Potter the Muffin.
((A.N. And so ends our deeply moving tale. Give us your favorite quote, mmkay? It will make us happy.))