Tommy Boy - The amazing dancing chicken
It was another picture-perfect morning in the Great Hall. Harry, Ron and Hermione all sat lazily around the table, eating random bits of "food." Of course, Harry's mind was clouded with the usual whirl involving Professor Trelawney's prophecy, Voldemort and what would be for lunch.
The lethargic atmosphere was interrupted by a not-so-appealing comment from Ron.
"Hedwig's got a boyfriend."
"Congratulations," muttered Hermione. Harry fancied that he heard jealousy in her voice.
Ron ignored the comment.
“She keeps slipping off at night and returns in this kind of daze. Have you noticed her eyes, Harry? They look so love-struck...”
“Ron, I know you are desperate for conversation, but desist from these futile attempts, alright? Let me think about how unfortunate and doomed I am in peace!” said Harry, with fake and very exaggerated anger. He had noticed, recently, that this was an extremely effective way of causing Ron to cry at night to his teddy bear, which had consequently been forced to endure many long, unhappy speeches that mostly consisted of the phrase "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to eat a worm."
“Were you expecting mail, Harry?” inquired Hermione suddenly. “Here comes Hedwig. There’s a letter hanging off one of her wings.”
Harry looked up, grogginess and still in his eyes.
“Who is careless enough to tie a letter to an owl's wing?” he wondered.
“Maybe she picked it up while making out with her boyfriend!” suggested Ron, whose enthusiasm on the subject was starting to worry Harry.
Hedwig landed softly on Hermione’s shoulder. The letter fell into a pile of toast. Harry took one glance and said, “I need to clean my glasses.”
Hermione picked up the letter and read the following:
To Lucius Malfoy
Malfoy Manor, Malfoy dominated street, Malfoy district, Malfoy town.
From Peter Pettigrew
There was a pause as the sentence sank in. This took quit a while, as all the Malfoys tended to be quite pushy, each one trying to make its way into the brain first. Ron, whose brain had much more empty space than Hermione’s, and who therefore was able to store the sentence a lot more easily, made his once-more negligible comment.
“Wow, Harry, your owl has some weird dates!”
Hermione opened the letter and mechanically read aloud the content. After all, not much of it particularly made sense:
Dear Lucius,
He has gone mad! It is hopeless! His brain is zonked! I tried to convince him that he was a man, but he just squawked in reply! Enclosed is a photo of…him. Lucius, you just need one look at it to get the picture! Tell me what to do! Please!
-Peter Pettigrew
A picture tumbled out and landed face down. Harry was about to flip it over, when Ron spoke up.
“Harry, don’t! You have no idea what might be on the other side! It could traumatize you for the rest of your life! You may never recover!”
Harry flipped the photo over. “It’s a chicken.”
Hermione was orbiting Ron and Harry as they walked towards Hagrid’s hut for tea.
“What is the meaning of this photo?” she cried, to no one in particular.
Harry turned his head to face her, and continued to turn in order to keep looking at her.
“Look, first we have to work this out systematically. To start with, who is in the photo?”
“Someone related to both Peter Pettigrew and Lucius Malfoy. He is a man who is not convinced so. The photograph is apparently of him”
“…Right. Now, how exactly would a man become a chicken?”
“Ugh! When will you ever read Hogwarts: A History??? It says quite clearly that on pertrification of one’s sense of self, a person who is convinced they are something else will be caused to change form, until they loose all memory of their original body.”
“Er…petrification of one’s sense-of-self?”
“A natural phenomenon. The most common form of petrification occurs to one’s sense of good fashion.”
They had reached Hagrid’s hut by this time, and were just about to open the door when Hermione spotted a copy of the daily prophet on the doorstep. Not much was legible, though, as the headline (typed in one-million-point font) was the only occupant of the front page, implying both that there was some earth-shattering news running around and that the editor was so excited he wet his pants over it. The font was so large, in fact, that she actually had to have Harry hold it a few meters away before anything could be made out. Now lets take a separate look at Ron and Hermione’s minds when they read the words.
Ron’s brain:
Aww! More English? Okay, let's tackle it slowly - PINK PAPA! PUTRID PUNK PURELY PULVERIZED. What’s pulverized?
Hermione’s brain:
That journalist can’t alliterate.
It turned out that Voldemort, (described by the ecstatic journalist as a dastardly, no-good son of a manticore, as if he were some sort of politician) had supposedly been trampled to death in a recent Muggle stampede caused by pepper. Apparently all the death eaters came griping to the ministry of magic, moaning that their leader was definitely gone, and had officially pleaded with the magical world to take them back. This news caused a fat, furry and somewhat smelly blanket of silence to descend upon the trio.
“Well, uh, seems as though Trelawney got in wrong eh?” said Harry, uneasily breaking the stillness, “Either must die at the hands of the other et cetera…”
“Erm…pepper?”
“Pepper spray,” breathed Hermione, unintentionally giving Ron the impression that this was a very bad deodorant.
“Well,” Harry continued, “Erm, if Voldemort’s gone…”
He was unable to complete the sentence as at that very moment a loud squawking pierced the air. The trio glanced up to see a somewhat discolored chicken fervently jumping on Hagrid’s roof as though it needed to go to the lavatory. It pranced madly for about five minutes and, at some point, even managed a somersault before finally having to plunk down out of sheer exhaustion.
Ron tentatively began to applaud but desisted when the chicken gave him an expression that was normally reserved for his mother. A tiny pause ensued.
“Well, that’s one hell of a chicken,” commented Hermione, then casually added, “it’s almost as if he’s Voldemort and wants to get our attention.”
To this the chicken gave another squawk and looked like it would jump to the moon, but then Harry mockingly interjected, saying “Come ON Hermione -- the next thing you know it’ll pretend to be my father.”
OK, forget moon. Now it looked as though Mars was the poor creature’s target. It gave a chuckle that suspiciously sounded like “Touché AWAY” and leaped up toward God-knows-where. They watched amazed as its originally beaked and feathered figure slowly receded to turn into an un-beaked and un-feathered dot before Ron caught it on its speedy decent.
The fat furry and somewhat smelly blanket of silence one more spread itself over the trio.
Ron cleared his throat. “Well, um…” he began, staring and what was -- externally at least -- a chicken.
“You know,” said Hermione, suddenly “I’ve heard of a movie with this ‘I’m you’re father’ thing in it…”
“Yeah, yeah, a movie…something with warts,” Harry cut in, straining to remember what little he did of the muggle world from the past six years.
Ron looked lost. “Why would people want to move Es?” he asked.
“Star Warts, that’s it!” exclaimed Hermione, as she recollected the name, “lets ask Hagrid!”
Harry thumped a fist on the door. “HAGRID!” he called.
There were noises inside that implied the big guy had just woken up. The door slowly creaked open to reveal a gigantic man dressed in socks, a vest, and, to the trio’s horror, briefs.
The fat, furry and somewhat smelly blanket of silence hurriedly got up and was making its way over to them when Ron quickly said “Uh, umm, uh, Hagrid? Have the chickens been acting a little weird lately?”
The half-giant groggily rubbed his eyes as he strained to remember. “Well, I think some have been using the VCR.”
Harry, Ron and Hermione’s jaws dropped simultaneously. Then, Harry, almost in a dream, walked over to Hagrid’s tea cupboard. He didn’t notice anything else - not the odd VCR stuck in the corner which bore the words "Move your Es, As, Us and any other vowel you want to!" not the framed, decorated and polished collection of tootsie pops in the other corner -- not even the pink, fluffy bunny rabbit Hagrid apparently cuddled in his sleep. He could only see the tea cupboard, which, on reaching, he dreamily opened with both hands. There, in all its glory, sat the muggle-turned-magic entire Star Warts series. Harry groped around in his robes for his wand. He lifted it out like a knight unsheathing his sword, and then, raising it above his head, incinerated the tea cupboard.
A small whimper floated through the room. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Hagrid all turned around to see the same discolored chicken standing on the threshold. It whimpered again, all weak and defenseless, and then, almost like there was nothing more in the entire world of poultry-hood for it live for, kicked its legs up in the air and died.
Hagrid shook his head. “Pity, this one. You folk will be seeing it at dinner.”
The atmosphere in the common room was a very humorous one that evening.
“So let me get this straight,” Harry said, chuckling, “through some weird freak of nature, Voldemort met a basilisk at got his sense-of-self petrified. He had a strange affinity toward chickens and so eventually convinced himself, and his body, that he was one. All the Death Eaters, freaked out by what had happened to their leader, ran away to the Ministry of Magic pretending he’d died in a Muggle stampede.”
“Caused by pepper,” Ron interjected.
“Caused by pepper,” Harry agreed, “then he somehow managed to make his way to Hagrid’s chicken yard, and was coincidentally name, what was it?”
“Tommy boy”
“And was coincidentally named Tommy boy. After becoming a strong fanatic of the Star Warts series through Hagrid’s videos, he lived a happy and content life until, TA DA, I showed up and burnt his collection. Then the poor bloke died of depression.”
“One hundred percent correct!” said Hermione happily, “it looks like Trelawney’s prediction did come true in the end, huh? ‘Either must die at the hands of the other’ -- except one had wings instead of hands.”
“I thought the ‘I am you’re father’ was hilarious,” continued Harry, “the most he could have been was my mother, because, you see, he turned into a chicken and not a rooster!”
Ron stretched back, grinning from ear to ear. “I’ll never forget that one either: Tommy boy - the amazing dancing chicken!”