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dixiehellcatSorry, I just don't want to spoil it. hehe
The Unexpected
By DixieHellcat
As they usually did, the Ghost Adventures Crew had split up to investigate the decrepit old house. As he usually did, Zak had sent Aaron to the oldest and most decrepit part of the house. And as he usually did, Aaron reluctantly headed off.
Neither Zak nor Nick had much luck on their respective explorations, so they met an hour later in their safe room. They took a break, ate a snack, and were about to go looking for Aaron when he came rushing in. "Spider!" he gasped. "Huge, fuckin', SPIDER."
Immediately Zak and Nick grabbed their gear and followed their shaky friend through the maze of hallways, till he halted outside a door. "Let's see this huge fuckin' spider," Zak said, trying to tease Aaron into calming down, but Aaron shook his head vehemently. "C'mon dude, face your fear." Still Aaron refused to budge, and looked even more frightened, so much so Zak was actually worried about him. "Stay with him," he told Nick. "I'll go squash it so he can get his nerves together and we can get back to work."
Nick agreed. Zak pushed the door open, cautiously pointing his light overhead so no nasty bugs fell on his head and messed up his hair. As he scanned the room, he saw nothing at first, but then a dark squirmy appendage of some kind caught his eye behind an old dresser. He stepped carefully closer and focused the light on it, and froze in his tracks.
It wasn't a spider. It was a nest of snakes, black and wriggly, dozens of them. As though they sensed his presence, they began to untwist from around each other and slither toward him across the dusty wood floor.
As they moved they exposed a figure beneath the nest, a clown doll with a psychotic grin on its half-eaten face, a face whose structure was horribly similar to his own. It lurched to its feet and walked stiffly toward him, carrying the rest of the snake nest with it, writhing in its broken hollow head. Zak couldn't move, couldn't scream even, as his worst nightmares lumbered toward him to seize and devour him. When he heard the door creak behind him he could barely force out words. "Don't—don't come in here, dudes—it's—"
Suddenly, as Zak felt his friends' presences behind him, the horror's motion faltered. It flickered like an old film, and its form changed; the clown doll melted for a moment into the figure of a weeping woman clutching a small body in her arms, then into a spider the size of a St Bernard. The wavering of shape broke the spell of terrified paralysis that held Zak. "Fuck!" he yelped. "It's a boggart!"
His fingers flew to a long zippered pocket on his pants—the fans of Ghost Adventures thought he wore Tripps for a fashion statement; they had no idea all those pockets were so handy for holding gear, including gear no Muggle should ever see. His wand slipped into his welcoming grasp, and he leveled the twelve and a half inch length of polished ebony wood at the shapeshifter. When it had faced only one foe at a time, taking the shape of its greatest fear had been easy; now, facing three wizards with wands drawn, it struggled and failed.
"Riddikulus!" Aaron shouted first; he'd always been fastest off the mark with a good Charm spell. The boggart jerked, hiccupped, and transformed into a short, fat drunk man with a plastic badge pinned to his loud polyester shirt.
Zak and Nick laughed out loud. "Good one, dude," Nick said approvingly, as the boggart staggered around a bit, fell on its face, shrank and vanished.
"Hey, those Vegas convention-goers are always good for a laugh," Aaron replied modestly. "Besides, I'm the one who freaked out like a dumbass, I figured I ought to dispel the thing."
"It wasn't all on you." Zak felt as embarrassed as though he'd been caught reading Witches' Home Journal. "I'm supposed to be the specialist on Defense against the Dark Arts, and I came barging in here by myself like an idiot, never thinking what it might be. Remind me again, somebody, how the hell Hogwarts ever let me graduate."
"Oh, I dunno," Nick joked, holstering his mahogany wand as the three started back for the safe room. "Maybe because there were only three American exchange students there during the Battle of Hogwarts, and only one crazy-ass Gryffindor who took on four Death Eaters at once and kicked all their asses. Merlin's dick, Zak, quit being so rough on yourself."
"Hey!" Zak retorted. "I seem to recall a wild Ravenclaw Yank who cooked up a trap that took out a dozen werewolves or more in that same battle. Wouldn't that have been the same Claw who years later thought making a ghost-hunting show for Muggle TV was a great cover for a crack team of Aurors to monitor magical activity around the US?"
"And the same Claw," Aaron put in, "who talked a big dumb Hufflepuff into becoming an Auror instead of hiding out in the Department of Mysteries basement the rest of his life." He flopped down on a rickety folding chair in the safe room. "Accio munchies," he added with a wave of his ivy wand before stowing it and passing around the candy bag that flew to his hand.
"You would've been wasted riding a desk, Aaron," Zak said. "And think of all the fun you'd be missing."
"Oh yeah. Walking into a vacant room and finding an Acromantula staring me in the face. Serious fun." Aaron paused before inserting more candy into his mouth. "Have we ever actually found an Acromantula stateside?"
"No," Nick replied, "but I know other researchers have."
After a moment's companionable quiet, Zak suddenly said, 'You know what hasn't ever been found in the States, though? A boggart."
"Seriously?" Aaron brightened. "Dudes! I hope my camera was set for magic." He scrambled to his feet and began going through thir gear, mumbling excitedly to himself.
Zak watched him and chuckled to himself. Nick's idea had seemed crazy initially, but they were the perfect team to carry it out. Friends since school, all raised in Muggle households, they were even more comfortable with the Muggle world than most American wizards and witches; they could convincingly pull off the roles of earnest ghost hunters, while using their positions to gather information and track down everything from weres to dragons to renegade followers of the mad dark wizard Voldemort. Their equipment, modified with help from a wizard techno-genius or two, helped them keep a foot in each world.
"I got it!" Aaron's happy yell tugged Zak out of his thoughtful pause. "If I'd had sense enough to look at the fuckin' footage instead of curling up in the fetal position, I'd've known right away it was a boggart."
"But that raises the question," Nick said, "of what the fuck a boggart is doing in a ratty old house in the middle of Nebraska, when they've never been reported in America before."
"Yep. Guess that means more work for us." Zak stood and stretched. "Let's finish checking this place out. We need some more footage for the show, and we need to make sure there aren't more wherever that one came from."
They plotted their next expeditions, and with a fist bump, and wands firmly in hand (though out of camera range) this time, the three wizards moved out again.
Notes—yeah, I did it. it's a GAC/Harry Potter cross. hehe.
For non-HP fans, a boggart is a magical creature that attacks by taking the form of its victim's fears; the charm Aaron uses against it, combined with a visualization of something the caster finds funny, defeats it. You really don't have to know much else about the Potterverse, I think, for this little blurb to make sense, other than that Aurors are basically wizard cops. So in this 'verse, the boys are an elite team that follows up reports of unusual magical activity, like dangerous creatures, evil wizards, etc.
Any fellow HP geeks who want to know how I came up with their wands, specialties, houses etc. lmk, though if I write more in this verse (and I plan to!) those things will probably emerge.
And yes, I do know their actual ages. However, it was easier to make this story work for them to be the same age. Nick is actually Harry's age, so I shifted Zak and Aaron to match him. Their relative ages are still the same; Aaron's still oldest, Nick youngest and Zak in the middle, but in this 'verse the difference is one of days or weeks rather than years. This way, they all met in school at Hogwarts, and were all present and took part in the battle with Voldemort there in their seventh year.
The Unexpected
By DixieHellcat
As they usually did, the Ghost Adventures Crew had split up to investigate the decrepit old house. As he usually did, Zak had sent Aaron to the oldest and most decrepit part of the house. And as he usually did, Aaron reluctantly headed off.
Neither Zak nor Nick had much luck on their respective explorations, so they met an hour later in their safe room. They took a break, ate a snack, and were about to go looking for Aaron when he came rushing in. "Spider!" he gasped. "Huge, fuckin', SPIDER."
Immediately Zak and Nick grabbed their gear and followed their shaky friend through the maze of hallways, till he halted outside a door. "Let's see this huge fuckin' spider," Zak said, trying to tease Aaron into calming down, but Aaron shook his head vehemently. "C'mon dude, face your fear." Still Aaron refused to budge, and looked even more frightened, so much so Zak was actually worried about him. "Stay with him," he told Nick. "I'll go squash it so he can get his nerves together and we can get back to work."
Nick agreed. Zak pushed the door open, cautiously pointing his light overhead so no nasty bugs fell on his head and messed up his hair. As he scanned the room, he saw nothing at first, but then a dark squirmy appendage of some kind caught his eye behind an old dresser. He stepped carefully closer and focused the light on it, and froze in his tracks.
It wasn't a spider. It was a nest of snakes, black and wriggly, dozens of them. As though they sensed his presence, they began to untwist from around each other and slither toward him across the dusty wood floor.
As they moved they exposed a figure beneath the nest, a clown doll with a psychotic grin on its half-eaten face, a face whose structure was horribly similar to his own. It lurched to its feet and walked stiffly toward him, carrying the rest of the snake nest with it, writhing in its broken hollow head. Zak couldn't move, couldn't scream even, as his worst nightmares lumbered toward him to seize and devour him. When he heard the door creak behind him he could barely force out words. "Don't—don't come in here, dudes—it's—"
Suddenly, as Zak felt his friends' presences behind him, the horror's motion faltered. It flickered like an old film, and its form changed; the clown doll melted for a moment into the figure of a weeping woman clutching a small body in her arms, then into a spider the size of a St Bernard. The wavering of shape broke the spell of terrified paralysis that held Zak. "Fuck!" he yelped. "It's a boggart!"
His fingers flew to a long zippered pocket on his pants—the fans of Ghost Adventures thought he wore Tripps for a fashion statement; they had no idea all those pockets were so handy for holding gear, including gear no Muggle should ever see. His wand slipped into his welcoming grasp, and he leveled the twelve and a half inch length of polished ebony wood at the shapeshifter. When it had faced only one foe at a time, taking the shape of its greatest fear had been easy; now, facing three wizards with wands drawn, it struggled and failed.
"Riddikulus!" Aaron shouted first; he'd always been fastest off the mark with a good Charm spell. The boggart jerked, hiccupped, and transformed into a short, fat drunk man with a plastic badge pinned to his loud polyester shirt.
Zak and Nick laughed out loud. "Good one, dude," Nick said approvingly, as the boggart staggered around a bit, fell on its face, shrank and vanished.
"Hey, those Vegas convention-goers are always good for a laugh," Aaron replied modestly. "Besides, I'm the one who freaked out like a dumbass, I figured I ought to dispel the thing."
"It wasn't all on you." Zak felt as embarrassed as though he'd been caught reading Witches' Home Journal. "I'm supposed to be the specialist on Defense against the Dark Arts, and I came barging in here by myself like an idiot, never thinking what it might be. Remind me again, somebody, how the hell Hogwarts ever let me graduate."
"Oh, I dunno," Nick joked, holstering his mahogany wand as the three started back for the safe room. "Maybe because there were only three American exchange students there during the Battle of Hogwarts, and only one crazy-ass Gryffindor who took on four Death Eaters at once and kicked all their asses. Merlin's dick, Zak, quit being so rough on yourself."
"Hey!" Zak retorted. "I seem to recall a wild Ravenclaw Yank who cooked up a trap that took out a dozen werewolves or more in that same battle. Wouldn't that have been the same Claw who years later thought making a ghost-hunting show for Muggle TV was a great cover for a crack team of Aurors to monitor magical activity around the US?"
"And the same Claw," Aaron put in, "who talked a big dumb Hufflepuff into becoming an Auror instead of hiding out in the Department of Mysteries basement the rest of his life." He flopped down on a rickety folding chair in the safe room. "Accio munchies," he added with a wave of his ivy wand before stowing it and passing around the candy bag that flew to his hand.
"You would've been wasted riding a desk, Aaron," Zak said. "And think of all the fun you'd be missing."
"Oh yeah. Walking into a vacant room and finding an Acromantula staring me in the face. Serious fun." Aaron paused before inserting more candy into his mouth. "Have we ever actually found an Acromantula stateside?"
"No," Nick replied, "but I know other researchers have."
After a moment's companionable quiet, Zak suddenly said, 'You know what hasn't ever been found in the States, though? A boggart."
"Seriously?" Aaron brightened. "Dudes! I hope my camera was set for magic." He scrambled to his feet and began going through thir gear, mumbling excitedly to himself.
Zak watched him and chuckled to himself. Nick's idea had seemed crazy initially, but they were the perfect team to carry it out. Friends since school, all raised in Muggle households, they were even more comfortable with the Muggle world than most American wizards and witches; they could convincingly pull off the roles of earnest ghost hunters, while using their positions to gather information and track down everything from weres to dragons to renegade followers of the mad dark wizard Voldemort. Their equipment, modified with help from a wizard techno-genius or two, helped them keep a foot in each world.
"I got it!" Aaron's happy yell tugged Zak out of his thoughtful pause. "If I'd had sense enough to look at the fuckin' footage instead of curling up in the fetal position, I'd've known right away it was a boggart."
"But that raises the question," Nick said, "of what the fuck a boggart is doing in a ratty old house in the middle of Nebraska, when they've never been reported in America before."
"Yep. Guess that means more work for us." Zak stood and stretched. "Let's finish checking this place out. We need some more footage for the show, and we need to make sure there aren't more wherever that one came from."
They plotted their next expeditions, and with a fist bump, and wands firmly in hand (though out of camera range) this time, the three wizards moved out again.
Notes—yeah, I did it. it's a GAC/Harry Potter cross. hehe.
For non-HP fans, a boggart is a magical creature that attacks by taking the form of its victim's fears; the charm Aaron uses against it, combined with a visualization of something the caster finds funny, defeats it. You really don't have to know much else about the Potterverse, I think, for this little blurb to make sense, other than that Aurors are basically wizard cops. So in this 'verse, the boys are an elite team that follows up reports of unusual magical activity, like dangerous creatures, evil wizards, etc.
Any fellow HP geeks who want to know how I came up with their wands, specialties, houses etc. lmk, though if I write more in this verse (and I plan to!) those things will probably emerge.
And yes, I do know their actual ages. However, it was easier to make this story work for them to be the same age. Nick is actually Harry's age, so I shifted Zak and Aaron to match him. Their relative ages are still the same; Aaron's still oldest, Nick youngest and Zak in the middle, but in this 'verse the difference is one of days or weeks rather than years. This way, they all met in school at Hogwarts, and were all present and took part in the battle with Voldemort there in their seventh year.
