Ficlet: The Years Before You Came (ensemble cast), PG
Title: The Years Before You Came: Harry Potter and the Universe
Author: minnow_53
Summary: An account of what happened before Harry Potter.
Rating: PG
The universe began with the Big Bang, several eons before human beings evolved from the rather revolting fish and fungi in the primeval slime. Harry Potter at this stage was still an unborn star, lurking at the very bottom of God’s consciousness.
For a few million years, the earth was populated entirely by dinosaurs. While good guy Brontosaurus!Harry splashed happily in the water, nibbling plants, evil Raptor!Draco plotted to eat his vegetarian rival some day. However, when the dreaded Voldie Rex came along, raptor and brontosaurus discovered true love under the gentle shade of a pterodactyl’s wings. Tragically, even Raptor!Draco could not withstand the asteroid that obliterated Harry, Voldie and every trace of life on the planet.
Prehistoric man came and went in the blink of an eye, and after the last mammoth had been culled, the Roman Empire arose. Two millennia before the Quidditch World Cup, the consul Cornelius Fudgius organised the rather more violent Roman games, pitting gladiators, minus their wands, against Hippogriffs and wild Kneazles, both noted for their long, sharp claws.
Jesus was born, a major event; and then he died, which was even bigger. After that, the people got religion, and the dark ages began. But it wasn’t all bad news, because the Harry Potter Subtext was now in place. The Rowling Bible, a priceless tome passed down from generation to generation of Cathar monks, asserts: ‘James and Lily shall beget Harry, and Harry shall beget James and Lily; which is mightily confusing.’ The RB also contains a prophecy yet to be fulfilled, the ascent of ’Scorpius the Magnificent, brother to Capricornus and Ursa Major.’
In 1492, Columbus discovered America, most famous for being the future home of many Harry Potter fans and their LiveJournals. Soon afterwards, Goodwife Gryffindor turned to her husband in exasperation and said, ‘Why don’t you stop messing about with that bloody sword, and do something useful for a change?’ Thus was Hogwarts founded. Godric subsequently fell under the spell of the beautiful Rowena Ravenclaw, and his wife rather faded out of the picture.
The Potter ethos resurfaced in Shakespeare’s lost comedy, Severus and Lily, purportedly about an abusive man redeemed by a good woman, ‘a redhead most fair’. Contemporary reviews suggest that it wasn’t very funny overall, but the character of Severus, ‘a purveyor of arcane learning’ had the audience in stitches. Unfortunately, there are no further records, so one assumes that Severus repented, married his Lily and ended his days as a pillar of Elizabethan society.
When the eighteenth century came along, Harry Potter’s spirit was all but extinguished by the Age of Reason and its rhyming couplets. A few fragments remain, like this one from Pope’s epic Satirical Discourse on Women and Reason:
In windswept seas, Hermione were thrice drown’d
But for her Ron, who bore her swift aground.’
(The rest of the poem is a bit less dramatic. It transpires that Ron is a humble shepherd in Arcadia and Hermione ‘Rejoiced to shear the fleece of little lambs.’)
Reason gave way to revolution, followed closely by the Victorians and various wars. In the trenches of the Somme, a young man called Neville wrote impassioned love letters to ‘Luna’, a correspondence that could be said to foreshadow Rowling’s oeuvre. Luna knitted relentlessly for Neville, garments which may have had a tiny bit of magic in them, because Neville survived the war: a sturdy, woollen sock stopped the German bullet that should have killed him.
The 1970s arrived, but not the First Wizarding War, as Harry Potter did not yet exist in real time. However, in a number of parallel universes, History suddenly held its breath and stopped dead as Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs swept onstage: though not always as we know them. In one universe, James Potter was a girl, and a Squib to boot; Remus Lupin never got bitten by a wolf and was therefore of no further interest to God or man; and Peter Pettigrew was a handsome, popular boy with an enviable social life.
Sometimes, all the Hogwarts students were gay, especially Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, whose romance was legendary. The two boys often slipped away to the Forbidden Forest on a warm summer night. Sirius would say, ‘I adore you, Moony,’ and Remus invariably replied, ‘I adore you too.’ ‘Let’s have it off,’ they’d chant in unison, then reanimate the world, figuratively, with another Big Bang
Sadly, the world never registered even the faintest reverberation: for the love-scenes played to an empty theatre, and still Harry Potter continued to fester in the collective unconscious.
Then, one fateful day in 1990, JKR ordered a skinny latte in an Edinburgh café, and wrote down the now-immortal words: ‘James, Sirius, and Sirius’s beloved girlfriend raised their wands as the policeman approached.’
Time had finally begun...
Poll
Author: minnow_53
Summary: An account of what happened before Harry Potter.
Rating: PG
The universe began with the Big Bang, several eons before human beings evolved from the rather revolting fish and fungi in the primeval slime. Harry Potter at this stage was still an unborn star, lurking at the very bottom of God’s consciousness.
For a few million years, the earth was populated entirely by dinosaurs. While good guy Brontosaurus!Harry splashed happily in the water, nibbling plants, evil Raptor!Draco plotted to eat his vegetarian rival some day. However, when the dreaded Voldie Rex came along, raptor and brontosaurus discovered true love under the gentle shade of a pterodactyl’s wings. Tragically, even Raptor!Draco could not withstand the asteroid that obliterated Harry, Voldie and every trace of life on the planet.
Prehistoric man came and went in the blink of an eye, and after the last mammoth had been culled, the Roman Empire arose. Two millennia before the Quidditch World Cup, the consul Cornelius Fudgius organised the rather more violent Roman games, pitting gladiators, minus their wands, against Hippogriffs and wild Kneazles, both noted for their long, sharp claws.
Jesus was born, a major event; and then he died, which was even bigger. After that, the people got religion, and the dark ages began. But it wasn’t all bad news, because the Harry Potter Subtext was now in place. The Rowling Bible, a priceless tome passed down from generation to generation of Cathar monks, asserts: ‘James and Lily shall beget Harry, and Harry shall beget James and Lily; which is mightily confusing.’ The RB also contains a prophecy yet to be fulfilled, the ascent of ’Scorpius the Magnificent, brother to Capricornus and Ursa Major.’
In 1492, Columbus discovered America, most famous for being the future home of many Harry Potter fans and their LiveJournals. Soon afterwards, Goodwife Gryffindor turned to her husband in exasperation and said, ‘Why don’t you stop messing about with that bloody sword, and do something useful for a change?’ Thus was Hogwarts founded. Godric subsequently fell under the spell of the beautiful Rowena Ravenclaw, and his wife rather faded out of the picture.
The Potter ethos resurfaced in Shakespeare’s lost comedy, Severus and Lily, purportedly about an abusive man redeemed by a good woman, ‘a redhead most fair’. Contemporary reviews suggest that it wasn’t very funny overall, but the character of Severus, ‘a purveyor of arcane learning’ had the audience in stitches. Unfortunately, there are no further records, so one assumes that Severus repented, married his Lily and ended his days as a pillar of Elizabethan society.
When the eighteenth century came along, Harry Potter’s spirit was all but extinguished by the Age of Reason and its rhyming couplets. A few fragments remain, like this one from Pope’s epic Satirical Discourse on Women and Reason:
In windswept seas, Hermione were thrice drown’d
But for her Ron, who bore her swift aground.’
(The rest of the poem is a bit less dramatic. It transpires that Ron is a humble shepherd in Arcadia and Hermione ‘Rejoiced to shear the fleece of little lambs.’)
Reason gave way to revolution, followed closely by the Victorians and various wars. In the trenches of the Somme, a young man called Neville wrote impassioned love letters to ‘Luna’, a correspondence that could be said to foreshadow Rowling’s oeuvre. Luna knitted relentlessly for Neville, garments which may have had a tiny bit of magic in them, because Neville survived the war: a sturdy, woollen sock stopped the German bullet that should have killed him.
The 1970s arrived, but not the First Wizarding War, as Harry Potter did not yet exist in real time. However, in a number of parallel universes, History suddenly held its breath and stopped dead as Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs swept onstage: though not always as we know them. In one universe, James Potter was a girl, and a Squib to boot; Remus Lupin never got bitten by a wolf and was therefore of no further interest to God or man; and Peter Pettigrew was a handsome, popular boy with an enviable social life.
Sometimes, all the Hogwarts students were gay, especially Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, whose romance was legendary. The two boys often slipped away to the Forbidden Forest on a warm summer night. Sirius would say, ‘I adore you, Moony,’ and Remus invariably replied, ‘I adore you too.’ ‘Let’s have it off,’ they’d chant in unison, then reanimate the world, figuratively, with another Big Bang
Sadly, the world never registered even the faintest reverberation: for the love-scenes played to an empty theatre, and still Harry Potter continued to fester in the collective unconscious.
Then, one fateful day in 1990, JKR ordered a skinny latte in an Edinburgh café, and wrote down the now-immortal words: ‘James, Sirius, and Sirius’s beloved girlfriend raised their wands as the policeman approached.’
Time had finally begun...
Poll