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lynsangelic1) wrote2008-08-19 08:25 pm
Fic: The WWW
Pairing: Hr/G (background)
Characters: Harry, Hermione, Ginny
Summary: What happens when the internet comes to Hogwarts?
Authors Notes: Crack fic to the extreme. Time period is irrelevant. And it’s so terribly post-post-post modern ;) Written between the hours of 2.10am and 4.30am. That should be warning enough for the “humour” contained within.
Harry entered the common room, not surprised to find it nearly deserted as it was the first Hogsmeade weekend of the school year. He was also not surprised to find Hermione in the corner, hunched over the birthday present her parents had sent her. And since Hermione and Ginny had announced at the Burrow that they had decided to stop messing around and were now engaged in a serious, romantic relationship, he was not surprised to see his ex-girlfriend at Hermione’s side.
He had made a monumental effort to be OK with this development and had ruthlessly attempted to be a great friend to the couple as they struggled with coming out to the general population of Hogwarts. He was already exhausted from his knockabout Quidditch game, but thought he shouldn’t pass them without at least saying ‘hello’.
“Hey Hermione, Ginny – What’re you up to?” Harry enquired cheerfully, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he strode over to the pair. He did this to conceal his tightened fists, somehow drawing strength from this hidden tension.
Still neither girl looked up at him – something he felt more than slightly annoyed at. But he let it go. He was being a great friend. He gritted his teeth and cleared his throat as he now hovered over them.
“Oh… Hi, Harry,” Hermione mumbled faintly, her concentration clearly focused elsewhere.
For her birthday, Hermione’s parents had given her a laptop computer. Silver and shiny, but surely useless in the Wizarding world, Harry had supposed. It’s not like she could hand McGonagall her essay on Hardnot’s theory of instable transfiguration on a floppy disk.
However, both Hermione and Ginny were staring at the screen, their faces illuminated in white and blue tones.
“Sorry, Harry,” Ginny said, still not removing her eyes as Hermione tapped some keys. “We’re just…”
“Busy,” Harry said snippily, ready to turn on his heel and troop up to his dorm to punch a pillow for a few hours.
“Yes,” Hermione conceded. “But it’s not like we don’t want to talk—“
“Holy Merlin stuck up a Hippogriffs’ arse!” Ginny yelped, grabbing Hermione’s hand. She turned to her girlfriend, more than slightly alarmed. “You know that I would never do that to you. You know I would never think of doing that to you! And I would never have told anyone that I had because—because—because…”
“I know, it’s OK,” Hermione soothed, cupping her cheek.
Harry felt the pressing need to vomit.
“I don’t know who would’ve even just thought of such a thing!” Ginny exclaimed, holding her head in her hands.
“Do I want to know?” Harry said eventually. Hermione finally gazed up at him, looking distressed and perturbed.
“You might want to sit down, Harry,” she sighed and patted the seat next to her. “It involves you too.”
“Eh, all right,” Harry replied, puzzled and a little worried as he took Hermione up on her offer. “What’s wrong?”
“Where do I start?” Hermione half-laughed and sat forward.
“Not with that one anyway,” Ginny groaned, still hiding her face.
“Oh, we’ve seen much worse than that,” Hermione said under her breath. She cleared her throat and adopted the posture of one about to break the news of a family fatality. “Harry – Do you know much about computers?”
“Not really,” Harry shrugged, still not understanding what this was all about. “You can type and that. Look at pictures. Get the time.”
“Right,” Hermione nodded patiently. “Do you know what the web is?”
“Normal spider web or Acromantula web? Cause believe me, they’re very different.”
“No, the world-wide web. The internet?”
“Oh, the internet,” Harry nodded wisely. “The net.
“It is the same thing. I won’t go into it, but basically you can look at pages that other people have made about any and every subject in the world.”
“There’s a page in the web?” Harry said carefully.
“Lots of pages,” Hermione corrected. “Billions upon trillions. It’s information. You type an address into the computer and you get information from another person. You with me so far?”
“Kind of,” Harry squinted.
“OK.” Hermione closed her eyes, now realising how difficult explaining this to someone who had no experience of the internet and worse still, no knowledge of the internet due to his closeted upbringing. It’s not like everyone in Hogwarts was raving about this internet. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have a clue. Hermione was only lucky that Dean had explained and shown Ginny the internet over the summer they were dating. He had his own West Ham fansite which his brother maintained while he was away.
“So I managed to get the internet on my computer by amplifying a wireless internet signal from a muggle town ten miles away.”
“That’s good, then,” Harry said, confident this must be a fine thing.
“There’s a lot of stuff on the internet,” Hermione continued. “So there are a lot of ways to search for it. So I Googled for myself.”
Hastily Harry stood up, clearing his throat loudly. “Well, you know I’m happy for you both and this ‘internet’ sounds great as well, but I don’t really want to talk about your—“
“It’s a way to search for yourself - Idiot,” Hermione half-smirked, tugging his jumper sleeve for him to sit down again. “It’s a good thing you’re fantastic on a broomstick because otherwise you’d be in trouble.”
A loud moan elicited from the curled figure of Ginny. “Do not say ‘broomstick’ to me ever again.”
“What?” Harry blinked
“I’ll get to it,” Hermione groaned. “Maybe. Anyway, I searched to see if there was any mention of me on the internet or anyone who had the same as me.”
“And was there?”
Hermione nodded slowly. “There were a lot.”
“How many?” he asked curiously.
“Two million, five hundred and seventy thousand,” she breathed out.
“Really?” Harry nodded. “And that’s a lot?”
“Of course it’s a lot!” Ginny snapped, now revealing herself. “I know you’re new to all this online stuff – but any moron with a grasp of really big numbers could tell you that’s a lot!”
“Right, right – OK,” Harry stammered. “OK, now I know. So what did the internet say about you?”
“What didn’t it say?” Ginny mumbled, resting her head against Hermione’s shoulder and forcing herself not to look at the screen on the laptop.
“I can’t even begin to—“ Hermione flustered.
“Are you sure it’s you? You said it might have been someone with the same name,” Harry proposed.
“It’s me,” Hermione nodded grimly. “How many Hermiones do you know?”
“One.”
“That was rhetorical.”
“Sorry.”
“It was me. Completely. It was me and magic and Hogwarts and you and Ginny and everyone. Someone knows everything,” she finished in a hushed voice. “Somehow, this great Wizarding secret has gotten out. It’s out there in the public domain. They know everything – from the classes we take, to the war against Voldemort – Everything.”
“Oh my God,” Harry shook his head in disbelief. As the shock subsided, he realised the full implications of what Hermione was telling him and jumped from his seat once more. “Oh my God! We’re got to tell Dumbledore! We’re got to tell the Ministry! Something’s gone wrong, someone’s leaked it all! What do we do now? And how come we didn’t know before this…?”
“Sit down,” Hermione ordered. “It gets worse.”
“How can it?” Harry exclaimed, shrugging off her tug to pull him down. “How can it possibly get worse?”
“Well. People are… writing things about us on the internet,” she said delicately.
“Of course they are! You just said so!” Harry yelped.
“No, they’re writing. Like stories. Like diary entries. They write about all of us. Even Susan Bones,” Hermione said, trying to impress the situation upon him.
“And the Giant Squid. And McGonagall. And Filch. And even Snape,” Ginny shuddered, burrowing her face into Hermione’s shirt.
“And what do they write?” Harry asked, folding his arms. “Is it gossip and crap? I’ve had that before.”
“No. It’s different. The majority of it, we haven’t even done,” Hermione said, unable to properly explain it. “And for some reason, it’s particulary focused on the four of us. Us and Ron. There are others, but we’re kind of the centre. And what they write…”
“Is it good? Is it bad?” Harry was beginning to panic. “Are they threats or whatever? What are they about?”
“Lots of things,” Ginny murmured, her gaze faraway.
“Harry,” Hermione said clearly, pulling him down onto the couch and to her eye level. “The vast majority have various pairings of us all linked – romantically.”
“Oh, don’t be coy, Hermione,” Ginny snapped. “We all have sex with each other. Sometimes it’s me and you; sometimes it’s Ron and you and most of the time it’s you and Draco! But there are people out there who write stuff about us getting together and nine times out of ten, there’ll be sex in it: Badly written, highly implausible, anatomically impossible, out-of-the-blue sex.”
Harry looked between the two very serious girls, and burst out laughing. Fits consumed him. And as he grew more incredulous at the ridiculous notion, his sides started to hurt from the laughter that would not stop coming.
“I don’t think so!” he guffawed, wrapping his arms over his pleasantly aching stomach. “I do not think so! Who on earth would make up stuff about Draco and I? Madness!”
“I told you, everyone’s involved – Not all at the same time. Though sometimes they are,” Hermione finished, wrinkling her nose.
“Harry, you’re not taking this seriously,” Ginny barked.
“No wonder!” He roared, wiping tears from his eyes.
Ginny and Hermione looked between each other, silently communicating as Harry continued to laugh. Hermione turned the laptop around to face Harry and tapped at the screen.
“Read that,” she instructed fiercely. “Read that and see if you think it’s so funny!”
After calming himself down, Harry hunched over the computer and started to scan the first couple of lines. Didn’t seem that terrible – Very unsettling at how these internet pages managed to describe one of his Potions class’s but nothing was that wrong so far.
Harry snorted as the Internet-Harry spilled his potion all over Snape’s desk just before the end of the lesson. Not something that seemed too out of place, in his opinion. Internet-Harry was ordered by that git Snape to stay and clear it up.
The evidence of laughter was soon wiped from Harry Potters face as he read on. He read as the rest of the class left him and Snape alone. He read as Snape made some highly inappropriate and disturbing remarks about Internet-Harry’s cleaning abilities and tight posterior.
As his eyes scanned the most heinous line of literature ever committed to the English language, Harry had to resist the immediate instinct of throwing the laptop in the fireplace.
He gagged, spluttered and, pushed away from the table and couch. He groaned and cried out as the visual image of Snape doing that to him was forever imprinted on his imagination. He wanted to bellow out every cell of disgust that swelled within him. He would never be clean.
When he finally whirled round on Hermione and Ginny, still sitting on the couch by the laptop, he felt it justified to unleash on them.
“HOW THE HELL COULD YOU LET ME READ THAT HOW SICK ARE YOU DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME I NEED A SHOWER IN ACID AND THEN DIP MY BRAIN IN BLEACH BEFORE THAT’LL EVER GO AWAY WHO THE HELL WROTE THAT SICK TWISTED BASTARDS!”
“That’s what it sounds like when he shouts in capslock, isn’t it?” Ginny murmured in Hermione’s ear.
“There’s worse on here,” Hermione said, pointing at her computer. “Lots worse.”
“Like what?!” Harry spluttered. “What could be worse than me and-and-and—“
“Ron and I,” Hermione said briskly. She opened her mouth to say ‘Or Ron and her’ but thought better of it as Ginny has been thoroughly hysterical upon discovering the existence of such material.
“There’s loads worse, Harry. Want to know what it’d be like for you to have sex with my mother? It’s right here. Or how about what Dean and Seamus really do when they’re alone? Or how much does Filch really love his mops? And not to mention the masses of stories we found where you get Draco pregnant and you raise hundreds of little white-haired, green-eyed prats on a farm somewhere,” Ginny said, stifling a giggle as she watched Harry go through a range of emotions.
“This is sick!” he cried. “Sick and twisted and wrong! How can people be writing about our lives this way?!”
Both Hermione and Ginny shrugged, not able to offer any satisfactory explanations: They didn’t understand it themselves, nor were they sure they wanted to.
“I have discovered one thing,” Hermione said. “These stories – They’re called ‘fic.’”
“I think it’s sort for the German, y’know? Ficken…” Ginny proposed airily.
“And I think it’s short for ‘fiction’,” Hermione said in a hard tone directed at her girlfriend. “Because that makes much more sense.”
“Not if you actually read the content of some of this crap,” Ginny scoffed.
“And there really is everyone on this? And it’s definitely us?” Harry asked, sitting down as his legs had begun to tremble.
“It’s us,” Ginny said resolutely. “There’s not a chance that someone else could have our lives exactly…”
“Parallel universe!” he suggested hopefully.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harry,” Hermione mocked. “The chances of that…”
“Are probably the same as the twisted fantasy versions of our lives turning up on webpages!”
“A bit higher than that,” Hermione said.
Harry collapsed back into the chair. “What do we do now? Can we talk to these people writing this stuff?”
“It’s anonymous,” Hermione sighed. “All anonymous. There’s no way.”
“I think we keep it a secret,” Ginny spoke up, once again relaxing into Hermione’s body. “We don’t freak anyone else out with this – Do everyone a favour and pretend it never existed.”
“You want us to cover up the internet?” Hermione asked incredulously.
“Do you have a better idea? Do you want to take that laptop to Dumbledore and show him the one with him and Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets?” Ginny challenged.
“No… She’s right,” Harry nodded slowly. “We don’t tell anyone. If the secret’s got out – it’s got out. We can’t change it. And maybe the Ministry’ll work it out sooner or later. But for now, we tell nobody. Not Ron – Definitely not Ron. It’ll destroy him.”
The three of them looked at each, then slowly towards the laptop which had brought them so much pain and suffering.
“OK?” Harry checked. “Secret – No one else?”
“No one else,” Ginny nodded vehemently.
“No one else,” Hermione relented.
The pact was made – Not another soul would know of the depravity that the three of them had faced in the common room that day.
“You know – I feel like reading,” Hermione tried to smile.
“What a shocker,” Ginny giggled, kissing Hermione lightly. “Read to me?”
“Of course,” she grinned, pushing Ginny’s hair back. “What do you fancy?”
“Strictly family-friendly,” Ginny grimaced, hauling herself up from the couch. She held a hand out for Hermione. “Something with a plucky rabbit and his doddery badger friend, or whatever. Something entirely benign and numbing.”
“Coming right up,” Hermione smiled, taking Ginny’s hand. She turned to Harry. “You going to be all right?”
He nodded faintly, staring off into the fire.
“You look really pale, you should go outside and fly for a bit,” Ginny suggested, doing her best to shake off the afternoons’ events.
“Yeah… Yeah. Will do. Thanks,” Harry smiled, looking at the happy couple. Something inside him warmed. This would pass. Looking at Hermione and Ginny, he was reminded of just how easily the terrible things could pass with someone you love holding your hand. “Enjoy your book.”
“We will,” Ginny winked innocently, pulling Hermione upstairs to their empty dorm room.
Harry sat for a long time, attempting to clear his mind of everything he had just learned. But then a logical or serious question would be posed about Wizarding security and the ramifications if their world was to ever become public and he would sink deeper inside his mind. And that usually led to an awful visual, which he quickly erased and the whole process would start again.
He groaned, sat forward and rubbed his face. He would take Ginny’s advice of going for a fly. Leaning forward, he noticed that Hermione’s laptop was still sitting on the table. Still on, still whirring away, still containing the depths of his own sordid imagination.
Just for a little while, Harry thought, as he pulled the computer onto his knee and began to read.