disclaimer (dis kla'mer), n. 1. the act of disclaiming; the renouncing, repudiating, or denying of a claim; disavowal. 2. a person who disclaims. 3. I add to the definition, since I can now, to say that I am one of the many lovely people who write Harry Potter stories and DO NOT own Harry Potter and Company in any way, shape, or form.
At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry there held many interesting, yet startling secrets of romance and horror. To which include the tales of the Bloody Barons death and the mystery of how long it took Madam Pince to realize how desperately in love she was with the schools' library.
But, tonight was no ordinary night, for it was the eighth year anniversary of when the great Harry Potter graduated from the school. And amidst the fog and gloom of the night stood the towering castle where dazzling displays of lights and fireworks, curtsey of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, were being shown inside.
The old classmates of the noble school gathered in the Great Hall where the enchantment of the night sky was removed and replaced with giant spinning Catherine Wheels and winged piglets that oinked every time they bounced against the walls. The owners of the fireworks stood behind the punch table as they admired their work and began to wonder what would happen if the winged piglets were to somehow mate with the new prototype they had of Harry Potter's big head, called 'Potty Heads'.
On the side of the Great Hall there was a long table that was bursting with glorious food of chicken legs, biscuits fresh from the oven, and mashed potatoes, making the students wonder who weighted more-Umbridge or the table?
Near the punch bowl by the twins' fireworks stood two figures, one who was currently drowning herself in as much punch as possible in the hopes of disappearing into the bowl and the other who was too busy talking her ear off to notice her dislike of him.
"So, I picked up the book my new, lovely Healer brought me," the man said, flashing a charming smile to one of the many groups of students gossiping about how fat someone had become to somehow outweigh the giant squid, before he continued, "and I was looking at the cover and thinking to myself, 'My, this fellow is absolutely amazing! He's even more beautiful than I am!' It also lead me to believe that I was attracted to this bloke, and it made me wonder if I was into romantic relationships with the same sex before that tragic accident where I lost all recollection of my past. But I then began to read this autobiography, and I haven't read a more astonishing piece in all my years of not knowing myself! And I asked my Healer who wrote the book because I was bloody well in love with it to find it was I who wrote it! It was called Magical Me by Gilderoy Lockhart, and I haven't even begun to tell you about the fan mails I have been getting lately! A Ms. Gardenia Florence was asking me about the patterns on my briefs in her letter I had received the other day…"
At this, the woman put her hand on her mouth the stop the outburst of vomit and quickly grabbed another cup of the punch before downing it. She began to ask herself why she had to be so independent and leave the brotherly protection of Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter to try to meet some new men. While the annoying man continued to explain the details of the personal questions lovesick girls were asking him, like if he ever flashed somebody and if he was interested in doing so, the woman gave him a glare as she began to hate whoever gave birth to this man.
"Oh, Professor Lockhart!" Parvati Patel squealed with delight as she and Lavender Brown came up to him, making the woman, who was imagining Voldemort being resurrected from the dead and killing Lockhart, thank the two girls silently before leaving them to have to suffer his self absorbed conversations that usually ended up with him practically talking to himself.
The woman, Hermione Granger to be exact, dodged the newly released Potty Heads that were bouncing off the walls, declaring every time they hit something:
"I'm Harry Potter!
And I'm such a bother!
Love me,
And I'll leave you be!"
But, the firework only got around to saying, "I'm Harry Potter! And-" before hitting something and repeating itself like the antique broken record player Peeves was trashing somewhere around the fourth floor corridor to shut it up for it was becoming more of a nuisance than the poltergeist himself.
Hermione then found the real Harry Potter trying to shoo away a winged piglet that oinked every time it was pushed away. But despite the man's attempts, the piglet seemed to be floating back towards him like a magnet. Next to him was Remus Lupin with a wolfish grin on his face for he was rather enjoying the show Harry was putting on for him. Before the werewolf knew it, a Potty Head hit him and began to chant its programmed rhyme before hitting the wall and repeating itself again.
"There you are Hermione!" Harry cried cheerfully before he roughly pushed the piglet away again as it then hit Terry Boot in the head and began to follow him as if it lost its interest in the man who defeat the greatest dark wizard of their time to follow a mascot for a Quidditch team around instead. "Stupid Fred and George."
"Well, all I have to say is that they're ruddy brilliant," Remus admitted with a nod of his head and an agreeable look on his face as the twins then began to set up a pin-the-centaurs-tail-on-the-Umbridge with students already forming a line to try the new game. Whereas the real Umbridge was scowling at those who were waiting to play the game and beginning to bother a very furious looking Snape to instruct the twins to put the game away.
"So, Hermione," Harry began with a raised eyebrow at the bushy haired woman, "enjoying the conversation with Gilderoy Lockhart? I must say that I absolutely approve of that color lilac on him, it brings out the blue in his eyes."
At this, Remus and Harry began to snicker and snort while Hermione blushed and looked away from the two to find Snape hiding under the punch table to avoid the nagging of a very red and sour looking toad.
"Just because I had a crush on him in our second year," Hermione replied as she turned to the two men who were grinning like Christmas had come early with a Dunk-The-Snape-Into-The-Cauldron game, "doesn't mean I still have one on him. That man has the same brain capacity as the Giant Squid."
"Ouch, I think the Squid is a bit hurt at that," Remus remarked before taking a light sip from his cup of punch as Harry began to snort at his friend's comment. "I'm pretty sure that even the rocks in the lake would be a tad bit hurt if compared to him, which I might add is a very low remark."
"He and Ron have the same disease," Hermione snarled angrily as she scowled and, from the corner of her eyes, looked at Lockhart, who found Snape and forced him out from under the table to which Snape ran for his life as Umbridge began to scold and follow the grown man. "Both of their brains are filled with nothing but fluff, dead flies, and the belief that they are the sexiest man alive."
At this, the three looked at the redhead in the middle of a group of anorexic looking woman to find Ron in the middle of his plans of going around the room, using the same pick-up line of "Who lies more, men or woman?" And just as he looked like he was getting somewhere without the same answers of, "I'm married" or "Uh…" he was receiving the new replies of, "Wasn't there a bloke like you who asked me that question already?"
"And I thought that Ron would learn his lesson in using the same pick up line more than once," Hermione stated before grabbing Lupin's punch, tipping her head back, and finishing it for him while he was watching Ron's failed attempts to get a girl.Remus turned to her once he noticed his missing beverage before she shoved the cup back at him earning her a raised eyebrow. "Well that goes to show you what kind of idiots our generation seems to have."
"I think you've had too much punch there, Hermione," Harry told her truthfully as he eyed her behavior suspiciously while she tried to grab his cup desperately.
"Look, I haven't had a bloody good drink or been to a ruddy good party in forever, so just give me the damn cup before I jinx your pants off," the slightly dizzy woman threatened, sounding more like a foolish Professor Trelawney than a scary Professor Snape. While Remus had to hold her back, along with his laughter, Harry scanned the room to make sure no one saw him as he dumped the rest of the beverage into a potted plant that appeared right next to him.
"Wait-where did-?" Harry began to ask in a perplexed manner before the fern interrupted him and began to coo and rub itself against him. After dropping the empty cup and making desperate attempts to push the potted plant away from him, Harry began to kick at the plant, causing it to fall back and have its pot smash into tiny pieces that scattered all over the floor and under the tables. "Stupid Fred and George!"
"You called us, Harry?" One of the two twins asked as they appeared instantly by his side with looks of utter amusement. Hermione,who was then let go by Remus,still couldn't tell the difference between the two twins, and she was sure if they wanted to, they could've claimed to the Muggle community that cloning was possible without magic.
"What the hell was that plant?" Remus asked as he snuck a glance at the plant and tried to act serious, making Hermione giggle in a very school-girl like manner and forget the urge to run, dive into the punch bowl, and maybe even give Lockhart a heart attack at getting his lilac outfit stained.
"Oh that? It's a fern," the other twin replied as if it was obvious, looking at the remains of the said plant. "Well, it was a fern."
"It must have been charmed to appear when you needed to dump the remainder of your punch out or something," one of the twins told them honestly with a shrug. "I think that was Flitwick's idea, anyway, but it must have been so drunk from all that punch that it annoyed Harry to no end until it's poor death."
"Oh, will you two just shut up?" Harry hissed before taking his wand out, repairing the remains of the pot, and sending the now alive plant back to the corner of the room with the other ones where it looked as though Hogwarts developed another swamp inside of the school.
"Bravo, Harry, bravo!" The twins chanted merrily before clapping him proudly on the back and leaving the group with a spring in their step right as one of the Potty Heads and piglets collided with an "Oink!" Before the students in the Great Hall knew it, there was a massive explosion, a grand fireworks display, and a puff of smoke that hung in the air before numerous little lightening bolts appeared from the cloud and began to zoom from every different direction.
Remus laughed at the new lightening bolts that glowed a bright neon pink before Harry began to scowl and huff in disapproval as a lightening bolt then began to follow him like the winged piglet had. This time, when it hit Lavender Brown in the head after Harry swatted it away, it instantly jolted the two and wouldn't let them leave without the other.
Before Hermione knew it, she saw that she was one of the many victims of the pink lightening bolts. As people began to pester Fred and George about said problem, the twins announced to everyone joyfully that it acted just like mistletoe, making all the married couples groan while making the single people, like Ron, begin to whoop in approval of the new idea and try to find a man or woman after their own failed attempts.
As Hermione was about to run out of the Great Hall to not have to kiss the likes of someone like Lockhart, or even worse, Snape, she bumped into someone, causing her and the person she bumped into to become jolted before she opened her eyes to find a very charcoal looking Lupin.
"Um…I'm sorry?" Hermione began as if she was talking to Snape while she coughed up black smoke. She began to feel like a stupid little schoolgirl again as her face turned a bright red, while he looked up to see the lightening bolt was hovering around the two as if it was an ominous sign. "I'm so sorry Remus, I meant to leave and not to get you, or anyone else for that matter, caught up in this mess, too."
"Well, look on the bright side," Remus pointed out, "at least I'm not Umbridge."
"That's a miracle," she replied before looking around the room to see various, paired-up-against-their-will, couples nervously give each other a peck on the lips before the lightening bolts above their heads disappeared, leaving the twoto run away from each other like they would have when they were younger. "Well…it looks like we're going to have to-err…"
"Right…" Remus added, as they stood still fumbling with their hands for no apparent reason while the awkward silence snuck up on them. Hermione looked around again to see, to her horror, that Crabbe and Goyle looked like their lips were glued together. And for the second time that evening, she swiftly put her hand to her mouth to calm her stomach down to see there wasn't a lightening bolt over their head or have the look as if someone was trying to burn them alive.
Remus saw Hermione's weird actions and turned his head to see where she was looking. He instantly turned green and groaned in disgust before hearing Malfoy and Pansy, one of the lucky one couples who were partnered with someone they actually wanted to be with, talk in-between their kisses.
"I never knew Crabbe and Goyle liked each other," Pansy admitted as Malfoy turned to his friends before turning back to her and kissing her roughly again.
"Yea, they've been together ever since second year when I found the two of them locked in a broom closet," Malfoy explained quickly, as Hermione turned red at the thought of catching Crabbe and Goyle snogging with only the clothes that Ron and Harry had left behind when they took the Polyjuice Potion.
"Your doing?" Lupin asked in a teasing tone as she, with a guilty expression, looked up at him.
"Yes," she replied before asking in a playful and sarcastic tone, "How did you guess?"
"Well, it definitely has Ron, Harry, and you written all over it," he explained truthfully as she giggled and nodded in agreement again. "And by the looks of it, I think they're going back to where their romance started."
At his comment, Hermione looked to see the two, lips still inseparable, leave the Great Hall.
"Come on, ladies and gents!" One of the twins cried as the two Weasley's spotted Hermione and Remus and began to make their way toward them. "Just kiss and get it over with, no harm done!"
"Easy for you to say," Hermione snarled at the two twins with a crimson face. "I can't wait until one of you have to kiss Umbridge even though I know that kissing Remus is going to be nothing compared to that toad."
"You know, huh?" A twin asked her suspiciously as the two looked at each other and grinned, making Hermione curse herself for saying anything. "Been snogging poor Lupin for a long time, eh?"
"I bet back then they did when he didn't have to teach classes, and she had that Time Turner," the other twin replied as the two began to laugh. "How long is that, twelve long years of snogging?"
"Twelve, my dear boy, twelve," the first twin repeated as a Catherine Wheel narrowly missed Malfoy and Pansy, who were oblivious to the firework that could have caused them to be part of a massive explosion, even though the two looked as if they were with their charcoal clothes.
"Now you know that isn't true!" Hermione snarled at them with her fists clenching.
"Lupin and Granger, snogging in the Whomping Willow tree, S-N-O-G-G-I-N-G, first comes classes and then comes the snogging, and next comes the cub in the baby carriage!" The two began to chant, even though it poorly rhymed, making Lupin chuckle nervously before he decided to end the torture and put his left hand on Hermione's shoulder. She wheeled her head around to face him before freezing as his other hand went from her shoulder to the back of her head to pull her head close to his as their lips met, making the lightening bolt disappear and the twins continue to chant and laugh.
As he was about to pull his head away from hers, while their lips separated which caused a small pop, to end the amazing (to him) kiss, she grabbed his hair roughly and pushed him back to her again. He sighed happily into her mouth at her decision.
"And people say that we can't play cupid to save our lives," one of the twins said to the other as the kiss between Remus and Hermione began to heat up. They began to 'tut' in disapproval while a Potty Head hit the two of them in the head, making the firework sound even more like a broken record before it bounced off the wall.
"Oh, and you're welcome!" A twin called to Remus and Hermione as the two, hand in hand, began to sneak out of the Great Hall together, remembering to not try to go into the broom closet occupied by Goyle and Crabbe.
And so, the Potty Heads and the winged piglets, even though they didn't realize it since they're main function was to bounce around and entertain, brought one loving couple together and accidentally brought up some covert secrets. Many new tales were easily unraveled from what happened that day... many tales of romance and horror at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Part of disclaimer definition comes from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. I messed up the third definition, so don't worry, it's not in the real dictionary.
Thanks to Bethany, who inspired this story, for the great question summarized as: What the heck did Crabbe and Goyle do when Ron and Harry locked them in the closet for the Polyjuice Potion in their second year? And thanks to her for the conclusion and support!
And thanks to those who enjoyed my pointless story.
What do you think? Review please! All are welcome!