Harry Potter Abridged! GOF Chapter 3

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

[Life at the Dursleys goes on as usual.]


Petunia: Alright, come and get your tasty, nutritious grapefruit for breakfast!

Dudley: But Muuuuuuuuum, this is destroying my propensity to act like a nasty, slobbish, lazy Fatty McFatfat!

Petunia: Orders from your school nurse so quit your complaining!

Harry: Cheer up, Dudley- if you can get thinner you just might turn out to be an alright guy!

[Just then, Vernon gets a letter from the Weasleys.]

Vernon: Not this shit again.... Harry, we need to talk!

[Vernon drags Harry to the living room.]

Vernon: So... yeah. Those wizard friends of yours sent me a letter: “Dear Mr. Muggle. We want to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup. We will take Harry there NO MATTER WHAT! Signed, Mrs. Weasley. PS: If we used too many of your bliddy stamps you can pay the cost.”

Harry: Well that’s saying something considering the envelope is covered in stamps!

Vernon: Do your friends have any idea that they look positively functionally retarded?

Harry: Well, they say the same thing about you.

Vernon: So who is this Mrs. Weasley, anyway?

Harry: She’s my best friend’s mother, of course!

Vernon: Yeah, yeah. Whatever. And... what is Quidditch?

Harry: It’s a game played on broomsticks that every one of us loves even though it makes no sense.

Vernon: Honestly, the stories you bring under our roof. You’re mighty ungrateful, considering everything we’ve done with you over the years.

Harry: Yeah, well... you guys are abusive! Oh, by the way, I’ve been telling my mass-murderer godfather that.

Vernon: ...Are you serious?

Harry: Yeah, he’s not happy. So let me go to my friends the Weasleys’ or I’ll tell him about the time you beat me with all sorts of-

Vernon: We did no such thing!

Harry: He doesn’t know it!

Vernon: Aye, aye, aye... alright, go hang out with your wizard friends, then! See if we care!

Harry: Alright, then I will!

[Harry then returns to his room to gorge himself on the sweets that his friends sent him.]

Harry: [Excessively twee] Ooh, goodie! I gets my sweeties today! I shall rise above the oppression- starting with my delicious birthday cakes that my friendses have sented me! *Gurgles* By the way, these cakes really should be getting rotten or moldy by now, but whatever.

[Just then, a tiny gray owl enters the room with a letter.]

Harry: You’re Ron’s owl, aren’t you? This is interesting. It says here, that they’ll be picking me up at five on sunday. Hermione is going to stay with them as well- convenient! Oh, and Percy is boringer and stupider than ever. Why do I get the feeling every single one of these events is orchestrated to get my trio together?

[Harry writes his eager reply and sends it back with the little owl, Pig, before sending Sirius a note with Hedwig explaining everything that’s been going on.]

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Ugh, yes. Being concerned about the welfare of a bunch of people you've never met, and not wanting unscrupulous people to mislead your entire country about the safety of their products, is boring and treason to the joy of life, or something. Never mind all the people who might get blown up if wizarding Britain starts importing substandard cauldrons falsely advertized to be safe. (I guess you should just intuit which are the good cauldrons? Or suck it up?) And clearly there is no use in promoting international cooperation when you could be hating on their athletes instead. Plus, it involves paperwork, which clearly must be boring and useless by definition, and no Real Wizard could find any sense of purpose or pride in it.

Also, looking up to a competent boss means you are a suck-up and a dupe with a faulty conscience. Unless your boss is Dumbledore. Or you are any of the dozens of other people who worked with your boss for much longer than you have and yet also did not see anything wrong, which is somehow okay for everyone except you. And there is no reason to keep working for a problematic boss like Fudge or Scrimgeor - you couldn't possibly reasonably think that you could do more good trying to work within the system using their resources, or that you might be able to influence and persuade people positively if you stay, and no way could you maybe know something Harry et al. don't about those bosses that puts them in a better light. (Like, oh, something about Stan Shunpike.) And there's no way the situation could change so that you were actually right about it being better to stay initially but wrong after a couple of years have passed - it's all or nothing, forever. (And we still don't know what Percy was up to that last year; he might well have been an effective secret agent, whether for someone else or as a solo freelancer.)

I find it so frustrating that these kinds of characters get such bad press. See also: Felix Gaeta from Battlestar Galactica. (How was he supposed to know secrets about Baltar no one else knew either? How was he supposed to know that settling in a hidden location was the wrong thing to do and that they should have dragged the entire human race around some more because they Had A Destiny, their only inkling of which is some religious prophecy their leader believes because of drug-induced hallucinations and some ancient planetarium show? And why does he get slammed for being an apparent-collaborator-but-really-spy during the resistance while others get passes for blowing themselves up, killing their wives, or running away for months and leaving their friends for dead?)