Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Disclaimer: Not mine, belongs to J. K., among others, none of this is for money or profit, and suing is not a necessary or preferred course of action. You know the deal. Oh, and I don't own Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed"--ditto the above disclaimer.

Chapter Four

Loser and the Other Losers

Dumbledore set the cast the goal of memorizing all their Act One lines by Friday. The crew goals varied, but they generally had to be prepared to set up their parts for the first act as well. In consequence, these fifty students spent the next few days wandering around school, mumbling under their breath as they repeated their lines or figured out their instructions. It was a major distraction, not only for them, but also for the other students and the irate teachers.

"McG sure was mad today," Ron remarked on Thursday morning after Transfiguration.

"Probably because you were reading The Quadrangle under the table the entire class," Hermione said severely. "Listening to you mutter the same line under your breath twenty times has to be annoying for any teacher."

"Actually, it was probably because Parvati and Lavender were looking up dress patterns," Harry put in. "They didn't seem too happy about it, either."

"No, it must've been Neville trying to put more 'oomph' into that 'power we will misuse' line of his," Ron said, sniggering. "He sucked at it, by the way."

"You shouldn't be talking," Hermione said coolly. "After all, you only started memorizing your part today."

"Yeah, why?" Harry put in. "I finished my lines on Tuesday."

Ron scowled at his best friend. "That's 'cause the only thing you do the whole first act is saying 'Greetings, Founders!' at the very end. Lucky bastard."

"Language, Ronald!" Hermione scolded him.

"Oh shit, sorry," Ron replied, stifling a giggle at Hermione's disapproving reaction to his apology. "Won't happen again."

"Right," Hermione said sardonically. "And you'll finish memorizing your lines tonight?"

"Yeah, yeah," Ron said quickly. In truth, he planned to leave the rest of it until tomorrow morning in class. After all, macho men were procrastinators.

Just then, Ginny and Luna met them from another hall. "Hiya, guys," Ron said.

"Hello, Ronald," Luna said, smiling faintly at him. "Hello, Harry. Got all your lines memorized?"

"I only had, like, one," Harry said as he allowed Ginny to give him a passionless kiss on the cheek.

"Then you better start practicing for the next three acts," Luna said, quirking her eyebrows suggestively. " 'The deepness of your love's an abstract view./But phys'cal is the bond of one from two!' I've got all my lines memorized already. The Heebripple was kind enough to give me the cues. In fact, we had the bestest time ever! You should join us, you know."

"Yes, of course," Ginny snapped acidly, her temper suddenly short. "How about I help Harry practice instead? After all, I am his girlfriend. Right, Harry?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, Ginny. What're you on about? Does it have to do with... with the scene in--the scene in..." He suddenly couldn't finish the sentence, as it was too painful for him.

"The scene where we have sex," Luna said, grinning. Ginny glared at her. Harry blushed and kicked his foot at the stone floor beneath him.

"I have to get to Arithmancy, you guys," Hermione interrupted them hastily. "The bell's about to ring."

"Oh, watch out for Vector today, Hermy!" Luna called after her. "She's in a foul mood--it must be the Menopausal Horn-nosers. They wreck havoc on the endometrium."

"Merlin, the teachers are all insane," Ron said lazily. "So what happened with ol' Vector?"

"I was reciting my lines to myself," Luna said, "and drawing costume designs to give to Parvati and Lavender. Ginny was glaring at me for some reason--" here, Ginny glared at her-- "and Loser kept bursting into tears over his script."

"That'd be hard on any teacher," Ron said sagely. "So why were you glaring at her, Ginny?"

"I wasn't glaring at Luna!" Ginny insisted, still glaring at Luna. "But now that you mention it, Luna, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop rereading Act IV Scene 3!"

"But I like it," Luna said. "It's cute, the idea of me and Harry getting naked. The Heebripple can't wait to see us."

As Ginny's expression darkened, it was easy to tell it wasn't only the teachers who were in a bad mood today.

~~~~~~

Five minutes later, Hermione found out exactly what Luna was talking about. What's more, it was ten times worse than the blonde-haired Ravenclaw had led her to believe. When the last bell rang, Professor Vector jabbed her wand violently at the piece of chalk beneath the blackboard. It snapped in two. Muttering an oath under her breath, she jabbed her wand again, and the two pieces rose up to write out a long list of instructions on the blackboard.

"This is a research paper I'm assigning you," Professor Vector curtly told her class. "It's to take up ten rolls of parchment, and it will be written entirely in ancient runes and mathematical equations. You will only be allowed to use information from texts in ancient runes, and you will include a full bibliography with internal citations. You must choose a topic pertaining to ancient spellwork from at least five centuries ago. I will be grading very harshly, so do your best. If you fulfill all the criteria, you have met average expectations and will receive an A--to get an E or an O, you will have to go above and beyond. This project should consume a great deal of your time over the following few months. Any questions?"

Everyone gulped, even Hermione. This assignment was a beast, even by Seventh-Year NEWT standards. Hermione raised her hand and asked, "Can we come after classes for advice?"

"Good question," Vector said. "Yes, you may. I'll be available after classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday."

Hermione gulped again: She felt as if she were trying to swallow her hop-skipping heart. "Professor Vector, ma'am, Dumbledore's scheduled our play practices for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, all right after school. May I come on Tuesday or Thursday instead?"

"Those are the days I help my Sixth-Year class on their project," Vector told her, "so I can't. If it's too much for you, you'll have to consider quitting the play."

"But I can't!" Hermione said frantically. "What about after dinner? Can I see you after dinner?"

"That's when I see my Third- through Fifth-Years," Vector said. "And then I grade papers. And then I go to sleep. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are the only days I can see you. I'm sorry." But she was in too much of a bad mood to mean it.

Hermione slumped back in her seat and moaned, "Fuck."

"What's that Miss Granger? You need to speak up!"

"Nothing," Hermione whimpered. "Just... thanks anyway." But of course she didn't mean it, either.

**********

Thursday passed into Friday. The students who had left off their memorizing for the last day spent every available moment in class to squeeze in a few more lines. In every room there was at least one student murmuring under his or her breath, lips quivering in an endless flow of monologue. The teachers got even madder (if that was possible) and handed out a greater amount of homework and detentions. It was all very hectic and unnerving.

But there was something about Professor Trelawney's class that destroyed all that anxiety, all that hurry, all that teary-eyed nonsense, and instead replaced it with a nonsense of its own. The soporific fumes did their duty in making the six students forget about their classes and social lives outside that tawdry tower. In fact, today the fumes were stronger than normal, so much so that more than one of the students started fancying hallucinations.

"I see... a unicorn," Ernie mumbled as he stared at Lavender's life lines (they had moved from advanced tea leaves to advanced palm-reading). "Which stands for purity. What does that mean?"

"I don't fuckin' know," Lavender said in a gaga tone--the fumes were getting to her. "I'm notta virgin." Ernie had guessed this already, but he hadn't wanted to address the topic. "Maybe I'll find a... a, uh... uh..." She lost her train of thought and leaned backwards across the arm of her chair to read Luna's hand upside down. "There's a gigantumongous fuckin' cock just below your middle finger," she informed her, pointing to a barely-visible vein in the Ravenclaw's smooth palm. "And the semen-stuff is like... oozing..." She followed the vein with her finger, all the way down to Luna's elbow. "Are y'gonna becomah tranny jerk-off?"

"No, Lav-lav," Luna said patiently, making sure she was just loud enough for Trelawney to hear. "You're reading it upside down. It's a huge, dirty sausage being chewed by a rabid Chihuahua. I'm going to be eaten, bit-by-bit, by wild animals in only two weeks. It's going to be horrifically painful, and they're going to start at my feet and move upward."

At least Luna's marvelous brain wasn't affected by the wildly burning incense candles. Trelawney swooped down on her and pronounced that the Inner Eye was indeed in their midst today.

"And, you, Professor..." Luna said, pulling gently on Trelawney's bony wrist. "...You have Edna St. Vincent Millay hidden in your palm lines."

"Edna St. Who?" Parvati said, ambling over to take a look.

"Edna St. Vincent Millay," Trelawney repeated, her breath catching in her throat. She didn't quite see what Luna saw, but she loved Millay so much that, if she moved her eyes just right, she could almost convince herself into catching a glimpse of the author's dour face between her lifelines.

"She's a poet," Luna said, her eyes wide. "You know: 'Love is not all,' 'What lips my lips have kissed,' 'We were very tired, we were very merry,' 'Loving you less than life...' And etceteras."

Of course the others didn't know (except Trelawney), because they weren't as smart as Luna--they just stared blankly at their professor's palm, not seeing and not understanding. But Trelawney was sufficiently moved by the supposed spectacle that she spent the rest of the class tilting her hand back and forth, trying to snatch a glimmer of the elusive poet. Ernie and Colin took advantage of the teacher's distraction to play a couple dozen rounds of hangman. Lavender and Parvati took out the crystal balls and began comparing their palm readings to their crystal gazings. Luna doodled naked pictures of her and Harry all across her Quadrangle script. Loser just sat in his chintzy armchair, half-buried by the fluffy cushions, and looked lost.

The bell rang half-an-hour later, and the students ran off, glad to escape the heavily perfumed classroom. Loser tripped on his way down the ladder and got a nosebleed, and everyone laughed at him (except for Luna, who was nicer than that). Trelawney paid them no heed; she simply stared at her hands, trying to read the mass of lines between her gaudy varicose veins. If she breathed in the incense deeply enough it became a hallucinogen, and she could see Edna St. Vincent Millay's face staring at her from out of her own palm. If she breathed too deeply, though, her hallucinations went crazy. She saw Dumbledore's pink arse winking at her from the ball of her thumb. Then Peeves crawled out from under her fingernail and sang a lengthy passage from Le nozze de Figaro. Her teapot's spout turned into a penis and humped the teacup until hot steam spurted into the tepid dregs. Then those creepy ants from Un Chien Andalou started crawling out of a hole in her hand; one managed to get all the way up her arm and down her shirt before she squashed it (just as it bit her bellybutton, which hurt like a bitch). Her first lover, who had some crazy name like Barnabus Bartleby, flew through the window, rotting in every crevice of his body after sixty years of decomposition. He exposed himself indecently before he flew off, leaving her shouting plaintively after him. She half-ran, half-tripped over to the window, a bit horny, and made moaning sounds. Behind her, the palm leaf turned into Edna St. Vincent Millay and said one word: "Sybil."

Sybil whirled around to face the long-dead poet, who stood calmly by the table beside her. It was the one Lavender and Parvati had been using, and the crystal balls were still out, nestled as a centerpiece in the midst of tea dregs and palm leaves. "Edna," she replied, the word slurring around itself.

"Look into the crystal ball," the hallucination commanded. Millay held her arm out in invitation, like Death pointing the way into hell. Trelawney stumbled towards the two crystal balls, which stared up at her like a pair of filmy, blinded eyes that gave insight to others whilst taking none of their own. And then Trelawney became, like, trippy and it was suddenly as if the whole thing was a big stage production with eerie purple lights and torches and heavy clouds and

[EDNA stands center stage by the table with two CRYSTAL BALLS. SYBIL stumbles from center left stage. RUG humps FLOOR.]

SYBIL:

What lips my lips have kissed,

EDNA:

and where, and why,

SYBIL:

I have forgotten,

EDNA:
and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning.

SYBIL:

But the rain

FLOOR: [grunting]

Ungh, give me more!

SYBIL:

Is full of ghosts tonight that tap and sigh

Upon the glass

EDNA:

and listen for reply;

RUG:

Yeah, I'm gonna pound you flat, whorebitch!

[RUG and FLOOR get down and dirty. EDNA lowers her outstretched arm and allows SYBIL to gaze at the CRYSTAL BALLS. SYBIL is both terrified and awestruck. RUG orgasms. FLOOR comes off a few seconds later.]

CRYST: [Both show the same scene--a room full of candles, heavy and flaming. The lights dance in a circle, wafting heavy clouds into the air above it, surrounding a sunken pool filled with water--a marvelous bathtub of some sort. The waters are dark and deep, and in them a figure rests, a SHADOW OF A PERSON.]

SHADOW:

No more...

[RUG and FLOOR cuddle after sex. Then RUG pays FLOOR a hundred galleons and leaves. SYBIL feels empty and wonders who the SHADOW OF A PERSON is. It looks effeminate, very much like]

Draco now appeared in the hallucination. He stepped over the Tea Leaf Gala dance and around Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poet stared in shock at the newcomer, especially when he descended upon Trelawney and thrust his hand up her skirt. Trelawney squawked, and the visions suddenly dissolved. The floor stopped wishing it wasn't a prostitute, Peeves lost his beautiful operatic voice and disappeared under her fingernail again, her teapot's penis turned back into a spout, and Edna left in a huff.

But Trelawney was still as horny as hell, and Draco was most definitely not a hallucination. The second she felt Draco's fingers, she started screeching: "DEATH, DEATH, DEATH!" Draco rolled his eyes and worked industriously on her for what seemed altogether too short a time. Then, just as she was at the brink of her orgasm, he pulled back.

"I've got to go now, professor," he explained hurriedly as she cried out indignantly. "I really should've been at play practice five minutes ago, and I still haven't dropped my bag off in the common room. See you later."

And he shot down the ladder. Trelawney gave a loud shriek of: "DEATH, DAMN IT! FUCK ME!" She slumped back in one of the armchairs and surveyed the mess around her. The rug was crumpled, the floor was scuffed, and the room was littered in soggy tealeaves, dream manuals, spell books, flower-patterned china cups, and crystal balls. Not to mention the tiny wet patch growing on her pleated skirt. And not to mention the teapot on table beside her.

The teapot...

Hey, she was still horny, and she needed something to relieve herself! Trying to picture her hallucination, she hefted the teapot up under her skirt, spout-first, and...

**********

"Aren't you supposed to be at play practice?" It was 3:15, and Draco had just finished another one of his sexual games (he had only been able to squeeze three people in this time, with Marietta being the lucky last). Pansy now stood in front of him, her hands on his hips, saying: "Well, aren't you?"

"Yeah, got a bit held up," Draco said breathlessly. "Now stop hounding me--I must really be on my way." He flung his bag at Nott, who sat in an armchair near the fireplace, and barked: "Take that to the dorms. And get your stupid cat out of my sight." He nearly tripped over the cat in question. It was a large, silver-furred feline named Brittany, and it was currently in heat. It rubbed its ripe, moist privates against Draco's knees and meowed beseechingly. "Eww, fucking horny piece of shit," Draco muttered in annoyance as he nudged Brittany sharply away.

Theodore Nott cut in indignantly, "Hey, careful with my--"

"--Yeah, yeah, I'm off." And Draco was off.

"What about a kiss goodbye?" Pansy called after her boyfriend. When he didn't hear her, she slumped dejectedly into the nearest armchair and sighed a long, loud sigh.

"Trouble in paradise?" Nott said ironically, making no effort to conceal a twisted grin.

"What the hell ever," Pansy mumbled. "Not much of a paradise to begin with. He, like, stopped being interested in me the second we had sex."

"Sucks," Nott replied conversationally. "Not to reflect poorly on your judgment or anything, but Draco's one of the worst choices of boyfriends you could possibly pick. He's such a slutwhore."

"Yeah, a real fucker," Pansy agreed moodily. Neither of them dreamed of taking their words literally, at least not yet. But more about that later.

**********

"I refuse!" This was the tagline of the day's practice, which was a complete disaster. Draco said it first when Dumbledore requested he gesture out the motions of eating an umbilical chord in his opening monologue. Hermione said it next when Goyle asked her to practice some of their Act II scenes together. Ginny snapped it out when Luna invited her to look at the pictures she had drawn in her script book. Ron said it when Dumbledore told him to practice foundation makeup on one of the house-elves. Harry said it (more emphatically than anyone) when Dumbledore just mentioned the nude scene in Act IV. "I refuse, and that's final!"

"My dear boy, you're perfect for it," Dumbledore comforted Harry (at least, he tried to comfort him, but he failed).

"No, I can't be!" Harry cried desperately, loud enough that the actors turned away from their practice to watch the exchange. "I'm too shy, I'm too ugly, I'm too young. That's it! I'm too young--too fucking young!"

"Harry, you are speaking nonsense," Dumbledore told him. "You are not shy--you are very brave."

"Yeah, you killed Voldemort, you know," Luna said. She had wandered over to support Dumbledore's case.

"I do know, thank you very much," Harry huffed.

"It was very bloody, too," Luna said quietly, though collectedly, "worse than Trelawney's prediction guff. We were all there; we watched you duel until you were ready to collapse. Then you did collapse, and Voldemort started torturing you. He tore you apart with all those curses, and you were screaming and screaming and... well, screaming some more."

Harry really didn't want to relive that moment, even in simple conversation. He shifted uncomfortably on the balls of his feet and looked around for someone to rescue him. But they didn't; they were too busy trying to figure out where Luna was leading with her monologue.

"And your clothes were torn, too," Luna said, "enough that I saw your nipples and your treasure trail. And I thought: If Voldemort kills Harry, I'll never again experience the man attached to those nipples and that treasure trail. So I sent a Tickling Charm at Voldemort to distract him."

"But then I sent a Cutting Curse!" Ginny cut in angrily, her brown eyes smoldering bitterly. "And my curse distracted Voldemort just long enough for Dumbledore to throw the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry--" here Dumbledore inclined his head in a modest bow-- "And then Harry decapitated Voldemort."

"It was the first time I was glad to see blood and guts," Luna put in. "I laughed and cheered when I saw Voldemort was dead. But I laughed and cheered even louder when I realized Harry was alive and well."

Ginny stomped towards the befuddled Harry and threw an arm around his waist in a distinct gesture of possession. "And then I fell by Harry's side and hugged him and kissed him more vigorously than I ever had before, and he said, 'I love you so much, Ginny. Now we have the chance to spend the rest of our lives loving each other.' "

The crowd shifted nervously, though nobody was as uncomfortable as Harry himself. "Are you sure I said--?" he whispered at Ginny--

"Yes, I'm fucking sure!" Ginny snapped. "The REST of our FUCKING LIVES!" And she glared furiously at Luna.

The cast and crew exchanged wary glances. It seemed that the red-haired Gryffindor had one-upped on the blond Ravenclaw. But Luna was still grinning as she replied calmly, "I can't wait to do a nude scene with Harry."

"Yaargh!" Ginny snarled at Luna and jumped her. Hermione stopped the furious redhead halfway in flight by grabbing her wrists, but she did more harm than good; Ginny crashed to the floor, hurt and humiliated and boiling with temper.

Harry tried not to look at his girlfriend, who was now bruised both in body and in pride. "Er, you okay?" he threw out quickly before he returned to Luna and asked, "Uh, so what does all this have to do with me doing a... a..." (he gulped) "a nude scene?"

"Well, you killed Voldemort, didn't you?" Luna said reasonably. "A nude scene should be a cakewalk in comparison. Besides, I'll be naked too, so all the audience and their staring eyes will be divided between the two of us."

"But he's not doing the nude scene!" Ginny howled. She lunged up again, but this time Ron came over from his house-elf to help Hermione hold her back. "Get the fuck off me, Ron!"

"I agree with Ginny," Harry put in despairingly. "No nude scene for me, please! I'm not that brave! And I'm still ugly and too young!"

"You're not ugly," Luna put in. "If you were, then why does the whole school want to see you naked?"

"The whole school doesn't want to see me naked!" Harry cried, looking around the audience in the hopes that someone would agree with him.

"Yes, we do," Luna said. "Don't we? Raise your hand if you want to see Harry naked."

Up went the hand of every single girl. A few boys raised their hands, too, including Dumbledore and the house-elf. Neville's hand went up for a second before he pulled it down, blushing furiously. The rest of the males were not comfortable enough with their sexuality to honestly admit that they were all at least a little curious.

"There you have it," Luna said, satisfied. She smiled primly and straightened her robes.

Harry looked crushed. His green eyes pooled with fear as he stammered, "But... but surely I'm too young! I'm only 17--isn't there something illegal going on here?"

"In the Wizarding World, you come of age at seventeen." These words didn't come from Luna, but from Hermione. Harry whirled around, stunned, to face his bushy-haired friend.

"But the Muggle World!" he cried. "Certainly I'm too young there. I can appeal to the Muggle police if not the Aurors."

"This is Britain," Hermione put in, "not the United States. The age of legal consent is 16. In fact, there was a boy your age who did a full frontal nude scene for London's West End production of Equus. What was his name now...?"

Harry looked crushed. Hermione looked proud of herself over her ridiculously vast store of knowledge. Dumbledore stepped forward and said, "Ten points to Gryffindor for Hermione's excellent brainpower and her ability to use it for the good of wizardkind. Now let's get on with practice."

Just about everyone was pleased with this outcome. Apparently Harry would be doing his nude scene after all, despite all his protests. Only the young man himself and his jealous girlfriend were furious at Dumbledore's pronouncement.

~~~~~

The students didn't stay pleased with Dumbledore for long. In five minutes, Lavender and Parvati were protesting the sheer amount of costume design he requested of them. Then Susan pitched another hissy fit over her whorehouse scene. Then Loser forgot his very first line in the act and spent the rest of the practice bawling his eyes out.

"He's going to need to have his makeup reapplied," Dumbledore told Ron. "If you would, Mr. Weasley...?"

"I did it once, and I'm not doing it again!" Ron huffed. "Makeup is the least macho thing a man could possibly do... besides playing Helga Bleedin' Hufflepuff!"

"Language, my boy," Dumbledore chided him. "Now reapply the makeup. You need the practice; you've been doing a pretty crappy job so far."

"That's because I'm a man!" Ron cried. "What man is ever good at makeup?"

"I am," Dumbledore said.

"Of course you would be, crazy old coot!" Ron cried. "You're good at everything except producing and directing a Founders Play. Just give it up; I don't want to do makeup or cunting Hufflepuff!"

"Calm down, Ron," Hermione put in soothingly. "It won't be too bad. At least you aren't doing a nude scene like Harry." She turned around to give her black-haired friend a special smile.

"You're dead to me," Harry murmured tonelessly.

"And at least you don't have to play the role of Gryffindor," Hermione added to Ron.

"I'd rather do that than play Hufflepuff!" Ron said desperately.

"Yeah, and then let me play Slytherin," Draco put in quickly. "And then make Longbottom do Hufflepuff. He's such a pussy already; he'd be perfect."

"I'm not a pussy," Neville protested. But he was too much of a pussy to defend himself any further.

"We're not pussies!" many of the nearby Hufflepuffs screamed. But they had Loser in their house, so their argument was pretty much shot down to splinters.

"We need to practice!" Hermione cried. "We're not getting anywhere!"

Hermione was the only person since Dumbledore to say a true word in this conversation. Which was why, ten minutes later, Dumbledore called an end to the whole debacle.

"We meet next on Monday. To all those who haven't yet memorized their Act I lines: memorize them. I'll be taking off points next time. We'll continue blocking with the first act until the end of next week. Feel free to memorize more of your lines in Acts II, III, and IV."

And he let them go. It was 5:56. Everyone ran off to enjoy one last activity before dinner and homework. Hermione raced over to Professor Vector's class to get some help on her project, but she got there just as the professor closed the door.

A/N: Whee! Hello again. So... about Equus--yes, I know that this fanfiction takes place in 1997, while Daniel Radcliffe did his performance in 2007. And yet it is still mentioned in this fic. Try to wrap your brain around that one.

Oh, and I used a direct quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed." The first five lines are in Trelawney's trippy scene, word for word, except the stage directions and the exchange between the rug and the floor are not part of it. Just so it's thoroughly disclaimed.

Watch Un Chien Andalou, by the way. It's a fifteen-minute silent film from the '20s. Uber surreal, uber weird. I don't own that, either.

Next chapter: Dumbledore coaches Loser through the fine art of profanity, Ron runs into a spot of trouble with his machoism, and Hermione catches Harry red-handed. So until then, tata!