Picking up the thread, A Dare Options

[McGonagall's Cat]

<title- Lavender First Picks Up The Thread>


As Lavender Brown walked down the steps to the Common Room from the Girls Dorm She noticed

(\__/)
(=’-‘=)
(“) (“)
Crookshanks

playing with a piece of thread. He seemed to have found the begining end of the thread on the steps and was rolling around, tangling it into a snarled up knot. With one swat it hurled into the Common Room, where he playfully attacked it again.

Lavender was going to breakfast and not particularly interested in the thread, until it wrapped around her ankle as she tried to walk over to her best friend Parvati Patil who was sitting near the fire waiting for her.

"What is that?" Parvati asked as Lavender untangled her foot.

"I don't know what's going on with it. I just noticed Hermione's cat playing with it on the steps over there." She answered pointing toward the stairs.

Parvati picked it up, noticing that it ran out of the room through the Portrait Hole. Since Crookshanks had lost interest and was now sitting on the rug near the fire licking his paw, she began to wrap the loose thread around and around the knot, forming a tiny ball.
She and Lavender followed the thread along, through the opening, down the hallway, wrapping the thread around the small ball as they went. They chattered on about having been invited to Trelawney's room for a private reading later that day.

"I can hardly wait!" giggled Lavender. "I just know she's going to tell me that cute Ravenclaw boy is destined to be in my future!"

"Well, I'm hoping to learn how many puppies my Mum's dog will have when she has her pups next week!" Parvati said enthusiastically.

As they turned the corner, still giggling and planning for their "private tea", the thread lead them to the top of one of the moving stairways. As they stepped onto it, it began to move. Parvati shreiked, almost losing her balance with the lurch, and the small ball of thread went flying through the air to






OK, here is the challenge: You have to pick up the thread, whoever you are, follow it a while through some interesting rooms/places/situations, and hand it off to (another character)...

who then picks up the thread and continues to wind it around and around into a ball as they continue through some interesting rooms/places/situations, and hands it off to (another character)...

who then picks up the thread and continues to wind it around and around into a ball as they continue through some interesting rooms/places/situations, and hands it off to (another character)...


The same character can pick it up again later... They can do many amazing things while it is in their possession... we can each write as many scenes as we care to write...


Go ahead! I DARE YA!!!

Through January 18th, 2004. 
Vote for favourite scene Jan. 19, 20, & 21 - so be sure to TITLE your scene to make it easier for all of us to vote for the intended one!
edited 1/18/04   This is now on-going       No time limit.

[moonbeam3243]

On Top of Spaghetti

...at the furry toe of a very disgruntled cat who had been laying seige to the kitchens, waiting for the opportune moment to steal a meatball. Crookshanks eyed the ball of string carefully, tail twitching. With one very slender claw extended, Crookshanks poked the matted, wet, dirty mess of string. He sniffed it disdainfully. It was the same string he'd been playing with when that awful Lavendar girl had taken it earlier.

"Pft," Crookshanks spat out contemptuously. Playing with... Those silly humans wouldn't ever figure out his more devious plots with the string. He'd known what the string was the moment he saw it; he'd known how it could be used; he'd merely been playing with it, waiting for his mistress to figure out what the string really was. He would never have been so foolish as to ignore its more important magical properties. He--

--was scared witless when Winky, in her usual drunken state, skidded across the kitchen floor, through a pile of spilt flour, narrowly avoiding the largest fireplace, and right into Crookshanks face. The cat yowled in anger and surprise and in that yowl Winky got a very up-close look at Crookshank's long, sharp, deadly fangs. Winky screamed, stood up, fell over again, and ending up relieving herself of a rather large amount of butterbeer that she had ingested earlier. Crookshanks streaked out of the kitchen; no meatball was worth this sort of abuse.

Of course, in the confusion of a drunken elf's face off with an angry cat, none of the other house elves had noticed that the ball of string had gone flying into the air, over the table, and smack in the middle of a large bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. The the ball of string, which had seen its share of mud, dirt, and dank, slowly drifted into the warm spaghetti sauce. Excess water, whether from the prefect's bathroom, the Giant Squid's lake, or Sir Cadogen's notorious sweaty hands, mingled with the tomato sauce, seeping into the noodles. None of the house elves noticed how the warmth of the sauce set off an unusual, slightly disturbing smell.

The house elves started picking up the bowls and plates and arranging them on the magical lift that would transport the food from the kitchens to the tables in the great hall instantaneously. The string-ridden bowl of spaghetti was placed beside a platter of garlic bread, a large casserole dish filled with salmon, and giant bowl of green beans. With a swish of the house elves' hands and a whispered word, the dishes filled with food disappeared.

Harry, meanwhile, grabbed the bowl of green beans as soon as it popped up and started piling some on his plate.

"How can you like those?" Ron asked, disgusted.

Harry shrugged. "I just do."

"You should eat more vegetables, too, you know," Hermione commented, accepting the bowl of green beans from Harry, "What would your mother think if she found out how you ate?"

"She's not going to find out, is she?" It would have been a more threatening statement if Ron had not been trying to speak while eating two pieces of garlic bread simultaneously.

"Ooo, look, spaghetti!" Ginny said from across the table. She reached for it, but before she picked up the bowl, Dean had grabbed it.

"Allow me," he said graciously. He picked up the tongs in the bowl and pulled out a mound of spaghetti. He dropped the noodles on Ginny's plate, then plucked out a few meatballs on the side. Ginny smiled at him, a bit offset by Dean's chivalry. She picked up her fork and started twirling noodles onto it.

Seamus, who sat on the other side of Dean, stared at the two of with an open look of utter destitution Harry glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye, and if Hermione noticed that the glance was envious, she didn't say anything. Ron leapt over the table and grabbed the bowl from Dean. "Looks good," he said.

Ron started heaping spaghetti onto his own plate. He dug in, not noticing how silent the table suddenly got. Harry poked him in the side.

Ginny was turning purple.

"Something wrong?" Ron asked. A noodle snaked its way out of his mouth and landed on his robes.

"How. Dare. You." Ginny said quietly. "This is just gross! Now that Fred and George are gone, we don't need you to pick up their slack!" She was absolutely livid.

"That's a bit much, mate," Dean said, looking down at Ginny's plate, "I mean, ruining her whole supper and all."

"What'd I do?" Ron asked. He shot a glance at Hermione. Hermione just shook her head.

"Putting this nasty ball of string on my plate when you got the spaghetti from Dean! Ooo, I could just..." Ginny trailed off. Everyone soon found out what it was that she could just do, because she stood up without warning, smashed her hand down on the plate of spaghetti, picked up the ball of string (with a handful of noodles as well) and hurtled it right at Ron's face.

The ball of string bounced off Ron's nose and landed two seats down into Neville's bangers and mash. Neville squealed and flipped his plate into the air, bangers flying everywhere. The plate bounced so high up that it landed right on top of a Ravenclaw fifth year. Her boyfriend didn't take the attack too lightly. He picked up a pork chop from his plate and slung it at Neville.

"Hey, it was an accident!" Harry yelled, and before he knew what he was doing, he grabbed a handful of green beans from the air and threw them at the Ravenclaw's table. Several fifth years stood up at once, reaching for dishes. Seamus decided that now was as good a time as any to practice the spell Professor Flitwick had chastized him for.

"Wingardium leviosa!" he shouted at the casserole dish filled with salmon and to his--and several other Gryffindor's--very great surprise, the salmon flew up into the air and started racing around the room, dropping on various students from various houses.

At the head table, Minerva McGonagal was turning a shade darker that Ginny had been when she thought Ron had sabotaged her supper. "A food fight?" she hissed dangerously, "Started by my house?"

Beside her, Snape sniffed arrogantly.

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, wondering if he could toss a biscuit at Filch without anyone noticing. Filch looked as if he would have an apoplexitic fit. "Well, it's been decades since the last one," Dumbledore said, "I guess we were due."

Spaghetti, fish, rolls, pork chops, bangers, liver, treacle, and a smelly ball of string all flew through the air as the Great Hogwarts Food Fight really started to pick up steam...