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ffuturesThis is a crossover between the Harry Potter books, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series, and the film Bedazzled (1967, not the 2000 remake). Some other crossovers and easter eggs are likely. All characters belong to their respective creators / owners / megacorporations of doom and not to me, please don't sue...
II - Comeback Tour
"I really haven't granted a lot of wishes or bought many souls over the last few years," said Lucifer, leafing through an implausibly long filing cabinet drawer. "Back in the day God had me working at it non-stop, said it was to give people a choice between good and evil. If I collected a hundred billion souls before he did he'd let me back into heaven, that was the plan."
"What went wrong?" asked Harry.
"I collected them, and God backed out of the deal. I let the last one burn his contract because I didn't really need his soul, and God said that I'd done it for the wrong reasons and wasn't truly repentant. So I had to start all over again. But after a couple of years I decided that it was a mugs game - I'd lived without Heaven for thousands of years, and although it's a wonderful place I've had it with dancing attendance on someone who doesn't even keep to the deals he makes. I cut right back, these days I do a couple of dozen a year when I run into someone really deserving or really heinous, and I'm pretty sure it's made no bloody difference. People didn't need me to push them at good or evil, they do a pretty good job of it on their own." He leafed through a file and tossed it over his shoulder to join a heap growing on the floor. "Looks like I never granted him or his followers any wishes. That one was the closest, a Death Eater who made a wish that the Chudley Cannons would never win another match. Voldemort got annoyed with him and killed him before I could get to him with a contract."
"Voldemort was annoyed because his minion wanted to hurt the Cannons?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Voldemort was a huge fan, went to every match incognito. Reckoned they were a cert to win the cup in eighty-two."
"You're joking!"
"No, I was being sarcastic, there's a difference. Of course Voldemort didn't give a toss about the Cannons; he was annoyed because the idiot wasted time thinking about quidditch instead of blowing up the stadium."
"Yeah, that sounds more like him."
"Getting back to your problem," said Lucifer, opening another filing cabinet drawer and pulling it out several feet more than the depth of the cabinet should have allowed, "I'm not finding anything about your parents. Your father never made a wish strong enough to merit my attention, neither did your mother, nor did you. Halfreck, are you quite sure it isn't something your crowd did?"
Halfreck looked up from the tea one of his minions had bought her. "Definitely not us. Do you really think I'd be here if it was? I have better things to do."
"That reminds me," said Harry, "we've been here for hours, they must be looking for me at Hogwarts by now."
Lucifer shook his head. "We're running on my time now, you could spend a week here and you'd leave about five minutes after you arrived."
"Thanks, that's one less thing to worry about."
"Okay, let's take another look at you..." Lucifer shut the filing cabinet and snapped his fingers. A pair of weird plastic glasses with mult-coloured lenses appeared in his hand, and he put them on and stared at Harry, the glasses making a weird weebling noise. "Hmmm.... the discontinuity is approximately two to ten years before you were born... sound about right to you, Halfreck?"
"Plausible, but I can't confirm it."
Lucifer vanished the glasses. "You were born in 1980, so roughly speaking the wish changed things some time between nineteen-seventy and seventy-eight. What were your parents doing then?"
"Mostly they'd have been at school."
"Any schoolfriends?"
"A few. Dad was friends with Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, oh, and Peter Pettigrew, though he was the one that eventually betrayed them to Voldemort. I don't really know much about mum's friends."
"Tell me about them."
"Pettigrew is a rat animagus. He looks a bit rat-like too, I don't know what my parents were thinking to trust him. Remus is a nice guy, a really good wizard, but he's a werewolf so he's always a bit ill and depressed. And Sirius is my godfather - he's a great guy, but he's on the run because Pettigrew framed him for betraying my parents."
"This Sirius... rides a motorbike?"
"He did, yes. Do you know him?"
"Not by that name, no, but I remember a wizard who had a bike and mentioned a werewolf friend." He went to a shelf and pulled out a 12" LP in a shiny cardboard sleeve. Lucifer was on the cover, wearing a shiny suit criss-crossed with diagonal bands of parallel black, white and grey stripes, holding a microphone. Behind him several girls in short tinsely dresses appeared to be doing some sort of dance. Silver lettering said 'Drimble Wedge And The Vegetation' in large type, and 'Hammersmith Odeon 1979' in smaller type below. He handed it to Harry, and said "Take a look at the back."
Harry checked the back, and saw what he expected; a list of tracks and some smaller pictures of Lucifer, the dancers, and his backing group, The Vegetation. A drummer, a double-bass player, and two guitarists. One of the guitarists looked strangely familiar. "This is someone called Stubby Boardman, but it looks a hell of a lot like a younger version of Sirius."
"I thought it might."
"You know Sirius?"
"To cut a long story short, Drimble Wedge was a rock star persona I used a few times in the sixties and early seventies. In seventy-nine a music journalist wished for him to make a comeback tour, and I decided to let him have what he wanted. I needed a backing group at short notice, and the only ones available were a magical group called the Hobgoblins. They weren't very good but they didn't need to be."
"Why not?" asked Halfreck.
"The whole point of it was that we'd turn out to be crap, worse than everyone remembered, get terrible reviews, and after that I'd never have to do the bloody act again. And I really chose the right backing group, they were dreadful. Which would have been fine except that the bloke making the wish was off his head on vodka the first two performances and didn't really notice. Before the third performance the Hobgoblins and I went to the pub; we were all a bit tipsy, there might have been some slightly illegal smoking too, and Stubby told me about his mate the werewolf and his poor friend Jimmy who couldn't find a girlfriend."
"Hang on... this was seventy-nine?" asked Harry.
"That's right."
"My parents were already married in seventy-nine."
"Not as such, no, not originally."
"You found him a girlfriend?" asked Halfreck.
"Sort of." Lucifer looked shifty, and slightly embarassed. "It wasn't like I wanted anyone's soul or anything, I didn't even make anyone sign a contract. It just seemed like a nice thing to do to cheer Stubby up."
"This mother of yours," said Halfreck. "What was her name again?"
"Evans," said Harry, "Lily Evans."
"Short for Lilian?"
"I always thought she was named after the flowers, but I suppose it could have been short for Lilian."
"Please tell me you didn't do what I think you did," said Halfreck.
"Honestly, cross my heart, I didn't," Lucifer said unconvincingly.
"You bloody did," said Halfreck. She picked up the LP and snapped it in two, then tore the sleeve into shreds. "You took an anthropomorphic personification, de-aged her, and threw her back in time to a school where she'd be surrounded by horny school-kids. Did she even know what she was doing?"
"Not really, not as such. She had to act like the age she'd been given." Lucifer snapped his fingers again and the bits of the record and sleeve vanished, and the disc reappeared in his hand undamaged.
"How old was she supposed to be?"
"Eleven when I sent her back. I had to give her a family and some back story, of course, so people remembered her earlier than that. She did too, of course."
"Can I just check I've got this right," said Harry. "Sirius was a bit sad about my dad being a bachelor and you were a bit stoned so you casually... what, sent a time traveller back to go to school with them and eventually marry dad? And that's how I came to be born? Isn't that a time paradox?"
"It would be if anyone remembered it," said Lucifer, "but of course they don't. You'll be fine so long as nobody does anything to mess up Sirius's wish. The only one who can is Sirius, so don't tell him about it and you won't suddenly cease to exist."
"What would happen if the wish did get undone?"
"How would I know? Voldemort probably doesn't die, I'd imagine. Maybe he wins then rather than taking a time out. If I were you I wouldn't chance it, you won't be there to know how badly you've messed things up."
"Why didn't you give them some protection?" asked Halfrek.
"I didn't even know who Jimmy was," said Lucifer, "it was all spur of the moment stuff. Stubby made his wish, I activated it, and that was pretty much it."
"Didn't anyone notice that the girl you sent back was missing?" asked Harry.
"It doesn't work like that," said Halfrek. "She was an anthropomorphic personification, a physical personification of an idea in the shape of a human. He could send one back and still have as many as he wanted here."
"As many whats as he wanted? What was she, anyway?"
"A physical personification of one of the seven Deadly Sins," said Lucifer. "Like Reg is a physical personification of Rage, he used to call himself Anger but it was a bit too conspicuous, I had get him to change it."
"That was it," said Halfreck. "What was it you called her again?"
"Lilian Lust, the girl with the bust," Lucifer said with a smile. He produced a small bell and rang it.
Moments later a red-headed woman walked in, wearing a short red dress and carrying a tray loaded with a coffee pot, cups, and a selection of sandwiches. She was gorgeous, and looked like a sexier version of Harry's mother, if she'd been a film star rather than a housewife. Even knowing what she was Harry felt a painfully strong attraction to her. In a voice with a strong American Deep South accent she said "Did someone just mention my name? Hi, Halfreck, good to see you again. Who's the cute kid?"
"Lilian," said Lucifer. "This is Harry, he's the son of one of your personifications. Please try not to seduce him, I have a feeling it would make him feel a little squicky."
Lilian pouted prettily, slammed the tray down on Lucifer's desk, said "See you later... Harry," in a sultry voice, and flounced out.
"Just can't get decent staff any more," said Lucifer.
Halfrek shrugged, and said "Why am I not surprised? Okay, we can't cancel the wish, we can't give him another, so we need to concentrate on finding ways for Harry to get through this mess without it."
"Joy. Eat up, Harry, this is going to take some serious planning."
TBC
Notes: For Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation's film appearance search for 'drimble wedge bedazzled' and play the first video that comes up. His backing group aren't visible, but presumably are around somewhere. The film's music was actually composed by Dudley Moore and played by the Dudley Moore Trio.
For Lillian search for 'raquel welch bedazzled 1967' and look for a video that starts with her carrying a tray into a bedroom.
Now posted to archives with some minor changes;
On Twisting the Hellmouth - https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-34251/MarcusRowland+Harry+Potter+Undazzled.htm
On Fanfiction.net - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14336114/1/Harry-Potter-Undazzled
On Archive of Our Own - https://archiveofourown.org/works/54407350
II - Comeback Tour
"I really haven't granted a lot of wishes or bought many souls over the last few years," said Lucifer, leafing through an implausibly long filing cabinet drawer. "Back in the day God had me working at it non-stop, said it was to give people a choice between good and evil. If I collected a hundred billion souls before he did he'd let me back into heaven, that was the plan."
"What went wrong?" asked Harry.
"I collected them, and God backed out of the deal. I let the last one burn his contract because I didn't really need his soul, and God said that I'd done it for the wrong reasons and wasn't truly repentant. So I had to start all over again. But after a couple of years I decided that it was a mugs game - I'd lived without Heaven for thousands of years, and although it's a wonderful place I've had it with dancing attendance on someone who doesn't even keep to the deals he makes. I cut right back, these days I do a couple of dozen a year when I run into someone really deserving or really heinous, and I'm pretty sure it's made no bloody difference. People didn't need me to push them at good or evil, they do a pretty good job of it on their own." He leafed through a file and tossed it over his shoulder to join a heap growing on the floor. "Looks like I never granted him or his followers any wishes. That one was the closest, a Death Eater who made a wish that the Chudley Cannons would never win another match. Voldemort got annoyed with him and killed him before I could get to him with a contract."
"Voldemort was annoyed because his minion wanted to hurt the Cannons?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Voldemort was a huge fan, went to every match incognito. Reckoned they were a cert to win the cup in eighty-two."
"You're joking!"
"No, I was being sarcastic, there's a difference. Of course Voldemort didn't give a toss about the Cannons; he was annoyed because the idiot wasted time thinking about quidditch instead of blowing up the stadium."
"Yeah, that sounds more like him."
"Getting back to your problem," said Lucifer, opening another filing cabinet drawer and pulling it out several feet more than the depth of the cabinet should have allowed, "I'm not finding anything about your parents. Your father never made a wish strong enough to merit my attention, neither did your mother, nor did you. Halfreck, are you quite sure it isn't something your crowd did?"
Halfreck looked up from the tea one of his minions had bought her. "Definitely not us. Do you really think I'd be here if it was? I have better things to do."
"That reminds me," said Harry, "we've been here for hours, they must be looking for me at Hogwarts by now."
Lucifer shook his head. "We're running on my time now, you could spend a week here and you'd leave about five minutes after you arrived."
"Thanks, that's one less thing to worry about."
"Okay, let's take another look at you..." Lucifer shut the filing cabinet and snapped his fingers. A pair of weird plastic glasses with mult-coloured lenses appeared in his hand, and he put them on and stared at Harry, the glasses making a weird weebling noise. "Hmmm.... the discontinuity is approximately two to ten years before you were born... sound about right to you, Halfreck?"
"Plausible, but I can't confirm it."
Lucifer vanished the glasses. "You were born in 1980, so roughly speaking the wish changed things some time between nineteen-seventy and seventy-eight. What were your parents doing then?"
"Mostly they'd have been at school."
"Any schoolfriends?"
"A few. Dad was friends with Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, oh, and Peter Pettigrew, though he was the one that eventually betrayed them to Voldemort. I don't really know much about mum's friends."
"Tell me about them."
"Pettigrew is a rat animagus. He looks a bit rat-like too, I don't know what my parents were thinking to trust him. Remus is a nice guy, a really good wizard, but he's a werewolf so he's always a bit ill and depressed. And Sirius is my godfather - he's a great guy, but he's on the run because Pettigrew framed him for betraying my parents."
"This Sirius... rides a motorbike?"
"He did, yes. Do you know him?"
"Not by that name, no, but I remember a wizard who had a bike and mentioned a werewolf friend." He went to a shelf and pulled out a 12" LP in a shiny cardboard sleeve. Lucifer was on the cover, wearing a shiny suit criss-crossed with diagonal bands of parallel black, white and grey stripes, holding a microphone. Behind him several girls in short tinsely dresses appeared to be doing some sort of dance. Silver lettering said 'Drimble Wedge And The Vegetation' in large type, and 'Hammersmith Odeon 1979' in smaller type below. He handed it to Harry, and said "Take a look at the back."
Harry checked the back, and saw what he expected; a list of tracks and some smaller pictures of Lucifer, the dancers, and his backing group, The Vegetation. A drummer, a double-bass player, and two guitarists. One of the guitarists looked strangely familiar. "This is someone called Stubby Boardman, but it looks a hell of a lot like a younger version of Sirius."
"I thought it might."
"You know Sirius?"
"To cut a long story short, Drimble Wedge was a rock star persona I used a few times in the sixties and early seventies. In seventy-nine a music journalist wished for him to make a comeback tour, and I decided to let him have what he wanted. I needed a backing group at short notice, and the only ones available were a magical group called the Hobgoblins. They weren't very good but they didn't need to be."
"Why not?" asked Halfreck.
"The whole point of it was that we'd turn out to be crap, worse than everyone remembered, get terrible reviews, and after that I'd never have to do the bloody act again. And I really chose the right backing group, they were dreadful. Which would have been fine except that the bloke making the wish was off his head on vodka the first two performances and didn't really notice. Before the third performance the Hobgoblins and I went to the pub; we were all a bit tipsy, there might have been some slightly illegal smoking too, and Stubby told me about his mate the werewolf and his poor friend Jimmy who couldn't find a girlfriend."
"Hang on... this was seventy-nine?" asked Harry.
"That's right."
"My parents were already married in seventy-nine."
"Not as such, no, not originally."
"You found him a girlfriend?" asked Halfreck.
"Sort of." Lucifer looked shifty, and slightly embarassed. "It wasn't like I wanted anyone's soul or anything, I didn't even make anyone sign a contract. It just seemed like a nice thing to do to cheer Stubby up."
"This mother of yours," said Halfreck. "What was her name again?"
"Evans," said Harry, "Lily Evans."
"Short for Lilian?"
"I always thought she was named after the flowers, but I suppose it could have been short for Lilian."
"Please tell me you didn't do what I think you did," said Halfreck.
"Honestly, cross my heart, I didn't," Lucifer said unconvincingly.
"You bloody did," said Halfreck. She picked up the LP and snapped it in two, then tore the sleeve into shreds. "You took an anthropomorphic personification, de-aged her, and threw her back in time to a school where she'd be surrounded by horny school-kids. Did she even know what she was doing?"
"Not really, not as such. She had to act like the age she'd been given." Lucifer snapped his fingers again and the bits of the record and sleeve vanished, and the disc reappeared in his hand undamaged.
"How old was she supposed to be?"
"Eleven when I sent her back. I had to give her a family and some back story, of course, so people remembered her earlier than that. She did too, of course."
"Can I just check I've got this right," said Harry. "Sirius was a bit sad about my dad being a bachelor and you were a bit stoned so you casually... what, sent a time traveller back to go to school with them and eventually marry dad? And that's how I came to be born? Isn't that a time paradox?"
"It would be if anyone remembered it," said Lucifer, "but of course they don't. You'll be fine so long as nobody does anything to mess up Sirius's wish. The only one who can is Sirius, so don't tell him about it and you won't suddenly cease to exist."
"What would happen if the wish did get undone?"
"How would I know? Voldemort probably doesn't die, I'd imagine. Maybe he wins then rather than taking a time out. If I were you I wouldn't chance it, you won't be there to know how badly you've messed things up."
"Why didn't you give them some protection?" asked Halfrek.
"I didn't even know who Jimmy was," said Lucifer, "it was all spur of the moment stuff. Stubby made his wish, I activated it, and that was pretty much it."
"Didn't anyone notice that the girl you sent back was missing?" asked Harry.
"It doesn't work like that," said Halfrek. "She was an anthropomorphic personification, a physical personification of an idea in the shape of a human. He could send one back and still have as many as he wanted here."
"As many whats as he wanted? What was she, anyway?"
"A physical personification of one of the seven Deadly Sins," said Lucifer. "Like Reg is a physical personification of Rage, he used to call himself Anger but it was a bit too conspicuous, I had get him to change it."
"That was it," said Halfreck. "What was it you called her again?"
"Lilian Lust, the girl with the bust," Lucifer said with a smile. He produced a small bell and rang it.
Moments later a red-headed woman walked in, wearing a short red dress and carrying a tray loaded with a coffee pot, cups, and a selection of sandwiches. She was gorgeous, and looked like a sexier version of Harry's mother, if she'd been a film star rather than a housewife. Even knowing what she was Harry felt a painfully strong attraction to her. In a voice with a strong American Deep South accent she said "Did someone just mention my name? Hi, Halfreck, good to see you again. Who's the cute kid?"
"Lilian," said Lucifer. "This is Harry, he's the son of one of your personifications. Please try not to seduce him, I have a feeling it would make him feel a little squicky."
Lilian pouted prettily, slammed the tray down on Lucifer's desk, said "See you later... Harry," in a sultry voice, and flounced out.
"Just can't get decent staff any more," said Lucifer.
Halfrek shrugged, and said "Why am I not surprised? Okay, we can't cancel the wish, we can't give him another, so we need to concentrate on finding ways for Harry to get through this mess without it."
"Joy. Eat up, Harry, this is going to take some serious planning."
TBC
Notes: For Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation's film appearance search for 'drimble wedge bedazzled' and play the first video that comes up. His backing group aren't visible, but presumably are around somewhere. The film's music was actually composed by Dudley Moore and played by the Dudley Moore Trio.
For Lillian search for 'raquel welch bedazzled 1967' and look for a video that starts with her carrying a tray into a bedroom.
Now posted to archives with some minor changes;
On Twisting the Hellmouth - https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-34251/MarcusRowland+Harry+Potter+Undazzled.htm
On Fanfiction.net - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14336114/1/Harry-Potter-Undazzled
On Archive of Our Own - https://archiveofourown.org/works/54407350
