Harry Putter & the Deathly Hairballs

by O'Donnell, Timothy R.

  Harry sighed and continued to pull trash from his trunk and fill up garbage bags. That is, until he came across a ticket stub from the circus. It was from when he tried to locate his uncle and godfather Serious Smack the Clown. Harry had very little family left and Aunt Hachooie was resentful and severe. She treated him so badly, he couldn’t help but try to locate someone who might be more of a relative to him.

  It was the second time the Fungus Eaters had set him up. They leaked information to Harry of the whereabouts of his uncle. Harry couldn’t help falling into their trap. Finding his uncle was his vulnerability, and they took full advantage of it, setting a trap for when Harry arrived at the circus. If it weren’t for all his good friends, he himself might not have survived.

  As it turned out, his uncle wasn’t so fortunate. Serious Smack died that day in a sudden and bizarre circus tragedy while trying to escape from Harry. It was all Harry’s fault that his uncle was dead. If only he hadn’t pushed, hadn’t persistently kept trying to find him, the clown would still be alive today. While it certainly brought up a bad memory, at least he didn’t get all choked up about it anymore.

  The good news was that he found out soon afterward that Uncle Serious had a brother, named Regular Smack. Harry had another relative, another uncle – Regular Smack the Mime. Harry smiled. Sure, he knew a mime was one of the most evil kinds of magicians, so powerful they were able to discern objects that no one else could see or touch. Harry just knew he could overlook whatever peculiarities Uncle Regular possessed. The bad news was that his uncle’s cell phone must be broken because every time Harry called, he picked up, but never answered. Harry was quite determined to find his missing uncle and make up for lost time. Only this time, he’d set up his own trap – an uncle trap. He’d capture Uncle Regular and force him to talk!

  Harry sighed. It would have to wait. First he had to take care of Moldyfart.

  The next object that provoked memories was the tattered remains of the Frozen Dairy Desert Cookbook. Sloberic Slipperin was the creator of the Chamber of Frozen Dairy Deserts and had left the cookbook to his heir as the key to the sinister chamber. Ron’s sister, Ginny, had brought it in to Hogwashes. Shortly after, students and teachers and even Custodian Belch’s cat were getting brain-freezed by tasting the ice cream novelties.

  Meanwhile, Ginny became possessed by the persevering spirit of Tom Ridley, as he attempted to steal her body and regain his mortal form. Fortunately, Harry was able to defeat the giant mildew stain that guarded the Chamber of Frozen Dairy Deserts and destroy the cookbook, closing the chamber forever. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, in doing so, Harry had destroyed one of Lord Moldyfart’s hoaxcrocks.

  Furthermore, he had rescued Ginny, and she had never been the same. She had fallen in love with her hero and savior, Harry Putter. She was constantly chasing him around, pulling him into closets to kiss him, and swearing to him of her undying love. Each Valentine’s Day she made a foolish spectacle of herself with some elaborate display of her affection. Last year, she hired a mariachi band to serenade him with love songs. It was all very embarrassing, because for her own protection, Harry wasn’t supposed to see her. It would be far too dangerous for her, since Lord Pull-My-Finger might kill her or worse in order to get to Harry.

  Finally, when he closed the Chamber of Frozen Dairy Deserts, he saved Grumblesnore’s job. The headmaster hadn’t done anything to locate or close the sinister chamber, and so, was about to get the sack. Grumblesnore complained about it. He always said he was looking forward to an early retirement. Harry thought he knew Grumblesnore better than anyone. The teenager said, “Grumblesnore likes to grumble, but deep down, it’s just his way of expressing how much he cares.”

  In reality, if it weren’t for Harry, Grumblesnore would have loved to remain at Hogwashes. Harry had eventually irritated the headmaster to the point where he felt like killing the boy. Harry remained quite oblivious that Grumblesnore hated him. He even thought his attempts to choke the life out him were just good fun – playing around with his mentor. How he missed the good times with Grumblesnore now that the old wizard was gone.

  Harry sighed again and was quite amazed at how many bags of garbage had been filled so far and there was likely to be a couple more. He continued his work, occasionally finding useful items that had been buried in trash. He found unused glue gum, silly string, dungbombs, butt-enlarging crackers, a ventrilo-whoopy cushion, anti-matter toothpaste, and even his dribble goblet of fire. He had forgotten all about that. He fired it up and was thrilled that it still shot forth flames large enough to singe someone’s eyebrows off. He thought to himself, “I’ll have to try it out on Mudley.” Mudley Dirtley was his cousin.

  Then he remembered that the Dirtleys, Aunt Hachooie, Uncle Vermin and Mudley had all been captured by Lord Moldyfart last week. It was likely by now they had been tortured to death for information about Harry. Harry sighed once more and wondered, “Who else can I fool with it?” Eventually he gave up thinking about it and set it aside to ponder about later.

  After a few moments, he pulled forth an old library book, The Cat in the Hat. He said out loud to himself, “Wow, that must have been in there since first grade.”

  He tried to remember if his Hogwashes library card had already been revoked by then. Perhaps this was the book Hermione took out for him that he never returned? She had complained about it for years. Then he sang out, “I know what somebody’s getting for Christmas!”

  Hidden at the bottom of his trunk, Harry discovered his dust bunny collection. It had been long forgotten. The last time he saw it was shortly after he brought it in to class on the second day of preschool for show and tell. Faco Maldoy, the Popular Rich Kid, asked with derision, “What’s the matter with you, Putter? Don’t you have any real toys?”

  Of course not! He didn’t have money, parents, or other relatives to give him toys. The closest thing he had was the Dirtleys, and they treated him like, well – dirt. Actually, they were kinder to dirt than to Harry. They ignored dirt, but they mistreated the weird little boy with the L-shaped scar on his forehead. Even on Christmas and on birthdays he received gifts like clothing, or a new broom and mop set to clean the kitchen floor.

  For toys, Harry made due with dust bunnies collected from under beds and dressers. He even shaped them into bunnies, kittens, puppies, goats, and other animals. However, after Faco’s remark, he buried the collection at the bottom of his trunk. This was the first time it had seen the light of day since. It made Harry smile to see his old childhood friends again and he spent several minutes trying to remember all of their names. Then he set them carefully aside in his small pile of saved mementos.

  He glanced in the trunk to see if anything else was left. He spotted something dark in the nearest corner.

  He asked out loud, “What’s this? A hairball? Huh, how’d that get in here?”

  He plucked it from its resting spot and tossed it in the garbage.

  Chapter 2 – That Really Gets my Goat!

  Later that evening, numerous members of the Order of the Harry Putter Fan Club arrived at the Dirtley’s house, 4 Privy Drive. There was old Mad Dog Hooty, Frommundigus Filcher, Wrestlemania Trunks, Fabulous Butterpants, Rhomulus Loopin, and Kingsley Shuckthecorn. They were an assorted group that had just one thing in common, – they were all diehard Harry Putter fans.

  Two of Harry’s former teachers were there, Cubious Hasbeen and Minerva McGooglesnot. Many of the older Cheesley children had come, including Bill, Greg, Marsha, Jan, Cindy, and the twins, Fred and George. Flour Delacour, Bill’s fiancé, was there by his side. They were due to be married in a week.

  The Cheesley’s mother, Molly, and their father, Arthur, were waiting for everyone back at the Boil along with Ginny and little Suzanne. As usual, Perky Cheesley was missing, and since he was a stuck-up twit trying to brown-nose his way up the ladder at the Ministry of Magic, everyone was thankful for his absence.

  Interspersed among them were Harry’s many friends he
had made among the students at Hogwashes including his two best friends, Ron Cheesley and Hermione Stranger. There was Neville Largebottom and his girlfriend, Looney Luvnoodle. And there was … oops, my mistake. That was all his friends, and really Neville and Looney weren’t even close friends, they were more acquaintances who couldn’t come up with a better excuse for not coming when put on the spot.

  Notably absent was Grumblesnore. The large group just wasn’t the same without him. Harry would have felt a lot less nervous, too, if the crafty old wizard were there to protect him.

  However, what made the gathering seem even larger than usual was the seven mannequins, all dressed up like Harry. In fact, most of his clothing wasn’t packed in his suitcase, it was on the seven dummies, eight if you count Harry.

  Their plan was ridiculous. There were probably a dozen more practical ways to get Harry safely from his residence; past his enemies, their spies, or whoever else may be watching; to the Cheesley home, known as the Boil. The easiest would be to use the Cheesley’s bottle of port to teleport there directly. However, Hermione was also a powerful enough spell caster to teleport without a portal key, or as the wizards call it – abberate. She was also very familiar with the destination, which is necessary for teleportation, and she could instantly bring Harry along with her.

  Or the whole lot of them could have piled into Fabulous Butterpant’s giant pickup truck. The little man had the magically extended cab edition, so everyone could have piled in comfortably and stayed together to protect Harry.

  Or Harry could have disguised himself so whoever was watching would not have been able to recognize him. He could have accomplished this simply by shaving off his eyebrow. Or he could have disguised himself as a zombie and shuffled away unnoticed. No one would be able to distinguish him from normal late night foot traffic consisting of the undead and sleepwalking neighbors.

  Or they could have distracted any onlookers and while they were glancing the other way, they could have high-tailed it out of there. For a distraction, they could have set off a few fireworks, waited for the ice cream van to come by in the afternoon, or had a few members of the group walk about outside in hazmat suits while looking concernedly at hand-held devices such as a cell phone or a meter of some kind.

  Or they might have smuggled Harry out in something big, such as a piano, a coffin, a basket, a giant wooden horse, a rolled up carpet, or a mattress.

  Instead, someone suggested a different plan. One of them had the brilliant idea to fix up seven decoy versions of Harry. Only a close observer would be able to distinguish the real Putter from the imposters. Then to further confuse their enemies, they would split into small groups, each escorting one of the seven dummies, eight if you count Harry. Finally, they would take a variety of routes to the Boil and a couple of other false locations. In the end, the Fungus Eaters would become as confused as they were. Their enemies wouldn’t know where Harry was at all.

  When the plan was first suggested, no one thought it was a very good idea. However, someone eventually spoke up and said it was a fine idea. One person even went so far as to call it a fabulous idea. A few people agreed, mostly because they thought it was Fabulous Butterpant’s idea.

  Fabulous Butterpants is a very short man who overcompensates by wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, by driving a giant pickup truck, and by starting fights. He gets his name from wearing pants that are so tight that he uses butter to get them on. He sells light-up merchandise for a living – light-up gloves, light-up belt buckles, light-up sneakers, light-up ice cubes, etc. However, most of his income comes from selling fireworks. He likes country music and sings and dances to it.

  Fabulous Butterpants has the annoying habit of writing everything down, whether it’s important or not. He’s usually very quietly taking notes on what everyone else says. Once in a great while, it’s a useful reference, but in general, no one knows what he does with all the notes he takes or all the notebooks he fills.

  There was something scary about the little man and several of them were quite afraid of him. He seemed the type that might turn his rage upon them at any moment. He might berate them, or start a fight, or quite possibly grab a shotgun out of his pickup truck and start shooting up the place and everybody in it.

  No one spoke up to tell him the plan was stupid and once someone said it was a fabulous plan, others kept their mouths shut and went along with it. Still others were bored and didn’t really care or feel like arguing about it anymore. Flour Delacour silently thought the whole thing reeked of unwarranted paranoia. But she was from France, and did not know the ins and outs of British eccentricity. Furthermore, she wasn’t quite used to Bill’s weird family yet, so wasn’t really up to diagnosing the family’s friends.

  They all began to prepare for the big move, by obtaining the mannequins to pull off the grand scheme two days later. Now was two days later.

  Under the cover of darkness, the large group left the Dirtley home en masse.

  Fabulous Butterpants, Neville Largebottom, and Looney Luvnoodle escorted a version of Harry to Fabulous’s large red pickup truck. Wrestlemania Trunks and Rhomulus Loopin along with Jan and Cindy Cheesley unceremoniously crammed themselves and one of the imposters into the Dirtley’s mini cooper. Meanwhile, Greg, Marsha, Fred and George Cheesley carried a mannequin to a waiting rickshaw, they propped it up, and began to pull it at a run down the street. Minerva McGooglesnot and Kingsley Shuckthecorn accompanied their facsimile to a group of three waiting centaurs. They strapped it on the back of one, and each mounted one of the other two. They took off at a gallop. Frommundigus Filcher and Mad Dog Hooty put their dummy on the back of a stolen golf cart and peeled out. Hermione and Ron balanced themselves and one of the decoys on Harry’s John Deer 2000 lawnmower and sped away. Bill and Flour conducted their rendition of the teenager down the street to the nearest bus stop.

  Cubious Hasbeen carried the one and only Harry Putter under one arm and Harry’s suitcase under the other to his motorcycle. He placed the suitcase in the side car, where Harry’s goat was already waiting and busily chewing the upholstery. In the meanwhile, Harry held himself as stiffly as he could in order to best resemble the seven decoys. Hasbeen placed Harry on the bike and mounted in front of him. He kick-started the engine and took off.

  Cubious Hasbeen is the groundskeeper and manager of the Hogwashes Magical Creatures Petting Zoo in the back of the school. Being 1/32 part giant, Hasbeen is more than just a big man, he is humongously large and fat. Hasbeen always reminded Harry of a large grizzly bear that had escaped the circus wearing a small tent. It was probably because Hasbeen got his clothing from Omar the Tent Man’s Big and Tall Fashions, that, and all his hair.

  In fact, Harry found it difficult to ride behind the giant oaf, as his long hair was constantly whipping in Harry’s face. He could barely tell where they were, with the big man’s body and wavy tresses blocking his view. It was only when the bike rolled to a stop at a red light that Harry could finally spit Hasbeen’s locks out of his mouth and take a good look around him.

  The roads were wet with puddles from the recent rain. The suburban traffic was light since it was so late at night. Harry watched a large black SUV roll to a stop next to them. The showy car had dark tinted windows, spinning wheel rims, and a flashing license plate that read, “Thug Life.” Harry stared at it impressed.

  Then the passenger side window rolled down and Harry could hear the strains of some rock n’ roll classic coming from the car stereo inside. It seemed hauntingly familiar. Harry started to hum the tune, waiting for the chorus to come, just knowing once he heard it, he’d remember the song’s title.

  That’s when the spells started coming fast and furious. His enemy Lord Moldyfart was singing out the lyrics:

  “In a gadda da vida, honey

  Don't you know that I'm lovin' you

  In a gadda da vida, baby

  Don't you know that I'll always be true.”

  With each “In a gadda da vida,” the Fart Lord stab
bed his wand toward Harry and a blast of energy accompanied the words to the worst of the unforgettable curses, the Iron Butterfly Curse, also known as the Death Curse.

  If it wasn’t for Hedbutt, Harry would have died. The goat leapt up from the side car and came between Harry and the Death Curse’s malignant energy. Harry’s poor goat was dead before he hit the asphalt.

  Harry cried out, “Cripes, it’s Moldyfart!” He pulled out his wand from his robe pocket and began defending himself. Meanwhile, Hasbeen with a quick turn of his wrist, hit the gas. The rear tire accelerated too fast and spun on the wet road surface without gripping. The bike slued a little bit forward and to the side.

  Moldyfart continued to sing, barely heard over the screeching tire:

  “Oh, won't you come with me

  And take my hand

  Oh, won't you come with me

  And walk this land

  Please take my hand

  In a gadda da vida, honey

  Don't you know that I'm lovin' you

  In a gadda da vida, baby

  Don't you know that I'll always be true.”

  His driver, Vermintail, one of the Fungus Eaters, joined him on the chorus, shooting more Death curses out the SUV’s window. Harry was hard pressed to block all their spells. His enchantments of protection shot forth with bright silver flashes of energy to meet and dissipate their unforgettable curses.

  Harry yelled out again, “Cripes! CRIPES! CRIPES! It’s Moldyfart!”

  The Fart Lord bellowed in return, “I changed the secret word, you moron!”