Ice Princess Parody

Author's Note: This is what Ice Princess was supposed to be: a short cliché twister. But it got longer and more serious and grew into a romance. So I took the weed whacker to it and started over. And it happened again. So I gave in and wrote the stinkin' romance. Finally, two years later, I managed to get the parody written as a parody.

...oooOOOooo...

Harry was ambushed by Daphne Greengrass one day after the last class.

"Potter. I need help."

"How's that my problem, Greengrass?". She had worn a "Potter stinks" badge last year. The only reason Harry was even talking to her was for the female attention. Potentially attractive female attention. Her face wasn't much to look at, but he'd heard two Slytherin classmates saying, you just gotta see what's under her robes.

"If I don't pass Divination this year I'm in big trouble. You have to help me!"

"Wait, what? Divination? Never mind. It's still not my problem. Why should I help you?"

"Well, I could pay you, but you're richer than me." Daphne ignored Harry's ratty, poorly-fitted clothes. Maybe she thought he had a personal sense of style. A rather questionable personal sense of style, but nonetheless his own. "Or we could, you know, figure out some other payment."

Harry, as a somewhat healthy teenager, leapt to thinking about what payment she might have in mind. He couldn't agree fast enough. They'd meet in the library after dinner.

...oooOOOooo...

"So … ah … Divination? What do you need help with?"

"I failed all of my homework all month. Yesterday I went up to talk to Trelawney and she gave me a glass of wine and had a bottle herself and told me that even the best seers have to make things up most of the time. And by the time she got to the end of the bottle she told me to talk to you because your and Weasley's predictions were always the biggest pile of made-up garbage she'd ever seen."

Harry was a little offended and a little worried. True, he and Ron just made up any old lurid garbage, but that didn't mean he wanted people to call it made-up garbage. And what if Trelawney stopped giving him good grades? He needed to pass Divination, too, because he was taking the minimum number of classes himself. Well, no point in worrying about it by this point. Trelawney was so busy predicting his death she'd probably never get around to failing his homework anyway.

Daphne was still talking while Harry thought. "And I could have talked to Weasley, you know, but he's poor, I mean, like, poorer than my family, and he's not too bright either, you know? I mean, I know what I'm talking about when I talk about being not too bright."

"Okay, I guess I can help you with your homework. So, ah, about the payment?"

Negotiations being successfully concluded, Harry and Daphne worked on their homework. They then scuttled off to a convenient broom closet until curfew.

...oooOOOooo...

Daphne ambushed Harry again the next week. "We're meeting in the library tonight, right?"

Harry flinched. He'd found out what was under her robes, all right. Pimples, rashes, and sores. Going by the stickiness of her skin, Daphne's pure-blood family maintained the medieval custom of bathing once a week in the summer and once every other month in the winter. They must have some family secret spell to keep the smell down. And maybe he'd mis-heard her nickname. Lice Princess, that was it.

"Ah, I don't know about that, Greengrass. Ah, I mean, uh, I already showed you how to fake the homework, right? So we don't need to get together any more?"

"But Harry, don't we work so well together? And, you know, I could use some help in other classes, too, you know? I'm not doing too great in any of them."

That surprised Harry a little. He'd heard somewhere that Daphne was seventh among the fourth years last year. Didn't that mean she must be pretty bright? Not that she seemed very smart now that she was talking to him. She'd always been pretty quiet in class and the hallways, so far as he remembered, but it seemed that once she started talking she never stopped.

"I mean, I was seventh in Slytherin last year. There were two whole people lower than me, so it's not like I'm really dumb, you know? It's just that some of us aren't good with book learning."

Harry demurred, not wanting to spend more time with an unwashed, not-too-smart, "Potter stinks"-badge-wearing girl, but Daphne was persistent. New negotiations resulted in a new agreement.

...oooOOOooo...

Harry was cornered by his friends in the common room one evening as he returned from a hot date following a hot study session.

"Why don't you spend any time with us anymore, Harry? Aren't we good enough for The Great And Mighty Boy Who Lived any more?" Ron was in fine form today. Oh, right, he'd probably gotten a bad grade on his Divination homework because Harry didn't work with him. "What's so special about Greengrass?"

Harry went with the simple truth. "She does this thing with her tongue."

Hermione's and Ron's jaws dropped.

"I could do that!"

Harry looked over at Ginny, wondering how she'd made her voice come out so deep…

…only to see Ginny glaring at Ron, whose hands were covering his mouth as he backed away.