Dr. GrapeNut

Chapter 4


In a secret and by invitation-only chat room, Buzzkill was online and deep in planning the big wank attack. An operative in the field sent an urgent IM, “We have an unconfirmed report of a Lockhart List being posted.” Unbeknownst to Buzzkill, Fanny Wack had made good on her promise to Asphodellyn to send a list of critics whose opinions and reviews were not worth a dead flobberworm in an attempt to head off the potential damage their wank would cause once it was unleashed.

“Can we head it off and delete it before anyone sees it?” Buzzkill tried every evasive manoeuvre known to forum leaders.

“I don’t think so. It’s already being discussed on several forums.”

“Private ones?” Buzzkill was nothing if not an eternal optimist. That was usually the case excepting during long dry spells when there were no new hot Severus/Lucius/Hermione threesomes being written.

“No, unfortunately not.”

“Damn!” Buzzkill was not in the least deterred by this turn of events. She’d earned her sheriff badge. She was no two-bit deputy playacting a role. This was war and she was well-prepared. “Do we have any word on whose names are on this Lockhart List?” She already had a good idea, but wanted confirmation.

“Well, for starters you are, Buzzkill, and everyone on your F-list.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.” The reply sent a shock wave through the chat room. Fortunately, all were still present and accounted for once the initial uproar began to ebb.

“Ladies, restrain yourselves. Save the wank for where it will hurt the most. We’re still on course to unleash the biggest bout of fandom wank ever seen and no piddling Lockhart List is going to throw us off course. We can do this, ladies. I know it and I have the utmost faith in you. Let’s do this for Severus, all right?”

Back at CoqTease’s site, Mandragora tried to gain access to the locked areas. CoqTease had committed fandom suicide without turning the site over to a new admin or revealing the secret password. After several minutes of guessing, Mandragora managed to gain access to the private part of the site. Almost immediately, she noticed a lot of random scribbles, never before published or publicly acknowledged in any way, and all of them having to do with Severus and a certain part of his anatomy.

A sudden message flashed on Mandragora’s screen, “Who gave you permission to be in the admin threads?” Bludger, a fanatical Severus fan and leader of one of the special attack forces, had gained access to the admin portion of the site.

Mandragora did not have a clue how that had come to pass, but she questioned the intruder. “Who are you and what do you want?” She always loved to slip in quotes from the film versions of the books.

“Bludger’s the name and from that you can guess my game.” The font was huge and red. Mandragora considered for a moment asking her to tone it down, but decided the situation was already volatile enough. Bludger spoke up again before she could respond anyway. “I could ask you much the same thing. I was told to find CoqTease and yet I find you here. Who are you?” Bludger began scrolling through the files looking for anything that could be of use, but found nothing other than a few poorly executed drawings and a lot of practice wank.

Mandragora was incensed. She considered herself a long-time and thoroughly upstanding member and was being questioned as if she didn’t belong there. “I’ll have you know, sweet cheeks, I am Mandragora, a close confidante of CoqTease and an executive officer here at this site.”

“Well don’t that just make you someone special? How about you and me have a nice little chat about CoqTease? I’m dying to hear what all you know about her.”

“Normally, that would be a wonderful suggestion, but at the moment, I’m afraid I have a more pressing concern.” Mandragora had had a sudden insight into CoqTease’s madness. She’d read and reread the seemingly meaningless scribbles and in a flash she had an epiphany. She knew the secret incantation. “It’s vitally important that I get word through to my master. I am all but certain, well I hope I am reasonably close, at least on the right trail…”

“Get to the point, darling!”

“I know the secret incantation that could stop the Wank War! It’s a recurrent theme in her unpublished ramblings here. Don’t you know that she went off the deep end? She orchestrated this whole wank war herself. She’s crazy. Don’t you know that?” Frantically, she typed a message and frowned when she saw a little bar filling up with green blocks at the bottom of the screen. “Not now! For the love of Severus Snape and everything in the Potterverse don’t time out on me now!”

*Cannot find server* were the only words on an otherwise white screen.

“Aaahhhhhh!” Mandragora pounded her fists on the desktop before standing up and then banging her head against the wall. Some days, she honestly believed she was cursed. ‘They are out to get me,’ she thought to herself.

Meanwhile, back in a private chat room, Buzzkill discussed the damaged reputations of herself and the others caused by the leaked Lockhart List. Several of their sites and journals had received some blows, but none so serious as to knock them out of commission. Still, the very idea of someone publicly challenging the value of her stellar reviews irked her to no end. There would be hell to pay if she had anything to do about it and in fact, she did. She addressed the others, “All right ladies, we’ve all taken some serious hits to our reputations and received some nasty comments from people we don’t know. It goes without saying that many of our fine fics will be shamelessly flamed for no reason other than a petty low blow of retaliation. They think we can’t take it. They think we’re just going to go cower in a corner and play with our wands. Well, ladies, I say differently! Let them send hate mail to us! Let them flame our fics and leave scathing anonymous reviews! Let them write silly little Lockhart Lists and publish them all over the internet! None of that frightens me and do you know why? It’s because I know that we’re not out of this fight yet. Not all of our names are known far and wide and I know that some of us will easily fly under their radar and be able to deliver a blow where it hurts. We can still get this done and deliver a wank to end all wanks and there ain’t no stopping us now!” She gushed with enthusiasm.

At CoqTease’s former site, things were going from bad to worse. Bludger had started to delete all files and remove moderator privileges in preparation for closing down the whole site. Mandragora was incensed, but powerless to stop it. All she could do was sit and watch years of work go down the drain. “Why are you doing this, Bludger? Couldn’t you just delete the whole damn thing in one fell swoop and be done with it?”

“Nah, if I did it that way, it would be over too quickly!”

“This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?”

“I repeat my words from earlier…I could say much the same thing about you.” Bludger deleted the last file, and then deleted the entire forum. It was over. Bludger issues a blunt and somewhat unfriendly message to Mandragora, “If you want to discuss any of what just happened here, follow this link to another forum.” Bludger shakes her head in disgust. ‘They were perverts, sexual deviants, every last one of them and CoqTease was easily the worst of the lot. They were right to close this forum down. Merlin only knows what evils they might have unleashed otherwise. I bet that Mandragora is one, too. Hell, she even admitted it just a few minutes earlier!’

Mandragora sensed that she was being accused of something and followed the link. She demanded, “What the hell is going on here? You hack into our site, delete everything and then delete the whole site without even giving me a reason why you did so?” She couldn’t believe it had happened. Though part of her was still numb, the anger was rising furiously.

Bludger explained, “I just did what I was told to do. I was told to get CoqTease online to have a little tête-à-tête with Fanny Wack. That’s why I went looking and hacked my way in. I was trying to find CoqTease but what do I find? A whole load of really bad and perverted sick smut, that’s what”

“We didn’t write that! We were being spammed!” Mandragora tried to explain, but had the unnerving suspicion that everything she said was being ignored.

“I think CoqTease knew it was you doing all of this and tried to stop you, only you beat her to the punch and locked her out of her own site so you could use it for your own perverted and nefarious ends!”

“Oh bollocks!” Snape’s anger right after Dumbledore refused to expel James Potter and Sirius Black following the Prank was nothing compared to what Mandragora felt at that moment. “How about you let me talk to Fanny Wack? I’m second in command after CoqTease.”

“You’re a pervert!”

“I am a respected member of the fandom, a renowned writer and a prolific poster. If you don’t let me speak with Fanny Wack, believe me when I’m through with you, you’ll be lucky if you are allowed to join a Tales of Trelawney archive or write snippets for a Dudley Dursley Does Devon screenplay on an amateur video site! Do I make myself clear?”

Reluctantly, Bludger agreed to allow Mandragora to attempt to contact Fanny Wack. “I’ll let you send one invitation to an IM session, but if you start writing anything perverted, you’re out of here in a flash! Got that?”

Mandragora sent a request for an IM to Fanny Wack, but was splinched before she could ask anything. “Password? But I already entered a password?” She typed furiously, but felt she was on the road to nowhere. “What do you mean ‘password does not match’? That’s ridiculous.” Mandragora realised she would not gain entrance into the chat room and tried to reason with Bludger for assistance. “I’m gonna need your help on this.”

“What can I do? I can’t log you in from here.” Bludger was still deeply suspicious of Mandragora, believing her to be a pervert who spams sites with poorly written dubious consent fics.

Somehow, somewhere, someone must have done something. Fanny Wack got word about the recall incantation and immediately issued it on every forum to which she belonged. She believed a major crisis had been averted at the very last minute. She posted the good news and celebrations began to break out far and wide across the fandom, at least among members of that forum who were online at that moment. LoveBug immediately penned and posted a drabble of grateful thanks on behalf of the fandom faithful everywhere to mark the occasion.

Thank Merlin for this hallowed deliverance from pitiful fics and asinine writers. You have seen fit to deliver us from written depravity and afford the opportunity to read and salivate over quality smut in outstanding fics for now and all eternity. Yay! We have seen horrid fics threaten our ship and have fought off traitors from within. We have upheld our convictions and laboured day and night so that the fics we write will be enjoyed by all. We will remember this moment. Future fans will take stock of what we have done and remark, “This was their finest hour.”

The ensuing mass squee-age was rudely cut short by a sudden comment from a thoroughly irate Asphodellyn Wormwood. She told Fanny Wack in no uncertain terms that one of the assault groups has not been neutralised. “Hey, a group of your wank warriors hasn’t stopped. We have reason to believe that they intend to launch a wank war at Barclay’s.”

Fanny Wack turned to LoveBug, “I thought all the groups received the recall incantation and had turned back? What’s going on? Who didn’t get the message?”

LoveBug, secretly thrilled that one of the groups was still active and that the Wank War would go on as planned, could barely contain her glee. “Well, maybe one of the groups was offline. I mean, like Widgy reminded us earlier, some people do pursue activities offline.” Laughing and singing under her breath she made a few inquiries from her own sources, and then switched back to Fanny Wack. “It’s Buzzkill’s group. She probably hasn’t heard since none of them have been in chat for awhile and we can’t get through to them.”

Asphodellyn was enraged. “What do you mean you can’t get through to them? You can send an IM, can’t you? What about sending an e-mail? Doesn’t someone have an actual phone number you could call and put a stop to this nonsense?”

LoveBug became very suspicious and just couldn’t leave well enough alone. “I think it’s a trap, a big old dub-con trap, if you ask me. I know a rat when I smell one and I smell one right now! I mean, what if this Asphodellyn is lying about a group of wank warriors getting through? We back down now and we’re sitting ducks. That’s just asking to be bombarded with a bevy of bad fics!”

Fanny Wack was ready to sacrifice Buzzkill if it would save the fandom from the Doomsday Fic being published. “Look, Asphodellyn, all you need to do is send your entire F-List to head them off. Get all the admins at that site online and delete flames as they come in. Throw everything you have at that one site and everything should be all right. I mean, you ought to be able to rally enough buddies to defend one site, right?”

“You want me to take care of the problem that your buddies caused?”

“Look, it doesn’t benefit either one of us if the Doomsday Fic is published. Neither of us wants that. I’m sorry that this group of wank warriors somehow flew under the radar and is trying to engage you in a wank exchange at Barclay’s.”

Asphodellyn went ballistic and typed some unforgivable words.

“Asphodellyn calm down! Don’t go crazy on me. That serves no purpose and doesn’t do a damn thing about the problem at hand. I’ve told you…all you need to do is launch everything you have at that one site and the problem will be eliminated. What more can I do? I’ve even given you all their screen names! Throw everything at that one site and you can’t miss!”

Unbeknownst to all of them, however, Buzzkill realised that someone had advance notice of the pending attack at Barclay’s and decided that it might be far more advantageous to attack where it would be least expected. “Ladies, I think a change of plans is in order. I know we all want to unleash some wicked wank and well, I think word may have been leaked as to which site we would target. We haven’t gone this far only to pull out now! No, we will complete what we started and reach a satisfying climax. I believe it’s in our best interests to alter our target and go after Collywobbles instead. They’ll never see us coming. We can all sneak right in there, unleash some wicked wank and be safely out of there before they even know what hit them!”