Title: The Wizarding Times' Changing Times Handbook
Summary: The Wizarding Times' Changing Times Handbook: Thirty things not to do when travelling through time.
Rating: T (mild themes)
A/N: Heeeelllo! Well, that's all I'll say for now. Oh wait, please don't flame me! I mean, constructive criticism is welcome. But I don't like flames.
Things not to do when travelling through time, according to the Wizarding Times' Changing Times Handbook:
01. Forget your companion if travelling with a significant other/ friend/ person of passing interest: you may later find yourself with an arm and a very expensive lawsuit on your hands.
02. Go back too far. For instance, if you are turning the time-turner and get distracted (or are just plain idiotic) then you may find yourself in a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the ancient wizards saw no harm in ripping your head off and roasting it in their newly conjured stew.
03. Become convinced that you are far happier in this other time. Because one day, you will find yourself walking down the street and going, "Hey, you! I know you! You're me!" Which isn't necessarily a wise thing to say, if you are afraid of the Mental Injuries Ward in St Mungo's.
04. Pick a bad location to use your time-turner. Because if you had happened to turn your time-turner a few dozen times just as you were walking through a dry creek bed/ empty lake/ large hole you may find yourself submerged in water, or even possibly underground and you will never see the light of day again.
05. Go back a few hundred years in a time when women weren't allowed to drink, men weren't allowed to laze about the house all day and children were seen and not heard. This would be especially deranged if you were young, a transgender with an alcohol problem, never did anything and very opinionated.
06. Use a time-turner if you are a Goth. Because if you just happened to appear in the middle of a medieval town's street, people would chase you down yelling, "Devil! It's the devil, I tell you!" And then when they caught you they would stab you with a burning pitchfork.
07. Wear short skirts and/or revealing tops. The ancient people might just faint in shock when you stroll into their house/ saloon/ book club meeting.
08. Do magic tricks such as eating fire, conjuring or showing people your Dark Mark. Because then people would chase you off a cliff yelling, "Witch! Witch! She's a witch I tell you!" And when you agree with them, they shove your head into a river, and you think about conjuring a bubble-head charm but then realise they might do something worse, so you don't.
09. Fall in love with a woman from the nineteenth/ eighteenth/ seventeenth century. Because when you go to kiss them, they shout, "Thou has tainted my dignity!" And then everyone will strip you of you 'honour' and you will never be allowed to pair up and breed with someone for as long as you remain in that particular millennium.
10. Show your scar from an evil curse to anyone. Otherwise fathers will never let their precious daughters anywhere near you because of your 'unholy skin'.
11. Wear parachute pants. Just don't.
12. If your preferred travelling time is to the sixties, then don't wear peace signs/ long beaded necklaces/ headbands made of towelling material. Because in a few short years, everyone will remember you as "That hippie who chained themself to a bulldozer." And then the other person will be able to reply, "Yeah! And then it ran them over!"
13. Become fixated on a thirteenth century celebrity and stalk them obsessively. Remember people, they didn't have AVO's back then. Give them a break.
14. Go to Egypt. Because if you go there when they were building the pyramids, instead of letting you sit down and watch with a can of coke and a mars bar, they'll make you drag 400 kilo blocks of stone around to put in a very tall triangle, then whip you. And when you ask where the handcuffs are, they'll scream at you in a language you don't even understand and whip you some more.
15. Somehow manage to take your brand new Lamborghini with you. Because when you drive past all the people who are leading their llamas and a cart down a narrow dirt path through the deadly jungle, you'll feel bad. And maybe accidentally run over the llama.
16. Forget your portable coffee machine. Believe it or not, they didn't have instant coffee back in 500 BC. They didn't even have coffee at all. And when you get up from the straw bed that you share with six other people and their pet pig and shout, "Where's my coffee!" no one is going to get you any. You probably won't even get a cup of water, unlike the pig.
17. Leave your medical certificate at home. Because if you go to Europe when they had the Black Plague, and you have a couple of pimples on your nose, they'll yell, "Code Three!" and point at you with their hoes and pitchforks, thinking you have the Black Plague. But when you insist that it's all a mistake, and show them your pimple cream, they'll recoil in fear because of the putrid smell.
18. Eat any red apples, no matter what century you are in. You never know if the kind little old lady offering you a juicy red apple is really the Wicked Witch, out to get you, just like she got Snow White.
19. Take up residency with seven dwarfs. Or any dwarfs, for that matter. You never know what their true intentions towards the lady in question really are…
20. Point out all your bad qualities to anyone. You may just find yourself labelled as 'The next big thing!'… in the king's freak show.
21. Dress up as a knight in an effort to try and impersonate a Knight's Tale. For one thing, you will most likely have never seen a real jousting event before, and for the second, you probably will have no idea how to ride a horse, seeing as how you would have never learned because you only ever ride a broomstick.
22. Shout from the top of a rooftop, "I love you, Jane/ Richard!" Because back in the fifteenth century, all castles/ houses/ huts/ had either very sharp pointy towers at which you will certainly fall and spear yourself on it or straw roofs that you will fall through and see William and Mary conceiving child number six on their little straw bed. Also, this will convince others that you really do have issues.
23. Take a nuclear warhead back to the Stone Age. It will mean the end of civilisation as we know it, after the stone masons have finished with their little chisels.
24. Go back to the Ice Age. It's cold.
25. Try and alter history by proclaiming yourself to be from space, just to see how the sixteenth century people react. Most likely, they will not believe you and put you under 'house arrest' and you will never be able to leave your house for as long as you live in that particular century.
26. Expect everyone to know your name, if you happen to be an evil wizard who is trying to take over the world. They just didn't have current affairs programs back then.
27. Expect everyone to know your name, if you happen to be the person who defeated the wizard in question. Sixty Minutes wasn't quite available back then.
28. Steal anything from anyone in the medieval age. They didn't have microbe killing soap/ bacteria ridding chemicals/ chemicals that emit greenhouse gases back then. You never know what will be crawling around on it.
29. Accidentally somehow manage to transport yourself to the future. Because when you learn that your favourite Quidditch/ baseball/ football team lost, you'll be so heartbroken that you won't be able to see through all the alcohol you have consumed and someone will steal you time turner. Guaranteed.
30. Break your time-turner. Besides it being plain moronic, you will never be able to get home and when you wave it in front of a seventeenth century blacksmith's face, he'll tap it with his stone hammer and then it really won't ever work again.
A/N: Completely random, I know. And I know it doesn't really have a lot- if anything- to do with Harry Potter and all that. But I just got the idea and had to write it down. Please review! Please review! Please review! (See I have very nice manners). Here is a cookie (or whatever floats your boat) to everyone who reviews. 'Cos I'm kinda hoping I'll get some.
If I offended anyone, I offer my sincerest apologies. It was actually really hard to write when I had to keep in mind if this thing was going to offend someone, or that thing was going to hurt another.
Oh yeah, I promised my brother I'd mention him, seeing as he gave me one or two ideas and forced me to put them in. You can probably tell which ones are his- he's younger than me, and a boy.