Harry Potter and the Secret Nurse

Life Out of Context

He woke up on the wooden floor in a bare room. The first thing he could see were the black jeans he was wearing and wondered when he bought them. He couldn\'t remember. The room was familiar, and not. It was completely bare with freshly painted off white walls and a hardwood floor. There was a wooden box next to him that was painted the same colour as the walls with a footprint on top of it. He stood and went to the window, he was in London, somewhere near downtown. There were music stores and movie theatres across the street. He ran his fingers through his messy hair, and something was missing. His glasses where missing, yet he could see perfectly.

\"Hey!\" came a very familiar voice from behind.

He turned and saw his old friend, looking very strange. He had clothes, good clothes that fit him well. A red T-shirt of a local rock band and a black sport jacket, his red hair was nearly down to his shoulders.

\"Ron?\"

\"Devon\'s looking for his cigarettes, did you see them in here?\" asked Ron.

\"I...,\" He didn\'t know what to say, then it was like he heard himself say, \"Tell him not to smoke in my fuckin\' room, it\'s disgusting!\"

\"Yeah, sure thing, SID,\" said Ron.

Calling him \"Sid\" was a put on, and that bothered him for some reason.

\"When are you going to cut your hair?\" he asked.

\"Don\'t you start mate,\" said Ron, \"You\'re beginning to sound like me mum.\"

Ron left. There were other voices coming in from the hall. It looked like there had been a party here last night. There were a few balloons on the ceiling and streamers hanging down. Then finally there was something familiar, his broom. He picked it up by the neck and held its weight so instinctively with him. He ran his finger down the neck, and heard music. This wasn\'t a Firebolt, or a Nimbus 2000, this was a Epiphone Goth Thunderbird IV Bass Guitar.
He knew this instrument, of course he did, he had known it for years. He held it, and played. His fingers knew what to do. Rifts came from him like spells, he just knew how to do it. Just as he started getting into it and losing himself in the music there was another interruption. A tall lumbering young man with short messy hair leaned in through the open door and knocked on the doorframe to get his attention.

\"Dan! Have you seen my cell phone?\" he asked.

\"What? I thought you said you didn\'t have a cell phone.\"

\"I told you last night I lost it,\" explained the tall young man..

\"Uhm, does it have a digital camera?\"

\"Yeah, that\'s it,\" said the tall young man, \"And it plays video games.\"

\"I think everyone\'s looking for it, but I haven\'t seen it.\"

\"Has anyone else said they\'ve seen it?\" asked the tall young man.

Going back to his guitar, he just shook his head no. That young man had called him Dan. Of course he called him Dan, he knew his name as well, it was Goyle, no wait, it was Josh. There was music in his head of what he wanted to play, but his hands were still not skilled enough to pull it off. Eventually he decided to put down the guitar and investigate what was going on. Something was muddling his mind, something was not right and he had to find out what it was.
Gently he put away his beloved instrument and went out into the hall. It was filled with people he knew, coming and going. Knowing their faces but not their names. Everyone was so friendly to him, but he just felt awkward and wanted something to cling to. There was Ron and he went right to him, not knowing what to say.

\"Emma\'s pissed at you,\" said Ron.

\"What\'d I do?\"

\"I don\'t know, just go apologize,\" said Ron.

\"Why should I?\"

\"Well for starters, she\'s bigger than you, mate,\" said Ron, \"And she\'s pretty mean with a lacrosse stick, just do it.\"

Ron just pointed to the other side of the hall, but there was no telling which door he was pointing to. After he grabbed a door handle, Ron just stopped and said;

\"Don\'t go in there, mate! Keith Richards is in there! There\'s probably all sorts of naked chicks in there and everything.\"

\"Well why the hell shouldn\'t we go in if it\'s full of naked birds?\"

Ron grabbed his shirt and pushed him over a few doors down. There was a room with a few girls inside, most of them completely unfamiliar, but finally one girl stood. The young woman he loved. With enormous relief he went up to her, but was stopped in his tracks as something was very wrong or different about her. She was wearing that black shirt with the tiger print that he knew, but there was something completely off about her. Her hair was very well kept, and she was looking down at him. This was NOT the woman he loved.

\"Since when have you been taller than me?\"

\"Dan!\" she said, \"I\'ve been taller than you since The Chamber of Secrets!\"

\"Yeah!\" Ron cut in, \"Remember they had to stand you on a box next to Emma? You fell off it and hit your head. You even re-enacted it last night at the party.\"

Last night? He couldn\'t remember anything about last night. It was a total blank to him. There were a lot of blanks. The least of which was where he was and how did he get there. Ron was laughing about something that happened the previous night and Emma just got mad and pushed Ron out in the hall, not being too forceful. Then she took him by the arm and led him to a bedroom where they would be alone. He knew by Emma\'s demeanour this was not going where he would like it to.

Emma slammed the door furiously and said, \"What where you doing last night?\"

He just ran his hand over his head, again thinking it was really odd there were no glasses on his face.

\"Honest to God, I just don\'t remember.\"

\"You\'re such a poser!\" said Emma, \"You want to fit in with your heroes across the hall. I know you only had two glasses of champagne last night. So don\'t tell me you were too drunk to remember!\"

\"Maybe I hit my head-\"

\"Maybe I\'ll hit your head in a minute if you don\'t stop pretending you\'re all strung out like Sid Vicious,\" said Emma, \"You had that talk with Gary Oldman, you WANT to wind up like Sid? There was nothing glamorous about his life. That DVD you keep watching that starred Gary in it just makes it look that way.\"

\"Whatever I did, I\'m sorry! Settle down, I\'m just a little confused, alright? This is all very new to me.\"

Emma just looked at him in a way that didn\'t look familiar at all, and was a little disturbing. She paced around him with her arms crossed until she reached the bed and sat on it, frowning at him.

\"It\'s not just you, Dan, I\'m worried for the whole franchise,\" said Emma, \"We\'re getting grown up now, we have to watch ourselves. Do you have any idea how much of a fuss the press would make if they caught \'Harry Potter\' having a drunken wild party in a flat with the Rolling Stones? They\'d have a fit!\"

\"That\'s not what happened!\"

\"I know, but you saying you can\'t remember last night doesn\'t help,\" said Emma, \"The Sun would blow a load out of that statement alone!\"

He sighed and then sat on the other side of the bed.

\"I\'ll be more careful, promise.\"

Emma stood up, keeping her eyes on him with a harsh glare and went over to a dresser where a small laptop sat. She picked it up and tossed it into his lap.

\"Do you call this being careful?\"

He looked at it and saw it was his Hewlett Packard he just bought that summer for himself.

\"My laptop! You found it. But what are you doing with it?\"

\"You\'re lucky I found it first,\" said Emma.

She pulled the lid open and hit the on button. The laptop queued up the last file that was open when the computer was shut down.

\"The Secret Nurse?\" Emma exclaimed.

\"I... hey! That stuff\'s private.\"

\"Well you should have hidden it a lot better than leaving your laptop in a room of giggling girls that would love to see what goes on in your head.\"

He went through the operating system. He knew all these files, he knew them all intimately. Movie scripts, cast of characters, spell lists, potions lists, Quiddich rules, places of the wizarding world, Wizarding SIMs, it was all there. The whole world, literally the entire wizarding world and what was known of it was there.

\"Somebody asked us to do something, uhm, we we\'re supposed to extrapolate how we thought things would turn out after the fight at the ministry of magic.\"

\"Yeah, Chris asked us,\" said Emma, who then grabbed him at the shoulders and shook him as she yelled, \"HE DIDN’T ASK US TO WRITE PORN YOU BERK!\"

\"I wasn\'t going to hand that in, that\'s private. I wrote about going to Sirius\' funeral, I just... I didn\'t like where it was going. It got depressing and dull. I just... I just don\'t think it\'s what a 16 year old would do for a summer.\"

\"Right, so it makes more sense for Harry Potter to fit image you made out. Drinking, passing out, cutting himself, and having sex like a... like... I don\'t know, screwing like mad rockers! Do you think it\'s fit for a kid\'s book?\"

\"No I ju- I don\'t think that most sixteen year olds, real ones, really live lives that are fit for kid\'s books.\"

\"Riiiight, and you know many sixteen year olds who do it like this?\" asked Emma, \"Chapter eleven? You made Hermione bisexual! Right out of the blue, where the hell did that come from? It’s just your wanking teenage fantasies, that\'s all this is.\"

He pulled the laptop away and said, \"Fine, just fantasies. Fine! But they\'re mine, so lay off. It\'s no business of yours to go peeking in my head.\"

\"Just keep it IN your head!\" said Emma, \"That\'s what I\'m saying. You lay it out like this and- cripes, the whole world will find out about it.\"

\"It\'s not like I posted it on the internet.\"

Emma kicked the bed and said, \"OH! You\'re so thick headed sometimes! I wish Joe never sent you that letter; it put ideas in your damn head. You better keep that laptop where no one will find it! If I catch you leaving it lying around in the open like at the party last night and I swear I\'ll chuck it out the window!\"

Emma was furious and stormed out of them room, slamming the door behind her. He sat there, utterly confused over what just happened. What letter was she talking about? He typed at the laptop thinking it was in his email, but as he sat the computer in his lap, he could feel something in his front pants pocket. He reached in and pulled out a weathered old piece of paper that was folded up. After opening it he read;

Dear Dan

I\'ll be announcing the release of book six this January. I just thought that you and Emma should have a heads up that in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince I have Harry and Hermione kiss each other. Since the kiss occurs at an extremely pivotal part of the story, not to mention the public attention it\'s bound to acquire, it\'s extremely likely the kiss will turn up in the film. Chris recommends you and Emma explore your feelings as to how this will affect the characters. I am excited about his idea on having both of you put these feelings into words and look forward to reading your essay, as your last one was quite brilliant.

In regards to your previous question, I think it\'s really unlikely Harry Potter will ever play a guitar or have a way to work it into the films. Sorry, I never gave a thought to including musical arts at Hogwarts. Good luck with your bass playing and keep it up.

Joe


As with most of the secure letters that came from Joe’s office, there was an official inscription on the bottom that read “Please destroy this letter when you’re through reading it. Thank you.” Dan folded the paper and put it back in his pocket. He let out a heavy sigh and let himself fall back onto the bed. He was so confused, he figured maybe it would relax him for a little to simply stare at the ceiling and let his mind go blank. A few moments passed, then he just raised his middle finger to the ceiling and said;

“Fuck’em! Fuck’em all if they can’t take a joke!”

That’ll show them, he thought, formulaic teenage angst. Real poignant. He curled up his knees and turned sideways on the bed. Maybe if he just shut his eyes for a while, he’d wake up on the right foot and the world would start making sense again. Before long, Emma was knocking on the door and shouting through it.

“Dan! I’m sorry I yelled at you. Dan! Dan, I locked the door accidentally. DAN! Don’t be this way, dammit. I left my purse in there! DAAAAAN!”