“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.