Don't Take No Sorcery

by Threepwillow

The Floo network does something it really, really shouldn't, and five wizard kids get thrown into the middle of Muggle Ohio. :::A VERY POTTER MUSICAL CROSSOVER. Oneshot, Kurt/Blaine, Samcedes, semicrack:::

(AN: This started from a joke about getting Darren Criss to make out with himself and went horribly, gloriously astray. I do hope you enjoy it, despite how absurd it kind of is. Consider yourselves warned. Also, something's gone kinda weird with my italics so forgive me for that, it's the site's fault.)

Don't Take No Sorcery

"So man, I gotta tell you, this has totally been the best summer ever."

"I know, right?" Ron grinned at his best friend as they thundered side-by-side down the stairs to his room in the basement. It had been the best summer ever. They'd finally talked Harry's dumbass Muggle family into letting him come spend most of July and August at the Weasleys' house, and he and Harry had been broing it up in his room the whole time, feasting on snacks and practicing all the underage magic they could possibly get away with. Hermione had finally let him get to third base, and that had been glorious. If he just didn't think too hard about how Ginny and Harry had probably done the exact same thing two floors above where they were sitting right now - or the mountain of summer homework they'd all been procrastinating on that he'd probably just make Hermione do for him on the train - Ron couldn't imagine a way the summer could have gone any better, that's for sure.

"I can't believe I went three years without knowing there were wizard video games. How cool is that?" They took their spots on Ron's grungy old sofa - the same spots they'd been sitting in most of the summer, now perfectly comfort-conformed to their butts, Harry on the right and Ron on the left because he was always player 1, duh - and slotted their wands tip-first into the controller pods for Ultima Quidditch 2012, the miniature 3-D figures coming to life in their enclosed case on the other side of the room.

"It's way cooler than Muggle games, that's for sure. You're using screens, what's up with that?"

"Hey, I've been playing Muggle games my whole life before this and I'm still gonna kick your ass, Weasley."

"In your Squirt-flavored dreams," Ron shot back. "I've got five older brothers and I still have the high score on this thing."

"Not for long!"

Ron scowled at Harry and gripped his wand-joystick, bracing himself for yet another of their crazy Quidditch deathmatches, but no sooner had he sent the orange team's best Chaser up to the faceoff with Harry's when another set of footsteps - a different, higher pitch but no less thunderous - tore down the stairs and stopped at the landing, scowling down at them.

"Ro-onnn - "

"Dammit, stupid sister! Pause," he hissed softly to the game-box, the spell freezing the tiny Quidditch men inside. He whirled around to glare at her. Ginny's lip quivered under his gaze, and then she shifted to glare at Harry. Ron glanced back over at Harry and saw him making a pained expression, and eventually he looked over and glared at Ron.

(This kept happening. Ron kind of wished someone had told him that being best friends with your sister's boyfriend kind of sucked sometimes.)

He sighed. "Yes, Ginny, what do you want?" he tried again, trying to be nice but still about two-thirds as annoyed as before.

"Mom says you guys have to go out and get stuff for dinner tonight."

"What? How come?"

"She said - " Ginny put on a pretty terrifyingly good impression of their mother. "It's Harry and Hermione's last night in the house and I'm gonna look like a monkey's ass if I don't have some kinda good food on the table for them to remember me by. She's doing something really fancy and doesn't have the right ingredients and wants you to go into Diagon Alley."

"Wait, so she wants to cook me an awesome dinner and I have to go buy all the stuff for it?" Harry said. "That seems kinda lame."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "I don't think she trusts Ron with the whole list - "

"Hang on, I can totally buy groceries by myself!"

"Cool, then uhhh, you do it, and I'm gonna be here reading your Warrior Wizard comic books and drinking the last of the Squirt, no big deal."

"You can't take those out of the packaging!" Ron yelled for probably the millionth time, because seriously? "No, you're coming with me."

"Seriously? I was totally kidding, I'd probably just end up making out with Ginny the whole time you were gone." He winked at her where she still stood at the bottom of the stairs. "Best summer ever."

"No. No. You're both coming with me." He lowered his voice to growl at Harry. "You are not getting more action than I do in my own damn house."

"Okay, okay, fine, jeez. Cockblock."

"Ronald Weasley!" his mom shouted from upstairs, and Ginny started wringing her hands together. "We better hurry, I think she's getting - antsy."

"Go upstairs and get the fireplace ready and we'll meet you in a second," said Ron, already crossing to his dresser to get a different shirt (one that was "nice enough to wear out in public" or Hermione would talk his ear off again) and some socks and his sneakers. Harry dug through his trunk for similar, and stopped for a moment to clean some specks off his glasses. When they were "presentable" enough they joined Ginny up by the fireplace.

"I hate using the Floo in the summer," said Ron. "It's already like ninenty degrees and then you have to light a fire just to get anywhere."

"Yeah, magic is awesome but sometimes it's pretty dumb," said Harry. "Oh well. Maybe we can stop off and get some ice cream at Fortescue's while we're down there? I think they've got one that has like, Pop Rocks on it."

"Harry Potter, don't you dare spoil your supper!" Mrs. Weasley shouted from the kitchen. "You're not getting anything that isn't on that list, you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Harry, scuffing at his ankle with the toe of his other shoe.

Ron rolled his eyes, and was about to apologize to Harry for his mom being so obnoxious, when suddenly Hermione's stupid cat shot out of freaking nowhere and collided with his left shin. Ron screamed and knocked into Ginny, who nearly fell into the fireplace before it was ready. While she was trying to snuff out the fire on the tail ends of the hair that had fallen over her right shoulder, Ron cast a look into the next room over, searching for his girlfriend.

"Hermione!" he yelled. "Come get your stupid cat, will you?"

"Sorry!" she responded, and he heard some scuffling as she came running toward them - but she froze when she was still two steps behind the sofa.

"Ron, what are you doing?"

"We're going to Diagon Alley so Mom can make a fancy dinner tonight!" said Ginny, doling out Floo powder to Harry and then to Ron. "I love when she makes new stuff," she added in a lower voice, glancing back toward the kitchen, "it's a nice change of pace from the same four or five - "

"Ginevra Weasley, unless you want to go to bed without dinner - "

"Yes Mom!" she shrieked. She took a little Floo powder in her own hand and then nudged Ron with her elbow. "Come on, guys."

"Ron, you can't go in there!"

"Hermione, it's a magic fire, remember? I'm not gonna burn anything. That was just the one time."

"No, Ron, don't - " She stumbled hastily over to him. "The Floo network is supposed to be down in several broad areas for major repairs today! There's no telling what could - "

"Ahh, c'mon, Hermz," said Harry. "I'm sure if there were something wrong with our stretch of the Floo, someone would've said something, in like, a public service announcement or some dumb shit like that. Let's go, I really wanna get back and finish that Ultima Quidditch match before dinner - "

"Harry, no!" said Hermione, flinging her arms across them both. Ron managed to catch himself, but it sent Harry reeling straight into Ginny, who tripped into the side of the mantle and used it to lever herself back upright. But that bumped her right back into Harry, who scuffed the heel of his shoe against the edge of the fireplace and tumbled backward into the fire, choking as he lost some of his wind.

"D - uh - on A...ley," he managed, the rest of his words wracked with coughs from the fire as he was whisked away.

Ron realized, like, way too late that Harry had grabbed onto the hem of his T-shirt and still had a grip on it as he fell.

Desperate, Ron reached out to Hermione and Ginny, grabbing one cozy around the waist and the other by the edge of her hair (and realizing, unfortunately, that he'd done it the wrong way around) and barely managing to shout out some directions of his own as all three of them - and Ginny's way, way too big handful of Floo powder - crashed into the back of the hearth too.

He really hoped that sounded enough like Diagon Alley, anyway.

They whirled miserably fast through the torrents of green flames, careening this way and that like they were backward on a roller coaster (or well, upside-down in Hermione's case) and slamming into the walls of the Floo tunnels in a way that just barely managed to not be painful. He had Ginny's elbow lodged hard in his stomach and Hermione's face buried in his armpit and this was so, like, the stupidest way to travel ever. Harry was right. Then, as if the day hadn't gone shitty enough already, they passed through a section of tunnel that merged and yet another bony, annoying body slammed straight into Ron and Hermione's ribs. Ron opened his mouth to scream what the hell but the sounds were lost in the dark green-tinged vortex of the Floo. (Seriously, it was like the freaking Matrix in here.)

They finally shot out the other end onto a dank concrete floor, with Ron on the bottom of the four-person dogpile, staring at a pair of far-too-shiny reptile-skin shoes as he hauled himself to a kneeling position and tried to catch his breath. And then - shit. He knew those shoes.

"Draco!" Ginny squealed, tripping past him to wrap Malfoy in a hug while Hermione reached down and helped him stand. Ron took her hand without looking - he was still glaring over at the other two. Ginny being Draco's "friend" was annoying.

"Malfoy, what are you doing here?" he said. "How did you - "

"Granger. Weasley." He dusted off some non-existent soot from the shoulder of his shirt and straightened the lapel of his vest. "I suppose this is all your fault, then."

"My fault?" shouted Ron. "How are you already blaming - "

"Well, Ron, he has a point," said Hermione. "I did tell you not to take the Floo network today, there's no telling what could have happened now because you didn't listen to me - "

"Dammit, Hermione, you're supposed to be on my - "

"Guys," said Ginny, suddenly. "Where's Harry?"

Ron stopped. Hermione stopped. Draco stopped. They all kind of looked around, at the dim and grungy environment they'd Flooed into - a thick furnace, barely any fire burning in it at all, just some coals tinged with green, and a messy, dusty basement space that looked like it was being used for storage.

"And where are we?"

Ron raised his wand from his pocket and told it Lumos before stepping cautiously forward, craning his head ahead of the rest of his body to peer around and look. Malfoy kept muttering about how it was his fault, but Ron waved his other hand back at him. "Shut up for a second, okay?" He could hear a faint sound coming from somewhere - something like people, milling around like normal. Maybe they'd just ended up in some boiler room by accident, and they'd show up in regular Diagon Alley if they could just -

"Aha! Guys, there's stairs over here, come on!" Hermione rushed over right behind him, followed by Ginny and, complaining the whole time like a bitch, Draco. They climbed the stairs and unlocked the door - Hermione gave it a quick Alohomora and stepped out into...

A hallway?

A really busy, squeaky hallway, with a bunch of kids their own age running everywhere, and some obnoxiously bright tiled floors and rows of metal lockers everywhere and oh, shit, a really tall really angry woman with short hair and a bright green track suit charging straight at them.

"What on Pat Sajak's green earth were you weirdos doing down in the boiler room?" she barked at them. Ron and Ginny froze - Hermione was the one who was finally able to speak.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, um, we're just - "

"Lost on your way to the choir room? I should have figured. Kids as weird as you can't belong to anyone but Schuester. Although you two are miserably ginger enough that I guess you could also pass for the black sheep of the Pillsbury family. Come on, back to where you belong, freak show."

As she rushed them along down the hallway, long arms not taking no for an answer, Malfoy finally managed to find his voice, too. "This is fairly preposterous, you know," he told her.

"On the contrary, I think it's preposterously fair."

"I'm just saying, I'd watch it if I were you. My father is capable of a lot of things in this - "

"Listen, Fontleroy, unless your father has a higher authority clearance than I do in the Ohio public school system - which is impossible, because I was recently granted a special level of power completely specific to the one and only Sue Sylvester that gives me governing power over just about every other body in the system at will - then I don't think he can do tiddlywinks to me." She came to a stop with her frog-marching in front of a shoddy wooden door, threw it open and shoved them inside. "And stay there. I've got to have a talk with William about being a better zookeeper."

The door slammed right in Ron's face and he took a couple of steps back, knocking shoulders with Hermione and then turning around to face the room they were in. It had a wide two-level arc of seats across the back, with high windows on the curved wall and more of the weird squeaky tile floors. Off to their left was a glossy black piano and beyond that was a big white board...thing with red and green marks left over little parts of it, writing that Ron couldn't read from where they stood. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before, and that kind of sucked. He reached out and took Hermione's hand and was super-relieved when she grabbed it back and squeezed, just as scared as he was, even as he could see the look on her face that meant the weird well-oiled gears of her brain were nocking into each other at a mile a minute trying to puzzle things out through the fear. To her right, Malfoy had his arms folded across his chest and was kind of curling in on himself.

Only Ginny was bold enough to take a couple steps out into the open space in the center of the room, turning slowly to take it all in. She stopped when she'd gone far enough around that she was standing facing them, and bit her bottom lip.

"So um, again," she murmured, "where are we?"

-xxx-

Harry hit the hearth hard on his knees and coughed furiously, clutching one hand to his chest to try and stabilize because, like, people always did that in the movies for some reason. He'd lost his glasses somewhere along the line and he groped around for them, landing on the frames after four or five blind grabs and lifting them up to his face. One of the lenses had a slim crack straight from top to bottom just to the left of center. Shit.

When he finally regained his bearings he stood up, trying to take in his surroundings. He definitely wasn't in Diagon Alley, that's for sure. He wasn't in Knockturn Alley or Seckshoe Alley like he'd landed when he'd screwed up before, either. He appeared to be standing in a fireplace set into the middle of the wall of a long, broad hallway, with grand decor and bright, shining polished floors. There were high windows on the wall across from him and soft bustles of noise coming from way down to his left. Figuring that was the best place to start to get a little better oriented, Harry brushed as much of the Floo soot off his clothes as he could, ran a hand through his wild hair, straightened his glasses, and turned to head in the direction of the sound.

No sooner had he set foot off the hearth and onto the slick floor than he felt a weird, soft-gross lethargy sink into his limbs, accompanied by a vague molasses-y spinning in his head. The next step he took his leg moved right down the path his brain was telling it to but at a slug's pace, pressing through the air like it had somehow become denser, even as his eyes scanned around and showed that nothing had changed. It was one of the most disorienting things Harry had ever experienced - it was like his entire life was suddenly in slow motion.

He was instantly suspicious of any unknown magic and whirled as fast as he could to jump back onto the hearth and into what he assumed was relative safety. The backward movement took just as long, and by the time he was free from the field of the spell his momentum was so out of control that he fell back to his knees again.

"What the hell?" Harry whispered. Where was he?

He tested the figurative waters of the hall again, but to the same results: slo-mo, the instant he stepped off the hearth. Arms, legs, voice, anything. The second return to the hearth was a little more graceful. Harry frowned at the edge of where the floor changed and drew out his wand from his pocket, thankful it hadn't cracked in the Floo fiasco.

"Finite Incantatum," he said pointedly to the void of the hallway, jabbing his wand outward. But even the spell itself was affected - when the pulse of yellow light hit the invisible barrier of the shift, it slowed and stuttered, flowing through the too-dense air like a pond rippling (in slow motion, of course. What the hell).

Harry frowned harder, scratching at the mess of his hair again. This hallway was ridiculous, but with the Floo down and his friends nowhere in sight, he was going to have to press through it to get off the island of the hearth sooner or later. Might as well bite the bullet and take the plunge and...some other metaphor. It was his only means of escape.

Pocketing his wand and steeling his resolve, Harry took the heavy, hesitant step he'd need to take to get off the hearth and back into the hallway. As soon as both feet were on the glossy floor the effect took over, slowing every movement that Harry made, his legs strange and buckling, his arms uncertain. It was incredibly hard to walk like this with the sensation of the magic clinging like something sticky and gross all over his skin and clothes and hair. He closed his eyes for a quick moment that lasted way too long and tried to do a Hermione. How did you overcome a weird obstacle when the solution that made actual sense became impossible? He figured the best option was probably to just think about it as little as he could. If he kept dwelling on how weird it was his body would never catch up, but if he blanked his mind and made himself just stroll down the hallway like he wasn't moving a third as fast as usual then maybe his body would just default to something normal rather than something strained and freaking annoying.

With this in mind, or not in mind, or whatever, Harry plodded his way to the end of the hallway until it hit a T-intersection and he tumbled back into real-time again - more gracefully than the first time but unfortunately less gracefully than the second. At least no one was around to see him, and when he finally caught himself and straightened up, Harry was given his first real chance to examine his new surroundings unhindered.

It was more glossy floors and more high, grandiose ceilings, hallways that were silent and empty but clearly meant to withstand heavy traffic. The windows here were broader and letting in thick yellow sunlight from outside, overlooking a small and lushly green courtyard area surrounded by more walls of the building, or maybe other buildings. In fact, the more Harry looked at it, the more it really kind of started to look like...

And then he saw it. On a broad otherwise-open space of wall a little to his left was an enormous tapestry...banner...thing, bearing in pretentious fancy script the words Dalton Academy.

"It's a school," Harry murmured to himself. This was not Diagon Alley, but Dalton Academy, wherever that was. Harry could even kind of see how a malfunctioning Floo combined with his own stuttering voice could have gotten the words confused. So that was one layer of "totally fucking weird" peeled back: he had a name for this place, and he kind of knew how he'd gotten here. Maybe if he could find another fireplace thatwasn't malfunctioning, or someone to make a Portkey for him or something, he could get back to the Weasleys' house and start over on working to find his friends from there. He might even get out of this place unnoticed, which would make it way easier to -

Oh.

Well, no.

Because suddenly a large, loud bell was chiming from somewhere else on the campus grounds, and from doors on either side of Harry, students in blue-blazered uniforms started pouring out, milling and laughing and echoing in the vast hallways. They jostled into him from all sides as they began to pass him, spinning him around, disorienting him, until one guy - about half a head taller than Harry (a little less with the hair, okay) with blond bangs spilling down into his eyes, stopped and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Whoa, Blaine? You really grew your hair over the summer!"

"What?" said Harry. "No, whah - my name's not - " He dropped one eyebrow at this guy. "Do you seriously not recognize me?"

"You're - not Blaine?"

"No! What kind of name is that?" Harry tried again, being a little more obvious this time. He tipped his glasses down his nose a bit and brushed his hair back from his forehead so that it framed his scar perfectly. "Now do you recognize me?"

The blond guy frowned kind of pitifully. "Nah, dude. I'm kind of terrible with names and faces, sorry...should I?"

"Well, I just figured most people kind of knew Harry Potter when they saw him."

At this the guy actually laughed - full-on, loud, drawing the attention of some of the other guys bustling through the hallway. "Man, that's a good one! But seriously, Blaine, a prank like this on the first day of school - "

"What's going on, Jeff?" Another student had come up beside the blond guy and tapped him on the elbow, trying to figure out what was going on in the commotion. Jeff spun to look down at him, a response on his lips, but it sputtered into nothingness when he saw who it was.

"But - isn't that - how can - what - oh, what..."

And Harry was tempted to agree. Because when he and the new guy finally made eye contact, it was practically like staring into a mirror.

(Well, a mirror with contact lenses, and no scar, and way shorter way grosser-looking hair, and who had maybe shaved a little closer than Harry had that morning...but still.)

-xxx-

Hermione scanned the room through narrowed eyes, trying to make the pieces fit, trying to concentrate.

"Can you believe the decor of this place? What kind of absurd pattern is that on the wall?"

"Oh wow, Malfoy, I never would've taken you for the interior decorating type."

They obviously weren't anywhere near Diagon Alley. She was fairly certain this was someplace far, far away from the things they were familiar with - and she was beginning to think this was probably a Muggle place, too. There was a television on a rolling cart - a big amp for an electric guitar or a bass -

"Oh sod off, Weasley. Just because your mess of a house is so small that you don't even have room for any kind of design motif to speak of, doesn't mean the rest of us have to settle for such squalor. You could do with learning to appreciate the finer things in life."

"Draco, have you ever even been to our house before? It's actually kinda nice!"

She kept scanning, but there wasn't much more she could get from visuals alone, not from where she was standing. With tentative steps, she hunted around for a calendar, photographs, anything, and the gears in her brain kept turning, grinding against each other...

"Oh, so you're inviting him to our house now? Damnit, sister - "

"I'm just saying he shouldn't knock it before he's tried it! I know you're used to like, your big fancy mansion and stuff, but there's something so warm about - "

"Are you implying Malfoy Manor is cold?"

...like her teeth.

"Guys can you just shut up for a second?" Hermione finally screamed, arms straightening ramrod-stiff as her fists clenched down against the sides of her skirt.

"Whoa, whoa," said Ron faintly, crossing over to her as he finally snapped out of it, thank god. "Babe, are you - "

"Sorry," she said, realizing suddenly that it was true. "It's just - I hate when things go wrong like this. After the whole Umbridge thing and then the whole Voldemort thing and just...I just want to go through a year of school where everything goes normal for a change." She leaned into his hand on her shoulder. "Every time something weird starts to happen it just kind of freaks me out."

"No, I totally get that," said Ginny, stepping over to her too. Draco huffed by the door, his arms crossed over his chest. "It's like all the stuff that's stupid and bad happens to us, huh?" Her giggle was forced, but it was appreciated nonetheless, and Hermione smiled.

"Good thing we've got practice then, I guess." She swept her hands through her hair, making like she was going to pull it back but then just dropping it. "Okay. I just. I think I've almost got this figured out. We were headed from the Burrow to Diagon Alley...but then... - yes!" It was totally freaking stupid, but it made sense! Geez, and if that's what had happened, the Floo network really needed to improve the layout of their infrastructure.

"Yes what?" asked Draco, and Ron and Ginny kind of nodded in agreement.

Oh, right. She was going to have to explain it to them. That was always the hard part.

"Okay. Um." Hermione looked around to get her bearings and her eyes lighted on the dry erase board off to the lefthand side of the room. "Oh! Okay. So - "

"Hermione, are you sure?" Ginny whispered to her as they crossed to the board. "You know you can't - "

"Just give me a second," she said, "how bad could it be?" Hermione cleared her throat. "Okay. So, so here's where we started..." She drew a small circle about eye-level with Ron, off to one side. "And then this must be where Malfoy started." She drew a second circle, parallel. Sort of.

"My grandmother's house," said Draco. "Dying to get out of there, crazy old harpie, but if this is the alternative..."

"Can you please just keep your two Knuts to yourself for a second?" said Ron, rolling his eyes.

Hermione continued with her diagram. "So we took the Floo, but it misrouted us...um, this way." She drew an arc, descending down from the circle that represented the Burrow and belling out, curving back in to a spot...somewhat centered between the two circles, but further down. "And then Malfoy, it must have sent you like - like this." She made another arc that mirrored the first, which intersected with it higher up, swept past it, and then rejoined it in the same place at the bottom, to make a sort of almond shape. Wow, this was actually turning out pretty good!

But Ron snorted. "Uh. Heheh, sure, okay."

"What?" said Hermione.

"Oh no, it's, no, keep going." He fluttered his hand at her but then set it back on his chin and sniggered softly into it a couple more times before calming down.

"Um...yeah, see! So here's where we hit you, Malfoy - " she tapped the marker against and around the place where the arcs intersected for the first time. "From the Floo misroute. Then around here - " She drew a bunch of smaller almond shapes inside the bigger one, going over her lines again and again, and it got a little messy but she was trying to make a point - "somewhere in here was where we lost Harry."

"Oh!" gasped Ginny, "oh...oh. Heehee."

"Yes, exactly! And then the spot at the bottom is where we are now - wherever that is. It's a Muggle school, definitely, but I don't know where..."

But now all three of them were laughing, Ginny pressing her face hard into Draco's shoulder and Ron scratching at the back of his head, torn somewher between embarrassed and hysterical. Hermione felt her enthusiasm for working out the problem deflate out of her, and her shoulders slumped as she turned from them back to her drawing. It wasn't that bad, was it? It was supposed to be a diagram, a representation, not an actual illustration of anything. What could it possibly look like other than -

"Whoa, okay Frankenberry, if you want to come join my team I guess there's no stopping you but you're really gonna need to understand that the little ladymuffin between your legs does not look like - wait a minute, you're not Rachel. Who are you and why are you drawing a taco on our whiteboard?"

Ron howled with laughter and Hermione blanched as the realization sank over her. Oh, oh no, did her helpful graphic really look like - like someone's woman parts?

She was suddenly very defensive and nearly had to shout to be heard over Ginny's giggling. "Well, who are you?" she said, staring down the girl who'd just walked through the door.

"Santana Lopez, obviously..." She was eyeing them up and down, slowly, but Hermione's brain had started going a mile a minute again. Lopez?

"Lopez, Lo - wait a second!" She snapped her fingers and rounded on Draco, scowling. "Aren't the Lopezes related to the Malfoy family?"

At this Ron sobered up, laying his hand on her shoulder again. "Um, babe," he whispered, "we talked about this? No breaking the fourth wall?"

Hermione winced. "Right - sorry..." She turned back to the dark-haired girl, who was crossing from the doorway to sit in one of the chairs on the risers at the back of the room. "San - Santana?"

"Yeah," she said hesitantly - "how have you not heard of me? Resident queer bitch extraordinaire?" She waved her hand dismissively. "Hummel might try to tell you that's him, but he's lying, I'm definitely numero uno. You can't cancel out an entire childhood in Lima Heights Adjacent with like, half a semester at gay Hogwarts."

Now Ginny and Draco froze, too, and as one all four of them seemed to give her the same sort of happy-desperate, disbelieving look.

"Ho...Hogwarts?" Hermione said faintly.

But that was when all the other people started bustling into the room, and things began to get too crazy for a real answer.

-xxx-

"But already? On the first day back?"

Tina sighed and shook her head. "I don't know why you're even surprised any more. They're getting out everything they've wanted to do all summer, it just stands to reason - "

"Don't these behemoths have something better to do with their lives?" Kurt grumbled. "It's like telling the same joke over and over again at every party and expecting people to still laugh."

Mercedes took the paper towel from him and gently pushed him away. "Talk and walk," she said. "I can redo my makeup in the choir room but we're going to be late." She did her best to clean the artificial grape gunk out of her ear, and then started in on the stuff that was still sticking to her eyelids. She wouldn't even be mad, but this was a brand new weave she'd just had put in, in time to look fabulous for the first day of school. If it came out of this a hot worse-for-wear mess she was probably going to take the nearest opportunity to knock Azimio Adams in the nuts.

And maybe Sam Evans, too.

Mercedes bit her lip. While Kurt and Tina strode along beside her debating the finer points of incorporating rain slickers and other slush-resistant items into fashionable back-to-school looks, she continued to wipe her face and tried not to be angry for other reasons altogether. They'd gone all summer keeping it hush-hush, but Mercedes had thought that meant they'd conquered the first, ugliest obstacle and were going to make it publicly official now that school was starting again. But Sam had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he'd really like for it to stay on the dee-ell even now. Even when having a star football-playing boyfriend was sure to protect her from the worst of the teasing and slushying. And it's not like she wanted to throw his reputation around like that, but - why was he even with her, if he didn't want to look out for her like that? If he didn't want everyone to know?

"Why?"

"Because there is a definite difference between a trenchcoat and an overcoat," said Kurt, rolling his eyes and answering a different question entirely. "Some people, I swear." But they were at the choir room now, their little triad merging with Sam, Mike, Artie, and Brittany, the latter two making the world's most awkward faces at each other every time they thought no one was looking. Mercedes tried her hardest not to do the same.

"Hey guys," she said, smiling weakly and holding up the grey-purple paper towel wad as a badge of honor.

"Ouch," said Artie. Mike held up a soggy towel from the locker room, stained green in a similar way.

"They were going for Brittany but I was too fast," he said, smiling morosely. "Green looks way better on me."

"That's a lie, I look awesome in every color," said Brittany. "I'm just on a diet."

"Sorry, baby," said Tina, pushing over to him and hugging him into a semi-indecent kiss. "Mmmm, it's my favorite flavor though."

"I know," said Mike with a wink.

"Sorry about you too, Mercedes," said Sam. He took the paper towel from her hand and wiped across by her hairline, getting a bit she must have missed.

"It's no big deal," she said, and tried not to sound upset.

"What are you guys all just standing around for?" squawked a voice from down the center hall of their T-intersection. "Can't you see we're wasting valuable rehearsal time? Get in there!" And Rachel Berry bustled past them, her yellow bow-encrusted sweater streaked faintly orange down the back, and barreled through the choir room door, leaving it swinging on its hinges. The rest of them followed through shaking their heads, Kurt already back to bitching about the slushie epidemic.

"And you!" he said, making a beeline for Santana. "Where were you? Where were the Bullywhips? Aren't you supposed to be preventing this kind of behavior, isn't that the whole point of your so-called organization? If I'm not mistaken, weren't you required by Sue Sylvester to recruit at least three more - "

"Sue Sylvester can't require me to do caca, Ladylips," said Santana, not even looking up from where she was filing her nails in the back row. "I'm a lone wolf."

"Ah-wooooo," howled Brittany faintly.

"Guys, is no one else concerned about the four other random people standing in our choir room that we've never seen before?" Artie deadpanned.

Because, yeah. Two redheaded kids, a guy and a girl, and then this other girl who looked a little bit like Rachel (better clothes, worse hair) and a really short blond guy were kind of hovering up by the whiteboard looking awkward as hell. Artie had already kind of wheeled over to them, and Mercedes followed after, looking curiously at them looking curiously at her.

She made up her mind fairly quickly. "Hi," she said, extending her hand for a shake, "I'm Mercedes. Are you guys here to audition for New Directions?"

"Um, not exactly," said the red-haired girl, though she did take Mercedes's hand and politely shake it back. "We're just kind of - here by mistake."

Rachel frowned dramatically. "Why am not surprised? Look, if you're not here to sing then you might as well just get out, I'm not concerned with - "

"Rachel, be nice!" said Mercedes. "One slushie and you get your granny panties in a bunch, I swear. Where were you guys trying to go? I know this school like the back of my hand, I can get you anywhere. Hopefully frozen-drink free."

"Well, uh, we were hoping - "

"Rachel got slushied?" Mercedes turned to the door to see Finn, Puck, and Lauren heading through it, Finn crossing immediately to Rachel to survey the damage - though hers seemed to have been much milder than Mike's or Mercedes's. "I can't believe those guys. This'll come out, right?" (Mercedes couldn't help but notice that he turned his gaze slightly to Kurt when he said that. Kurt shook his head and mouthed throw it out right back.)

"Wait, who are these chumps?" asked Puck, tilting his head toward the four strangers as he took a seat in front.

"We're trying to figure that out but you chumps keep stampeding through and interrupting," said Mercedes, rolling her eyes. "Forgive them, they're insane."

"I've certainly seen my fair share of that," said the blond guy, in a high and vaguely not-American voice.

"My name is Ginny," said the redhead, and Artie chuckled a little.

"Bet you get crap for that a lot, yeah?"

She blinked at him. "For what?"

"Well, you know - long red hair, kinda skinny, and your name is - you know, like in Harry Potter?"

The brunette gasped. "Wait, but you're - you've heard of Harry Potter?"

Lauren snorted. "Lady, who hasn't heard of Harry Potter? It's made like, billions of dollars and you'd have to be kind of culturally blind. And deaf. And stupid."

"Well, I just thought - since you're Muggles and - "

"Hermione, don't you think this is getting a little ridiculous?" said the redheaded guy, leaning in to whisper to the other girl and - no. Really? He turned to them. "Look, there's been a mistake, and we just wanna get home. We're looking for my friend Harry. He's kind of about this tall - " he gestured parallel to the ground at about the neighborhood of his armpits - "and he's got like really messy hair and glasses. Once we find him, we're leaving, and we don't wanna cause any trouble or get in anybody's way. Okay?"

But Lauren had actually gotten up and crossed over to them now, and was scrutinizing the shorter girl's face from an inappropriately close distance. "Hang on a second," she mumbled. "If you're Ginny Weasley - " she pointed at the redhead without even looking at her, still fixated - "are you actually Hermione? And this is Ron, and this is - "

"Draco Malfoy, of course!" he said haughtily, and Artie laughed again.

"Okay, yeah, that's where you're losing me," said Lauren. "This is some great cosplay on the three of you, don't get me wrong, and you're super in-character and everything - I bet you two are actually dating, am I right? You can't fake that."

"Well, yes," said "Hermione," straightening up a little and pulling back from Lauren, adjusting the front of her sweater.

"See? Great! But you really should've tried to find a better Draco," she continued. "Everyone knows the real Draco should be about as tall as Ron and look amazing in leather pants. I don't believe you for a second."

"What - what are you insinuating?" demanded the blond kid, shouldering past Mercedes to stand toe-to-toe with Lauren and coming up not even to her nose. Mercedes shot a look at Artie, who just shrugged. "I daresay the Malfoy family name should carry quite enough weight for me, regardless of my trousers or my - my physical stature. What does a filthy Muggle know about anything anyway?" He glared hard up into Lauren's eyes and she stared incredulously back.

She shrugged and finally gave up. "Eh, I guess I can see why you picked this kid."

"Look, this isn't acting!" sputtered the Hermione chick, hands flapping. "I don't know how you know so much about the four of us, or about Harry, or why anyone would want to - to dress up as us, but my name is Hermione Granger and we are looking for Harry, we don't know where he ended up, so could you please- "

"If you're really Hermione Granger," said Sam suddenly, "prove it."

"What?" asked about six people.

"You know - do some magic, or something. Like Lumos or Expelliarmus or something."

"Ginny's" eyes went impossibly wider. "How do these Muggles know all of this?"

"I don't know," said Hermione, turning back to her.

"What are we supposed to do?" said Ron. "I think the rule about not doing magic in front of Muggles kind of goes out the window when they all seem to already know about it."

"Yes, but we're still not supposed to do magic outside of school - "

"We're in their school!" said Ginny.

"I love how they're talking about all of us like we're not even here," said Mercedes, grabbing the handles of Artie's chair and wheeling him back over toward the risers.

"Is it bad that I'm kind of used to it?" he muttered back.

"Oh for crying out loud, Granger, just do it already!" said Malfoy finally. "Look, I'll do it. No one's using this chair, are they?" He gestured to the empty seat between Finn and Puck before shoving up the sleeves of his oversized shirt and pulling out what even Mercedes had to admit was a super-legit-looking wooden wand from some pocket somewhere.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" he chanted, twirling the wand around, and then -

Shit. It actually happened.

The room let out a collective gasp as the chair flew into the air. It leveled out about a foot over Finn and Puck's heads, but it didn't look too stable, bobbing and weaving through the air as Draco guided it around the room a little bit faster than Mercedes thought was necessary. Hermione dropped her face into her hand, Ginny clapped and squealed and Brittany bounded up, trying to catch the legs of the chair as it whisked past her and Santana.

Draco was looking particularly pleased with himself until the chair swept past the open door to the choir room and clocked Mr. Schuester square in the face.

-xxx-

Blaine sat between Nick and Jonathan at the Warblers' senior council table. The rest of them, including two freshmen who'd been tapped for auditions today, sat around the rest of the room.

The person claiming to be Harry Potter sat in the middle right in front of him.

"I'm sorry, but this has to be a joke," said Trent, shaking his head and flapping his hand. "Nice try, Jeff, but we're not buying it."

"What - me?" said Jeff. "Look, guys, just because I found him wandering in the halls like this doesn't mean he's my responsibility, does it? It's not like the time that cat followed me home - "

"I don't think we should blame Jeff," said Jonathan evenly. "I don't think we should blame anyone. I'm just confused as to why someone would play this kind of joke in the first place."

"I'm telling you, it's not a joke," said the new guy. "I don't know where I am, how I ended up here, how you guys all seem to know my name when you're totally Muggles, but I'm definitely Harry Potter. It's not something I lie about." He adjusted his glasses, and the neat collar of his polo shirt. His face went a little smug.

"There's no such thing as Harry Potter," said Fletcher from the back of the room. "It's dumb kids' books and dumb kids' movies and the only good thing to come out of it is Emma Watson." Bernard fistbumped him and Blaine struggled not to roll his eyes.

"Hey!" said Jeff.

"Books? Movies?" said Harry. "That would be awesome."

"What if we make him do magic?" said Nick.

"I mean, I guess I could, but - "

"He obviously can't do magic," said Trent.

"Well what if we ask him something that only the real Harry Potter would know?"

"Also known as 'something only Jeff and Marcus would know because they're giant nerds'!"

"Guys!" said Jonathan, smacking the gavel once against the table. "The anti-bullying policy is still in full effect, okay?"

"But you can't possibly believe this!"

"I believe him."

Blaine felt every eye turn on him as the room fell silent. He rose from behind the council table and crossed behind Nick, heading to where Harry sat in the center.

"But - why, Blaine?" asked Trent, still mildly flabbergasted.

"Because," he said. "At the risk of pointing out the giant elephant in the room?" He glanced fleetingly over at Jeff, and Jeff was nodding. "He looks just. Like. Me." Blaine smiled. "And I know full well what my own face looks like when it's lying. And he's telling the truth." He stopped right in front of Harry and stuck out his hand for a shake, and Harry stood up, their eyes exactly even, their palms similarly sweaty when they met. "Blaine Anderson. Head Councilman for the Dalton Academy Warblers."

Harry shook it, nervous but strong. "Uh, Harry Potter. Chosen One." He clicked his teeth and Blaine laughed outright.

"Awesome. How'd you end up here, anyway?"

"You know, I haven't quite figured that out yet, unfortunately," he said. "Magic, man. It's kind of a bitch sometimes."

"Such language," muttered Trent, scandalized, but Blaine chose to ignore it.

"I can see where that might be an issue, yes. Is there any way we can help you get back to where you're going?"

"I mean, if there were I would totally tell you, but before I go anywhere I kind of need to find my friends. I have no idea where they ended up."

"Who, Ron and Hermione?" scoffed Fletcher.

Harry turned and stared at him, pulling a bitchface that, while it wouldn't even rival Kurt's on a bad day, was still pretty impressive. "Them and my girlfriend Ginny actually, is there a problem, man?"

"Just ignore Fletcher, please," said Jonathan.

"Why don't you just stick with me for now?" said Blaine. "We can tell people you're my cousin, if we have to, and no one will have to know and we won't have to sit through all of this again. And in the meantime, we'll do anything we can to help you find your friends. I promise."

"Uh, cool, thanks," said Harry. "So like, my friend Ron is about so tall, and with red - "

Blaine just laughed again. "Yeah, we know." He rocked back a step or two and addressed the rest of the room. "Well, Warblers, our first business meeting has been somewhat of a wash. You'll all report this afternoon to our first rehearsal and performance meeting and we'll get started on refreshing our standard material and generating a list of which songs to retire and which we might want to integrate new into our repertoire. We'll also be auditioning Gage and Jackson at that time. In the meantime, go to class, and it'd probably be best if we just pretended this whole thing never happened." He smiled out at them, and Jonathan swung the gavel twice to signal the end of the meeting before the room dissolved into murmurs and the rustling of bags and papers.

Harry frowned at him and shifted his weight to one hip, folding his arms. "So yeah, Mr. Head Councilman, about that whole thing where we've got the same face."

"Sorry?" said Blaine.

"That fake-ass smile you just plastered on for everyone?" said Harry. "You hate this."

Blaine faltered a little, but kept smiling back at him. "The Warblers have a stellar reputation here at Dalton, I love being part of such a great group."

Harry nodded his head back and forth a little and made a dismissive gesture. "Yeah, okay, the warbling thing, maybe. Music stuff, right?" Blaine nodded. "I totally feel you, music is awesome, even when everything else sucks. But that's the thing here. This school? Sucks."

"Dalton is a very prestigious - "

"Bite me," said Harry. "Hogwarts is prestigious. I should know, I kind of run that shit. But this is..." He looked slowly around at their practice room, and Blaine saw his eyes stop on the Warblers tapestry, the wide windows, the gavel. "This is stuffy is what it is. This is a stick up your ass and not in the fun way. You're suffocating here, Blaine." He laughed, kind of pathetically. "Loosen your tie."

Before Blaine could react much, Harry drew an honest-to-god wand from his pocket and flicked it in a sharp, tiny movement at Blaine's collar. Instantly the top button of his shirt popped open, and his tie slid down a couple of inches, still tied but slightly rumpled where it ducked back into his blazer. After a few seconds of contemplation, Harry swung the wand again, this time at his hair. Blaine's whole scalp prickled, and when he reached up to check what had happened, he found his head a mess of loose curls, his hair gel completely vanished. He smoothed his hand against it perhaps more slowly than he'd intended, and Harry's face (his face) broke out into a lopsided grin.

"Yeah," he said. "Feels great, doesn't it."

"I should probably head to class," said Blaine, giving Blaine a smile - small, wry, and deliberately genuine. "Are you coming, or not?"

-xxx-

"So what exactly was the reasoning for sticking me with him, anyway?"

Sam groaned, hiking his backpack further up his shoulder and gritting his teeth a little. "Look, you and I look the most alike, so you're easiest to pass off as like, my stupid little brother or something. Plus I'm pretty sure I know the most about the Harry Potter series after like, Lauren and maybe Artie or Mike, so they were hoping I'd have a better handle on you," he said. "But clearly that's not going to happen." You know, considering Draco was basically only speaking directly to Kurt.

"But I don't want to go to your stupid Muggle classes with you!" Malfoy whined. "Can't I just stay in that room and hide out and just ignore the fact that all of you exist?"

"The two classes of the jazz ensemble have practice in there second and third periods," said Kurt, walking beside them, "and then Mr. Schue is in there grading papers sometimes. If he doesn't turn out to be concussed." Kurt side-eyed Malfoy hard. "Besides, everyone else had to go with someone, you saw. Hermione's with Rachel and Ginny's with Mercedes and Ron's with Puck - which if you ask me is just an explosive disaster waiting to happen - oh, she texted me back. Hm. No, Mercedes says she got to Halley's class and checked with all her regular gossip sources and no one's seen anyone like Harry at all. And if they haven't seen him, he isn't here. Those bitches be crazy."

Sam grit his teeth even harder and tried not to think about how much he would have liked to be kissing Mercedes right now. "I just hope he didn't end up too far away from here. Can't you guys contact him, somehow?"

"What, like you all just have owls sitting around waiting patiently should a wizard stumble into this Muggle mess? No-oh, you have to get all pointlessly complicated with your cellophane phones and Quirties and whatnot. Snore."

"Look, I'm not trying to be rude, but could you please, maybe, just shut up for a second and walk to class with us?" said Sam.

"You're doing a wonderful job considering you're not trying."

"Okay, seriously?" said Kurt. "I know you're kind of this snotty one-note character up until the sixth one or so but you could at least - hey, where do you think you're going?"

Because Malfoy had shot suddenly away from them and out into the crowd of students headed to second period, and was so small he would have disappeared into the sea of them if it weren't for his shock of bright blond hair. Sam was so over this already - couldn't this week of all weeks just have been normal - and he shouldered forward after him, not even bothering to see if Kurt was keeping up or just heading to bio lab without him. He knocked into a few people with his backpack, but he didn't even care - this Malfoy twerp was his responsibility now and Sam was damned if he was gonna disappear on him and wreak stupid magic havoc everywhere.

He finally got a hand clamped hard on Malfoy's shoulder right as his hand was reaching for the knob on the door to - the basement boiler room? What the heck? Malfoy winced in Sam's grip and was still spinning around to face him when Kurt caught up, his breathing a little heavy and his face stern.

"No," he scolded. "Absolutely not. I was trying not to treat you like a puppy that we need to keep on a leash at all times but if you're seriously thinking about trying to leave without the rest of them - "

"You're right!" said Sam suddenly. "Hermione said you guys got here by Floo powder, there's totally no fireplace in here at all. The closest thing would be the furnace. What the hell gives, man?"

Malfoy scowled. "Oh, come on, you're not serious? I ran into those losers by accident, on my way home from my grandmother's house. We didn't come here together and there's absolutely nothing that says we have to leave here together either. Just let me go, this is stupid." He shrugged Sam's hand off his shoulder hard. "Even you think it's stupid."

"Of course I think it's stupid," said Sam. "Doesn't mean you get to punk out on your friends."

"They're not my friends," Malfoy insisted.

"Either way!" said Sam. "You'd probably be boned without Hermione, anyway, you guys don't know if they fixed that thing or not and I wouldn't trust any of you to last two minutes without her brains."

"And furthermore," hissed Kurt, who was practically seething at this point, "you'd never forgive yourself for leaving behind people you care about." He exhaled sharply and his face set into something dark and impassive. "I know that from experience."

Malfoy shuffled his feet. "They're not my friends," he mumbled again, but there was no force behind it - no one would have believed him. He relaxed, a little, and when Kurt to head on to bio, Malfoy followed obediently behind, with Sam bringing up the rear. Kurt seemed more relaxed, too, laughing about a funny text Blaine had sent him.

But Sam, with the words leaving behind people you care about still thudding through his head, was as tense as ever.

-xxx-

Ron's hand was hovering on the handle to the passenger door of the beat-up, black-painted Cadillac, with his Muggle buddy-system friend already sliding into the driver's seat, before it occurred to him to ask.

"Dude, what are we doing?"

Puck leaned across the center of the bench seats to look up at him through the half-open window. "We're cutting class, bro! I got some weed and some sick new PS3 games back at my house, I wanna see what happens when a wizard gets baked. Now let's go before Buzzkill Becky Johnson catches us."

Ron shrugged, slid in, and adjusted his headband in the mirror on the underside of the sun visor. "Works for me."

-xxx-

So, a couple hours later, Harry felt confident that he had sufficient information to declare that Muggle school sucked.

Maybe he wasn't being fair. Blaine had chemistry second period, which was kind of like Potions but with way more theoretical Muggle science BS, so that was pretty lame, but third period he had history, and that was actually kind of interesting - learning about the world the way the Muggles had always seen it, beyond what he'd gotten from grade school before Hogwarts, without all the goblins and alliterative names and other magic crap that made the history Binns taught so damn boring. And now he had a free period, which Harry always appreciated. So maybe Muggle school had the potential to be kind of cool, if done correctly.

But Harry was definitely sure that Dalton was doing it totally ass-backwards wrong.

The whole no-girls thing was bad enough. (Harry thought just sharing a dorm room with five other dudes was lame. How did any of these guys even deal?) But it wasn't just that all Blaine's classmates were boys - it was that all Blaine's classmates were hoity-toity, put-together, preppy boys just like Blaine was trying to be, their uniforms arranged just as carefully and their attitudes just as prim and annoying. There had been one or two exceptions, people like that blond Jeff guy or his friend Nick who were practically bright spots on the gloomy Dalton horizon, but even they seemed to keep a pretty heavy lid on it most of the time - just like Blaine was doing. It was really freaking disconcerting to go through the day with this guy that looked just like him and watch that guy speak and smile and act in a way Harry wouldn't be caught dead acting. If he didn't bust this guy out soon, the damage was going to be irreversible, and even when Harry went home he was going to take with him the knowledge that in some weird other world was his miserable suited-up doppelganger, suffering through the bullshit of high school in ways that no one should have to endure.

Tackling it straight on clearly hadn't worked, though, and Blaine had just thrown his defenses back up. He was going to have to be a little less Gryffindor about it from now on.

"So the Warbly thing is a music thing, right?" he said, as they went back to the same room they'd been in that morning, which was remarkably empty this time of day. "I mean, there's a piano in here, so I just figured - "

"Yes," Blaine said, cutting him off with a chuckle. "We're a singing group. A cappella. I actually get to front the group a lot, I've had several solos, that kind of thing."

"Awesome," said Harry. He crossed to the piano and tugged the cover back on it before sitting down on the bench. Blaine dumped his stuff beside Harry, then moved to push open some of the windows - it was still August, and the room was getting really stuffy midday. He was on the other side of the room when something in his messenger bag started buzzing and beeping at the same time.

"What the - " Harry mumbled, and reached in to find whatever it was and make it shut up - it turned out to be Blaine's...cell phone, which was tiny and weird-shaped and still looked nothing like any phone Harry was familiar with from his days with the Dursleys, but he supposed this could kind of be construed as ringing.

"Your tiny phone thing is going off at me," Harry called to him. He looked down at the display. "Someone named Kurt?"

Blaine started back toward him, smiling - a real smile this time, truer than anything Harry had seen so far, which was kind of awesome. "My boyfriend," he said.

"Ha!" cried Harry. "Yes. Totally knew it. Didn't even need the stupid scarf."

"What?"

"Never mind. So uh. Boyfriend. That's great."

"Yeah, he's pretty amazing," Blaine said, and it was so sincere Harry kind of wanted to puke. He checked the message on his weird phone-thing. "Look out for me calling you at first lunch, you'll never believe what's going on today. Hah! Bet I win that story-telling contest."

Harry laughed a little, too. "So you haven't seen him today to talk all that over? He's not a Warblet?"

Blaine's smile turned a little sad. "No, no, Kurt doesn't go to Dalton any more. He didn't for very long to begin with, really. He's at a public school, McKinley, it's in the next town over."

"Man, that must be hard. Why'd he leave?" Then Harry thought about it. "Wait, why'd he even come here in the first place?"

Blaine sat down on the other end of the piano bench with a small sigh, and looked at Harry in earnest. "Dalton is very serious about its no-tolerance anti-bullying policy. Things here are...regimented," he said. "Kurt's school isn't like that. It's hard, for him, considering how - " he paused, head tilting, choosing a word carefully - it was so surreal, Harry could read just about every slight subtle expression on his near-identical face - "outspoken Kurt is about his life and his sexuality - "

"Ohhh, so he's totally flaming. Like way gayer than you," said Harry.

Blaine arched one eyebrow. "You do know that's not how it works, right?"

"I know, I know, you either like dudes or you don't. Keep going?"

"Kurt came to Dalton at a time when he was struggling the most at his own school, before we got together, as an alternative to having his life threatened on a regular basis," said Blaine. "Some things got settled, issues were resolved - not completely, but to a degree where it was safe enough - and then he went back when his time here was up."

"Sounds to me like he got out when the getting was good," said Harry. "Someone threatens your life, you punch 'em in the face and threaten 'em right back. Someone stifles your soul, that's when you need to get out of there and back to a place that's letting you be who you're supposed to be."

"It's more complicated than that, you're oversimplifying - "

"I know I am," said Harry, rolling his eyes and knocking Blaine on the side of the head a little. "It seems like breaking it down into basic terms is the only way I'm gonna get through that thick skull of yours, geez. Look, listen to me." He swung so he was straddling the piano bench, and he could look at Blaine head-on, directly into those eerily-identical eyes. (Bastard had contacts, Harry was still kind of jealous.) "I know all about what it's like to be in a place where you're stuck, and stifled, and where you literally get punished for trying to be who you are. I get that."

"The Dursleys," Blaine murmured faintly.

"Still don't understand how you guys know everything about my life, but yes." Harry shook himself a little, trying to stay focused. "I get that. I get Kurt's thing. But you know what else I get? This whole private school, uniform, small group of people you spend every waking moment of your life with thing. I get your thing, too. And the way you are doing it is totally ass-backwards wrong."

Blaine lifted his hands but then dropped them again, like he didn't know what to do with them. "It's - it's just - "

-xxx-

" - hard to go through every day knowing they all still think the worst of me," said Rachel, idly tracing out the patterns of a tune on the keys of Brad's piano without actually playing any notes. "Still! They've known me for years, Hermione, they know who I am and how I function and that this is just - me - and yet they're horrible to me. They're only nice when Finn makes them and he only does that because he wants to get to second base with me."

"I know," Hermione said simply - and something about that struck Rachel much harder than she was expecting. Not "I'm so sorry," the honest pity of someone who didn't quite know how things worked but knew Rachel shouldn't suffer through them; not the chipper "it'll all work out someday!" of someone who had no idea how things worked at all, the one that reeked of condescension and lies and the utter lack of surprise that someone like Rachel would have a life this miserable. Hermione didn't pity her. Hermione just knew. "I know what it's like, for even the people you consider your closest friends to still think you're kind of - terrible. And for there to be days when the only thing that keeps you hanging on is you."

"Oh, that's just it!" Rachel wailed. "If I didn't want all of this so badly, if I didn't know the only way to get there was to be me, just - uncompromisingly and - "

"Rachel," said Hermione softly, "sometimes you have to compromise."

"What?" Now Rachel wasn't certain that Hermione understood at all.

"You have to approach things - rationally," she said, her finger tracing circles on the glossy surface of the piano, hesitant. "Being contrary just for contrariness's sake, yeah, it sets you apart, it hardens you for the real world - whatever that's supposed to mean - but it alienates you, too. You can't keep trying so hard to stand out and still expect to fit in."

"So what, I'm just supposed to cave in and be just like all of them?"

"Of course not," said Hermione. "Never on the inside. Never where it counts. But if you let them think you've got a little give to you, they'll warm up, they'll accept you as one of their own, like - okay, so, here's me, there was this time where there was this dance, right?"

"What, like the Yule Ball?"

"That's it exactly. And I - I'm not the gussied-up sparkling eyeshadow pretty dress type, that makes me so antsy. Books have done way better by me than a push-up bra ever did. But in that moment, all I wanted was for things to be wonderful, and to feel like I was someone that somebody cared about. And I couldn't do that and keep doing my all-Hermione-and-books-all-the-time sort of act at the same time. I had to give a little one way or the other. I had to compromise."

"Did it...did it work?" said Rachel. She found suddenly that she was leaning in toward Hermione, hanging on her every word.

Hermione's eyes went kind of distant and she let out a small sigh. "It definitely worked. It wasn't my favorite thing I've ever done, and it - it never will be - but I...and then he..."

-xxx-

"...won't even let me say anything!" Mercedes threw up her arms and huffed out a long, angry exhale, and Ginny fidgeted with her hands a little where she sat by the piano. "Sometimes I just kind of want to scream."

"So do it," said Ginny.

Mercedes turned back upstage to her, eyebrows raised. "Really?"

"Yeah," said Ginny. "I mean, the auditorium is empty except for you and me, and if you need to let something out, I think you definitely should. The whole situation sounds terrible."

"You know what," said Mercedes, "you're right!" She rushed out onto the proscenium, rocked her arms back and her head forward, and let out a loud, long shout, carrying on until her lungs gave out. When she finished it bounced hard off the auditorium walls for a few moments and then left nothing but a ringing silence. She rocked heel-toe back and forth a couple of times, and then turned and crossed back to Ginny, arms swinging. "Wow, that did kind of help," she said, giggling a little. "I don't know, Ginny, what should I do?"

"I don't know either," said Ginny, frowning and shrugging a little. "I wish I could help, but that's the super-frustrating thing about when you like a boy. Sometimes the Quaffle's totally in his court, you know?"

"I mean, I guess so."

"And he knows how you feel about the whole thing, right?"

She nodded. "We had this big discussion about it last week and then I brought it up again on the phone last night. But he really wants this to be a thing that's just between him and me, and to not tell everybody."

"That's pretty stupid."

"Tell me about it."

"And then you just get backed up in this big dumb dead-end that you're in right now, where you can't do anything, because it's all on him. And that's just awful!" Ginny slumped, and poked idly at one of the keys on the auditorium piano, which made a high and piercing sound. "It's like...this one time, it was the first time Harry and I kissed..."

"Oooh, juicy," said Mercedes, sitting down next to her.

"And it was so amazing and he was so nice and I'd had a crush on him basically forever, but we just kissed this one time and then he just dropped it like a screaming mandrake," said Ginny. "I tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn't make a single move! A

nd it just got to the point where I'd done everything it was possible for me to do, and it still wasn't going anywhere. And it was only going to go somewhere if hedid something."

"But he did do something, right?" said Mercedes. "'Cause like, you two are together now."

"He did," said Ginny. "But it kind of took like, three or four near-death experiences and saving the entire wizarding world first."

"Uuuggghh!" said Mercedes, dropping her head back and then rocking it forward again in time to slamming both hands on the piano, a jumbled dissonance bursting out from it. "This is so stupid! I'm never gonna getanywhere at this rate." She stood back up and stepped away from the piano a little. "Gimme a sec, I think I need to scream again."

"Hang on," said Ginny. "If you're willing to try it, I think I've got a better idea."

-xxx-

"Here," said Hermione, and she waved her wand at some blank paper until it swirled with bars and notes of music, complete with lyrics. "Maybe we could try this. If you just stay solid on the inside..."

-xxx-

"Why don't you hang tight for a second, okay, blazer-boy?" said Harry. "Let me do the Warbling."

-xxx-

"There's this song I know."

-xxx-

Rachel watched, amazed, as the piano played the right notes all on its own, and she just tried to keep up with the lyrics on the page. Her sightreading had clearly gotten a little rusty over the summer.

"I take a grain of salt,
A stiff upper lip,
It's not their fault I'm not as hip - "

"Wake up kid," sang Hermione, "you know you're more than this..."

"I'm the smartest person that I've ever met," Rachel continued, a smile growing on her face.
"So why do I allow myself to possibly forget?
There's so much I know how to do,
So much more than all of you.
The only thing I wish I knew was how to make them see
The girl that I can be..."

-xxx-

"I'm laughing," sang Harry, plinking it out as he went.
"It's hard to hide a smile.
My god, it's been a while since I have had a reason to." He raised one eyebrow at Blaine.
"To think, it's been here all along,
Somewhere to belong, and a reason,
A something to believe in -
I've finally found it, a place where I'm wanted..."

Blaine found himself suddenly picking up the next line. "This must be how it feels, to have a home."

-xxx-

"Sa-a-am-myyy," sang Mercedes, finally getting into it, with Ginny fumbling miserably through the notes on the piano.
"Sa-a-am-myyy,
Why can't you see
What you're doing to me?"

She'd found a microphone somewhere and she leaned heavy into it on the stand, building up.

"I've seen you singin' on that stage,
You look just like an angel, and all I do is pray
That maybe someday you'll let me be
The one to say 'hey, he's with me,'
And there won't ever be no other way -
Hey!
When I say - "

-xxx-

"I am done with losing, on with choosing!
The coolest girl on the face of the planet - "

"The coolest bitch on earth, goddamnit!" cried Hermione.

"The coolest chick you've ever seen or heard!
So you can try to bring me down,
But sorry, guys, I'm sticking around
I've thought about it and I've found..."

-xxx-

"...to have - a - home!" finished Harry, more softly than he'd been planning, as the edge kind of seeped out of him. He was always totally down for a big loud show-stopping showoff moment, but this...this wasn't about him. This was about Blaine.

"Wow," Blaine murmured, as Harry played through the outro and then the music room fell silent. "And you - you wrote that?"

"Yeah, I guess," said Harry. "I mean, it just kind of...happened. I think magic and music really have this like connection, you know?" He paused. "Which in hindsight could totally explain how I was so awesome at playing guitar when I was only eleven."

"I never knew," said Blaine. "I mean, obviously, I didn't, since we just met this morning and all, but through the books there's never any mention of - "

"I'm starting to think that whatever weird books are out there about my life have gotten a bunch of things kinda goofed up," said Harry.

Blaine smiled, and leaned around to put his own fingers on the piano, just his right hand, flitting almost instantly to the exact keys Harry had just been playing - running through chords of the song like he'd already learned them. "Not - not just the music thing, though," he said, dropping his hand back to his lap just as suddenly. "I mean, just - that was intense."

"Yeah, kinda."

"And reading the - the book version, you couldn't quite get the sense of exactly what it was like - I mean you were obviously upset in our world and much happier and more at home at Hogwarts and stuff but just - the rawness of it. The total transformation, such a huge shift."

"It's hard," said Harry, realizing suddenly how close Blaine's movements had put them. "It's the worst thing I ever have to do, to go back to them when I'm not at school. It's like I leave a part of me behind every time I leave - "

" - him," Blaine whispered. "Every time I have to leave Kurt."

"It's not just him, you know," said Harry. "If you were leaving him to come back to something that you liked, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. It's when you leave something amazing for something that's totally shitty, that's when you feel like this. Like someone's kicked your insides." He could see it, deep in Blaine's way-too-close eyes, that he knew. He could read this face, his face, like a book, like a slip of sheet music.

"Maybe you're right," said Blaine, voice soft. "Maybe there is something bad for me in this place. It's just been so good for me, too, that I can't see how - I just don't think - "

"Shhh," said Harry. "Don't think. Do." They were so close their noses were practically touching. Harry felt his words in Blaine's identical lips. "Be a Gryffindor," he said. "Have some courage."

Blaine kissed him. Harry hummed softly, a little confused, but it only took about two seconds from it to go from weird to just weirdly hot. Blaine was a really good kisser, his hand sliding up to cup around Harry's jaw, and there was something about the solid forcefulness of a guy, pressing insistent against his lips with another coarse slightly-open mouth, that was new and bright and exciting no matter how much Harry loved the soft eager sweetness of kissing Ginny. He opened his mouth to it, too, and let their tongues meet, sucking hard at Blaine and letting his fingers fan out against Blaine's leg just above his knee where they still sat on the piano bench. A bell was chiming somewhere, had started chiming some time ago it seemed, but Harry was lost in the weird parallel same-but-different taste of Blaine's mouth, the faint desperate noises he was making against him and the way his body kept shifting forward and back, hungry but conflicted, the muscles of his neck shifting under Harry's hand where it had come to rest just above his shoulder.

"Mmmh," said Harry between the hot, thick kisses, "oh man."

"No, I - " said Blaine, protesting even as he kept going - "I have a boyfriend - "

"I have a girlfriend," Harry pointed out, before slipping back in for more.

His lips were getting raw and tingly from it but neither of them really seemed like they were going to quit anytime soon when suddenly, Blaine's phone resting on top of the piano started to ring/buzz again, a different sound than before, rattling against the hard surface. Blaine groaned into Harry's mouth and then pulled away, a little bit of saliva dangling between them before Harry had the sense to wipe it clean as Blaine answered the phone and mouthed 'Kurt' at him. "Hey, Kurt, what's up?" There was some high-pitched chattering from the other end that Harry couldn't understand beyond it being full of overwhelmed excitement, and a few sentences in, Blaine's eyes shot open wide. "Are you serious right now? - No, I definitely do believe you, is the thing." He shook his head a little in amazement. "Yeah, I do. - Well, because Harry Potter is here at Dalton. - Yes." He rolled his eyes. "Of course I would have told you. Soon! Especially if I'd known - yes. No, I can - I'll ditch last period, the drive shouldn't be that bad if I beat traffic." Kurt said something else, and Blaine paused, letting the silence hang, before giving Harry an enormous grin. "No, I don't think it'll matter if I miss Warblers practice. - No, I am, I just...I won't be. For much longer anyway. I'll explain when we get there. - When we get there, Kurt. Have lunch, get ahold of the rest of them, I'll see you in a couple of hours. - Okay. - I love you too. Bye."

Harry grinned. "You're ditching the Warblers?"

Blaine shrugged. "It won't matter in a couple of weeks, considering I'm probably leaving Dalton altogether."

He leapt up from the piano bench and threw his arms around Blaine in a bro-hug, completely as if they hadn't just been making out five minutes ago. "Yes," he cried, "yes! My doppelganger is saved! You gotta get out of here, man!"

"I figure I probably do," said Blaine, smiling madly too - a real smile.

"And Kurt's found my friends?"

"Seems so! He said all four of them are at McKinley and they were just looking for you before they tried to figure out how to get home."

"Wait, four?" said Harry. "Who all's there?"

"Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and I guess he said Draco Malfoy."

"Oh god," Harry groaned, slumping back onto the bench. "How does he always end up involved in our freaking business? You'd think after a while he'd realize that we're not worth it and to just leave it alone!"

Blaine laughed a little, and shook his head. "You would think, wouldn't you? But you would be surprised." He stood up suddenly, gathering his bag and his phone and taking a couple of steps toward the door. "Come on. We're making one more stop before we hit the dining hall for lunch."

"Oh yeah?" said Harry, rising and following after. "Where to?"

"The Edward J. Dalton Memorial Library."

-xxx-

Kurt waited until nearly the end of lunch before announcing it to everyone. It was fun to have the little secret to himself, and he sat and ate his tomato sandwich and smiled, engaging vaguely in the conversation Ginny and Mercedes were having to his right - oh, they were getting along so well, he'd hate to rain on their parade with the news that Ginny was going to have to leave soon. Mercedes had been kind of down and out lately, for reasons Kurt had yet to suss out, and seeing how happy she'd been with Ginny all afternoon had been a lovely change of pace from the last couple weeks of the summer.

So he finished his sandwich, ate his grapes and his giant white chocolate macadamia soft cookie, and waited until his bag was firm on his shoulder and he was heading out of the cafeteria altogether before pulling up the group labeled New Directions from his contacts and shooting a mass text: We found Harry Potter! He's with Blaine at Dalton. They'll be here towards the end of the day. xo K

He got several responses quite quickly -

From: Sam E
THANK GOD get this twerp away from me, he wont calm down & when he found out i live in a hotel it just got worse

From: Tina CC
yay! but we have to take pixx before they leave! it's been so much fun gin is the best :( we're putting a feather in her hair in schu's 5th LOL

From: Rachelphaba
NOOO THEY CAN'T LEAVE! Can't she just stay forever? frownface ETERNALLY :(

Kurt rolled his eyes at that one, as he sank into his seat in the back row of his government class, and actually bothered to respond.

To: Rachelphaba
Rachel, sweetie, we talked about this. You can't take in every stray you see because sooner or later its real owners come for it and by then you've gotten too attached.

From: Rachelphaba
Oooooh you're not funny! Don't call her an it! She's my FRIEND and her NAME is Hermione Granger!

To: Rachelphaba
I don't care if her name is Stefani Hermanotta, she doesn't belong here and they're really going to need to find a way back to where they came from.

He sighed and set his phone to silent, not looking to get it confiscated for texting in class, and was just worming it back into his impossibly snug pockets when it lit up one more time.

From: Quinn
what the hell are you talking about?

Oh, right. Quinn was missing the first few days of school since she was still in Los Angeles on vacation with her mother - Kurt had taken notes for her in French and everything. That was...hm. Maybe he shouldn't even bother trying to explain.

To: Quinn
No big deal. I'll tell you later, we're just having a weird day.

From: Quinn
every day at mckinley is a weird day.

Kurt supposed she had a point.

(The day got even weirder when he finally got a response from Puck, a full class period later, and it read yo cool hp im there hang on wait my hair...WHOP, followed immediately by another text that was just a string of random punctuation symbols. Kurt decided he did not want to know.)

When the bell finally rang to let Kurt out of English and free them all from regular classes for the day, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. He took the long way around through the hallways to the student parking lot to make sure he'd walk past at least a handful of the others.

"Mike," he said, "will you be a dear and run down and tell Mr. Schue what we're doing and not to expect us for glee practice until a little bit later? While we deal with the wizard gang, and whatnot. And, uh, check on that bruise of his?"

"Um, deal," said Mike, "as long as you don't ever call me 'dear' again." He shot Kurt a lopsided smile and split off from the slowly-growing pack, heading down to the choir room right as they picked up Brittany and Santana ducking out of seventh period gym.

"How do you still look so good after sweating so much?" griped Tina.

"Hotness is natural just like sweat," said Santana, tucking her bangs back out of her face.

"I'm getting really good at using the hand dryer," said Brittany.

They finally folded Finn, Rachel and Hermione, Ginny and Mercedes, and Sam and Draco into the group. Draco was clinging to Sam's shoulders like some kind of demented backpack.

"Wheee!" he cried. Kurt shot Sam a look.

"I did a Liam Neeson impression in sixth period and now he keeps calling me Rumbleroar," said Sam, looking miserable. He shook his bangs out of his eyes and hiked Draco up higher on his back. "This was sooo not in the books."

"Don't worry, we'll be dislodging the monkey on your back soon enough." Mike had rejoined them with Artie and they were nearly at the broad back doors when Kurt paused. "Wait, where's Ron and Puckerman?"

"Um," said Ginny. "Your scary friend Lauren left about half an hour ago to go get them...I guess they were at his house? She said something about pots." Mercedes shrugged apologetically at him and Artie snickered.

"Oh brother," sighed Kurt, but nevertheless they all filed out past the auditorium and down to where students were milling around their cars, eager to get home. Even in the mess of all of them Kurt's eyes found him instantly.

Blaine.

Good lord was he beautiful. There was something about him, even at this distance, that looked shockingly good - something looser about his smile, something different about his hair - Kurt couldn't place it. It kind of made him want to kiss Blaine senseless, even in the middle of all these people, even as one corner of his mind was on constant peripheral alert for cups of blue raspberry misery. He stepped out toward the foot of his shiny silver car and Kurt got a good, full look at him -

And his heart plummeted.

That uniform.

It was a wholly unexpected feeling, washing over him, seizing him up, making his heart thud harder. Just a week ago they'd been able to lounge around with each other all day and do nothing, the summer season mostly over with at Six Flags, Kurt's father usually out during the long daylight hours; they could lay on the couch and do nothing but taste each other, no other cares in the world. They were both excited to be seniors, having the run of the school, and Kurt was confident he'd finally get a competition solo with New Directions this year, and Blaine thought he could really do well for the Warblers serving on the senior council. They were still so in love and they were going to be wonderful.

But something about that damn blazer just struck him. This wasn't going to be wonderful. This was going to be nine more long, miserable months where they couldn't spend all day together, where they'd be lucky to even get weekends together and even luckier to find time alone, where Kurt was going to get all excited about new fall trends and planning outfits for key days at school and Blaine was going to scratch his head and chuckle self-deprecatingly about his three wonderful options of blazer/cardigan/sweatervest. And Kurt suddenly didn't care about making sure all the Harry Potter kids got home. Kurt cared about making sure Blaine came home. Right into his arms.

He wrapped him in a tight hug and didn't even try to justify it to anyone, hearing Blaine's cute "whoa, okay, hi to you too" and steadfastly ignoring it. He breathed in the scent at Blaine's neck where his collar and tie hung surprisingly loose and sloppy, and didn't pull away until Santana tapped him on the shoulder and reminded him that she was only one Bullywhip in a sea of hundreds of slushie-bombs waiting to happen.

"I like to get my gay on as much as the next freak, but seriously, come on."

Kurt fixed her with a frustrated stare. "You are somehow even more annoying now that you've come out."

She was about to respond when Ginny burst past her, nearly knocking her over, and latched herself onto the other boy who'd just climbed out of Blaine's car in a similar manner. "Harry!" Her red hair went flying absolutely everywhere as she plowed her full weight into him, but he took it surprisingly easily and wrapped his arms almost inappropriately low around her waist, holding her close.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Harry murmured against her, and then she pulled back and kissed him soundly before they finally pulled apart.

"Hey everyone, this is my boyfriend, Harry Potter!" said Ginny, grinning a mile wide and spreading her arms out between him and the rest of them.

Oh.

Oh.

"You've gotta be joking," said Tina, and Kurt was inclined to agree. He was aware that he was probably staring but he couldn't even be bothered to try to be polite. He couldn't help it. Behind the glasses and the mess of hair, standing there in a passable polo shirt but absolutely atrocious jeans, was the disheveled spitting image of the boy whose hand Kurt was still holding. He flicked a glance to Blaine, who just shrugged and shook his head, but then immediately turned back to Harry, who was now getting hugged by Hermione. This was - well not that anything today had really escaped this label - but this was unreal.

Brittany stepped over to him and leaned into his ear as if she were sharing a secret, even though she was still speaking at regular Brittany-volume. "Kurt, is your boyfriend Harry Potter?"

"Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?" said Blaine, laughing.

Beyond that, there were introductions all around, and things almost seemed kind of...normal. Artie pulled his high-end digital camera out of the bag hooked onto his chair and they took approximately a million pictures, showing off the new bright purple feather hooked into Ginny's already vibrant hair, laughing as Harry waved his wand and gave a passing Azimio Adams the most intense wedgie of his life. Lauren showed up with Puck and Ron in tow not too long afterward, both of them still a little red around the eyes and Puck's mohawk now a crest of bright green tree leaves, and they took about a million more. Kurt held the camera and shot video as Ginny, Brittany, Tina and Mike tapped and clapped out a cute little dance routine to some song Harry and Hermione were humming about summer. There was a particularly great one of Draco posing on Finn's shoulders as if they were about to charge into battle, and a breathtakingly stunning candid of Harry and Blaine leaning on each other and just laughing, laughing, like they were all having the best day of their lives. (Kurt couldn't help but call that one back onto the viewfinder a couple of times and just stare. Blaine was already the most beautiful person Kurt had ever seen - the concept of two of him, even if one of them was Harry freaking Potter, made Kurt feel feelings he didn't think he was quite prepared to feel. Just - damn.)

"Group shot!" yelled Lauren. "We've gotta have one of everyone so I can stick it on Facebook and know for eternity that I met the real Harry Potter and all my internet friends didn't."

"You want an autograph?" said Harry. "I don't usually like giving them out, it's kind of tacky, but I figure - "

"Yes," said Lauren, completely straightfaced and genuine in a way that Kurt had literally never seen from her before - no sarcasm, no derision, no nothing. "Just...yes."

They propped the camera on the top of Puck's car and then shuffled into position, squeezing in as snug as possible. Kurt was standing between Blaine and Mercedes with Hermione and Rachel right in front of him and somehow everything felt incredible, with the faint and painful exception of the texture of Blaine's blazer under the smooth palm of his hand.

"Okay, don't move!" said Ginny, worming out of the dogpile. "I want to do mine too!" She swapped Artie's camera out for hers, a decidedly larger and more complicated contraption that she'd pulled out of a purse way too tiny to hold it. She slipped back in, waved her wand, and the flash went off with a shower of magenta sparks, cascading all over Puck's trunk.

"My baby!" he cried, bolting toward it to make sure it didn't catch on fire. The group fell back apart again, splitting into smaller groups for more hugs and more laughter and more total insanity. It seemed so shockingly normal that Kurt honestly had to remind himself that these five wizard kids hadn't been friends with them for years.

"Well, but they kind of have," he realized aloud, thinking about the number of times he alone had read the books and seen the films.

"What?" said Blaine.

"Oh, nothing," said Kurt. "But I was just wondering, this all seems so...conclusive. Have you already figured out how you're getting home?"

"The same way we got here in the first place," said Ginny. "Floo powder. I was worried because we were all out, and we had no way of contacting Mom to come get us with some extra - I think I, uh, spilled most of it anyway - "

"But I totally had some," said Brittany. "It's no big deal." She reached into the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a ziplock bag full of a pale green powder - it could easily have been ground up sidewalk chalk. But when she tilted it in the light, parts of it glinted gold in a way that no Muggle substance ever had.

"Wait, what?" Sam said.

"You mean to say you've had actual Floo powder this whole time and you never thought to tell any of us?" demanded Lauren.

"Well no," said Brittany, "it's totally useless to us, we're all Muggles, duh." She shook her head as if they were idiots. "I had to get it from Lord Tubbington. He and Professor McGonagall are like, really close. I see them Skyping sometimes...it's disgusting."

"As soon as we found out, we were just waiting to get Harry back before we left," said Hermione. "We'll just have to use that boiler we came in through in the basement of your school. Kind of a tight squeeze, but I guess we'll manage."

"Maybe if you'd ease up on the snackage just a little," Ron muttered.

"Hey, don't hate on a girl who likes to eat," said Puck. "Besides, you're kind of the king of the munchies over there, if the last four hours have been anything to go on."

"This sucks," said Tina. "I've been having so much fun with you guys, and you're all such great singers and dancers too! I never knew! I wish you didn't have to leave."

"Yeah, me too," said Mercedes. "But just think, man, we'll always know that we got to meet the Harry Potter. And not even Daniel Radcliffe but actually Harry Potter, and Ron and Hermione and everything. Who else can say that?"

"Gee whiz, Harry, I can't believe you're even famous in the Muggle world," said Hermione, rolling her eyes.

"I can," said Ron and Harry at once, and everyone but Draco laughed.

Eventually they decided that it would be best if the five of them headed back down to the boiler room on their own. It was already too small of a room for the whole lot of them to fit into, and they didn't want to look too suspicious and too much weirder than they already did. "Plus," added Hermione, "the most magic we've done for you so far has just been sort of beginner-level, parlor-trick stuff. I think using Floo powder right in front of Muggles would probably be a way more serious offense." Kurt watched as they walked back up into the school, Harry stalling and looking back longest of all, and waving specifically at Blaine. Blaine squinted into the bright August sun and waved back, looking about as upset as Kurt felt.

"Goodbyes are terrible," he said. "I've never been good at them."

"You're telling me," said Kurt, pouting. "I have to send them back to Hogwarts and then turn right around and send you back to Dalton."

Blaine's expression shifted. "Yeah, about that. Remember when I said on the phone that I had a decent explanation for skipping Warblers rehearsal on my first day as a council member?"

Kurt's heart skipped a beat in his desperation to not get ahead of himself. "Um. Yes?"

Blaine stepped around to face Kurt directly, walking them a couple steps away from the rest of the New Directions. "Kurt, Harry...helped me with some things. Taught me something, I think, in person, that I never could have learned from those books. He opened my eyes to how - terrible things have gotten, at Dalton, for me."

"G...go on." He was staring straight into Blaine's newly-brightened eyes and loving every second of it.

"And that all those things I said it was doing for you - stifling you, trying to make you fit in - it's doing that to me, too. I like being safe, I like feeling important, and I'm so bad at stepping outside of my comfort zone when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm never going to get anywhere if I'm not - challenged, if I just sit there and play the part and keep living a dream that isn't really mine. This guy I am, the guy they want, that guy could be anybody. I'm just a body filling a blazer. I've got to get to a place that feels like it's mine...like home, and not just a little bubble I live in. And I feel that...when I'm with you."

"Blaine- "

"I'm transferring here. To McKinley."

"YES!" Kurt screamed, flinging his arms around Blaine and gripping him so tightly that he could practically feel his ribs against his own through the blazer. It was as if Blaine had gotten down on one knee and proposed. All his feelings about stupid distance and stupid uniforms and stupid Dalton went whooshing out of him, and the other kids were staring and he didn't care, and the parking lot had emptied out around them and he didn't care. Kurt was finally, finally - short of that discontinued Dior jacket that he really just had to give up on at this rate - going to have everything he ever wanted.

"I love you," he said fiercely, and then pulled back and kissed Blaine square on the mouth, long and wet and deep, his hands tangling into Blaine's gel-free hair. Mercedes and Rachel catcalled and Finn groaned from somewhere far, far away, and he was pretty sure Lauren had grabbed Artie's camera back up for a few more pictures, but Kurt honestly didn't care what ended up on Facebook at this point, because Blaine was so, so delicious.

But Kurt noticed something, and mentioned it when they pulled apart. "That's new."

Blaine blinked stupidly but Kurt saw right through it. "Uh, what's new?"

"That tonguey...twisty...thing. You've totally never done that before. Where'd you learn that?"

"Uhh - "

Kurt gasped dramatically. "You totally made out with Harry Potter!"

"Wizard wanky," said Santana.

"Kurt, I just - we both knew this would be the only - and he was - " He stopped, tugged on his loose tie a little, hung his head. He knew that looking-up-through-his-eyelashes-because-I'm-slightly-shorter thing was Kurt's total Achilles heel but Kurt didn't even think he was doing it on purpose this time, he was so pitiful. "You're not mad, are you?"

And Kurt just sighed, because he'd forgive this boy for anything. "Are you kidding? I'm just mad that I didn't get to watch."

-xxx-

As the whole group headed back inside, trudging through the halls to the choir room, Mercedes spotted Sam near the back and slowed down to fall in step with him. With no one looking, she knocked her shoulder into his arm and he knocked back.

"Watch it," he said softly, nodding at Tina, who was the closest to them in the mob.

Mercedes frowned and took a deep breath - better just to get it out. "Sam, I still hate this secrecy thing," she whispered to him. "And I like you a lot, and I'll keep doing it if you really want to, but that Ginny Weasley, she...helped me with some stuff. Taught me something, which is that it's okay to be really frustrated when the Qua- uh, when the ball is in someone else's court, you know? But that if you're not even gonna put the ball in play, I'm gonna do everything in my power to try to take it back. I don't need you to give me the go-ahead to spill the beans, Sam. I just wish you'd tell me why you won't."

"It's better this way," he said.

"How? How is me getting slushied all over my brand new weave better than my hottie football player busting Azimio's balls and making him play fair? How is lying to all of our friends for no reason better than telling the truth and letting them all be happy for us? Well, except Santana, she's never happy for anyo-"

"Because I'm just going to have to leave," Sam blurted out.

Mercedes's steps slowed and she looked up at him. "What?"

"Shit. Okay, well, there it is," said Sam. "My dad finally got a new job, and it's a really good one, but he had to move to Iowa to take it. He's living with my aunt Josie right now, and once he's worked long enough to get us some money for a good apartment, we're all following after." He sighed, and ran a frustrated hand through his bangs. "I'll probably be gone by Halloween."

"Why didn't you just tell me?" said Mercedes, shaking her head.

"Because I didn't want you to put an expiration date on this," he said. The others were far ahead of them by now, nearly to the choir room. They'd stopped by the trophy case. "I just thought - if you knew, that I was going to have to leave, you wouldn't put your all into us. You'd just be thinking about how it was only going to last until October, and making plans to, y'know, deal accordingly."

Mercedes reached up and grabbed both sides of his face. "Hey. You listen to me, Samson Robert Evans. You clearly don't know me very well if you think Mercedes Renee Jones doesn't put her all into absolutely everything. I wanna be with you like I wanna steal that sectionals solo from Rachel, even if both of those points become moot by November, is that clear?"

His hand shifted up to rest on her shoulder, and she let her hands trail down his chest, and stop there. "I just wanted to have this," he whispered, "these memories, of us. Without - without everyone else's drama smeared all over it, if they knew. Just you and me, awesome together, forever."

"Everyone else's drama can expecto my patronum," said Mercedes, grabbing his hand and heading toward the choir room, tugging him with her and knocking their hips together once they were parallel. "Now come on. There's a duet I wanna do."

Sam grinned, and squeezed her hand tighter. "Cool."

-xxx-

Having dropped Malfoy back off at his stupid pretentious mansion, Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny finally stumbled back through to the Burrow, with only one Floo network accidental re-route to a shop in Hogsmeade called "Perky Preston's Prurient Potion Party!" that Ron never, ever wanted to set foot in again. He fell out first, staggering over to the sofa before turning around to catch Hermione as she flew through afterward. Ginny, meanwhile, fell straight onto the floor, with Harry landing on top of her.

"Oh, sorry there," Ron said, shrugging. He could only catch so many chicks and his girlfriend definitely had top priority over his stupid sister.

"Ronald, there you are!" cried his mother from the kitchen. "What took you so long with the freaking chicken?"

All four of them froze, shooting panicked glances at each other. Shit.

"Um," Ron called back, "we just - "

"Maaaaa!" interrupted a voice from just outside the front door. "Percy, Ron, somebody? You guys in there?"

Ginny ran to the door and opened it to reveal Bill, standing there almost taller than the doorframe, a stack of - oh sweet jesus, beautiful flat boxes piled on the palm of his left hand. "Hey sis," he said, ruffling her hair with his free hand before ducking inside. "Ma, it's me, Bill! I was in the area, stopping through on business and I figured I'd bring dinner. I got pizza!"

Their mom came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "Oooh, you know I hate surprises," she said, but her face softened instantly when she saw him. "Unless they're so totally sweet like you. C'mere and give your ma a kiss, come on." Bill thrust the boxes into Ron's hands and bent nearly double to hug her, and he quickly found a place to put them before the four of them slunk downstairs and closed the door behind them, escaping the most immediate repercussions of not following her grocery list.

"Geez, Ginny, what are you gonna tell her?"

"Me?" she said. "I'm not the one she sent out there for all that stuff! What are you going to tell her?"

"I don't know!" said Ron. "C'mon, Hermione, think of something."

"Well, we have to tell her the truth, obviously," she said. "I'm not lying to your mother."

"Get serious, Hermione," said Harry, "do you think she'd actually believe us? Do you think anyone will believe us?"

They all kind of fell silent. Ron scratched at the back of his head, up underneath where his headband sat, and thought about his day with Puck - the purple cloud animals they'd made, how hilarious it had been to watch a Muggle trying to do magic with his wand, that awkward thing they'd accidentally shown his little sister - and, even more amazing, the great afternoon he'd spent with all those cool Muggle kids, laughing and singing and dancing as if they'd known them for so much longer than just a day. Before he knew it, Ginny had tugged her giant camera out of her tiny purse and was poking at it, and it spat out two photos, the normal one and the silly one they'd taken, with them and their awesome Ohio friends shoving at each other and goofing off and clutching their stomachs in laughter. They were two amazing pictures, and Ron knew his would probably end up stuck to his bedpost when they went back to Hogwarts, to remind him of this stupid, crazy day for the rest of his life.

"No," he said, tracing his finger over his own arm slung across Puck's shoulders in the photo. "I guess not."

"At least we got a couple of these on my camera," said Ginny. "Not that I - not that I ever think I'll forget this, but it's nice, to have something to remember them by."

"Wait!" said Harry. "That's not all!"

"What do you mean?" said Ron.

From his back pocket, Harry took out a tiny book, which swelled back up to regular size once it was free. It was a thick hardcover, with an elaborate dust jacket - a children's book, by the look of the illustrations, and bearing a glossy golden title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

"I don't believe it," whispered Hermione.

"Yeah," said Harry. "Neither did I."

-xxx-

~THE END. :)

...

...Fondue for Two!
Fondue for Two!
It's some hot dish -
Fondue for Two!

Draco swung his feet against the baseboard of the sofa while Brittany adjusted the camera and sat back down in her chair. "And you say this will be posted to the FlooTube universe at large?"

"Totally," said Brittany. "We have a lot of fictional character crossover in the discussion forums so I try to make it as accessible as possible." She turned back to the camera. "Hi, this is Brittany S. Pierce and you're watching Fondue for Two with me and my special guest today, Draco Malloy."

"It's Malfoy."

"Please don't correct me."

When she didn't immediately say anything, Draco reached out for a cube of melon, skewered it, and dunked it into the pot of chocolate, trying to find some way to occupy the awkward silence. (Why wasn't she saying anything?) He made sure to blow on it so it didn't burn his mouth and then bit into it - wow, it was actually pretty good. Naturally she asked a question precisely when his mouth was full, though.

"So how long have you been in love with that girl Herman?"

He nearly spit it all out, and barely managed to swallow it instead. "I don't know what you're talking about. Hermione Granger is a miserable Mudblood and I - I never want to speak to her again in my life, no matter how blissfully melodic her voice is." There, that sounded convincing, right?

"Are you sure? Because I have it on hot authority that you totally want to get with her."

"And whose authority is that?"

"Answer me this, though," said Brittany. "Did you or did you not...sing a song about her at the Yule Ball."

"Who told you that!" he gasped.

"Everyone knows that, duh, it's like common knowledge." She tossed a wave of her hair back over her shoulder. "Don't act like I'm stupid, please, it really hurts my feelings."

Draco stirred his fondue skewer through the chocolate, fidgeting. "I...may have...expressed some feelings at that time, possibly through song," he admitted. "However that was well over a year ago and any infatuation I may have thought I had has absolutely - "

"Do you wanna make out?"

" - what?"

"I'm sorry, you just - that melon-chocolate combo is like my favorite fondue we've ever done on the show and when people eat it like that it really makes me want to kiss them. You don't have to say yes. I just figured I'd ask."

"Uh, n - no thanks," said Draco.

"So you are in love with Herman." Brittany nodded soundly. "Good one, Lord Tubbington, thanks for helping me clear that up. Okay, so my next question is, do you prefer Huggies or Pampers for your personal diaper use."

Draco nearly burst into tears.

He was never going to get to that video exposee he'd written up about Pigfarts at this rate.