Scrub-A-Dub-Dub

The only thing Harry Potter liked about staying at the Dursleys' was the toilet paper, the soft and smooth toilet paper. He found the magical toilets to be, well, an experience.

He can still remember the first time he went to the toilet at Hogwarts. It was late after the welcoming feast on his first day. He had been nervous about using the communal bathroom and had decided to wait for as long as he could. His roommates were asleep when he snuck into the bathroom and locked himself into a stall. It was only after he had sat down on the toilet and had started when he noticed there was no toilet paper. He panicked. He tried to stop. He could not. What was he going to do? Was this some sort of test? A prank?

He was looking around the stall for something, anything, when he finished. Suddenly something touched him. Harry jumped in fright he quickly stood up and looked into the bowl. There was nothing there. Harry sat down on the bowl again and felt an invisible brush start scrubbing his bottom. It hurt. His backside was clean but red raw. He found it a disconcerting and rather painful experience.

He had tried every toilet he could find at Hogwarts and had finally found one near the dungeons that was not so rough on his backside. It was during Harry's fifth year that he was grateful for the proximity of his favourite toilet to the potions classroom. Snape had forced him to consume Neville Longbottom's Draft of Peace. The potion was up to Neville's general standard and did not give Harry any sense of peace but gave him the squirts. He had spent hours sitting on that toilet until he convinced Neville, who was pleading for forgiveness at his stall door, to go to Madam Pomfrey for a cure.

Then there was the time he used Hagrid's toilet. The scrubbing it had given Harry lifted him off the seat and left his bottom scratched and red. This had motivated Harry to learn the cushioning charm and spent the days after his visit muttering a discrete cushioning charm before he sat down. He always had to hope that Hagrid's tea would not affect him in that way and made a point of avoiding all of Hagrid's offerings of food.

Harry had tried everything. He had asked the toilet to be gentle, not only did it not work but he felt rather ridiculous talking to a toilet. He had tried chamber pots only to find they all had the same charm applied to them and that it was rather awkward to squat. He had even gone to the library to research.

His research Harry found that the Guild of Magical Plumbers was founded in 1700B.C. and that magical plumbing had gone through two revolutions. During the first century pipes were spelled to bring in both hot and cold water. This led to a slight increase of wizards using baths instead of spells to keep clean. The second revolution was during the tenth century when the Guild of Magical Plumbers did their best to make toilets more attractive. This attempt encouraged wizards to make use of indoor plumbing. Previously they had been doing their business outdoors. Or if the weather was not friendly to a naked bottom or any other exposed anatomy, then a chamber pot that was rarely emptied was the preferred option.

He also found that there were many options that a wizard could have charmed onto his toilet. There were heat charms that kept the toilet seat at a constant warm temperature, there were wakeup charms that would send a magical spark onto the sitter's bottom if they had taken too long, there were extension charms that would enlarge the toilet seat into a bench if another person needed to use the toilet at the same time and there were the cleansing charms which would clean a wizard's bottom once he had finished.

Harry was so excited. He had found the answer! It was a cleansing charm used by the Guild of Magical Plumbers. Unfortunately further research into The Guild of Magical Plumbers found that they closely guarded any spells that they used. To find out their secrets all Harry had to do was survive his confrontations with Voldemort, graduate from Hogwarts, find a plumber to apprentice himself to and after seven years of apprenticeship he would be inducted into the Guild of Magical Plumbers and then, and only then, would they share their plumbing charms. There were a few difficulties with this plan, the two major problems being that his bottom would be as tough as leather by then and he had to survive his encounters with Voldemort.

He had thought about asking his friends. Ron had grown up in the wizarding world and would surely know all about it. However, that would mean exposing once again, his ignorance about the world in which he was born into and was meant to save. His other pureblood friend, Neville, would have only been too eager to help Harry and he was not sure whether he wanted that much eagerness near a toilet stall. He thought about asking Hermione, who knew everything, and had almost managed to get up the courage to ask during his forth year when he overheard Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan joking about how much the girls enjoyed the toilets. Somewhere in his mind Harry knew that the jokes were boyish adolescent fantasies but the rest of his mind pointed out that it was just something he did not want to think about.

Harry was planning to ask Sirius, he was after all his Godfather and had grown up in the wizard world. He had hesitated in asking him during the summer and Christmas he stayed there as he realised that Sirius would have no problems in bringing up Harry's inability to operate a toilet at the age of fifteen at any possible moment. After all, Sirius had missed out on any other embarrassing stories by spending his childhood at Azkaban. Then Sirius had died which, of course, meant that he could tell no embarrassing stories to any of Harry's future partners, but he couldn't help him with mastering the toilet either

So who could he ask? Professor Lupin? Harry was not even comfortable talking to Lupin about girls let alone the scrubbing of his backside. As for Headmaster Dumbledore, Harry could just see the daft old man giving him a demonstration and that was something he could do without. Professor McGonagall was old, prim and female. Professor Flitwick would probably fall into the toilet. Professor Snape would use the information to make his life even more difficult and that would lead Malfoy to write a song linking Potter to the word potty. There was no one he could ask!

Instead he started smuggling toilet paper from the Dursley's supply into his trunk. In his second year he had managed to sneak in 6 rolls before the Weasley brothers sprung him from the Dursley jail. His time at The Burrow, however, was not spent in vain.

It was here he discovered that different places have a different scrub action. The Burrow's toilet scrubbed forward and back once in a brisk manner. During his third year at his stay at the Leaky Cauldron his discovered their toilets were very laid back, yet very rough. It was like a grater was being passed slowly across his bottom. He had used up most of his stolen supply of toilet paper while staying there and mastered the act of springing off the seat before the charm started.

The toilet he encountered through his stay at twelve Grimmauld Place during his fifth year almost made him glad he had spent his childhood with the Dursleys. The toilets there did a round scrubbing motion and then swatted his bottom. Even with his trick of springing off the toilet seat just as he finished still did not let him escape the swatting!

So at the end of his fifth year, after the death of his Godfather and hearing the overwhelming truth of the prophecy, the thing he was most grateful to see on his return to the Dursleys' was the roll of lavender printed toilet paper hanging next to the toilet. Once again he could relax.

It was only after Harry escaped staying with the Dursleys and was back at twelve Grimmauld Place that things came to a head. He just could not deal with it anymore. Muggle's were not all that bad, he thought, after all they had comfortable toilets and toilet paper while the wizard world had him killing or being killed by an evil egotistical psychopath! Harry was running down the hall, doing up his pants as he went, when he bumped into Hermione coming out of the girls' room. Harry jumped as if he was once again swatted by the magical toilet brush. Hermione gave him a look and said,

"Ahh, Harry, it's apto mundus."