Harry Putter & the Deathly Hairballs Read online

  HARRY PUTTER

  AND THE DEATHLY HAIRBALLS

  BY

  TIMOTHY R. O’DONNELL

  CHAPTER ILLUSTRATIONS BY:

  GRIFFIN O’DONNELL

  COVER ILLUSTRATION and

  THREE BAD KITTEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY:

  TIMOTHY R. O’DONNELL

  Text copyright © 2011 by Timothy R. O’Donnell

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Timothy R. O’Donnell

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. It may be shared in accordance with the Kindle lending agreement for fourteen days. Thereafter, if you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by T.O.S.H. Publishing, LLC

  Kindle Edition.

  ISBN 978-0-9825379-9-2

  Published by

  T.O.S.H. Publishing, LLC

  (The Order of the Silver Hand)

  www.TOSHpublishing.com

  [email protected]

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  RILEY AND GRIFFIN.

  IT’S THEIR STORY TOO.

  Books by the author, Timothy R. O’Donnell:

  Epic Fantasy

  The Erthelba series:

  Book 1 - Iibrahiim

  Book 2 - Polydora

  Book 3 - Hgia Lucii

  Book 4 - Athandoros

  The Hysterical Parodies:

  Harry Putter and the Chamber of Cheesecakes

  Harry Putter and the Deathly Hairballs

  Chapter 1 – Memories are Like Kittens, Reality is Like a Full Grown Cat

  Sure they were droplets of blood, but to Custodian Belch they were just another mess to clean up. He mumbled to himself, “Inconsiderate students. Just bleed anywhere. Do they clean up after themselves? Course not! All they’ve got to do is waive their magic wand and say the magic words, ‘AAA drycleaners are the best.’ But, no! They just bloody leave it.”

  He sighed as he bent down to wipe the small dark spot with a damp rag and walked in a crouch down the dimly lit dungeon corridor moving from drop to drop. When he stood up, the cumulative ache in his back made him groan. Even as he did, his squinting eyes automatically surveyed the stone floor for refuse or other aberrations. His eyes fell upon the next object of contempt.

  He approached it with a scowl, wondering what was the disgusting thing lying in the darkness. He bent closer until he recognized it.

  He mumbled, “Cursed hairball!”

  But even as he uttered it aloud, his heart melted and his eyes became watery. He loved cats. As long as he could remember there was a cat in his life. Long ago there was Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, and Sly Stallone. And then there was his current one, Chuck Norris. Hairballs brought back sweet memories of the many cats from his life, especially of his first cat, Errol Flynn.

  He stood there scowling at the hairball. His heart hardened once more as he reminded himself, “Memories are like kittens, reality is like a full grown cat. When you buy a kitten, no one can resist the cuddly, warm, cute and adorable creature. You don’t think about the reality of the situation. That kitten is going to become a full grown cat. She’s gonna claw your furniture, she’s going to cack-up hairballs, she’s going to spray her territory with urine, and she’s going to leave decapitated mice and rats as her personal gift to you.

  The reality is you’ll spend more time feeding her and cleaning the litter box for that ungrateful feline than you will cuddling her. But when she’s dead and gone, what do you remember? You’ll fondly recall the cuddly, warm, cute and adorable creature and forget the disgusting, caterwauling, scratching, flea-bitten, pain-in-the-butt cat.”

  One thing he wasn’t was squeamish. He picked up the hairball and he died. Ironically, his final words had been, “Cursed hairball.”

  Meanwhile, Harry Putter was dealing with a mess of his own. He was in his bedroom, the master bedroom of the Dirtley family home at 4 Privy Drive. He was almost seventeen, as his birthday was only two days away.

  Harry was a thin teenager in regard to his arms and legs, however, he carried a somewhat protruding belly. He had neat black hair, which he wore in bangs to hide the L-shaped scar on his forehead. The hairs on his chin, cheeks, and upper lip were starting to come in now, but at the moment he was clean shaven.

  He had a pronounced unibrow and refused to pluck the hairs between his eyes anymore. It hurt too much. He also gave up trying to shave the small spot between his eyes. The first time he had tried, it had been a fiasco. He made his eyebrows uneven to start, and in each of his attempts to correct the matter he overcompensated, making it even worse. Eventually, he had to shave them both entirely off. He got a lot of strange looks for his strange looks. However, since then, the singular eyebrow had grown back, hairier than ever.

  Last year, he had gotten a new pair of glasses, but unfortunately had broken them already. He had placed them in his robe pocket and promptly sat down on them. The frame snapped at the bridge and he had makeshift-repaired them with masking tape.

  He recently had lost five pounds because there wasn’t anything left in the house to eat that was sufficiently fresh or wholesome. Mostly, that was due to the general lack of cleanliness of the Dirtley home. However, the real difference was the Dirtleys weren’t around anymore, so no one had bought any food for a week now. Harry had not lost enough weight yet to get rid of his small protruding belly or to risk going outside.

  Yet, the mess Harry was dealing with was not the Dirtley home. After so many years at school, he was finally cleaning out his school trunk. It was something he had never done before. He was no longer going to Hogwashes School for Wizards and Witches. He had dropped out recently.

  There were good reasons why he wasn’t going back to school this year. At the end of his sixth year in school, seventh if you count preschool, he had made a promise to the Headmaster, Elvis Grumblesnore. After Elvis had saved his life from the conspiracy to kill him, Harry said, “I’m sorry I ever considered not coming to school this year. I promise no matter what, no matter how many people want to kill me, I’ll always trust you to protect me, and come here, where I belong.”

  He had not broken that promise. One of the reasons he wasn’t returning was that Grumblesnore was no longer alive. It was quite a shock. Late spring, with the school year nearly over, the old headmaster had taken a tumble and it was a bad one. He accidentally fell down the extremely long spiral staircase to the Astronomy Tower, and that was a very tall tower. He was found at the bottom with nearly every bone in his body broken. And unfortunately, he was not found in time for Nurse Pomfrite to do anything about it, try as she did.

  It was quite unusual. Everyone had gotten quite used to the school nurse performing the miraculous. Harry remembered many students dying during Defense Against the Fine Arts class only to be back in the swing of things the next day, thanks to Nurse Pomfrite.

  And then there was Professor Carnivorous Ape. He had been killed in spectacular fashion. Harry remembered his gruesome demise. He had witnessed Ape’s simian body as it was riddled with shot, seared with electricity, shriveled up in flames, and cursed to death. Yet even with most of his body destroyed, Nurse Pomfrite had managed to restore his head back to life. And while Ape no longer had a body, at least he was alive. His ape head was sustained in a large glass jar filled with s
ome kind of liquid. He used a hoverboard to move around. He even had his wand and could hold it in his mouth, point it, and mumble the magic words to cast spells. The following year, Ape had resumed his teaching duties, and after Grumblesnore’s Death, he had even been promoted to the position of Headmaster at Hogwashes. Yes, Ape’s head was alive and well, thanks to the miraculous healing powers of Nurse Pomfrite.

  And no one was happier than Harry that Ape was alive. He felt somewhat responsible for his teacher’s death. After all, Ape died while trying to protect Harry. Afterward, Harry felt he owed it to the dead simian to take his difficult lessons to heart. Harry spent the ensuing summer trying very hard to maintain inner peace, obey rules and laws, and refrain from violence. It made him break out in a perpetual rash. He was so relieved when, the following autumn, he discovered Nurse Pomfrite had saved Ape’s head in a jar. He promptly went back to being his old juvenile self.

  Yet despite all her attempts, Elvis Grumblesnore somehow was beyond the school nurse’s amazing magical healing powers. Ms. Pomfrite said she had tried everything without success. Perhaps his soul had traveled too far from his body, beyond the range she could call it back. Harry had attended his service and funeral as the revered headmaster’s body had been laid to rest and sealed in a special tomb deep in the dungeon bowels of the school. Even Harry still had trouble believing his good friend and protector was truly gone.

  More importantly, Harry was not going to school this year because he was on a mission to destroy his mortal nemesis, Lord Moldyfart. Nearly two years ago, Harry had learned about a sinister prophecy. An ominous prediction had been made before Harry was even born, back when the Fart Lord was a boy known by his given name, Tom Farisol Riddly. The troubled teenager had received a dire and ominous prediction, “Someone will steal your heart!”

  The young man took the terrible harbinger of his doom quite seriously and literally. He believed a horrifying enemy was destined to rip his still beating heart from his very chest. And so the young Fart Lord took precautions just as any half-sane wizard would. His fear inspired him to become the most powerful and ruthless sorcerer the world had ever known. He made unholy pacts with demons, penguins, and llamas. And he had insidiously split his very soul, placing portions of it in repository objects, known as hoaxcrocks. If even one fragment of his soul remained intact, he could not be completely destroyed and could eventually recover. Several times, Harry had brought about severe setbacks to Moldyfart’s nefarious plans. The last time Harry said the magic word, “Cripes,” and Moldyfart changed into a groundysnout, a flying pig. However, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Smelled had always sooner or later managed to regain his strength. He had done so once again. His disguise had been restored. He had regained his human form.

  At first, Harry took the prediction seriously, too. He imagined some wise and profound seer was the source of the prophecy, and so he believed Moldyfart must surely have good reason to fear for his life. That is, until last year, when Harry found out from Professor Ape’s head that the sinister and deadly harbinger of doom’s source was a tiny slip of paper in a Chinese fortune cookie. Ape knew. He was with Tom Riddly at the Cho King Palace Chinese Restaurant that fateful day. He had read the fortune himself.

  When Harry learned of it, he became incensed with burning rage and undying hatred for his archenemy. Moldyfart had murdered his parents over a stupid message from a fortune cookie! Harry had even tried to vent his rage upon the bearer of this news, his least favorite professor. However, Ape, the Poisons Class teacher, craftily escaped on hoverboard out the window to avoid Harry’s wrath.

  Harry was now obsessed with vengeance. He had given up yoga and his quest to find inner peace. He would find peace once his mortal enemy was obliterated. He was prepared to devote the rest of his life to destroying Moldyfart. He vowed one day to exact his revenge upon his nemesis, even if it was the last thing he ever did. And he often imagined the satisfaction he would derive by ripping the still beating heart from his enemy’s chest. He could not think of a more fitting ending. However, his best friend Ron Cheesley always told him, “Right after, you should take a bite out of it. That would be bloody brilliant and savage cool!”

  Harry thought the idea was bloody gross.

  And so, Harry was preparing for what was sure to become his greatest adventure to date, as Harry called it, The Quest to Destroy Lord Moldyfart. He felt quite sure that it would inevitably be turned into a best-selling book and a mega-movie blockbuster. He pictured Matt Damon or Brad Pitt playing his role in the latter.

  But first things first, Harry had to confront Moldyfart and destroy him before the lucrative story rights would bring him riches. And so, he was preparing. Specifically, he was cleaning out the mess that was his school trunk. He was trying to sort the items within, particularly to find items he would need for his journey from the garbage that had accumulated inside. And there was quite a collection of trash from over the years, everything from wrappers from chocolate slugs bought while he was in preschool to his latest cell phone bill. It was seven years worth of litter.

  However, among the refuse, there were saved items that brought back fond memories. These he meant to keep stowed away as cherished mementos. Going through the trunk was a bit like taking a trip back in time. The deeper he delved, the further back he traveled.

  One of the first of such items he found was last year’s Advanced Poisons class text. It was an old beaten up copy that had a former student’s copious notes inside. The student had called himself “The 2/3rds Nigerian Prince” and he “needs your help transferring money into your country.” The notes inside were from a true master of establishing email fraud schemes.

  Harry had never studied school material with half the devotion he had given the profuse notes of the 2/3rds Nigerian Prince. In fact, he had neglected nearly all of his class work last year while establishing and running his very own email racket and in so doing, had made a killing. After all, he spent nearly his whole life breaking the rules, and after a summer of obeying them, he was ready to make up for lost time. Running email scams was such a natural extension of his conceited belief that the rules don’t apply to him, that he felt no guilt for these minor transgressions. He justified his actions saying, “If someone is stupid enough and greedy enough to fall for it, they don’t deserve to keep their cash.”

  But the most shocking part was when it turned out Carnivorous Ape was the 2/3rds Nigerian Prince. Behind all of his big talk, advocating that laws should not be broken, the Headmaster of Hogwashes was the father of the email fraud scheme. Perhaps it was his own guilty past that drove him to preach to the students to obey the rules. Perhaps it was just a front operation to hide current nefarious scamming activities. Or perhaps he was just young and had not yet formed his convictions.

  The next item Harry discovered in his very own personal dumpster dive was a paper napkin with the logo of “The Ambergris Grill.” It was from his sixth year at Hogwashes, seventh if you counted preschool. He had saved it as a memento from the class trip to Atlantis. With the Chamber of Cheesecakes and the conspiracy to kill him, what an adventurous year that had been! Even the class trip had gotten off to a rocky start when the submarine was attacked by Ron’s pet squid, Nemoy. Released by Ron in back of the school into the waters of Lake Iwannabealifeguard, the squid had grown to gigantic proportions. It had feasted upon mermaids and Gruntbelows, also known as undersea goblins, and had even eaten Gandulf the Off-White. The trip had been nearly ruined. However, Ron commanded Nemoy to release the sub and his ever faithful pet obediently complied. Thank goodness!

  The whole trip to Atlantis had been wonderful. They stayed at the famous Parthan Hotel. They visited the Neptune Museum, the King’s Palace, the Atlantic Aquarium, and the Coliseum. To top it all off, dinner was at the exquisite Ambergris Grill restaurant. After a year fraught with insane cravings for cheesecake, Harry had a harmless slice for desert and it was simply incredible.

  Delving deeper into his trunk, Harry pulled forth the trophy fr
om winning the Fry-Wizard Tournament. It was quite an accomplishment and had brought many followers into the Order of the Harry Putter Fan Club and a lucrative sponsorship from the Fry-Wizard company, makers of magical frying machines.

  During the tournament, he competed with the best students from three schools. The first challenge was to fry eggs. The second challenge was to fry up fish and chips. The final and most difficult assignment was to navigate the Labyrinth of Death, past deadly blast-end toots and a ferocious minotaur, answer the Riddle of the Sphinx, and get to the trophy before their rival students.

  Yet Harry’s victory was so closely contested by another student, Cedric Biggleby, that they reached out and grabbed the trophy at the very same moment. However, it was all an elaborate trap. The trophy was really a bottle of port, and when the two grabbed the cup, it teleported them into the clutches of the Fungus Eaters. In order to restore their master, Lord Moldyfart to his full powers, the Fungus Eaters killed Cedric.

  Afterward, Harry battled the Fart Lord. He was so nervous facing He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Smelled that his intestinal fortitude abandoned him. The noxious odors arising from the encounter rendered the nearby Fungus Eaters unconscious. In the end, Harry discovered when he needed to, he could match Lord Moldyfart, stench for stench.

  Harry went on to win the tournament. However, the death of Biggleby cast a cloud of suspicion over the whole event. One had only to smell Harry to know that foul play was involved. The ensuing investigation into the matter eventually cleared Harry of wrongdoing. Harry felt terrible for his fellow student, Cedric, and his family, but not badly enough to give away the trophy.