The FanFiction is now closed!
The winner is
Katrine Treft for her exceptional story "Of Bandstands and Beagles." Katrine, as I read this story I took note with fiendish delight of how cleverly you had interjected the three necessary items into the story (though the salamander was a bit of a stretch, it worked). A very clever story that would of been hard to match. Unfortunetly, you had your 'his' and 'hers' mixed up; I fixed those in the copy below just so readers can follow the story easier. There was also some repetition of words and phrases in the beginning, but those flaws disappear further in the story.
Everyone else, I glare at you. Katrine and Liz were the only ones to send a story in. And now that Liz has left, second place would of been easy. Katrine's story is below for everyone to read and I've awarded her the 300WC.
***
Of Bandstands and Beagles
“I believe that I hate you.”
His only response was a raised eyebrow.
“No, really, I do.”
A lazily, amused grin was his only response. It was highly infuriating when the object of your hate refused to acknowledge your strong feelings for him and grinned at you. Grinning was not an acceptable response to declarations of hate.
“I hate you so much, in fact, that I think I’ll leave you to Cousin David’s tender mercies the next time he comes over.”
Ah-hah. That provoked a response.
“Maddy, you wouldn’t! That would be pure cruelty! Another hour of listening to David’s three essay series comparing ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and ‘Broomsey, the Talking Broom!’ would…” He paused, obviously unable to think of anything suitably devastating. “Well, at the very least it would lead to a painful, untimely death, no matter how much Broomsey comments on ‘social pressures’!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about the untimely,” his companion muttered, darkly.
“What have I ever done to you that would merit that fate?”
Madeline gaped at him. “Well, for starters, getting me logged up in a Muggle jail cell certainly counts!”
Her brother looked around a little guiltily. “Well, possibly. Though inflicting David on me is surely a little extreme....”
Madeline took a look around her. She was sitting on the edge of a scruffy bunk, in a tiny little box of a room, surrounded by dingy concrete walls. The only decoration the cell sported was a door that led off to a wardrobe sized toilet. And a small wardrobe, at that. Across the aisle, visible through the barred front of the cell, her brother Richard lounged on his bed in his identical accommodations.
“No, it wouldn’t.” she pointed out, grumpily.
Richard shrugged in response.
“You’d better have a clever plan for getting us out of here,” Madeline continued. “I do not fancy being charged with destroying public property!”
Finally, finally, Richard had the sense to look a little guilty. ‘Well, a quick Reparo would have fixed it in no time. If that stupid policeman hadn’t come along just as the roof was collapsing…”
Madeline sighed. “Face it, Richard. We destroyed a bandstand.” Frowning, she rethought that sentence. “Correction, you destroyed a bandstand!”
Richard threw her a dubious look. “If I remember correctly, it was your idea to go to the shop by way of the park.”
His sister gaped at him. “Excuse me, but it wasn’t my idea to then test – how did you put it? – ‘How well Muggle materials compare to magically reinforced ones?” By the end, her words were lashing across the corridor that divided them.
Her infuriating sibling grinned back at her. “Well, we solved that little mystery, didn’t we? Very badly!”
Madeline huffed, crumpling the single thin blanket that lay on the bunk in one hand. “I’m sure most Muggle bandstands aren’t designed for people jumping up and down on top of them, spells issuing downwards, when their roof is at least ten metres off the ground!”
“They should really think of that sort of thing, then, when they build them,” Richard countered, eyes thoughtful. “Do you think we should suggest it to the policeman? He might take the idea to the local council.”
Withering slightly under his sister’s decidedly frosty glare, he conceded, ‘Admittedly, he didn’t really seem the type to take suggestions, did he…?”
At this, Madeline gave up, and dropped her head into her hands. She couldn’t believe this! Not only had her Merlin-cursed idiot of a brother managed to get them caught by the local Muggle police force, but now he was refusing to accept the seriousness of their predicament! This was not fair. No, scratch that. This was beyond not fair.
Clearly, she’d been despairing into her hands for quite a while, as the next sound from her brother was filled with far more concern then previously. “Maddy? Look, I’m sure we’ll get out fine. Without even breaking any laws. Muggle or Magical. We can…” Here however, his imagination failed him. What could they do? He was fairly sure that for even over-age witches and wizards – they were both eighteen – almost completely destroying a muggle building was a punishable offense. Rather regretting now that he’d never read the Statute of Secrecy in more detail – it would have been quite nice to know what punishment they were liable to face – his mind failed to come up with any vaguely legal plan for escape. He decided that this was possibly the worst situation he’d ever found himself in.
Yes, he was hardly the most responsible person in the world, but so far in his life he’d managed to avoid getting in serious trouble – unless you counted that time in sixth year, when he’d had that unfortunate run-in with the transfiguration professor, which he tried not to think about, even though his family delighted in recounting the story of his punishment. This, however, was bad. This involved the law. Maybe not their law, but the law nonetheless. And he was fairly sure their law would get involved fairly soon.
“Oh, Merlin,” he groaned, running a hand through his hair.
He was surprised by the snort of laughter that came from his sister’s cell. “At least you appear to have finally accepted we’re in big trouble.”
“Not that big trouble,” Richard tried to defend himself with his normal words.
He was unprepared for the response that got him. Madeline leaped up, and stamped to the front of her cell, glaring directly at him. “Not that big?! Richard, this is the worst trouble we have ever been in! We’ve destroyed a Muggle bandstand, we did it with magic, we’ve gotten caught by the Muggle police for breaking their laws, the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes is sure to get involved soon because of the excessive magic use, and our wands could be broken for breaking the Statute of Secrecy! I don’t think the Ministry is going to have any sympathy, after all, given that there is almost no way that bandstand could have been broken in any other possible way! On top of that, we’re sitting in tiny cells in a Muggle jail, have absolutely no chance of telling anyone anything until the morning, and have had all our things taken away! Which includes my wand, and my lucky hippogriff brooch!”
She subsided back onto her bed, glare not diminishing one whit, and hissed, “So no, Richard. Don’t you dare tell me we’re not in big trouble.”
Richard blinked. He hadn’t known his sister could hold her breath that long. “Well,” he began, and that grin Madeline so dreaded began to appear on his face. ‘If you’re so bothered, I suppose we’d better get out of here, then, and fix all the damage.”
Madeline looked at him. Just looked. She didn’t think she could summon up the energy to be exasperated. “Well done Richard. I’m glad you’ve caught up. But considering we have no wands, and even if we did two people disappearing from a jail cell would be highly suspect, I’d say we’re just going to have to get in trouble.” With a snort, she leaned back against the wall. “Though, admittedly, less-then-legal methods of escape are sounding better and better…”
Much to her surprise, Richard kept grinning. “Oh, good. Less-then-legal sounds excellent to me.” He forestalled Madeline’s protestations by slowly drawing a wooden stick out of his boot, with an elaborate flourish. Even in the rather dim light of the cells, it was very obviously Richard’s nine inch, willow and unicorn tail wand.
The reaction he got for his theatrical movement did not disappoint. Madeline let out an astonished squeak, before managing to ask, “And you didn’t bring that up before, why?!”
Richard merely quirked his eyebrows up, and described his plan.
**
A very short time later, the two of them were carefully walking up the short corridor that led to the police station’s main office, the cell doors having been no match for a quick Alohamora. Said cells had been carefully restored to the condition they’d been in previously, with rumpled blankets smoothed, and the doors spelled shut behind them. Richard’s plan involved never having been there at all.
Madeline peered carefully through the door which she’d pushed open a crack, and thankfully saw no-one. Her careful caution was rather destroyed a second later, though, as Richard gaily pushed the door open, and sauntered in. Madeline sighed, shook her head, wondered if her brother would ever advance beyond the subtlety level of a two year old, and followed in his wake.
He headed straight for the desk, and began to rifle through the drawers, searching for their confiscated items. Madeline, going for the more practical approach, made a beeline for the still turned-on computer, looking to delete their files. This required some thought, as her computer experience was limited to a few times messing about on one at a Muggleborn friend’s house. It gave her an advantage in the mouse moving department, however, and meant that she was able to find the police records fairly quickly.
The next part of the operations was rather more difficult, however, and made even more so by her brother who, having found all their briefly lost belonging and having then dumped them in a sprawled pile on the desk’s surface, was now peering over her shoulder, poking at assorted things, and asking irritating questions. Richard hadn’t had Madeline’s slight initiation into the world of computers, and so was fascinated by every little flashing light.
“Richard!” Madeline finally snapped, after the fourth time he’d managed to type a meaningless string of letters, the second time she’d narrowly averted a complete systems crash, and Richard’s eighth mumbled, “Gosh, the things Muggles come up with,” comment. “You are not helping! Go Obliviate the policeman, or something.”
It was only a few minutes later, when she had managed to delete the files, successfully erasing their presence from the police records, that she realised her brother might have taken the words literally. Oh, Merlin.
She leaped to her feet, skimmed through the pile of their belongings with eager fingers, grabbed her wand, and listened. Where were the nearest sounds of chaos coming from?
Only a few moments after listening, she heard a rather panicked cacophony of sounds rising from what she thought was the police station’s back garden. Bingo. Pulling open a likely door, she found herself in what was obviously the yard where the police dogs were kept. That explained the barking, then.
At one end of the yard, her brother was threatening a policeman – Madeline noted with relief that it was the one who’d caught them staring guiltily at the collapsing bandstand – with his wand, while the policeman was threatening him back with a rather peeved looking dog. The dog food lying in a puddle nearby could explain the dogs angry expression – missing dinner would annoy anyone, after all.
With a sigh, Madeline pointed her wand at the dog, said “Stupefy!” in a tone of voice that was surprisingly devoid of exasperation, and watched with satisfaction as the poor thing collapsed mid-bark. Richard, picking up on the situation fairly quickly, then stunned the befuddled looking policeman with an economical flick of his wand.
Silence fell surprisingly quickly as the siblings looked at each other. “How come I can’t even send you to Stun a single Muggle policeman?” Madeline asked after a moment. “I would’ve thought even you could’ve managed that!” Taking a closer look at the inert dog, she added, “Especially when he’s threatening you with a beagle with a heart shaved onto its flank and several bells on its collar!”
From Richard’s lack of response, he clearly thought the same thing, but bent down hastily to the prone policeman, and began preparing his Obliviate, pointedly ignoring his sister. Leaving him to it – her brother was a dab hand at memory spells, and all possible threats seemed to be unconscious – Madeline returned inside, and scooped all their belongings into a handy plastic bag, making sure to pull out her hippogriff brooch, check it for damage, and pin it on again.
She’d just completed the task when Richard returned through the door, looking pleased with himself. “There we go,” he said, in a satisfied tone of voice. “He, and his dog, should wake up in ten minutes, his last memories being of feeding the dogs, and the beagle’s last memories being off…” He shrugged. “Dog biscuits, or something. Which leaves us free to high-tail it out of here!”
Suiting actions to words, the pair left, hastily.
**
Twenty minutes later, Richard and Madeline stood looking proudly at the fruit of their labours. A few handy construction spells, and the bandstand looked like just as it had before. Newer then it had before, in fact, as they hadn’t been able to resist giving it a fresh coat of paint. Penance for the mess they’d made of it earlier, they’d both decided. That and the fact they hadn’t been able to resist trying out the spell.
“Well then,” Madeline said after a few minutes pleased contemplation. “We’d better be heading home, hadn’t we?”
Turning to leave, Richard took the chance to smugly tell his sister, “See? I told you it would all work out fine. And we’ve even done the village a service, giving it a sturdier bandstand then before.” With a grin, he added, ‘And it was a good chance to see the inside workings of a Muggle police station! We should do things like this more often!”
Madeline didn’t even bother to dignify that with a reply, though the look she shot at Richard clearly told him that she felt he was taking completely the wrong message away from this.
“If you do anything like this again,” she threatened, “I will take up Aunt Susie’s offer to get myself a salamander, and stick it in your bed. Explaining to mum why your home-knitted sheets have burst into flame will be very amusing, I’m sure.”
And with that, she strode off for home. Richard stood looking after her with a doubtful expression on his face for a moment, before running to catch up. He slipped his arm through hers with only a minor amount of arguing, and then the two carried on their way down the street, laughingly insulting each other. Their only problem now would be explaining to their father precisely why a quick trip down to the corner shop had taken them over two hours. Madeline fully intended to let Richard talk their way out of
that.
