Harry Potter Abridged! OotP Chapter 2

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Now that my semester's over and I'm back at my parents' home for some R and R, I thought I'd celebrate with another one of these (and more to come)!

Harry: Mrs. Figg?! What are you doing here?!

Mrs. Figg: Chasing a good-for-nothing named Mundungus Fletcher. Why?

Harry: Mrs. Figg, are you a witch?

Mrs. Figg: I'm actually a squib. Hence why I can blend in with muggles—and why I was able to send my cat out to watch for Mundungus, who abandoned you to the Dementors just now just because he was a coward.

Harry: Oh, no! He's a stinking Slytherin! Is he another Death Eater I'll have to make dead by the time the series is over?!

Mrs. Figg: I wish. Actually he's ostensibly on your side.

Harry: Oh, lucky me!

Mrs. Figg: You have to get out of here right now—oh, and you too, Fatso!

Dudley: [Whimpers]

Mrs. Figg: Come on! Get up, Useless! [Grabs Dudley's arm and pulls to no avail]

Harry: I'll help.

[The two of them pick Dudley up and begin to walk with him.]

Harry: So, you didn't tell me you were a squib!

Mrs. Figg: Dumbledore told me not to. He said your poor stupid brain couldn't handle it.

Harry: Am I really that stupid?

Mrs. Figg: How should I know? I'm not a main character! Anyway, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your time spent with me, but you know how it is—the Dursleys are so evil and abusive they wouldn't stand to have you go near me if they knew you were having fun at my house.

Harry: Wow! And here I thought you were just an annoying old lady with too many cats, but now that I've seen you're actually a squib sent to protect me by Dumbledore, all is forgiven!

Mrs. Figg: Well, you'd better hope Dumbledore can protect you now that you've used magic before you were seventeen!

Harry: ...What?! But I was defending myself from soul-sucking monsters!

Mrs. Figg: Did you expect the Ministry of Magic to be reasonable? It's up to them to make it look like you're a poor, persecuted underdog!

Harry: Oh, right. Woe is meeeeeee, the Ministry of Magic will frame me for underage magic for NO REASON because THEY HATE ME!

Mrs. Figg: I didn't say you had to start now!

[Just then, Mundungus Fletcher appears!]

Mrs. Figg: YOU STUPID COWARD! I'LL FEED YOU TO MY CATS!! [Hits Mundungus with handbag]

Mundungus: Why, whatever gave you that idea?

Mrs. Figg: You abandoned an innocent boy to be attacked by Dementors, you moron!

Mundungus: I did?

Mrs. Figg: Yes you did! You were supposed to be on the lookout here!

Mundungus: But I just HAD to buy some shiny new contraband! After all, that's my entire purpose in this stupid story!

Mrs. Figg: So why in the hell did you think you needed to start at such a crucial moment?!

Mundungus: Practice makes perfect?

Mrs. Figg: Save it! Just go tell Dumbledore about the Dementors and how they unfairly provoked poor Harry into using underage magic!

Mundungus: At least I got the plot set in motiooooooon! [Apparates away]

Mrs. Figg: Well, now that that's over with, it's time for you two boys to go home. [Leaves]

Harry: Oh, lucky me!

[He takes Dudley home with great effort.]

Petunia: DUDLEY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!?

Dudley: Free the Fairies! [Vomits]

Petunia: Oh, no! Dudley's going to die! Vernon! Help! Our son's dying of magic! Again!

Vernon: Dudley, who's done this to you?

Dudley: [Cries] Harry Potter!

Harry: Well... I'll just be off to my room.

Vernon: Oh, no you're not! You're going to receive Punishment for hurting our son!

Petunia: So, Diddy, what was it that he did to you?

Dudley: He started masturbating right in front of me!

Petunia and Vernon: …

[Just then, a screech SCOPS owl enters through the window]

Vernon: NOOOOOO! AN OWL! THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO US AT THIS MOMENT!

Harry: Oh, look! You just capslocked! Now you can't blame me for capslocking!

Vernon: You started it!

[The letter Harry receives is from a woman named Mafalda Hopkirk, and informs Harry that he has been expelled from Hogwarts and his wand is to be destroyed.]

Harry: Oh, no! This is terrible! Without my wand, I have no manhood!

Vernon: Never mind that letter! Tell us what happened or we'll make good on all the horror stories you've been telling your friends about how abusive we are!

Harry: Even the one involving the black pepper pie and the pipe wrench on my nuts?

Vernon: Yes, even that one!

Harry: You can't do that! I've just been expelled from Hogwarts so there's nobody keeping me from using magic on you!

[But just then a Common Barn Owl enters!]

Harry: Oh, look. It's from Arthur Weasley! Oh, and Dumbledore's going to intercede on my behalf! I'm saved!

Vernon: Just what do you mean by all that?

Harry: Well, I recently received a letter from the Ministry of Magic, see, expelling me from my school.

Vernon: Why would they do that?

Harry: Because I used magic.

Vernon: So you admit to traumatizing my son for life by engaging in some sex ritual.

Harry: Sex ritual?

Dudley: He said he visualized naked people and then he came, and it turned into a stag!

Harry: Oh, yeah, well my “magical come that turned into a stag” just saved your life!

Dudley: You were saving my life?

Harry: Yes. Saving your life from horrible depression metaphors who would have sucked out your soul had I not ejaculated on you at precisely the right moment!

Dudley: That's your big explanation for why I felt like I'd never be happy again? The author was flinging bad metaphors at me?

Harry: Basically.

Dudley: I'd still rather believe you were the one who did it.

Petunia: As humiliating an admission as this is, I actually know what Harry's talking about.

Vernon and Dudley: WHAT?!

Petunia: Those bad depression metaphors are Dementors, and they guard the wizards' prison. My sister heard about them from her mercifully-dead husband.

Vernon: Wow! My wife actually speaks of magic as though it exists!

Harry: It's as if the universe has rejected its own laws!

Petunia: There are laws in this universe?

[Just then, another owl enters.]

Harry: Oh, look! I'm not expelled after all! I'm just suspended until my disciplinary hearing on August 12.

Vernon: And here I was hoping you'd just be hanged....

Harry: Nope! I will survive! Anyway, I'm just headed to my room....

Vernon: OH NO YOU DON'T! You're going to tell us exactly what happened to our son!

Harry: Fine, be that way! I was just walking home with Dudley when he started harassing me like the bully he is, and so I pulled out my wand but didn't use it, and then the Dementors showed up.

Vernon: And just what did these Dementoids have a mind to do with Dudley?

Harry: They were going to suck out his soul! I already told you!

Petunia: But they didn't...actually do it, did they?

Harry: No, I saved him with my magical stag-cum!

[And another owl arrives.]

Vernon: Oh, no! Not more! I'm getting traumatic flashbacks to the letters in the first book!

Harry: Ooh! It's from Sirius! [Reads letter] Oh, he just wants to tell me not to leave the house. WHYYYYYYY is nobody praising me to the high heavens because I destroyed two Dementors and saved my useless waste of a cousin?!

Vernon: Earth to Harry!

Harry: LEAVE ME ALONE, ASSHOLE!

Vernon: You shut up! It is up to us to make it look like we're ganging up on you!

Harry: What do you want?!

Vernon: Just why did the Dementos come here?

Harry: I don't know. I suppose they were just tormenting me because I'm so eminently tormentable.

Vernon: Maybe they were coming to arrest you? You know, because you broke one of their decrees?

Harry: Naw, it's more likely Voldemort sent them here.

Vernon: Oh, THAT Voldemort! The one who killed your parents years ago.

Harry: You're not scared of him? You're scared of my little wand and you're not scared to hear Lord Voldemort's name?

Petunia: Have you forgotten? We're not magic. We don't care who the Dark Lord of your world is; we care about the fact that every time our family comes into contact with magic something bad happens.

Vernon: Anyway, didn't that giant asshole say that Voldemort was gone?

Harry: He's come back though! I've seen him!

Petunia: And he's brought his minions to our world to help.

Harry: It looks that way. Wow, it's almost as though the nonmagical world is being overtaken by the magic underworld!

Petunia: That it does! We'll have nowhere to go if the magical beings come to swallow us up!

Vernon: Or at least render us irrelevant. How are we supposed to protect ourselves?

Harry: All the better to shoo you out of the story so that it can be all-wizard, all the time!*

Vernon: Well, I won't stand for this! Harry, I am kicking you out of our house, effective immediately. You can take your chances against the Dementors yourself.

Harry: You can't do that! All my correspondents in the magical world are telling me to stay with you!

Vernon: But we never asked to be responsible for you in the first place, and now you're putting all of us in danger. If the Dementors come into our house we're all goners but if you leave and they get you at least we'll be safe!**

Harry: Dammit, you're not supposed to look sympathetic! Quick, tell me that this is all your desire to rid this house of magic!

Vernon: Will it get you to leave if we do?

Harry: It may remind me just why I'm so miserable here.

Vernon: Alright...we're kicking you out of the house because we hate your magic and have given up trying to make you give it up. Now go! Before the Dementors come back!

[But just then, ANOTHER owl drops in, with a Howler!]

Petunia: Oh, look! It's addressed to me!

Howler: HARRY MUST STAY FOR REASONS OF PLOT, BITCH!

Petunia: Well...reasons of plot. Can't argue with that—it looks like Harry's staying.

Vernon: Oh, dear....

Petunia: Harry, just go to bed.

Harry: But Aunt Petuuuunia, what are the “reasons of plot” this Howler is referring to?

Petunia: If they're so important to the plot you'll find out about them soon enough. To bed!

Harry: Fine, fine! See if I care! [Goes to bed]

*There is a paragraph in the book dedicated to making this clear (in less tongue-in-cheek terms, obviously). Way to be meta, JKR!

**I suspect there will be more of these serious pockets in the abridged series, as we get more “strawman has a point” type situations.

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Mrs. Figg: Dumbledore told me not to./

And why couldn’t Mrs. Figg just tell Harry who she was after Harry found out that he was a wizard?

/[The letter Harry receives is from a woman named Mafalda Hopkirk, and informs Harry that he has been expelled from Hogwarts and his wand is to be destroyed.]/

So, how come Tom Riddle never got a letter like that? How was he able to evade detection for so long?

/Howler: HARRY MUST STAY FOR REASONS OF PLOT/

Even though he could’ve been just as safe (if not more so) at the Burrow. His mother’s blood-protection didn’t do squat against the dementors or anybody else who wasn’t Voldemort. So, why couldn’t Harry have stayed with the Weasleys after Voldemort returned? Especially since the Weasleys are all wizards and thus would have a better chance of fighting off Voldemort and the Death Eaters than three Muggles, a Squib, and an untrustworthy thief.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Mrs. Figg: I wish. Actually he's ostensibly on your side.

Does Harry actually understand the word ostensibly? I thought he was too dumb to know what that meant--particularly since they both admit Harry's dumb a few sentences later. :D

now that I've seen you're actually a squib sent to protect me by Dumbledore, all is forgiven!

Yes, if DD says something's okay, it must be okay. It's really Dumbledore's world. Harry just lives in it and has it named after him for marketing purposes.

Vernon: NOOOOOO! AN OWL! THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO US AT THIS MOMENT!

Why, did it do a great big owl poop on top of their heads?

Harry: No, I saved him with my magical stag-cum!

I wonder if this is the reason Hermione's not good at the Patronus charm--wrong biology. Now that you mention it, it is a very sexual image, isn't it?

Vernon: But we never asked to be responsible for you in the first place, and now you're putting all of us in danger. If the Dementors come into our house we're all goners but if you leave and they get you at least we'll be safe!**

Harry: Dammit, you're not supposed to look sympathetic! Quick, tell me that this is all your desire to rid this house of magic!


No, no, that doesn't make them look sympathetic. It makes them look cowardly. If they were brave and truehearted, like Gryffindors, they'd be happy to put themselves at risk for their unpleasant, ungrateful relative.

[But just then, ANOTHER owl drops in, with a Howler!]

Petunia: Oh, look! It's addressed to me!

Howler: HARRY MUST STAY FOR REASONS OF PLOT, BITCH!

What the letter says in canon is actually a lot worse: "REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA." (capslock in original) Scumbledore really sounds like a Mafia don here. "You don't really want to turn Harry out, do you Petunia? That wouldn't be a very healthy thing to do."

I really enjoy these posts of yours. They're like a particularly amusing version of Cliff's Notes. I only wish the actual books had been this much fun.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I wonder if this is the reason Hermione's not good at the Patronus charm--wrong biology. Now that you mention it, it is a very sexual image, isn't it?

As is Tonks. But Minerva is awesome at casting the Patronus - she casts 3 of them in a single spell.

[sunnyskywalker]

But of course, McGonagall has no canon romance. It's like being an honorary man! Isn't that special?

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Mrs. Figg: How should I know? I'm not a main character! Anyway, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your time spent with me, but you know how it is—the Dursleys are so evil and abusive they wouldn't stand to have you go near me if they knew you were having fun at my house.


Harry: Wow! And here I thought you were just an annoying old lady with too many cats, but now that I've seen you're actually a squib sent to protect me by Dumbledore, all is forgiven!

Harry doesn't have a problem with Dumbledore knowing how the Dursley had treated him all along. Or question how a squib could protect him.