Discombobulated

Discombobulated
Chapter One: The Discomboburug
11132008 – 0510P

Disclaimer: Sadly, I own nothing and I make no money from this. The original characters, settings, and situations of this series belong to the lovely, brilliant, and much-coveted goddess that is JK Rowling, not me. I do, however, own tacky orange Halloween lights. Which are hard core.

Summary: There’s a new creature in Hogwarts, which has the special ability to mix up the feelings of anyone in proximity. Hilarity, smutty goodness, and… love? ensue.

Pairings: DM/HP (primary pairing), DM/HG (secondary pairing), HG/SS, DM/SS, SS/HG/DM, SS/HP/DM, NL/LL, RW/OFC, BZ/OMC, DM/BZ… possibly some others not planned out yet.

Warnings: M/F, M/M, M/M/F, M/M/M, anal, oral, bi, DP, HJ, minor, rim, voy, OOC, WIP (will add more when/if it warrants)

XxX

It was a hot, sticky day at Hogwarts, a strange fact considering it was September, and the time of year when the air usually started cooling and turning crisper as autumn drew on. Desperate to escape the sweltering heat of the stone castle, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had decided to walk down to Hagrid’s hut for a bit of tea and conversation. Ron wasn’t overly happy about this. It seemed that he had not quite forgiven Hagrid for the Blast-Ended Skrewts of the previous year.

“Still, it has to beat sitting in the tower, roasting,” Harry pointed out as a rare cool breeze whipped across his face.

Ron just grumbled something as they drew closer that sounded suspiciously like, “scorpion spiders”. Hermione quirked an eyebrow at him but said nothing.

Hagrid was in the vegetable patch when they arrived, brandishing his flowered umbrella and shouting distinctly muddled curses at things that, Harry could only guess by his movements, were flying around him.

“Hagrid? What are you—” Hermione started but Hagrid cut her off.

“Gnargles.”

Harry shook his head as though trying to clear water from his ears. For a moment it had sounded like Hagrid had said—

“Hagrid, grargles aren’t real,” Hermione chastised exasperatedly.

“’Course they are,” Hagrid grunted. “Luna told me ‘bout ‘em.” Ron was stifling his laughter by wholeheartedly trying to stuff his fist into his mouth. “’Course, I can’t see ‘em. But that don’ mean nothin’. Some people can’t see threshals, neither, but they’re there, ain’t they?”

“Well, yes, but Hagrid, Luna isn’t exactly—” Harry cut his own sentence short as he whipped around. He could have sworn he’d seen, out of the corner of his eye… But no. Gnargles couldn’t be real. That would make Luna right, and that would go against every law of nature known to man.

“—sane,” he finished, his eyes scanning for anything in motion. He thought he had seen it near the back door to Hagrid’s hut, but now that he looked, all that he saw was the corner of what looked like a very hairy brown rug. Maybe it had been the wind…

“Bollocks,” Hagrid grunted. Harry turned back to watch Hagrid as Hermione went full-speed ahead into trying to dissuade him of his new beliefs, but hardly a minute had gone by before he was whipping his head around again, his heart thumping madly.

There was no mistaking it: the rug had definitely moved. Except when it did, it was more in a flopping motion, like a giant, flat fish out of water. And there was no wind.

“Hagrid… what is that?” Harry asked, but Hagrid was too busy giving chase after Ron, who had scratched his ear and therefore convinced Hagrid that he had a gnargle trying to attack his brain and needed saving. Hermione looked around momentarily and then went back to trying to stop Hagrid from beating Ron with his ugly and potentially dangerous umbrella, before doing a double-take and freezing, her eyes wide and trained on the rug. It gave another half-hearted sort of flop.

“Oh my…” she breathed before shouting over Ron’s increasing cries of, “Gerrof me, you giant oaf! My brain is fine! I can’t believe that you’re taking anything that Luna says seriously!”

“Hagrid! Where did you get that?!”

Hagrid stopped, distracted as always when someone wanted to know about a newly procured “interesting” object. Of course, what he would call “interesting”, most would call “dangerous and horrifying”, but that was merely a technicality.

“Oh, tha’? Ain’t it lovely? I thought it’d really liven the place up. But how’d it get out here?”

“Hagrid, what exactly do you think that is?” Hermione asked, her voice raising a bit.

“A rug.”

“It’s a Discomboburug!”

There was a very long silence in which everyone looked from the rug to Hermione to Hagrid, then back to the rug and then to Hermione.

“It’s a creature that looks like a rug! Hagrid, it’s a class III non-tradable good!” she squealed. Harry groaned. Hagrid always seemed to get hold of those.

“What’s so dangerous about it? It just looks like a stodgy old rug to me,” Ron asked, not having seen it move.

“It heightens and confuses emotions! It’s caused all sorts of horrible things to happen. It was raised from class I to class III in 1428 after Earnest the Fool murdered his master because the man had declined to take him on a trip as the entertainment when he went to see Queen Elizabeth. It had only been briefly discussed that Earnest would go, but when he didn’t get to, he flipped out, yelling about how it had been an honour promised to him and that never in his life had he been so betrayed. As soon as Earnest was removed from the room, he broke down, weeping, and proclaimed that he never meant it. That it was ‘the devil’s work’ and that he’d been ‘enchanted’. The muggles chalked it up to insanity, but Ministry officials discovered the Discomboburug at the scene of the crime. They recognized it and knew instantly what had happened.”

“So… these rugs,” Ron started, looking skeptical. “They make people kill each other?”

“Well, not always,” Hermione admitted, although it was clear that she thought the case of Earnest the Fool was her best bet in convincing them that the rug was dangerous. “It can confuse and heighten any trace emotion. There have been countless children born out of unions influenced by a discomboburug. It was rumoured that Merlin himself was one.”

“Yer overreactin’ Hermione,” Hagrid grumbled. “It’s jus’ an ol’ rug.”

Hermione did not look happy.

“C’mon, Hermione, you said that thing is only dangerous when you’re around it, right?” Harry said as Hermione was still stewing later that evening at dinner. She just glowered. “Well, Hagrid lives by himself so there’s no one for him to kill or… anything else.”

“Honestly, Harry, if that were the case do you really think they would be level III?” Hermione spat at him. “They would just be able to throw them all in a room and lock it up and never hear from them again. But you saw it! It was moving when there was all of that energy and emotion in the air at Hagrids! It gravitates towards it!”

“C’mon, what could happen?” Ron asked thickly around a mouthful of potatoes.

But despite the boy’s casual attitudes, Hermione was worried. The rug was clearly affecting Hagrid already. After all, when had he ever taken Luna seriously before? And suddenly he was out in his garden, swatting at gnargles?

She had to do something about the Discomboburug.

XxX

AN: No smut or anything in this chapter, but I think my premise is pretty cliché, so we all know it’s coming right? Right.

I would love reviews. Especially since it’s my first story.