DISCLAIMER: Distractions, distractions, I don't own it all.
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Harry stood a fair distance from the Acme catapult; having quickly learned one should do a test run on equipment before using it on yourself… usually. Sometimes the prospect was too much to pass up.
This wasn't one of those times.
Instead, he had Wednesday tied up and sitting in the launcher while he wound the spring mechanism. He heaved a sigh as he finished and reached into a coat pocket, pulling out Thing (who it seemed had moved in permanently) and a notepad. "Would you mind taking notes?"
Thing snapped his fingers and readied a pen as Harry held the notepad in one hand and reached for the release lever with the other. He grinned up at his struggling cousin. He didn't want to miss this…
He pulled the lever with a cackle.
Unfortunately, all Acme products tended to ignore logic and physics.
WHUMP!
And the base sprung backward directly on top of him.
A shaking fist slowly slid out from underneath the catapult. "Uhrrrrrrrrrrr…"
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Eight year old Harry grunted as he finished digging the bear trap in front of the property gate. It was getting to the point where those carolers were getting on everyone's nerves. It might not have been so bad on his part if any of them could actually sing.
Christmas was the time for giving wasn't it? Well he'd 'give' them a lesson in common decency! He didn't go to their houses and play music by Barbara Streisand did he? Though if they didn't learn quickly he might start doing so.
He paused as the sound of jingle bells rang cheerfully down the road. Sure enough, a minute later a fat man in a red suit in a red horse drawn carriage came rumbling down the road. "Santa?" His eyes lit up.
The paid fat man in a Santa suit looked down at Harry as the boy called his name and he smiled at the youth. It was moments like this that made him glad he took the job in the winter holidays. "HO! HO! H-"
The last thing Santa saw was a shovel.
When Santa woke up he was hog tied on the floor with three children looking down at him with looks that had him sweating more than the suit did.
"Hey Santa." Harry frowned at the fat man and leaned on his shovel. "I want to talk about all the letters you ignored from me when I was at the Dursley's."
Wednesday leaned down at his and Santa felt the hairs rise on the back of his back. "And you WILL tell me the secret to enslaving elves to do your bidding."
Pugsley clicked a pair of nut crackers together ominously.
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Some people wondered why Harry returned to the house after having successfully left before. As said before, Harry had watched television. Both on rare occasion at the Dursley's and with his new family.
Television would tell you; escape plans needed to be elaborate in order to succeed. People weren't filmed making daring escapes by turning an unlocked door handle. Television didn't lie.
And more importantly; it was not an escape unless they knew you were escaping. If they didn't know, then you were just running away.
Harry Potter Addams; eight years old; did not run away from anything. Not even his fat cousin Dudley with his game of 'Harry Hunting.'
He preferred to call it a 'tactical evasion.'
He did a lot of tactical evasions these days. Live to fight another day and all that.
Mostly just live another day.
Having just woken up, Harry considered this a great success. He flipped the switch of his closet. "Good morning Uncle Knick Knack." The dismembered hand scratched his head. "Good morning Thing."
It was early enough, he might be able to get started before the daily attempt on his life. He picked up a roll of blueprints. "Let the experiment commence! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
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With the exception of certain family rituals or common practices, the Addams did not formally teach magic. They came from an ancient family that believed magic to be the element that spawned chaos.
Teaching magic inflicted rules and laws against something that was never meant to be confined or measured. That's not to say they didn't use magic; only that it was an art to be determined by the user. Used and used by differently for everyone.
So even though magic had pretty much been a given for Harry in his first few days with the family, the idea of control was a lost concept.
Not that it mattered either way.
Stubbornness could get you farther than insanity.
Harry and Pugsley looked at the Necronomicon sitting on the table, flipping idly through its pages. Fester had called it a good joke book and given it to the two of them.
"What language is it?" Harry wondered aloud, pausing every couple of pages to look at one of the illustrations. That one looked like a tree… if a tree were using human corpses like a xylophone.
Pugsley turned the book upside down to look at an illustration. "Maybe it's that one you see singers using on T.V. all the time. Engrish was it?" He flipped though the book more until he found a picture he liked. "What do you think it is?"
Harry squinted at it and grunted. "Who knows? Eldritch horrors maybe?"
"You think so?" Pugsley immediately brightened up.
"Only one way to find out." Harry glanced at his cousin before they both shrugged and threw their arms up chanting and dancing around the table; improvising the spells as they did so.
"Telephone solicitor – New York cab driver- airline food – Bob Saget – McDonald's coffee - Barbara Streisand!"
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Outside in the cemetery, darkness seemed to gather and coil together, growing and shifting into something terrible… It moved towards the house…
Mortisha and Grandma-ma sat at the dining table. The former was reading a book while the latter worked on dinner. Neither looked up as a blob of darkness rushed through the room.
"Look Mama." Mortisha turned a page in her book. "Someone has summoned eldritch horrors to the house again."
"Feh!" Grandma-ma spit in the pot of boiling liquid she was cooking. "They don't make
Eldritch horrors like they used to."
The darkness rushed though the house. It could feel the ones who summoned it. But first, it spotted its first victim. It lurched at the towering figure-
Squish!
Lurch paused in his duties as he stepped on something. "HMMM…" He looked at the twitching blob of darkness stuck to the sole of his boot. He scraped his boot on the floor until it came loose, ignoring the whimpering, and continued his duties.
The blob rushed through the house again; this time at a slightly more sedate pace should more lurking giants be about.
There.
A little girl.
A nice easy target.
It rushed forward eagerly only to feel its instincts cry out to stop in fear of its existence.
Wednesday looked at the blob of darkness as it stopped near her feet. As she narrowed her eyes at it, it seemed to quiver and quietly move back in the other direction.
The darkness decided it would just go the other way around.
Yeah.
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After several minutes of waiting, Harry and Pugsley watched a blob of darkness morph slowly down the stairs as if it were sulking.
It perked up once it reached the bottom and realized they were there. With a great expansive leap, it moved at them. This time, it would-
"GROWF!" THUMP THUMP THUMP
"Eww! No! Bad Head Wig! That's Gross!" Harry turned away from the… activity that now occupied the basement corner. He didn't know darkness could wail like that.
Pugsley frowned and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, that's a dud."
Harry frowned in agreement. He flipped a page in the book. "Try again?"
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AN: Thanks to all of you wonderfully demented people out there. Any thoughts, ideas, escape plans, experiments or plot bunnies you think would be a good idea, please include them in your review and I shall consider them. You are an inspiration to my work. Literally.