Haley’s Annoying Show Tune Du Jour:
What is this feeling, so sudden and new
I felt the moment I laid eyes on you?
My pulse is rushing, my head is reeling
My face is flushing
What is this feeling?
Fervid as a flame
Does it have a name?
Yes! LOATHING! Unadulterated loathing!
For your face, your voice, your clothing
Let’s just say, I loathe it all!
-- “What Is This Feeling?” from Wicked.
THURSDAY
I’ve decided to preserve for posterity whatever ridiculous show tune Haley uses to wake me up every morning in case I ever need to present it in front of a grand jury. I’m not even going to try to make sarcastic remarks about these songs because I’m pretty sure they make themselves.
Today was my first day working at the Chudley Cannons’ stadium. I’m writing this from a nearby ice cream parlor and spattering the pages of this journal with hot fudge, but I need it after a crazy day like today. I think the first thing I should tell you about my day was that we were required to wear neon orange robes. Neon Chudley Cannons orange. No matter how many times I say it, I can’t get over how horrific it all was. There are few colours that look worse with reddish-brownish hair than neon orange. Add to that the fact that neon orange is the colour of prison uniforms, and I think that sums up my day nicely. And from now on, I know that shade of neon orange is exactly how I’ll always imagine the fires of Niflheim.
What the Niflheim does Niflheim mean?
Mmm. I just looked it up and apparently, Niflheim is the Norse equivalent of that place you go after you die when you’re bad. You know, the opposite of Valhalla. These censoring quills are pretty weird, but at least there’s one bright spot in my day now. I love how totally non-threatening ‘Nifleheim’ sound, don’t you? It sounds like some bumbling German tourist in lederhosen drunkenly skipping around and trying to play the accordion.
Well, anyway, I have to work with two other trainees, both three years younger than me and both people who I rather wish would go to Niflheim. (Guess what my new favourite word is now?) I like to think of them as Cliopatrick, mainly because their names are, in fact, Clio and Patrick. Puns are fun.
Now, it’s true that I’ve been known to make snap judgments about people based on my first impressions, but they’re almost always right. I don’t feel ashamed about admitting it, because you can tell a lot about a person that way. For example, I know that Clio Winkley is a little skunkbag.
Clio is even shorter than Haley and almost as thin. She’s very, very, very blonde and very, very, very tan, both in a very, very, very obviously fake kind of way. And yet, she doesn’t act like someone who would be very, very, very blonde and tan”she has this serious, overly sophisticated way about her that’s just so incredibly odd. She makes me feel stupid, even though I’m pretty sure she’s not actually very smart. She’s probably one of those people who’s just really good at making people think she is.
I’m not really sure why she wants to be an Auror, maybe because it’s mostly a “guy job” and she probably wants to meet as many guys as possible; we’re the only girls in the training program, and I wouldn’t touch any of those blokes with a twenty-foot pole, so she’s been lucky in that respect. I honestly don’t think I have ever seen her without at least one hand touching her hair, which will be interesting to see in combat situations. But the number one sign that she’ll flirt with anything that breathes is that I’ve even seen her flirt with Patrick Wormwood. And no one in her right mind would do that.
It’s not that Patrick is ugly. He’s not. He’s a perfectly normal-looking man”average height, average weight, dark hair cropped close, glasses, neat clothes. He’s just incredibly… I won’t even try to describe him. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about him. I’ll just suffice it to say that he reminds me of an interesting cross between Uncle Percy and Uncle Pervy. (In case you were worried, I don’t actually have an uncle named Pervy... I really hope I didn’t have to tell you that.)
Today I arrived at the stadium, decked out in my Niflheim-neon orange, to be confronted by a most alarming-looking person. If you’ve ever seen the Disney movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” this man was Frollo without the purple dress and exciting plumed hat that should probably be on some medieval princess somewhere.
If you’ve never seen “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” then you, unlike nine-tenths of the female wizarding population, never dated Tyrone Thomas. His passion in life, other than Quidditch and snogging as many people as possible, was always films, especially wimpy films that most men wouldn’t be caught dead watching. Last time I talked to him about five years ago, he was madly obsessed with “The Princess Bride.” His dad’s Muggle-born and was always obsessed with movies himself, and so Tyrone knows even more about Muggle pop culture than Haley does. Between them, I might as well not even be a witch.
But I digress. I still have to describe this alarming-looking person for all of you lucky girls who never dated Tyrone and therefore never had to watch Disney movies. First of all, this guy was about six-foot-three and as skinny as a twig. He had short grey hair, receding slightly, with a widows’ peak that any vampire would be proud of. His cheeks were hollow enough to hold scoops of ice cream, his crooked nose was pointy enough to slice cheese and possibly diamond, and he had suspiciously red lips. His pale grey eyes looked almost white, and to add to this strange picture, he had pointy eyebrows that danced terrifyingly around his face in the strangest of ways as he spoke. Also, he was wearing pinstriped robes, which I don’t think is ever a good sign.
“I am Henderson Vaultz,” he said in a voice so short and abrupt that he probably used toenail clippers on it. “I own this stadium. There will be no jokes about ‘doing the Vaultz.’”
I think my jaw became friendly with the floor. I know for sure I will never be able to hear his name again without thinking about ‘doing the Vaultz,’ and I also know for sure that I would never have thought of that if it wasn’t for The Vaultz himself. Ick.
“You will report for duty every morning. I will alternate your guard duties. Today, Mr. Wormwood will occupy the stadium entrance, Ms. Winkley will supervise the crowd inside the stadium, and Ms. Weasley will stand guard at the entrance to the Cannons’ dressing room.”
My jaw dropped even further. Clio gave me a glare of jealousy, and I’m sure that pythons the world around were giving me similar glares, envying my jaw-unhinging abilities. Stand guard outside the dressing room? Of an all-male Quidditch team? Whose numbers include my ex-boyfriend? Nooo, thank you…
That was when Patrick spoke up. “Sir, would you really consider it entirely prudent to have a woman guarding the dressing room? Not to, of course, belittle the quite considerable talents of the lovely Ms. Weasley, but however skilled and beautiful she may be, one must acknowledge that uncomfortable and, dare I say it, improper situations could occur.”
For once in my life, I agreed with him. (Especially on the part about me being skilled and beautiful, of course.) As obsequious and creepy as he may be, one must acknowledge that he had a point and, dare I say it, a good one. Hint: If you didn’t realize I was impersonating Patrick’s weird, weird speech pattern in my last sentence, you really don’t know me at all.
Vaultz gave Patrick an ice-cold glare. It was probably the first glare he’d ever received in his life, because he looked like he was about to wet himself. “There will be no such trouble,” Vaultz snapped. “None of you are to have any contact whatsoever with the Cannons. They are athletes, and you are Aurors. You are here to do your job and they are here to do theirs, and socializing will not be necessary.”
Speaking of what’s necessary, I think breath mints definitely are, Mr. Vaultz, was the thing that I didn’t say but thought emphatically. But at the same time, I breathed a sigh of relief”hopefully minty-fresh”that I was at least bound by my career to ignore the athletes. People say I can be really rude sometimes. At least I had an excuse this time.
“But sir,” whined Patrick, “I understand your devotion to upholding the rules of course, but you must realize that not everyone is quite as honourable as you are. Rules may be ignored. Being trusting toward the fair sex like this encourages hanky-panky.”
What. The. Niflheim. Patrick Wormwood is only twenty years old. No twenty-year-old should say ‘hanky panky.’ No one from the twenty-first century should say ‘hanky panky.’ Or ‘fair sex.’ Or basically anything that kid says.
“There is no time for chit-chat,” Vaultz said briskly. “But breaking the rules will result in severe penalties, so I doubt these ladies will do anything so stupid. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have actual work to do.” And with that, he strode off, pausing only to briefly abuse the man at the hot dog counter.
Charming man.
Once he was safely out of earshot, Clio began pouting for England.
“Oh, come on,” I said quietly, “you’ll get your turn. If it helps, I’m really dreading this.”
Clio’s round brown eyes widened and she raised an eyebrow, a mannerism that Haley hates so much that I practically expected her to pop out of nowhere and smack the girl in the face. Unfortunately, this exciting event didn’t happen. “Come on yourself, Emma,” she groused. “Even you can’t possibly pretend that you’re not thrilled to hang around the Quidditch players’ dressing room.”
“Guarding it. It’s not like I’ll be standing in the doorway staring at Tyrone Thomas naked. And even if I could, I really would not want to.”
Patrick visibly blushed when I uttered the word ‘naked.’ Oh, the scandal! [Insert Victorian hand-wringing here.]
“You know that’s not true. Any girl in the world would give her wand arm to see that,” Clio informed me. “I don’t know why you insist on acting like that”it doesn’t make you cool and mysterious.”
Why does everyone but me talk in such a weird, formal way? Seriously, I might as well be in a book.
“I don’t know why you ‘insist’ on jumping to conclusions about stuff you don’t know,” I shot back, and strode off around the corner. A second later, I turned around and popped my head back around the corner. “And by the way”Tyrone Thomas is a terrible kisser,” I shouted before heading back. I rather hoped he heard me, wherever he was.
Guard duty was just as boring and uneventful as I had hoped it would be. For most of it, the players were out on the field anyway, so I was guarding an empty room, which was just fine with me. To use Clio’s expression, I’d give my wand arm to never have to face Tyrone again. That would be way too awkward.
I just realized, I haven’t really told you anything about Tyrone except that he’s pretty, he plays Quidditch, he likes movies, I dated him, and I regretted it. Well, I’m as a general rule not a romantic person at all. I’ve had three boyfriends in my life, and The ‘Ronester, as he likes to call himself, was my first. He was one of those guys that you see in every school in the world, the popular, good-looking jock who knew perfectly well that he was all of those things. Exactly the type of person I’ve never liked at all.
But he seemed to have taken a shine to me in our third year, and he kept doggedly pursuing me over the years, and gradually, we got to be friends. I have to admit, Tyrone can be uncannily charming and funny when he wants to be. Also very generous, and thoughtful in a slightly stupid way. I denied it for about three years, but I have to admit, I liked him a lot. He’s one of those charismatic people you can’t help but like. We started dating in sixth year and all the way through seventh year, and then a little bit after we graduated.
I’ve always had a temper, and I’ll admit that it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble. Tyrone and I always fought a lot, both as friends and as a couple; sometimes, we wouldn’t talk at all for as long as four months. But then we’d always get back together like it had never happened, and it’d be no problem.
Then we had the fight. It wasn’t even a fight, it was a discussion”we were at a restaurant, and Tyrone ordered green beans. Only he pronounced it like ‘green beans’, and I said it was ‘green beans.’ And then all of a sudden, we started dragging up all this other stuff, like how I say pronounce ‘mischievous’ as “MISS-cha-viss,” and he says, “miss-CHEE-vee-us,” and I say ‘EN-ve-lope’ and he says, ‘AWN-ve-lope,” and I say ‘van-EL-la,’ and he says ‘van-IL-la.’ And before long, it was potayto-potahto-tomayto-tomahto-let’s-call-the-whole-thing-off.
It definitely wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. I wasn’t really mad, either”I knew that the next day, as soon as Tyrone tentatively said ‘hi’ to me, I’d act like there’d never been any argument at all. Only it never happened.
I kept expecting him to owl me, to visit me, to send me a package, anything, but after that day, I never heard from him again. It’s been five years, and I’ve moved on”I’ve dated two other guys, and he’s probably dated about ninety-seven other girls. It’s no big deal, but I’d rather not have to see him again.
And for the most part on the job today, I was lucky. I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t even look at him”naked or clothed. But I did overhear him; I couldn’t help it.
I was just sitting there outside the door reading “Witch Weekly” and pretending to do some kind of job, and all of a sudden, I heard a male voice say, “Yeah, the Aurors, I heard about that. That blonde one’s kind of cute.”
“The other girl’s really fit, though,” said another, then proceeded to say something else that made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. “What d’you think, Ty?”
“He likes the guy best!” shouted another voice.
I recognized the laugh that followed, and then when a sepulchrally deep and somewhat unnecessarily loud voice spoke, I could feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “Shut up, Gregg.”
“What about the girls, though?” persisted the first voice. I began to wonder if all guy conversations were like this. “How about the red-headed one?”
Tyrone let out another laugh, but this one was very different from the first. It was a short, sharp bark of a laugh, more like an icy gust of wind than something created by a human voice. “Uh yeah, she’s not bad-looking, I guess,” he said darkly, “but there’s no way I’m getting into that can of worms again. Ugh. Come on, guys, Vaultz vill vant us out there.”
I turned my back to the door and pretended not to notice as it swung open and seven men spilled out. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I watched a dark outline push haughtily past a slightly shorter man with shaggy light-brown curls and march past without looking twice at him. Wow, and now Tyrone was being a snob even to the other guys on his team. New lows for him, but somehow I wasn’t surprised.
I didn’t have to look at Tyrone as he passed to know what he looked like. His unrealistically perfect picture was on a million t-shirts, posters, mugs, and magazine covers, after all. Tall, broad-shouldered, even more well-muscled than back in school, smooth dark brown skin that always made you want to search frantically for just one zit that could prove he was human.
I knew he had slightly slanted hazel eyes and dark, expressive eyebrows and a strong chin and jaw and high cheekbones and a freakishly dazzling smile. I knew he had short, curly black hair that was always shiny with hair products and occasionally a fine fuzz across his full top lip that he was convinced passed for a mustache when it looked more like carpet lint. I didn’t need to look, and I didn’t want to look, no matter how beautiful he was supposed to be.
So I was a can of worms, was I? Good. Great. It would be a million times worse if Tyrone still thought he had a chance with me. I spent years trying to fend off his flirting before I caved in, and I didn’t want to have to go through all of that again.
The nice thing, though, about a can of worms is that it can always catch bigger fish. And there are way more fish in the sea than some self-absorbed, pretty-boy Quidditch superstar.
Pride and Pre-Juiced Plums: A Potter's Pentagon Love Story by Schmerg_The_Impaler
Chapter Notes: Thanks for bearing with me, guys! Now, I must say, this story is a bit of an AU of my already AU trilogy... so as to not include spoilers for the third Potter's Pentagon books, I've changed some stuff-- for example, at least one character who dies in the third book is alive in this. So don't automatically assume, "Oh, Character X lives," or "Character Y marries Character Z." Not much happens in this chapter, but the story definitely picks up later, so fear not. I just had to set the stage.
The song of this chapter is "What Is This Feeling?" from Wicked, by Stephen Schwartz. If you like Wicked, you can find a spoof of it on my profile! _______________________
Chapter Endnotes: Be sure to drop me a review! I promise the story gets better... I just had to include this part. I'd like to give EXTRA-SPECIAL THANKS to the delightful Zoheb (go read his fics!) for teaching me the word Niflheim.