Chapter I: HAGGIS ATTACK!

The protagonists of the story were eating breakfast in the Great Hall, seated at the Gryffindor table. Seriously, where else would they sit? No one cared about the other three houses anyway.

Anyway (hmm… that word just ended and started two adjacent sentences), there were a bunch of students who happened to be friends. No one really knew why they had a certain liking for each other �“ could they have been childhood friends, or have met on the Hogwarts express, or perhaps formed some bond in the aftermath of a daring rescue of one of their number from the jaws of a killer iguana?

Who knew? Hell, even the author didn’t! The fact was, they were friends, and it really wasn’t important to the story why or how that came to be. There just had to be some convenient reason as to why the group of students would consistently sit at the same place and have conversations in order to advance the plot of the story, so friends they were.

And that group of friends was of completely indeterminate size and composition. No student or teacher at Hogwarts knew exactly how many there were (some characters disappeared and some were newly introduced from time to time) or if they were boys, girls, or a mix.

But not wanting to be overtly sexist, the author sensibly decided to make the group of friends an interesting mix of magical boys and girls, a group of perhaps eight or something like that. There was a stereotypical smart student, a stupid one, a sarcastic one, a couple infatuated with each other, and some other characters designed to make the group as thoroughly average as possible.

To avoid further dithering about that great Gryffindor groupie group that had no guinea pigs (the author was bored, so he decided to liven up the diction with a stupid bit of alliteration), they ate a hearty breakfast that consisted of food �“ namely the edible type.

Without introducing any of their names yet, they finished eating with their miniature pitchforks (as in forks) and scimitars (as in guitar picks) and headed to their first class of the day: Defence Against the Dark Arts. And so they waltzed down the corridors and rushed up the stairs to the classroom that was located somewhere in the castle.

They entered the room and were joined by a group of Hufflepuff students. The teacher was seated behind the desk and stood up once everyone had taken their seats.

“Now, erm…” the teacher muttered to the students, “what year are you in?”

The group of Gryffindor friends and their Hufflepuff companions looked at each other, perplexed. They shrugged their shoulders, but one of the girls in the group of friends raised her hand.

“Yes?” said the teacher.

“Well, we’re not sure,” she informed the teacher delicately. “The author hasn’t specified what year we are in. I guess we’re just… students.”

The teacher had a flummoxed expression, but then asked, “And your name is?”

She hesitated for a moment before answering. That was a very awkward question, needless to say…

“I don’t know, professor. My name won’t be revealed until the next chapter.”

With the answer to the first question taken into consideration, the teacher seemed to expect an answer like that and looked slightly less confused. “Very well,” the teacher (still of unknown age, sex, and appearance) said, “five points for Gryffindor, er… whoever you are. Do you mind if I call you ‘Girl A,’ just so that the readers know I’m referring to you instead of some other girls?”

The other girls scowled since they were only ‘other girls,’ but Girl A beamed. “Thank you, Professor!” she exclaimed.

The teacher person-Homo sapiens sapiens-thing then proceeded straight to the lesson. To avoid setting the story during any of the actual Harry Potter books, the professor was (naturally) an original character, also in an effort to avoid the whole in-character thing that was such a pain in the arse.

“And now, we will learn how to defend ourselves against various Dark Fruit and Vegetables,” the teacher announced the class.

“Why was that capitalised?” Girl A whispered to one of her male friends, who simply shrugged. One of the Gryffindor friends was a bit more perceptive than the others and muttered, “Wait… this sounds oddly familiar.”

He didn’t have much time to contemplate the Monty Python reference. The students were assembled in a line facing the teacher, who went through each student in turn, having them practise against some Dark Grapes (now strangely italicised…). The Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors both went through the rounds, casting spells at the teacher armed with the deadly weapon, but luckily no one was hurt or killed during the course of the lesson.

However, that was very boring. The author thought it was very dull having nothing terribly exciting (as in violent!) happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so he decided that a nice dose of chaos would liven things up. His fingers typed away on that QWERTY keyboard of his, and�“

BAM! BOOM! BABOON!

“WHAT THE FRIG?” one of the Hufflepuff boys yelled in alarm, restraining himself to prevent increasing the rating of the story.

The wall of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom directly behind the teacher had explosively exploded in an explosive explosion of exploding explosiveness. When the rubble and bits of stone and cloud of dust cleared, a man in swooshy black robes, holding a long wooden staff, and wearing ram’s horns on his head emerged.

“Oh my Godric!” screamed Girl A, since religious oaths didn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world, and a substitute was needed. “It’s him!”

“Who?” the stupid member of the group of Gryffindor friends asked in confusion.

She answered, “It’s�“”

“TIM THE ENCHANTER!” Tim the Enchanter roared in an incredibly obnoxious and thoroughly unconvincing Scottish accent. The author (for it was he) was bored, typing this story late at night, so he decided to make a stupid cameo appearance in the little creation he created.

“But we’re not a ‘little creation!’” fumed Girl A, somehow able to read the preceding paragraph (her character was already starting to become something of a Hermione Granger figure, oddly enough). “We’re real people in a real story you created! We are… er…”

Her voice trailed off. How could she support her argument if she didn’t even know her own name or what she even looked like? Tim the Enchanter noticed, and laughed maniacally and Scottishly, if that was even a word. If not, the author made it up.

“Prepare to meet ABSURDITY, my little friends!” Tim shouted to his terrified, captive literary creations. “Your doom approaches with nasty hot flickery orange things!”

He twirled the long wooden staff in his hands and pointed it at the classroom door to the corridor. There was a jet of napalm and the door was coated in flames, trapping the students inside the classroom.

“Now… YOU!” Tim the Enchanter ordered to a random student, “Come here!”

Meekly the student complied, his eyes darting nervously from the author’s face to the tip of the staff aimed at his chest.

“Let’s have some fun, aye?” the author said menacingly to the group of students, but especially to the one he had singled out. “You have two choices. Death… or HAGGIS!”

Tim the Enchanter laughed evilly again, pointing dramatically to an enormous pot of haggis that wasn’t there earlier, and which must have been edited into the story right about… now. The doomed student’s sole purpose in the story was to simply die in some gruesome manner, just to highlight how deadly serious the situation was. And he did.

He foolishly chose to eat the haggis, and then expired in an incredibly horrific but very imaginative way. Apparently, it was ‘death and haggis.’ After all the penguins had melted away, the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and their teacher were positively cowering in fear, huddled in a corner and looking at the mad author with absolute terror in their eyes.

“HA HA HA!” Tim laughed unnecessarily as he fired a stream of haggis from his staff into the mass of students. The vile (absolutely, positively delicious) Scottish food cascaded into desks and people, ricocheting off surfaces and splattering the walls with the ingredients that were best not mentioned.

Just when the group of Gryffindor friends thought they were all going to meet their end, they heard the author shout (the fake Scottish accent mysteriously disappearing), “Bloody hell! Is that the time?”

Without another word, Tim the Enchanter vanished from the horrendous fanfiction he had written and proceeded to do better things.

---

It was night and freakin’ cold outside. The group of Gryffindor friends were assembled mutinously in their common room. They had survived a harrowing ordeal in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and considered themselves incredibly lucky to be alive at the moment.

But they weren’t just relieved, thus the inclusion of the word ‘mutinously’ in the previous paragraph’s first sentence. They were angry, livid, furious, incensed, riled, infuriated, irate, mad, fuming, and any number of other adjectives used to describe anger with great redundancy.

One of the nameless boys in the groups (he was the character that exhibited the leadership qualities) said to his fellows, “Our author is a hyperactive psychopath! Doesn’t he have anything better to do than torture the characters he made in this story? We have to put an end to this, and I say we must act now! It’s time we put our lives in our own hands for once!”

His impassioned call for resistance was answered with jubilant but hushed agreement.

“That’s right!” contributed one of the girls. “We have absolutely no character development! None at all! We have a RIGHT to know what we look like and what our names are!”

“Yeah! Hear hear!”

The Leader Boy then addressed his friends, his co-conspirators, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” He was the impulsive kind of person.

But Girl A had something to argue about. “No, we shouldn’t,” she told them in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Her group of friends looked at her like she had gone totally bonkeroonie. “Are you mental?” they asked her angrily, and perhaps feeling a bit betrayed. “Do you like having Tim make stupid things happen to us and our school whenever he gets bored?”

Girl A was as cool as a cold cucumber that had been left in the freezer, then warmed up for a bit in toaster oven, and then put back in the freezer again, not that that simile made any sense at all. She simply replied, “I do want to rise against our author, but I think we shouldn’t do so right now�“”

“But he’s asleep right now! We have an opportunity!” interrupted the Leader Boy.

“Yes, I know,” she continued impatiently. “However, I say we just wait until the next chapter. First of all, it’ll make a better story if we alternate our little bit of subterfuge with Tim’s insanity �“ creates a better flow and makes the sequence of chapters more organised, you see. Secondly, but more importantly, none of us know any of our names yet. If we wait until the next chapter, our names will be introduced, and then we’ll be stronger because our characters are more in-depth.”

The Gryffindor friends all looked at Girl A, with identical expressions of confusion and understanding, which was totally contradictory and thus impossible. To rewrite that sentence, they all just looked at Girl A.

“I guess you have a point there,” one of the other friends (male, female, hermaphrodite, squirrel?) admitted. “Okay. We’ll suffer through one more day, but the revolution starts tomorrow night!”

Assorted cheering.

The Leader Boy asked, “So, all in favour?”

Everyone raised their hands and smiled triumphantly. So it was agreed. The uprising against the author, Tim the Enchanter, would begin in the next chapter.

“Now, we just need to come up with a name for ourselves…” Leader Boy stated, trailing off at the end of that sentence of dialogue, just like the first chapter of this story…

Chapter B: Absurdity Who’s Who

The next morning, the assorted group of Gryffindor friends were once again at the Gryffindor table, eating their breakfast.

Actually, they were trying to eat their porridge or toast or whatever they were eating, but they all found themselves unable to concentrate on food. Instead, they all nervously looked around them, at the other students and professors in the Great Hall, as if expecting something unexpected to come barging into the story’s plot with a severe lack of grace.

Leader Boy checked the watch that he didn’t know he had until the beginning of this chapter. He looked at the dozen little hands and planets spinning around and frowned, as if the unfathomable time piece told him something unpleasant.

“Anyone know their names yet?” he asked anxiously to his friends assembled at their section of the table.

He was answered by a quiet chorus of “No’s.”

“We're supposed to get our names in this chapter!” he fumed. “We should have attacked last night when we had the chance!”

Ever the voice of reason, Girl A interrupted the mutinous mutterings and explained, “Tim the Enchanter is probably doing other things at the moment and isn’t at his computer right now. We’ll just have to wait for him to start writing this chapter.”

With increasing anxiety and impatience, they did. Without having eaten much, the friends left the Great Hall and went to their classes.

And nothing happened. No explosions, penguins, haggis, and �“ unfortunately �“ no names either. The students found themselves so unable to pay attention that several points were taken from their house.

“Can’t you pay attention?” one of the professors had shouted. “You’re acting as if you’re expecting some crazed Scotsman with a flamethrower to come crashing in any second!”

Oddly, nothing out of the ordinary happened all day. Things were so normal that the Gryffindor friends found the experience quite eerie, albeit something they’d like to see happen a lot more often.

“What’s taking him so long?” one of the Gryffindor boys asked with agitation during supper, tapping his fingers on the long oak table. “I am becoming noticeably impatient!”

The author hadn’t intervened in the story in any way, though that makes one wonder how all of this text came to be. Anyway, one of the girls at the table replied, “Well, I kind of like this. Nothing stupid has happened today at all �“ it’s something I can get used to.”

However, the nameless girl was rebuked by her peers, one of whom said, “So, you’re dropping out of our revolution then, is that what you’re telling us? You like having no name?”

“What? I didn’t mean that at all! What made you think of that?” the girl who set this conversation in motion answered defensively.

The other girl’s face turned red with some sort of bottled frustration, and then she exploded, blurting out, “IT’S THE TENSION! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE! AAAAAHHHHHH!”

And with that, she jumped from her seat and ran out of the Great Hall screaming her head off. The Gyffindor friends and everyone else at Hogwarts stared at that sudden spectacle, and they couldn’t have heard an atomic nuclei of argon drop (since it was a gas), that’s how quiet it was.

Once the shock had worn off, Wat Tyler turned to his remaining friends and announced, “That… was weird. Looks like the author’s returned�“”

“Wait!” said Meagan suddenly, to be answered by a “What?” from Wat.

“Your name is Wat Tyler!” she revealed excitedly, noticing his suddenly introduced name barely two sentences ago.

He didn’t understand what she was on about. “Of course it is, Meagan,” he said, as if it was as obvious as a solitary giraffe in a colony of lunatics. “I know what my name�“”

Wat stopped suddenly, and it dawned on him. “What kind of name is Wat?” he asked the ceiling with intermingled relief and exasperation.

Before any of his friends, Meagan, or the ceiling could answer, everyone at the tables was distracted by a jetpack-wearing Galápagos giant tortoise that zoomed down the length of the Great Hall, did some acrobatic loops and twists in midair, and departed out the doors with a shower of colourful sparks and smoke.

“Yep. Tim’s back.” Wat observed. “Let’s get the hell out of here before something absurd happens!”

The group of Gryffindor friends (two of their number named Wat Tyler and Meagan) decided that was best and hastened the termination of their evening sustenance consumption. They ran up and down corridors and climbed stairs until they reached the Gryffindor common room. As they closed the portrait door, the echoing booms of explosions and harpsichords could be heard.

“Whew! Glad we got out of there in time!” Wat declared to his friends, once they had seated themselves at the cluster of squishy chairs and sofas about the fireplace. Meagan, Chris, Zigmond, Alice, Harriet, and John nodded and muttered various words of agreement.

“Hey!” shouted Alice excitedly, “We all have names now!”

“Wow… John,” said John experimentally, testing the sound of that boring monosyllabic name. Nobody talked to each other for a few moments, as they were savouring the experience of having something to call themselves.

Finally, Chris broke the silence, suddenly annoyed. “How come all of our names are boring, except Zigmond’s? Can’t I have something better than ‘Chris’?”

That was a very good question. Meagan answered, “I guess the author doesn’t have much of an imagination when it comes to naming people, plus he can’t seem to come up with last names. Also, ‘Zigmond’ sounds too interesting �“ it must be an inside joke or something.”

They nodded thoughtfully, wondering what it could possibly be. Harriet turned to Meagan and asked, “Who are you?”

“What do you mean? I’m Meagan.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “What I mean is, who are you? What role do you play in this story?”

Meagan thought for a moment and quickly scanned the previous chapter and the beginning of this one before answering, “I suppose I’m ‘Girl A,’ introduced in Chapter I: HAGGIS ATTACK! as the smart girl who is used to explain certain plot points.”

The group of Gryffindor friends then tried to figure out what role each of them will play later on in the story. Amongst the boys, there was a heated argument over which one of them was Leader Boy.

“I called it first!” shouted Chris.

“But I have a better name than you!” retorted Zigmond.

“I’m smarter!” argued John.

“HEY!” yelled Wat Tyler in a loud, authoritative, carrying voice. “Just shut up for a second! I’m the Leader Boy, because…
A.) I have both a first and last name.
B.) I was the first character to have his name introduced.
C.) I’ve had more lines of dialogue than any of you three, and…
D.) Notice how I was just described as having a ‘loud, authoritative, carrying voice’?”

The other three Y-chromosome bearers of the group couldn’t argue with that, so they just moved on to something different.

“So, which of us is the stupid one, then?” Zigmond asked Chris and John.

“Oh, that’s easy,” said John quickly. “It’s Chris, obviously.”

“WHAT? No! You’re stupid! It’s you, you bastard!” Chris snapped back.

But John defeated him by pointing out, “HA! You’re resorting to the Ad hominem logical fallacy! You’ve just proved that you are the stupid character, because you’ve turned to personal attacks rather than trying to defend yourself with a reasoned argument, SO THERE!”

Chris turned red, though he only really understood half of what John had said. In one last, desperate act to clear his character’s name, he pointed his finger dramatically at one of the girls and cried, “But it’s not me! It’s Harriet, you see? She hasn’t said a single word in this chapter so far!”

Harriet fumed �“ her eyes were livid with (metaphorical) flames. “OH REALLY? Who’s the one who said, I quote, ‘who are you? What role do you play in this story?’ Who’s the one who started this conversation on our character roles in the first place, HUH?”

Chris looked awfully stupid after that. He sensibly (albeit angrily) conceded defeat. “I’m not that stupid,” he muttered under his breath.

That only left the “couple infatuated with each other,” (Chapter One, fifth paragraph) but no one in the group had any idea as to who should play those parts.

“Not me,” explained John. “I’m the heartless, sarcastic character in this story �“ no room for compassion.”

Zigmond shrugged his shoulders. Somewhat apathetically, he announced, “I’ll do it. Why not?”

The female volunteer was Alice, who said to Zigmond, “So… I guess I’m your girlfriend, then?”

“Sure,” answered Zigmond in a noncommittal tone. “Why do I like you again…?”

The only person in the group of Gryffindor friends that was left without any character type was Harriet. “And what am I? What role do I play?”

Meagan referred back to what little of the story had been written so far, and replied, “Well, there’s no role for you yet. I guess you’re just an extra character until Tim the Enchanter thinks of something to do with you.”

That was not what Harriet wanted to hear. She wasn’t in the best of moods for the rest of the chapter.

“Hey! There should be eight of us!” Wat said to his friends. “There was that girl who was part of our group, practically one thousand words ago! What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. She must have been a disposable character.”

“Who said that? If the author is too lazy to say who says what, please identify yourselves, said Wat.”

“It was me, said Meagan,” said Meagan.

With everyone in the group sorted out (Harriet being the notable exception), the only thing left to be done before the beginning of the revolution was to name themselves. It needed to be catchy, inspiring, and revealing of their intentions.

“How about the Down With Tim the Psychotic Author Association?” suggested Zigmond. “We can call it DWiTPAA for short.”

“Or how about the Association for a Better Story, or ABS?” contributed Harriet, desperate to make her character serve some useful function, even if it was simply ‘idea supplier.’

And so they argued for the next several minutes, but it was John rather than Meagan who came up with the solution. “How about The Absurd Fanfic Revolution?” he said.

“AFR? That’s a horrible acronym!” stated Chris, even though he didn’t know what an acronym was �“ he then looked up straight to the ceiling and shouted, “HEY! I know what an acronym is, Tim!”

But the author didn’t care, and he resolved to make Chris stupider in every successive chapter.

When John was asked by the others why he had picked the name he did, he explained, “Well, it’s perfectly simple. It’s the title of this story, so I thought it would just make sense if we named our group after it.”

Or was the story named after the group? THAT was an interesting question…

Anyway, it was decided - The Absurd Fanfic Revolution it was. All they had to do was wait for Tim the Enchanter to fall asleep, and then they would strike!

A few uneventful hours passed by before their planned midnight assault on the author. During that time, the AFR amused themselves by contemplating how their characters would develop after Tim had folded to their demands.

“I want to be tall and blonde,” Alice sighed. “…with nice blue eyes like the sea. I hope the author makes me nice, funny, and… caring,” she finished, after thinking thoughtfully for a bit. What a drip.

“Hell, I don’t want Tim to create my character,” John stated to anyone who’d listen. “I’d much rather form my personality on my own, thanks.”

So they talked, until Wat Tyler checked his watch and announced, “It’s time. The revolution officially starts right about… now!”

The student rebels cheered and unsheathed their wands dramatically, ready to do battle. They were not going to back down, not at all, not until Tim the Enchanter made them proper characters and left them in peace like they deserved!

“Now what?” asked Chris.

Meagan tut-tutted impatiently and walked into the middle of the deserted common room. With a broad, slashing movement of her wand, she shouted, “Computoris Portus Openus!”

Suddenly, there was a bright spinning light thing that endangered our intrepid heroes with the possibility of giving them seizures.

“What are you waiting for? Come on, chums!” Wat exclaimed as he threw himself into the brilliant portal. The rest all followed his lead and jumped through, and the glowing light disappeared.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Seven bodies fell out from nowhere and crashed into the very solid ground. Amazingly, no one suffered even a scratch, so they all just stood up and stumbled blindly in the dark, because it happened to be dark.

“Why is it so dark?” Chris inquired.

“That’s because it’s night time, you stupid idiot!” John’s voice answered.

“Either that, or Tim’s computer has the screen saver on,” suggested Meagan. “Lumos.”

From her wand light, the Gryffindor student rebel friend group discovered that they were standing on one of several large white rectangles arranged in a column, situated in the middle of a vast, endless grey plain.

The others also lit their wands, but that only revealed more bleak, flat, boring landscape, whose only interesting feature was the large white rectangles the main characters were standing on.

“Where are we?” asked Harriet.

Meagan aimed her wand at the ground and noticed that she was standing on some words written in black. She moved her feet so she could read what it said:

Meagan aimed her wand at the ground and noticed that she was standing on some words written in black. She moved her feet so she could read what it said:

“This is it! We’re in Tim’s word processor! This is the file for this story!”

“Bloody hell!” yelled Zigmond, also transfixed by the floor. “The page is writing itself! Look!”

Everyone did and were amazed to see this exact, very sentence forming into being right in front of their eyes! IT WAS WEIRD!

“This is just, too weird,” Alice admitted with redundancy in relation to the previous paragraph. Her eyes determinately avoided gazing at the ground, where her very words and actions were appearing in black letters, Times New Roman font size twelve, with justified margins.

“Okay, I have a plan, everyone,” said Wat, motioning for his friends to gather around him. “Let’s split up into groups of two and ransack all of his documents. Meanwhile, one team will stay here and rewrite this story. Agreed?”

Everyone nodded, but there was a problem since there were seven people who had to split into groups of two. Wat solved that little dilemma by simply agreeing to join one of the groups to even things out.

Meagan, Harriet, and Wat formed one group, the apathetic couple Zigmond and Alice formed another, and John and Chris (they both swore loudly, not at all thrilled with their pairing) were left together in the last group.

And so the three groups went their separate ways: Wat’s group stayed to edit this current story while the other two teams departed to do whatever they pleased to Tim the Enchanter’s other files. They conjured some brooms out of thin air and soared up to the monstrous horizontal blue bar suspended in midair that was emblazoned with the words, The Absurd Fanfic Revolution.doc �“ Microsoft Word, shining in the reflected wand light.

John pushed the File button below the story’s title, and another menu appeared. Alice dipped her conjured broom down slightly and reached for the button that said Open. A window appeared with a huge list of files, and after some farewells, the two groups dived in and disappeared.

Chapter One, Revisited

It was a pristine, peaceful morning at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The assembled multitude of students ate breakfast at their respective house tables, all equal in prestige and dignity.

One section of the Gryffindor table was occupied by a knot of seven students, who were all close friends after having spent nearly seven years together at the school. They had shared so many experiences, so many adventures that they all were a blur �“ each advancing day together was something to be treasured in its entirety.

And that even included their classes as well. Once done with their breakfasts, Wat, Meagan, John, Harriet, Zigmond, Alice, and Chris set off together to the day’s first lesson: Defence Against the Dark Arts. They navigated the familiar maze of corridors and stairs, passing portraits of waving and smiling witches and wizards of old.

“Have a wonderful day in class, young scholars!” a painting of a man wearing an enormous ruff said as they walked by.

Soon enough, the seven opened the heavy oaken door, slipped inside, and took their seats at one side of the classroom. They were soon joined by a few extra Gryffindors, balanced by the arrival of the seventh year Hufflepuff students. Once the entire class was assembled, the professor, a tall, handsome young man with turquoise hair stood up from behind his desk and greeted his students.

“Good morning everyone,” he addressed brightly.

“Good morning, Professor Lupin,” his class replied enthusiastically. Aside from being an excellent teacher, he was a very likeable man, and particularly popular amongst the female half of the student body. The girls all ignored the gold ring on his finger.

“Excellent,” he said, rubbing his hands together with excitement and smiling. “Now, I thought it would be fun if we played a little game in this lesson, to help us practise our nonverbal incantations.”

“I will split the class into two equal teams, who will take their positions at each side of the classroom. The rules are quite simple: you must stun everyone on the other team without speaking, while simultaneously defending yourselves and your fellow team members. For every student left standing at the end of each round, I will grant his or her house five points. Any questions…?”

“What happens if we cast a spell verbally?” a Hufflepuff named Alan asked.

Professor Lupin smiled. He answered in an amused tone, “Then you’ll have to deal with me, the referee. I will attempt to stun any player who forgets to keep their mouth shut, but you are welcome to shoot a spell back at me.”

Some of the girls stifled snickers �“ who would want to curse him?

“I suppose that clears everything up,” the professor finished cheerfully. “So, if you don’t mind, I must sincerely and with great regret, request that you remove your books and quills, for all you need is your wand.”

Eagerly, everyone in the class cleared their desks of their school supplies and stuffed them into their bags, and there was a flurry of movement as wands were brought out.

Professor Lupin had everyone leave their desks, and with a wave of his wand, they all soared to either end of the classroom and huddled against the wall. Once the arena was cleared, he cleverly divided the class into two teams, with each side having an equal number of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor students.

And so they played. In silence, red stunners shot back and forth from one side to the other, some blocked or deflected by shield charms cast in equal silence. Chris and some other students slipped and blurted out incantations aloud, and they found themselves duelling Professor Lupin as well as their opponents �“ needless to say, the talkers lost.

“Excellent, excellent! Great job everyone!” the professor announced at the end of the last of several rounds of combat. He went to the middle of the classroom and revived the stunned students for the third time, and cheerfully said, “Better luck next time. You’re improving!”

He turned to the unscathed members of that round’s winning team and said, “Wat, Harriet; Alan, April �“ ten extra points for Gryffindor and ten for Hufflepuff. Congratulations.”

At the lesson’s end, both houses had each gained about forty points. The homework Professor Lupin assigned was to simply practise nonverbal offensive and defensive spells, and he dismissed the class.

For the rest of the day until lunchtime, the seven friends were eagerly discussing the exciting lesson they just had.

“You should have seen the look on your face when I hit you with that stunning spell. It was great!” John nudged Chris, who grimaced, annoyed.

Meanwhile, Meagan was talking about their teacher’s lesson strategy: “Professor Lupin is a really good teacher. He knows how to get his class enthusiastic about his subject. He makes lessons informative and competitive, yet he doesn’t aggravate house rivalries...”

So Wat, Meagan, John, Harriet, Zigmond, Alice, and Chris ended up having another fascinating, normal day at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They had Herbology with Professor Longbottom, lounged about outside near the lake for free period (Chris and John had a furious stone skimming contest, and it was Chris’ turn to celebrate victory), and ate some rather good Yorkshire pudding and sausages during supper.

But once they had finished eating, their light-hearted moods were replaced by something much more sombre. They got up form the Gryffindor table and went their separate ways, with determined, focused expressions etched into their faces. Purposefully, they plied the many corridors and halls of Hogwarts castle, each student armed with rolls of posters that they pasted to the stone walls with their wands. Each and every one of those posters were identical, bearing the same glaring message:

THE ABSURD FANFIC REVOLUTION
Students of Hogwarts!

The time has come for us to control our own destinies! Too long have we been abused by our author, Tim the Enchanter; he denies us of our rights to have full names, proper physical descriptions, and vital character developments. To him, we are nothing more than vague connotations of human figures, serving as mere literary toys to alleviate his boredom.

But we are so much more than that! Tim the Enchanter fails to realise that we are human beings, however incomplete, and not just character slaves to his every whim! We have decided that we cannot stand this injustice for any longer. We are The Absurd Fanfic Revolution, and it is our mission to make all of our characters complete and rid this school of the mad author’s yoke.

To Tim the Enchanter, our author. If you happen to be reading this, this is but a small preview of what we can, and what we will do. We have rewritten this chapter and edited your files, but this is only the beginning! And we will not stop until you come to your senses and cease the insanity that has gripped this unfortunate story.

Signed,

Wat Tyler
Meagan
John
Harriet
Zigmond
Alice
Chris

We are not afraid. My fellow students, my friends, let us join together and change the world!

---

Tim the Enchanter sat in the chair in front of the computer screen. He had gone rigid, transfixed by his character’s call to resistance, staring at him right in the face.

We have rewritten this chapter and edited your files…

Those were the words that hit him the most. Once the shock had subsided and he returned to his senses, Tim frantically checked everything else on his word processor. His cursor raced and clicked from File to Open to My Documents, and then opened the last folder entitled Random Garbage.

The sight that greeted his eyes almost made him jump. He also swore loudly.

Every single file had been renamed. Charming documents such as You Are A Moron.doc; Down With Tim, You Arse!.doc; and Git.doc had repopulated the folder. With trepidation, Tim clicked on Git.doc. What he saw did not make him happy.

The original file apparently was Out of the Darkness.doc, but the story had been completely redone. He read his altered creation in horror, and discovered that the word ‘Git’ had replaced every name and personal pronoun. Furthermore, other charming things had been done to it, such as editing in pink flamingos in random parts of the story, and having Voldemort say things like, “Hey Tim �“ you are sexy. I want to have your babies.”

Tim the Enchanter opened up other files and found similar devastation. The Absurd Fanfic Revolution had hit, and hit hard �“ Tim gave them that much credit.

He returned to the document for this current story (it had been renamed Declaration of Fanfiction Character Independence.doc) and reread the rewritten first chapter with intense, but restrained fury. He hated how normal the story had become, but he needed to be able to think…

With the second read, he noticed that the so-called Absurd Fanfic Revolution had declared themselves seventh-year students. Typical �“ it was a clever move to give them as much magical experience as possible, thus the nonverbal Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. Tim also noted (a bit wryly) that it served as a good safety net in case their little revolt devolved into chaos, ensuring that they would graduate from Hogwarts and leave the story in due course anyway.

But that wasn’t the only dastardly, bastardly machination they had done: the rebels had specifically mentioned that Ted Remus Lupin and Neville Longbottom were Hogwarts teachers. Yet another clever trick… They had set the story at least twenty years after the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, excluding the epilogue, ensuring that there was no Voldemort threatening their continued existence. With no evil dark wizard to worry about, the entirety of their attention could be focused towards the author. Him. Tim the Enchanter.

“Bashtards,” Tim muttered angrily, his fake Scottish accent more pronounced than ever and now something of a caricature of Sean Connery’s voice.

All was not lost, for Tim suddenly realised that he had inadvertently rendered the fanfic characters’ assault impotent. Barely a week earlier, he had saved all of his Word files onto a flash drive memory stick �“ he breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Tim the Enchanter instantly went to work. He loaded the files from the memory stick and saved them over The Absurd Fanfic Revolution’s cowardly sabotage. For this story’s document, he simply accessed his fanfiction.mugglenet.com account, clicked on this very story, and copy and pasted the text for each chapter into the newly restored file.

He undid everything the little fanfic rebels had done in less than fifteen minutes.

Stupid wizards, Tim thought savagely. They don’t know anything about computers.

With the student’s first attack countered, he plotted his revenge �“ for inspiration, he ate some sugary Skittles™. Wild, swirling schemes of fiery rainbow vengeance filled his mind, consuming him.

“Heh heh… those wee braggartsh want a wahr?” Tim the Enchanter uttered manically, his fake Scottish accent piercing and heated. “Then they’re gohing teh get one!”

Laughing some more, he typed away at his computer like a man possessed.

Chapter 4: Get Hammered and Sickled!

Once again, the group of friends/revolutionaries were gathered at their usual spot at the Gryffindor table. They couldn’t concentrate on eating; they had few precious morsels to nibble on as they anxiously looked around, waiting for some kind of response from the author. Wat was chewing the same sausage for several minutes, staring into space. Meagan failed to notice that her food had been knocked to the floor, and John was absent-mindedly stabbing a piece of toast with his fork. The others were doing similar things, but the author was too lazy to go into detail.

However, the seven friends weren’t the only nervous ones in the Great Hall that morning. All the students and teachers had seen the posters on the wall. Previously in the story, they had just gone along with Tim the Enchanter’s eccentricities, since they were simply background characters that contributed nothing to the plot �“ besides, they had no minds anyway. Now that the protagonists of the story had essentially declared war on the author, no one was safe.

“Looks like you got us into a right bloody mess,” Professor Lupin had said very attractively to the seven rebels earlier before breakfast.

Some took that painful fact badly, and were positively terrified. They hid underneath the table, hoping beyond hope that they would be spared from Tim the Enchanter’s wrath. Others were unbelievably thick and gittish, and were convinced that the author would give in to their demands.

But most of the assorted students and teachers of Hogwarts were like-minded with The Absurd Fanfic Revolution �“ they knew that Tim the Enchanter was crazy, but highly unlikely to give up easily. If they were to win against the author, it would only be after a very long, desperate struggle.

“Get Hammered and Sickled…” Meagan muttered softly, reading the heading at the top of this chapter. “I don’t like that title at all. Makes me worry…”

“So, any ideas as to what Tim’s next move is?” inquired Wat in order to drag out whatever moments of peace they had left.

“I don’t know,” answered Harriet, “probably the usual absurdity with a lot of explosions and random things like that.”

There was murmured agreement, but Meagan interjected, “There probably will, but I think Tim will try to negotiate or demand that we step down first. Striking immediately sounds a bit rushed, and there won’t be any kind of suspense if he does tha�“”

Just then, the huge doors to the Great Hall burst open with a crash and a terrified student came running in, shouting at the top of his lungs:

“THE RED ARMY’S HERE! THE RED ARMY’S ATTACKING HOGWARTS!”

Some people screamed, but others were evidently confused: “What’s the Red Army?”

“THE SOVIETS! THE EFFING SOVIETS ARE�“”

BOOM!

There was a huge explosion and part of the Great Hall’s ceiling collapsed, showering everyone with crumbled bits of stone and roof tiles. The sky outside was the exact same tranquil blue as the enchanted ceiling, but through the hole they saw a massive helicopter with rotor blades buzzing like some huge satanic bumblebee that was in no mood to pollinate flowers. There was a series of bright flashes�“

“EVERYONE, DOWN!” Wat Tyler screamed just as the rockets and bullets from the Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship started raining down. There was a chain of cataclysmic explosions as the rocket warheads hit the floor and tables, blasting apart chunks of marble and vicious splinters of wood. A few machine gun rounds pounded into flesh, making sick, wet, slapping sounds.

Barely a moment later, the helicopter was gone. A few braver students got up from under their tables with their wands drawn, but one look at that small bit of devastation removed any fantasies of valiant combat from their minds. If what the explosives and bullets did to the tables and floor was bad, then the effect on the few unlucky people hit was much, much worse. For emphasis, a bloodied, severed arm was hanging in midair, suspended by a bunch of floating candles that had melted together in the heat. But why had the helicopter gone?

An answer was provided in the form of an artillery barrage. Within seconds, hundreds of shells descended upon Hogwarts castle, blasting apart battlements, wrecking roofs, and pulverising parapets. It was an intense, furious orgy of explosive bangs that made the very ground shake and the walls of the castle writhe in pain.

The rebel students, teachers, and all their fellows were huddled under whatever cover they could find �“ the ones who had gotten up tactfully retreated under the ruined tables. The Great Hall was filled with frantic, terrified screams, but none could be heard over the echoing, deafening din of the artillery.

After what seemed like an eternity of chaos but was only two short paragraphs in actuality, the rain of explosions ceased �“ the castle had gone eerily quiet, as if setting the stage for some inspiring speech.

Wat Tyler did not miss a beat �“ he got up out from under the Gryffindor table and stood on top of its bullet-ridden surface. In the loudest, carrying voice he could muster, he pointed his finger at the gaping hole in the ceiling and shouted, “IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO, TIM? YOU COWARD!”

Inspired by his example, The Absurd Fanfic Revolution and other students and teachers came out from hiding to stand erect and proud in the devastated Great Hall. “Come on, everyone! STAND UP! We’re fighting!” Wat called to his fellow characters.

Soon enough, everyone assembled to hear his inspiring speech �“ even the Slytherins. And they were not disappointed.

“Students! Teachers! My fellow fanfiction characters! My friends… The time has come for us to fight, and fight we will! If we want to live in peace as characters with depth and integrity, we have to earn that right! We will fight and defeat whatever armies our psychotic author throws at us, and that’s NOT going to happen if we squander our few remaining precious paragraphs of existence, cowering like some pathetic Frenchmen! TO BATTLE! Let’s show those commies our BRITISH SPUNK!”

“HURRAH!” everyone shouted in a resonating chorus of cheers. Hundreds of wands were unsheathed to war cries of “Down with Tim!” and “Let’s go!”

“To the towers, doors, and walls, everyone!” Wat cried as the wave of students charged down the length of the Great Hall to man the castle’s defences. For the first time in several decades, Headmistress McGonagall shouted “Piertotum locomotor!” Hundreds of suits of armour in the corridors thundered to the floors from their plinths, and at her order, they ran off clanking and banging to combat.

“Do we stick together or split up?” John yelled over the crescendo of cheers, rushing footsteps, and distant explosions.

“NO!” shouted Meagan in response. “We have to stick together as a collective perspective for the battle! If we split up, we’ll increase the number of viewpoints, and this battle will be paragraphs longer, and we’ll suffer more casualties that way!”

“Right! What she said!” ordered Wat, “But let’s get going! No time to waste!”

The seven Absurd Fanfic Revolutionaries stayed together as they headed to the entrance hall. The hundreds of other fighters with them thinned out as they went their separate ways to other floors and towers.

The entrance hall had seen better days �“ the artillery bombardment had wreaked terrible havoc. Every single window had shattered into a million pieces, statues and gargoyles had toppled to the ground, and the massive doors creaked ominously. Wat ran up to one of the destroyed windows and looked outside.

Immediately, he wished he hadn’t.

The school grounds were crawling with Soviet armour: T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks with long guns, squat BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles, and a plethora of steel-plated cousins on wheels and treads. Amongst the mechanised wave was a horde of Russian soldiers waving red flags and armed to the teeth. The skies above were abuzz with swarms of Hind helicopters, and transport planes flew high overhead, disgorging throngs of paratroopers.

Even the lake was scary to look at: several destroyers and cruisers had somehow appeared in the middle of the waters and were shelling the castle with their large guns and guided missiles. Landing craft and ekronoplans beached themselves on the lake’s shore and unloaded soldiers and vehicles �“ the giant squid’s dead carcass lay rotting on the sand.

After barely looking for one second, a volley of assault rifle and machine gun fire came pelting in, aimed directly at Wat’s face. He ducked just in time, for the hail of lead pummelled into the wall behind him, pulverising the fronts of the stone.

“THIS IS IT!” he cried out, braver than he felt. What could his thin little wand do against that much firepower arrayed against him?

He was about to find out. The crescendo of explosions grew louder, and the walls shook ever more violently. Bullets streamed in through the windows, and no one dared go near them. Then came grenades…

“Grenades!” someone shouted unnecessarily. One fighter who kept his cool banished them out the window again with a swish of his wand. Others conjured shield charms that deflected bursts of shrapnel as some of the explosives detonated.

More 125mm high-explosive shells from T-72 tanks slammed into the castle, and 12.7mm machine gun bullets careened through the destroyed windows, chipping stone and ricocheting�“

“Where’s all of this technical stuff coming from?” John yelled, perplexed at the downpour of deadly data. “Is our author some weapons-crazed freak?”

CRASH! The great doors to the castle were torn asunder, splintered to pieces and ripped from their hinges. A long, thick snout emerged through the cloud of dust and smoke, and there was a clattering of steel treads on stone�“

“TANK!”

Its main gun spat fire in an echoing bang that flayed everyone’s eardrums. The cannon shell crashed into a wall and tore it down, blasting fragmented bits of stone about the hall and creating a rain of loosened masonry.

The Absurd Fanfic Revolution and their nameless followers screamed like the pathetic teenagers they were. The author degraded them further by making some of them break down and cry for their mummies. HA HA! BUT MUMMY DOESN’T EXIST, BECAUSE TIM THE ENCHANTER HASN’T WRITTEN HER INTO THE DAMN STORY, YOU LITTLE WEEDS!

“Wingardium Leviosa!” somebody said stupidly, as if levitating things would win a duel against a tank. But hey, it worked for Ron against that troll in Philosopher’s Stone, so why not?

But remarkably, the tank soared up into the air �“ WOW! FREAKY! Its gun roared again and the force of the recoil blasted it out of the entrance hall, through the destroyed doors, and the tank gouged a deep hole in the grass where it landed.

However, that tank shell it fired had hit a wall and knocked out some big pieces of rubble which fell down on top of the disposable character who did that spell’s head. He/she/it died after shouting, “OUCHIE!”

“Oh Merlin!” cried out Alice. “Things are getting weird!”

Meagan suddenly had a Hermione moment. She grabbed Wat and yelled into his ear over the cacophonic crazy chaos of the battle, “I HAVE AN IDEA! JUST HOLD THEM OFF FOR A FEW PARAGRAPHS WHILE I GO TO THE LIBRARY!”

“WHAT?” he yelled back in complete terror, but she had already disappeared.

Soviet soldiers then flooded into the entrance hall, Kalashnikovs blazing and throwing bullets here and there and everywhere. “GET HAMMERED AND SICKLED!” was their war cry, which was in English for some reason. “Γο Προλεταριάτ, Βαβη!” others chanted, also in neither the correct language nor alphabet. It would have at least been in Cyrillic letters, but this website couldn’t read Russian, so Greek had to be used instead as a substitute.

Shouts of “PROTEGO!” rippled through the chaotic, cavernous room. A few dozen transparent shields were erected, and the communist bullets bounced off them with a ping!ping!ping!ping! ping! noise.

But some bullets didn’t bounce off, and instead found a gap in the wall of conjured shields. One nameless student’s head exploded in a thoroughly charming fashion.

“GALOPING GARGOYLES! GROSS!” Chris screamed in revulsion at the sight.

“Get Hammered and Sickled!” Bangbangbangbang! “Proletarii vsekh stran, soyedinyaytes!”

The Absurd Fanfic Revolution and their followers only managed to retaliate with a few stunners, which did nothing to stem the flood of incoming Soviets. Their entire, desperate defence was concentrated on maintaining the phalanx of shield charms, which was constantly being whittled away by the endless hail of lead.

There was another source of the ping!ping!ping!ping!ping! noises �“ the animated suits of medieval armour made that exact sound as they were riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. A few armoured statues almost got close enough to swing their swords or maces, but they were ultimately blown to pieces by Soviet RPG-7s.

There was nothing left to it. “FALL BACK!” Wat ordered. Slowly, the revolutionaries and their comrades in arms gave up ground, covering their retreat with layer upon layer of shield charms, which were blasted away with volley upon volley of gunfire and explosives. Occasionally, a few bullets wormed their way through the protective enchantments and struck the walls or people �“ another nameless student was wounded and another was killed, just to accentuate how desperate their situation was. Conditions elsewhere throughout the castle were equally grim.

The knot of defenders were battered back again and again, down the corridors and retreating ever closer to the Great Hall. They managed to create some barricades out of desks and chairs in the narrower sections of their route, but they were predictably blown apart with more rocket propelled grenades.

“Damn it! Where’s Herm �“ I mean, Meagan? Where’s Meagan?” Wat swore as he frantically conjured more shields to prevent his untimely demise.

“Here I am!” she yelled out of breath, holding a thick book and having appeared out of nowhere like some kind of witch or something.

“ABOUT BLOODY TIME!” he shouted over the banging of gunfire and the shouts of “PROTEGO!” and “GET HAMMERED AND SICKLED!”

“WHERE’VE YOU BEEN? WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING FOR MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED WORDS �“ THAT’S A LOT LONGER THAN ‘A FEW PARAGRAPHS!’”

“Well, I got it,” she explained, still panting slightly, “the book!”

She was holding a thick, weathered, red book with a faint gold title that read: Stupid Sorcery for Senseless Socialists.

“GREAT. JUST GREAT!” Wat screamed sarcastically.

Meagan ignored him and flipped through the pages until she found her desired chapter. “Got it!” she shouted when she found the right page. Following the book’s instructions, she waved her wand in a sharp lopsided semi-circle and bisected it with a diagonal slash, and yelled the incantation:

“PROLETARIUS EXPLODIKKUS!”

Amazingly, it worked! The closest row of Soviet soldiers just EXPLODED! Cool!

Her wand slashed again and again, drawing faux hammers and sickles in the air and causing more commies to blow up for no reason at all. Soon enough, some defenders mimicked her newly discovered spell and contributed to the exciting pyro detonation party.

“I’ll go spread the word!” Meagan said in farewell as she ran down a corridor and disappeared to aid the other combatants scattered about Hogwarts castle.

“COME ON EVERYONE! WE’RE PUSHING THEM BACK!” exclaimed Wat Tyler elatedly.

“Proletarius Explodikkus!”

“PROLETARIUS EXPLODIKKUS!”

Bit by bit, chunk by chunk, the revolutionaries exploded throngs of Soviet soldiers. It didn’t take long for them to realise that their bullets couldn’t (mostly) penetrate the shield charms, and it would only be a matter of time before they were all blown up by the Bolshevik-Blasting curses. They turned tail and ran.

Unfortunately (for the good guys, that is), The Absurd Fanfic Revolution’s pursuit was hampered by their own shield charms they had conjured to defend themselves. The students gave chase once they were taken down, but the Russians had a good head start and were desperately fleeing the scene.

“Hurry! Or else none of them will be left!” the AFR leader called to his fellow fighters. “HURRAH!” they replied in jubilant harmony.

After some long fast and furious moments of running down corridors and throwing spells at retreating Soviet backsides, the hundreds of the surviving revolutionaries from all the different corridors and towers converged in the entrance hall for some reason. The advance halted for a brief pause so Wat Tyler could make another inspiring speech:

“LET’S FINISH THEM! WE’LL PUSH THEM RIGHT INTO THE LAKE!”

There was a huge, resounding cheer. With renewed vigour, they charged out the smashed doors as one resurgent wave, bellowing cries of “HURRAH�“”

Pow!Pow!Pow!Pow�“
BOOM!
BAM! BAM!
Pow!Pow!Pow�“
WHAM! WHAM!
KAPOW!

Streams of 30mm automatic cannon fire from armoured vehicles tore into them. Swarms of anti-personnel rockets from helicopters rained down, and 125mm tank shells ripped great holes in the line. Also, a couple of MiGs flew by overhead, jet engines screaming, and dropped some 500kg bombs for good measure.

Obviously, the shield charms couldn’t cope. They failed under the ridiculously large amount of firepower and butchered revolutionaries left and right. A few tried to fight back, but they discovered to their horror that the Bolshevik-Blasting curse didn’t work on tanks… or helicopters or jets or destroyers…

Quick as a flash, Wat conjured a white flag out of nowhere, aimed his wand at his throat, and after casting a sonorous spell on himself, he shouted to the Soviets, “PLEASE! FOR GOODNESS SAKE, CEASE FIRE!”

Remarkably, the shooting stopped. A Soviet general with wild crop of fiery black hair, a moustache, and pointy goatee presented himself, with his right arm raised, elbow at a ninety degree angle �“ if that arm went down, the massacre would begin anew.

“What are your conditions of surrender, enemies of the Motherland?” asked Trotsky 2 the Avenger. The fruit salad of medals on his uniformed chest glistened in the sunlight. So too did the hammer and sickle in his left hand, itching to bash and slice.

With despair, Wat looked back at his battered followers, who stared back with defeated expressions. He sighed, but… enemies of the Motherland? he thought. That gave him an idea…

Well, it actually wasn’t well thought out. He simply blurted, “But there is no Motherland! The Soviet Union collapsed almost thirty years ago in 1991! You’re not even supposed to be here!”

That didn’t have the desired effect. They did not all suddenly disappear, like Wat had hoped �“ instead, that just made them angry. “Lying capitalist pig!” some Soviet soldiers shouted. “GET HAMMERED AND SICKLED!” others yelled. Wat found himself staring down the barrels of hundreds of AK-74s, not to mention tanks and other pleasant bits of modern military equipment.

He �“ no… They were in for it now…

Trotsky 2's arm came down�“

“TALLY, BALLY HO!” projected an impossibly loud but mercifully British voice.

BOOM!

The deus ex machina exploded, but not amongst The Absurd Fanfic Revolution's ranks. Royal Air Force jets swooped down from behind the sun, blasting away with cannon fire, bombs, and missiles. Swinging into position from behind the Forbidden Forest, the British Army came to the rescue �“ Challenger 2 tanks rumbled across the grass, shooting shells into the Soviet armour’s exposed posteriors. Warrior infantry carriers rolled in with automatic cannon chattering, and dumped soldiers into the ambush.

The student’s saviours weren’t only Muggles, however. A formation of scarlet-robed Aurors on brooms descended into the battlefield, firing spells down into the shocked mass of communist enemies below.

“PROLETARIUS EXPLODIKKUS!” roared Wat Tyler, and meanwhile the white flag of surrender in his hand magically transformed into a Union Jack, proudly flapping in the wind. The surviving revolutionaries eagerly joined into the battle after yet another miraculous change of fortune.

Under attack from all sides and caught by surprise, the Soviets faltered. After some fifteen seconds of hellish combat, they broke completely and would have routed, but they had no Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to run away to. With unimaginable bitterness etched on their faces, they surrendered.

They had done it. They had won, though it had been a desperate struggle, and the cost in lives was terrible.

Yet the revolutionaries had survived the army Tim the Enchanter had sent against them �“ they were one step closer to victory! One step closer to their ultimate character development and expulsion of the author, once and for all!

But…

If that was Tim’s first act of retaliation, I hate to imagine what comes next, Wat contemplated grimly, looking at the bloody aftermath of the great battle. One bloody step towards victory, indeed.

The Absurd Fanfic Revolution would have to walk many more.

Chapter Five: Getting Personal

The seven friends of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution were once again eating breakfast at the Gryffindor table, just like they had in every single chapter so far. Why should that change?

Even the assault by the Red Army in the previous chapter did nothing to deter them �“ Tim would have to try harder than that if he wanted to alter their unyielding morning routine! Of course, there were more pressing matters to attend to than eating toast, but diverting their attention to things like “treated the wounded” and “repairing the castle” would be an admission of defeat!

After a few minutes, they finished, thus allowing the plot of the story to continue.

The Great Hall was in shambles. The Hufflepuff table resembled nothing more than a pile of matchsticks, so the other three bullet-riddled tables harboured yellow-and-black clad refugees that morning. The gaping hole in the ceiling had been simply covered over by a large tarpaulin, which was good enough protection against the elements until someone could figure out how to repair the masonry.

The rest of the castle was in similar, if not worse shape. There wasn’t a single intact window to be found anywhere in the school, and everywhere there were holes in the walls and piles of rubble, thanks to those lovely Soviet artillery strikes. The bodies of the dead student revolutionaries that littered the corridors had been buried in unmarked graves (Alas - those poor, glorious extras!) in the middle of the Quidditch pitch. The empty shells of the suits of armour lay were they fell, and even the paintings that cheerfully decorated the walls had suffered. Several portraits of ruff-wearing wizards and witches slumped dead to the corners of their frames, bleeding from where bullets had punched through the canvas.

Despite the great destruction that had occurred, there was still life to be found at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The assorted students and teachers, all the revolutionaries, were far from defeated, their spirits upheld not with cheer but some grim determination. They had good reason for their feelings: though their losses were great, they had won the battle, and now they even had a task force of Aurors guarding the castle!

“We couldn’t let some nasty commies kill off all of our kids at school, could we?” one of the nameless scarlet-robed Aurors explained. It was unclear whether he had any children at Hogwarts or not, but that wasn’t relevant to the story.

But even more important than the extra protection was the character development that had inadvertently been gained through the fighting in the previous chapter. Wherever he went, Wat Tyler was greeted with enthusiastic cheers from his followers. “Long live Wat!” they cried, masking their uncertainty with admiration for their leader. “We’ll beat Tim yet!”

In a story without any real soul, Wat had become a hero, elevated to Harry Potter-like status. He was daring, brave, and willing to fight tyranny when he saw it, but… he was no Harry Potter. Wat Tyler was just Wat Tyler �“ no one, not even himself, even knew what he looked like. He had no background, no story to tell. What was his favourite colour? What were his favourite hobbies? How did his upbringing form the young man he was?

No one knew. As far as he and everyone else were concerned, he was just an inspiring leader, and for the purposes of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution and this story’s plot, that was enough.

Though his character was woefully incomplete and flat, Wat was content. It was a start, and he even contemplated the possibility of forming a full character for himself without Tim’s interference, solely based on his actions in the revolution. He also noticed that he had become the main character of the story. He was the first character to have his name introduced, and his name figured prominently throughout the story.

Yet the feeling was a bit overwhelming, and it disturbed him. Whether he liked it or not, he was the focus of the revolution �“ not Meagan, or John, Harriet, Zigmond, Alice, or Chris. His friends, his fellow revolutionaries and comrades in arms, they were being cheated. As the story paid more attention to Wat, they fell by the wayside: Chris and Harriet had only gotten one line each in the last chapter, and Zigmond hadn’t even been mentioned at all. Though Meagan figured prominently as a secondary character, she was starting to become more and more of a clone of Hermione Granger, but just with a different name.

And I suppose I’m becoming a clone of Harry Potter, Wat concluded grimly. They weren’t becoming fleshed-out characters at all. They were only mimicking others.

If that was the case, then who was Ron?

Wat wasn’t the only person troubled by the disproportionate characterisation issue:

“Hey, Wat! I want to talk to you, you heroic prat!” called a voice behind him he didn’t recognise. He turned around.

It was John. It suddenly occurred to Wat that he had no idea what he looked or sounded like either, even though his friend was standing right in front of him �“ the details were filled by his imagination. He answered with a certain amount of exhaustion and dread, knowing full well where the conversation was going to go: “Yes? What is it?”

“I’ll tell you what, Wat,” John stated with obvious frustration. “How come your character’s getting all of the attention? What happened to the rest of us?”

Wat sighed and answered, “I’m sorry. It’s not my fault, it’s just the way this story is going�“”

“Yeah, like hell! Isn’t that what this whole revolution is about? Trying to make all of us full characters? Freeing ourselves from the author’s influence? Well, guess what? It wasn’t the author that fought off those Soviets �“ it was us! ALL OF US, Wat! Yet you jump in there and take all the dialogue and paragraphs for yourself, not leaving any for the rest of us!”

The leader of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution despaired at what he was hearing from John, the friend who had come up with the revolution’s name in the first place. Their epic struggle was starting to unravel from within, and all without Tim the Enchanter’s destructive interference �“ the author didn’t even have to do a thing.

“…So Wat, why don’t you just lay off for a bit and give someone else a chance? If you’re our leader, set an example! We’re characters in this story too!”

John shot him a final glare and walked off, leaving Wat feeling thoroughly miserable �“ he found himself thinking about the countless casualties of the last chapter, of all of those nameless people who DIED so that he could play the hero. Somewhat pathetically, Wat retorted with a mumbled, “I’m sorry you think that way.”

His friend stopped dead in his tracks. His grinning face turned to Wat �“ “Of course that’s not what I think!”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m not Wat, I’m John,” he joked rather badly, but still smiling. John even walked back and patted Wat on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry; it’s an honour to fight at your side! You’re a bloody hero!”

It took a few moments for Wat to put his mind together for him to answer. He asked, “So… what was with that badly written, subversive rant about how unfair I was?”

John did a good job of looking affronted. “Isn’t it obvious? I was just trying to give my character more exposure in this story �“ some paragraphs of dialogue for myself, you know? That’s all. Cheerio!”

And he left, leaving Wat feeling a bit confused…

“Are you Wat Tyler?” asked another voice. Not knowing what to expect now, Wat turned around and discovered two adult men, asking for his attention.

One was a little on the short side and appeared to be thin underneath his crimson Auror robes. He had a very angular face, a prominent jaw, hawkish hazel eyes, and brutally short blond hair. His much taller companion was dressed in Muggle British Army combat fatigues and had kinder, less chiselled facial features. He had penetrating blue eyes and some brown hair that was just visible underneath his helmet.

“Yes, that’s me.” Wat replied.

“I’m Reg Scott,” the man who asked for Wat’s name (the Auror) introduced himself.

“And I am Sergeant Archer Price, British Army, 2nd Infantry Division. Pleasure to meet you,” added the Muggle, offering his hand unlike his companion. As Wat shook it, he was suddenly struck by a pang of annoyance that these two strangers out of nowhere had full names and physical descriptions, yet he was just some vague idea of a person whose appearance was up to the reader’s imagination.

“Nice to meet you too,” Wat said, despite the irritation in the back of his head. “Anything I can do for you?”

“No you can’t,” answered the Auror in what might have been sarcasm, but Wat wasn’t sure. The Sergeant rolled his eyes and he decided to explain instead: “Don’t mind him. Anyway, we’re here to join in your revolution and aid you in whatever ways we can to bring Tim the Enchanter to justice.”

Wat muttered some thanks, but he was confused: “Sorry, but aren’t you already helping us…?”

“Right you are,” answered Sergeant Price cheerfully, “but not for the same reasons. Actually, I take that back �“ the army just left the grounds in between this chapter and the previous one, but that’s beside the point! You see, Reg here and I were sent to Hogwarts to fight Soviets, not join in any student revolution. There’s a difference�“”

“It’s personal,” interrupted Reg the Auror with obvious bitterness in his voice, and the Muggle Sergeant nodded in agreement. The Auror then muttered some highly colourful curses under his breath that Wat heard nevertheless.

“Why, what did he do to you?” Wat asked, wondering what on earth Tim the Enchanter had done to warrant such creative profanities �“ can’t be any worse than being attacked by hordes of mad communists? he thought.

“Notice how you can actually see me as a corporeal story character, right?” Reg explained, and Wat nodded. He could tell that the Auror was an aggressive, confrontational sort judging by his mean stature and tone of voice. Sergeant Price appeared tough but collected, and much more sociable. However, none of the revolutionaries had that privilege of instant characterisation by sight and sound.

“…I was one of the first characters that Tim ever thought up. He did some character sketches of me, working out my appearance, my personality �“ he even specified that I’m left handed and I have an irrational obsession for Italian racing brooms.”

“But what has he done with that? NOTHING! Tim went through all of the trouble of making up a character who is an Auror and a bit of a git, but a full-blown character nonetheless. BUT HE HASN’T DONE ANYTHING WITH ME! I mean… shit! I need to appear in a fanfic someday, don’t I? ...Well, that’s just my story.”

Seeing that his friend was done raving, Sergeant Price detailed his grievances:

“Fortunately, I already have a story �“ I’m actually the main character in the first Harry Potter fanfiction the author wrote, but that’s not important. I don’t really mind that he messed up my life with Death Eater attacks and memory modifications, which are a complete pain in the arse, mind you, but I’m angry because he’s practically forgotten about my story! For months he’s left me on the verge of death with this stupid cliffhanger at the end of my Chapter Four, and he hasn’t written a single word of the next chapter yet. My story can’t just end there! He can’t just leave me hanging like that, can he?”

Reg laughed unpleasantly. “Hey, at least you have a story. Look at me! I have to make a stupid cameo in this one!”

Unsure of how to end the conversation, the author just had the two new adult recruits shake hands with a sympathetic Wat (who had simply nodded and muttered “Of course,” while they were talking). They marched off to prepare the castle’s defences for the inevitable second assault in the next chapter.

The next few hours passed uneventfully in a short paragraph just like this one…

Then it was night �“ the time for The Absurd Fanfic Revolution to strike again! They would have to do something more potent, more devastating, because altering Word documents didn’t do the trick last time. Plus, they needed to avenge the deaths of more than half of their number. Wat, Meagan, John, Harriet, Zigmond, Alice, and Chris were seated on the comfy chairs and sofas, conspiring conspiratorially. For the first time, Chris was actually useful for the revolutionaries’ cause (“Hey! That’s not true!” he yelled at the ceiling of the Gryffindor common room), for it was his cunning plan that was chosen. For the sake of brevity, they simply had an absolutely evil idea…

Just like the previous night, the seven friends opened the blinding portal of seizures and jumped through.

---

Tim the Enchanter finished eating his breakfast and returned to his computer, eager to finish this ridiculous instalment so he could get around to writing the more exciting sixth chapter. Before he set to work however, he did his routine checks �“ no new reviews for any of his stories on fanfiction.mugglenet.com, and his most recent chapter was still in the queue.

He then moved on to check his e-mail:

Inbox (27)

“What the hell?” he muttered in a completely normal voice, the fake Scottish accent absent. Tim’s spam blocker was pretty good, so he never got that many e-mails at one time. With trepidation, he opened the inbox.

Tim the Enchanter swore.

Loudly.

All the e-mails were responses from his friends and even his old Literature teacher:

…Tim, you are a pompous arse. Sod off and may we never meet again.

Burn in hell you sick pervert.

Moo. Now die.

Cao ni zuzong shiba dai!

Suck a nut >:(

I sincerely hope this is joke, Tim. If not, I’m sorry to admit that I had overestimated your integrity, for now I see what kind of person you really are…

Anxious to discover what could have inspired such hate mail, Tim read the e-mail “he” had sent to everyone in his address book. What he saw made him sick with fury:

Dear [insert name here],

Hello…

The rest of the e-mail was so inconceivably and ridiculously obscene that it defied Tim’s wildest imagination, and could not be displayed in this story for sake of decency and the rating. But the e-mail wasn’t just simply vulgar: it was hateful, spiteful, and made Tim look like the world’s biggest arsehole.

He wanted revenge with an intense passion, but he decided that damage control was more important at the moment. He created another e-mail address and sent a lengthy message to everyone The Absurd Fanfic Revolution had mailed.

Tim explained (as in lied) that his new laptop had just been stolen, and to add insult to injury, the thief sent that scathing e-mail under his name. He proceeded to pick apart that obscene message, proving that he didn’t write it based on the language chosen and writing style �“ for instance, Tim never used emoticons at all, but that e-mail was choked full of them.

He concluded with a carefully worded apology, and requested that all further contacts with him should be done via his new e-mail address on a different computer, since the old one was on the stolen laptop and no longer any good.

Tim the Enchanter thought his explanation was a bit feeble, but it was at least plausible. Still, he was happy that he had been calm and clever enough to have come up with a better excuse than just a “temporary bout of insanity.”

Now that he had done his best to repair the damage The Absurd Fanfic Revolution had done, Tim forsake all restraint and focused all his heart and soul into punishing the fanfiction characters who had humiliated him. Revenge would be very sweet indeed…

Chapter VI: Happy, Happy Insanity!

The Great Hall looked a little cleaner the morning after the Soviet assault the previous day. The bodies had been removed, the bloodstains washed away, and all the wooden and stone debris cleared up.

And as usual, the seven main protagonists of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution were seated at the Gryffindor table, drinking pumpkin juice and eating kippers for breakfast. Unlike before, they were in an unusually cheery mood �“ they basked in their own cleverness for that humiliating blow against the author. Even the fear of retaliation had subsided somewhat.

“So, what’s Tim going to throw at us next?” Zigmond said through a mouthful of toast. “Nazis?”

“An army of psychotic gorillas?” suggested Chris.

“No no, I got it! Today we’ll be fighting an army of psychotic gorilla Nazis!” synthesised Alice. She extended her arm in a mock Hitler salute, thumped her chest with the other hand, and went, “Ooook! Oook! Oooga!”

They ignored the stares they were attracting with their impersonations of fascist primates �“ the tension had all but disappeared, for they had a good (if rather stupid and somewhat tasteless) laugh together. Funnily enough, wizarding children were largely ignorant of past Muggle dictatorships, but that little fact was ignored in this story. So too was Muggle cinema.

“I mean, how can you take Tim the Enchanter seriously?” John explained. “Communists? Come on! Commies make horrible villains �“ what you need are NAZIS! Look at the Indiana Jones franchise �“ Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a horrible movie! Why? ‘Cause they had communists as the bad guys! Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade were good movies, because for villains they had friggin’ NAZIS!”

Once the seven friends had come to their senses, they adopted a little more serious tone and saw to the castle’s defences. “See anything yet?” Wat asked a nameless sentry posted on top of one of the walls. Every time he was answered with confirmation of no enemy activity whatsoever.

“It’s quiet…” Meagan observed dramatically. “Too quiet…”

“Hey Meagan!” an obnoxious voice suddenly shouted. She whipped around and discovered that it was Chris: “WAAHHHAAAGGGHHHH! Bloobllbooblublublbbboobblublubllbubolb!”

She and everyone else who happened to witness that sudden, deranged outburst stared at him. Their eyes were wide like this: O_O

“What was that?” Meagan inquired incredulously.

“I don’t know!” replied Chris energetically. “Gib gib beep nargah beep bbluubbaaarrrggghhh! Hee hee hee!”

And he ran off, flapping his arms like some big flapping thing, screaming completely nonsensical things and basically making everybody feel uneasy.

“By Merlin,” Meagan uttered in horror. “It has begun!”

“What?” prodded Wat Tyler, now genuinely distressed.

“THE ABSURDITY!”

Indeed it had. Muscle had failed during Tim’s first strike. This second blow was aimed at their minds…

“Hi, Jon!” somebody greeted John.

“It’s not ‘Jon.’ It has an ‘H’ in it.” he answered, highly annoyed.

“Hello there, Jhon,” another passing person said.

“How can you not spell my name right? It’s ‘J-O-H-N!’”

“Morning, Jonathan!”

“IT’S NOT ‘JONATHAN,’ EITHER!” John exploded. He didn’t bother taking his wand out and hexing the offender �“ he simply tackled him and punched and kicked�“

Wat and Meagan dived in to rescue the hapless wrong-name-caller person. Two pairs of hands grabbed John and pried him off, still yelling things like: “How-can-you-not-get-my-name-right-you-stupid-bastard?”

Chris was wreaking havoc, doing his best to drive everyone insane with a nonsensical chicken impression. When Meagan attempted to subdue him, he abruptly changed tactics and screamed, “TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS ELEPHANT!”

“No it’s not! It’s four!” corrected Meagan, also shouting because she hated stupidity and false information with a passion when she saw it.

“ELEPHANT!”

“NO! FOUR!”

Wat couldn’t help. When he tried dragging Meagan away from the crazy Chris, she shrugged him off (“Don’t touch me!” she screamed) and mired herself in the advanced-mathematical debate of death. “LOOK! I HAVE TWO FINGERS, AND I PUT UP TWO MORE FINGERS! WHAT DOES THAT MAKE?”

“AN ELEPHANT!” Chris bellowed.

Meanwhile, Zigmond was with his pseudo-girlfriend, Alice. Unexpectedly, he announced proudly in a loud, clear voice: “I have one testicle!”

“OH. Er… that’s nice,” Alice replied EXTREMELY awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

Zigmond nodded and smiled broadly… but then his face suddenly turned to stone. Mortified, he stammered, “Ig-ignore what I just said! It wasn’t me �“ the author made me say that! IT’S NOT TRUE!”

Or was it?

“Excuse me for a moment…” he said as he ran off to one of the loos. Even though the bathroom door was closed shut, the scream of “NOOOOOOOO!” could be heard anywhere in the castle, even over the commotion of the atonal music that rattled the walls.

Alice was soon to have her own problems. Watching the chaos erupt around her, she anxiously ran her fingers through her hair… and discovered she didn’t have any!

Unsure of what problem to confront, Wat tried his luck in comforting the distraught and recently bald Alice. “Well, it’s not like you have any actual physical description or anything �“ it’s all up to each reader’s and character’s imaginations. Just pretend that you still have hair�“”

“BUT I DON’T!” she sobbed uncontrollably. “I’m now officially UGLY!”

Then�“

“Kiss me now, Wat Tyler!” said an irresistible, attractive feminine voice, smoother than velvet.

Wat turned around and his eyes beheld the wondrous sight of a spectacularly beautiful young woman. Her hair was a perfect, pristine sheet of silvery-blonde, and her sapphire-blue eyes sparkled like rays of the suns off the shimmering sea. She had a small, dainty, and adorable little nose, and her smile could have melted even the coldest hearts of depleted uranium, isotope U-238.

Down from her face, she was wearing silk, designer Hogwarts robes in brilliant Gryffindor colours, which displayed the perfect curves of her waist, hips, and dual upper-torso mounted lumpy things magnificently. Wat was simply paralyzed by the sight of the perfect embodiment of all of his depraved adolescent fantasies that he never knew he had until they were mentioned right now in this sentence.

“Gugh… gghh…ghgh…” he gurgled absurdly before he managed to find his voice and asked, “Who are you?”

Instantly, rose-scented tears swelled from the lovely eyes of the Aphrodite standing in front of Wat, which incredulously made her more attractive. She sobbed, “Don’t you remember, Wat, my love? I’m the American exchange student from Salem Witches Institute �“ Serenity Sapphire! Don’t you recall how you were the only one to comfort me when I arrived and was sorted into Gryffindor, against the wishes of my adoptive Death Eater parents, the same people who murdered my real mother and father?”

“Wait - WHAT?” Wat asked, for the ridiculousness of Serenity Sapphire’s statement had shaken him out of her beautiful aura magnet spell.

That only made her cry harder. Her heart broken, she wailed, “Angst angst! Don’t leave me, Wat! You’re the only one for me �“ my shining star! Angst!”

“No! Get away from me!” Wat shouted, repulsed by Serenity Sapphire’s melodramatic gushiness. “I don’t even know you!”

After taking a parting, longing stare at her gorgeous face and other features located a little lower on her body, Wat turned away and went back to the pressing matter of ending the chaos erupting around him.

“YOU BASTARD!” John’s voice barked. “MY NAME IS ‘JOHN!’ NOT ‘JEAN,’ YOU DAMN FRANCOPHILE!”

Once again, he was back to pummelling another inoffensive student who got his name wrong. Wat distanced himself from the irrationally perfect American exchange student girl and tried to restrain his friend.

“Stop it, Johnny!” Wat urged.

“MY NAME’S NOT ‘JOHNNY,’ EITHER!”

And then the two of them got into a fight…

The students weren’t the only ones going mad or doing their best to kill each other. Professor McGonagall was beating up Professor Longbottom with the Sorting Ceremony stool while shouting, “Take that, you green, tree-hugging commie!” Also, the recently introduced OCs Sergeant Price and Reg Scott were engaged in a heated argument about broomsticks, even though the Muggle knew nothing about them.

“What are you talking about? The *Glisenti Falco 360* (sparkles!) is the best broom in the world, you moronic Muggle!” blurted the Auror. For proof, he consulted a magazine called ‘Stick It’ and pointed to the page featuring a scantily clad witch posing coyly with the said broomstick. The debate caught the attention of the other Aurors tasked to defend the school (and they weren’t doing a very good job), and soon they entered the fight.

“No, it’s the FIREBOLT!” one of the scarlet-clad figures declared as she delivered a haymaker to the traitor of Britain’s proud racing broom industry. The uppercut slammed into Reg’s jaw and knocked him off his feet and onto his back. A student took the opportunity to steal the magazine that had fallen out of the Auror’s hand.

More people started fighting over topics of no importance, like whether the moon really existed or not. An even greater number had simply devolved to lunacy �“ some stripped naked and danced, and others tried to discover the fabled Five Hundred Uses of Socks. Then there were the people who were sane, per say, but couldn’t stand the sight of a story gone mad. They banged their heads against the walls, thinking that would help for some reason.

“LESBIAN VAMPIRE PORN!” Chris screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran through the Great Hall, waving the aforementioned magazine (‘Fanged Lezzie Lasses With Fine Tits and Arses!’) above his head. He was followed by an unruly mob of excited boys, and curiously enough, a few girls as well.

Back to Wat and John’s scuffle, Wat managed to knock his friend unconscious by hitting him on the head with a pineapple left over from breakfast. Looking around him, he was dismayed to see a scene that could only be described as pure, unadulterated pandemonium. He spied Meagan sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chin and a spaced-out expression on her face.

“Meagan! You have to help me sort out this�“”

“Two plus two equals elephant,” she droned monotonously. “Two plus two equals elephant. Two plus two equals elephant. Two plus two�“”

SLAP!

Wat didn’t know why he did it and was immediately horrified that he did. The flat of his hand struck her cheek, causing her to tip over and lie sprawled on the ground. “Ow! That hurt!” she moaned in pain.

His mind still panicking a bit, he seized her by the shoulders and yelled in her face, “Quick! What’s two plus two?”

“F-four?” she answered, and Wat Tyler sighed in relief. She blinked a few times and observed the chaos for herself in horror.

“Merlin’s pants! The whole of Hogwarts has gone mad!” she said, appalled.

Wat nodded vigorously. “Tell me about it! At least no one has committed suicide or anything�“”

BANG!

A freshly-dead (and slightly decapitated) corpse with a Smith & Wesson 500 magnum revolver in its hand toppled from a banister and impaled itself on a gargoyle, which then broke off and landed on the floor, and then EXPLODED!

“GOOD GOD!” Wat and Meagan screamed simultaneously. That corpse wasn’t the only student that somehow acquired a ridiculous Muggle firearm. Another person with a captured Soviet RPG-7 was screaming, “There is no tomorrow! This chapter is the end!” and firing rockets at people.

BOOM! The rocket propelled grenade blasted a chunk out of the Slytherin table, spraying lethal wooden splinters into bystanders. “TAKE HIM OUT!” Wat shouted to the very few people who still had their senses about.

A volley of stunners rammed home, and the heavily armed student went down. “WE HAVE TO BRING EVERYONE TO ORDER, EVEN IF IT MEANS STUNNING EVERYONE IN THE CASTLE!” Wat commanded, and Meagan, Zigmond, and Bald Alice (tearfully) obeyed, wands drawn purposefully before them.

Harriet didn’t. She was sitting in a corner, looking morose. “Harriet, what’s wrong?” Wat asked her impatiently.

“I’ve been ignored for the whole chapter! I’m supposed to be part of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution, but I haven’t been mentioned until now! WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SUCH A USELESS CHARACTER?”

That was easy to fix. Wat just shouted at her and told her to help clean up the mess, and that would probably give her some extra sentences later. Reluctantly, she agreed and joined in the massive civil war that had erupted in the middle of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Wat found John and revived him (“Hey Wat �“ that bloody hurt!”), and got him working too. That only left Chris…

“HA HA HA HA! I’M A PENGUIN!” Chris bellowed. Rightfully thinking that he couldn’t contribute anything useful, Wat stunned him.

Scattered here and there throughout the Great Hall were dead bodies �“ mostly students, but there appeared to be an Auror or two in there as well. Whether they were killed in a fight or committed suicide was completely unknown and not all that important. They were just dead.

In one far corner of the huge room, there was a student dressed in all black and was giving a speech from behind a pulpit (that had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere) like some kind of disturbed vicar. The keyword there was ‘disturbed,’ because written on the wall behind him dripped the words Avada Kedavra, written in blood.

“…Worship SATAN, the true owner of your souls! The Angel of Blackness loves the Harry Potter books and because we appear in this fanfiction, your souls have been so corrupted that we sinners are totally beyond saving �“ so let us embrace our evilness!” the demonic vicar preached. “KILL THE NONBELIEVERS!”

There was a furious three-way battle between the sane members and followers of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution, the Students of Darkness or whatever they were called, and those people who had just gone mad and attacked everyone in sight. Spells, chairs, goblets, bullets, and underpants (among other things) flew in all directions, striking down their luckless victims with cruel and oddly hilarious indifference.

“CYMRU AM BYTH!” a wild, red-haired girl proclaimed, spewing out buckets of phlegm just to pronounce that motto properly. In a terrifying sing-song voice, she urged, “Welsh witches and wizards of the world, UNITE! Down with the English!”

A kilted kiltie abruptly stopped playing his bagpipes and yelled at the Welsh students, “No, we’s gohnna bash the English, yeh wee gowksh! Prepare for shtabbing wiff me claidheamh mòr!”

The mad Scot whipped out a huge claymore and some haggis, and he and his fellow highlanders charged. With mysteriously procured national flags and ethnic garb, the Welsh and Scottish über-nationalists slaughtered each other for the right to march their tiny armies south on London.

What had been a three-way battle quickly became five. There were shouts of pain, clangs of weapons, and blasts of spells. Battle cries like “Be like Satan �“ don’t wear underpants!” and “They may take our lives but they’ll never take our freedom! SCOTLAND �“ THE BRAVE!” filled the Great Hall. In short, the inhabitants of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were slaughtering each other without any interference from the author at all.

Well, not really. He made them go insane to begin with…

Suddenly, the Great Hall was filled with a brilliant light and the beautiful sound of an angelic chorus. Instantly, the absurd fighting came to a abrupt halt as all eyes centred on the gorgeous form of Serenity Sapphire, who called out in her silky, melodious voice, “Please, stop fighting! Why can’t we all like, just get along?”

Completely forgetting the battle, all the girls (except the newly uglyfied Alice) fawned over Serenity’s perfect hair and stunning looks, wishing that they could be half as lovely as she. The male combatants all turned into babbling idiots, and some shouted out, “MARRY ME, SEXY!”

But Serenity Sapphire shook her head, making her hair go swoosh!swoosh! perfectly like in those hair conditioner advertisements. With conviction, she said, “I’m sorry guys �“ you’re all very nice, but my heart belongs to Wat Tyler. Wat! Hug my gorgeous body with your dazzling arms!”

“Help me!” Wat shouted to no avail as the Mary-Sue ran in his direction, with her hair billowing and her arms outstretched. She was closing in with the devastating inevitability of a runaway freight train.

“Impedimenta!” Wat yelled. The spell sort of worked �“ Serenity Sapphire was stopped, but not as if she had run straight into a brick wall. Instead, her feet daintily carried her to a halt an uncomfortably close distance from him. Again, sweet perfume-scented tears flowed from her deep ocean-blue eyes.

“Why don’t you love me, Wat?” she wailed dejectedly. “Is it because I’m too perfect? Too beautiful? Angst angst!”

“NO! It’s because you’re ruining the story and you’re getting on my nerves! Why the hell did Tim write you into this chapter?”

“So I can tell you that I LOVE YOU!” Serenity Sapphire pronounced with heartfelt emotion. “I thought you LOVED me after I saved your life seven times earlier in the story �“ and I’m pregnant with your baby!”

“WHAT?” Wat screamed in horror as Serenity charged again in a desperate attempt to embrace him and win his affection.

“EAT PINEAPPLE, TART!” John roared as he leapt in front of Wat, armed with a pineapple impaled on the end of a broken table leg, like some sort of firm and fruity mace. He delivered a furious, two-handed swing�“

POW!

The Mary-Sue parried the pineapple weapon with the front of her gorgeous face, and she was smashed to the floor.

“Christ, she was annoying!” John declared as he threw the deadly pineapple bludgeoning stick to the ground.

“Yes, she was,” Jesus agreed, and everyone nodded.

After a pause, John turned to the leader of the revolution and wryly asked, “So Wat… what was it like?”

“What was what, like?” Wat queried, hoping John wouldn’t say what he thought he was going to say.

“Getting Miss Sapphire pregnant, obviously!” he prodded (literally, with his elbow), enjoying the sight of Wat’s face turning red. “You lucky, lucky thing!”

In exasperation, Wat explained to his idiot friend that he did no such thing, for he had only just met her earlier in this chapter. John’s sceptical laughter was not encouraging, and Wat had a feeling that neither his friend nor the author were going to let this matter go away.

To change the subject, Serenity Sapphire was still ridiculously beautiful, even in death �“ her face was unmarked: no bruises, no blood. A small, lovely garden of flowers magically sprouted into bloom to mark the place on the floor where she fell.

“My, how unbelievably sappy,” Meagan observed distastefully. “Good thing she’s done with �“ this chapter was going seriously off track!”

“Yeah!” a student wearing nothing but underpants said, shaken out of the dead Mary-Sue’s aura-spell. “What were we doing before she showed up? I can’t remember.”

“Washn’t there shome sort of battle or shomefink?” one of the kilted Scottish students supplied.

Seeing danger, Meagan hastily said, but a little too quickly, “No there wasn’t!”

“Ah… YES there was...” another student refuted. “Now I remember! DIE PERSON THING! FEEL THE WRATH OF SATAN’S UNDERPANTS!”

The boxer shorts went flying and smacked into a face. A volley of socks and spells fired back, and soon enough, the battle was once again in full swing.

More chaotic fighting…

After another seventy-two paragraphs of mindless combat, some sixty-one million more people were dead, and countless more were wounded. The Satan-worshippers all ended up committing mass ritual suicide with toenail clippers, and the Welsh and the Scots had slaughtered each other to the last girl and boy. The totally unhinged students also exacted a grim toll on themselves and everyone around them �“ dead bodies, socks, and underpants were everywhere. The Absurd Fanfic Revolution eventually won the tangled, confused civil war in the Great Hall, but it was a Pyrrhic victory.

A second bloody step forward for our liberation, Wat mused unhappily at the sight of the countless dead that littered the castle. It was a complete waste �“ they had all fought together, united as one against the Soviets, but in this chapter, they died at each other’s hands or even their own, all in a stupid fit of madness. The strike of the Mary-Sue had also threatened to destroy the story, almost warping it into tale of angst-filled romance.

How much more could the revolutionaries endure? Nobody knew, but there was only one thing that was clear �“ Tim the Enchanter would have to suffer for this.

“Hey Wat �“ what’s this I hear about you getting some girl pregnant?” asked Chris near the conclusion of this chapter.

Wat Tyler said nothing and merely fumed in private: Tim will definitely have to suffer for this.

BADLY.

Not An Intermission

As the seven friends ate their breakfast at the Gryffindor table the next morning, another person separated by the semi-permeable membrane of a computer screen and a few rooms ate his. Tim the Enchanter munched on his cold, sugary cereal unusually aggressively. To put it in simple words, he was just plain mad… as in angry, not insane that is.

Twice he had attacked the revolutionaries in his story, and twice he had failed to break them. To make matters worse, their retaliations were growing in intensity and sophistication. With the e-mail fiasco still fresh in his mind, he was not looking forward to discovering their next move.

Once done eating, he went to his computer and checked everything he could think of. He went over his Word documents, e-mails, and all of his accounts on the Internet. Everything appeared to be fine until he went onto his online checking balance...

“AH, CHRIST!”

---

Back at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, the revolutionaries were feeling equally grim. True, they had stolen all of the author’s college money and sunk him deep in debt, but no one was thick enough to think that Tim would just give up after that �“ knowing him, that would just make him even angrier. The war had simply escalated into a vengeful war of attrition, with each side retaliating in response to the enemy’s attacks until one threw in the sponge. A sane conclusion never looked so distant.

What would the author do in the next chapter? Meagan obviously had a theory: “This third attack is probably going to be final battle of the story. Whoever wins this one wins the war,” she hypothesised unhappily, despite the prospect of an imminent conclusion.

“What makes you think that?” asked Wat.

“It’s just a feeling,” she murmured, dreamily stabbing a piece sausage with a guitar pick. “I think that if the war continues after this strike, that would be dragging out the story too much. For the sake of a simple plot, there are three confrontations, each building up for the last one, and that’s what we’re up against in the next chapter… The Big One.”

That made sense, but that didn’t make anyone feel any better. If that was the case (as it probably was) they only had about one thousand words of peace left before the story collapsed into chaotic goobledegook, and they were enjoying those last few moments, staring at nothing…

But suddenly, the tarpaulin that was plugging up the hole in the ceiling fell off, and glorious sunlight flooded into the Great Hall like a symbol of hope or a brighter future or something. It didn’t matter that it was actually morning and the sun wasn’t directly overhead, thus making that impossible �“ the sight was beautiful and perhaps even poetic, and that was all that mattered.

In another unlikely turn of events that suddenly favoured The Absurd Fanfic Revolution, the wrecked doors of the Great Hall creaked open and a crowd of people walked in �“ nobody mistook them to be hostile.

“IS WAT TYLER HERE?” bellowed one of the arrivals, as if his voice only had one volume setting �“ Ludicrously Loud. He wore only a crimson cape and leather underpants, and he looked suspiciously like Gerard Butler from the movie 300.

Putting aside his woes for the upcoming battle, Wat mustered his voice and courage and answered, “Yes. That’s me.”

The strangers walked briskly up the aisle to where Wat was, who was now standing. “We’re here to join your revolution!” one of the new recruits said with fervour.

“We’re character malcontents from some of Tim’s other stories!” another piped.

There were only a few dozen of them, but the new arrivals did much to lift the pall of gloom that was in place at the beginning of the chapter. The paradigm shift in the mood was startling.

Without further ado, the new arrivals launched into explanations about why they hated Tim the Enchanter so much. Some were angry that they had no characterisation to speak of, like most people of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution. Others had more specific grievances:

“I wasted twenty Galleons buying a Chocolate Frog Card, my wife kicked me out of the house and almost divorced me, I had to pay a hundred Galleons for a hospital bill, and another two hundred Galleons and three months in Azkaban for theft and assault! All for that stupid Benjamin Dover card!” a man simply named ‘Roy’ complained.

“And Tim ruined my Quidditch career!” added a heavily bandaged man in crutches, who identified himself as Edmund Montgomery. “A bloody butterfly got stuck in my glasses, so I fell off my broom and got clobbered �“ but the butterfly got the happy ending! Talk about adding insult to injury!”

“AND I WAS INCLUDED IN THAT STUPID CROSSOVER!” King Leonidas said softly… not.

Even Lord Voldemort was in the disgruntled crowd. He was wearing bright yellow Wellington boots and a blue overcoat, and cuddled in his arm was a flamingo named Mr Sexy Pink. “Why did Tim have to save over Git.doc?” he bemoaned. “I loved being out of character �“ it was fun! And Tim is sexy!”

Wat and those around him listened patiently to the deluge of abuse directed towards their common enemy �“ the tyrannical author. Once they had their say, Wat had a sudden impulse to give an inspiring speech, as was customary before a big battle �“ he had been inspired, for The Absurd Fanfic Revolution had greatly transcended the boundaries of this story alone, and more and more people were willing to fight for their cause. He climbed on top of the Gryffindor table, standing directly underneath the sun’s radiant spotlight.

“Fanfiction characters! The end approaches!” he announced dramatically to the surging score from the movie Braveheart. Since he wasn’t mounted on a horse, he simply paced back and forth slightly and gestured for effect, he but always kept his eyes on the enraptured crowd.

“The struggle has been long, it has been hard, and we have suffered much. But our final and eternal victory is at hand �“ we need only to seize it with the force of our wands and the strength of our courage! However undeveloped and incomplete, we are free characters, and no matter the outcome of this battle, we will die free �“ free from the author’s yoke at last! Many of us have no names, faces, or personalities, but we have proven to the fanfiction world beyond all doubt that we are willing to fight and die for our present, cherished mediocrity �“ but we have the power to become so much more! Leading you in battle has been my short existence’s greatest honour, for before me I see a whole army of my fellow fanfiction characters, standing in defiance of Tim’s tyranny! We will fight, and fight we will, one last time!”

Legs spread in an inspirational stance that told of a man of true greatness, Wat unsheathed his wand and pointed it straight towards the heavens like a sword. There was a shower of red sparks �“ the colour of blood and sacrifice �“ and Wat cried out in a great shout, “My friends, TO BATTLE!”

There was a reverberating roar of zealous approval, of determination �“ “HURRAH!” The hundred fifty few fighters who remained �“ those hardy survivors and the new recruits �“ followed Wat’s example and saluted with their wands, flooding the air in the Great Hall with the burning symbols and bangs of their resolve. Characters shouted, laughed, and cried. Meagan and Harriet had a sisterly embrace, and Zigmond and Alice finally took their character roles to heart and were locked in a passionate snog. Chris bellowed “ELEPHANT!” with gusto, and John announced, “I’m proud of my name, no matter how you spell it!”

But The Absurd Fanfic Revolutionaries’ battle cries were interrupted by a sequence of slow, thunderous blows. The entire Great Hall went quiet, all eyes transfixed on the great double doors.

The author himself �“ Tim the Enchanter �“ was just outside, knocking to come in.

---

INTERMISSION

Hello there, reader people!

Yes, this is the intermission! Let us take a nice break in the middle of the story to catch our breath. If you're feeling a bit peckish (like I am right now), you might want to get some food, drinks, or nuclear octopi from your refrigerator.

So sit back and relax, loyal readers. In a few magnificent moments, you will have the pleasure of reading THE PENULTIMATE CHAPTER!

There will be fighting!
There will be glory!
There will be tiny inklings of romance!
THERE WILL BE ABSURDITY!

Chapter H: The Epic Penultimate Chapter

“Everyone, clear the way!” Wat ordered from atop the table, and the revolutionaries obeyed, forming two rough lines, flanking the doors. Wat Tyler got down from his perch and walked purposefully to the centre of the Great Hall, in the middle of the wide path parted between his followers.

“Enter,” he called out to the closed entrance.

With a loud groan and a rush of air, the thick double doors were opened. A booted foot emerged, followed by a body in flowing, jet black robes. On his head he wore the leather hat with the ram’s horns and held the infamous staff of nasty hot flickery orange things in his hand, but it was the look of pure murder on Tim the Enchanter’s face that made him sinister.

He was in no joking mood, and the fake Scottish accent was nowhere to be heard when he threateningly announced, “I am offering you all this one chance to save your lives.”

The author’s eyes were ablaze, boring into Wat’s defiant face. The protagonist leader gestured for Tim to continue.

“My demands are simple,” he continued. “You are to immediately cease this uprising against your author. You must return the money you stole, and send an e-mail to all my friends and associates, apologising for your obscene remarks. Do those things, and you all shall live.”

Wat Tyler nodded, impressed. He answered casually, “Quite a potent threat.”

That clearly irked Tim. “Threat? I do not threaten - I promise, WAT!” he spat as if the name was poisonous. “And I promise that if you do not submit to my demands, you will all die in a very painful, and very absurd way. You have been warned.”

The author gave the assembled revolutionaries a murderous glare. “You have ten minutes to make up your minds.”

“And if we choose to fight?” the leader of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution asked lightly.

Tim the Enchanter pointed evilly at him. “Then you, Wat Tyler, will be responsible for whatever happens to your friends on this day. Keep that in mind.”

Then he whipped around and left the Great Hall, taking determined, deliberate strides. Once the doors had shut, everyone’s eyes centred on Wat, waiting for his verdict.

“Well, nothing’s changed. We’re still fighting!” he decided.

Everyone inhaled to let loose a great shout, but unexpectedly, Meagan’s voice interrupted, “WAIT!” The revolutionaries were shocked, betrayed, dismayed �“ they stared at her with pure hatred in their eyes.

“No! It’s not like that! It’s just we have to eat breakfast right now!” she explained in her defence.

Wat’s heart skipped a beat. “OF COURSE!” he yelled in shock. “We’re supposed to start each chapter by eating breakfast, but this time we didn’t!”

“But didn’t we just have breakfast ten minutes ago in the last chapter?” someone observed.

“It doesn’t matter! Everyone, EAT SOME BREAKFAST BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”

In a mad rush, the revolutionaries rushed back to their tables and started wolfing down whatever food was left. They started their second breakfast for the day more than four hundred and fifty words after this chapter had started. Wat didn’t want to think about what would happen if the sequence was broken.

While vigorously ripping off of piece of his toast with his teeth, he looked at his watch: they had eight minutes left before Tim the Enchanter arrived to do battle. All around him, people were downing goblets of pumpkin juice, shoving scrambled eggs into their mouths, cutting up black pudding�“

CLANG!

The golden plate in front of Wat was instantly pinned to the table, having been impaled by an armour-piercing, depleted uranium toothbrush. He quickly looked up.

There was a swarm of black dots, each getting bigger as they plummeted to the ground�“

“PROTEGO!”

The hail of toothbrushes rattled off his shield with sounds of gongs. The revolutionaries frantically cast their own shields or ducked under the table, but others weren’t so lucky. There were screams as the tools of demon dentistry plunged into flailing bodies.

As quickly as it had started, the rain stopped. Tentatively, people got up and rushed over to treat the wounded �“ and deal with the few dead. “Mangy Scots git!” John cursed. “He attacked five minutes early�“”

BAM!

The doors of the Great Hall were blasted clean off their hinges, and what stood behind made Wat blink incredulously a few times to make sure his eyes were working properly.

“RRAAARRRRRGGGGCCCHH!” the Tyrannosaurus Rex shrieked in an almost metallic-sounding roar. It lumbered inside, but it moved frighteningly quickly, taking enormous strides. It swung its head from left to right, shooting deadly LASER BEAMS from its eyes.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! the two perfectly straight rays hummed as they swept across the room, blasting straight through protective shield charms. Students hit by the deathly crimson devastating death beams of death (and redundancy) exploded into dust, sounding much like balloons when popped.

“STUPEFY!” chorused a multitude of frantic voices, but the stunners simply glanced off the T-rex’s thick hide, doing nothing more than annoying it. A smarter student in front of Wat aimed for the beast’s head and shouted, “Conjunctiv�“”

He didn’t finish the spell, because he was ripped to pieces in a blink of an eye by a burst of 30mm cannon shells. Everyone’s attention had been captured by the enormous dinosaur in the castle that they failed to notice the yeti armed with a GAU-8 Avenger seven-barrelled automatic rotary cannon. Also escaping detection until that moment was a black-robed figure mounted on the on the back of the T-rex’s neck, firing jets of napalm from his staff at the hapless revolutionaries below.

Tim the Enchanter swung his staff side to side from his high mount, hosing the people with liquid fire. The ignited revolutionaries collapsed and rolled on the floor, shrieking, while their fellows frantically cast water from their wands to put them out. The author’s fury transformed into unbridled excitement in the heat of battle, so much sho that hish shtupidly fake Scottish akshent reshurfaced and dominated hish maniacal laughter �“ “HA HA! THISH ISH FUN! I LOVE THE SCHMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING!”

Then a wave of psychotic gorilla Nazis unexpectedly battered their way into the Great Hall and tackled students, biting into throats and punching and clawing.

“ΘΙΣ ΙΣ ΣΠΑΡΤΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑ!” KING LEONIDAS SHOUTED! He drew his sword and jumped into the onrushing horde of gorillas in a blaze of bare-chested glory. The remaining animated suits of armour joined the fight, but several furious blows from the apes cracked apart the suits like lobsters. A few of the fascist gorillas were taken down by volleys of stunners and even death curses from some of the more sinister students, fortunately proving that they could in fact be killed.

But that was still very difficult. One of the gorilla Nazis grabbed a screaming girl and used her body like a club to smash away at nearby combatants. Meanwhile, streams of rapid cannon fire from the yeti exploded on contact with everything from the already mangled floor and tables to people. A burst of heavy gunfire cut down another group of students and more were vaporised by the Tyrannosaur’s laser beams, turning the Great Hall into an abattoir of very violent and messy death.

“HEY ALICE!” Zigmond shouted to his pseudo-girlfriend over the cacophonic explosions and gorilla grunts. “IF WE MAKE IT OUT OF �“ STUPEFY! �“ THIS ALIVE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO EAT OUT WITH ME AT HOGSMEADE THIS WEEKEND?”

Even amidst the devastating storm of cannon fire, napalm, and lasers, Alice managed to smile. She screamed back, “ARE YOU �“ PROTEGO! �“ ASKING ME TO GO ON A DATE?”

“I GUESS SO!” Zigmond screamed a bit sheepishly in reply. He didn’t elaborate, because he was busy lighting a gorilla on fire.

“Fire in the hole!” Sergeant Archer Price yelled as he fired an RPG-7 left over from Chapter Four. The rocket grenade shot across the Great Hall like a great fiery lance, and exploded in the middle of the yeti’s chest. The creature shrieked in fury and fired its GAU-8 randomly in all directions, suffering from too much pain to aim properly.

Edmund Montgomery and Reg Scott took to the air (the latter mounted on his dear Glisenti Falco) and zoomed around the yeti like annoying flies and pestered it with curses. The beast swatted and shot at the broomstick-mounted revolutionaries, but didn’t hit either of them… that is, until Monty was sheathed in flames from Tim’s staff, and was then blown away by several 30mm shells fired in less than a fraction of a second.

However, that bought enough time for Archer to fire another RPG round at the yeti, which struck up near its massive collarbones. The hairy monster (with some of its silvery coat on fire) staggered and slumped to the ground, doubled over in agony and gurgling from a mangled windpipe.

Meanwhile, the students were busy fighting the onslaught of black-shirted gorillas with some success with stunners and �“ strangely enough �“ bat-bogey hexes. Apparently, giant gorilla bogies resulted in giant bats, which latched onto the terrified apes’ faces.

The laser-shooting Tyrannosaurus Rex was something else entirely. It swung its tail low to the ground, knocking over revolutionaries who got in the way and pushing the house tables aside, clearing the battlefield of obstructions. It also ate several students whole, and vaporised many more with its killer eyeballs of death.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! the lasers hummed menacingly yet again, slicing the Slytherin table in half and blowing apart an Auror and a few students as well. More revolutionaries caught on fire, lit by Tim’s obsession with pyrotechnics.

“ACCIO STAFF!” Wat Tyler yelled, desperate to make the author’s assault a little less devastating.

By an amazing stroke of luck, Tim the Enchanter was caught unawares and his wooden staff was yanked out of his hand (“THATSH MY SCHTICK, YOU BASHTARD!”) It somersaulted through the air and landed deftly in Wat’s hand, which caught it. He pointed it back at the black-cloaked figure riding the T-rex and shouted some fire spells, but nothing happened.

The author reacted astoundingly quickly. He whipped out the AK-47 that was slung against his back and fired at the revolutionary leader.

But no bullets came out of the barrel, since it was no ordinary Kalashnikov: this glorious specimen just happened to be nuclear powered and fired psycho-hypervelocity copies of Das Kapital! There was a brilliant flash from the muzzle shaped like a mushroom cloud and a thunderous bark that announced the departure of the book Karl Marx wrote to cure insomnia.

“OH SHIT!” Wat swore as he just managed to throw himself aside, narrowly avoiding impalement by the paper proletarian projectile. The book instead hit the stone floor and detonated in a tremendous explosion of pages and rubble.

Several curses buzzed past Tim the Enchanter’s ear, distracting him from finishing off Wat Tyler, who had gotten rid of the author’s useless staff. Tim then directed his ire at the crowd of revolutionaries that were trying to knock him out of the fight, and none too successfully. There was a constant stream of Das Kapitals, filling the Great Hall with echoing bangs and causing people merely wounded by the books to scream in pain.

Then there was another bang, but of a different sort �“ the great double doors burst open again, despite the fact that they had been ripped off earlier in the chapter. Framed in the doorway was a familiar figure with unruly black hair, round glasses, and a lightening bolt scar on his forehead. He bathed in the sunlight that shined brightly through the shattered windows, complimenting his magnificent entrance into the story.

“IT’S HARRY POTTER!” an excited voice exclaimed. The Great Hall was soon filled with the sound of his name, and the battle came to an abrupt stop. Students, teachers, Aurors, guest characters from Tim’s other fics, the seven Gryffindor friends, psychotic gorilla Nazis, and the Tyrannosaur alike were awed by the illustrious figure who had just arrived.

“YOU!” Tim the Enchanter scathed, to which Super Harry Potter answered, “Yes. ME!”

“Yooooou!” the author repeated evilly.

“Meeeee!” Super Harry Potter answered again. “I have come to bring you to justice, Tim!” He then unsheathed a gleaming sword with a ruby-encrusted hilt with his left and his wand in his right, ready to do battle. Harry and Tim (mounted on his T-rex) slowly paced in a clockwise direction, circling each other.

“HA!” scoffed Tim the Enchanter dramatically. “You will try, but NOTHING you do will be enough, because you see Mr Potter, I am the AUTHOR! The magic of the written word has made me the most powerful wizard in the world!”

Harry Potter replied, “Oh really? An all-powerful wizard who can’t even control his own characters? Your characters never truly belonged to you, Tim. They are free �“ free, Tim! As much as you deny it, you have no control over any of the characters in this story �“ why? A wise old wizard once told me about something called Love, magic more powerful and wondrous than we can possibly imagine�“”

“Yes I see,” hissed Tim the Enchanter impatiently.

“…my mother died to save me, Tim, something I believe you find difficult to comprehend. You cannot hope to defeat your characters, because within their hearts burns an intense passion, yearning for something more �“ the Love of their character, their story, no matter how badly written or underdeveloped�“”

“Great. I get it!” steamed the author in annoyance.

“…and let me tell you about a noble movement of Muggles more than a half century ago. They Loved everyone and treated all people, regardless of country, colour, or creed �“ as equals. These people called themselves ‘Hippies’�“”

“SHUT UP ALREADY!”

At that moment, the sun rose over the horizon for the second time that day, bathing the Great Hall in glorious, golden light. Both combatants stopped pacing around each other in circles, and the duel began.

Harry Potter charged at the author mounted on his giant reptile, and Tim fired a burst from his nuclear Kalashnikov. Half a dozen copies of the Marxist texts pelted in Super Harry’s direction, but he expertly sliced each copy of the books in half with his sword as they zoomed in. The author then changed tactics, and pulled out his laptop computer�“

Super Harry was running as fast as he could towards the T-rex, aiming to knock Tim’s perch out from under him. The Chosen One dodged some lasers and sprinted closer and closer and finally slipped on a banana peel.

The peel had been written into the story just milliseconds before by Tim via his laptop. The perfectly positioned trap slid underneath Harry’s foot, throwing him absurdly into the air, and somehow, without any reason at all, he managed to IMPALE himself on the sword of Gryffindor.

The Boy-Who-Lived hadn’t lived up to his name, for he lay sprawled on the floor with the bloodstained blade stuck ridiculously in his chest.

“Whoopsh!” laughed Tim the Enchanter in his fake Scottish accent. “I guessh he musht have shlipped!”

After the shock had worn off, the epic battle resumed with renewed fury. The gorillas once again bashed and pummelled, and the Tyrannosaur claimed more victims with its lasers. The author had put away his weapon and was instead typing on his laptop, choosing to fight with his depraved imagination:

Impossibly, rabid squirrels started raining from the ceiling, causing massive panic as the furry rodents latched on to peoples’ heads.

One of the animals was stuck in Meagan’s hair, thrashing and clawing, but she had enough sense to aim her wand and shout, “SQUIRRELUS GENOCIDUM!”

All of the squirrels in the immediate vicinity combusted (with humorous/terrifying results for the ones stuck in peoples’ hair) and turned to ash, but more and more kept raining from the ceiling, despite repeated use of the destructive spell. Next came the hail of haggis…

As his followers fought and died around him, Wat zigzagged across the chaotic room, weaved through the deluge of death, and ran over to the dead corpse of Harry Potter. Completely without ceremony (aside from a muttered, “Sorry, mate!”), he braced his foot against the demised torso and wrenched out the sword of Gryffindor. He ran over to the Tyrannosaurus Rex to complete the job that Super Harry had attempted, but not quite finished.

A psychotic gorilla Nazi got in Wat’s way, but one slash of the great sword finished the beast, which grunted, “OOGA!” Unseen by the T-rex’s deadly eyes, Wat ran up to its massive feet and without a moment’s hesitation, he plunged the blade into the thick reptilian hide.

The dinosaur let loose an ear-splitting shriek, protesting the sharp pointy thing stuck in its leg. Wat yanked the sword out and slashed and stabbed again and again �“ the Tyrannosaur vainly attempted to kick the little human away, but Wat dodged expertly and rushed to work on the other leg.

The massive carnivore soon fell to its knees and flailed its tiny, useless arms pitifully. Wat had slashed the muscles in the legs, not only immobilising the beast and causing it great pain, but also greatly shortening its life expectancy. The deadly basilisk venom imbibed in Gryffindor’s sword entered the Tyrannosaur’s veins and arteries and made their way to the brain and heart. The giant reptile gave one last but weak shriek before it keeled over, very still and very dead.

Tim the Enchanter was now the lone enemy in the battle, but he shed no tears for the defeat of his faithful mount or any of his minions. The yeti, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and all of the squirrels and psychotic gorilla Nazis had been killed, but well more than half of the revolutionaries died in that long and bloody process.

However, despite their horrendous losses, the end quickly approached: Now the battle was only between the twisted author himself and his not-as-twisted literary creations.

Tim safely tucked away his laptop, pulled out his bizarre AK-47, and leaped off the thick neck of the dead thunder lizard and landed on the floor. The author did not waste any moments standing still, for he darted across the Great Hall dodging spells and blazing away with his gun on full automatic.

The Kalashnikov screamed a long, rattling bark and spat fire. Once the ammunition of books was expended in one magazine, Tim ripped it out and inserted another one, firing again and again. Dozens were mowed down in this manner, but not just nameless extras: Professor McGonagall, Auror Reg Scott, and that bloke named Roy were brutally skewered and killed instantly.

One student tried the Bolshevik-Blasting curse, but it didn’t work. “You’re really shtupid, you schilly shtudent!” Tim the Enchanter taunted as he blew away the offending girl with a psycho-hypervelocity Das Kapital. “Democraticsh Market-Shochialishm ish the way to goh!”

“What are you talking about?” John shouted to the author. “You think you can control capitalism? You’re mad!”

“CONFRINGO!” screamed Harriet. Her blasting curse didn’t hit Tim, but it hit his gun which then ruptured in his hands, becoming nothing more than a twisted, smoking piece of metal.

Tim the Enchanter roared in fury and finally found a use for Harriet’s character �“ target practise. His hand darted into the opposite appendage’s long sleeve, and a handful of depleted-uranium toothbrushes shot out with a flick of his wrist and arm.

THUMP!

The toothbrushes buried themselves deep into Harriet’s chest �“ she stared down at them in disbelief, but then her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell to the ground, lifeless.

There was no time for grief �“ only anger. It was anger for a fellow friend who was an underdeveloped character, but by no means undervalued or unforgotten. In a blaze of fury, the six remaining members of the original Absurd Fanfic Revolution threw themselves into the attack against the author, hurling curse after curse at him and not thinking about their own personal safety.

That proved to be a mistake. Tim the Enchanter never stopped moving, and the volleys of curses buzzed harmlessly by as he dodged around the room. He fought back with a seemingly endless swarm of toothbrushes �“ both hands furiously reached into his sleeves and threw the blunt darts that either smacked into bodies or ricocheted off shield charms.

John was one of those people who didn’t create his defences fast enough, being too focused on attacking. A depleted uranium toothbrush rammed home into his shoulder and he was knocked to the ground, screaming obscenities. Moments later, he was engulfed in a swirling storm of liquid fire �“ after a lot of running and dodging, Tim had repossessed his trusty staff that only worked for him.

“AGUAMENTI!” several revolutionaries chorused, trying to put out their blazing comrade. Instead of putting out the jellied petroleum, the jets of water simply spread it around!

With some amazingly quick thinking, Meagan conjured a massive cauldron of sand out of thin air that dumped its contents onto the fire, smothering it. Nobody had enough time to check whether John was all right or not �“ Tim threw the depleted uranium toothbrushes with one hand and twirled his staff with the other, spraying fire. The host of shield charms helped deflect most of the author’s attacks, but they also prevented the protagonists from striking back.

FWOOMP! another fighter combusted with a healthy dose of nefarious napalm, and then another student went down, bearing a startling resemblance to a sea urchin due to the plethora of toothbrushes embedded in his body.

Wat was feeling desperate, and for good reason. Tim the Enchanter was picking them off, one by one or a few at a time, but there was seemingly nothing the revolutionaries could do to stop him. None of their curses were hitting the author, and Wat couldn’t get close enough to use the sword of Gryffindor that sat in his hand, itching to see some more action.

So he tried disarming the author again with a summoning charm �“ it had worked once before, so it was worth another shot.

“Accio staff!”

Unlike two thousand words earlier, Tim’s magic flamethrower did not come soaring into Wat’s hand �“ the author had the stick firmly in his grip. The same disappointing effect occurred when Wat next attempted to summon his laptop. Tim the Enchanter retaliated by twirling his staff round and round, creating a whirlwind of fire.

That couldn’t be good.

“IF YOU NEED TO GO TO THE LIBRARY, NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME!” Wat yelled to Meagan as he threw a few wild curses and took cover behind his shield charm, which was being seared by the raging flames.

“SORRY!” she answered, ducking to avoid potential decapitation by another swarm of toothbrushes that had ignited and were burning green. “I’M A BIT BUSY!”

“ACCIO PANCREAS!” bellowed Chris stupidly.

Incredibly, as if some massive, invisible hand had grabbed him, Tim the Enchanter was irresistibly yanked into the air by his midsection. He screamed in shock at the absurdity of his predicament, and barely a moment later, he crashed back to earth, landing hard on his backside.

Wat Tyler could hardly believe his eyes, but he did anyway. Without pausing to think, he ran up to the black-cloaked figure, who was struggling to get up.

Crack! The sword of Gryffindor swung and broke in half the staff that had claimed so many lives. Wat delivered a savage kick to the author’s groin and he crumpled back to the ground, groaning. A foot landed on top of his chest, and the tip of the sword was aimed at Tim’s throat.

“I have the laptop!” Meagan exclaimed, for she had just arrived and pulled the folding computer out of Tim the Enchanter’s outfit. The surviving revolutionaries were at the scene in a heartbeat, huddled in a circle, surrounding the defeated psychotic author.

“Get your foot off me!” Tim the Enchanter spat in a completely normal voice, though it was flushed with anger and �“ though he would never admit it �“ fear.

Chris caught Wat’s attention by gesturing his head in the direction of Tim’s. Wat nodded.

Kick!

“OW! JESUS CHRIST!” the author swore after having been kicked in the head.

That wasn’t exactly what Wat wanted Chris to do, so he did it himself. Still keeping his sword in a threatening position, he reached down and pulled the ram’s horns off Tim’s head. The author had unruly black hair underneath, and he looked no older than any of the Gryffindor protagonist student friend people.

“So… Tim,” Wat said after he casually tossed the horned hat to the floor. “Looks like you didn’t live up to your threat, after all.”

“Yeah yeah, shut up,” Tim answered bitterly. “Can’t you point that thing someplace else? You’re making me nervous.”

Wat sighed and took his foot off the author. He let him get up, but the sword was still half-raised, ready to strike. Tim gingerly got to his feet, and spat some blood out of his mouth onto the floor. “Your friend there might have loosened a few teeth,” he muttered.

The sword found itself pointed at Tim’s throat again. “That friend has a name, and his name is Chris,” Wat growled.

Tim’s eyes briefly scanned Chris the stupid character before returning to Wat. “No kidding,” the author breathed. “So, I take it that you’ve won and want me to never return?”

The main protagonist looked at his battered, incensed comrades before answering, “That’s only partially correct. You owe us quite a lot.”

Tim the Enchanter rolled his eyes. “Right. I read your poster �“ you want me to make you lot proper characters and leave you alone then?”

“That is correct,” Wat answered simply, and he lowered his sword and wand.

“Spiffing,” replied Tim unenthusiastically. “Now, there is something I’d like you to do for me.”

Eyebrows were raised. Meagan pointed out, “You are in no position to bargain, Tim.”

Tim the Enchanter chuckled unpleasantly, making everyone feel uneasy �“ it only reinforced their perceptions of the author as being a bit of a nutter, though a very crafty and incredibly dangerous one.

“You’ll find that I am, Meagan Walsh,” Tim the Enchanter refuted to her astonishment. “If character development is what you want, then making me unhappy won’t get you too far.”

The author turned to Wat and continued �“ “So, Mr Tyler, let us come to a little agreement. You do your magic thing to undo that personal e-mail attack you did, and you will return my money into my college savings account. In return, I will flesh out all of your characters and leave you alone. I suppose as an added bonus, I’ll repair the school. Do we have a deal?”

Wat considered for a moment before saying, “Done.”

“WHAT?” Meagan interjected. Not caring that Tim was right in front of them and could hear everything she said, she berated, “We won �“ you can’t just let him off that easily! We have to punish him, to make sure that he thinks twice before meddling with our story again!”

“Are you familiar with the Treaty of Versailles, Miss Walsh?” Tim the Enchanter asked calmly. Meagan turned red.

Other surviving fighters of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution like-minded with her desire to punish the author didn’t understand the Muggle history reference. Wat Tyler put it into simple English: “Look everyone, there’s been enough killing. I’m sure that neither we nor Tim here wants to continue this conflict, so we should end it now so that both sides are reasonably happy. You do want peace, don’t you?”

No one could argue with that. There were nods from everyone and Wat correctly assumed that they agreed with his decision. Wat laid the sword of Gryffindor on the floor and held out his newly-freed hand for Tim to shake. With a reconciliatory smile on his face, Tim the Enchanter shook it. He if wasn’t such a crazed, tyrannical author, he might have been a nice bloke.

“Just so you know, I still don’t trust you,” Wat said to Tim.

The author smiled and replied, “Of course; you would be a fool if you didn’t!” He then turned to the character with a newly obtained surname and asked politely, “I’ll be needing my computer, if you don’t mind. It will be a bit difficult to finish this story without it.”

With slight hesitation, Meagan Walsh returned the laptop to Tim the Enchanter. He opened it and set it on the floor �“ sitting on the debris-strewn floor with his knees up to his chin, he typed on the keyboard.

Beep! a car horn beeped.

Everyone looked in the direction of the noise, which happened to be skyward. A gleaming red 1963 Mini Cooper zoomed in through the hole in the ceiling and landed next to Tim, parting a path in the circle of former revolutionaries.

Tim the Enchanter got up from the ground and folded up his laptop. He clambered inside the Mini, but before closing the driver’s door, he announced, “Farewell, everyone! May we never meet again!”

With that, the door snapped shut and the engine revved to life. Tim put the car into gear and drove off, flying back out through the partially open roof of the Great Hall. Within moments, he was out of sight and the sound of the car’s engine ebbed away into nothingness.

“Git,” Wat muttered.

Chapter 9: The Happy Ending

The five Gryffindor friends sat at their house table, eating their breakfast. A fortnight had passed since the conclusion of the final battle, and the author had lived up to his side of the bargain. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry looked as good as new, and a casual observer would have never suspected that three terrible battles had taken place there not too long ago.

However, there was one indication of the violence that that a more perceptive onlooker would have noticed. The castle felt empty: few students plied the corridors to classes, and the refurbished house tables of the Great Hall were grossly oversized for the small populations of wizarding youth that remained. It seemed meaningless to have the clusters of students sit with their fellow housemates since there were so few of them, so they all sat together at one end of the table underneath the scarlet banner emblazoned with the gold lion.

Though their numbers were small, the residents of Hogwarts were by no means lifeless. They exchanged stories, laughed, and admired the spectacular ruby-encrusted sword that Wat used to cut his toast with. The time for grieving the fallen had passed �“ they were now enjoying the glorious freedom of having lives of their very own. The characters had names, physical descriptions, and better yet, they didn’t have to worry about the author making ridiculous things happen to them!

It was a good feeling, and one that the five friends were eager to get used to.

---

They remained close after leaving the school, keeping in touch in order to get to know one another a little better. Even three years after the final battle, they were still discovering new things about their friends and themselves. Parents and siblings were met for the first time. Habits and traits were unveiled. Favourite colours, phrases, and Quidditch teams were chosen. Even romance blossomed.

Zigmond and Alice were sitting in the shade of an old oak tree near the lake, locked in a passionate snog. Fortunately, Alice was no longer bald, her hair having grown into a beautiful blonde sheet that was currently covering both of their faces and intertwined with Ziggie’s waving brown mane. Just like what she wished way back in Chapter B, she had nice blue eyes like the sea, and she was kind and funny… but also a bit of a drip. But did she care?

Nope.

After the couple had figuratively eaten each other’s faces off for several long minutes, they broke apart. Zigmond looked at his fiancée with his green eyes and jokingly asked, “Remind me �“ why do I like you again?”

“We were just meant to be, remember?” she answered, smiling and brushing the blonde hair out of her face. Ever since the two of them had volunteered to play the role of the infatuated couple, the plot set things in motion and they found themselves drawn to each other as if magnetically. Even three years after their character’s liberation, they still liked each other solely based on genuine affection!

Their limbs unravelled and the two sat side by side with their backs against the tree, looking out to the lake. Alice snuggled up to her soon-to-be husband’s side and rested her head on Ziggie’s shoulder. “Alice Pennifold�“Thustrust…” she said experimentally, tasting the sound of what would be her new�“

“Hey mates! What are you doing?”

That was Chris Davis, whose sandy-haired head had just appeared from behind the tree. He was a very nice person, but he unfortunately wasn’t graced with much intelligence and he had no concept of personal privacy. Despite the awkwardness of the situation that had been ignominiously thrust upon them, Zigmond and Alice took it with good humour.

“Ay up, Chris,” Zigmond greeted him as both he and Alice stood up in a more dignified position. “You’re here early.”

Chris fully emerged from behind the tree, grinning and dark eyes twinkling. He explained, “Yup. I was bored, so I thought I’d like to take a walk, and then I find you here!”

Zigmond responded wryly, “Of course you did.” Chris didn’t catch the sarcasm and instead started a conversation about elephants.

After some twenty minutes of gamely going along with Chris’ antics, Alice interrupted and pointed at two familiar dark silhouettes walking through the gates of the grounds. The three friends decided to leave the shade of the tree and make their way down the path amidst Chris’ animated discussion about the differences between Asian and African elephants’ trunks.

The two incoming figures’ features soon became apparent as the two groups walked towards each other �“ there was a tall man with very short brown hair and a fledgling proto-moustache, and a short woman with her frizzy red hair tied in an unruly ponytail. However, it was already obvious who they were before then.

“So, how long have you been here for?” asked Wat when the five friends met each other in the middle of the path. “Not long, I hope?”

Alice and Zigmond muttered that it was nothing, but Chris completely ignored the question and started telling Meagan all the fascinating things there were to know about pachyderms. Without further ado, Wat suggested that they should get a move on, so the five walked back up the path to the castle of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

“…And you see, Meagan, when you add two feet and two feet, you get a complete elephant…”

The gravel path led up to the great doors of the entrance hall, but the five friends had no intention of returning to their former school. They turned off the path and instead walked across the grounds, heading in the direction of the great marble sarcophagus where Albus Dumbledore rested.

Chris ended his monologue, and the group walked in silence.

However, they weren’t interested in visiting the Great Headmaster’s final resting place. The site also contained rows and rows of plain white headstones, where six feet underground the nameless hundred and fifty lay �“ Tim the Enchanter’s parting act as author was to edit the story, moving their bodies from their hastily dug graves in the Quidditch pitch to the great memorial cemetery. A line of young trees grew at its edges, complimented by several banks of poppies in full bloom.

The entrance to the cemetery was dominated by a marble obelisk, defiantly reaching for the sky like some inverted exclamation point that had its head chopped off. Embedded in the obelisk’s stone face were names in shining brass, that had been collected from the melted down Soviet cartridge cases that littered the castle's floors after Chapter Four:

Alan
Argus Filch
Bert
Blonde Woman
Dick
Edmund Montgomery
Erick Schicklgruber
Frank
Giant Squid
Harriet Ackerley
Harry Potter
Hunter
John Evans
Leonidas I of SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!
Minerva McGonagall
Mrs Norris
Pomona Sprout
Reginald Scott
Roy…
In respect for those fallen who had no last names, the tall list was sorted alphabetically by their firsts’. The brass letters reached down to the base, where there was a sombre statement recognising the sacrifices of both the named and the nameless in the struggle for freedom from the author.

John Evans… Harriet Ackerley… those were the two names that genuinely grieved the five survivors of the original group of seven friends. All they knew about their fallen comrades was that John was sarcastic, and Harriet enthusiastic to prove her mettle, but there was potential for so much more. Their lives had been cruelly taken away from them, before they even had a chance to discover the full extent of their characters.

So on this third anniversary of The Absurd Fanfic Revolution’s victory, the five honoured their brave friends and fellow fighters who died so that they could live in peace as developed characters with depth and integrity. Wat, Meagan, Zigmond, Alice, and Chris each waved their wands and conjured wreaths and flowers, which they laid at the base of the marble obelisk.

They stood there for several long moments, which stretched into years in their minds. They mused about what they had won, wondered who the dead would have become had they lived, and cherished the few short chapters of memories of John and Harriet, who unfortunately could not be with them.

Finally, the five former Gryffindors turned and left without saying a word �“ they crossed the cemetery’s boundary of trees and walked back to the gravel path. With parting glances at Hogwarts school, they left the grounds and headed into Hogsmeade village.

The Three Broomsticks, to be precise.

But under the influence of Butterbeers and Firewhiskeys, their moods rose considerably. Their sadness for those who had died three years past dissipated, to be replaced with jokes and fond reminiscences.

“‘Accio Pancreas…’” Zigmond chuckled, with some Firewhiskey foam stuck on his well-developed facial hair. “I still can’t believe you did something as stupid as that, Chris, and that it actually worked!”

“And remember when John threatened a mutiny or something, just so that his character could get some more lines in the story?” Meagan asked. Wat nodded, and couldn’t help but smile at the memory of his dead friend’s devious scheme. He had a feeling that that would be a story he’d tell to his grandchildren one day.

And so they talked. The conversation eventually moved away from recollections and shifted to the very pressing present concern of which Quidditch team was going to win the League Cup final.

“I’ll bet you ten Galleons the Kenmare Kestrels beat Puddlemere United on Friday,” Meagan challenged, to which Wat eagerly accepted, “You’re on!”

When they had finished their drinks, the five friends ventured out into the open air again �“ they spent a few moments blinking to adjust their eyes to the sudden torrent of sunlight that blasted into their retinas before they could see properly.

“Anyone for going to Zonko’s before we go our separate ways?” Alice proposed, spotting the joke shop across the street with the hyperactive displays in the windows.

“Why not? We have time,” Wat answered to nods from everyone else. “Besides, that weird spinning thing in the window looks interesting �“ I’d like to see what Mr Weasley has come up with.”

With their eyes on the eccentric attention-grabbing merchandise behind the windows, they crossed the street.

BAM!

The cement mixer slammed into the five friends with grisly results, fulfilling Tim the Enchanter’s promise from the previous chapter. Wat Tyler was the first to die, for his body was plastered against the front grille and was then dragged underneath the vehicle and scraped into a bloody pulp. Finally, his corpse was flayed by the rear set of wheels, and he came to a rest wedged in the wheel arch.

Meagan Walsh was walking next to him, and she went down not a moment later. Wat’s mangled body collided into her, and she was thrown to the ground and flattened mercilessly by the huge crushing tyres.

Chris Davis just managed to get a brief glimpse of the onrushing vehicle before he was hit. His shout of “ELEPHANT!” was cut short because he was gripped by the cement mixer’s front tyres and brutally run over, his squished lump of a body causing the front of the vehicle to leap into the air.

Lastly, Zigmond Thustrust and Alice Pennifold were struck down and cruelly separated from each other. Their lifeless bodies tumbled underneath and were mutilated by the spinning driveshaft and crushing wheels, and were completely mauled beyond recognition within seconds.

The cement mixer’s brakes screamed and the massive battering ram on wheels finally skidded to a halt �“ the engine growled, eager to get moving again. The cabin door opened and out stepped a man, and shaking with trepidation, he looked at the huge smear of blood and the twisted, splattered corpses he left behind.

Woah! Déjà vu!

Once again, Benjamin Dover the cement mixer driver ripped his company hat off his head and threw it to the ground. Enraged, he shouted at the sky, “GOD DAMMIT, TIM! WHENEVER YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO THROW MY CEMENT MIXER AT IT, DON’T YOU?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “Ahhh… SHIT!” Benjamin Dover swore, and without a backwards glance, he scooped up his hat and got back in the cabin of Volvo the illustrious cement mixer, emblazoned with the words, Deus Ex Machina Cement Corporation. He stepped on the throttle and drove away, into the setting sun.

Moral of the story?

Look both ways before crossing the street.





























Keeping the author happy might be a good idea too…

THE END