hh_mirror | The Hat marries people, yo. (Open to those who signed up)

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The Hat marries people, yo. (Open to those who signed up)

One bright Hogwarts morning, fliers with small, numbered Hat-shaped plastic tokens are sent out to a select group of students via house elf. “Your presence is required at an Awards Ceremony in the Great Hall tonight,” the flier states. “Attendance is mandatory. Formal dress is required. Prizes will be given.”

And so, at the appointed time, the students are ushered into the Great Hall. It has been lavishly decorated for the occasion: streamers, flowers, a champagne fountain, the works. At the front of the hall sits the Sorting Hat, likewise decorated in a wreath of flowers and lots of bling. It sits imperiously and waits until everyone has taken a seat and the beautifully decorated doors have been closed and barred.

“My dear students,” it begins, “we are gathered here today for a wonderful ceremony. A ceremony of magic and beauty, and it is my privilege to be here with you. Now, before you can get your wonderful awards--” here one of the Hat's folds dips in what might have been a wink on something with a face--”are you all carrying your special prize tokens?” It waits for a little longer while the attending house elves (all carrying bouquets of multicolored flowers) check to ensure that yes, everyone in the room has one on their person. “Wonderful! By the power vested in me by the Board of Education, I now pronounce you married!”

Before the shock and outrage can set in, the Hat rushes into the next part of its speech. “No use getting upset, it's legal now! This place has become a haven for loose morals, and you're helping to fix that! Don't worry about your belongings, you won't have to spend a second sweating and becoming undesirable for your new spouses! While you've been here, the house elves have moved your sundries out to your new homes for you, isn't that nice of them? They've even been allowed to charm your new homes so that you can't remove your objects from them! Let's hear it for the house elves!” It doesn't pause for applause. “Now, I'll let you happy newlyweds get to the business of consummating your new relationships in the name of ~~duck waffles~~ procreation. Your tokens are numbered with your new addresses, and a map has been provided at the door. Don't try to run, the ushers have been provided with cattle prods and given the permission to use them.” The Hat waves a strap at one terrified-looking bouquet-holding elf near the front, who pulls a cattle prod out of the flowers and waves it around. “And now, onward! Onward to happy families! Onward to El Mundo Del Sombrero!”

The doors open. The armed house elves swarm, herding the students to a tent village on Hogwarts grounds. Resistance is futile.

Once arriving at the tent whose number matches the number on their token, each student will meet his or her new spouse(s) ...

((The tents in El Mundo Del Sombrero are wizarding tents that appear to be one-bedroom houses complete with bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms, etc. inside. Rearranging and addition of objects is allowed, removal of objects for the purposes of moving elsewhere or returning to the castle is not due to the charm on the tents. Players are allowed to NPC the house elves shocking their own characters if an escape attempt is made. Note that characters will not be barred from returning to the castle later to do other things, e.g., use the library; they just can't move back into the castle. Congratulations on your nuptials.

Feel free to RP in this post, or to post your own separate posts that take place within the dubious sanctuary of your brand-new tent!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There were a few too many pieces of contradictory information running around for Billy to respond right away. One, that Alan owned a cat. Two, that he and the Palmer girl were back home, and Billy was stuck here. And three, the big old marriage thing. He looked from Ian, to the cat, and back again before his eyes fell on a familiar object, and it broke him out of his confusion loop.

"My lucky strap!" he said as he picked up the camera bag. Quickly checking the contents, he was relieved to see that the elves hadn't broken the delicate equipment inside. The camera was okay. Things could start getting better now.

"...You have a lucky strap?" Fractal's squirming grew more insistent, and Ian set him down at a slight pressure of claw.

The kitten had better things to do. Bag! Bag with shiny things! Fractal scurried over to Billy and popped his head and forepaws in between the bag's opening and lid.

"Yeah. This bag's saved my life," he said, jerking the bag away from the cat. He'd have to find a way to cat-proof his stuff. All of this magical education had to have some practical value. "No! Bad cat!" he said to the kitten.

"Why? You got something better that's lucky?"

"Yes. A working knowledge of probability." He stood and retrieved the cat, who yowled its fury.

Dog - with what could only be described as a smirk - rushed to fill the void and check out the bag herself.

"Oh! When we do the divorce settlement, how would you feel about having custody of the iguana?"

He'd moved into a zoo. That was the only explanation. Billy stopped shooing the new cat away long enough to ask the important question.

"What on earth are you doing with an iguana?"

"Conducting an indefinite, wary hostile standoff," he replied with a sigh. "It's your friend Grant's idea of therapy for my dinosaur phobia."

"And you didn't just get rid of it?" Billy asked as he peered into the iguana's tank. The iguana stared right back, as they were wont to do. Billy ran his finger alongside the glass, and the lizard's eyes followed the movement. "Have you named it yet?"

"No. It's not its fault our friend's a bit of a bastard. Its name is Terminal, after another green blinking mostly motionless thing, an antique IBM computer. You know, the kind with the DOS interface."

"A bit?" Billy said under his breath. He looked a bit irritated at Ian's explanation. "Unlike some people, I'm not suck in the Stone Age," he said. "I remember those computers."

"I didn't say I liked them, merely that it's what the iguana reminded me of. I'm quite fond of my laptop - when I'm someplace that electronics work, that is." He watched Billy with the iguana. "Seriously. That thing and I have not really bonded here. You interested?"

He could handle being married for a day or two in exchange for getting an iguana out of the deal. That's as long as this farce would last, right? Billy was woefully unlearned in the ways of the Hat. "Yeah, I'll take it," he said.

The cats were busy poking their noses into the corners of their new homes. One of the, he couldn't tell which, broke off from the expedition to wrap around his ankles. Billy tried hard not to leap back from the animal. "If I sleep on the couch, can you keep these guys in the bedroom with you?" he asked.

"Probably. If anything, they're less happy about giving up their territory than we are," Ian replied, and gave Billy a quizzical look. "That could easily be taken as a slam on either my attractiveness or my ability to keep my chivalry or both. If I were to take offense, on which grounds should I base it?"

Billy stopped playing with the iguana and stared at Ian. "You weren't thinking we'd share the bed, were you? I mean, the last time was fun and all, but I think that this will be less awkward for everyone if we keep our distance."

"I wasn't necessarily thinking of 'sharing the bed' in terms of anything other than sleeping. But if you insist..." Ian shrugged.

"I'd have thought that after last time there'd be a certain level of physical comfort there. But I've been known to be wrong about these things before."

"Look, the last time was fun and all, but I figured that it was going to be a one-night stand. Which is fine, but that means that there isn't going to be any sharing of the bed. At all." As if trying to make his point physically clear, Billy started to lump his stuff on the side of the room with the couch.

Ian threw his hands up. "Fine. Fine! Whatever you say. You take the iguana, I'll take the cats, we'll both have plenty of company. Geez."

"Great!" Billy said with a bit too much force. He didn't dislike Ian, but the man came with a list of personal testimonials about why one shouldn't be married to him. This whole thing was a mess. Billy slumped down on the couch, trying to avoid the cats.

"Great." A little less enthusiasm would be nice for the old ego... "No sex and no bed-sharing. I feel married already."

He bent over the back of the couch to grab the cats, and took them into the bedroom. A few minutes later, he had wards set up on the doorway that he and Billy could pass through, but not Dog or Fractal. There would be hell to pay for that, of course, but why should his relationship with his pet(s) be any better than with his 'spouse'?

There was already hell to pay. Dog started scratching at the invisible barrier, howling for all she was worth.

Billy looked indignant. "Look, I'm sure with the ladykiller skills you claim to have, sex probably isn't your problem. I don't care if you bring somebody home. I already know that I'm not your type."

He looked pained at the sound the cat was making. "Is it going to keep doing that? Which one is it?"

"That's not the point," he muttered, and knelt to pet Dog.

"You can't tell? They do have different markings, you know, and different voices. This one's Grant's cat."

Hmph. Sarah Harding wouldn't've mixed them up. Or called them 'it.' Of course, Sarah was in Africa, not in Ian's tent.

"They're cats," Billy said, as if that explained everything. "Why did you guys end up with pets that look so similar, anyway?"

"There are cats, and there are cats," he replied. "They're littermates. Some woman was giving them out as Sorting bribes."

"And you just took a free kitten? What kind of woman has cats with her for a bribe?" And what kind of person takes cats as payment?

"The kind with a very large purse, apparently." Ian raised an eyebrow. "Frankly, given how, ahh, scatterbrained this woman seemed, I doubt the kittens could've done much worse for caretakers."

He shrugged. "Maybe you just had to be there..."

"Maybe."

The tent had a small kitchen in it, and Billy began to root through the refrigerator to see what was inside. "Can you believe this?" he said, his voice muffled by the door. "They've got white bread, sandwich meat, processed cheese in here." He pulled a jug out of the fridge and shut the door. "But at least they've got pumpkin juice."

Smooth topic change, that.

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