Fanfic / The Best Seven Years

The Best Seven Years is a crossover between Calvin and Hobbes and Harry Potter, written by Blu Taiger. Several years after the comic strip, Calvin and his family has moved to England, when one night Susie arrives to visit Calvin while she is visiting her grandmother. Calvin then reveals what has happened since he saw (the initially skeptical) Susie last: Calvin is a wizard.

A prequel story was written called In Love and War. Taking place while Calvin and Susie were still classmates in the fourth grade, Calvin and Susie use Calvin's cardboard box time machine to travel back in time to research an oral history report. However, something goes wrong during their journey and they wind up during the war between the Maximals and Predacons, and must find a way home.

The fanfics have the following examples:

• Alien Gender Confusion: Apparently, and to Calvin's shock, Galaxoid is female.
• Anachronic Order: Seven Years, since the framing device is Calvin telling Susie about his time at Hogwarts, tends to jump around a lot. After mentioning Percy Weasly appearing in the third task of the Triwizard Tournament, he goes back and mentions other times in previous years he messed with Percy.
• Analogy Backfire: While Merlin is making a time machine out of Calvin's mother's car, Hobbes replies that the only thing missing is for an old man shouting "Great Scott!" Merlin's response?
  Merlin: "I have seen the Scots. They are not so great."
• Astral Checkerboard Decor: Several cardboard boxes fall face down from the sky in Susie's dream in In Love and War. Their bottoms are black and white, and after they are finished falling make a gigantic checkerboard pattern.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Hobbes claims that the Hogwarts Letter is a scam, and that there's no such thing as magic. Calvin lampshades this by pointing out that Hobbes is a talking tiger. Hobbes doesn't see the connection.
  • Susie tells Calvin that she doesn't believe that he was rescued from the Ministry by aliens, and that there's nothing that will make her believe that. Calvin lifts her in the air with magic and points out that she didn't believe in magic earlier, either.
    • It goes further, though- she openly doubts the existence of aliens. The prequel story was a crossover with Beast Wars, and she met multiple aliens during that story. Further, the time machine in that story was a cardboard box.
• Babies Ever After: Seven Years ends with Calvin and Susie dropping their daughter, Shannon, off at the platform for Hogwarts before collecting their son, Ryan, and Ursula and Hobbes have children going to Hogwarts to take up Hagrid's job named Artemis and Apollo.
• Big Damn Heroes: Galaxoid and Nebular bail Calvin out before he is sent to Azkaban.
  • Natalie saves Calvin's life by taking the Avada Kadava curse meant for him.
  • Calvin sneaks into the Predicon base to rescue Susie, but is ultimately subverted due to being caught by Waspinator.
  • The Maximals also pull one off after Calvin tries to rescue Susie.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Louis Carrol was apparently a wizard.
  • And so is Chuck Norris.
• Brick Joke: When Calvin first meets Professor McGonagall, he asks if he can learn how to transform like she can. He later becomes a Deinonychus animagus.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Calvin self-describes himself as this- he's really motivated to work, but only on things he wants to work on, and his efforts in other fields suffer as a result.
• Bullying a Dragon: Umbridge wants Hobbes out of Hogwarts because he's a talking tiger. The problem is, that when a creature that has the physical strength of the largest, most powerful cat on the planet and is immune to magic doesn't want to go where it's told... it tends not to go, as the Inquisitorial Squad finds. It's like the old joke goes- "where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep? Wherever it wants."
• Cerebus Syndrome: While the story never loses it's wackier elements, Seven Years takes a notably darker tone during the events of Deathly Hollows. Fitting given what was happening in Wizarding England at that time, but it was still a shift towards darkness.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: After Calvin escapes the Ministry, several Death Eaters track down Calvin's parents and use the Cruciatus Curse on them to try to get them to spill where Calvin is. They threaten to torture them to death if they don't comply. When they convince the Death Eaters that they don't know where Calvin is, they attempt to finish the parents off, but thankfully Calvin, Glaxoid, and Nebular show up for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Before their time on the run to avoid the Ministry, Hobbes brings up the time they tried to run away to the Yukon (as seen in the collection "Yukon Ho!") Calvin tells him point blank that he's taking it seriously this time.
  • Glaxoid and Nebular bring up that Calvin sold them the planet for a leaf collection, which Calvin did near the end of the comic's run.
  • When dealing with larger bullies, like Crabbe, Goyle, or Cormac McLaggan, he pulls tricks on them reminiscent of what he used to do to Moe, such as insult their intellect or acting like a monkey around them.
• Curse Cut Short:
  Calvin: Is that so? Well YOU can kiss MY— (timely Rescue)
• Death by Irony: One of the Death Eaters who Apparated onto Galaxoid and Nebular's ship is knocked out has his memories modified into him thinking he is a coconut sculptor. He dies in a Death Eater raid two weeks later.
• Denser and Wackier: Than Harry Potter, but mostly because it's Calvin giving Susie the highlights of his time learning magic.
• Distant Finale: The story ends with Calvin and Susie (And Hobbes and Ursula) married, and sending their children off to Hogwarts. Hobbes and Ursula's children are apprenticing under Hagrid to be the future Groundskeepers and Keepers of the Keys of Hogwarts. Harry and Calvin finally meet when their kids become friends, and it's implied that the two families become good friends.
• Does Not Like Guns: Ursula, but in that they scare her. To the point that the Boggart the quartet encounter takes on the form of a rifle-wielding hunter when Ursula faces it.
• Expecting Someone Taller: This is Hobbes's reaction to seeing Harry for the first time.
• Famed In-Story: In the Distant Finale, Calvin is famous as the writer of the Spaceman Spiff comics.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: To a small degree. Harry Potter and everything in it is real, which includes dragons and wizards and magic, but Glaxoid and Nebular, not to mention Cybertronians, are also present. It's also stated that Calvin is a direct descendant of Circe from Greek Mythology, which makes the greco-roman pantheon canon as well.
• Fantastic Racism: Umbridge as usual. Not only does she dislike Muggleborns, but as per canon, she dislikes anything sapient that is non-human as well. This means that Hobbes gets in trouble for existing, but she can't do anything about him because he's a Furry, and thus super-strong and immune to magic.
• Framing Device: The entire story is Calvin telling Suzie of his time in Hogwarts.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: After Calvin and Susie have a fight in In Love and War, Stupendous Man and the Dictator-for-Life of G.R.O.S.S appear, with Stupendous Man being the angel, and the Dictator-for-Life being the devil, and the whole situation is lampshaded by Calvin. Eventually, a Hobbes and pirate Hobbes appear to assist.
  Calvin: "Oh wait a minute, is this one of those shoulder angel bits? Where you're gonna tell to do the right thing and you're gonna tell me to do what I'm gonna do anyway?"
• Heroic Sacrifice: Natalie jumps in front of Calvin and takes an Avada Kedavra for him.
• Hero of Another Story: Calvin ends up having several times where his adventures came close to appearing in the canon events of the books (such as nearly witnessing the Basilisk's first attack, and only narrowly avoiding death; watching Harry in The Tri-Wizard Tournament, and taunting Percy after it; Calvin catching Draco when he was leaving the Room of Requirement, causing Filch to drag him to Slughorn's party; etc), but despite seeing Harry at the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and Ron noticing Calvin's dino form during their year on the run, they don't meet face-to-face until the epilogue, something Calvin lampshades:
  Harry:It's really incredible, after all the things we've both done at Hogwarts, that we never once met before now.
  Calvin: No kidding. It's almost as if someone wrote this big, elaborate story and then somebody else wrote this other story that coincided with the first story, only it was about different characters and it couldn't disrupt the flow of the first story!
  • At least part of this is explained by Calvin being a year behind Harry (same year as Ginny and Luna) so they don't share any classes or have much reason to interact. Plus, Calvin even admits that he's not really much for going out and socializing- he and Hobbes would much rather do their own thing, further limiting opportunities for Harry and Calvin to interact.
• Heroic Lineage: Inverted, somewhat, for Calvin. On his dad's side he's the direct descendant of the Sorceress Circe and Odysseus, (From the Odyssey), and his mother's maiden name is Riddle. While it's not confirmed that she's related to those Riddles, it seems rather unlikely that it's a coincidence, given the crossover.
• I Need to Iron My Dog: This exchange happens during a conversation between Calvin, a student who wanted to know what the purpose of a rubber duck was, and Ginny Weasley:
  Calvin: "Well, y'ever been in the prefects bathroom? The bath they have in there is slightly smaller than the average muggle bathtub."
  Ginny: "What were you doing in the prefects bathroom?"
  Calvin: "Well, I hope that helps you with your homework. Right now, I have a, um... ice cream in the oven."
  Calvin quickly about faced and dashed off around the corner.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Calvin mentions that Hagrid has "Giant Blood" in him.
  • Hobbes and Ursula, though it's an interesting case as both are the same type of magical creature- "Furries," a grouping of animals with anthropomorphic features and sapience that Muggles can only see as normal creatures or stuffed animals- but Ursula and Hobbes are different types of Furry, with her being a lion and him being a tiger.
• Invisible to Normals: Hobbes and Ursula are both a type of magical creature known as a Furry, that's basically a regular animal with human traits such as walking on hind legs and opposable thumbs. However, muggles see Furries as either regular animals (In Ursula's case) or stuffed toys (In Hobbes'). Susie is initially affected by this, but the potion Calvin gives her makes her able to see Hobbes as he truly is. It's mentioned that Calvin's been working on this potion for a while and that he's used his parents as voluntary test subjects, but it hasn't worked until the batch Susie drank.
• Language Barrier: During Calvin's first class with Snape, Calvin accidentally turns him into Hitler, which also caused Snape to speak German instead of English. Miraculously, Calvin actually gets away with this one because Professor Flitwick recognizes that it wasn't on purpose.
• Layman's Terms: After saving Calvin from the Ministry of Magic, Galaxoid and Nebular tell him that a misty Lepus Europaeus passed though all of their defenses to warn them of Calvin's plight. When Calvin asked what a Lepus Europaeus is, they show him a holographic image of it: A rabbit.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: See Hero of Another Story.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Calvin says this to Galaxoid and Nebular, only to find out that they are married!
• Locked Out of the Loop: Calvin would have joined the DA in his fourth year, but since Luna was told not to tell anyone, he didn't know it existed until after it had disbanded.
• Mythology Gag: In the Distant Finale, Calvin is known for being the author of the "Spaceman Spiff" comics. In real life, "Spaceman Spiff", in addition to being one of Calvin's imagined up characters, was a character Bill Watterson created for a comic book project years before he created Calvin and Hobbes, and just re-used the character in that strip.
• No-Sell: Hobbes and Ursula, being Furries, are unaffected by any form of magic, including Avada Kedavra.
  • Galaxoid and Nebular detected an energy cloud approaching their ship, but it completely bypassed every defensive shield they put up. Fortunately, it's just Luna's patronus.
  • The door to the cockpit of Glaxoid and Nebular's ship is made of a metal that prevents anyone from teleporting in, which means it can keep out Death Eaters that try to apparate inside.
• Non-Indicative Name: Seven Years isn't actually about all seven years of Hogwarts. Calvin only tells Susie about the first five years he attended, and the year he spent on the run from the Ministry, but doesn't cover any remaining schooling. That only adds up to six years.
• Oh, Crap!: In ''In Love and War", upon arriving home, Calvin destroys the time machine, but he suddenly realizes that the notes on the Civil War they went back in time in the first place to get were left behind on the Axalon.
  • Of the two Death Eaters who apparated onto Glaxoid and Nebular's spaceship, the one who didn't get knocked out nearly instantly declares that the other one "Had it coming" and fled back to his home.
  • The Death Eater who survived the attack on the spaceship is part of the operation to take Calvin's parents, and starts running as soon as he sees a drone from the ship appear to save the day.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Calvin tells Hobbes they're running away from Hogwarts in what is canonically the seventh book (when Voldemort is taking over) due to his Muggleborn status, Hobbes at first thinks that this is like when they ran away to the Yukon and starts packing comic books. Calvin puts a kibosh on that, startling Hobbes, as he realizes this means that Calvin is actually serious about running away now.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: For most of it, Seven Years is a tale of magic and a crazy boy's adventures in it. Then during the Ministry of Magic, Calvin gets rescued by aliens.
• Paranoia Gambit: Calvin pulls one off on Percy. Basically, the prefect made Calvin write out lines saying he wouldn't do various things that he'd done, and he put down a line about putting snakes in Percy's socks. When Percy notices, he acts like it was a mistake, only to reveal to Susie that there were no snakes.
• Put on a Bus: In-Universe, Calvin's parents sit out the war in a Roswellian research station after Death Eaters attack them.
• Popcultural Osmosis Failure: While his singing of "That's Your Horoscope For Today," went down well with the Ravenclaws, Calvin notes that Weird Al songs he could actually sing to Hogwarts are pretty limited, shooting down a few that depend on Muggle References.
• Raptor Attack: Calvin's Deinonychus form lacks feathers and is only three feet tall, the same height as a Velociraptor.
  • His patronus takes the form of one as well.
• Redemption Equals Death: See Heroic Sacrifice.
• Retcon: Originally there was a scene written early in the story where the Room of Requirement made Calvin and Hobbes pizza. This was before book 7 was released, which revealed that the Room couldn't do that, so the author rewrote it into a scene where Calvin teaches the House Elves how to make pizza.
• Rewatch Bonus: It's implied that one of the judges during Calvin's ministry trial is actually Hermione under Polyjuice Potion, and thus takes place on the day that Harry and his friends stole the Horcrux from Umbridge.
  • When Calvin and Hobbes go through the gate to Platform nine and three quarters, they hear a loud noise behind them, which says that they just missed getting locked out by Dobby (and that Harry and Ron were right behind them).
• Ship Tease:
  • Apparently, Calvin asked Luna out, but Luna turned him down and convinced him that they would be better off as friends.
  • The machine Calvin imagines up in the Room of Requirement that reads his books for him (he learns better from hearing things than reading, so it's not him being lazy) uses Susie's voice, and in the epilogue they are married with children.
• Shout-Out: Several, mostly due to Calvin being Calvin:
  • During their time on the run, Calvin put a Undetectable Extension Charm on a rucksack, and specifically tells Hobbes not to compare it to the TARDIS.
    • And again in In Love and War, when Hobbes says that time machines look like blue phone booths.
  • When Calvin arranges for a picture to be placed in the Slytherin Common Room, the identity he uses is "Spaceman Spiff of the Tau'ri."
  • Calvin and Hobbes sing "Your Horoscope For Today" to help their fellow Ravenclaws to chill out.
  • "Thanks for the question, 'Minister'. I look forward to killing you soon! HIYA!!" Sadly this was All Just a Dream.
  • Calvin impersonates the Swedish Chef after leaving the kitchens, and had considered using it when teaching the Hogwarts house elves how to cook pizza.
  • When Terrasaur kidnaps Susie and Calvin finds out, he rushes to Optimus Primal and shouts "Optimus! Susie! Tracks, jungle! Disappeared! Terrasaur! Gone, Susie!"
  • While Merlin is making a time machine out of Calvin's mother's car, Hobbes replies that the only thing missing is an old man shouting "Great Scott!"
  • In the "Paranoia Gambit" example above, the format of the joke is nearly identical to another joke from the comic Foxtrot. The only difference was that instead of one of the things he's writing lines for being fake, Jason was writing lines for something real that he got away with.
  • When Ursula gives Hobbes a red handkerchief, Calvin keeps expecting him to say "They're Gr-r-r-reat!" like Tony the Tiger.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Calvin's speech towards Umbridge during his 'trial':
  Yaxley: "We've indulged this one long enough. This court finds the defendant guilty! You will be taken to Azkaban at once."
  Calvin: "Guilty of what?! Of existing?! You have no right to do this – absolutely no right! You think your precious magic makes you so special, like you're some superior being but you're not! You're just human – we're all human, we're all the same, whether people realize it or not and we should all be treated the same regardless of who we are or where we come from or whether we can use magic or not!"
  Yaxley: "Hmm, amusing! But you see, we are different! We are wizards. We have power the muggle filth do not have. And that power, by right, makes us superior to the other rabble that populate the world. The muggles are an inferior, insignificant breed. They do not possess the abilities we do. As such, they are no better than the mangy beast of the field."
  Calvin: "And you know what the sad truth is? I often wish I was an animal. I've found time and time again that animals have much better qualities than humans. Animals aren't judgmental or critical, they just try and stay out of each others way. And when animals do kill, it's for one of two reasons: either to eat or to keep from being eaten. Animals know nothing of anger, hatred or malice; they only destroy life in order to sustain life."
• Speak of the Devil: Per canon, Voldemort has the Taboo set for his name, with his minions ready to apparate in and grab anyone bold enough to speak his name. Unfortunately for the Death Eaters who try going after Calvin, when he says it, he's on an alien spaceship, and the defenses easily handle the intrusion.
• Super-Strength: Compared to everyone else around him, Hobbes has this purely due to his tiger heritage. The story explicitly states that Tigers are the largest and strongest of the Big Cats, capable of wrestling things to the ground that weigh more than twice their weight. He doesn't use it often, but it comes in handy when Umbridge tries to get him to leave, or when hunting during the year on the run.
• Taking the Bullet: In order to save Calvin's life, Natalie jumps in front of him and gets hit by an Avada Kedavra.
• Tempting Fate: At one point, one of the engines on Galaxoid and Nebular's ship ruptures, Galaxoid then says to not worry since the ship has several engines so that, if one fails, the ship can stay airborne. Immediately after she says it, all of the remaining engines rupture.
• The Load: Natalie during Calvin's time on the run. She is too young to use magic and has zero experience camping.
• Unusual Euphemism: Calvin uses HOLY SUGAR BOMBS as one when he sees the first dragon the contestants in the Tournament had to face.
• What the Hell, Hero?: This is Susie's reaction to hearing about Percy basically abandoning his family after Voldemort's revival.
  • Calvin is very unhappy with Galaxoid and Nebular when they reveal they can breathe underwater, since he had just risked his life saving them because he thought they were drowning! Worse, he risked going to Azkaban, since in order to save them, he used one of the unforgivable curses (granted, it was a) the mind control one, not the torture or insta-kill ones, and b) used on a dolphin, not another human, but it still freaked him out pretty bad) to do it!
• You Do Not Want To Know: When Suzie asks what exactly is a horcrux, Calvin and Hobbes both refuse to tell her.