Terry Boot and the Masochist's Boulder

It was a dark, clear night when the senile old wizard from Hogwarts started his journey through the Canadian wilderness. The artic wind and snow blew fiercely into the old man's face as he made his way across the frozen tundra. The crunch of his boots in the snow was the only sound for miles, except for the occasional howl of a wolf in the distance.

He was looking for something in particular, or rather, someone, and if you really care that much, he was looking for a family. The wizard trudged through the snow for quite some time before he happened upon the scene he had been dreading. It was total carnage, the type you only see on Wild Discovery, and that only once in awhile when their camera crews get lucky enough to find some action. Yes, the scene he had stumbled across was dreadful indeed. The Boots, Rowena and Egberth, had been eaten alive by a two-ton polar bear. But who could blame the bear for eating them, what with names like that.

The old man looking through the bloody snow was the most powerful wizard of his time, Albus Dumbledore. "Rowena," Dumbledore murmured, picking up the battered and bloody camera that should still be in her hand. "What a waste," Dumbledore said, and whether he was talking about Rowena or the camera, no one knows. "Well, this is what those dirty hippies get for deserting the magical world."

Dumbledore threw the camera down onto the ground, but not before pocketing the last roll of film. He knew he could find someone who would buy it for at least ten galleons. If that plan failed, he was sure it would fetch a pretty price on Ebay. Muggle technology be damned, he was Dumbledore, and if he wanted to use it, he was going to. No one was going to stop him, except maybe liver disease.

He pulled a flask from inside his robe and took a long draught. As it warmed his innards, a semi-lucid thought crossed his weary mind. 'Isn't there a baby?' he pondered, as the alcohol started taking affect. He turned around, and started searching through the bloody snow. What was that baby's name anyway?

Dumbledore had a kind heart, and at that moment he was cursing it internally while calling out into the frigid wilderness, "Terry, my boy, Terry!" He wasn't exactly sure if that was the name of the child, but he figured that the baby wouldn't be able to tell anyway.

Suddenly, from under his foot, he heard the baby cry out. Bending down to pick up the profusely bleeding Terry, he said, "Sorry, Terry, my boy, I didn't see you down there...what with your one leg and all," Dumbledore added the last part as the clear lack of appendage came into full sight. Inwardly, Dumbledore sighed. The last thing he needed on a night like this was some malformed baby.

Terry Boot, if that even was his name, looked at Albus Dumbledore with interest. In his little crippled baby mind, he was wondering if this was the man who was going to save him from the coldness, pain, and the life of discomfort he was sure to have if his missing leg was never found.

"Let's find your leg, so we can get to the business of putting it back on and making you normal again," Dumbledore said, cradling the shivering Terry while looking for a tiny leg in the snow.

This is how Dumbledore and Terry made their way through more of the frozen Canadian tundra, looking for a particular polar bear. They hadn't gone far, when they heard a distinctive growling. The growling of a polar bear gnawing an infant's right leg, to be exact.

Albus Dumbledore gently set Terry into the snow, and hobbled after the polar bear. "I'm gonna getcha," he mumbled, arms outstretched, as the bear ambled ever so slowly backwards. After five minutes, the polar bear stopped, stared at Dumbledore, his eyes shining, and gulped down the infant Terry's right leg.

"Damn you, polar bear!" Dumbledore shouted into the frosty night. Silently, the bear lifted his leg, and let out one of the longest urinary excretions in the history of Muggles and Wizards. Impressed, Albus waded through the snow to the place where the bear had peed, because he couldn't believe he had witnessed such a long piss. The bear had a smug look on his face as he watched Albus Dumbledore amble over to where he had marked his territory. Leaning down, Dumbledore inspected the urine in the snow. Written on the now soiled white blanket of Mother Nature's were the four words that would haunt Terry for the rest of his life.

"I BE LORD PULLAPART!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Whew," said Dumbledore. "Those sure are a lot of exclamation points. I give it a ten."

Dumbledore knew that only one polar bear could have strung more than two words together in urine, and that was a magical polar bear. Whoever this Lord Pullapart claimed to be, one thing was clear; he meant business. He had already eaten two of the most powerful nature photographer's in the world, and who knows who he would digest next?

Realizing that Terry's only hope of having a happy childhood was now being digested by a large polar bear with a superiority complex, he gave up the struggle for Terry's normalcy. He absentmindedly picked up the infant and threw him into his old, worn satchel. 'No need to be careful with that baby now,' he thought.

Making his way back to civilization, he stopped at a small airport to warm himself with pure, unadulterated Muggle technology. Inside, he saw an unsuspecting airport operator. He was working alone.

"You, Sir!" said Dumbledore, laying on the charm. "Would you like a baby?"

"No," the man answered, confused and a bit scared at why he was getting door to door baby salesmen. Especially in the Canadian wilderness.
"All right, thank you anyway!" Dumbledore said cheerfully, as he sauntered into the bathroom located behind the man's desk. Pulling a plunger from within the dark, dank lavatory, the old wizard crept up behind the man, and bludgeoned him with said plunger.

"You could have used magic," said a voice from the lobby area.

"I should have known you'd be here, Professor McGonagall," Dumbledore said calmly, stashing the weapon back in the bathroom.

"How should you have known? I got laid over here from Vancouver."

"You could have used magic," said Albus, throwing it back in her face. Take that!

"I guess we both should have used our magical capabilities," said McGonagall. "But sometimes it's nice to get away from the laziness of the Wizarding world."

"So true, and yet so false," said Dumbledore wisely.

"What do you have there?" asked McGonagall. "A baby! Oh how cu--Oh Merlin's Beard! He's deformed!"

"I know. Lord Pullapart struck again, or for the first time, or...yes, he struck for the first time again."

McGonagall rolled her eyes, and then said, "My word! How disgusting. It's a good thing you left him in the snow to slow the bleeding, Albus. Though if it was really worth," she gestured at his mauled upper leg, "remains to be seen."

"What? Oh yes, of course. That's why I left him in the snow," Albus quickly covered for his incompetence.

Suddenly, Professor Snape apparated on the scene, a pool of grease slowly forming at his feet. "The Potter's have been murdered, but their baby survived Voldemort's attack," he uttered gravely, and apparated away from that deformed baby.

"We have to get going, right away!" said McGonagall.

"Wait a minute," Dumbledore said. "What just happened? I heard a flash of light."

"Didn't you just see Severus? He came to tell us about the Potters!"

"Who?! I can't hear you, you'll have to step closer. My eyesight's not what it used to be...what?!" he said, squinting his eyes in her direction and tapping his nose.

Thinking quickly, McGonagall said the first thing that came into her aged, tired mind. "Booze! And lots of it. This way!" she said. "Back to Hogwarts, you headmaster, you."

"Of course! But what about Terry?"

"Terry?"

"The what? Booze?!" Dumbledore asked, and then he looked down at his arms. "Oh! You meant the baby. You should have said something."

In the end, they decided that the baby Terry wasn't worth arguing over, and they left him on the unconscious man's desk, which had really been Dumbledore's plan all along. However, since the plan had involved Terry, Dumbledore had kind of forgotten about it. When the man awoke, it was to find the infant Terry with a letter pinned to his reeking diaper. It was Terry's first introduction into the Muggle world where he would be staying for the next eleven years.

Meanwhile, in a little house at 5 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey, Nonny and Diddle Bardus were blissfully unaware that they even had a grandson, let alone that he had been the victim of a brutal attack led by the world's most powerful polar bear. They were enjoying the advantages of retirement to its fullest, and were glad that there weren't any complications in it, like children of their offspring, malformed or otherwise.

That particular morning found Diddle Bardus putting together a ten thousand piece puzzle. Mr. Bardus loved starting things he could never finish. It wasn't that he eventually forgot about the puzzle, it was that he enjoyed the feeling it gave him when he burned each piece in the fireplace after weeks of silent labor.

Nonny Bardus loved baking things. She would bake all day and all night if she could, but obviously she couldn't. Nonny wasn't nearly as stupid as her husband. She would make Diddle breakfast in the mornings, lunch in the afternoons, and dinner in the evenings. She loved making things for him, because he worked so hard on those puzzles of his.

Nonny had just finished baking a delicious looking cherry pie when the doorbell rang. Wiping her hands on her apron, she and Diddle went to the door together to see who was calling. Not many people called on the eccentric couple, and they usually liked to keep it that way.

"Yes?" asked Nonny, when she opened the door to find a teenage boy in uniform standing next to her daisies.

"Is this the Bardus residence?" the boy asked, looking a little too gangly for Nonny's taste, and too pock marked for Diddle's.

"Yes," she grimaced at him.

"Right, well...singing telegram, Ma'am," he said, jerking his cap awkwardly in her direction. "Ahem," he said, to clear the remains of that last cigarette from his throat.

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Diddle Stop

Your darling daughter is dead Stop

Their only child is alone Stop

You're his only relatives Stop

See you in Canada Stop."

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Nonny, fanning herself with her apron.

"Here are your plane tickets," the gangly boy said, handing Mr. Bardus a white envelope.

"Er...thank you, son," said Diddle, handing the boy some loose change that just happened to be in his pocket.

When the Barduses were safely back inside their house, they both had very different reactions to the news.

"Poor Rowena," said Nonny, wiping her eyes.

"Deserved what she got, that witch," said Diddle.
"Diddle!"

"Well, she was."

"I wonder if their child will be like them," Nonny pondered, wandering back into the kitchen. "Magic, I mean, not a ridiculous, dirty hippy."

"It doesn't matter as long as he has ten fingers and ten toes," said Diddle, chuckling as he opened the paper.

"I suppose you're right, dear," Nonny told him. "We can always beat the hippy out of him."

That very night the Barduses packed their luggage into one of their old suitcases that hadn't seen the light of day for many a decade. You could tell they were really old, because they were in black and white, and black and white things always look old, like Sidney Poitier and his many wives.

"Diddle, I don't think I want another child in this house," said Nonny, packing things down tightly into the suitcase.

"I think it will be great to have a kid in the house! Hopefully a strapping young man, to help out around here with things. Someone to take on the family business...puzzles!"

"Maybe you're right, Diddle. As long as he isn't deformed, I can love him."

"You're right, of course, dear," said Diddle, as he climbed into bed for the night while Nonny finished up the packing. "As long as he isn't a cripple, I'll love him just like my own son."

Little did they know that in the Canadian frontier laid their grandson Terry, waving his arms, and kicking his leg in the air like a happy newborn, who didn't know that no matter what he did, he would be crippled for life, and that no one would care. Because who would ever care about a crippled baby?

It was a dark, cold night in northern Canada when the small plane landed at an obscure Muggle airport. The silent couple made their way from the plane to the office of the airport, where the special delivery was waiting for them. The special delivery named Terry.

"Are you the grandparents?" asked the man behind the desk. He looked weary after being saddled with a deformed baby.

"Yes," said Diddle, lowering his hood. His wizened face looked like a dried apple, and he must have been at least eighty years old. Actually, he was a hundred and ten.

"Where is he?" asked Nonny, who lowered her hood.

"Right here," said the man, opening up his desk drawer. Inside was a small bundle of Terry, all wrapped up in furs.

"Doesn't being in a drawer hurt him?" asked Diddle.

"Nah. I figure, if he lived through a bear attack, he can live through anything," said the man, lighting a cigar and taking a puff.

"He's adorable," said the woman, picking him up. She quickly recoiled. "He's deformed!"

"Yah, that will happen when a polar bear gnaws off your leg," said the man, taking another puff and blowing it in Terry's face.

"Can we change our minds about taking him?" asked Diddle, looking worried.

"Sorry, no refunds. Besides, I have so many extra babies that have been mauled by polar bears, I don't know what to do with them," the man said, pointing to a door that said "deformed baby storage".

"I'm so sorry," said Nonny, sympathizing, and trying to hand Terry to the Diddle who wasn't having it.

"It's all right. Sometimes they cry, but if you knock hard on the door with this stick, they quiet right down," the man explained, demonstrating for the Barduses.

"Well, we'll just be leaving then," Diddle said. "Thank you for taking care of our trash...I mean, Terry."

"Not a problem," said the man, leaning back in his chair for a good, alcohol induced sleep.

The two silent figures made their way back to the plane, the frigid arctic air blowing right through their thick jackets. Suddenly, there was a cry from behind them.

"Hey! You forgot your deformed baby!"

"RUN!" screamed the old woman, as she and her husband jumped onto the plane as it began to cruise down the runway. But before the door could close all the way, the man caught up with the slowly progressing airplane, and threw Terry in through the half open door, watching to make sure they took off with the baby still on it.

The little baby rolled to a stop at Diddle's boot clad foot. "What are we going to do with him, Nonny?" he asked her, puzzled.

"I don't know, Diddle. I mean, he's healthy and adorable, but he only has one leg. Who wants a kid with one leg?"

"His parents would have been ashamed, if they hadn't been brutally mauled to death by that polar bear."

"That's the truth, Diddle, that's the truth," Nonny nodded.

Suddenly, Terry started crying. "What did that man say to do if he started crying?" Diddle asked Nonny.

"Beat him with a stick?"

"Okay."

So they did, and eventually Terry stopped his loud wails of woe.

It would not be the last time Terry cried with despair, and it would not be the last time that he was beaten with a stick. With a name like Terry Boot, and with only one appendage, who wouldn't want to beat the kid?