One Shot Tober productivity sneak peek · 1:21am Oct 22nd, 2020
Curse you, Admiral Biscuit! You got me writing on the One Shot Tober project, and I’ve been busy cranking out a lot of little bits that never would have seen the light of day otherwise, from 1940 aftershots to Harry Potter seeds. I’m going to put the whole thing up as one giant compilation file at the end of October, because I don’t want to clean up a post every day, but I’ll let you peek at some of it now so you know I’m still here. Two bits. No more. Ok, three.
A 1940 snippet:
“I really don’t understand the way ponies do things,” mused Jon under his breath as they walked through the woods. “I mean we’re well into Fall, and yet I don’t see a single leaf falling from the trees.”
“That’s why I brought you out here, now that the doctors have cleared us both for other activities,” said Nightshade, who was walking by his side and only occasionally flicking her tail at his Army trousers. “Humans don’t normally get to see everything we do, and since you’re probably going to be Equestrian Liaison for the duration of the war, it’s a good idea to open your mind to some of our customs. I mean I was totally baffled when I was training in England and leaves kept falling off the trees onto our training facility. Just every minute or two, here came another one, and another one.” She shook her head, letting her dark violet mane cascade around in an obvious signal. Normally, the flirtatious Night Guard was all armored up, but when she wasn’t…
A few scratches behind the ears left Nightshade leaning against Jon’s hip hard enough that he had to stop walking. A few nudges later left the mismatched couple standing just off the side of the forest path, with Nightshade giving off a series of low pants much like a happy dog. The fact she was wagging her tail and giving slow flaps of her membranous wings did not help the domesticated image.
“You’re hopeless,” he murmured, but did not stop scratching.
“Hopeful,” she managed through a low groan. “Gonna get those pants off yet, Lieutenant Walthers.”
“So all the ponies gathered back there for this ‘Running of the Leaves’ have something to do with the leaves falling,” guessed Jon. “I thought it was just one of the festivals where ponies do silly things to enjoy themselves. I mean you have a very beautiful forest here. As opposed to over there where the monsters are,” he added quickly. “And where I don’t want to go again without a tank.”
There was a distant retort of a gunshot, followed by a loud cheer and a noise like thunder.
“Ah, there we go. They’re using a starting pistol this year.” Nightshade stood up and shook off his hand. “Watch carefully. It took a lot of work to find us the right spot.”
“So we can watch the runners?” Jon was going to say more, but the herd of galloping ponies down the path drowned out any other noise, and in mere moments, they all flowed past like a colorful avalanche. It was thrilling, much on the level of the Running of the Bulls in Spain was supposed to be, if he had ever managed to get there.
“That was amazing!” gushed Jon once most of the ponies had passed. “I just don’t understand why we had to be exactly here—”
The rustling noise above him prevented complete surprise, but it was impossible to be prepared for several tons of dry leaves dropping on his head all at once, and Jon was knocked flat. By the time he struggled up to his knees from under the weight of all the leaves, crunching and rustling with every movement, all he could see was a smiling batpony face directly in front of him.
“So,” purred Nightshade, moving up close enough to rub noses. “About those pants.”
Date: January 30, 1967. Three days after the tragic Apollo 1 fire.
“Cape Canaveral Tower, this is Wonderbolt One. Request permission for tower flyby before landing.”
“I’ll talk to our prospective astronaut,” said General Russell, picking up the microphone from the tower controller. “Wonderbolt One, this is restricted airspace. You are cleared to land, and that’s it.”
“Roger that, Tower,” responded the cheerful female voice that General Russell had last heard warbling out some pop tune from his radio. “We’ll just get set up for our approach. Is the pattern clear?”
“Affirmative, Wonderbolt One,” said Russell. “Airspace has been cleared for your arrival.”
“Great. We’ll just get set up and be there in a moment, Tower. Formation Starburst, Bolts.”
“Formation Starburst?” Russell looked around the tower and the half-dozen officers who had managed to wrangle the best seat on the base to watch the arrival of the Crystal Empire’s young heir and Princess of the Pop Charts. “Anybody know what that is?”
“I can take a guess, sir.” A colonel pointed at a cluster of dark dots sweeping down out of the sky. “Oh, hell. They’re on burner. HIT THE DECK!”
Six F-4EE fighter jets blazed down the runway less than fifty feet above the ground, locked together so tightly that they looked like one massive airplane with twelve glowing exhausts. An F-4 on afterburner was a bone-shaking experience by itself, but six of them traveling just barely below the speed of sound hammered the control tower so hard it was impossible to be heard over their thunder. Then they reached the end of the runway and screamed into the sky, higher and higher with colorful smoke trailing after them until they burst in six different directions. The corkscrewing fighter jets meshed and interwove, leaving a perfect pattern of a blue heart on a shield suspended in the humid Florida air, then peeled off by singles to make their landing approaches.
“If I was her father, I’d kick her ass to the moon,” grumbled General Russell.
Harry Potter and the Pony Princess
Done in memory of James and Lily Potter
Taken from us this October 31, In the Year of Our Lord 1981
Their sacrifice will not be in vain.
“Avada Kedavra!”
There was a blinding flash of green light out in the hallway, and Lily Potter felt her heart tear in half. There was no mistaking that voice or the rushing noise of the Killing Curse, and the solid thud of a body hitting the floor meant that her brave husband had been cut down almost casually by Lord Voldemort, much like thousands before him.
They were supposed to be safe here. The Fidelius charm was unbreakable… unless the Keeper gave up the Secret voluntarily.
“Peter, you rat!” she hissed under her breath. It took barely two steps to reach the crib and scoop up Harry, but a quick spell to check meant Apportation was completely out of the question, and the Floo network was compromised by enough of the Dark Lord’s followers that using it would be nothing but an elaborate way to commit suicide.
Trapped, just like a rat. The bitter irony was palatable, considering who had betrayed them.
“Lily Potter,” hissed a cold voice from out in the hallway, something that could not have been and was certainly not human. “There is no need for further bloodshed. I want only the boy.”
“No!” Lily tightened her grasp on little Harry, who stirred restlessly in his sleep.
“Be reasonable,” came the voice again.
Rage boiled up in her heart, an incoherent fury that blotted out the rest of Voldemort’s honey-flavored words. His very presence made Lily feel most unreasonable, a spitting mother bear trapped in her den with one surviving baby to protect against the wolves. It did not matter what he said. He could promise life eternal for all his followers, but all he delivered was death and destruction. Life was more than words. Women understood the precious nature of life more than any man. Far more than a bond of blood, birth was life given substance from life. She had carried her infant in her womb before he even had a name, slipped out of the house in secret to visit Petunia when she was likewise growing a child within, and marveled in the way little Harry had seemed so perfect in every way after she had suffered through the agony of childbirth.
She was his, by blood and death, one flesh made from two people and the love which bound them together. No mortal force deserved to threaten such a bond, and Voldemort had just casually killed her mate the same as he was about to kill her and the child which she had born. No matter what kind of rage filled her heart, or the love of her ancestors reaching back through the ages, she lacked the power to save her son.
Except…
She forced her concentration down past the soft words of Voldemort coming from the corridor, away from her husband lying dead on the floor, into the depths of the spells they had unearthed together from libraries and crypts in their search for something, anything to stop the Dark Lord. Never take anything for granted when reading a spell from somebody with the title ‘The Insane’ but the convoluted spell, twisted as it was, had not seemed impossible until she and James had reached the end of the page and found that it required an incredible amount of power plus the death of two people to send one to safety.
It was a gamble worthy of insanity, but she was out of cards in the game, and insanity was all she had left to save Harry and send him to someplace safe from Voldemort.
But where?
Petunia’s home was the obvious choice, but she was a Muggle, and worse, had reacted to Lily’s pregnancy with all the enthusiasm of somebody being told they were due for some terrible and invasive surgery. She was the only living family Lily had left,
Even if Lily’s insane gamble paid off and Voldemort died, she had heard the rumors being whispered. He would return, and there was no place in the wizarding world where a tiny child could be safe.
Her eyes stopped their frantic scanning of the nursery, and a small smile crept onto her face by stages. It was not a pleasant smile, but one that a shark might flee from in abject terror. Keeping the sleeping child in her left arm, Lily began to work her magic even as the quiet footsteps from the outside hallway grew louder.
* * *
Albus Dumbledore was not accustomed to being baffled. He was also not used to being second to the scene when something went wrong. The crowd outside of the Potter cottage had been trivial to slip through undetected, but the wreckage inside showed signs that another wizard had already been here and gone. Still, it was far too easy to piece together what had happened right up to a particular point, at which things became downright odd. And that was saying something for the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, who had seen more oddities over his lifetime than even he believed.
He was still considering when another presence in the ruined house became obvious, and Dumbledore remained in the nursery while his steps drew closer.
“Hello, Kingsley.” The ever so faint rustling behind Dumbledore stopped, then returned as the dark form of Kingsley Shacklebolt slipped into the room with his wand still held loosely in one hand.
“Dumbledore,” he murmured in return, his alert eyes never stopping their constant scanning for danger. “Why did I know you would be here.”
“How could I be anywhere else at this time?”
He touched the cold hands of Lily Potter and folded them back onto her chest, then remained quiet for a time in respect for the departed. He had seen too many fall in his life, young and old, cut down by the inevitable scythe of Death. Dumbledore had shared his knowledge of the three Deathly Hallows with few other members of the Order, but the Potters had one of them while he himself had another. If only James had not allowed a feeble old man with delusions of redemption to borrow the Cloak of Invisibility, the promising young man would be alive now, hidden with his family away from the reach of Voldemort.
“James is out in the hallway,” said Kingsley, who crouched down beside Dumbledore much the same way as a lion might before he pounced. “But I suppose you knew.”
“Regrettably, yes.” Dumbledore stood up, his eyes searching amongst the wreckage of the nursery for a clue to the child’s location. “I am more concerned about who is not present who should be.”
“What?” Kingsley stood up in a rush, wand out to defend himself and looking around twice as rapidly. “Is Voldemort still here?”
“In a fashion.” Dumbledore lit his wand and played the light over a faint tracery of dust in the doorway where Kingsley had just come through. It stopped the auror dead in his tracks, and he stared for a time before venturing a single word. “Voldemort?”
“The mortal remains of Tom, otherwise known as such, yes.” Dumbledore paused a moment with remorse. Such a long chain of deaths, from from Gellert Grindelwald, to Tom Riddle, to meeting his end at the wand of a mother defending her child. And yet, there was something more that was tugging at his mind, even more than the missing child. He could not believe for a moment that the great mind and enormous power of Tom Riddle, who had risked everything to cheat death, was really dead. After all, at Hogwarts he had looked in so many places for power over death, and to have suddenly stopped looking was… suspicious, at best.
Even as he was thinking, a stray gust of wind from the vast rent in the cottage walls and roof swept over the ashes, and they were gone.
“The Potters had a child, as I recall,” said Kingsley. “Harold?”
“Harry.” Dumbledore swept his wand over the empty crib with a frown. “A most clever child, filled with potential, much like his parents. Although I do not believe Voldemort’s Death Eaters spirited him away in the confusion. Nor did he die.”
“So where is he?” The auror scanned the room again, casting several detection spells to no avail.
“Someplace safe, far away from here, where the remainder of Voldemort’s Death Eaters will never find him.” Dumbledore touched a section of charred wallpaper and smiled just a little under his beard. “Lily Potter was a powerful witch indeed, and I believe she has entrusted her child with a guardian that Tom Riddle would never comprehend and could never reach, even if he searched forever.” He stood abruptly and put away his wand. “Please make the arrangements for the family. I must go speak with an associate of mine to see if he can shed any further light on certain details.”
“And what of the boy?” Kingsley gestured with his wand outside of the cottage, where the gathered numbers of witches and wizards continued to grow. “What do I tell them, old man?”
“Why, the truth, of course. That Voldemort is dead. He died attempting to kill the Potter child when the spell he used rebounded on himself. And as for Harry…” Dumbedore let out a subdued chuckle. “Tell them he survived, and has been hidden well for his own protection. The press will eventually find out that I was here, and shall leap to the wrong conclusion, as usual.”
“That’s it?” Kingsley put away his own wand and stepped away from Lily Potter’s body, who had a smile even in death. “They’ll go mad, old man. It will be a celebration like nobody has ever seen before. Everyone will be dancing in the streets.”
“True.” Dumbledore’s head bowed, and he looked down at the still form of Lily. “There is no joy without pain in this world, no victory without sacrifice. Go and spread the word, my friend. Let them mourn the deaths of James and Lily Potter, and rejoice in the boy who lived.”
Then there was a whirl of apportation, and the Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt was the last living creature in the room. He let out a huff of exasperation, took one last look at Lily Potter’s body, and began to pick his way through the debris on his way outside, where he would have to tell the world the good news.
Behind him, a tattered scrap of singed wallpaper waved in the breeze, making the collection of colorful ponies on it dance in joy.
Emotional whiplash, anybody?
I wonder what other stories you will revisit?
Sounds neat
5383207
... Understatement... I'm already contacting my legal office to see if there's something in the books I can throw at ya... Oh God my chest...
5383211 There *might* be a piano prequel involved.
Argh. Now I want to read all of these!
What shot tober?
Can't wait.
5383235
One shot. Like, here's a completed chunk of story that you will not see more of.
5383292
Thanks for the reply, but I was afraid of this... Clarifying:
One-Shot Whatber?
Presumably a monthly-inspired event thing (like Inktober) for writing stand-alone stories, which I had not heard of before.
See, now that Harry Potter idea sounds AWESOME!
*Sighs* What could've been....
When it comes to loud, there are few things that match a Phantom II running at maximum power. Maybe an atom bomb....
5383432
The general just needs to be thankful they weren't going supersonic.