***
Henry Potty exchanged frustrated glances with his friends. Just as they’d been about to accomplish the best all-time rescue ever, Really Wimpy had tripped on his own shoelaces, and Henry, running behind him without looking where he was going, had gone hurtling over the prone teen and into the mud. By the time Horrendous had picked up her stunned friends and helped Henry sponge off his glasses, the Demeanies had killed Cereals, along with a past version of Henry Potty.
Now they were all locked in their dorm room for killing the worst traitor in history without a permission slip.
“Darnit, Cereals shouldn’t have died,” Henry complained for the fortieth time. “If I’d only read ahead, I’d have known he was a good guy, and I wouldn’t have plotted to kill him for half a book.” He dragged the corpse of himself up to a sitting position, and moved it like a ventriloquist dummy. “I agree, oh great Chosen One, how ‘bout you?” (Some might wonder why the three children had been sent to their room with a corpse. However, the detention slip had read “Henry Potty,” not “Only versions of Henry Potty still alive” or “Just the most recent Henry Potty from this reality.” You’d think a magic school with time travel devices would be more precise.)
Really Wimpy, who’d been pondering for the last three hours, finally felt his thoughts congealing into an idea. Or at least a question. “Horrendous, you said earlier that we need to change what’s happening. What’d you mean?”
Horrendous hesitated, twisting a long mousy curl around her finger. “If this were fiction, I’d suggest we turn back a few pages.”
Henry’s eyes widened. “It is fiction…but can we really do that?”
Horrendous tried to look mysterious, but only managed a know-it-all smirk. “With the power of reading, we can. All the library posters say so.”
“That’s great! We can go back a decade and save my parents.”
Horrendous looked regretful. “I’m really sorry, Henry. But I only have a certain number of words allotted per month, and I used up the last batch texting.”
“Rewritten the story yet?” Bumbling Bore asked as he entered the room, long beard dragging behind him. His half-moon glasses were absently dangling from one ear.
“Professor! We weren’t going to—”
“Disrupt the entire course of the novel and drive the readers mad to free a convicted traitor? Of course you were—I read ahead.” The professor paced the room, stepped on his own beard, and fell flat on his face. “A curious thing, beards. One’s chin droops lower and lower until one’s jaw seems to be resting on the floor.”
“Your jaw is on the floor,” Henry said, helping him up.
“Ah. That explains it. What was I speaking of?”
“Beards.”
“What? Why bother with those? If you’re going to page-travel, you need sage advice from a master of the magical arts. Too bad all you have is me. Now listen: You will cross chapters and repeat paragraphs. You will skim sentences and dance on the tips of apostrophes. Beware the dreaded semicolon and its ilk, and make sure to dot your t’s and cross your i’s.”
“What? Professor, that’s—”
“Silence! You have no time.” Bumbling Bore hesitated. “Aside from all that you’re about to create. Now be careful: You may in fact go where no one has bothered going before.”
Ignoring the professor as always, the teens clustered in the room’s center. “Everyone hold hands,” Horrendous said. Really, always an opportunist, grabbed hers. Henry followed. “Now repeat after me: Ookmark-bay. Ookmark-bay!” As the teens all chanted this ancient word of power, they heard pages rustling, and a faint scent of bookbinder’s glue. And the world reshaped itself.
A Preposterous Portfolio of Parodies: Free Selections from Spoofs of The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Trek and More Page 5