Author’s Note: Thanks to all of the PPC agents who volunteered for a part in the following chapters. Your help is very much appreciated. ^_^

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Foo Powder was a truly terrible way to travel, thought Meir Brin as she skidded headfirst into the fireplace. “Headquarters!” she yelled, halfway into the flames. A multitude of bright colors flashed around her, and then there was a loud thud.

“Hey, Meir! Meir, Meir, Meir, Meir, Meir!” said someone excitedly as the HFA coordinator came into consciousness with a monumental headache. She blinked, and found herself looking up at a face that was exactly the same as her own.

“Meir!” said the person happily, hugging her around the shoulders.

“Marokee...” growled Meir Brin. “Nice to see you, too. This is the PPC, right?”

Marokee helped her up, nodding furiously. “Yes, this is the cafeteria, with all the food, and drink, and... What’re you doing here?”

“Yes, what’s going on?” asked another voice.

“Aria!” said Meir Brin, very relieved. “It’s a long story, but—the Harry Potter Canon’s broken!” she blurted out. “We’ve got Mary Sues, and Slash Demons, and, and—”

“Sues?” asked a large, imposing agent, snapping her plastic fork in half.

“Yes, all over, and I—”

“Slash Demons?” uttered another agent, who didn’t look to be quite human. “What continuum is this, again?”

“Harry Potter,” replied Meir Brin, close to tears. “And I don’t think we can keep them away from the Canon Characters much longer, not with the Mini-Aragogs gone—”

“The Mini-Aragogs are missing?” asked Polaris, coming up behind Aria. “Since when?”

“Oh, a couple months ago,” said Meir Brin, as a horde of PPC agents started to form a ring around her.

“This is bad,” said Aria. “Come on, we’ll sort this out,” she said, elbowing her way through the crowd and dragging Polaris and Meir Brin with her. The sound of her fluffy slippers sounded strange on the polished, slightly scorched floor.

“We have to go now, though!” sputtered Meir Brin.

“Time works differently here, we’re all right,” yelled Aria. “Polaris, could you round up a crew of agents?”

“Let go of my arm and I will,” said Polaris, radiating excitement.

“Sure,” said Aria, and Polaris careened back into the cafeteria, shouting: “HFA’s under attack! To arms! To arms!”

“Where are we going?” asked Meir Brin as they sped past numerous black doors.

“To find the Mini-Aragogs,” replied Aria, skidding to a halt in front of a door tucked into the corner of a hallway. “Ah, Intelligence,” she said, pounding on the black surface.

A woman answered, looking as though she experienced this sort of thing a lot. “What is it?”

“Architeuthis, this is Meir Brin, Meir Brin, Architeuthis. We need a multi-fandom scan for about three hundred or so Mini-Aragogs, then rout them back to HFA,” said Aria quickly. “Thank you!”

Architeuthis looked at Aria bemusedly, then nodded and turned back to her computer console. “Lots of spiders, to the Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy. I’ll see what I can do. Any particular reason why they have gone missing?”

“HFA’s Canon’s broken,” supplied Meir Brin as Aria started running back to the cafeteria with her in tow. “Thank yooouuu...”

*********

The battle had spilled out of the Great Hall and onto the lawn. Ally hadn’t been quite sure what to do with the Switch of Character Banishment until a Sue charged her and Ally found how satisfying it was to smack things with it. Needless to say, with a self-explanatory name like “The Switch of Character Banishment,” Ally hadn’t been in the dark for too long.

She was currently holding a line of fanwriters at the foot of the main staircase, smacking things left and right while trying to use her wand at the same time. Klose had recruited some of the better fliers, like Hermione8meg, Serenity Bloom, KazraGirl, and Doom Song, and mounted them on broomsticks in a twisted sort of cavalry corps. The only problem with having spellwork in the air was that bodies would fall upon the students on the ground if a cavalier was knocked off of his or her broomstick. Such was the case when Doom Song plummeted ten feet, to land immobilized upon an Evil Avatar. The Avatar had been disposed of, but the loss of another fanwriter was something that HFA could not afford.

For already the enemy battalion outnumbered the fanwriters at least three to one. Ally, Redfire, Molly W, and Riona had taken charge of the battle indoors, hexing Vambiolatos into oblivion as best they could. The remainder of the uncanon staff had retreated to the castle steps, where Slash Demons were falling like flies before a horde of angry Wantingmors.

Swish, smack! went the Switch of Character Banishment, and a Mary Sue vanished before Ally’s eyes. Ally had never been especially brave; fear and an overwhelming sense of duty were the only things supporting her so far. She had never been so terrified in her life, especially after what had happened to Rex Natos.

The Vambiolatos had cornered the Fellowship of the Peeves near a broom cupboard on the first floor, and it was there that they had displayed a new weapon: Habadaba Queenia. Ally’s nerve had crumbled when she had seen the rainbow spell shot at her fellow fanwriters. Now Rex Natos was imprisoned in a glittering rainbow bubble, suspended sixteen feet in the air. That had been her creation, her Fan-Created Spell, and now she was regretting it more and more.

It was only fear that was keeping her going now, only dread at what the Vambiolatos and Evil Avatars would do to her friends that was making her fight. She twirled the black Switch down upon an approaching Mary Sue, and it fell, vanishing before its perfect body could hit the floor.

“Stupefy!” screamed San Carpenter the Insane, throwing a Stunner at a Slash Demon. It froze in mid-air, then crumbled into dust. Being without substance, the Slash Demons could not take a normal spell as lightly as some of the other creatures.

Alanna Roseguard and Nathonea Dewstan pushed their way through the masses, to take up a position next to Ally.

“They’ve taken the dungeons,” said Alanna, Disarming an Evil Avatar as it approached. “Dark One Shadowphyre said to tell you not to let them pass these steps.”

Ally nodded. “Yeah, they can’t get to the second floor, whatever happens,” she panted, banishing a Vambiolato. It screamed and tried to shoot fireballs out of its eyes before falling to the ground and disappearing.

“Back to the grind, then?” asked Nathonea, brandishing a large sword that she must have taken off of an Evil Avatar. “Serpensortia!”

Suddenly a flash of light illuminated the Entrance Hall, and Ally whipped around to see a large white window opening behind her at the top of the stairs. The Vambiolatos froze momentarily as their varied eyes adjusted to the brightness. Ally shielded her face and squinted at the shining window, before a wide grin spread itself over her face.

Ally would not learn their names until much later, but at that moment she would have glomped the whole lot of them. Well-armed PPC agents with wild eyes were striding out into the early morning glow that had lit HFA in gentle radiance. In the forefront of the lot was Agent Polaris, tranquilizer gun at the ready, followed by Agents Jay Thorntree, BriRi, and Taboo.

“Meir Brin wasn’t kidding,” said Agent Mary Sue, swigging a bottle of tequila. “Up and at ’em, you—!” The rest of what Agent Mary Sue said has been censored, but it did cause the nearest Vambiolato’s head to explode.

Ally was pressed back against the railing as the horde of PPC agents streamed out, shouting battle cries and cutting through the enemy ranks like a Mini-Aragog through a bucket of bouillabaisse. Agents Erin Mirestone and Kuro Shin climbed up on top of the banister and were hexing Slash Demons viciously, while Laurina Twain and Katryn laid into a pack of Vambiolatos that had the remainder of the Fellowship of the Peeves surrounded.

“May I borrow this?” asked a voice, sounding amused. Ally turned to see Meir Brin watching the battle with a look of satisfaction, pointing to the Switch of Character Banishment.

Ally stumbled, and only then realized that she hadn’t seen the HFA coordinator since three hours ago when Meir Brin had lent her the Switch. “Yeah, sure, thanks,” she muttered, feeling too tired to respond correctly.

Meir Brin smiled and went off to terrorize some Evil Avatars that had staked out a fort in one of Filch’s broom closets.

“Are you lot all right over here?” asked a PPC agent, carrying a roll of bandages over her arm. “I’m Agent Navaeh, this is Agent Jocelyn,” she said, checking them over for injuries.

“Err, could you look at this?” asked Riona, pointing to a purple bruise that had blossomed near her cheekbone. Navaeh hurried over to apply a salve, while Agent Jocelyn fended off a Slash Demon that was careening toward them.

Ally was knocked back into battle mode all of a sudden, and would have hit herself if her arms hadn’t felt like lead. Just because the PPC agents had all come didn’t mean that the fight was over! Now she was back with just her wand, which in many ways suited her just fine. You didn’t have to have a lot of upper body strength to perform spellwork, unlike with the Switch of Character Banishment, which easily weighed a good twenty pounds.

“Expelliarmus!” she cried, launching herself back into the thick of things. Soon she found herself fighting next to Agent Lambda of the PPC, who seemed to have run out of ammunition for her tranquilizer gun and was therefore using it to bash Mary Sues. No longer was Ally fumbling to remember the names of the five spells that she could use: they rolled quickly off her tongue as if she had been doing them for the whole year, despite her extreme fatigue.

Indeed, how tired she was! Ally could never remember feeling this exhausted, mentally or physically. Now that the PPC was here, the edge of her fear had been dulled, and that terrified emotion that had driven her was now ebbing away. Instead, hope had swelled inside of her, yet if she had been asked about it later, Ally probably would have said that hope did more harm than good. More than ever she wanted to sleep, and it was only when she saw the angry, malicious faces of the Vambiolatos that she began to fight anew.

Ally was just beginning to succumb to her fatigue when a loud cry brought her to her senses. A fresh rip in reality had appeared in the air above her, and more creatures were streaming through it. “Does it never end?!” she wailed, elbowing a part-fairy Vambiolato in the face.

Nearby, Agent Milask laughed heartily. “If it ever did, we’d be out of a job!”