TBAY: Peter Doesn't Get The Girl

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40459

Elkins pauses outside of the door to the lecture hall in the basement 
of the Canon Museum, biting nervously at her lower lip and toying 
with the black market time-turner that she wears on a chain around 
her neck.

"Now this isn't one of those sorry things like the Ministry has on 
offer," the dubious fellow Elkins had met loitering outside of one of 
the more disreputable shops in Hypothetic Alley had explained to 
her.  "Not one of those piddling hour-by-hour deals.  This is a 
Yellow Flag Special, this is.  This baby can take you back days, you 
get me?  *Weeks* even, you wanna take that risk."

"Risk?" Elkins had asked.  "Um, yeah.  So...uh, what kind of, er, 
risks are we talking about here?"

"Oh, you know." The man had shrugged.  "The usual.  You interested or 
not?"

Under ordinary circumstances, Elkins wouldn't have been interested.  
But these are not ordinary circumstances.  Far from it.  Ever since 
the Memory Charm Symposium, something seems to have gone terribly 
wrong with her ability to remember things clearly.  She has been 
troubled by these terribly disturbing thoughts.  Well, more like 
images, really.  *Visions,* perhaps.  In one of them, she is 
screaming at the top of her lungs, while waving Cindy's Big Paddle 
about in the air.  In another, there are pieces of paper falling 
about her like snow.  Snack foods, flying through the air. 
Splintering wood.  And then there's the one...

But, no.  Elkins shakes her head.  That one doesn't even bear 
thinking about. It's just too ludicrous, really.  There is just No 
Way that she actually *broke* Cindy's Big Paddle.  She would *never* 
have done a thing like that.  For one thing, it would have been 
utterly out of character.  For another...well, if she'd really done 
such a rash and ridiculous thing, surely Cindy would have *killed* 
her.  Wouldn't she?

And then there's the one in which she's on some kind of movie set.  
Elkins just doesn't know *what* to make of that one.

Elkins does know, of course, that sometimes it is best just to let 
the past lie dormant.  She's said so herself, many a time.  But she 
just can't help herself.  She *has* to find out what really happened 
that night.

Now, though, reeling and nauseated and dizzy from the experience of 
jumping all the way back to the night of the Memory Charm Symposium, 
Elkins is beginning to think that this was probably a really *stupid* 
idea.  Her vision is blurry, the Yellow Flag Special feels unusually 
heavy around her neck, and she desperately wishes that she had never 
noticed the legend "ACME" printed in peeling gold flake across its 
base.

Oh, stop being such a wuss, she tells herself crossly.  It's only 
time travel, after all.  What could possibly go wrong?

As if on cue, Lucius Malfoy stalks through the door to the lecture 
hall, reaching for his wand.

Elkins, who has spent the past three months or so living in the 
basement of the Canon Museum specifically in the hopes of avoiding 
just such a confrontation, gasps and cringes back against the wall, 
but the man doesn't seem to notice her at all.  His cold grey eyes, 
narrowed in slits of fury, are fixed on the stairs at the end of the 
corridor.  As he sweeps past, Elkins thinks that she hears him 
muttering something about slanderous accusations.

She sags against the wall, gasping for air. 

Okay, she thinks.  That was not good.  But Malfoy never attended the 
Memory Charm Symposium, did he?  She doesn't remember seeing him 
there.  Could she have overshot somehow?  Is this even the right 
*night?*

Where's a convenient calendar when you need one? Elkins wonders 
irritably, right before she remembers that here in the Canon Museum, 
the header of the post to which one is replying is almost always to 
be found written on the wall somewhere close at hand.  After a 
moment's scrutiny of the wall, she finds the graffito, scrawled in 
red ink.

"Message 39000," the byline reads.  "Wed May 22, 2002. 3:23 
pm.  'Theory Bay -- What is going on? -- I'm leaving LOLLIPOPS.'"

May 22?  Was that right?  Elkins just can't remember.

Even though she knows that she's not supposed to allow herself to be 
seen, she risks a peek around the doorframe and into the lecture hall.

The Memory Charm Symposium does indeed seem to be over, but it can't 
have been over for too long.  The place is still a mess: cheese whiz 
and kool-aid everywhere, chairs and lectern reduced to splinters of 
wood.  At first glance, the room seems to be empty, but then Elkins 
spots motion.  She ducks back out of the doorway and presses herself 
against the wall.

"Well, Peter," she hears Eileen's voice commenting from somewhere 
within the empty lecture hall. "We meet again." 

Why, it's Eileen! Elkins thinks.  And Mr. Pettigrew!  My friends.  My 
old friends.

"Did you really think you could postpone this moment forever?" Eileen 
is demanding.  "Did you really think that you could mislead us with 
stories of Severus's undying passion for Lily? It was you who started 
that story, wasn't it?" 

Elkins' eyes widen.  Oh, she thinks.  So Eileen's going *here,* is 
she?

Well!  About time, really.  About time.

"Do you want to know, Peter," Eileen purrs lazily.  "When I began to 
be suspicious?"

The congruity of names, Elkins thinks.  Certainly the congruity of 
names was what first started her own mind working down those 
passages, and given Eileen's passion for LotR, that must have been it 
for her as well: the congruity of names between JKR's "Wormtail" and 
JRR's "Wormtongue."  

We do know, after all, that JKR is herself vulnerable to the 
associative power of naming.  And it's clear enough that she has been 
subconsciously influenced by Tolkien.  We see it in every hair of 
Albus Dumbledore's beard, in every twinkle of his eyes, in that "Ware 
Balrog" sign that Pip once noticed stuck to his back.  We see it in 
the name "Longbottom."  And we see it in the name "Wormtail," so 
desperately reminiscent of "Wormtongue."

Ah, yes.  Grima Wormtongue, whose price for betrayal was the woman 
that he had long secretly desired, long watched furtively with those 
heavy-lidded eyes -- a physical descriptor which JKR, strangely 
enough, seems to have subconsciously replicated and yet displaced 
onto the Ever So Sexy Mrs. Lestrange.  Wormtongue, the corrupted 
advisor.  Wormtongue, who confronted with the evidence of his crimes 
first denies everything and then grovels pitifully.  Wormtongue, the 
archetypical ill-used sycophant.  The avatar of the Worm Who Turns 
Too Late.

Blessed Grima Wormtongue, the Patron Saint of SYCOPHANTS.

"It was the whole tEWWW EWWW tEWW be trEWWW affair," Eileen is 
explaining.  "It seemed out of character for Snape and Voldemort..." 

Yes.  Elkins nods with satisfaction.  Eileen is right.  The "TEWWW 
EWWW" theory had never really worked very well for her back when it 
had Snape cast in its leading role.  Peter, on the other hand...

Well, yes.  Yes, that could work.  It could work quite well.

If we rework TEWW EWWW To Be TREWWW so that it is *Peter,* rather 
than Snape, who was offered Lily as his prize, then everything begins 
to fit together.  It explains why Voldemort hesitated for only that 
split second before cheerfully slaughtering Lily.  After all, if he'd 
really promised her to some *competent* Death Eater, one with some 
genuinely useful *skills,* then one might think that he would have 
thought twice before deciding not to follow through on his promise.
It's not as if he couldn't have stunned Lily, or bound her, or 
Imperio'd her -- or in fact done anything at all to her that he 
liked, as apparently at the time she was either engaged in a 
fiendishly clever little bit of manipulation to arrange her own 
maternal sacrifice, or merely doing an excellent impersonation of 
Hermione's infamous "are you a witch or aren't you?" performance from 
the end of PS/SS.  She wasn't doing anything to protect herself.  She 
wasn't doing very much of anything at all, in fact, other than 
screaming and begging and carrying on like a Weak Woman.  So why 
wouldn't Voldemort have actually followed through, if he had 
really promised her to someone with useful talents, like Snape?

Ah, but if he had promised her to *Peter?*  Weak, snivelling, 
eminently bulliable little Peter Pettigrew?  Well, that would be 
different, wouldn't it?  Pettigrew's usefulness resided solely in his 
connection with the Potters and their circle. By his act of betrayal, 
he had already outlived his usefulness, so what would be the point in 
rewarding him at all?  His devotion was no longer required.  So it
would really be far more entertaining, from Voldemort's point of 
view, just to kill Lily and have done with it.

Peter does, after all, have this amazing ability to lead others to 
underestimate just how dangerous his disloyalty can be, does he not?

It also explains why Peter never sought out Voldemort until he felt 
that he had absolutely no other option.  Sirius claims that this was 
because he never did anything unless there was something in it for 
him, but it's really rather more complicated than that, isn't it?  
There's a lot more going on.  Voldemort *betrayed* Peter.  He 
promised him the woman he desired.  And then he killed her instead.

Small wonder that Voldemort does not trust Peter's loyalty!  And 
small wonder that Peter himself seems so mistrustful of Voldemort's 
likelihood of keeping his promises this time around.  From Peter's 
perspective, you see, Voldemort has a really lousy track record when 
it comes to this kind of thing.

In fact, right after Voldemort's rebirth, when maimed Pettigrew gasps 
out his reminder of some "promise" to his unimpressed master, is he 
really referring to a current event at all?  We have all naturally 
assumed that Voldemort must have promised Pettigrew some reward in 
exchange for the sacrifice of his hand.  But the words can be read 
differently.  It could be that what Peter was really trying to say 
there was: "Don't hold my past disloyalty against me.  You promised 
me Lily, and you reneged.  Surely you can understand why I might have 
been a bit faithless, under the circumstances?  So come on, be a 
sport, won't you?  *I* sure have.  Don't make me bleed to death here 
in this creepy graveyard, okay?"

Lily's death would also explain the depths of Peter's self-hatred, 
all of his self-destructive tendencies, his apparent fondness for 
dramatic acts of symbolic self-castration.  Oh, yes, he's just a mass 
of Freudian conflict, Peter is!  Just look at what he does in the 
wake of the Potters' deaths, once he is faced with the truth of what 
he has done.  What does he do when Voldemort has betrayed him by 
reneging on his side of the bargain and then vanishing, leaving him 
with no allies at all?

He frames Sirius, that's what!  Sirius, Harry's godfather.  Sirius, 
who served as Best Man at James and Lily's wedding.  Sirius, who 
was "inseparable" from James himself.  It is a pragmatic act -- 
Sirius is, after all, the person Dumbledore believes to be the 
Potters' Secret Keeper -- but is it not also a highly *symbolic* one?

And how about that pointer finger, eh?  Peter really didn't need to 
cut off his own *finger.*  Any identifying marker would have done 
just as well.  And even if he did feel that leaving behind a finger 
was necessary to make the evidence for his own death seem 
incontrovertible, surely any sane person would still rather lose a 
pinky, say?  Or a ring finger?  Not a pointer finger, and certainly 
not the pointer finger of ones *good* hand.

It's an insane choice, viewed from any rational perspective.  But 
place it in the context of a grief-crazed Pettigrew who *knows* the 
nature of his sin, and it all begins to make sense.  For in truth, we 
all know what a pointer finger represents, don't we?  Everybody 
sniggered back when Nancy Stouffer claimed that Peter's missing
finger represented his "inability to make a point," and well they 
should have!  Because we all know what a pointer finger *really* 
represents.  All good Freudians know *that.*

If thy right pointer finger offend thee, cut it off.

Eeeee-yup.  Peter indulged himself in a little act of symbolic self-
emasculation on that street corner, all right.  Perhaps he felt that 
it was an act of atonement.  Perhaps he wanted to make the self-
punishment fit the crime.

And indeed, ever since then he's been quite the little castrati.  
We've talked a bit about all the ways in which JKR exempts Pettigrew 
from the hurt-comfort dynamic -- by making his suffering grotesque 
and repulsive, by showing him as utterly lacking in pride or dignity, 
and so forth -- but really, it goes even deeper than that.  No one 
crushes on Pettigrew.  *No one.*  That is because the text goes out 
of its way to mark him as fundamentally sexless.  He is soft and 
balding, like a palace eunuch.  He cowers sobbing on the floor like 
an "oversized, balding baby," an infantalizing description which is 
also an inherently degendering one.  Pettigrew's behavior codes as 
neither masculine nor effeminate, but as neuter.  Or perhaps we 
should say as *neutered.*  As Scabbers, his primary descriptors 
are "fat" and "lazy."  These are the words that we use to describe a 
castrated male animal.  It is how we describe a pet who has been 
*fixed.*

Elkins nods to herself and returns her attention to the conversation 
underway in the lecture hall.  She's clearly missed some of Eileen's 
cross-examination while she has been musing: from the sound of his 
wheezing, Peter seems to be practically on the verge of snivelling 
now.  In spite of herself, Elkins frowns.  Although she is certainly 
all prepared to hop on board with this theory, she can't help but 
feel a bit put off by Eileen's methodology.  Really, she thinks 
disapprovingly.  I mean, honestly!  Is it really necessary to extract 
a *confession* out of the poor little rat?  As if he doesn't already 
get enough of this sort of treatment in the canon, we're now going to 
start subjecting him to it here in the *Bay,* as well?

Eileen's gone all Tough and Steely, Elkins concludes sadly.  It must 
have been all of that CRAB CUSTARD that did it to her.

"Mr. Pettigrew," she is saying, in her new Tough and Steely 
way.  "I've read Prisoner of Azkaban. I've also read Goblet of Fire. 
I know more of your post-1981 behaviour than Mr. Black does, I assure 
you. And... well, you couldn't look him in his eyes, could you? You 
could bind him to the stone, cut him, stand by while Voldemort 
tormented him, but you just couldn't look into those green eyes."

No.  Elkins nods once more.  No, he couldn't force himself to look 
into those green eyes, could he?  Was there really a little bit of 
life debt troubling his conscience there in the graveyard, as we have 
been led to conclude?  Some nagging bit of scruple, perhaps, imposed 
by a strange mystical bond?

Well...perhaps.  Perhaps.  But the graveyard is hardly the *only* 
place that Peter has exhibited such reluctance to look Harry in the 
eyes, is it?  In fact, he shows that same reluctance even before he's 
accumulated any burdensome life debt at all.  He never once faces 
Harry in the Shrieking Shack until the very end, when he has already 
checked everyone else in the room off on his Supplication List.  And 
even then he is reluctant.  He hesitates, he "turned his head 
slowly."  He is far more willing to clasp Harry's knees or to grovel 
at his feet than he is to look directly into those familiar emerald 
green eyes...

And when he finally does bring himself to do so...well, just look at 
the masterpiece of misdirection that he delivers: 
"Harry...Harry...you look just like your father...just like him..."

Ah, yes.  Well.  Snape always harps on Harry's resemblance to his 
father too, doesn't he?  And yet we all know what's really eating 
away at *him,* right?

With a thrill of sick horror, Elkins suddenly notices that a lollipop 
has suddenly appeared in her left hand.  She gasps, then tosses the 
nasty sticky sugary thing off to one side, shuddering uncontrollably.

Oh, she thinks.  Oh, that was close.  Close call, there.  Too close 
for comfort. 'Waaaaay too close.  

But still.  Still, still, still.  Still and all.  If this 
misdirection ploy is good enough for Snape Loved Lily, then surely it 
is also good enough for Peter Loved Lily.  After all, as we all know, 
Severus Snape is nothing but Peter Pettigrew, through the looking 
glass.

Yes, it's clearly misdirection, all of this "your father"ing that 
Pettigrew gets up to in the Shrieking Shack.  He knows full well that 
if Sirius and Remus come to suspect, even to *suspect,* even for a 
split-second, the true nature of his nasty little arrangement with 
Voldemort, they will blast him into tiny pieces right there on the 
spot.  He's not taking that chance.  He's not going to risk using 
Lily's name at *all,* not right there, not under the circumstances.  
Peter knows that he's useless when it comes to hiding his emotions.  
He knows that if he even once speaks her name, his voice will betray 
him.

As indeed, his words very nearly do.  Consider this line, for example:

"Harry, James wouldn't have wanted me killed...James would have 
understood, Harry..."

He would?  James would have *understood?*  Understood what, for 
heaven's sake? Cowardice?  Self-interest?  Betrayal?

No.  James would not have understood.  That is because James was 
*heroic.*  In fact, James was so tediously and irritatingly and 
*boringly* heroic that not one reader has ever confessed to having a 
crush on him.  James would never have understood such motivations.  
But one thing that even he, one thing that even the Ever So 
Infuriatingly Virtuous James Potter might have understood?  

Even *he* might have understood how it must feel to be haunted, 
obsessed, tormented, *consumed* by the fires of passion for the 
lovely young Lily.  

After all, he married her.

Ah, yes.  Misdirection.  

The favored pasttime of so very many notable SYCOPHANTS.  

And there's more, too!  There's ever so much more!

Just listen to Peter whine, as he tries to justify his behavior in 
the Shrieking Shack.  "I was scared...I was never brave...He forced 
me...He would have killed me..."

Uh-huh.  Cowardice.  It's a feeble defense, but not an altogether 
unappealing one.  It inspires disgust, but it can also inspire pity, 
even sometimes sympathy.  Who among us, after all, has never felt 
terribly afraid?

But is that *really* what lay at the heart of Peter's betrayal?  
Peter, you will note, is a *liar.*  He is a liar in fear for his 
life.  And while cowardice is indeed shameful, there are forms of 
venality far less likely to inspire pity, far more likely to warrant 
summary execution at the hands of ones erstwhile friends.

Could Peter's confessions of rank cowardice be merely a cover?  A 
cover for something even less forgivable?  Could his true weakness 
never have been cowardice at all, but rather *lust?*

Really, how could anyone miss all of the clues we have been given to 
show us that Peter had a thing for Lily?  Just look at his weakness 
for red-heads!  Just look at what he does after Voldemort's fall!  He 
retreats into his animagus form to hide himself away both from his 
erstwhile DE colleagues and from any of Dumbledore's people who might 
come to suspect him.  He seeks out a wizarding family to adopt so 
that he might stay abreast of important events in the wizarding 
world.  He somehow manages to ingratiate himself to a young Percy 
Weasley, and is then taken into the bosom of the family.  All well 
and good.

But why on earth would he choose the *Weasleys?*

Now admittedly, Peter probably didn't stand much chance of getting in 
with some snooty old family like the Malfoys, not with his 
unprepossessing appearance and all, but surely he could have found a 
family somewhat more usefully placed than Arthur Weasley's.  Arthur 
Weasley works in Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, for heaven's sake!  
Wouldn't the family of some lower eschelon worker in one of the more 
directly active branches of law enforcement have made a somewhat 
better choice?  The family of someone who files away reports on 
contemporary Dark activities, perhaps?  Someone who might know 
something useful about the at-large Death Eaters, or about Voldemort's
current status, or about continuing intelligence into the entire 
affair?  Someone who deals with something slightly more relevant than 
enchanted *tea sets,* for heaven's sake?

But the instant that Peter laid eyes on his first Weasley, he just 
couldn't resist. Of course he couldn't!  Not with all of that red 
hair.  That red hair.  Just like *hers.*

No, Harry's eyes aren't the only thing that touches on Pettigrew's 
weakness.  The Weasley hair does it to him as well.  Just look at how 
he treats Ron when he makes his escape at the end of _PoA._  He sends 
the kid into some kind of magically-induced coma.  He could have 
killed him.  He could have hurt him.  But he doesn't, in spite of the 
fact that he has to take Ron out *quickly,* and in spite of the fact 
that Ron refused to speak so much as a *word* in his defense back 
there in the Shack.  There's no life debt *there,* that's for sure.  
Ron just won't go to bat at all for poor Peter in the Shack, will 
he?  He recoils in disgust, he all but kicks the man in the face, 
and this in spite of three years of loyal (if somewhat uninspired) 
pet duty.  Why, Peter even bit Goyle for Ron once, and Goyle was 
really a whole *lot* bigger than he was at the time.  But is Ron 
appreciative?  Hah!  Little ingrate.

And yet Peter treats him gently enough, all things considered.  In 
fact, given that Ron has a broken leg, and that Peter is abandoning 
the lot of them to the mercies of Werewolf!Lupin, his treatment of 
Ron is downright merciful.  The boy is sure to be eaten no matter 
what happens, but at least this way, he will be spared the terror 
and the pain of the experience.  It's far more consideration than Ron 
was willing to show to Peter, that's for sure.

Yup.  It's gotta be that red hair.  How could Peter bring himself to 
harm directly a boy with hair so much like hers?  

The sound of her own name startles Elkins out of her reverie.

"...Elkins will be applying Cruciatus," Eileen is saying hurredly, a 
new note of nervousness in her voice, "the rest will be pouring 
Veritaserum down my throat, and putting me under Imperius.  They 
might even time-travel to revisit our conversation..."

Elkins starts guiltily, one hand reaching up to cover the Yellow Flag 
Special around her neck.

"Whatever the correct answer to our memory charm speculations..."

Elkins relaxes and tunes out again.  Just more memory charms, she 
thinks.  Whatever.

Elkins is sick to death of memory charms.

Instead, she ponders once again that old old question of precisely 
who *was* kissing Florence behind the greenhouses.

According to "Peter Gets The Girl," it was Peter, snogging it up with 
the future Mrs. Lestrange, and it was Peter who hexed Bertha Jorkins 
as well.  Bertha Jorkins' appearance in the Pensieve scene of _GoF_ 
thus serves as a powerful message from Dumbledore's subconscious
mind: "Hey, dummy," it is trying to tell him.  "The one responsible 
for Bertha's disappearance is *Peter Pettigrew.*  Don't you remember 
how he hexed her, back in his student days?  Yeah, well, he's done it 
again."

All well and good.  But what "Peter Gets the Girl" has never quite 
answered to Elkins' satisfaction is *why* Peter would have hexed nosy 
Bertha Jorkins for teasing him about kissing a girl.  Wouldn't a 
chubby little bottom-feeder like Peter kind of *like* it for 
everyone to know that he'd actually managed to kiss a real live girl?

Well.  Not if he was in love with Lily, he wouldn't.  Not if she 
wasn't yet involved with James.  Not if he'd been hoping that might 
someday have a chance with her.  Not if his tete-a-tete with Florence 
was just his way of passing time while he was carefully laying all 
the groundwork for getting in good with Lily by playing up that 
entire hapless "poor Peter never gets a date" schtick for all it was 
worth.  Not if he had based his entire *strategy* on the premise of 
his own romantic helplessness.

Oh, yeah.  Bertha just *ruined* Peter's strategy there, giving the 
game away that he actually *was* capable of finding female 
companionship when he wanted it.  Undercutting all of 
that "Hopelessly Devoted Admirer Who Will NEVER Get A Date With 
Anyone Else" stuff that he'd been feeding to sympathetic soft-touch
"Lily-Was-Nice" Lily.  Giving the show away that dear little "Oh, I 
can talk to *you* about this, Peter, because you're not *like* all 
the other boys, Peter" Pettigrew really was "just like all the other 
boys" after all.  After finding out that Peter had been snogging 
Florence behind the greenhouses, was Lily ever going to give way to 
the temptation to let him have just one sympathy...uh, hug?

Nope.  Not a chance.  Bertha just ruined Peter's entire strategy, she 
did.  And he didn't forget that, either.  Not by a long shot.

Canon, Elkins thinks.  Is there canon?

Why, yes!  There is!  _GoF,_ very first chapter:

"'A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, 
Wormtail -- though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful 
she would be when you caught her, were you?'

'I--I thought she might be useful, My Lord--'

'Liar,' said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more 
pronounced than ever."

Mmmmmm.  A curious question, that?  Why on earth *did* Pettigrew 
think to bring Bertha Jorkins all the way to Voldemort, rather than 
just, say, killing her himself to ensure her silence?  Why go to all 
the trouble to drag her into the woods and introduce her to his 
vaporous Dark Lord?

Can you say, 'Payback?'

Because this isn't precisely 'Peter Gets the Girl.'  This is 'Peter 
DOESN'T Get the Girl,' and the fact that Peter never got the girl 
ruined his entire *life,* and as far as he's concerned, Bertha 
Jorkins was partially to blame for that.  If she hadn't ruined his 
chances with Lily, after all, perhaps then he never would have become 
so *bitter,* so *twisted,* so willing to throw his lot in with 
Voldemort just to--

"Kill me, and they'll find out eventually!"  Eileen's voice has now 
risen in something that sounds distressingly akin to panic.  Elkins 
blinks, then frowns. "I think Elkins very nearly had it once, and the 
others are hot on your trail.  I promise," gulps Eileen.  "I 
promise.  I'll get them not to tell Harry, if you leave me alive."  

Elkins winces.  So much for the new and improved Tough 'n' Steely 
Eileen, she thinks.  Oh, well.  Stands to reason.  After all, we 
SYCOPHANTS can hardly ever maintain that demeanor.  Not, at any rate, 
for any significant length of time.

"Why should you believe me?" asks Eileen.  "Well, I'm a Gryffindor."

There is a rather awkward silence.

"Oh," Eileen whispers.  "I see. Right. I just didn't see it ending 
this way.  CINDY!" she screams suddenly.  "CINDY, THERE'S A DE 
MURDERING ME IN THE BASEMENT! AND I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE TO 
RELAX IN OUR NEW CANON SUPPORTED MATCHING ARMCHAIR! HELP!"

Elkins can hear the sound of footsteps pounding their way down the 
stairs.  She glances up and down the corridor, bites her lip, and 
then reaches up to the Yellow Flag Special around her neck.

"Sorry, Eileen," she whispers, and turns it, five times fast.

Elkins, you see, has never once been in any danger of being sorted 
Gryffindor.

She finds herself abruptly -- far too abruptly -- back in June.  The 
museum is quiet and empty.  The floors seem to have been polished 
fairly recently.  There is no graffiti on the walls.  Elkins staggers 
weakly up the stairs and out the door, into the nearby Garden of Good 
and Evil.  She stands motionless for a moment, staring blankly at the
sundial in the middle of the garden ("It is later than you think"), 
and then falls to her knees to be violently sick into one of the 
rosebushes.  

As she disentangles her hair from one of the thorns, she hears 
newcomer User Google, musing out loud:

"Will Wormtail Pull A Gollum?" 

Elkins coughs and wipes the back of her hand across her mouth.

"A Gollum?" she repeats to herself.  "A *Gollum?*"

She shakes her head. 

"Nah," she says.  "Way too obvious."



-- Elkins, always happy to light a single candle to Grima Wormtongue, 
the Patron Saint of SYCOPHANTS


For an explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, visit
Hypothetic Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%
20Files/hypotheticalley.htm 
and Inish Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
method=reportRows&tbl=13