This is the final part of this story, and a very possible ending to the whole story. I’ve had to make a few changes though: As it originally stood it was really very disgusting, so I ran the whole thing through my MS Auto-Censor, and some parts of the text have accordingly been changed. I’ve made those parts really obvious by putting them into BOLD CAPITALS, LIKE THIS. And so, on to the final dramatic scenes ...
Harry looked around for help, any help. His four friends were still crouched behind the wall, apparently too busy to either look up or offer any useful suggestions. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were checking each other’s wounds and piling up the dead. Bush-Dumbledore had vanished. Oh well. Clutching his paperclips in his sweaty palm AND A BUCKET FULL OF RED PAINT IN HIS OTHER HAND he slowly got up off the boulder and faced Voldemort once more.
Voldemort, A BUCKET FULL OF RED PAINT HANGING FROM HIS LEFT ELBOW, brandished his spoons and called, “Death Eaters, ready!”
There was a clatter as the Death Eaters, standing behind Voldemort, readied their spoons. “Yes, master,” they chanted.
“And-a-one, and-a-two, and-a-one-two-three-four!”
As one, Voldemort and the Death Eaters began to move forward, their spoons beating out the rhythm of "There’s No-one Quite Like Grandma." Harry clenched his teeth against the horror of it all and sprinted toward his attackers.
“AAaaarrrrgghghghghg!!!” he cried, as he charged across the hollow. “Oof!” he said, as he tripped headlong over a pebble. He cut his knee SLIGHTLY AND SPILT SOME RED PAINT. AT THE SAME INSTANT, A LITTLE BIT OF PAINT SLOPPED OUT OF VOLDEMORT’S BUCKET, AND A PRETTY LADY APPEARED BY HARRY AND POURED A CUPFUL OF RED PAINT BACK INTO HIS OWN BUCKET.
“Sorry, Harry,” said the pebble. “Up you get.”
In a daze, Harry got to his feet and tried again. “Aarrghghghghgh!!” he cried, closing in on Voldemort and his spoons. “Ouch!” he said, stumbling over a branch that was suddenly lying across his path. He’d VERY SLIGHTLY HURT his elbows, and SOME MORE RED PAINT SPLASHED OUT OF HIS BUCKET. VOLDEMORT’S BUCKET WOBBLED A TINY BIT AND SLOSHED SOME MORE RED PAINT ONTO THE GROUND, JUST AS ANOTHER PRETTY LADY APPEARED BESIDE HARRY AND TOPPED UP HIS BUCKET ONCE MORE.
“Sorry, Harry,” said the branch. “Have another go.”
“Let me try, headmaster!” piped the bat excitedly.
Harry pulled himself up once more and ran a little less quickly towards the crowd of Death Eaters. “Aarghgh!” he cried, and, “Oi!” as the bat flew into his face and made him fall over. RED PAINT oozed out of a TINY scratch on his shin. VOLDEMORT’S BUCKET TILTED AGAIN, CAUSING A COUPLE OF PINTS OF RED PAINT TO SPILL ONTO THE GROUND. A PRETTY LADY APPEARED BY HARRY AND POURED A COUPLE OF JUGFULS OF PAINT BACK INTO HIS BUCKET.
“Sorry, Harry,” said the bat insincerely. “Keep going.”
“Argh,” he said, jogging across the hollow. “STOP IT!” as the bat flew down the back of his robes, causing him to leap into the air with shock and tumble over another boulder that had suddenly appeared in his path.
“Sorry, Harry,” said the boulder.
“I’m not sorry,” came the muffled voice of the bat. “It reeks in here. Don’t you ever wash?”
“To the rescue!” called Ron, leaping over the wall, purple spit dribbling down his chin. Neville, Luna and Hermione followed him, all similarly stained with purple.
Harry looked up in disbelief. “Have you been chewing gum the whole time that I’ve been out here stalling for my life?”
“Yeah,” said Neville. “Good plan, isn’t it?”
Harry was about to explode with rage when he was suddenly surrounded by purple and blue bubbles. Instead of popping when they reached him, they simply nestled up closely to his body and made a protective wall. Brilliant! He could start running again without worrying about falling over. Taking a deep breath, he started his charge once more.
“No!” screamed the bat, shooting out of Harry’s collar. “Longbottom, you fool, you’re spoiling it! Help, Headmaster!”
“Don’t worry, Severus,” said a prickly gorse bush nearby. “I’ll take care of it.”
Within seconds most of the bubbles were burst, and Harry was wiping the RED PAINT off a FLOWER BY his ankle.
There was a blur of movement as Neville surged past Harry and began hitting the gorse bush with his wand. “What did you do that for?” he screamed. “We were helping him! We’ve been waiting seven years for our chance to get in the history books, and you burst it!”
“Come, come, Neville,” said the gorse bush, “you’ll all have your chance to shine in the inevitable spin-off series, I promise you.”
Mollified, Neville returned to the others; Harry could hear whispered comments about “contracts” and “rights.” He really was on his own now.
“One more ought to do it, I think, Severus?” said a small stick.
“With pleasure,” said the bat.
“I didn’t know motorbikes could fly,” said Luna, pointing.
“Huh?” said Hermione.
“It’s me, ‘Arry! An’ I reck’n I go’ ‘ere in th’nick o’time, di’n’t I?” And Hagrid burst into the hollow on Sirius’s motorbike, although, with Hagrid as the rider, it looked more like a child’s toy.
“Hagrid!” beamed Harry with relief.
The bat sighed with annoyance. “That great oaf always gets in the way,” it said.
“Wait, Severus,” said the stick. “Pick me up, would you?”
Harry watched anxiously as Hagrid tried to get the motorbike down to ground level. There were still a few bubbles bouncing around the hollow, and they seemed to be causing some trouble.
Jumping as the flapping of the bat’s wings suddenly became very loud in his ears, Harry turned and saw that he was face to face with a stick.
“Quickly, Harry,” said the stick, balancing on his shoulder (the other one, not the one covered in pooh). “This is your last chance to run him down. Run! Use your power!”
Thinking that perhaps his power was Running With Paperclips, rather than just Paperclips, Harry once more pelted toward Voldemort. Incredibly, Voldemort and the Death Eaters were still creeping forward, tapping out their spoon tunes. Harry was just beginning to realise that Voldemort was in fact insane, and that there were consequently a lot of moral questions about the validity of his own aggressive form of defence, when the bat poked him in the eye with the stick WHICH WAS WRAPPED IN COTTONWOOL AND BUBBLEWRAP.
“OW!” cried Harry, clutching his face. RED PAINT gushed out of HIS BUCKET.
“OW!” cried the stick. “That was my ndose, Severus!”
“Sorry, headmaster,” said the bat. “But I think it did the trick.”
Hagrid had finally parked the motorbike and now came lumbering up to Harry. “You alrigh’, ‘Arry? Go’ a lo’ o’ cu’s there.”
“Nothing serious,” said Harry. “Ugh! What’s happening to Voldemort?”
With a ghastly groan, Voldemort had crumpled up in a ball and was turning even paler than usual. HIS BUCKET WAS EMPTY NOW, AND HARRY’S WAS STILL FULL.
“It’s your special power, Harry,” said Dumbledore, billowing up into human form out of the stick. His nose was slightly more crooked than usual. “I wandt to thandk you for your perseverandce tondight.”
“Where’s Sna” I mean, Professor Snape?” Harry was beginning to feel a bit more alive, more alert, more full of himself, somehow. Was this what victory felt like?
“Here I am, Potter,” fluted Snape, stepping lightly over the writhing form of Voldemort on the ground.
“I thought you were a bat,” said Harry bluntly.
“He was,” said Hermione. There was a note of triumph in her voice. “Look at his sock-garter, Harry.”
Harry looked, and saw the silvery twinkle of a tiny hourglass attached to Snape’s left shin.
“I took a leaf out of your book, Miss Granger,” shrilled Snape with a nasty smile.
“Who’s side were you on, then?” asked Harry. “The good guys or the bad guys?”
“He was on my side, Harry,” said Dumbledore.
“Oh. You mean the good side?” said Harry.
“If that’s what you prefer to believe, then yes.” Dumbledore was smiling kindly down at Harry. “Do you see ndow what I meandt about Voldembort mbaking a fatal mbistake ind Chapter 32 of the Goblet of Fire? He borrowed all his RED PAINDT FROMB you, and of course you were boundd to take it back if you ever ndeeded it.”
“Ooohhh,” said Harry, the light dawning.
“It’s dawn,” intoned Luna.
“Huh?” said Harry. “I thought that was my own inner sense of realisation and acceptance.”
“There is no end to your arrogance, Potter,” said Snape.
“Well, we’d better be gettindg back to Hogwarts,” said Dumbledore. “Orchestral Mbanoeuvres Ind The Dark will take care of the rembndandts of Voldembort’s Death Eater Spoodn Armby.”
“How are we going to get back?” asked Ron. “I know Hermione’s about to say we can’t Apparate into Hogwarts.”
“Quite true, Mbr. Weasley,” said Dumbledore. “Allow mbe.”
He walked briskly across the grassy clearing to Voldemort’s SLEEPING body, poked it with his wand, and said, “Portus.”
“Brilliant,” breathed Hermione.
Several of the Death Eaters, cracking under the strain of losing, began to sing in their childlike voices, “Ding dong, our master’s dead. Which Dark Lord? This Dark Lord! Ding dong, Lord Voldemort is dead!”
“There’s ondly onde thindg left to clear up,” said Dumbledore, returning to the group. “I dond’t thindk we’ll be ndeeding this andymbore.” And his long fingers reached out to Harry’s forehead and carefully peeled off the scar.
THE END
Author’s Note: OK, I admit it -- I didn’t spend hours decoding J.K. Rowling’s books, looking for secret hidden paragraphs. I made it all up. And I did it all because I was so frustrated by Voldemort’s ridiculously complicated plan in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. After that, it seemed only natural to poke fun at the various other discrepancies that have occurred: the Marauder’s Map; the slight confusion over the order of James and Lily’s deaths. And then I thought it would be funny to exaggerate the possibility that Snape might be a vampire, and also heighten Dumbledore’s eccentricities. As for the spoons and the paperclips ... well, you can never have too many spoons and paperclips.