Loon Goes To Hogwarts

Loon Goes To Hogwarts

Part 3 - Everyone Loves Loon

Leigh had only been at Hogwarts a single day when everyone started acting very strange around her. Especially the boys. She just couldn't think what it was. They would stare at her as she walked through the halls. She was used to this, but generally it was stares of bewilderment. Well... these boys were bewildered, too, but they also tended to look at her the way she looked at those pretty shiny plates at dinner.

Maybe it was her new outfit. Leigh had decided the ordinary tie-dye hadn't been nearly interesting enough, and had continued to improve her uniform throughout the day. The skirt was still tie-dyed in rainbow colors, but it was much shorter, to display her knee-length boots. The top of her robes was now purple, with a big glittery silver butterfly on the front. And her hair was up in some sort of strange style involving a braid across the top of her head while the rest of her hair hung straight. She thought it looked much better.

But it seemed that the funny little man with the kitty-cat who was always wandering around the halls disagreed. "Hey! You there!" he shouted as Leigh walked by. "What are you wearing?"

"Ooh, is this a guessing game?" Leigh clapped her hands in excitement. "I love guessing games! Let's see... is it a penguin?"

The man blinked, then glared at Leigh. "Insolence! That's detention for you, young lady! In fact, that's two detentions, one for the rudeness and one for being out of dress code!"

"Codes?" Leigh's eyes darted nervously. "Is it the Cheese Men? Are they sending their evil messages again?"

"Cheese Men?" The man - who Leigh discovered through her miraculous telepathic abilities is named Filch, because referring to him as "the man" all the time is just getting confusing - gave her a suspicious look. "You've been stealing food from the kitchens?"

"No, have you?" Leigh studied him closely. "I think you have. You're kinda fat, you know. You should exercise more."

Filch's eyes widened. "I am?" He studied his waist in alarm. "I thought my robes were just getting tighter!"

"I don't think so." Leigh shook her head solemnly. "You've definitely put on weight since I saw you last."

"You last saw me this morning at breakfast!" Filch's eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Exactly why you should be worried," Leigh told him, nodding in agreement with herself. "What's that, Rok?" She held Rok up to her ear. "Rok says that a brisk morning run every day does wonders for him. Maybe you should try that."

"Yeah..." Filch nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I think I will. Thanks, Miss Leigh!"

"I like to help people." Leigh smiled at him as he began his brisk morning run by running briskly into the door as a student opened it from the other side. "Ah... another convert to a healthy lifestyle." As she turned away, she missed seeing Filch start to run briskly down a flight of stairs, lose his balance, and break both his legs. "Helping people is fun."

As Leigh proceeded to her next class, which was Divination, she passed Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and noticed to her delight that Hermione was wearing a penguin necklace. She waved cheerfully at the Gryffindor girl, and traipsed on her merry way. She missed the following conversation, which went something like this:

"She waved at me! Did you see her wave at me?" Ron exclaimed in excitement.

"She didn't wave at you, you moron," Harry said, giving Ron a contemptuous look. "She was waving at me."

"She was looking straight at me," Ron insisted.

"Fine, maybe she waved at you," Harry admitted. "But she smiled at me! And she took my dinner plate at the start of term feast!"

"You're getting all excited because she waved, smiled, and stole a plate?" Hermione asked, frowning.

"But she waved and smiled and stuff at me!" Ron grinned happily.

"What are you talking about? She waved and smiled and stuff at me!" Harry corrected.

"Who cares?" Hermione shrugged. "Anyway, I think she was waving at me."

"Don't be silly, Hermione," Ron said dismissively. "Why would she want to wave at you?"

Meanwhile, returning to the adventures of the main character and her pet rock, Leigh climbed up the little ladder thing that took her into the Divination classroom and immediately began coughing because of the thick smoke.

"Ah, I sense with my special Inner Eye that we have a new student in our class," a voice said out of the mists.

Leigh stopped coughing because it's so hard to make interesting conversation when you're choking to death on thick perfume. "Inner Eye? You have eyes inside your head?"

"Yes, young lady." Professor Trelawney came out of the smoke. "You must be our new student. I sense that you, too, will have great success with your Inner Eye."

"I haven't got any eyes inside me," Leigh told Trelawney. "My eyes are on the outside, see?" She pointed to her eyes.

"Ah." Trelawney nodded knowledgably. "Emerald green eyes. You must surely be related to the only other person I know with emerald green eyes."

"Well, yeah." Leigh frowned. "It's obvious, isn't it?"

"To those of us with the Inner Eye, all is revealed," Trelawney declared loftily.

"I mean, of course I'm related to my mother," Leigh continued, puzzled. "You need weird eyes to figure that out? And how do you know my mother, anyway?"

"Not your mother!" Trelawney snapped. "Harry Potter!"

"Who?" Leigh asked. "Did you see him with your funny eye?" She peered around the classroom. "You couldn't have been using your outside eyes, it's too smoky to see in here."

"Yes, the future is clouded," Trelawney began. "Hey, stop that!" She snatched at Leigh in a futile attempt to keep the girl from opening the windows.

"Now you don't need to keep your eyes on the inside," Leigh told Trelawney as the perfumed smoke floated away. "You can use your ordinary ones."

At that point, Harry, Ron, and Hermione entered, providing a sufficient distraction on account of the fact that Hermione isn't really supposed to be there anymore. But she is returning, because in this strange insane story there must be at least a brief voice of reason, and Harry and Ron don't qualify.

"Today we shall be learning to predict your love life," Trelawney announced. "There is no good reason for doing this, but any lesson that is inserted into a story has to have some relevance to the plot, so we're doing this instead of the fire-gazing that was originally scheduled. I shall need a volunteer."

"Rok volunteers!" Leigh immediately shouted.

"Rok is not a member of this class," Trelawney informed her coldly.

"Sure he is!" Leigh said brightly. "He's a Gryffindor and everything! He was Sorted, too, weren't you listening?"

Trelawney sighed and shook her head. "Why don't we predict your love life?"

"Well, that's a silly idea!" Leigh laughed. "Whod want to fall in love with me?"

Every male in the class looked up at this statement in astonishment. Hermione also looked up at where the words were hanging on the ceiling. "There's a typo right there," she pointed out. "You've forgotten the apostrophe. Whod isn't a word."

Yes, well, some of us aren't Little Miss Perfects all the time. I mean, honestly! Fine. "Who'd want to fall in love with me?" Happy now?

"Quite." Hermione smiled.

"If we could get on with it?" Trelawney scowled. "Miss Leigh, your love life. Please come here."

"Can we use the shiny crystal balls?" Leigh perked up in interest.

"Yes, fine," Trelawney agreed, seeing that a shiny object was clearly the only way to get Leigh to cooperate. "You just hold this shiny crystal ball and stare at it, and I'll predict your love life."

"Ok!" Leigh snatched the crystal ball and was immediately mesmerized.

Now that her victim - er, excuse me, student - was sufficiently distracted, Trelawney began. She pulled out her Special Star Chart Thing and pointed at a random star. "Leigh, this Special Star Chart Thing tells me that you are destined to have a great and tragic romance. Many will love you, but you will love only one in return. You and he will be separated across the mighty chasms of death itself, but even that shall not stop true love, and you shall cross it to reunite with him once more - "

"Why?" Leigh interrupted, looking up from the shiny crystal.

"What?" Trelawney snapped, losing her train of thought.

"Why am I doing all that mighty chasm stuff?" Leigh asked. "Mamoo isn't dead."

"Who is Mamoo?" Trelawney asked icily.

"Well," Leigh took a deep breath. "In another life he and I were lovers, but then one of us died, and now we're sort of together but not really because he's too clueless to do anything like ask me out, and - "

"Silence!" Trelawney shouted. "You dare to be so flippant in the face of your destiny?"

"Ooh, you used a vocabulary word!" Leigh grinned happily. "Flippant! That was on my vocabulary test back home, and I got it wrong, and I got a thirty on that test, and then I threw it at Mamoo for no real reason - "

"Just who is this Mamoo, anyway?" Harry demanded. (He was a little behind in the times... the shiny crystal had kept him fascinated, too.)

"Well, I think he might be my one true love." Leigh frowned. "But then again, maybe not. Rok says Mamoo is going to be my husband when I'm old enough to get married, but I don't know. I mean, he keeps going on about the stork..."

"No!" Harry wailed, oblivious to the fact that Hermione was scooting quietly away from him with a nervous smile pasted on her face. "You are my one true love! I have known it from the moment I first set eyes on you!"

"No!" Ron objected. "She belongs to me, I tell you! Me! And I shall fight you for her, yes, even unto the death shall I fight!"

"I thought I belonged to my parents," Leigh said, confused. "At least till I'm eighteen."

"No! You're mine!" Harry shouted.

"Mine!" Ron corrected. They both drew their wands in fury.

At this point, Leigh probably should have grabbed their shoulders and begged them to stop, saying that she wasn't worth fighting over, but she'd gotten distracted by the shiny crystal ball again.

Ron and Harry stared awkwardly at each other, since the two conflicting suitors never actually expect to have to fight each other. Finally, each one held out a fist.

"Rok, paper, scissors!"

"Yes! Go me! I win!" Harry crowed, gleefully smashing his Rok over Ron's scissors. "Oh, Leigh, my love, now you can live happily with me! For you must admit that we are destined for each other, because I am the special superhero in this story, and I always get the girl, with the exception of the times when it's set in the previous generation, in which she goes to Sirius or Remus, because in that case she'd be old enough to be my mother, and that's just wrong! But anyway, if you look at Trelawney's little Special Star Chart Thing, you will see that our stars are crossed! Tell me you love me, Leigh! Tell me you love me!"

"That would be lying," Leigh told him gravely. "Rok says it's not nice to lie."

"You don't love me?" Harry stared at her in disbelief.

"I knew it! She loves me!" Ron cheered.

"No! She loves me!" cried Seamus.

"Me!" objected Dean.

"Me!" yelled Terry Boot, who was a Ravenclaw and technically shouldn't even be in there, but what the heck.

"No! She is mine!" Harry screamed. "If I cannot have her, no one can!"

Harry waved his wand around madly, but without casting any spells, because while he's stupid enough to actually cast them, he's so stupid he's gone and forgotten all of them. But his wildly waving wand knocked into a shelf holding up more crystal balls, and all of them fell over to squash Terry Boot, shattering both themselves and his skull, because he wasn't supposed to be in this class and the author had to get rid of him somehow.

"Oh, no!" Leigh gasped. "That's awful!" She shook her head over the carnage. "All those shiny objects wasted..."