While some people cope with embarrassment through laughter, Ron managed to cope with it through eating a lot. Unfortunately when you are out in a meadow doing you-know-what, the only edible things around are …flowers…and grass.
In fact, Harry was beginning to feel a little bit concerned about his friend.
“Um, Ron, I hate to tell you this, but you, uh…” he searched for the right word, “you look like a cow, mate.”
“That would be a bull,” Salazar commented. When Harry gave him a blank look, he elaborated, “A cow’s mate is a bull.”
“Right,” said Harry, as though he understood, but he really didn’t. Ron wasn’t commenting, he was on all fours munching on grass. Still wearing the baby swan costume. “Don’t birds eat, like, worms or something?”
“Good idea,” Ron said through a mouth of daises and grass stems.
“NO! I was trying to make a point. You AREN’T a bird Ron!”
“Your right,” Ron stated, his mouth empty of grass, “I’m not a bird-Ron, I’m a Ron-bird!” He flapped his arms and started running around screeching “tweet tweet”.
Harry turned to Salazar, “Sally,” he said, using his friend’s nickname, “since you are the only somewhat sane friend available, I need your advice, what the bloody hell is wrong with him?”
“Well,” said the so-called Sally, “you know how Godric hit him with those spells every time he gave him the finger…”
“…and mooned him…”
“…and spat on him…”
“Yes,” Sally said, “well I think one or more of those spells affected Ron’s brain.”
“How so?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” Sally drawled sarcastically, “your friend thinks he’s a bird, he’s PERFECTLY sane.”
“Oh, yeah, forgot about that,” said Harry, “how do we fix him?”
“I’m not qualified to give this sort of advice! You know how I feel about teaching!”
“I’m asking your advice as a friend, Sally.”
“Are we friends?”
“Yes, remember that montage the readers saw with all the movies/ice creams?”
“But that wasn’t real,” Sally sniffled.
“It helped strengthen our bond of friendship,” said Harry kindly. He grabbed Sally’s hand and the two of them did their secret friend handshake that involved one or two hokey pokey moves and a perfect pirouette.
“Honk, honk!” Ron (currently believing himself to be “Ron bird”) broke this touching moment by running right into Harry and pecking him.
“Ouch, Ron! Gerroff!” Harry yelped, “I don’t feel that way about you!” He rubbed his neck, “we REALLY need to reverse this.”
“We should probably do it quickly, before Helga finds out,” Sally added hastily.
“Why?”
“Because she’s so ‘let’s play school’-ish, if she saw what happened here she would go detention crazy!”
“But Ron didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Not Ron, Godric!”
“He deserves it!”
“No man deserves the punishments Helga could devise.”
“Where is Godric anyways?”
The man they were speaking of was currently rolling around on the ground with laughter as “Ron-bird” began throwing himself down the hill in an attempt to fly. He laughed a bit too hard however and rolled down the hill to Harry and Salazar’s feet.
“Well,” he said, keeping the straightest face he could muster, “wonder what happened to him.” Then his self-control broke and he burst into maniacal laughter, he had had his revenge.
“That looks very nice, Hermione!” Helga said, gazing at the building she had made, “You completed your task outstandingly! So that’s the grade you get! Outstanding! Ooh! I just invented the grading system! What fun!”
Hermione rolled her eyes, “You didn’t invent that, that was invented by a Tibetan monk centuries ago. Well, maybe it would be a decade or two ago, but the point is, someone else invented it!”
“I need to go see this Tiberian monk,” Helga fumed, “he’s plagiarizing me.”
“Tibetan,” Hermione corrected, but it was to late, Helga waved her wand and was gone with an airy ‘poof’.
“Where did Helga go?” asked Rowena, emerging from the “castle”.
“Off to Tiberia, I’m afraid,” Hermione sighed.
“Is that even a country?”
“No.”
“Oh,” Rowena paused thoughtfully, on one hand, Helga was getting annoying with the whole let’s-play-school thing, but on the other hand, she was her best friend. Then she realized something, “does this mean I have to teach you?” She asked in a scandalized tone.
“No, just leave me alone while I work on the new Hogwarts.” Hermione said impatiently.
“Don’t speak to your teacher like that!”
“Sorry, are you willing to teach me now?”
“Not exactly, it would be best if you just gave up and went back to wherever you came from.”
“For that I would need the Time-Turner.”
“You’re a clever witch,” Rowena snapped, “find another way, I’m not giving up my prize!”
In Tiberia, Albania, Helga was looking for a certain monk. As she really didn’t know the language though, she was having much luck. A street vendor stopped her, offering her something pale and slimy on a plate.
“Ooh! Native cooking!” she squealed excitedly and took a large bite.
“Yugga needda paya thata,” yelled the street vendor in native Tiberian.
“What?” Helga asked innocently, devouring the disgusting dish. But she couldn’t understand Tiberian and didn’t really get the message until the vendor pulled out a knife. Then she decided that it really wasn’t worth staying around to search for a monk and dissapparated.
“Okay, I figure if we can get Ron to eat this powder I ground up of random ingredients then use the reversing spell, we can fix him,” said Salazar, showing his hand full of the powder of random ingredients.
“What does the powder do?” asked Harry, curiously.
“Absolutely nothing, but I like grinding things to help me think and it seems a shame to waste it.”
“Erm…hate to interrupt,” Godric mumbled, “but Ron-bird isn’t here.”
“What?!” Salazar snapped, “where did he go?”
“Said something about a nest, and ran towards the forest.”
“Crap!” Salazar exclaimed, “I’ll go make more powder.”
“Tweet, tweet, I am Ron-bird, who dares enter my lair?”
“Ron you’re not a bird!” Harry said, looking up at Ron who was perched on a branch high up, still wearing the ridiculous baby swan costume.
“Tweet, tweet, of course I am you silly land lubber, how else do you think I got in this tree?”
“You climbed it?”
“NO, only land lubbers climb! I flew! Watch, I’ll do it again!” Ron jumped up from the branch he had been sitting on and looked poised to spring.
“Look friend is obviously in emotional trauma, and you didn’t help him?” Godric asked, scandalized, “If I had any hints that Salazar here was about to kill himself, I wouldn’t have waited for him to climb a tree.”
“You put him in this ‘emotional trauma’!” Harry cried.
“Born to be free,” Ron sang as the wind blew and the branch swayed, bouncing him around, “as free as the wind blows…”
“Oh bloody hell, you really are not the songbird type of bird, Ron.”
“I’m not a bird-Ron, I’m a Ron-bird!”
“I vote we let him jump, he’s really getting on my nerves.” Salazar stated, hands over his ears to block out Ron’s singing.
“So, Hermione,” Rowena said, “how does this, Time-Turner thingy work anyways?”
“I’m not telling you until you give it to me!” Hermione exclaimed, “We really need that! I have a feeling if my friends stay here any longer, one of them is going to go insane and think he’s a bird or something weird like that.” She reached for the Time-Turner in Rowena’s hand, Rowena closed her fingers over it, smiling evilly.
“Tell me how it works first,” she cooed, batting her eyelashes at Hermione. The latter looked taken aback.
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Well that’s the only persuasion I’ve ever used to get information out of people.”
“I’m going to be the first bird to fly to the MOON!”
“Okay, I with Sally now,” Harry declared, clamping his hands over his ears.
“But it’s just not right to let him jump,” Godric argued.
“I’m not going to jump, I’m going to fly to the MOON!” sang a voice from above.
“Since when are you on his side anyways?” Salazar asked, looking Godric over critically.
“Since when are you Sally?” Godric asked.
“I’ve always wanted to be called that, but no one ever did, until Harry here,” sniffed Sally. “Now I have to start school where they’ll call me Professor Slytherin, and I’ll never be Sally again.”
Will the Ron-bird dilemma be fixed? Will Hermione retrieve the Time Turner before one of her friends starts to think he’s a bird? Wait…that’s already happened.