A funny thing happened on the way to the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Fifth Element. I was attacked by a vicious plot bunny while watching Devil Wears Prada with my family. This story is a result. It's a crossover, but it also utilized some Fifth Element characters, and some ideas I will be incorporating into that story if I ever get to their Seventh Year.
All my readers know I don't solicit reviews for Fifth Element. My daughter loves that story, and that's all I need. This one is different. My wife thinks that putting Hermione in the Andrea role in Devil Wears Prada is not consistent with Hermione's accomplishments and she doesn't want me to continue this. My daughter is on the fence. She thinks it's "nice" but she doesn't like Harry's (doomed) relationship with Ginny.
That means you, the readers, get to determine the fate of this story. I'm posting six chapters. Give me thumbs up or thumbs down.
The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 1: A Blast From The Past
Pride goeth before a fall.
Ain't it the truth. Just when she thought she was finally getting the hang of things, she let her guard down and screwed up big time.
A despondent Harmony Farmer looked at her Danger Hiptop mobile. Sighing, she opened it, stared at it for a few seconds, and then closed it again. Was any job - especially this job - worth the possible consequences of what she was contemplating?
Just last evening she had been bursting with pride. The Boss from Hell had finally trusted her enough to deliver the mockup book (and the boss' drycleaning) to her townhouse in Manhattan's ritzy SoHo District. That seemingly small feat was achieved only after an agonizing almost two month learning curve in a very foreign environment. The learning curve was much steeper than anything in journalism school, and was probably even worse than … before….
But as always happened before, when she put her mind to it, she did it. Even the Boss from Hell now called her "the smart one."
Then she screwed it all up. The twins were so adorable. They looked just like the daughter those two might have had - assuming it turned out to be a daughter (she left before even the sex was known, and for almost nine years had resolutely refrained from ever finding out). Those imps encouraged her to venture upstairs, into forbidden territory, where she intruded into her boss' private domestic problems.
Muy bad - very, very bad.
She had violated instructions, intentionally if innocently, and with this boss, there would be a price to pay. But Harmony had no idea how big that price would be. She had never thought that it might change her life - that it might bring her most peculiar past crashing down upon her after all these years.
She opened the mobile again. This time she actually had her fingers poised over the buttons before again putting it away.
Sure enough, the retribution had been just as certain as it was characteristically devious. It happened only an hour ago, after the lack of any immediate dressing down had lulled her into a false sense of security. But then she was called through those glass doors and given a new assignment:
"Harmony, I want you to get the new Harry Potter manuscript for the Twins…."
The mention of that name - by this woman after all these years - hit her like a Stunner to the chest. Her breathing hitched, but she concealed it like the professional she aspired to be. The Boss from Hell did not seem to notice.
"…They're leaving by train to their father's for the weekend, so I need it by four o'clock this afternoon."
Recovering quickly from the shock, she had responded. "Right Ms. Beastly. I'll drop by the Borders at Rockefeller Center right after lunch and pick up two copies."
"Harmony, I don't think you understood my instructions," the boss had said with that soft breathy voice that came from a heart of stone. "They've read all the Harry Potters you can buy in the store. What I want you to get is the unpublished manuscript for Book Six. The Journal has a story this morning that it's finally been finished and delivered…."
"But Ms. Beastly, I'm not sure that will be possible if it's not in the stores…."
"Harmony, if I thought it was easy, I would have had Emily do it. My daughters have asked me for it, and they shall have it. If you can't get it for them, don't bother coming back…."
"But Ms. Beastly…."
"That is all," the boss pronounced with her customary finality.
Harmony staggered out of the office, almost turning an ankle in her ridiculously high (and ridiculously dear, had she paid for them) stiletto heels, and flopped into her chair. She had remained there ever since - contemplating her fate.
It was obviously retaliation for what she had overheard the night before - being given a task that Ms. Beastly knew full well was impossible to complete successfully. It had been in all the papers for years. The Bloomsbury people always guarded the pre-publication contents of the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series more closely than Saddam Hussein had guarded his weapons of mass destruction. That was always part of the series' mystique…. There was no way in this world or the next that Ms. Beastly actually expected her to obtain a copy of that top secret manuscript - in only five hours.
It all about getting her fired. Only there was one little thing that Ms. Beastly did not know about Harmony Farmer.
Actually, it was not a little thing at all.
Actually, it was a very big thing - a secret every bit as well-hidden as J.K. Rowling's best-selling prose.
It was the key to many, many secrets … to a secret past she had fled in heartbreaking sorrow almost nine long years ago.
And the one small part of that secret that mattered at this moment was that Harmony Farmer was the only person in North America with an absolute right to a copy of that manuscript. All she had to do was ask.
It was her contract - in that contract she had signed only a few months after she had left … the one delivered through an intermediary of an intermediary … the one that had permitted the whole series to be published in the first place.
That contract gave her the right to review and object to any portrayal of her in the Harry Potter series.
Now, if she wanted to keep the job that she had been killing herself to master, it was either invoke those contractual rights or risk becoming indebted to that creepy Gilderoy Lockhart lookalike and his implication that he might just be able to help her with her problem. From the way he had always leered at her from the moment they were introduced, his quid pro quo was obvious.
Harmony Farmer knew something that was not generally known.
She knew that the Harry Potter series was not what it seemed. It was not really fiction all - but rather biographical.
And Harmony Farmer was not what she seemed either. You see, Harmony Farmer was a witch … a witch who had once been Harry Potter's best friend - and more.
That "more" was why she had fled England nine years ago next June and thereafter never looked back. It was why she had never exercised her contractual rights, and indeed had not had any contact at all with anyone in England for two full years
Was saving this hellhole of a job, glamorous as it could be at times, worth the risk of reopening wounds that were as old as they were deep?
- 5 -
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 1 Blast From The Past.doc.doc 12/27/06
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