“Werewolf?” Aletha repeated, her eyes wide.
“There wolf,” Danger said in a guttural voice. “There castle.”
Aletha stared at both of them for a moment, then cracked a smile. “Why are you talking like that?”
“I thought you wanted to,” Danger said.
“No, I don’t want to,” said Aletha.
“Suit yourself, I’m easy,” chorused Danger and Remus, and all three of them started laughing.

Danger: “Second breakfast, anyone?”
Remus: “Feeling a little hobbitish today?”

“Begone, if you be not deathless!” [Aletha] hissed. “For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

Remus: You’re the navigator, love. Tell me where to go.
Danger: Go to jail, go directly to jail…

Danger: “I don’t know where, but I know who.”
Sirius: “What?”
No, What’s on second, Who’s on first, Danger’s memory supplied. She ignored it.

“Of course you know, This Means War!,” [Remus] said, and grabbed Draco.

They all disappeared as the train rounded the corner. Harry felt a great leap of excitement, but there was a little tinge of sadness to it. He knew what he was going to — but it couldn't be better than what he was leaving behind. (Living with Danger)

Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner. Houses flashed past the window. Harry felt a great leap of excitement. He didn't know what he was going to—but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind. (Philosopher's Stone)

To pass the time, she had taken to rewriting Sirius’ novels in her head. She found she enjoyed playing with the characters and the worlds he had created. Occasionally she would laugh aloud as she came up with a truly enjoyable or memorable moment.
I wish there was some way to save this, she thought wistfully. Or maybe share it with other Valentina Jett fans…

Danger: “Oh, come on. Harry Potter, Slytherin? Not in this universe.”

Draco: (announcer voice) “Ronald Weasley, come on back.”
Ron: (snorts) “Is that from some Muggle thing again?”

The other boy had both hands flat against the glass now, his nose almost pressed against it, as if he were hoping to fall through it somehow… ("Living Without Danger")

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. {"Philosopher's Stone")

“Why would I throw a firework in my own cauldron, though?” protested Draco as he sat down at the table and accepted a mug of tea. “No one would believe that.”
“Unless someone claimed you were trying to make people think you’d never do that,” said Hermione with a sigh, sitting down opposite her brother. “So that you’d done it in a way to make people think you hadn’t done it. That’s probably what they’d say if we pointed out how stupid it would be for you to have stuck a piece of your own essay to the fireworks, too.”
Harry groaned. “It’s as bad as iocaine powder,” he said, making Draco and Hermione both laugh.

Danger: "...Voldemort is still gone.”
Frank: “And Francisco Franco is still dead,”

Draco: “Funny. I know another bunch of people who say things like those. ‘Resistance Is Futile’ and all that. And what’s funny is, they may win for a while, but they always lose in the end. By the end of the program, the good guys beat them every time.”

Moony smiled. “Taught you well, we have,” he said in a squeaky voice.
“Aren’t you a little tall for Yoda?” asked Hermione critically.

Harry’s expression had gone from confused to shocked to sullenly fuming. “I’ll get you for this,” he muttered.
Remus raised an eyebrow. “And my little dog, too?”

“Like a maze, only we can’t see the walls. We have to figure out what numbers on the sheet are the next ones in the sequence. Like figuring out what stones are safe to step on next.”
“Jehovah begins with an I,” intoned Harry, making Hermione laugh.

Hermione: (to Draco) "I do when I need to. And I need to now. We have to think… find some way to get out of this—and I do NOT have the time to play Clarence to your George Bailey, so knock it off right now!"

Hobbiton, say, or the jungle where Mowgli lived with his brothers. Or a large house in Austria…

“So he may be projecting your father onto you, or conflating the two of you—it’s even possible that was his idea of a joke. Mad-Eye’s sense of humor always was a bit rough. So no, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. Now, why don’t you not bother about grabbing your arm anymore and show me you can transfigure it?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “I can try.”
“What am I going to say?”
“Yeah, yeah, do or do not, whatever, Yoda. What happens when you go out to do, but you do not?”
Remus whistled a repeated note, which segued into a musical sequence.
Draco smiled. “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again,” he chanted with the music.

Draco sighed. “For the last time, I do not have veela blood.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but I don’t think my family--my birth family--would have gone in for intermarriage with magical creatures, since they were so very interested in keeping the bloodline pure.”

“We’re not just whats,” said Harry. “We’re whos.”
Moony hummed a few notes of a song, and Harry smacked his leg. "You know what I mean."
“Yes, I do, and you’ve picked it up exactly. You can’t let this grind you down, Harry. You can’t let them define who you are, and who you will be. Unless you like their image—Harry Potter, daredevil boy hero, faster than a speeding spell, stronger than the Hogwarts Express, able to leap over the castle in a single bound…”

Danger: (irritably) "I would sing my song without a burden."

[Danger] rose on her toes and shut her eyes, fighting to banish the hatred and focus on her destination. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, she chanted in her head.
You forgot to click your heels, Remus said as everything hurtled away from her and invisible bonds pressed in all around.
Danger administered a mental smack.

Harry: "I don't know what I'm going to do. How do you face a girl dragon?"

Luna: "You could always dress up as a donkey and make her fall in love with you."

Silver smoke geysered from her wand and rapidly coalesced into the shape she’d been hoping for, the shape she’d prayed it would take. She knew at that moment how the Pevensie sisters must have felt on the morning after the most dreadful night ever to occur in Narnia.
The figure which stood before her was a brightly shining lion.

A gnarled hand gripped the edge of the desk. “But certain doesn’t make it right. And just because you’re fighting for good things doesn’t mean that everything you do is automatically good.”
Harry saw out of the corner of his eye Hermione’s lips moving, and could have laid a bet on what she was saying. Good done in the name of Tash is still the work of Aslan. Evil done in the name of Aslan is still the work of Tash.

"And Joseph, right in the center here." Letha drew a circle on the floor with her wand.
Draco stepped into it. "Look, Mum, the Caucasian Chalk Circle."
"I'm the director, not your mother, this is Webber, not Brecht, and if you can't stay inside your mark any better than you did when you and I blocked this number last night I'll put bars on it ahead of schedule, is that understood?"

Draco: "I guess someone thought we were doing Phantom instead of Joseph."

[Harry] lifted a foot to step forward, then stopped, a voice from a story rising to the surface of his mind. “Aren’t we going to mark this pool?”
Thank you, CS Lewis…

“Now you are a lioness…”

“You say that the truth is dangerous,” Corona murmured, stepping closer to his side. “But I fear neither death nor pain.”
“What do you fear, then, my lady?” Sirius returned in the same quiet tones.
“A cage.” Corona’s gaze darted about the elegant ballroom as if the windows were barricaded and the doors locked against her leaving. “To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all chance of valor is gone beyond recall or desire.”

“I can certainly try.” Danger gently disengaged Meghan and stood up just in time to catch Draco holding his hands above his head like ears. “Don’t even start, fox-boy,” she said, flicking one of his real ears. “That joke is dead and buried, and we are not making an Inferius out of it.”

Thou shalt not use the Floo Network, nor shalt thou use the Knight Bus, save when going away from Headquarters, Neenie said in a silly voice. Portkeys are right out.
Harry chuckled. “One, two, Portkey.”
Three, sire.
“Whatever. So what can we use?”

Remus shut the door quietly, so as not to disturb the sleepers. For that, you get a spanking.
But I haven’t even lit the Grail-shaped beacon!
You deserve it anyway.
Fine. And after the spankings–
Don’t finish that sentence.
Oh, so you don’t like it anymore?
Remus’ reply to this was graphic, specific, and would have given the cubs nightmares for months.

29 August dawned bright, warm, and musical.
I'm getting married in the morning,
Ding-dong, the bells are gonna chime...
[Aletha] paused a moment, as if thinking how to change the song to fit her situation better.
Boys, come and kiss me,
Show how you'll miss me,
But get me down the stairs on time!

Then the doors of the Great Hall burst open with a very dramatic chord.
Three hundred heads turned as one.
“Nobody expects the Hogwarts Inquisition!” shouted a small, plump, heavily-made-up figure in hot pink robes, swishing into the Hall. “Our main weapon is surprise, surprise and double-talk--two, our two main weapons are double-talk and surprise, surprise and double-talk, and an almost fanatical devotion to the current administration--three, our three main weapons are surprise, double-talk, an almost fanatical devotion to the current administration, and our pretty pink Alice bands--ah spit.”
It turned and sashayed out of the Hall, and the doors slammed shut behind it.

The kettle whistled. Harry picked it up and filled the cups. “Here you are,” he said, carrying the cups to the table by their saucers. “Take your pick.”
“Well...” Ginny opened her eyes and grinned at him. “I’m not a great fool,” she said in a nasal voice, “so I can clearly not choose the tea in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the tea in front of me...”
Harry laughed. “Just don’t chase me around going ‘Umbridge, Umbridge, Umbridge’,” he said, setting down one of the teacups in front of her.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” Ginny picked up her tea and blew on it. “You’re not Miracle Max anyway.”
“Who am I, then? Westley?”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re Inigo Montoya.”
Harry laughed. “I can see it now,” he said. “I walk up to Voldemort, and…” He set down his tea and stood up, adopting a Spanish accent and a heroic pose. “Hello. My name is Harry Potter. You killed my father. And my mother. Prepare to Die.”

“Problem, what problem?” Harry struck a heroic pose. “I laugh in the face of problems.”

"—ran circles around them, and the best part is, they have no idea who it was!" Danger waved a hand in the air, giggling as though she and not Hermione were the younger of the sisters. "We could take credit for it, or some Aurors who've done work off the books—"

"Even better," Sirius broke in. "Spread around four or five different stories. It was us, it was Aurors, it was real animals on some kind of intelligence potion the Department of Mysteries dreamed up, it was animals under Imperius by other Death Eaters making a power play, it was shape-shifting American kids playing superhero—"

“Knut for your thoughts.” Ginny’s voice broke into his ramblings, and suddenly Harry knew exactly what he was going to say, and how.
“Show me the money,” he said.

Aletha: "You spend years of your life on these ungrateful brats, and just when they finally start to get interesting, they leave!”

I dreamed of being a Slytherin once. Of being the person I would have been, if nothing had ever changed. Draco Malfoy, and proud of it.
I’m Draco still, and proud of who I am…
Half a smile made it onto his face. Two out of three. Not bad.

Anne: Don’t come on so cocksure, boy / You can’t escape your genes...

“Someone is not here,” Luna said, turning a little to get a different vantage point of the inside of the door, though Harry knew she was looking through it at the people on the other side. “Betrayed and not betrayed, tricked and not tricked, the black swan is fallen from the sky…”
“The black swan,” Ginny repeated under her breath. “There’s a ballet, with a sorcerer’s daughter…”

“O Time, thou must untangle this, not I,” Mrs. Danger murmured. “It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”

Professor Jones huffed. “Look, I came here for an argument!”
Mama Letha smiled. “And isn’t that exactly what you’re getting?”
The Pride snickered.
“All right, enough silly quoting.”

“Will, this is Gertrude Granger-Lupin, but she always goes by Danger. Danger, Will Robinson.”

Lee pulled a scrap of parchment from his pocket. “Well, I’ve got a little list…”
“And they’ll none of them be missed, right?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”

“Magic is real?” Crystal knew it was at least the tenth time she’d asked the same question, but it wasn’t one she wanted to leave open for debate. “Unicorns and dragons and wizards?”
“Oh my,” George agreed with a snicker.

“My name is Maya Pritchard, and in January I did something very brave and very stupid…”

Percy: What are you doing here?
Ginny: Rescuing you, of course.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the blind... (New International Version)

"[...]Dadfoot’s stories were always about us. The Pack. He gave us different names and faces and put us different places and times, but we were always there."

Masked wizard, swinging up a wand. Fire. Muggle child bending to pick a flower. Hold. House-elf, hands raised in spellcasting motions. Fire. Teenage girl with braided hair, eyes glinting disconcertingly as they focused on him—

"[...]Because we were both still wounded, still torn apart, when we came together, we healed as one, not two. Which makes it sound like a horror movie, like Dr. Frankenstein–”
“Frawn-kun-steen,” Mare corrected under her breath, then frowned.

A hand clamped down on [Lucius'] shoulder and squeezed, breaking his grip on Danger and turning him to face its owner.
“Get away from my sister,” said Sirius Black coldly, and punched Lucius in the face.

"Luna..." Draco pointed a thumb at the sliver of light. "I have a feeling we're not at Hogwarts anymore."

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (King James Version)

"Let us start at the very beginning."

"A very good place to start," Draco murmured, unable to stop himself.

Remus: All’s well that ends well.
Even if that is a different play.

Hagrid: “Yeh either hated Danger or yeh loved her. An’ a lot o’ people thought they’d hate her when they heard about her, an’ when they met her they loved her. Funny world, isn’t it?”

Zelda was a human in animal form, Ray’s sister or his cousin or his aunt…
Harry thumped his head against the pillow. I should never have listened to that recording of H.M.S. Pinafore.

Ray: "This is where you beg me to help you, because I’m your only hope, right?"
Zelda: "Just call me Princess."

Luna leaned back against Ray, one hand absently stroking her Gryffindor crest. “Malfoy really should have known better than to try to keep your dad around,” she murmured. “After all, it’s not like he’s a tame lion.”

“It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky…”

Narcissa: “Did she sit like Patience on a monument?”
Pericula: “Smiling at grief?”

Have you been working for the Malfoys long?”
“Not terribly. I came to them in June.”
“Blown in by the east wind, and only to stay until it changes?”
Peri laughed. “Something like that, but without the black hair.”

“I see a word,” Peri intoned. “A word with eight letters… a word that asks a question, a question that many fear the answer to…”

“I was married once,” she said. “And very happily married. I had a family I loved dearly and good friends. And then, through a strange series of events, I was given the chance to make their lives immeasurably better if I would simply walk away from them. It was not a trick, not a game, but a real offer. And I took it.”
“More things in heaven and on earth, Horatio?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“And I like seeing you, and Ray. But I could do without the Spanish Inquisition…” He closed his eyes, hearing her quick intake of breath. “I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Peri whisper-shouted, grinning madly. Her face relaxed into gentler lines. “I’m sorry. Once again, my astounding lack of tact surfaces as my distinguishing characteristic. One of these days they’re going to collar me as a medical specimen—human born entirely without tact. I’ll go right between the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman.”
Ray came around to them and spouted a long string of consonants, pointing at the fountain.
“You want a penny to throw in?” Remus asked, rattling his pocket.
Ray nodded hard.
“Well, I may be a bit stretched at the moment…”
“Like butter scraped over too much bread,” Peri put in.

“So, King Arthur,” said Peri lightly as she and Remus walked down the street, hand in hand. “Will you start a Round Table in your court at Camelot?”
“Indeed I will. And the knights will dance whene’er they’re able.”

“Where am I sleeping? Down in the Slytherin dorms?”
“No, you and Cecy have a guest suite. You’ll be in the dorms when you come to school, but not tonight. It’s near there, though, and she’ll be looking out for you. I assume you can get to the dorms on your own?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it’s the second corner to your left and straight on till the end of the hall.”
Draco got a sense of ‘missed joke’ about this but let it pass. “Thank you, sir. Good night.”

Draco: (thinking) I am the whatever-that-was-the-Manor-showed-me that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.

Draco: (thinking) “Forget not the night is for hunting, and remember the day is for sleep.”

Draco froze, transfixed. Blue-gray was all there was, all there would ever be—he was being weighed, measured, and somehow he sensed that he had not been found entirely wanting—

Neville: For our audience is patient, but their patience now is gone with it,
And they are likely thinking that it’s time that we ‘GET ON WITH IT!’

Gertrude "Danger" Beauvoi: “Now, we’re going to watch a film that was made before any of you were born, by a comedy team of four Muggles and two wizards, one of whom was a direct descendant of our own Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington--good afternoon, Sir Nicholas!”

“He turned me into you.”
Hermione blinked at him a few times. “Into me?”
“I got better,” Ron added sheepishly.

“I didn’t get a chance to read it yet.” Ron flattened one of the sheets and peered at it. “Looks like a list. Let me see if I can find the first piece.” Two sheets later, he made a noise of satisfaction. “Here it is.” Pressing the paper flat, he began to read aloud. “Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice…”
“What?” said Hermione shrilly.
Harry snorted with laughter. “Sounds like something Fred and George would’ve written after their career advice session,” he said. “Go on, Ron, this should be good.”
Ron found his place and continued. “It pays well, there are all sorts of perks, and you can set your own hours. However, every Evil Overlord I’ve read about in books… invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end.”
“Wish this was a book,” said Harry a bit bleakly.

Draco (in response to attempted Occlumency by Snape): "I fobbed him off with the abbreviated presentation of What I Did on My Holidays, and now he’s sure at least one of us is mad."

Snape (after viewing said memories, in which a girl sings "All I Want for Christmas is You"): "Perhaps I should have checked the expiration date on that bottle. Any drink which makes me hallucinate about attending concerts with Sibyll Trelawney cannot be good for me."

“Am I allowed to know your name now, or do I have to keep guessing until you get my first-born child?”
The other eyebrow joined its friend. “Was that a proposition, Malfoy?”
“No, it was a botched story reference. Never mind.”

“STOP IT!” Hermione shrieked, slamming her book shut. Draco yanked his arm back into his lap just in time to avoid it being seen. “What is wrong with you?”
“It wasn’t me!” Ray protested as his sister’s glare fell on him. “It was the one-armed man!”

“That’s odd,” he said aloud. “I don’t remember ordering a mini-me.”

Draco undid the clasp on his robes, sliding them off to reveal a very Muggle pair of jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “There wolf. There castle” and small pictures of these two things, arrows pointing them out. “Christmas present,” he explained at Hermione’s incredulous look.

“Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…”
“Shut up!” screeched Alecto Carrow, swatting at Peeves with a broomstick without even dis-lodging his Viking helmet. “Shut up!”
Cackling through his song, Peeves swooped from side to side of the entrance hall, over the heads of the students who were filing in from the carriages. “Lovely Spam!” he caroled, off-key as usual. “Wonderful Spam!”

“Have I told you about the latest misadventures of my problem child?” Snape asked.
“No, do enlighten me.” Mischief sparked in her smile. “Has he set all the suits of armor to dancing about on tables?”

Abby: “He phoned home!”

Snape: "'Further up and further in'?"
Lily (approvingly): "Exactly."

Draco: (thinking) Dawn of the dementors.

Cecelia': Out of my dreams and into your arms I long to fly;
I will come as evening comes to woo a waiting sky…

“Come on, Pearl,” he whispered to her once they were safe in their bedroom. “No crying now. Time to be brave.”
Meghan wiped her eyes and sniffled hard. “I’ll try.”
Draco held his hands behind his head as if they were pointed ears. “Do or do not,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “There is no try.”

Everyone’s expecting something to happen at the trial. She smiled sweetly. And pranksters’ rule number one is: never, ever, do what they expect.
Let’s make it a true déjà vu, Alex…
Danger smacked herself mentally. Too much American television, girl.

Remus: “And so the Pack lived, and thrived, and the cubs grew strong and brave, and even when the hunters came and captured and separated them, the Pack found one another again. For the strength of the Pack is the wolf…”
Hermione: “And the strength of the wolf is the Pack."

“Rosemary,” Meghan murmured. “That’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.”

Miss Anderson smiled at him. “You’re a wizard, Harry."

“May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve always wondered—what were you thinking the day I told you? What went through your mind?”
Aletha nodded. “My first reaction was probably fear,” she said. “That and surprise…”
“Our two main weapons are fear and surprise,” interrupted Remus, “surprise and fear, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, three, our three main weapons…”

In most situations, of course, he didn’t want to be manipulative. Even if he thought he knew what was best, and even if he turned out to be right (as was the case an overwhelming majority of the time), it was still his policy, most of the time, to give advice and guidance, then step back and let events happen unless he took part overtly. Besides being ethically correct, it was in general more entertaining.

Remus reclaimed his chain and tucked it away under his shirt. “Let’s go home,” he said. “All of us.”

“Seems like some things are just meant to be,” said Draco with satisfaction, sitting back in his seat. “Bertie Bott’s, anyone?”

Neenie: "I'll get you 'a little bit of butter to your bread' as soon as you have your drink, King dear."

"Around here, the people that we used to call writers or authors are usually called Chroniclers, because they're the ones who see what's going on in the worlds and write it down, chronicle it. The most skilled Chroniclers can just look out into nothingness, into the void, and see a brand-new world that no one ever saw before. But a lot of the less skilled ones, the newer ones, take a shortcut, especially when they're learning their trade."
"That makes sense." Fox bit an extra-large chunk of pineapple in half. "What is it they do?"
"They focus on an existing world, and a question. Usually a what-if question. What if Cinderella's slipper didn't fit? What if Hercules failed at one of his labors? What if a bunch of modern Americans turned up in the middle of the Thirty Years' War?"
"Tell me that last one's a joke."
"Not even. Going off the rails a bit, if you ask me, but nobody did. In any case."

"Yes, but we can't possibly be safe yet." Remus turned away to hide both what he was doing and his smile of satisfaction about it. Sometimes, balance comes in ways we never imagined. Such as the coincidence of an unexpected sight and a familiar phrase. "We're missing the most important things."
"We are?" Neenie asked from behind him, sounding worried. "What do you mean?"
If I'm going to go mad, I may as well go mad with style.
Remus turned to face her and, with great dignity, draped the bright red bath sheet he had conjured around her shoulders. Reynard was presented with a gold one, and Remus displayed his own, with its prominent Gryffindor lion, before twisting it into a rope and tying it around his waist. "Now we're safe," he said with satisfaction. "We have our towels."

"Legendbreakers work in the shadows," Eve's voice murmured in Neenie's memory. "We do our best work in the unChronicled moments and the indeterminate times. Or if not, if we have to come into the open, we make one small change and let its consequences spread naturally."
"And even then, we have to be anonymous," Suzie's voice took over. "It has to be a case of, 'Who was that masked woman, anyway?'"

And while your heart sorrows, the domain will grieve with you. Until you recoup your loss, until you regain the person you feel responsible for not saving this time, it will be winter here."
"Always winter?" Neenie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. "And never Christmas?"
Miss Suzie's smile was as wintry as the breeze now cutting through Neenie's thin robes. "The words are yours, not mine, but yes."

"‘For this reason,’" he quoted softly, "’a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’"