Harry Putter and the Chamber of Cheesecakes

HARRY PUTTER

AND THE CHAMBER OF CHEESECAKES

BY

CHAPTER ILLUSTRATIONS BY:

RILEY O’DONNELL, Age 9

GRIFFIN O’DONNELL, Age 11

COVER ILLUSTRATIONS BY:

TIMOTHY R. O’DONNELL

Text copyright © 2004 by Timothy R. O’Donnell

Illustrations by Timothy R. O’Donnell, Riley O’Donnell,

and Griffin O’Donnell copyright © 2004 by Timothy R. O’Donnell

All rights reserved.

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ISBN 1-4116-0688-4

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

            While most kids dream about being off from school, and find their summer to rocket by like a cheap amusement park ride, Harry Putter found summer to be the bane of his existence.  It was because each summer found him at number 4 Privy Drive, living in the house he grew up in with his Aunt Hachooie, Uncle Vermin, and cousin Mudley, collectively known as the Dirtleys.  Even though he was still spending this summer in the same place, it had started off with a bang, and had been like no other summer in his life. 

            Each summer Harry was treated like a subspecies.  The Dirtleys didn’t want Harry in their home, and resented his intrusion in their lives.  In fact, from as early as he could remember he slept in the doghouse, literally, leaky roof and all.  That is, until the summer after his first year of school, – preschool.  He came home and discovered the doghouse was gone.  That summer he lived in the closet under the stairs.  And even though Uncle Vermin squeezed a bed in there, Harry liked to sleep under it, rather than in it.  He had grown accustomed to sleeping under his first bed ever, at school, for it seemed more like being in his old doghouse, only it didn’t leak like his old doghouse.  Harry thought he was in heaven, only a heaven where someone was trying to kill him.  He thought Uncle Vermin was being nice, but later he found out that Hasbeen threatened to beat the snot out of his Uncle Vermin. 

            Cubious Hasbeen was Harry’s first friend ever, mostly because he always threatened to beat the snot out of his Uncle Vermin, but also because, he was the one who came and took Harry off to school, changing his life forever.  Being 1/32 part giant, Hasbeen was humongously fat and pretty intimidating, so the Dirtleys got rid of the doghouse to make appearances look good from the outside (in case Hasbeen should peek over the fence into the backyard), but not without a general increased resentment that they took out on Harry brutally. 

            It wasn’t until after his third year of school, that Harry came home to discover that he had a bedroom of his own.  Uncle Vermin explained that the Tax Assessor had come by in the middle of the year, and was going to raise the property taxes because of the “additional bedroom.”  Uncle Vermin had to get rid of Harry’s bed to prove that it was really a closet, in order to avoid raising the taxes.  So, Harry had his own room that summer, in the guestroom, a real bedroom, upstairs and everything.  Of course, he still slept under the bed. 

            But not this summer!  This summer he slept in the master bedroom under a king-sized bed.  Uncle Vermin and Aunt Hachooie had the guestroom.

            Each summer Harry was treated like a slave.  He had a list of chores a mile long.  Some were difficult chores like, laundry, dishes, washing cars, scrubbing floors, sweeping chimneys, etc.  Others were more menial, such as brushing cousin Mudley’s hair, plucking Uncle Vermin’s nose hairs, or massaging Aunt Hachooie’s bunioned feet. 

            He would come home from school and the place would look like it hadn’t been cleaned for eight months.  It was a pigsty that pigs wouldn’t want to live in.  (The Dirtleys of course, didn’t seem to mind.  They were just living up to their disgusting name.)  He would spend each day cleaning until night when he would fall asleep exhausted.  His only goals were to do a good job and thus avoid kicks to his ribs or the seat of his pants from the Dirtleys. 

            Not this summer!  This summer, he did no cleaning or chores.

            Each summer Harry felt like he was slowly starving to death.  Uncle Vermin rationed Harry’s food and resented the cost of the little he spent to feed Harry.  He sure mentioned it a lot.  (Harry found it very surprising later in life that food and doghouses were a good deal less expensive than Uncle Vermin had him believe.)  Harry was not allowed to be in the kitchen unobserved.  All the work he did cooking and cleaning in the kitchen was conducted under the watchful eyes of Aunt Hachooie.  He occasionally was able to sneak into the kitchen to steal something to eat, usually a handful of uncooked rice or macaroni.  However, he always risked a thorough beating when doing so. 

            This summer, Harry had developed a small spare tire on his slight frame.

            In each of his past summers, Harry was forced to go to therapy sessions with the Dirtley’s analyst for his supposed deep-seeded hatred of the Dirtleys.  Though he tried several times, he was never able to convince his therapist that it was really the reverse, that the Dirtley’s hated him.  Nor did the analyst believe the fantastic stories that Harry told him: that he spent his early years sleeping in the doghouse; that he had a list of chores a mile long, or that he was being slowly starved to death – “Just look at me, I’m skin and bones!”  Harry never mentioned any of his many adventures, or anything that really took place at school or else he would have been thrown in a straight jacket in a padded room.  Once he had accidentally mentioned that his food talked to him, but was able to convince the analyst that he was only joking. 

            This summer there were no therapy sessions.

            Sure, this summer had started out exciting enough, but despite all the improvements, Harry Putter found himself bored.  Today was too muggy outside, so Harry stayed in his room where the window air conditioner hummed and kept life bearable, another improvement realized only this summer.

            He looked out of the window of his bedroom and sighed.  All the neighborhood kids stayed far away from 4 Privy Drive even though Uncle Vermin had a swimming pool installed in the backyard in April.  They all had known for a long time that the weird kid with the L-shaped scar on his forehead lived there.  Stay away from Harry Putter!  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; the neighborhood kids were a bunch of morons the likes of which only his cousin Mudley could stomach.  In fact, many of the sorry lot looked up to Mudley for leadership, – a sorry lot indeed.  That was fine with Harry, he wanted someone of intelligence to talk to, Ron, Hermione, heck, he would settle for Neville Largebottom. 

            But no one interesting was around.  The only sign of life was the mailman heading from mailbox to mailbox delivering the mail, or as those in the wizarding community referred to it, the muddle mail.  Muddle being the word they use for the poor humans that muddled through life without the use of magic.  Wizards of course had a much more sophisticated mail delivery system.

            Had the mailman looked up, he would have seen a skinny teenager with neat black hair and unibrow, wearing glasses that had been makeshift repaired with masking tape staring out of the window back down at him.  Harry’s hair was neat because he had Mudley brush it fifty-five strokes three times each day; he had a unibrow because it hurt too much when he had Mudley pluck the hairs growing between his eyebrows; and his glasses had been sat on by Hedbutt, his pet goat, that he loved more than anyone else in the world, besides himself.

            But even Hedbutt was nowhere to be seen.  Harry sighed again, flopped on the bed, and rummaged through a pile of comics.  He considered the quibbage comic, The Adventures of the Furious Whacker, but settled on his copy of the latest Dr. Nova comic.  However, he found himself only leafing through it with disinterest, he had read it three times already.  He lay down on the bed and his eyes wandered around the room until he found himself staring at the Loose Cannons poster on the wall.  The Loose Cannons were his favorite professional quibbage team.  He sighed.  The pool was boring, the neighborhood kids were boring, Nintendo was boring, even the comics were boring. 

            Even though he kept telling himself that it was the best summer of his entire life, and he had said so a half dozen times in letters to Ron and Hermione, who was he kidding?  This summer was still the bane of his existence.  It turned out that the ill treatment he had received from the Dirtleys was better than the constant boredom he endured this summer. 

            What he really wished for was to be back at school, and he had a really bad school year last year, too.  (No wonder everyone thought he had a severe case of stupid in the head.)  However, school didn’t start for three more days.  And while Harry was happiest at school, it wasn’t really his friends there that made him happy, certainly not the books and classes, after five years, six if you counted preschool, the magic held little magic for him.  It wasn’t even playing quibbage that made him happy.  What Harry really wished for when he wished he were back at school, was for an adventure. 

            His protruding belly gave a pang, and Harry remembering the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, decided to go downstairs and get a snack.  He was quickly disappointed to find the empty package of Reese’s contributing to an overall filthy kitchen counter stacked with used dishes and cups, an empty box of cereal, and a jug of milk someone had left out of the fridge all day, all on top of layers of other garbage.  He picked up the wrapper and angrily thought to himself, “Mudley!” 

            As he headed down the hallway, past the closet under the stairs, and into the living room, he pulled out his magic wand and yelled, “Mudley Dirtley!  You scumbucket!  Where are you?”

            In the living room, he spotted his Aunt Hachooie; she sat on the blue sofa with the doilies on the arms, near the air conditioner, frozen in the act of fanning herself, and with a look of fear and loathing on her gaunt face. 

            Aunt Hachooie was a stern woman, tall and thin.  She was very old fashioned in her thoughts and her appearance.  She looked like she would keep a house just so.  Not so, above all, she was a Dirtley, and that means trash.  On top of that, she had grown accustomed to having Harry do all the real work keeping the house in order for so many years.  Furthermore, she was used to commanding the Dirtley household like a tyrant, though Uncle Vermin didn’t realize that he was not the one in charge.  Harry immediately commanded her, “Go buy some more Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!”  He jabbed his wand repeatedly, shooting off a few bolts of electricity from its tip to emphasize his words, and to get her moving, right quick.

            “But …,” said Aunt Hachooie, who was interrupted by the furiously crackling electrical bolts jolting her feet until her graying brown hair stood on end.

            “Now!” shouted Harry.  With several short cries, she danced from the room, out the front door, and ran to the car.

            A whimper could be heard in the suddenly quiet living room.  Harry turned and noticed Mudley’s fat butt sticking out from behind the coffee table.  Mudley chanced a peek over the edge of the table and quickly pulled his head back down as Harry set the coffee table ablaze with a fireball blast coming from his wand.  Harry smiled with satisfaction at the pig-like squeal that Mudley made. 

            Mudley Dirtley was a big kid, who liked to throw his weight around.  He had grown up teasing and bullying Harry.  But ever since Harry had started using magic, he had moved on to terrorizing easier prey in the neighborhood.  Mudley was a pig.  In fact, there was pig blood in Mudley from his father’s side of the family, most visible in his beady eyes, snout, and jowls.

            Just then, a letter dropped through the slot in the front door.  Harry knew right away that this letter was not the muddle mail.  He opened the front door to confirm his suspicion, and saw the young goat that had delivered it scampering away.  He sent a lightning bolt after the goat but missed, Aunt Hachooie leaving in the Dirtley’s car, a mini Cooper, got in the way.  He picked up the letter and tossed it on the burning coffee table where it quickly shriveled to ashes in the blaze.  He had gotten so many of these letters so far this summer, (in reality a hundred and fifty seven) that he could recite them by heart.

“The use of all methods of magical incantation, enchantment, and summoning by any 1st through 6
^th
year students outside of Hogwashes school for Witchcraft and Wizardry is strictly forbidden and most definitely not allowed.  Desist immediately in using magic in the presence of muddles.

                                    The Department of Wizard Affairs”

            Harry scoffed at the idea that some silly rule that was meant for unimportant children, who might do something dangerous using magic without supervision, might somehow apply to the great Harry Putter.  Preposterous! 

            The warning notice also reminded Harry of the excitement of the very beginning of summer.  There had been another big trial, Harry’s second.  (In his first trial, Harry got off using a temporary insanity plea.)  The Ministry of Magic really thought they had him this time, when he began using his magic on his first day back from school to educate the Dirtleys on what Harry called the New House Order. 

            The Ministry had tried to seize his wand that day, but Harry wouldn’t relinquish it.  He sent the Ministry’s lackey scurrying back to the Ministry without his own wand, let alone Harry’s.  Next, the Ministry sent over an Auditor, a wizard who is adept in the magical field of Accounting.  An Auditor uses accounting practices to stun their quarry, until dumbfounded, they submit to paying taxes, interest penalties, and worst of all are beguiled into letting the Auditor prepare their financial and tax reports.  Harry was greatly relieved when the Ministry sent over Kingsley Shuckthecorn to audit him.  Kingsley was a member of The Order of the Harry Putter Fan Club, and according to club bylaws, was not allowed to take Harry’s wand.  Kingsley was forced to resign his lucrative Ministry position at once, and immediately helped Harry to defend himself against any further Ministry attempts.