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Harry watched the retreating form of Snape from the grounds with a mixture of anger, fear and confusion. He was utterly alone on the high tower. Gazing over the edge, he could just make out the crumpled form of his dear friend and mentor Albus Dumbledore on the ground below. In a blind panic, Harry ran back down the stairs, barely aware of the curses and hexes blowing holes in the walls around him. His heart ached for effort and for grief as he ran around the perimeter of the school to the place where Dumbledore lay.

Tears streamed from his eyes as he laid hands on the lifeless Headmaster of Hogwarts. Suddenly jumping to his feet, Harry ran back into the school and made his way to Dumbledore’s quarters. Curiously, the entranceway was already open and as Harry ventured in he found that the same was true of the door. He decided to ignore this fact for now and instead busied himself looking for something he could use to mend this terrible situation.

‘There must be something!’ he screamed in a frustration. A thought suddenly struck him like a wet towel, ‘What can restore somebody back to life? The only thing I can think of is the blood of a…’ he stopped short, the sentence left unfinished on his lips

Harry turned slowly and looked at Fawkes, who looked straight back at him, an expression of what must have been reproach on his birdly features. ‘…Phoenix’ Harry concluded. He tilted his head slightly and regarded the Phoenix with a half-glazed look of curiosity. His eyes twinkled ominously. Fawkes croaked uneasily

Harry’s eyes wandered from the sword of Godric Gryffindor mounted on the wall and then back to Fawkes, who was now regarding him with a look of tentative flippancy. Harry looked again at the sword, then back to Fawkes, then back to the sword again. Fawkes’ eyes darted from the sword, then back to Harry Potter. All pretence aside, Fawkes began gnaw at the tether around his ankle as beads of sweat fell from his feathered hide and sizzled in his ashtray. Without a moments notice Harry lunged at Fawkes and in one fluid movement grabbed the sword of the wall and lopped off the ill-fated firebird’s head.


Fawkes let out an almighty scream and Harry, without a seconds delay, began looking for a receptacle with which to gather the blood. He searched through the drawers of Dumbledore’s desk and suddenly stumbled upon something that made him wince.

The severed head and respective body burst into flames and a highly irritated but wholly reanimated Fawkes came squawking from the ashes. Harry remained crouched behind the desk trying to gather the courage to face his angry victim.

A weak voice issued from behind the desk, ‘Sorry Fawkes’. Slowly Harry stood up from behind the desk with a sheepish grin on his face and a small golden hourglass in his hand. He shrugged. Fawkes just glared at him and muttered something under his breath.

Hermione and Ron burst in to the room, smiling and breathing heavily. Hermione started speaking without looking up ‘Harry, all is well, the Death Eaters are gone and as it turns out – Harry?’ she looked up to find Dumbledore’s office uninhabited save for a newborn Phoenix staring aghast at a bloody sword on the ground. Ron began to catch up with the pace of events ‘What happened in here then? Where’s Harry?’

But Harry was long gone by then. Although it is hard to say one is long gone when one is hurtling backwards through time itself. Harry arrived precisely in time to see Snape and Draco Malfoy making a beeline up to the high tower.

‘Infinito Probabiliatus’ Harry roared.

Where once there were two wicked hearted wizards there now sat a fully grown sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias. Without sparing a moment to run them through the finer points of existentialism Harry continued on his way up the tower taking two steps for every stride. He reached the top and found Dumbledore, alive and well, leaning against the battlements, smoking his pipe with a disturbing air of nonchalance. ‘Okay Severus, Draco, let’s do this’ he said as he whirled around, then with a look of surprise he exclaimed, ‘Harry! What on earth are you doing here?’ his pipe falling from his mouth and landing with a loud crack on the stone.

‘I’m here to save you Professor, I just stopped Malfoy and Snape on their way up here to disarm and kill you!’ replied a breathless Harry

‘You’re kidding’ said Dumbledore with an unnerving lack of concern

Harry picked up on this and replied, nervous and confused, ‘No sir, they were running with their wands and everything, but it’s okay, I turned them into a sperm whale and a rather attractive bowl of petunias’


Albus Dumbledore closed his eyes and pinched his nose-bridge between his thumb and forefinger ‘Harry did you really think a stupid little git like Draco and a sub-par Potions teacher would be able to disarm and kill the most powerful wizard in the known world?’

Harry couldn’t answer that but he tried anyway, despite his near-mute better judgement ‘But, I thought -’

‘Did you?!’ Dumbledore interrupted, 'did you really think Harry?! Or did you just do what you always do and just acted without thinking?! By the ever loving mother of Merlin you can be so stupid sometimes Harry!’

Harry became immediately defensive ‘Hang on a moment…I saw you die!’ he crowed as if he had won some unspoken dispute.

Dumbledore sighed in resignation ‘Harry, you saw no such thing, what you really saw was a very carefully orchestrated and apparently successful farce designed to mislead Voldemort and simultaneously fulfil the terms of Snape’s Unbreakable Vow. I was to die and fall from the tower while Snape and Draco were to go and join the Death Eaters, under rather impressive credentials I might add, and then at an opportune moment they would slip some broccoli into one of Voldemort’s salads, he’s terribly allergic you see. Meanwhile, once the Death eaters were gone, Ron and Hermione were to come out of hiding in the bushes at the foot of the tower and give me a dose of Phoenix blood that Fawkes was kind enough to supply us with,’ at this Harry winced again and decided it best not to mention his earlier misdemeanour, ever, Dumbledore continued ‘Then with Voldemort incapacitated or possibly dead, we are unsure yet just how allergic he is, and myself alive once more, the Order and I would go around making sure he was properly dead and finishing of his little band of miscreants once and for all,’

It took a moment for the plan, and the immediate consequences of his actions to sink in, but before they had a chance his indignation caught up with his remorse, ‘Hey! How come I was the only one left out of this little plan of yours’ he whined, while searching his memory for anyone else that might have been overlooked.

‘You weren’t, Mr. Filch was too, and Neville Longbottom!’ said Dumbledore ‘We left you out because of your alarming propensity to act on your emotions and screw everything up, and Mr. Filch is just a useless and embittered old man’

‘What about Neville?’ asked Harry, still trying to avoid the touchy subject of what was to come. His cheeks flushed and his ears burned.

‘Neville was involved, I was just trying to make you feel better’ muttered Dumbledore ruefully.

There was a painfully long silence…

'So, what now?' Harry ventured.

'Well Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'You used time-magic to change the course of history which resulted in the breaking of an Unbreakable Vow, not to mention giving away the clever deception to Voldemort. You tell me'

Hermione and Ron burst onto the parapet, frowning and breathing heavily. Hermione was carrying a rather attractive bowl of petunias, Ron looked utterly lost. 'What's happened here then? Why isn't Dumbledore down there? Harry you flapjack, what did you do?' but before Harry could defend himself 'Dumbledore stepped forward, 'Never mind that, let's get Professor Snape into the lake and would somebody please water Master Malfoy? Whatever the consequences of Harry's meddling with the very fabric of time and space are I am certain there will be little good in squatting up here waiting to find out'

As he said this the sky began to glow orange and great flaming meteors, too many to count, began to fall from the sky.


'Oh, good work Harry,' growled Ron, 'You've gone and initiated the apocalypse!'

'No I haven’t!' cried Harry, but not entirely convinced that he hadn’t, he added, 'I can fix it, I'll just use the spell on Snape again, then he can kill Dumbledore and set things right!'

'No good,’ replied Dumbledore, 'If you use Infinito Probabiliatus again the chances of you turning him back into “Snape” are infinity to one, you’ll more likely turn him into a small sun or an apricot tree or something even more inconvenient than his current form.'

He spoke these words as he walked down the stairs and was suddenly aware of the large crowd of Death Eaters that were assembled at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for them. Hermione coughed loudly and nudged Harry into the front, but before he could even draw his wand the side of the room exploded in an almighty inferno as a meteor collided with the castle wall, obliterating the nefarious crowd.

Moments later, Voldemort himself came marching down the hallway shouting out orders ahead of himself, 'Alright you lot, look sharp, Dumbledore will be coming down those stairs any minute now and if you – damn it all, why must all my minions be killed by meteors?! - Well, that's me then, I'm off!' and with a look of pained resignation he spun on his heel and fled the castle on his own.

There was silence for the first time in over an hour. Not only had the remaining Death Eaters cleared out but it seemed the meteors had also stopped falling. ‘Some Apocalypse,’ muttered Ron. The Earth gave an indignant quake and Ron quickly retracted his statement.

Renovations and repairs began immediately and Dumbledore had Slytherin commons converted into a laboratory for the examination of the meteor that had crashed into the building. Professor Snape was moved into the lake where he immediately began feasting greedily on Grindylows and Mermaids with gusto. Draco Malfoy was given a nice windowsill to perch on and some slugicide pellets.

The children spent many an evening gazing at the rocky surfaces of the cosmo-stone but nothing came of it. Eventually Dumbledore forbade students from wasting away their hours looking at it, but one night, after staring at it for a while he decided there was no sense in wasting his own time investigating it either but just as he was about to leave a small section of the stone began to glow. Without even thinking, Dumbledore touched his wand to the glowing spot and it immediately spread in a glowing ring around the stone. Jets of what appeared to be steam began pouring out as the meteor began to cleave along the glowing line and finally, like a great gaping cosmo-clam shell, the top half of the stone lifted up and a young boy stumbled out.

His appearance was as interesting as it was disturbing. The most striking thing was his enormous, glistening eyes, grossly out of proportion to his tiny nose and mouth. His mop of black hair was roughly matted down by a bright red baseball cap and he wore what appeared to be a mostly denim outfit, with red sneakers and a black tee shirt. On his belt was clipped what appeared to be a red metallic diary and some little wee orbs, half red, half gray.
‘Hi,’ said the stranger, ‘My names Ash, and this little yellow fellow…’ he gestured to a pitiful jaundiced rodent that had just this moment emerged from the meteor ‘…this is Pikachu’


Dumbledore started, but introduced himself all the same. The students at Hogwarts had a similar first impression but soon after took a shine to their ghastly new friend and his yellow companion. A number of weeks in, he and Pikachu managed to get a position helping Hagrid catch monsters in the forbidden forest and storing them in his “Pokeballs”. One afternoon, while Hagrid was enjoying a cup of tea on a stump in his pumpkin patch, Ash came tearing up the garden path from the direction of the forest. His eyes were wide with shock, he was flailing his arms wildly and for a second Hagrid would have sworn on his life he saw what appeared to be an enourmous, sky blue raindrop clinging to his head.

‘A meteor,’ he cried once he was within hearing range, ‘another meteor in the forest!’

Hagrid sat up, ‘We’d best tell Dumbledore about this’

Fifteen minutes later Ash, Hagrid and Dumbledore were standing around the recent discovery. Harry had insisted on coming along as well because, after all, he was still the protagonist of the story, even if he was a snotty opinionated protagonist. Dumbledore went through the same motions as he had with the last meteor. There was a hiss and a crack and a puff of cosmo-steam and there before their very eyes stood a young man with sandy blonde hair. His face was gentle and his eyes were resplendent and blue. His clothes consisted off a light tunic and tight fitting pants with shoes to match, all of which were a rather sickly off-cream colour. He stepped forward and drew a rather impressive glowing green sword that could rival even the mighty Sword of Gryffindor.

'My name is Luke Skywal-' he began, but Dumbledore cut him off, 'No need for formalities, my good man, we mean you no harm and I doubt you could do us any,' the fellow attempted to protest but again Dumbledore silenced him with a wave of his hand and asked simply, 'Can you cook?'

Luke nodded his head gingerly with a look of utter bewilderment on his face. He took over as head chef at Howarts and the students certainly didn't seem to notice, although all the food, even the coleslaw, from then on had a slightly scorched flavour to it as though cut with a red hot knife. Dumbledore was thrilled. His taste buds were too ancient to register the change in taste and he could work the out of towner for a pittance because he had no grasp of wizarding currency.

Harry could hear Dumbledore and Snape talking as he approached them at the dinner table that night, the distinct taste of char-grilled cucumber still ripe in his mouth.

'...and the best part is' said Dumbledore, 'I finally found a way of getting around those blasted House Elf Workers Unions set up by that infernal Hermione Granger, be sure to give her and her friends some grief net Potions for me would you?'. He trailed off as he noticed Harry coming nearer and groaned inwardly when the look on the boys face indicated he was about to whine about something.

'Dumbledore, I think I have an idea that could help us defeat Voldemort once and for all...' Harry hesitated, slighty perturbed by their apparent complete lack of interest in his idea, he started again more slowly, 'I couldn't help but notice that those two characters we got out of the meteors have a rather charismatic and confident air about them that I also share', Dumbledore and Snape both raised an eyebrow, Harry pressed on 'I think perhaps they possess a certain star quality which would be quite useful when taking on You-Know-Who'

Dumbledore groaned again, outwardly this time. Here he was going off on his "I-am-the-chosen-one-it-is-I-who-must-defeat-Voldemort" schtick again. However the boy was right in one sense, that the two recent employees did possess a certain air of confidence and strength, or perhaps it was just naivety. Either way, their ignorance of local knowledge would come in handy since they were just about the only ones around that didn't flinch when you said their enemy's name.

'Great idea Harry' he whispered and then straightened up to make an announcement, 'Students of Hogwarts I have just had a rather excellent idea!'. Harry's smug smile dropped instantly in font of the body of students. 'I will be assembling a group of students and some staff members to take part in a rather difficult and potentially dangerous quest. If you wish to apply simply see me after supper at the front of the great hall here.'

After the meal a large number of students flocked to the front and Dumbledore halved the group immediately by picking, seemingly at random, a large cluster of students who immediately began chattering excitedly about their quest until he dismissed them with the slightest amused grin curving up the edges of his mouth. In the wake of the disappointed and grumbling students, he began choosing students simply by pointing them out with his bony index finger. The list grew quickly as he shouted out the names:

'Neville, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Seamus, Dean, Cho, Fred, George, Draco, Crabbe, Goyle...' with these last three names, the conspicuously and primarily Gryffindor group scowled at them and the trio gave back as good as they got, '...and of course, for a group such as this we will need a student leader, someone with great magical ability, courage like a lions and a quick head on his shoulders...It seems obvious that choice will have to be none other than...' Ron looked disgusted but dewey eyed Hermione looked on, both of them as sure as the rest of the group as to who would be picked and yet also equally shocked by the last name called, 'Colin. Colin Creevey.'

An awkward, skinny white haired boy squealed with delight from somewhere in the throng. Harry rounded on Dumbledore in a right furor. 'THAT COTTON TOP SPAZ WITH THE CAMERA?!' he roared. 'Oh, Harry stop being such a prima donna,' sighed Dumbledore 'I have actually had it up to the tip of my tall pointy hat with your crap and frankly I would rather see this plan go horribly horribly wrong in the hands of the pasty little moron than see you traipsing off to save the day again with a stupid grin on your cocky little chops and trying your best not to look like a big headed twat which you invariably end up doing.' he turned back to his group leaving Harry with an expression of furious indignation plastered all over his cocky little chops. 'Now, the teachers that will be going are: Myself, of course, along with the Professors Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick and Hagrid, we will also take along our cosmo-chums for good measure'

And so it was settled and Harry was left to stew in the castle on his own, having all of his subjects canceled until further notice and none of his usual supporting characters around, he spent most of his time taking walks around the grounds, reading the letters that were being sent by his friends telling him of all the wonderful adventures they were having. Harry couldn't be sure, but he detected just a hint of gloating in their writing and he hated the way they signed off all the messages with 'Having Great Fun Without You, Ron & Hermione'

No matter, he had made new friends anyway. A small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy from the first years and a frizzy haired third year girl who was suffering from a bad case of wizard-acne, which we all know is ten times worse than muggle-acne. He had taken to calling them Ron and Hermione and shared with them all sorts of secrets and deeply personal facts that made the small, pale, frightened looking, ginger haired boy go whiter still and the third year girl would blush, although you could hardly tell. They were too scared to tell Harry, but they did not enjoy the coercive friendship as much as he seemed to. When they pointed out that their names weren't Ron and Hermione, nor were they Bum and Hermiobum as he called them when he was in one of his moods, he would simply laugh derisively and say 'Of course you aren't, I know perfectly well what your names are!' and yet nothing changed.

Nothing, that is, except for the growing number of employees that seemed to be taking on positions at Hogwarts, bringing with them employment slips signed and sealed by Dumbledore himself.

There was an enourmous red, blue and gray robot who had the remarkable ability to transfigure himself into a flat-bed truck. He had taken over the role of transporting students between the school and the train station. He also washed dishes between transportational faculties. Harry made a witty remark about how he couldn't transform into a dishwasher. His new friends just laughed half-heartedly and flinched as he raised his hand to pat himself on the back.

Also now working at the castle was a new gardener who called himself simply Wolverine, although Harry hadn't the faintest idea why. Rumours and speculations began circulating about exactly what the well dressed man who called himself 'Bond' was doing with his time at Hogwarts. All they knew was that he seemed to get along well with the tall swarthy, mustichioed man who pranced about the castle in black leggings, masks and wide brimmed hats carving Z's into drapes and banners with his rapier.

A very small man, smaller even than Ron 2.0, with hairy feet and an inexplicably attractive gold ring on a chain around his neck had taken to working with Filch to keep an eye on students out past curfew. They weren't sure how he used to sneak up on them so easily and neither Harry nor Frodo got an explanation as to why one night while roaming the corridors, both of them ran headlong into an invisible entity that muttered obscenities and then seemed to scurry off in the other direction.

A tall, wild-haired, wild-eyed man in a leopard skin loincloth had been given a job as janitor but had promptly been fired for flinging his own faeces at the paintings and first years. With a loud hoot he scarpered off into the old forest, beating his chest and was never seen again. The position was later filled by a girl who said little but wandered round in her blue dress and bright red heels mumbling things about scarecrows and emerald cities. She was a tad creepy but far less disruptive than the previous job holder. 'She's mad that one is,' Harry told his "friends" one afternoon, 'she keeps insisting that I was present in all her dreams!'

Another fellow dressed in a white jumpsuit had used his futuristic vacu-broom to finally rid the castle of those pesky poltergeists once and for all and then, having not much else to do, busied himself with fixing various leaks and creaky floorboards around the building. He had gotten into an argument one evening with a group of teenagers which had apparently come down in one large meteor together as to whether or not ghosts were real. Most of the debate occurred between the Ghostbuster arguing for and a bookish girl dressed entirely in orange and a tall blond boy that Harry insisted was gay, arguing against, insisting that they were simply crafty, well-disguised criminals.

There were two other teens in the group, an attractive red headed girl that Harry cryptically said could solve his mysteries any day and a ill-shaven gaunt looking figure who was clearly coming down off some seriously illicit substances and had a disturbing appetite for dog biscuits. Their pet dog had become good playmates with Hagrids dog, Fang, until they had a spat over a female rough collie with the name tag Lassie. Although they seldom were seen to be doing any real work, the teenagers had been commissioned to find and catalogue all the hidden chambers and ominous switches in the castle. They didn't so much use any kind of scientific, or magical for that matter, method but instead seemed to just stumble around and fall on buttons and doorways.

The two original additions, Ash and Luke, had come back as well, taking back their respective posts in the school. The only one who didn't seem to be fitting in was Skeletor: Overlord of Evil who insisted on going by that title but couldn't seem to find a job to put his specific skills to work in. He spent much of his time skulking around the restricted section of the library quietly whinging about the lack of evil in Hogwarts.

Harry did his best to get up to mischief and rehash the capers of the past, but his companions for the most part lacked any real enthusiasm. It was a bit tragic really. All he really managed to do was make a nuisance of himself, spread unease and discomfort in the foreign workers and attract many pitying glances in his direction. He would run around with blow up snakes shouting, 'Look out! The Chamber of Secrets has been opened again! Don't worry I'm on it!'

Finally his torment came to end with the return of the search party. Accompanied by a severely under dressed and disproportionately huge man with golden locks and a gigantic sword which he swung around at every chance. The hulking figure had the rather redundant title of He-Man.

'We got all we could,' the original Ron and Hermione told Harry one night in Gryffindor commons. Harry was putting on his most devil-may-care facade and trying to look interested when really he was just seething internally. 'It seems Voldemort has been doing some recruiting of his own, and get this, it seems that all the guys we got our hands on, by sheer coincidence have evil counterparts that have sided with the enemy. There's this big white robot that can transfigure into a gun and this green lady that has a snitcher on our new janitor. Oh yeah and this huge flaming eyeball! It's like a team made of pure EVIL!'

A loud cackle burst out in the corridor and cause the three to jump and turn around while a single set of boots clattered down the marble steps towards the entrance. Skeletor had been listening in from behind the portrait of the fat lady. Upon hearing the news he had made haste to join what he perceived to be a side more accommodating to his unique talents.

'Yeah, yeah,' said Harry impatiently, turning back to his friends, 'We've all had our fair share of adventures over the past few weeks'


The following morning Dumbledore had the entire school down in the grounds by the lake. The Great Hall was no longer large enough to fit everybody. Mostly to the fault of Optimus Prime.

Dumbledore pressed his wand against his throat and began speaking in a magically amplified voice, 'Attention all students! We are now facing a challenge the likes of which the wizarding world has never seen before! Fortunately we have assembled some very able bodied fighters on our side, unfortunately You-Know-Who has recruited their evil counterparts. I would like to be able to dismiss all the first, second and third years but we may just need you, if not to fight at least to use your lifeless bodies to block breaches in our defenses!' Several young students went white, somewhere somebody in the crowd was violently sick. Albus Dumbledore continued as though he wasn't speaking atrocities, 'Also we will be transfiguring many of you into livestock which will then be set ablaze and herded into their ranks after which McGonagall and I will-'

However Harry and the students and the special guests and you and I will never know what Dumbledore had planned for he and McGonagall to do as an encore to his first barbaric battle plan. We will never know because at that very moment an enourmous sperm whale, for his own inscrutable reasons, suddenly burst from the calm lake waters and soared high over the headmaster. Owing largely to Dumbledores age-worn reflexes and whale-Snapes inability to fly, the behemoth landed with a resounding thud on the former head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Former, because it seemed quite improbable that he would be able to continue at his position in his new exanimate form.

Ron nudged Harry in the side and laughed mirthlessly to himself, 'Looks like Snape knocked off old Dumbledore in the end after all' and as is if in answer to his insensitivity there was an earsplitting crack and a kind of whirring, screeching sound.

Before Harry could get his bearing he suddenly realised he was standing on the high tower again. There was a stabbing pain in his left hand and he could see the lifeless form of Dumbledore on the ground below. Not squashed by a whale, but dead nonetheless. He looked at his aching palm and found the fragments of a shattered hour glass embedded deep in his flesh. After turning it over a few times and pouring the sand feebly from one hand into the other, he eventually accepted that the Time Turner was broken. The phoenix blood hadn't worked either. While they had been administering it to their headmaster Hermione had suddenly remembered it was unicorn blood they had needed and besides it was probably too late for anything to be effective at this point anyway so they may as well go get a cup of tea, pop themselves in front of the telly and wait for this whole shambles to blow over.

His friends came rushing up the stairwell just in time to see Harry collapse onto his knees and let out a blood-curdling scream of anguish. His clothes were torn and battered. In true poetic form, the skies opened up and rain began to fall on the three as they stood there on the parapet, their heads hung low. They stood there for several minutes, soaking wet, none speaking, but all thinking the same thing. They had done all they could but Hogwarts would never be the same again...






Also Hedwig died of an unrelated heart attack.