Disclaimer: Paul, Michael, and Jolene belong to me. Harry, Snape, Draco, Ginny, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, or any of the HP characters are (c) JK Rowling, obviously. No disrespect is meant to her or them because of Paul's opinions.

A/N: I'm sorry - I couldn't resist. Paul watches anime sometimes but avoids the fandoms like the plague, and just doesn't understand why Michael or anyone else is so obsessed with Harry Potter. And since we all know Michael was waiting in line at midnight of July 16th, I had to put this up. Apologies for the silliness.

Fandom

It was four a.m. and the phone was ringing.

It was four a.m. and the phone was ringing.

Heart hammering, Paul Fleming-Walker jolted himself awake, flung himself over his husband’s sleeping form and groped clumsily for the phone. After several swipes and missed attempts and thwacking Michael in the face by accident, Paul fumbled for the lamp instead.

It only succeeded in blinding him, of course, but once the purple flashes died away Paul was able to reach the receiver. “Hello?” he gasped, adrenaline pounding through him. He vaguely recognized his sister’s voice, but she was speaking too fast and far too hysterically for him to understand her.

“Jo? Jo, calm down. Are you all right? Is Mom all right? What’s the matter?” Paul realized he was still sprawled over Michael’s body when the other grunted and tried to push him off. He scrambled back and shot an apologetic glance vaguely in that direction.

“It’s . . . it’s . . .” the eleven-year-old was definitely crying, and Paul’s insides lurched. Something must have happened. “Everything’s all crazy!” Jolene gasped, “It’s . . . Draco, and Dumbledore, and . . . and . . . and oh man, Snape, and . . . and he . . . and Harry . . . and Hermione and GINNY and Ron was — oh!”

Paul’s eyes glazed over with some sort of red film. “Jolene,” Paul took the phone away from his ear for a moment, Jo’s squawks filling the room. “What. Are. You. Talking. About?”

“Harry Potter!” Jolene screeched, loudly enough that Paul actually dropped the receiver with a grimace. “Honestly, Pauly!! I just finished it and . . . and so much . . . I just wanted . . .”

“Jolene!” Paul resisted the urge to shout, keeping his irritation down to the edge that crept into his voice. “You have an entire household of people to wake up and geek about this. Why me?”

She paused a moment. “Well, ‘cause Tiffany doesn’t like Harry Potter and Bethy’s at a sleepover and the boys are too little to read it and Mom’s sleeping,” she made it sound like the most logical thing in the world. Perhaps if Paul weren’t so tired he might have fallen for it.

“You think I wasn’t?” Paul felt Michael’s hand come up to rub between his shoulder blades, and he appreciated the gesture. He was dangerously close to homicidal. “And for goodness’ sake, Jo, when have I ever read Harry Potter? When do you think I even have time to read? And I have to get up for work in less than two hours!”

Silence. Then, with the air of ‘Man, I should have figured this out before’ . . . “Is Michael there?”

“Yes . . .”

“He read it, right?”

Paul shoved a fist in his mouth to keep from shouting something along the likes of, ‘Are you insane?! Of course he read it! He dragged me to Chapters for a bizarre pre-party where kids were dressed up in utterly bizarre costumes and there were people far too old for this sort of thing dressed as god knows what and they were all bonding like they’re some sort of cult and squealing about things I don’t understand and then he didn’t talk to me for three hours until he finished the stupid book and then went straight to bed and I’ve had to deal with him muttering to himself in his sleep and I’ve only had half an hour of sleep . . .’

“Yes,” he said instead.

“Can you put him on?”

Wordlessly, Paul handed the phone over with an ‘it’s for you’ gesture. Michael gave him an odd look, but his expression dissolved into fanboy glee after only a few seconds. Paul flopped over on his stomach and clenched his pillow over his head, but it didn’t help.

After a few minutes of listening to “Oh my god!” and “I know!” and “Oh definitely, and the part where —“ and “Crying! I know! I was completely —“ and “Can you believe it?”, Paul lurched himself off the bed, snatched a pillow and the top blanket, and stormed out of the room.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” he announced dramatically from the doorway, but Michael barely managed to wave him off. The redhead rolled over on his stomach, phone in hand and feet kicking in the air. Paul threw up his arms, groaned theatrically, and stomped into the living room, where he flung himself onto the sofa.

He could still hear Michael squealing. Paul didn’t drift off to sleep so much as slam his eyelids shut and demand that the Sandman visit him — and if he knew what was best for him, he’d hurry his imaginary fairy self and his bag of magic dust over here, now.

Paul didn’t understand Michael’s obsession with a bunch of children’s books. Not that Paul didn’t like kids’ series, which he did (he’d been so busy growing up, trying to raise six siblings, that children’s tales were pretty much all he ever read), but this one was just too weird. He’d picked one up and tried to read it, but within the first few minutes had been assaulted by so many unfamiliar terms being tossed casually about that he gave up in disgust. Michael had tried to explain it to him, but Paul generally tuned him out while the other babbled on.

Not to mention, in a misguided effort to understand just what Michael was going on about, Paul had typed in ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘fanfiction’ into an Internet search engine. Five minutes later, he was hurriedly turning off the power and trying to erase the mental image of Harry and an unpleasant-sounding person, whose name sounded a lot like ‘snake’ but wasn’t, doing something in a classroom that he wouldn’t even consider doing with Michael, anywhere.

“Tomorrow,” he muttered, teeth gritting as Michael rambled on about Harry and something to do with the Latin word for ‘dragon’, and bathrooms, for heaven’s sake, “I am going to find that stupid book and burn it.”