Fender was nursing a bruised ego (plus wrist, shoulder, and spleen) as he sat down at the Slashering table for lunch. He had not had a good first week of school. To start with, he kept getting trampled by mobs of fangirls going after their lust-objects in his classes, and he was not looking forward to having “How Not to Get Wapped with MWPP” after lunch, which promised to be similar. As not being of the glomping persuasion, Fender was usually dragged down by the Lusterbuffs when he attempted to fight the crowds swarming to Draco and Snape. Then there had been the memorable time that Juliet Norrington had mistaken him for young!Snape, and he had run into Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy in his flight (Juliet Norrington had run off as well, screaming “Disinfectant! Disinfectant!”). “Note to self: never cross the Black women,” he reminded himself, rubbing the patchy burn on his shoulder.

He stirred his onion soup with his good hand, and looked around the hall. HFA was certainly different from what he was used to. Instead of sitting in his own corner of the cafeteria, he was squashed between fellow fanwriters, most of which were girls. If Fender had been a particularly hormonal youth, he would have spent his days in euphoric bliss (especially after being mistaken for a younger Severus Snape, considering the character’s popularity among the ladies. Go figure). However, owing to his snobbish contempt for fangirls, he considered the Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy no paradise.

“Yay yay yay yay yay!” squealed the high-pitched voice of Phayn Knarm-Doots. “I can’t believe we have em-wapp class again!”

Fender looked up to see the giddy girl sit down across from him. “‘Em-wapp’?” he asked pointedly. “You are perhaps referring to MWPP?”

“Only stodges call it MWPP; say it with me, ‘em-wapp’!” said Phayn excitedly.

Fender rolled his eyes. “‘Em-wapp’. Happy now?”

Phayn bounced up and down in her seat, accidentally overturning a pitcher of pumpkin juice onto Fyrheafoc, who hissed and bared her fangs at her. “Yes I am! Nothing better than a class with Remus, Sirius, and Sevvie-kins!”

“Never would have pegged you for a Snape-luster,” scowled Fender, pulling out a notebook so that he could draw bats and wolves in the margins. He wasn’t a particularly good artist, he just liked giving his possessions an aura of darkness.

“Oh, but I am!” said Phayn, grinning from ear to ear. She wrung her hands excitedly under her chin. “Snapie and me, we’re going to get married, and he’ll—”

“He wouldn’t marry you,” interjected Fender. “What kind of a person do you think he is?”

“I bet he’s a real sweetie on the inside!” gushed Phayn.

“Oh, come on,” said Kayl leaning over from her table to join the conversation. “Maybe Snape’s not as bad as he seems, but he’ll never be a ‘sweetie’. He’d need the right person... probably not you.”

“Uh-huh!” said Phayn defensively, an odd expression in her eyes. She took a moment to regain her composure before calling out to Eris Conner, a girl Fender knew to be a member of Sevvie’s Angels, “Isn’t Snape the best guy in the Canon?”

“No way!” argued Aki_sama, a Canonlaw. “Remus is so the best out there! Come on, what woman can’t love man who bleeds monthly?”

At the staff table, Lupin buried his face in his hands and wept.

“You made him cry,” said Megan Trades. “And to answer your question... Sirius could.”

Lupin stood drunkenly, mumbling something incoherent about dead decency. He ran into Sirius on his way out of the Great Hall, looked at him, screamed, and dashed off.

“Well, what about Blaise Zabini?” protested Moria, joining the lust-object praise-fest.

Robin O’Brien gave her a funny look. “You know, if Blaise had a definite gender, I don’t think that would be as weird. He... she... it... Blaise Zabini is kind of... androgynous, at the moment.”

“I lust after male!Blaise,” clarified Moria, pronouncing her exclamation point with a slight click of the tongue.

At the Slytherin table near the doors, Pansy Parkinson and Draco glanced at Blaise Zabini, who was looking rather effeminate that day. Blaise shook his/her head as the two snickered quietly. Pansy took up chanting “Bla-ise’s got a lust-er” sotto voce.

“Come, fanwriters,” said the merry yet commanding voice of Professor Dumbledore. “Wantingmors and Lusterbuffs to the Potions classroom for ‘Practical Wizardry’, Slasherings and Canonlaws have ‘How Not to Get Wapped with MWPP’ in the History of Magic room.” Fender ground his teeth as Dumbledore pronounced the word “em-wapp” as well. As the Great Hall gradually emptied of fanwriters, Dumbledore commented to Professor McGonagall, “It is so nice to see such committed young people these days.”

“You have not borne the brunt of their ‘creativity’, I see,” she said.

“Perhaps not as much as some. But then again, it is always nice to see that one is considered a father-figure to so many daughters,” said Dumbledore pleasantly. “Even if they are Vambiolatos.”

Before entering the History of Magic classroom, Fender was subjected to a most humiliating ritual: the Order of the Sphinx Security Check.

“Place all forbidden items here,” said Jocelyn, indicating a tray. “This includes deus ex machina love-pendants, purity talismans, mace, fog-pills, powdered sugar, and Dementors.”

OrangeKitty grumbled as she handed over the portable fifty-foot collapsible lobster crate that Lizzy Addams had sold her in order to capture the Giant Squid. Molly Morgan examined it with a jeweler’s glass, then tossed it in a heap with a large ruby, four rolls of rice paper dotted with finger paint, and a dead chipmunk. “None of us are hiding Dementors under our cloaks,” said the Slashering dispiritedly.

“I am,” said Minister Fudge. He was driven away by a loud chorus of boos from the fanwriters.

Fender stood staring at the ceiling as Pineapple Queen, another member of the Order of the Sphinx, frisked him for concealed weapons. Why she was doing this, Fender didn’t know, but assumed it had something to do with the rabid Sirius/Remus slashers who didn’t take “We’re just friends” for an answer.

A phalanx of Mini-Aragogs formed a sizable barrier between the instructors’ area and the fanwriters’ amphitheater seating. Like the Great Hall, the History of Magic classroom had been magically expanded to accommodate such a large number of students. Talking quietly with their backs to the class, Lily Evans, James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew provoked an undercurrent of squeeing from the fanwriters. Fender’s lip curled disdainfully.

“Settle yourselves,” said James Potter. “This isn’t a drool-fest, it’s a class.”

“A very important class, at that,” added Lupin. “This course is to teach you about our times at Hogwarts, the ‘Marauder Era’ as some of you have affectionately termed it.”

“Before we crack down on your sorry hides, we have compiled a list of complaints and common inconsistencies found in MWPP stories that we would like to address,” said Sirius.

“Crack down on my sorry hide, Remus!” said Comicqueen217.

The Marauders gave her a funny look as Lily took out a long list. The fanwriters shifted uncomfortably in their seats, glancing nervously at their neighbors.

“Item number one: James and I did not get together in our first year. This should be common knowledge to you, if you have all dutifully read Order of the Phoenix,” said Lily, glaring at a couple Canonlaws in the front row. “All of us were only eleven at the time. Were you kissing when you were eleven?” A couple of fanwriters appeared as if they were about to speak, but James shot them a glare that sent them cowering in their chairs.

“You got a whole chapter of MWPP in The Order of the Phoenix,” said Remus pointedly. “Work off of that, please.”

“I would also like to point out that I was not a malicious back-stabbing traitor through my seven years of Hogwarts,” added Pettigrew hesitantly. “I would appreciate if I wasn’t maligned in every one of your stories...”

Kellie Owens and Phoenix Flight managed to convey a boatload of disbelief and disdain without making a sound. Kellie, who was a second-year, had attempted to warn the Canonlaws about Pettigrew’s testiness when it came to his past. Only a few had listened. Slightly, the only student to request the form of a rodent, went up to one of the non-listeners and bit her ankle.

“Lucius Malfoy has also asked that we point out that he did not attend school with us,” said Sirius Black. “He’s at least five years our senior, if not more.”

“But, but,” protested a fanwriter in the front row. “Isn’t a Malfoy a Potter’s sworn enemy?”

James rolled his eyes. “Jamed, Poter, attack,” he said, and the Mini-Aragogs of those designations swarmed forward, dragging the offending fanwriter out of the classroom, muttering “yo-yoses...” underneath the clacking of their pincers.

“Malfoy is my son’s schoolboy nemesis,” said Lily, tsking. “James and Severus were the ones always going at it in our days. You will recall this important plot point from the Philosophical Sorcerous Stone book?”

Remus leaned over and whispered something in Lily’s ear, and she blushed. “That’s what I meant. Philosopher’s Stone or Sorcerer’s Stone...”

“Moving on,” said James Potter. “You realize that we were children of the 70s, right? We did not have computers, or cellphones, or video games when we were growing up. Research the period if you were not alive then!”

Dippy raised her hand. Fender had already heard about Dippy in his brief time at HFA. Apparently, the Order of the Sphinx already had a whole stack of papers on her in Oedipus Inferno. Sirius inadvertently took a step backwards when she spoke. Rumor had it that Phaidra, a Wantingmor, was developing a plan to capture Sirius and sell him to Dippy for a large sum of money, chocolate, and, for some odd reason, pipe cleaners. “Does this mean that Sirius and Remus went to a disco?” asked Dippy, a hint of a squee in her voice.

“Errr... Let’s not go there...” said Remus tactfully, causing a couple girls to swoon. “The next point on our list has to deal with the secondary characters that you use in your stories.”

“You may make up characters until Canon states something about who went to Hogwarts in our year. But this does not give you the right to make up background Vambiolatos,” said Lily vehemently.

“Most of the MWPP stories we’ve looked at seem to exist solely to put a Sue in to chase Remus or Sirius,” said James. “And while we’re on the subject, where on earth does it state that Sirius ever wore black leather?”

“He had a flying motorcycle,” rationalized Ekwy slowly, flinching as the canon characters looked in her direction. “Bikers wear leather?”

“Fanon assumption, very overdone,” said Remus. “Use fanon sparingly, please. I know it’s a popularly held notion that I was bitten on my shoulder, that Sirius wore black leather day in and day out, and that Snape had a crush on Lily—”

“He did?” blurted Lily Potter. “I am going to have a nice long talk with Severus,” she fumed. “Really, you stop a guy from being de-pantsed and they think you’re the be-all and end-all of existence...” she groused.

“What I was going to say,” continued Remus, “is that fanon theories—educated guesses and conceptions held about the Canon but not necessarily true—become clichés if they are used too often. Be warned. I doubt any of you would like to run into a Cliché around here.”

“That’s very true,” said Demosthenes from a few rows ahead of Fender.

“This brings us to the last item on our list,” said James Potter. “I would like to talk about the effects of living in a time of serious danger. Voldemort was on the rise while we were attending Hogwarts, and you cannot conveniently ignore this when writing novel-length. Those were dark days, we were all in very serious danger—”

James was cut off as two girls up in the front row started giggling. “‘Sirius, danger, go fetch help, boy!’” chuckled one of them. They stopped abruptly when they realized that Sirius was glaring at them, a livid expression on his face.

“Do not use ‘Sirius’ puns here...!” hissed Black, brandishing his wand. “This could get ugly...” he growled, eyes darting toward the ceiling nervously. “You’ve summoned the Flying Pun, you idiots!”

A small, demon-ish nun leapt out at the two girls, and started to maul them with a crimson herring. Between their shrieks, the two gasped out an apology to Sirius Black, who had ducked for cover under the desk. The Flying Pun didn’t especially like HFA. The Flying Pun didn’t especially like Sirius, the origin of so many of its children at HFA.

“This place keeps getting more stupid by the second,” muttered Fender in the last row, ignoring the circus taking place a couple yards in front of him. Not only had the class been an utter waste of his oh-so-valuable time, but every single faculty member had pronounced it “em-wapp.”