If you haven’t read the book and only seen the film, read the book. It’s available cheap, at around £2. Send a 10-shilling postal order for a free receipt.
Oh, and eagle-eyed readers might notice that one character has been cast twice, and one cast member has been used twice, or vice versa, respectively. The intelligent reader might wonder why, and the cynical might correctly deduce that it is simply because I am evil, and sarcastic, and have an exceedingly twisted sense of humour. And, of course, just because I can. Hey, it’s a dream… Or is it?
Merrily, merrily, merrily, then, on we go.
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A Treatise On The Perils Of Excessive Involvement In The Reading Of Fiction | ||||||
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Category: Post-HBP, Peter Pan Challenge (2007-4) Characters:Harry/Ginny Genres: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Crossover, Fluff, General, Humor, Romance Warnings: Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Violence Story is Complete Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 20 Summary: ** Winner of Best Overall in the Peter Pan Challenge ** ** Winner of Best Unusual Story Creativity in the Peter Pan Challenge ** When the RoR provides an enchanted library for Ginny to relax in, her dreams take on a strangely literary bent... COMPLETE... for now. Hitcount: Story Total: 40445; Chapter Total: 3781 Author's Notes: |
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Peter Potter (Possibly) It was truly a mistake to have a dog as a nurse. Or at least this dog, for this dog, instead of being a large, fluffy, friendly and stolid Newfoundland, as all good nurses should be, was a large, fluffy, friendly and mildly demented dog of uncertain breed, who had a certain fondness for pranks. Mr. Darling often said that Nanfoot would have taken leave of his senses, had he had any to start with. And so it was that Nanfoot was tonight tied in his kennel rather than occupying his customary abode in the children’s nursery, for his latest prank had gone awry. Mr. Darling had been most upset that evening to find his sherry replaced by cough medicine (though some will undoubtedly say that they are much the same, and far be it from this chronicler to argue); and he had deduced — correctly, of course — from the mere presence of the prank that Nanfoot had been involved, and so had evicted the creature for the night. Thus was then the situation at the beginning of the evening, with Nanfoot chained in the garden and Mr. and Mrs. Darling picking their way deftly through the light snow on their way to the party at No. 27, and the children mostly asleep in their beds at home, guarded by the night-lights. The children, two boys of seven and ten, and a girl of very nearly sixteen, were mostly trustworthy, and Ginny — the girl — especially so, and so Mr. and Mrs. Darling had few qualms about leaving them in her care without Nanfoot. And thus all would have been well, had not the stars been so fond of fun as to have been seduced by Harry (himself seduced by the pursuit of his lost shadow, which he had carelessly mislaid on one of his midnight japes some weeks prior) with the lure of a good prank. Anxious as they were to get the grown-ups out of the way, there was a commotion in the firmament as soon as the door of No. 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling, and the smallest of all the stars cried out: “Now, Harry!” The night-lights flickered briefly before going to sleep; though with them absent, there was another light in the room, many times brighter, and in seconds it rushed through all the drawers and pockets and wardrobes in the nursery. It came to rest on the window latch, and the glow faded as its movement ceased. It was a fairy, a girl called Tinker Vane exquisitely gowned in designer leaves, cut low, through which her figure could be clearly seen, not that Harry ever seemed to notice. She was slightly inclined to embonpoint. She braced her feet against the latch and pulled it open, then was launched into the air as the lower sash blew open, and Harry dropped in. “Tinker Vane,” he called softly, after making sure that the children were asleep, “Tink, where are you?” She was trapped between the lower and upper sashes of the window, and mildly dazed; she kicked the glass with a harrumph, then, grumbling, squeezed through the gap at the top of the window and plunked out onto the sill. The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered Harry; it is the fairy language, and given Tinker Vane’s remarks it is perhaps fortunate that you ordinary people could never hear it. It is, many eminent linguistic scholars concur, a most excellent language, and also a particularly satisfying language for the more vehement expressings in which a flustered fairy might indulge; for while the majority of it consists of the mild-mannered tinkling of sleigh bells, it is not limited to such equanimity, and in much the same manner as the tolling of Big Ben may be considered greater than the gentle pling of a mantelpiece clock, so the fairy language contains a number of gratifyingly obscene clangers. Tinker Vane knew them all, and was particularly proficient in their employ. Nevertheless she said that his shadow could be found in the big box, by which of course she meant the chest of drawers, and Harry jumped at them, scattering their contents with both hands and, in the notable instance of one particularly unfortunate collar, his teeth. Tink, in her zeal to assist his excavations, dived in to search the pile of neatly folded bloomers, and so when Harry recovered his shadow and slammed the drawer excitedly closed, she was shut up in the drawer. If he thought at all — which he did not, of course, for his reasoning was that someone of his obvious perfection should not need to indulge in such squalid activities as cogitation — it would have been that he and his shadow, when brought together, would flow together and join like fragments of killer robots from the future, but such was not the case, and he was perhaps not surprisingly devastated. He tried to stick it on with an old glob of chewing gum which he found under one of the beds, but that also failed. A tremor passed through Harry, and he sat on the floor and cried. His sobs woke Ginny, and she sat up in bed. “Boy,” she said curiously, “why are you crying?” Harry sprang to his feet instantly, and bowed, his glasses momentarily falling off his nose before reattaching themselves. She was much pleased, and bowed similarly from the bed. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Ginevra Molly Angela Darling,” she replied with some satisfaction. “But you may call me Ginny. What is yours?” “Pan. Harry Pan.” “What were you crying about?” He wished, momentarily, that he had brought the conversation to names and addresses and letters instead, but concluded that, the gift of temporal revisions being denied him, the theoretical existence of Pan lachrymation and its application in a historical context with specific reference to the last several minutes would have to suffice, though it pained him to discuss it. “I wasn’t crying,” he said rather indignantly. “Yes you were,” Ginny postulated matter-of-factly, pointing to a number of tear drops floating through the air towards the window in an attempt to remove themselves from the story before it had an opportunity to range too far into the realms of silliness but failing; they had run through the fairy dust on his cheeks as they fell, though they had as a result not fallen far; or, if they had, they had continued to do so with no noticeable increase in their proximity to the floor. “I wasn’t crying,” he amended, “about monkeys. I was crying because I can’t get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn’t crying.” “It has come off?” Ginny queried, deciding not to wonder who had brought up monkeys; it was a silly thing to mention with no context, and since silly things could not happen, it had not. Probably. “Yes.” Then Ginny saw the shadow on the floor, looking bedraggled. “It must be sewn on,” she said, more than a little patronisingly. “What’s sewn?” In reply, she withdrew a long needle from her sewing pouch and proceeded to thread it, though when she prepared to interface the point with Harry’s foot, he recoiled. “You’re not bloody sticking that thing in me!” Ginny sighed, briefly contemplating the irritations of boys and considering how fortunate it was that ibuprofen existed, or the poor dears would never shut up. “Very well,” she said, and fetched her wand from her bedside table, and pointed it at Harry’s foot. “Collumbra.” And the shadow attached itself to his foot with a sound much like that of a blue cheese omelette wrapped in a custard wig hitting a lightly annoyed bonobo monkey; it is perhaps not surprising that neither Ginny nor Harry recognised the sound. And so soon Harry’s shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased. The moment Harry noticed his shadow’s newly reattached status, he had begun leaping about in wild glee, having forgotten that he owed his bliss to Ginny. “How clever I am!” he crowed, “oh, the cleverness of me!” “You snotty arse,” Ginny exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm; “of course I did nothing.” “You did a little,” Harry allowed magnanimously, continuing to swoop and vault through the air in celebration. “A little!” Ginny huffed, and sprang in the most dignified way into bed and covered her face with the blankets; as a parting gift, she had treated Harry to a demonstration which left his nose smarting for several hours thereafter. To induce her to look up, once he had beaten off the bats, he pretended to be in pain, and when this failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with his foot. “Ginny,” he said, “don’t go to sleep.” Still she would not look up, though she was listening intently. “Ginny,” he continued in a voice that even twenty years later would retain the ability to raise a flush strong enough to force Ginny to lie down in a dark room for a few minutes. “Ginny, one girl is more use than twenty boys.” Now Ginny was every inch a woman (another fact that had not escaped Tinker Vane, and which annoyed her immensely), and she peeped out of the bed-clothes. “Do you really think so, Harry?” “Yes, I do.” “Do you bollocks,” she grinned, “though it was an excellent attempt, and as a reward I shall get up again. They spent the next twenty minutes or so — simply because twenty minutes is a particularly respectable interval, with much more of a period tone than the frivolous five-to-fifteen minutes so popular among young people these days, though this may have something to do with the frequency with which fifteenminutes are found in the bargain bins of even the most upmarket shops nowadays — discussing fairies and the means by which they may be most expediently exterminated, though that was perhaps not the aim of the exercise. It did not cross Ginny’s mind that, while disbelief appeared to be fatal, the more arcane lores suggested that a can of permethrin and a good fly-swatter would be rather more efficient. It was as Harry explained about the modern rarity of fairies that he realised that Tinker Vane was keeping very quiet. “I wonder where she might have got to,” he said, rising, and called Tink by name. “Harry,” Ginny cried, a sudden flutter thrilling her heart, “you don’t mean to tell me that there is a fairy in this very room?” “Yes, she was here just now. You don’t hear her, do you?” “The only sound I hear,” said Ginny, “is like a tinkle of bells.” CLANG off, you great ugly girl, swore Tink, and keep your CLONG hands off my man! But she had said this while Harry was otherwise distracted, as he so often was by shiny objects, and so he remained oblivious to her ravings; Ginny, of course, was oblivious anyway, as she had clumsily allowed her Pimsleur Fairyish subscription to lapse. Eventually Harry heard the tingling and saw the glow through the keyhole, and realised where Tink was. “Ginny,” he whispered gleefully, “I do believe I shut her up in the drawer!” He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the nursery screaming with fury. “You shouldn’t say such things,” Harry retorted. “How could I know you were in the drawer? No, don’t be silly, of course she doesn’t have her head stuck up her... in any case, I’m sure it’s absolutely delightful.” Then, in response to a particularly resonant BONG, “Tink, that’s a terrible thing to say.” Tinker Vane answered insolently. “What does she say, Harry?” “She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and that she is my fairy.” He tried to argue with Tink. “You know you can’t be my fairy, Tink, because I am a gentleman and you are a lady.” To this Tink replied with a number of choice phrases that, if translated to English, would severely increase this tale’s rating. Ginny suspected that a number of them were probably anatomically impossible, or would have done had she been able to understand the words. “She is quite a common fairy,” Harry explained apologetically. “She is called Tinker Vane because she manages the cauldrons.” “She looks very small for a blacksmith,” Ginny posited. “Oh, she isn’t. She is a chocolatier.” By this time Harry had flown up and perched on the brass rail at the foot of the bed, and Ginny plied him with more questions. “If you don’t live in Catchpole Gardens now —” “Sometimes I do still.” “But where do you live mostly now?” “With the lost boys.” “Who are they?” “They are the children who fall out of their porridge when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent to Sometimesland to defray expenses. I’m admiral.” “What fun it must be!” “Yes,” said cunning Harry, “but we are rather lonely. You see, we have no female companionship.” “Are none of the others girls? Besides, surely no one could ever fall for that line?” “I do not know; I’ve never tried it. But girls, you know, are far too clever to fall out of their breakfast.” This flattered Ginny immensely. “I think,” she said, “it is perfectly delightful the way you talk about girls, although we endeavour not to fall into our breakfast in the first place.” A thought struck her; and one which was to precipitate the entire debacle that followed. “If you have no female companionship, who is there to tell you stories?” “We have no one.” “No one to tuck you in at night?” “No one.” “Then I shall come with you back there,” she concluded, then sagged. “Although I cannot fly,” she realised, despondent. “I shall have to remain.” Harry became frightfully cunning. “I could teach you. Yes, I shall teach you to jump on the wind’s back, and away we go.” “Can you teach Rohn and Nevael too?” “If you like,” he said indifferently, and Ginny ran to wake them. “Wake up,” she cried, “Harry Pan is here to teach us to fly!” This brought them both to their feet promptly, and the first lesson (which involved leaping off the bedstead and attempting to miss the ground) ended with several bruises and many loud thuds, for it had slipped Harry’s mind that happy thoughts are a mere fuel additive to the AvGas of fairy dust. The second — and last — lesson was significantly more successful, following the addition of a liberal portion of dust, which Harry applied in a manner much like an Italian waiter with a pepper mill; Tink objected to this, and once she had restored her coiffure to its usual state she glared daggers at Harry for a long time. However, the dust had had the desired effect, and they were soon all four flitting joyously around the room. “I say,” cried Rohn when he got tired of circling the room, “why shouldn’t we all go out?” “Better yet,” said Harry, “we could all go to Sometimesland.” Rohn hesitated, as did Nevael. But Ginny was eager to see how long it took her to do a billion miles. “There are mermaids,” she said. “Oo!” “And pirates.” “Pirates!” cried Rohn, seizing his Sunday hat. “Let us go at once!” “Have you all you need?” Harry enquired, and they nodded. “Come on, then! Pack up, let’s fly away!” he cried imperiously, and soared at once out into the night, followed by Rohn and Nevael and Ginny. The flight was long and, Ginny soon found, dangerous; the three of them (not Harry, of course) were sleepy, and that was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down they fell. The terrible thing was that Harry thought this funny. “There he goes again!” he would cry gleefully, as Nevael suddenly dropped like a stone. “Save him, save him!” cried Ginny, looking with horror at the cruel sea far below. Eventually Harry would dive down and catch Nevael just before he could strike the sea; but he always waited until the last moment, and you felt it was his cleverness that interested him and not the saving of life. Also he was fond of variety, and the sport that amused him one moment would suddenly cease to engage him, so there was always the possibility that the next time you fell he would let you go. He could... ...Ginny stirred, frowning in her sleep. Something was wrong. That didn’t sound like Harry, caring, kind Harry... ...sleep in the air without falling, by merely lying on his back and floating, and you could get behind him and blow, and he would go faster. Now Nevael was nodding off again, but before he could doze off fully, Harry was at his side, shaking his shoulder to wake him. ...Ginny smiled in her sleep... Eventually, after many days of flight, they saw it in the distance; perhaps not so much because of the guidance of Harry as because the island was seeking them out. Ginny and Rohn and Nevael stood on tip-toe in the air to get their first sight of the island. Curiously, they all recognised it at once. They welcomed it as one might an old friend, though their joy was gradually replaced by fear as night rolled in and wrapped the island in velvet blackness, grim shadows rolling over the shores and through the forests, and the roar of the beasts of prey becoming quite changed. They drifted lower, their feet occasionally brushing a treetop. Rustles and crashes drifted up from the darkness below them, as unseen beasts roamed beneath the foliage. Harry paused occasionally, listening intently, staring down with eyes that seemed to bore holes in the earth. Eventually he stopped and turned to them. “Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?” “What kind of adventure?” Rohn asked cautiously. “There’s a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us,” Harry told him. “If you like, we’ll go down and kill him.” “Tea first,” Ginny said decisively, and they sat on a cloud for tea. As they nibbled, Rohn continued his enquiries. “Are there many pirates on the island just now?” “I have never known so many.” “Who is captain now?” “Hook,” answered Harry, and his face became very stern as he said that hated word. “Jas. Hook?” “Aye.” This sobered them all, for they knew Hook’s reputation. “He was Toadbridge Blackbeard’s bo’sun,” Rohn whispered. “The worst of them all, the only man of whom Benbecula is afraid.” “Smee, the butter.” As the diligent reader may gather, the sentence was uttered by James Hook, pirate. He was a tall man, sallow face and hooked nose shrouded by a curtain of lank black hair. There was a metallic click as he replaced the hook on his right hand with a butter knife, which slotted cleanly into the socket where his hand had once been. He picked up a crumpet and buttered it liberally; heavily buttered crumpets were one of his better-known secret passions, while his less-known ones included mah jong, sneering, and tending the four rabbits he kept hidden in his quarters; Albus, Nymfitonk, Black-eye and Tom (whom he had believed to be male until Tom laid an egg; but by then Tom had learned to respond to the name, and so it remained). He gazed evenly at the nervous figure who sat before him by the for’ard side of the table. “Gordon Tawnick, our new... recruit...” ...that’s not right, Ginny thought, grumbling in her sleep, and changed the story... Hook’s form wavered and shifted; his face grew long and elegant, his hair changed to fall in long, flowing blond locks, the sneering and belligerent expression on his face changed to a disinterested hauteur, and his bearing straightened imperceptibly. Steely grey eyes pinned Tawnick to his seat. “Will you swear allegiance to me?” “A... aye.” “Will you swear, ‘Down with the king’?” “D... down with the king?” “This is Mr. Smee, my Bo’sun. You defer to him on all things. Your task is to do anything he or I tell you to. Given the opportunity, you are to acquire valuables, and loot of any notable description.” He gestured to a caped figure with lank black hair and a hooked nose, who stood, lurking, in the shadows of the corner. “When we have captured our loot, we send it hence to the hold to be processed by this sallow fellow, Processor Snape. This is vital for you to know, for anything heavy is your task to carry.” Tawnick blinked, but gulped and nodded. “Ay... aye-aye, captain.” Hook waved him off toward the door. “Mr. Smee, take him away and show him the ropes. And the capstans.” He bit into his crumpet, and was about to begin on his twelfth when he heard the lookout call: “Pan’s firefly in the sky! Three o’clock high!” On hearing this, Hook leaped to his feet, scattering the plates, and shouted, “Ready Long Tom!” They had found their tea most pleasant, having spread their picnic out on a handy cloud, and they would have enjoyed the Dundee cake in the centre of the blanket as well had they not been interrupted by a tremendous boom from below, and the cake vanished, leaving only a broad hole in the cloud. The pirates had fired Long Tom at them. We of course know that no one had been hit; Ginny, however, was blown upwards by the wind of the shot with no companion but Tinker Vane. We cannot know whether the idea came suddenly to Tink, or whether she had planned it on the way, but she at once popped out of the hat and began to lure Ginny to her destruction. Tink was not all bad; or, rather, she was all bad just now, and tended to be in all cases involving potential rivals for Harry’s affections, but on the other hand sometimes she was very slightly good. At present she was full of jealousy of Ginny, and while Ginny could of course not understand the language, it sounded kind, and Tink flew back and forth, clearly meaning “Follow me, and all will be well.” Ginny did not yet know that Tink hated her with the fierce hatred of a very irritated hatredy thing. And so, bewildered, she followed Tink to her doom. On this evening the chief forces of the island were disposed as follows. The lost boys were out looking for Peter; the pirates were out looking for the lost boys; the redskins were out playing baseball, the Indians were out looking for the pirates, and the beasts were out looking for lunch. They were going round and round the island, but they did not meet, because all were going the same way, except for a cunning wildcat who thought of going back the opposite direction, and returned to his lair with an exceedingly satisfied expression on his face, a lethargic and well fed demeanour, and a bloodied shred of pirate neckerchief dangling from one tooth. The boys on the island vary in number, according as they get killed and when they seem to be growing up, at which point they are thinned out by Harry; but at the moment there were six of them, counting the twins as two. They are forbidden by Harry to look in the least like him, and thus they have taken to wearing fancy dress. It is considered remarkably good camouflage, and has proved effective on many occasions as the pirates consider that the white and red blurs in the woods could not possibly be an enemy, since nobody would be stupid enough to try to hide while wearing a clown costume. This, as we shall see, demonstrates that the boys have some degree of intelligence, albeit of a peculiarly specialised sort, and judged in quality only against that of the pirates, which is perhaps not such a good indicator. The first in the line is Tootles, not the least brave but the most unfortunate of that gallant band, for all the excitement happens when he has passed out of frame; thus he has less screen time than any of the others, and so gets paid a relative pittance. He was, however, particularly proficient with his bow; for this reason, and his distinctly limited intellect, Tink, who was bent on fatal mischief this night, had concluded that he would be the best tool for her dastardly scheme. Next comes Nibs, the gay and debonair, who had found himself in a number of awkward misunderstandings, followed by Slightly Corner, who cuts small but elaborate saxophones out of branches and dances to his own tunes. He is the most conceited of the boys; he thinks he remembers the days before he was lost, and fancies himself as something of a Casanova (or fancies that he would be, had he any casas to nova), and this has given his nose an offensive tilt. Curly is fourth, and last come the twins, whose pockets it is unwise to search without caution, lest one find things that should not be found. They tend toward the exothermic. Here they pass a river, where a crocodile floats silently by; Curly grins at it and points, and is instantly rebuked by Slightly; “Curly, you should know better! Never smile at a crocodile!” Thus then was the situation when they came upon Tink, who advised them of the presence of an evil Ginny Bird come to kill them all: “Harry wants you to shoot the Ginny!” Tootles, being the only one carrying his bow at the time, excitedly nocked an arrow, fired, and Ginny fluttered to the ground with an arrow in her breast. Ginny woke some time later to hear crying, and scolding voices. “Listen to Tink, she is crying because the Ginny lives.” “Tinker Vane,” Harry’s voice drifted in, “I am your friend no more. Begone from me for ever.” There was a tinkling. “Well, for a whole week at least.” She sat up, looking around to find herself in a small hut that seemed to have built around her of branches and woven leaves. Hark to that, the Ginny lives, in spite of Tinker’s crime, Harry had grown used to the poor quality of the boys’ songs; however, after that particularly egregious example Harry decided that the random singing of fairly preposterous songs was rather silly; and the boys did so no more. Ginny was not concerned about the song, however, and in fact found the whole experience rather flattering, particularly as the boys scurried about to decorate the house to her liking. Before she knew it she had been shanghaied as their mother, and would have found herself picking up socks within minutes had they been aware of the existence of socks. Her reunion with her brothers also included an introduction of the lost boys, and a summarised — if incoherent — narrative of the events that had led to the hole in her nightgown and the dent in the button on its cord around her neck, and so her joy at being reunited with Harry and her brothers was tempered by her fury at Tink’s attempt on her life. But Tink had been exiled, and Ginny was kept busy with cooking and tidying and, more than anything else, telling stories. She took to setting examinations for her brothers to ensure that they did not forget their parents, but stopped short of inventing silly acronyms for them. One day not long after, Harry was surprised to find Slightly Corner stroll past him with a black eye, whistling an old wartime song. “What happened to him?” he asked Ginny, who was coming from the same direction; she showed him her wand. “He was trying to get a bit too friendly, so I hit him with my famous Colonel Bogey hex.” And so passed a great deal of time on the island with Harry and the lost boys, and even Ginny ultimately began to lose track of time, and began to forget about the life she had formerly known. Through the many months that passed — though the passage of time was not any form that we would recognise — they had a great many adventures. To describe them all would require an immensely large book, and the most we can do is give one — or perhaps extracts of two — as a specimen of life on the island. The difficulty is which one to choose. The brush with the redskins at Slightly Gulch, which ended with the redskins agreeing to be the lost boys for the day, after Harry had a whim to be a redskin for the duration of the battle; naturally the lost boys all followed suit, and so the battle would have been terribly one-sided had not the redskins agreed to make up the numbers as lost boys. Or perhaps the adventure in which Harry saved Tiger Ronni’s life in the Mermaids’ Lagoon, so making her his ally. Or the cake the pirates cooked so that the boys might eat it and perish; but always Ginny snatched it from the hands of her children, so that in time it lost its succulence, was used as a drop trap to brain a hippopotamus, was used as a missile, and eventually was carelessly left near the bay, where Hook fell over it in the dark. But a shorter adventure, and quite as exciting, was Tinker Vane’s attempt, with the help of some street fairies, to have the sleeping Ginny conveyed on a great floating leaf to the mainland. Indeed, let us tell that one, for it is perhaps the one most indicative of Tink’s vicious and homicidal streak, which could perhaps soften the blow were anything to happen to her. It had started in a clearing some miles distant, where Tinker Vane often went with her friends to lounge about and indulge in antisocial behaviour, like wearing hoodies and flying around at all hours of the night singing loudly, or getting drunk and passing out on the path, or carrying concealed knives to rob elderly mayflies. The local law enforcement fairies dared not enter their sod for fear of the mean street fairies who dwelt there. Only the Procurator Fairy, Krupke, was tolerated by them, and even he was ridiculed. On this occasion they sat under a fern smoking Caterpillars and listening to Tink, who was raving. While a translation will not be forthcoming, and a full transcript in Fairy would do little but confuse the reader, it can be summarised thus: TINK: “The Ginny will steal my Harry if not stopped.” JET: “Then we must stop her.” TINK: “But how? If we kill her Harry will surely know.” BARRACUDA: “Only if he sees it.” TINK: “He sees everything that happens on the island.” JET: “Yes. So we do not kill her on the island. We shall need a large leaf...” And so it was that, the very next night, Ginny lay oblivious on a large leaf as it was carried through the air and gently set down on the sea far from the island, where the fairies felt the current might draw it towards the mainland. Tink returned to the island to aid the search — if there was a search — and to avoid suspicion, while Jet Venturi remained on the leaf to end Ginny. She had made one vital mistake, however, in failing to consider three vital things, namely that she was a mere inch above the water; that the sea is inhabited; and that fairies, to the uneducated eye, look a great deal like flying insects. As Jet raised the knife to cut Ginny’s throat, a large fish plunged up out of the water, swallowed Jet whole and fell back into the depths with a glop. Ginny awoke several hours later, naturally shocked to find herself all at sea; but she was fortunate in that the tides (another thing Tink and her friends had neglected) had drawn her back near the island, close enough that she was able, using the leaf as a flotation aid, to swim back to land. As she hove near, Ginny saw a great commotion on the shore; the lost boys and the redskins, most carrying flaming torches, scurried about; looking for her. The Indians soon disappeared back into the jungle, while the boys continued their search. One pointed out to sea and saw her; he called the others, and with their help Ginny was soon ashore. She dragged herself up the beach, aided by the lost boys, when suddenly the ambush was sprung. Pirates swarmed over them from every side, and soon the battle was in full swing. Many pirates were killed in the battle, for there were a great many of them and very few lost boys, so when the pirates swung their cutlasses they tended to strike down their friends rather than their foes. One pirate seized Ginny and tried to tie her wrists, but she fought him off and retreated. She reconsidered, however, when she saw a pirate swing a cutlass at Curly. “Stop!” she cried, as the cruel blade detached Curly’s hand. “I’ll let you tie me up, but do not kill them!” This they did, and the lost boys followed her example, and soon they were blindfolded and paraded through the forest in ropes. The ground changed beneath their feet as they passed across a beach, then into a jolly, then they were made to blindly climb a ladder onto the deck of Hook’s ship, where they were securely lashed to a capstan. Then, as her blindfold was removed, Ginny saw Hook. Her eyes widened as she saw his flowing locks, and, seeing that the pirates’ attention was elsewhere, she leaned as far towards Rohn as she could. “Rohn, do you see Hook’s wig?” “That’s a wig?” “We must retrieve it and bring it back with us to London!” “Why?” “Do you not recognise it? It is the fabled Hair of Gryffindor!” Rohn and Nevael let out a gasp so loud as to draw the attention of Hook, and he turned toward them, smearing an ingratiating smile across his face. “Children, do you know who I am?” “I know thee well, Sir,” said Rohn, who had had a classical education. “Y’are a fishmonger.” This remark appeared to rile Hook more than Rohn had anticipated, for Hook began pacing back and forth, muttering “Bloody codfish” under his breath. Then he stopped, and ceased his raving. “Harry Pan is no more, children. You know that, don’t you? I poisoned him earlier, left a whole box of poisoned chocolate cauldrons on his table. There is no way he could survive them, aha.” Ginny was suddenly stricken, but seeing a speck in the sky over Hook’s shoulder she was caught by a flash of inspiration. “What will you do with us?” “You may join my crew if you wish; otherwise you will die.” “I think,” Ginny mused slowly, “that I would rather not die. How would I be named?” Hook cast an appraising glance over her, noting her glowing red hair, and cocked his head. “You are Ginny?” “Yes.” “Then we shall call you ‘Red-Headed Gin’.” He yanked a short, nervous-looking man from the crew and bade him cut her loose. “This is Tawnick; he shall be your sidekick, such as every true pirate must have.” “Gin and Tawnick,” Ginny mused, nodding; “I like the sound of that. Would you arrange a hook in lieu of Curly’s hand?” “Not a hook, but I’m sure something can be arranged. But not a hook. I have one, it is my name... too many hooks spoil the ship.” “Fair enough.” She rose, rubbing her sore wrists. “You are quite sure Harry is dead?” A curious smile crossed her face as her eyes locked on something behind Hook. “My plan could not have failed,” Hook sneered, “unless...” “Unless someone intercepted the chocolates,” Harry said, dropping lightly to the deck behind Hook, barely disguising the venom in his tone. “Unless Tinker Vane ate them first.” He gently placed Tink’s still body on the planking, and glared at Hook, who grinned broadly back at him once the shock passed. “Nevertheless. She was not the intended target; however, she will do. She was quite infuriating enough.” “Save her.” “There is no antidote, you credulous fool! Nothing can save her now, nothing except...” A mumbled chant from the capstan interrupted him. “I do believe in fairies, I do...” A moment later the other boys took up the chant, and soon almost every voice joined them. And almost every eye was fixed on the shocked Hook. Ginny’s eyes were not. Then, suddenly, the belief reached critical mass. Tinker Vane gasped, drawing in a frenzied breath as the colour returned to her face. She was about to rise and lunge for Harry, who had his back turned, when she was swiftly crushed beneath a small and perfectly polished shoe. “Whoops,” said Ginny, nonchalantly. This was all she said for some time, for the deck erupted into a melee of quite savage proportions. The swirling battle had erased the evidence of Tink’s execution, and it was not until Ginny told Harry about Tink’s many attempts on her life that he began to suspect the truth. Under the circumstances, of course, he could not blame her, particularly as there was no proof; he forgot all about Tinker Vane within a day, and never thought of her again. They commandeered the Jolly Roger and sailed it around for a few days for a lark, occasionally bringing up food to the now rather seasick James Hook, chained up in the fo’csle. And then, only a week after the battle, Ginny took Harry aside and told him the words he had expected never to hear. “Harry, it’s time for us to go home. Nevael, Rohn and I, we are going. This evening. Will you join us on the flight?” He did, of course, and with great reluctance; but somehow, allowing her to leave Sometimesland for the first time in his life was something that to Harry mattered more than his amusement. And so that night they were back in the nursery, and were met by Nanfoot, who had maintained a constant vigil. And the Darlings found themselves with six children to spare; “They followed me home,” Ginny had said, gesturing to the lost boys. “May I keep them?” They met often at night over the following months, and over time Harry had more and more difficulty forgetting Ginny; while he did not wish to abandon Ginny, nor did he have any wish to abandon Sometimesland. And so they had compromised, spending most nights out flying together. It was after such a nightly excursion that they now alighted through the window of Ginny’s room, which she had to herself after her and her brothers’ earlier disappearance, as dawn broke on the horizon, Ginny holding Harry’s hand fondly. “You are sure you will not return with me?” he asked plaintively, but she shook her head. “I can’t,” she said sadly, “I must grow up. But you are perfectly welcome to remain here with me.” At this he shook his head; “No — I must not grow up. But...” Harry winced and frowned, his face contorting as a stab of unfamiliar pain assailed his jaw. He poked his thumb and forefinger inside and withdrew the small tooth that had shaken loose; already, he felt, a new and larger one was growing in to take its place. He stared in disbelief at the tooth. Ginny patted the bed beside her, casting a glance at Harry. “Please come here and sit down,” she said, and he did, though his face still bore a shocked expression. “Come, give me the tooth; put it under my pillow, and wait until morning; by then it will have transmuted into a gold sovereign.” Ginny leaned in and gently prodded his cheek. “Shall I kiss it and make it better?” Harry glanced up, confused, then nodded. She kissed him, on the cheek just above the ache. Then she kissed him again, on the mouth. Unfamiliar sensations flowed through him, thoughts and feelings he had never experienced. He returned the kiss awkwardly, stumbling a peck onto her smiling mouth. All children, except one, grow up. And, later that night, he did too. |
| Reviews 20 |
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