“The bandages should be coming off tomorrow, but Harry’s definitely right. Healing bones is nasty.” Ally absently scratched the wrappings confining her hand to a plaster mitten, shook her head, and poured more Butterbeer into her tea.

Seated across from her at the Whinging Scab, faculty pub of HFA, Miss Brin gave her a mild look of sympathy. “How goes the trawling for Luggage?” asked the coordinator.

“Frankly? Horrible. Em and Molly Morgan have been at it all night with the Pensive—useful thing, that, even if it is ‘an abomination to Canon’, as Percy so puts it—but we still haven’t got a fix on it. I don’t even know if we will; it’s a big multiverse, after all.

“Still, freak occurrence, right? I’d rather keep to chasing Lady Umbra and Cir out of the Malfoy torture dungeon or busting Austynne for Sirius-stalking, even running Peeves out of the Bad Spells closet before we all get toothpaste boils again.”

Miss Brin flinched. The bout of Habta Mucka Wedger Fedger (a Fan-Created Spell gone out of control, as was their wont) that had hit the school a week previous had been particularly nasty. Petunia Dursley had been coughing up dustpans, Ron Weasley had sprouted a rash of butterfly tattoos all over his calves, and poor Hestia Jones even grew a pair of lumps on her head that glowed like disco balls. There had been inoculations, of course, even though getting the whole of Potterverse to take something that, as Neville Longbottom put it, “might possibly contain raven spleens, or something,” caused just about as much havoc as hacking up cleaning implements, painted shins, and mirrored lumps on the noggin.

“OFUDisc should know, in any case,” said Miss Brin at last.

“Why? A bad feeling about it? I thought you didn’t get LINK,” said Ally.

There was a raised eyebrow and a bit of annoyance from Miss Brin, but she waved it off and coordinator and Canon Guard paused to watch the Lord Voldemort co-op place the final piece on their house of cards. In accordance with Voldemort tradition, it was roughly the same design as the Riddle House and LVJ had even charmed a pretzel to slither in and out of it à la Nagini.

“Hey! What’re you all doing?” Ludo Bagman and Gilderoy Lockhart bounded up to the Dark Lord(s), promptly—in accordance with the laws of comic progression—knocking the house of cards to the ground.

“We’ll see if this spell of yours works, now, won’t we,” said Tom Riddle disdainfully to his older self. “Really, you are probably the most inept wizard I’ve ever met, Me Sr.”

A couple tables down, Neville Longbottom succeeded in melting the Firewhisky keg with a simple Lumos spell.

Yet in mere moments the fallen cards sprang to life, and reformed the Riddle House (of cards) on the Voldemorts’ corner table.

“Not so shoddy now, young nip,” said Lord Voldemort Sr., the adult, balding head of the trio.

“Like you could have done it without LVJ’s help,” said Riddle, indicating the grotesque baby-like incarnation of Voldemort known as Lord Voldemort Jr., or LVJ for short.

“Plebeian ingrates,” gurgled LVJ, shaking his rattle.

“Oo, I do say! What a lovely shade of lilac!” giggled Gilderoy. His voice, however, was not as loud and pitched higher than usual. The reason quickly became apparent.

“Look, my dear boy! I do believe we’ve shrunk!” said Ludo.

Indeed they had. Lockhart and Bagman were both now inhabiting the miniature Riddle House.

“Not so bad, eh?” snickered Lord Voldemort Sr. (Yes, snickered. Harry Potter had once commented that the trisecting of the Voldemort personality into its three incarnations at HFA had left Lord Voldemort Sr. with an excess of candor and cheerfulness. It had also made him, quite frankly, a whole lot scarier.)

“For an old fogy like you, maybe,” said Tom Riddle.

“You’re not even strong enough to Stun me,” said Lord Voldemort Sr. gleefully. “Too little to fill my boots, eh, sonny?”

“You mean, my boots? Merlin, you’re so embarrassing.”

Meanwhile, the pretzel Nagini was having a merry old time chasing Gilderoy and Ludo throughout the Riddle House of cards.

“Anyway, as I was saying, this’ll probably blow over real quick,” said Ally. “That box thing that crunched me was tough, really, but it’s not a horde of Mary Sues or Evil Avatars, you know.”

“Miss White, what have I told you about the Ironic Over-power?” said Miss Brin.

“I thought we had diplomatic immunity,” said Ally.

“Meaning that it’s free to shoot us in the foot whenever it pleases without reprimand? In that sense, yes,” said Miss Brin.

“Testy, are we?” said Ally, stirring the semi-spiked tea with her good hand.

Miss Brin sighed. “It’s that Thing. I don’t like having it in the academy.”

“You think something’s going to happen to it? Why?” said Ally. Miss Brin shot her a skeptical look. “No, really,” said Ally. “Hurting that Thing would injure everybody a lot more than it would help. And anyway, it’s pretty well hidden. That code of Hermione’s, coupled with that crazy math thing the Buffyverse girl did? Getting to the Thing’s going to take some hacking.”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Brin. “Still...”

“Still what?” said Minerva McGonagall, pulling up a chair at their table.

“She’s in a tizz about the Thing,” said Ally, jerking her thumb at the coordinator.

“An understandable tizz,” said Miss Brin. “You know what it is. What it does.”

Somewhere to their left, Bagman squealed as the pretzel Nagini caught up to him.

“We cannot do anything about it now,” said McGonagall reasonably, nodding to Professors Sprout, Hooch, and Flitwick to join them. “It’ll play out, and we’ll be ready when the time comes. But I’ve some business I’ve been meaning to discuss, if you’ve a moment.”

“Of course,” said Ally, scooting her chair to make room for Madam Hooch.

“You have told them, Minerva?” asked Flitwick, passing drink orders to his Mini-Aragog, Flikwik. The small Mini sped off toward the bar, muttering “Grape sodases, grape sodases” under the clack of its pincers.

“Not yet. There has been another notice from this Inquisitor person,” said McGonagall.

“We haven’t found them yet, then? I thought I asked your people to get a handle on that,” said Miss Brin to Ally.

Ally smiled guiltily. “Well, with the Luggage, and the ‘intruder’, and the metal, we’ve been really busy, plus Kitsune Moonstar and TRF-Chan tried to get into Aerobics Lair yesterday and we had to reset the accordion panels, then Kate Davis found the chocolate fountain behind the Owlery, and... Oh, all right, so I did forget, but I was going to do it eventually.”

“Of course,” said Flitwick, patting her hand. “You’ve done a superb job already; I was just telling Hooch here how excellently those escape hatches in the broom closets were working before we came.”

Hooch nodded. She seemed to be in quiet, bit character–mode that day, which was a change for one who suffered from multiple personality disorder as she did. The fandom perspective on the Quidditch coach was almost entirely based on her yellow eyes and had therefore run the gamut from raving psycho-fan to austere hawkish madam. That unbalance of personality and her lack of a first name had given Hooch a strange propensity to refer to herself as Royolana. Still, it was better than “Hoochie.”

“Thanks,” said Ally uncomfortably. “Erm... what does the HFA High Inquisitor want now?”

Flitwick glanced at McGonagall. “I think they should see this for themselves.”

Behind them, miniature drama was being played out inside the card-made mansion. “Never expected that,” said Riddle, a darkly amused note in his voice, as he peered between two crinkled card-curtains. “Looks like sourdough, too; excellent taste.”

“Why did you imbue our pretzel constrictor with basilisk powers?” burbled LVJ.

“Heh. I ask myself if we should dip them in chocolate?” said Lord Voldemort Sr.

“Okay,” said Riddle and LVJ.

Before leaving the Whinging Scab, Ally caught sight of two pretzel statues on the table beside the Riddle House of cards, both no larger than chess pieces, and bearing a striking resemblance to Gilderoy Lockhart and Ludo Bagman. She also saw LVJ wave his wand to conjure a bone-motif fondue pot.

As they left the faculty wing via a strategically placed movable stairway, the party found themselves treated to the far-off echoes of the House-Elf Choir singing “Chumdeleidalalala,” a guaranteed ear-bleeder, and the frantic scrapings of students, clawing at the walls as they begged to be released from Igor Karkaroff’s one-man show. From the sound of Karkaroff’s inflection, Ally figured that he had just finished Chapter One, “I Am Born.”

At last McGonagall led them to a large window on the third floor, which overlooked the greenhouses. “There you have it.”

Seated on each roof pane was a student, appearing absolutely miserable as Mini-Aragogs looked on, in the immediately recognizable en garde position (though a few seemed to have snuck off to play Diamond Web Round in the corner).

“They’ve been up there all morning, and some of their hormones must be really acting up,” said Professor Sprout. “The mandrakes don’t like it at all; think they’ll come down and eat their seedlings. I tried asking the Mini-Aragogs why they were keeping them up there, but they’ve got orders, or some such nonsense. Won’t budge even for bouillabaisse.”

“Miss White, if you wouldn’t mind?” said Flitwick, tugging at her sleeve.

“Oh.” Ally moved back to let the tiny Charms wizard climb up onto the windowsill. “Right. Erm, so whose Minis are we looking at? That looks like Werasley over there, and Griffindor, but I don’t know the others on sight.”

“Gryffydur, Gryfinndor, and Gryiffindor are over by the east wall,” said Miss Brin. “They’re not Godric’s, though; he only has Griffendor and Godirc for his entourage.”

“Well, it could be anyone, then,” said Ally. “But really, the HFA High Inquisitor orders everyone to sit on the greenhouses’ roofs all day? What kind of order is that?”

“Oh, that’s not all,” said Hooch, the maniacal look in her eyes that pronounced the return of raving psycho-fan!Hooch gleaming brightly.

There was a pitter.

There was a patter.

There was an avalanche of punctuation.

Commas poured from the sky, clunking to the ground beside exclamation points, interrobangs, and semicolons. Dashes and periods, ampersands and pounds signs, all fell willy-nilly over the greenhouses, leaving nasty welts where they struck the fanwriters. Efforts were made to shield the head with solidified textbooks, but, big as they were, Dances with Rubber Chickens with Pineapples Round Their Necks and Amusingly Shaped Vegetables Stuck Up Their Noses: An Introduction to Comedy did surprisingly little to shield Lusterbuffs, Slasherings, Canonlaws, and Wantingmors alike from the dreaded hail of stones.

A shaking melody rose up amidst the pounding. Somehow, the Mini-Aragogs had acquired barbeque forks and were making rounds through the group, hissing “Starts singingses!” over and over. Werasley, the self-appointed leader, was even harassing X-Smasher 3, growling “Tap-dancingses, fanwriterss, let’s sees you tap-dancingses!”

“Singing in the Punctuation Rain,” commented Miss Brin. “And this is the group that tried petitioning the Headmistress for secrets of the Canon? Very nice, in a vigilante sort of way.”

“Yes, it does seem appropriate,” said McGonagall. “Brightens my day, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Indeed.”

“Yep.”

“So...” said Professor Sprout. “Heard the one where Umbridge walks into the bar with the werewolf and makes those demands of the barkeep?”