trin's harry potter fanfiction

title: Bookaburra
date: july 23, 2002

Before the beginning of his final year at Hogwarts, Harry notices that there’s a new shop at Diagon Alley. It’s sprung up where a failed novelty cafe used to be. The cafe was called Frankenstein’s and had people dressed up in costumes to serve the customers and scare them, and was basically doing a roaring trade when it was discovered that the costumes weren’t real and the zombies were.

Recession Causes Hike in Cheap Labour, the more respectable wizarding newspapers called it, and sold less. The Daily Prophet emblazoned across its own front page: FREAK RESTAURANT SHOCKER!, and sold out.

The name Bookaburra is carved out of sharp-smelling wood across the door. It sounds Arabic and full of flying-carpet mystique. Harry expects a performing monkey in a purple vest (a vague memory from the less violent cartoon films Dudley watched), nasal instrumental music that will make his eardrums tingle as if they’re being electrocuted. Belly dancers, the more male side of his brain reminds him gleefully.

Instead, as soon as he enters the room, a snowy parrot lands on his shoulder and cleans its beak on Harry’s brand new shirt. Harry tries to shoo it off. It proceeds to nibble on his ear like corn on the cob.

The shop smells like books. Not old books, new books whose pages fairly crackle with fresh ink. And there’s another smell, something like woody horse stables but not quite. Harry, with his limited knowledge of the world, can’t place it.

There’s no shopkeeper in sight, which is rare in Diagon Alley, where everyone has everything to sell and something to say about it. Especially about the way you dress, Harry thinks, scratching his sleeve. Some guy had come up to him and told him he looked absolutely shabby and none of the girls would like him at that rate, and produced a shining white suit with a grin that would have made most smart children run away.

Wouldn’t stain, he promised. Wouldn’t crinkle. Wouldn’t smell. Right now the shirt is smelling more and more like parrot. Plus, it itches.

The books rustle as Harry approaches the shelves, which are everywhere and resemble matchsticks in a tornado then the ordered rows that Harry’s used to. As Harry reaches for one, he glimpses another parrot with the sunshine spiked crest on another annoyed patron’s shoulder, drooling, and feels better about the less saliva-dripping one he has.

As Harry pulls out a book that intriguingly says “Birds: A Bit of Heaven On Earth”, the books suddenly slip from all of their shelves, tumble out in torrents. It’s the flood of letters through the fireplace all over again, thinks Harry, not quite ready to be concussed at the age of seventeen and panicking as the parrot on his shoulder screams. Only in hardcover.

Just as the books nearly hit Harry, they upend themselves and suddenly their heavy spines become as light as bird bones and they take flight in a whirlwind of white shuffling pages.

Harry could laugh, his hands outstretched to touch the feathery wingbeats of all the books that smell like Eucalyptus, sea breezes, oranges in groves and trees so dry they burn up in the sun, all of them flashing like opals in the dim light of Bookaburra.

“Potter?” somebody says alarmingly, as if Harry has been caught doing something illicit and very embarrassing. Harry turns, vaguely sees Draco with a curious parrot on his shoulder, clutching a book to his chest. Draco stares as if Harry has suddenly acquired an extra pair of eyes and runs out of the shop, bird shrieking away on his shoulder.

Later on, when Harry tries to leave the shop, the cockatoo on his shoulder screeches and wails, inconsolable. Harry, strangely guilty, stuffs it in his room at the Three Broomsticks and tries to cover his ears to mask the wailing.

He tries to go asleep, but then the parrot is still there, hopping from one foot to the other, destroying all wood objects with its beak. It’s officially been called “Bloody Hell Shut Up”. Every time Harry feels the bed comfortingly fall away, a sure indication of sleep, Bloody Hell Shut Up is there to wake him up.

Then there’s a pecking on the window. Harry’s almost grateful to shove the sill up, hoping that Bloody Hell Shut Up will take the hint and leave. But then there’s another Bloody Hell Shut Up parrot outside the window. Harry’s ready to scream and get out the nearest axe when Bloody Hell Shut Up flies out, blinking its black eyes at Harry.

Both parrots settle in a nearby tree, and Harry finally gets some sleep. When he wakes up, they’re gone, and if he squints right, he can see both glaring white birds soaring off to annoy somebody else, hopefully in their native country.

The same morning, Draco wakes up in the Malfoy Manor and wonders where Fuck Off Now and Leave Me Alone, his parrot, went. He wistfully brushes his fingers against his newest acquisition, the book called “Boys: A Bit of Heaven on Earth” and hopes to God Lucius Malfoy will never find it.