It was hopeless. No matter how many times she tried, Ally could not erase the memory. The screaming fanwriters, the shades of Blello pouring through the windows, splintered glass tearing through tapestry and table alike...

Sitting in the Canonlaw House bathroom, Ally pressed her forehead against the cool ceramic tiles. Why did they have to blame us? We didn’t do it! she thought, her mind snapping with frustration. Speaking for myself, I have enough pride to call Hogwarts ‘Hogwarts’, not ‘Hoggiewarts’. The Canon Characters have got to lighten up!

“Ally, come out!” called Molly W from the common room. “We have to go to ‘Heredity’ before Hagrid decides to ‘reward’ us by letting us play football with his Skrewts again!”

Sighing, Ally got to her feet and looked in the mirror. A gaunt, beaten face stared back at her, smeared with Blello. Blello. Possibly the most annoying “color” ever, if one could call it that. Some of the fanwriters had remarked that it reminded them of Urple, whatever that was. Blello. It didn’t seem to want to come out, no matter how much Ally scrubbed. Blello. Most aggravating.

Skipping down the steps into the common room, Ally couldn’t help but think of how much she had changed. For one thing, Ally certainly looked different than she had that time last autumn when she had written her fanfiction and published it on the Net. Her hair was no longer a bleached blonde, having grown out sufficiently that only the part from her ears down resembled that shade, as the top had returned to mousy brown. The rest was singed, charred, and usually streaked with mud or the various potions that Snape felt the urge to throw at his students when the fanwriters did something abysmally stupid. Such as call him Sevvie-kins. Grandmomma Longlegs had learned that the hard way.

Ally left the Canonlaw dorms with a pack of her housemates, noticing the stripe of turquoise-yellow that was still dripping on the walls of the corridors. At last they made their way down the main staircase, and Ally realized that she had completely forgotten her textbooks. A slight shudder ran through her veins. Traveling alone was dangerous, especially when it could incite an attack of the Fellowship of the Peeves. Nasty little buggers, the whole crew was plotting something once again, and—

Wait a minute, what if they had done that? Ally stopped in her tracks. The Fellowship of the Peeves was all about annoying things, and Blello was certainly annoying enough to be a Peeves calling card. She bit her lip, then sprinted up to the Canonlaw dorms once again, remembering a little too late to jump the trick step.

She was just passing by the Charms room when a conversation drifted out through the door and stole her attention (just as conversations are wont to do).

“... but it would be in our least interests to fight them; we haven’t the power or the stability to ward off so many. I fear that surrender, complete and utter surrender is the only thing in our future,” said a mournful voice.

“Oh, put a sock in it, Trelawney. The attack yesterday was bad, but it wasn’t terrible enough to worry Quirrell, and anything that moves seems to worry him nowadays.”

“My dear Minerva, Quirrell is not worrying because Ludo slipped sedatives into his pumpkin juice this morning; surely you observed? Oh, of course not. I had been crystal-gazing and saw it in a vision.”

McGonagall snorted. “Ah... yes. And please refrain from calling me ‘Shirley’.” Ally could not see the speakers, but she guessed that McGonagall was doing that odd eye-twitch thing that had nearly given Chelsea a heart attack. If there was one way a fanwriter didn’t want a Canon Character to look at them, it was as if the fanwriter was an extremely annoying parasite that the Canon Character wanted to kill, grind, and can.

“My apologies, my dear ungifted Minerva,” said Trelawney in her ethereal voice. There was a sucking noise that suggested that the two women were drinking tea.

“Well, I believe that will be all for today,” said a different voice. Ally flattened herself against the wall as she recognized the voice of Lily Potter. “Your time is up, but I think we have made some progress here today. We can have a civilized conversation if we work at it, remember that.”

“Though I doubt my esteemed psyche ever needed counseling for Outer Sources, it is always a pleasure to speak with one of such understanding,” commented the Divination professor.

McGonagall snorted once again. “Esteemed psyche my paws,” she growled.

And despite Lily’s best efforts, the two women managed to inflict sizable injuries on one another. This in turn put them both in a state of paralysis that even Madam Pomfrey could not fix. With the two professors in full-body casts, the sentinel of Characters guarding the Harry Potter Canon was once again weakened...

*********

Black circles hung under Meir Brin’s eyes as she took her place in the staff seating area near the Quidditch pitch. It seemed like only yesterday that she had been checking the Mini-Aragogs before their first MAPLE game. The HFA coordinator balanced the Switch tiredly over her knee, and her whole frame seemed to droop. Generally, staying up for three days would do that to you.

They must be here, somewhere, anywhere! What sort of plothole could capture and incapacitate four hundred healthy Mini-Aragogs? thought Meir Brin, brushing dirt off of her hands slowly. I cannot understand it; they knew what was going on, but couldn’t figure out how. And Aragog says that only a few orcs have come through the OFUM plothole...

The HFA coordinator slumped and rubbed her eyes. “I hope we can last long enough without them,” she said out loud. “And perhaps Elessor and Giligad will find the answer of this disappearance at OFUM.”

“Have you heard back from them yet?” asked a voice suddenly, and Meir Brin would have jumped out of her skin had aforementioned skin not been so accursedly tired.

“Dark One?” she asked curiously. Sure enough, the shape-shifter materialized into the chair next to her. “What’s new?” asked Meir Brin, hoping that it was the Mini-Aragogs, or similar good news. Perhaps a fanwriter had fallen into the Plagiarist’s Inferno. That was always good for a show; Klose had even roped off a section along the sidelines to watch and eat popcorn.

She shook her head. “I went through all of the fanwriter dorms. No hidden tunnels, no trussed up spiders, not even any bouillabaisse for silencing payments.”

“I don’t understand it; they cannot just disappear,” stammered Meir Brin, pushing hair out of her eyes in frustration. “Dursely and Weasely have even vanished as well. It’s as if all of our guardians are being kidnapped. The Misspelled Marauders are working overtime, but with just the seven of them...”

“I thought there were only four,” commented Dark One Shadowphyre.

“There were. Now we have Misspelled Marauders X, Y, and Z. But that’s hardly enough to keep the Canon Characters safe during classes. Especially at such a vulnerable time.”

Dark One pointed at Lucius Malfoy chasing Molly Morgan and Selena Luna around the perimeter of the pitch, shouting something along the lines of “Steal another lock of my son’s hair and I don’t care what house you’re in, I’ll skin you alive and feed you to Orfalda!”

“They seem competent enough to me.”

Meir Brin replied by pointing to a surge of fanwriters walking down to the field from the castle. They were moving a little too quickly to be simply running for their lives, but too slow to be being chased by something. It was exactly 28 miles per hour. The recorded speed of a glomping fangirl. “Is that Sirius Black down there?” she asked, starting to get to her feet.

Dark One squinted slightly, then transformed into a large bird. Gliding down to the source of the problem, she arrived just in time to see Sirius Black go under a wave of lustful writers. Up in the stands, Meir Brin witnessed a rather large explosion and several fangirls being tossed into the air.

Approximately ten minutes later, a truckload of fanwriters was being removed to the hospital wing with a menagerie of bumps, bruises, cuts, and bites. The population that was not experiencing painful difficulties were in the stands, wondering how there could be a MAPLE (“Mini-Aragog Paintball League—Extreme“) game without the Mini-Aragogs.

“Point and counterpoint,” said Shadowphyre, returning to the stands. “Are we beginning?”

Meir Brin nodded and disappeared down the rafter-like steps to the coaching booths. A quick conference with Professors Snape and Trelawney would produce a suitable compromise. But that would be a “compromise” in only the loosest sense of the word.

“Tiddlywinks is not a suitable replacement for a MAPLE game!” argued Snape angrily.

“On the contrary, Severus dear, I have always enjoyed a good game of Tiddlywinks. And with my limited movement...” Trelawney cast her magnified eyes over the full-body cast that she had been encased in. “I fear it will be the only way... Alas, my death was coming, and as I knew of it so soon, I cannot help but fear that in the near future my mortal body will pass on to the nether-life, and I shall remain only in spirit, to help and to guide your poor unfortunate spirits...”

Snape threw up his hands in exasperation. “If you even think of coming back as a ghost, I will ensure that you outlive me one way or another.”

Nearby, Onyx sent up a great wail: “No, Severus, don’t do it! Angst but no suicide! Angst but no suicide!”

The Potions master rolled his eyes and stalked off to the other side of the booth, where the fanwriters could not see him. Meir Brin gave the immortal expression of “heaven help me” and flipped through Ye Great Big Book of Rainy Day Fun Games.

“Cribbage, Cricket, hmm... ‘Shoots and Ladders’?” She looked over at the sulking Canon Characters. I don’t think so. “‘Stairmaster Deluxe Grand Prix’? Definitely not. Oh! Oh. Well... maybe...”

“My ethereal senses tell me that a suitable substitute has been found!” exclaimed Professor Trelawney, trying to rub her temples prophetically. With the heavy plaster casts on her arms, it appeared rather difficult and gawky, but that was a moot point.

Meir Brin laughed. “All right then, a Staring Contest it is.”

“I refuse,” said Professor Snape shortly without any intonation.

“You say that because you fear defeat. I have foreseen your defeat in my future visions. Dark times, dark times are ahead for us. And dear Severus... he shall lose to the bewitching gaze that conceals itself within my eyes...”

After that, it did not take long to get Severus Snape and Sybill Trelawney out onto the Quidditch Pitch and trying to bore holes into each other’s head with their eyes. Meir Brin had to admire them. Trelawney was utterly immovable with her dazed, trance-like stare, and Snape seemed to be forcing his eyes to remain open with sheer willpower.

Meir Brin glanced at her watch. Five minutes, six minutes... twenty-four minutes, thirty-one minutes...

“All right, one more minute and we call it a draw,” she said, quite tired.

Sybill’s eyes had started to water. Severus kept squinting, then biting his lip in a manner that suggested how fed up he actually was.

“Seven, six, five—”

“HE BLINKED,” roared Trelawney. “Look, did you see it? Did you?”

Meir Brin nodded. “I’m afraid you did, Professor. Trelawney will be marked as having won this round.”

The Divination professor slumped back into her wheelchair happily, like some old coot on their porch rocking chair. “All has been fulfilled. In my dreams I saw this moment, and now it has come to fruition.” She looked up at Snape, who was turning an amusing shade of Blello. “Do not worry, my dear. As I have said, I foresaw your defeat.”

Snape ground his teeth and turned abruptly to return to the castle. Unfortunately, Lyssie St. Cloud and Belphegor were cursed with ill luck when they passed in front of the angry professor. They were scrubbing the carburetor fluid out of their robes for the next two days.

Meir Brin walked off of the pitch that day, happy as well. But ill news was there to greet her as well, in the form of Klose.

“Meir Brin, we have a very, very big inconvenience. I just found James Potter. Tied up. In the Owlery. He has been heavily sedated, and I think that he is wearing lipstick.”