Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter. I think that I may not have been to blame for the origin of Sausageland and various other concepts (excluding the briefly mentioned Lord and Lady of Amun Dimn, this reality's iteration of 'Mr. Toad' and competitive flower-arranging) encountered in this piece, either; it was sufficiently long ago that my memory of who made what is unclear enough that I'm prepared to attribute their origin to a close relative of mine, and to give credit, as such, where it is accordingly due.
WARNING: This one-shot is identified as 'PARODY'. I really mean that.
Note: The following piece takes place in early 1991, when this version of Albus Dumbledore has had to take matters into his own hands to try to deliver Harry Potter's 'Hogwarts Letter'. The premise here is that Harry Potter has ended up (somehow) being raised by people who are most certainly not the Dursleys.
Rating: This piece is rated 'T'.
Albus Dumbledore peered at the bizarre sight that stood before him – it was a sausage (standing 'upright'), in a specially-tailored-to-fit business suit, with an arm each side of its sausage 'body', two short legs underneath it, and a face in the upper part of the 'body'. It was somewhere between five and six feet in height, and it currently had a polite expression on its face. It looked like something which a child might draw up, but it was a walking, talking, apparently living fact, and unfortunately he was required to deal with it.
And it somehow spoke English.
And apparently this 'sausage' creature was not unique, but there was an entire country full of them.
And Harry Potter had somehow fallen into their midst – which was why Albus was currently 'here', wherever 'here' (technically 'Sausageland') actually was (Albus had ultimately had to rely on Fawkes to get him to this place after every other transport method he could think of failed).
"And you are?" Albus Dumbledore enquired.
"I am Mr. Sausage Logic, the Prime Minister of Sausageland." the sausage replied.
Well, at least that meant that Albus was at least now – after one of the most frustrating three hours that he had experienced in recent times – dealing with someone in authority.
"And I am, as you may have heard, Albus Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot." It was best to bring out the big guns on the 'titles and offices' front, Albus considered, if he was dealing with a Prime Minister. "I am however also headmaster of a school, and it is partly in that capacity that I am here to speak with you today."
Mr. Sausage Logic flexed the 'head' part of his body forward slightly and then back, which was presumably the sausage equivalent of nodding.
"I have heard of you." he said. "You are headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"I would like to be able to claim similarly of you, but information about you and your fellow sausages is somewhat difficult to come by in my part of the world." Albus responded entirely truthfully. Lack of information had been seriously hampering him ever since he arrived in this crazy place.
"We are on a different world from your own, here." Mr. Sausage Logic replied. "This is the lower 'Plaine' of the world of Mythathania."
"Ah. That perhaps explains my difficulties in finding facts about you." Albus acknowledged. It would have been nice, mind you, if one of the dozen or so sausages that Albus had already spoken to this afternoon had mentioned that, but to be fair he had sort-of-assumed that this place was some corner of Earth; a highly obscure and very well protected and hidden corner of Earth, but still on the same planet as Hogwarts, whatever else was going on. Still: the 'different world' business finally explained just why nothing short of Fawkes had been able to get him here, when Harry Potter's 'Hogwarts Letter' had thrown up the address of 'Harry Potter, the Royal Palace, Sausageland'. He did have to wonder, though, how these 'sausages' – or at least their Prime Minister – knew about Earth, when information going the other way was so hard to come by? It wasn't as if Harry Potter himself was likely to have known and been able to tell the sausages anything about Earth – as near as the headmaster's frantic investigations since he had seen the address on the letter had been able to discover, Harry Potter had 'disappeared' from Privet Drive, where the headmaster had left him in 1981, within days at most of his deposition there, and at such a tender age as Harry had been then, he could have neither known nor informed his new carers of anything. "Anyway," Albus continued, "I am here to deliver to one Harry James Potter an invitation to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"We have schools here in Sausageland." the Prime Minister said. "Harry is already attending a school which instructs him in such useful subjects as mathematics, history, geography, chemistry, physics, woodwork, art, and sausagemobile maintenance."
'Sausagemobile?' Albus felt like saying.
"Sausagemobiles.", the Prime Minister said, and Albus realised that he must have said it out loud; well either that or the sausage in front of him was some sort of mind reader. "Our vehicles. Being able to repair them and keep them in good working order is a valuable skill for children to learn."
Right. Albus was in a country called Sausageland, populated by walking talking sausages, and they travelled about in vehicles called 'sausagemobiles'. Of course they did.
"And do your schools have sports?" Albus enquired, half-dreading the answer.
"Of course. They feature football, hiking, athletics, skiing, and a number of other good-for-the-body outdoor activities. And unlike our neighbours in Cancan, we refrain from anything as barbaric or violent as competitive flower arranging."
Albus really didn't want to know about 'Cancan' or 'competitive flower arranging'. His mind was currently having trouble coping with the facts of Sausageland.
"Not quidditch?" Albus suggested.
"Sausages aren't really suited for broomstick riding." the Prime Minister replied. "Well not unless they have special skills, such as members of the Witch family."
"You have witches here?" Albus asked.
"Mr. Witch, Mrs. Witch, and their two children." the Prime Minister replied, once again leaving Albus feeling that the universe seemed to be having a joke at his expense.
And it belatedly occurred to him that apparently Mr. Sausage Logic knew what 'quidditch' was, even though Sausages didn't usually ride broomsticks.
"How do you know what quidditch is, anyway?" Albus asked, unable to help himself.
"It is sausage-logic that I know all the background necessary for this conversation." the Prime Minister replied. "Of course, I couldn't have done that if you were the Lord or Lady of Amun Dimn, or Mr. Toad, say – probably not even if you were Chonky Wonky – but you are a guest and first-time visitor here, so you have to abide by certain of our rules, as I might have to wave a wand around crazily and shout magic words if I ventured to the world which you have come from."
"Anyway. Harry needs to go to Hogwarts so that he can play quidditch, which he can't do here and because…" Albus floundered. "Look: because he's a hero on Earth, and people are expecting him to turn up, and there's a prophecy, and an evil wizard, probably, whom he's going to have to unfortunately face down. Please?"
"Harry's parents were killed by the evil wizard, were they not? And one of your men, 'Severus Snape', is sworn to protect Harry?" Mr. Sausage Logic said, after thinking for a moment.
"Yes and yes." Albus said. He supposed the sausage standing in front of him 'knowing' somehow about Severus Snape was part of that 'necessary background' that he had somehow divined by whatever bizarre means worked in these parts. "Although I'd appreciate it if the latter didn't get about, since it's supposed to be a secret. An undercover bodyguard is much better than one out in plain sight."
"I will speak to the king, but I think that he will let Harry speak to you and make up his own mind."
Author Notes:
And that is where this piece (perhaps mercifully) concludes. I think that this version of Harry (when he shows up) might want to speak to Severus Snape, briefly, but ultimately, he's not going to want to go to Hogwarts. He's living with the royal family (Mr. Funny is the King of Sausageland) of an absolutely fantastic place, having (usually) a whale of a time. He's happy, and he's aged ten. Why would he want to give that up to go to a place/world where a scary dark wizard who killed his parents lived (I repeat: harry is aged TEN right now, and his priorities do not include being heroic or vengeance) away from all his wonderful friends and his absolutely brilliant adoptive family? And in this place Albus Dumbledore is so far out of his depth, that he couldn't even begin to try to force Harry to leave it, against his will, even if this version of Albus Dumbledore actually wants to do that.
Cancan is one of Sausageland's neighbouring countries, ruled by an evil wizard.
Chonky Wonky is the entity who inadvertently created the Sausages, shortly after which event they (permanently) escaped his control. Sometimes he doesn't get on with his creations; at other times he does.
'Sausagemobiles' are 'all terrain' vehicles, which (as far as I recall) on the flat look like enormous horizontal sausages on lots and lots of little legs. I think they had hatches/ramps in the sides which opened to admit drivers/passengers. Their capabilities include doing ridiculous things like running up the sides of near-vertical cliffs, and I suspect that they may have been able to float and propel themselves along in sufficiently deep water, too. I *don't think* that they were submersible or capable of independent flight, but I may be wrong on that count.
With regard to the origins of Sausageland, blame it on long car-journeys during summer holidays and (in an era when available car-journey appropriate leisure technology was in short supply, unless your family was somewhat richer than we were) some very bored children obliged to 'make their own entertainment'.
This piece is a one-shot. Harry's scar has almost certainly been 'fixed' (as in the piece of Voldemort's soul in it removed, by a suitably clever sausage expert who realised what it was and could 'do something about it' (without killing Harry) in a place where the rules of magic and so forth aren't exactly those of the canon universe) and Albus Dumbledore *should* be able to handle Voldemort on his own without that to worry about. Should. (Oh dear...)