A/N: Part of the Professor Muggle series. If you haven't read ProfessorMuggle, Professor Muggle: Year 2 or Professor Muggle and the Lost Witch you may get a bit lost/confused regarding names and relationships. Story is set after the Boyd twins have been born.


Stupid Scranner

20 July, 2013

"Hank, there's a letter for you."

Melody gave the owl a treat, closed the kitchen window and handed me a letter. I sat down my tea, pushed my glasses to the top of my head and took it from her. After opening it up and scanning it quickly I shook my head. "Why's George owling me instead of using the Floo, especially at this time in the morning? Says his is out or something but I have to come over there now, and he wants to know if I know how scranners work. I think he means scanners. And why is he up so early?"

My wife shrugged. "It's George, Hank. I've given up." A baby's cry came from the nursery and Mel's shoulders sank. "Merlin, again? I just got Minerva down. Must be Mione. Why can't they have the same schedules?"

"Um, sorry, but George said I…"

"Just go, Hank, but don't stay long. You promised I could go to the shops with Hannah this afternoon."

"I know, I know, I'll make it short."

I drained the last of my tea and went into the bedroom. As it had been all week it was raining in Stintborough, and I had no idea what the weather was like in London, so I just guessed and threw on a pair of jeans, a polo shirt and some flip-flops. Remembering what it was usually like when George called me into his International Headquarters I reconsidered my footwear and put on some trainers and jammed my Braves hat on my head before walking into the nursery. As expected Mel was rocking Mione, the most troublesome of the twins. "Um, he said his Floo's out, so…"

"I don't know, Hank. Floo over to the Leaky and then catch a Muggle cab or something. Just hurry. I need to get out of the house for a bit."

"Sure, sure. No problem."

I followed Melody's idea, and after realizing that I hadn't taken a cab in ages and that London cabbies still gouged like crazy I finally ended up near the little park that stood next to the International Headquarters of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes. The hike through the park wasn't fun, as it was raining cats and dogs, and I'd forgotten an umbrella, so by the time I finally made it to the entrance of George's place I was soaked to the bone and definitely glad I'd changed shoes. A man in a purple trimmed uniform stood in a little guard booth.

"Welcome to the International Headquarters of Weasley's…"

I motioned with my hand to skip the rigmarole. "Yeah, yeah. I know. George sent me an owl, I'm Hank Boyd."

He flipped open his little notebook and nodded vigorously. "Oh yes, highest priority, go right on in, sir." After a few moments he suddenly looked up at me. "And have a Wheezy day, sir!"

I nodded at him. "Yeah. Sure. Thanks." I made my way into the reception desk where a very attractive young brunette witch sat at a desk, filing her nails. "I'm Hank Boyd; I'm here to see…"

She stopped filing her nails and stood up. "Oh yes, he's expecting you. If you'll follow me, please."

I walked through the hallways with her and we turned so often that I got lost. Eventually we made our way down a long flight of stairs and stopped at a little door that was painted the most horrible shade of green known to man. It looked nothing so much as vomit that had been left outside to bake in the sun. At least it didn't smell that way. I waited for her to open the door but she simply smiled at me and told me she didn't have clearance to enter that room and then walked off, leaving me there by myself. Not knowing what else to do I went to open the door but the damn thing wouldn't budge, so I banged on the door.

"George, it's me, Hank. Open up. What's so damned…"

The door flew open enough for George to stick his one-eared head out, ascertain it was only me, and then he reached out and grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me through the door into a little entryway of sorts. The room looked like every laboratory from every cheesy horror movie, stone walls, crap all over the place, and doors the same color as the other one stood a few feet away. "Jesus, George, what the fuck is going on?"

George stood there, wand in hand, and he looked like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have; in other words, normal George. But something was off, he looked, well, spooked. I knew that couldn't be good.

"Need your help, Hank. You see, I bought a Muggle scranner…"

"Scanner? You mean scanner?"

"Yes, yes, of course." He looked over his shoulder quickly and then turned back to me. "I made a few modifications. Found some notes that I'd written up before that I'd forgotten, don't know how, they were brilliant, and tried to incorporate the scanner with the spell…and it all went a bit wrong."

I sighed. "What, instead of replicating pictures of people they come out as naked pictures?"

He tapped his head with a finger. "Have to remember that one, but no. Um, maybe it's best if you take a look."

"Sure. But I have to be back by this afternoon, Mel's got plans."

"Mmmm…maybe."

"Shit, George, come on. What is it? It can't be that bad, can it?"

I followed him to the door, he opened it up and stood back, letting me walk inside. I was definitely not prepared for what I saw, as approximately five Hermione Grangers stood in the corner, at least ten Harry Potters milled about and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

"Holy fucking shit, George!"

"Exactly." He looked at me. "Exactly."

-ooo-

We were back in the little entryway when George handed me a bottle of half-full firewhiskey. "I wasn't drinking at first. After the first few, well, I needed it."

I took a long pull off of the bottle and looked over to him. "What the fuck did you do, George?"

He started rambling about how his notes that he'd found had something to do with time travel, but he'd worked out that there were parallel universes, alternate universes from ours, and by aligning some magical whatzihoozits with something or other that he was able to tap into that. The long and short of it, because I didn't understand a tenth of what he was saying, is that he'd hooked up the scanner and magicked it up so that when he fed it a picture of someone an alternate universe version of them would show up. He'd done almost everyone he could think of, and had a room full of people, and had started asking them questions when the other iterations started showing up. He'd wanted to see what Harry Potter was like in another universe, but instead of just getting one Harry they just kept popping into existence. Attempts at stopping the magic on the scanner hadn't worked, so in regular intervals new arrivals just kept showing up.

"You know George, just when I think you can't surprise me, you go and pull off shit like this. What, what, I mean…what am I supposed to do?"

"Uh, fix the scanner?"

"Maybe I could do something if it wasn't hooked up right to your laptop, but this is beyond me."

The door creaked open and I turned to see a Hermione look anxiously at me and George. "Excuse me, but I need to return home. Draco will be expecting his lunch any time now."

I snapped my head up to George. "Draco? What the fuck?"

He rolled his eyes and waved at the door. "Go ahead. See if your head isn't spinning after ten minutes or so."

I looked at the Hermione, to George, back to the Hermione and then back to George. "I can't pass this up. You got a notebook? I gotta make notes."

He went over to a small table, opened the drawer and handed me a roll of parchment. "I was interested at first, but after a Luna told me she ran off with Percy…"

"Oh hell, this just keeps getting better." I took the parchment from him, reached into my pocket and pulled out an ink pen and opened the door, much to the relief of the Hermione that needed to prepare Draco's lunch.

-ooo-

As Hermione Malfoy walked away from my little table I couldn't believe it; never in a million years would I ever connect the name Hermione with Malfoy. That would never happen in a million years. The rest of the Hermione's stood in an orderly queue, waiting to speak with me at the little desk I had appropriated. Apparently the word had got out that I was some sort of helpful person who would take down everything and help get everybody back to where they were supposed to be. Even alternate universe versions of Hermione still were orderly, I guess. The next Hermione walked up and sat down at the chair across from my little desk, and I stared uncontrollably, as she had sleek, blonde hair down to the middle of her back and was wearing clothing that looked like it belonged in a music video instead of on the Hermione Weasley that I knew.

"Name?"

"Hermione Granger."

"Married or single?"

"Divorced." She reached into her little handbag. "Can I smoke in here?"

I looked around. "Uh, sure. Can I bum one?"

She tipped the pack towards me and I took one out. She put one to her lips, so I took out my wand and made the usual pitiful little flame and lit both cigarettes. After reaching into her purse and taking out a small, green ashtray she sat it on the desk.

"Divorce was final this year, thank Merlin."

I nodded. "And your ex-husband's name?"

She leaned back in the chair, put her arm over the back of the chair and inhaled deeply. "Which one?"

I nodded deeply. Stranger and stranger. "Ok, why don't you tell me?"

"Well, first there was Ron Weasley, then Charlie Weasley, then Ron again, and finally Sirius Black. Horrible mistake."

"Sirius…ok, ok." I wrote it down quickly. "And your profession?"

"I'm between things at the moment."

"Right. Kids?"

"Merlin, no! Why would I want to do that?"

"So…what do you do for Galleons?"

She took a deep drag, exhaled and leaned over the desk. "I have a good lawyer, love. You married?" I held up my hand and showed her my wedding ring. "Can't fault a girl for trying. Is there tea? Anything stronger?"

I looked over to the door to the entryway and then back to her. "I'll see what I can do."

She stubbed out her cigarette with an almost angry motion and looked at me pointedly. After a few minutes I realized what she meant, took a drag off of my smoke and put it out. After the fires were extinguished she picked up the ashtray and moved off, probably looking for something alcoholic.

The rest of the Hermione's were surreal, to say the least. About half of them were married to Ron, one was married to George, three were married to Muggles and one was gay. The majority of them either worked in the Ministry, at Hogwarts, or did something with books. The Hermione married to Draco was an author and stay-at-home mother. Just when I thought I'd finally reached the end of interviewing the Hermiones another one popped into the room wearing a nun's habit and I decided I'd had enough of interviewing them. I made my way back to the entryway to find George tinkering with the scanner.

"So, uh, Hank, has your brain exploded yet?"

I laughed and leaned over the table. "I just talked to all the Hermiones. Crazy. So who should I interview next? The Harrys?"

He shook his head. "Deadly boring. All of them ended up with Ginny. And they're all Aurors, too. Well, I think one of them might teach at Hogwarts, but they all end up with Ginny. One of them has six kids or something like that."

He avoided looking at me for a moment and I knew him well enough to know what that meant. "George. What is it?"

"I might have run through a picture of you and Melody."

"Might?" I put both hands on the table and leaned in closely. "Did you or didn't you?"

"I did."

"Fucker." I took my hands off the table and started walking around the little room. "So out there, in one of the rooms that branch off that big-ass…"

"Special Projects Development Quarters."

"Yeah, whatever, George, that thing…somewhere in that thing, in one of the little side rooms there's more of me and Melodys walking around?"

He looked at me and then just nodded.

"Fucking awesome. Great. Wonderful." I shook my head. "Maybe I can bum another smoke off of slutty Hermione."

"I don't know if you should talk to the other, um, you's, Hank."

"Yeah, maybe you're right. I'm talking to the Melodys, though." I took a look at my watch. Fuck. "And you're finding a babysitter for my kids. My Melody has an appointment that she's not going to miss." I didn't wait for him to respond, I just walked back into the room.

-ooo-

It was odd to see all the different Hermiones. It was odd to see all the Harrys and Ginnys, even more so to see a prim, proper and conservatively dressed Luna, but when I stepped into the little room and saw all the Melodys? Holy shit. Six of them were all clustered around talking, and they were all unique and very different than my wife. One had hair down to her waist and was dressed in what I guessed wizarding hippie clothes looked like. She was barefoot. One was dressed in a sharp, blue Muggle business suit and three inch heels. Another was extremely pregnant, and the one next to her was wearing a Harpies sweatshirt and looked sort of like my wife. Next to her was a shockingly pale and dirty Melody in Azkaban prisoner's clothing, while standing to her right was a Melody that looked…well, normal. Like my Melody.

I cleared my throat. "Um, ladies, if you could form a line I'll get all your information so we can get this sorted."

The business Melody strode forward immediately. "Can you please fix this? Brian and I have a meeting at two."

Brian? Fuck. "Uh, ok. Name?"

She looked at me oddly. "Henry?"

"Yeah? You know me?"

She moved her glasses onto her nose. "Yes, I do. We dated briefly. I'm surprised they let you out."

"What do you mean, let me out?"

She rolled her eyes just like my Melody. "I had to have a restraining order put on you after I chucked you. Aurors arrested you in my garden with some Muggle box blaring music that you held over your head. Dreadful."

"Ok, sure." I took a deep breath. "Listen, I'm sure you all know George Weasley in whatever…" A chorus of groans broke out. I waved my hands. "Ok, ok, well, this is a George thing. I'll get your information and then we'll fix everything." I looked back to the business Melody. "Name?"

"Melody Bottlesworth. I work with my husband at his architecture firm. Mum had him over for tea not long after I chucked you."

"Right. Ok, then, moving on…"

In the matter of the next interviews I found out that Melody had dated me in almost every reality, but the only one she ended up with me in was the current one. The real one. The one where I had kids and she had to meet Hannah for shopping. Hippie Melody had dated me for one date and then decided to follow her heart and love everything, mostly garden gnomes. Pregnant Melody was married to Ron Weasley and was expecting their first child any day now. Azkaban Melody had snapped and offed her mum, which seemed a little drastic to me. Harpies Melody had dated me and continued on, single, as Harpies press secretary. And as for the "normal" looking Melody? We had married and then divorced after our first child, a boy named Harry, was born. I was about to stand up from the desk when everyone's attention was diverted by a popping sound, and another Melody stood in front of us, wearing an old nightgown with some gunk on her face that my Melody used as a facial mask to tighten her pores or some shit like that.

"Hank?" She turned to me and her eyes went wide. I stood up to say something but before I could say a word she ran over and threw her arms around me. "Merlin, I never thought I'd see you again!" She kissed me, hard.

Eventually I held her at arm's length. "Um, hello. I hate to break it to you…"

"Am I dead?" She looked around the room. "What in bloody hell…they're all me!"

I nodded. "Yeah, it's a George Weasley thing. You know George, right?"

She waved me off. "I can't believe you're alive. I can't believe it. Hank, I saw…I saw you die after your brother's wedding reception."

A chill went over my spine as I knew exactly the moment she was talking about; before we were engaged I'd taken Melody over to America for my brother Ted's wedding. After the wedding we were attacked by Muggle hating wizards, and I'd done a spell with my wand to protect my niece. There were other anti-Muggle assholes about, though, and in the fighting I'd actually killed one of them. Two technically, because the shield spell did something, but that wasn't what was bothering me; in real life I'd survived and asked Melody to marry me not long after that. In face-gun, Melody's reality, though, I must have died.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Listen, this isn't your, um, reality. This isn't real. It's a dream, uh, yeah, that's it. A dream."

She grabbed my left hand and brought it up to her face. "You're married. Who'd you marry?"

It was then that I saw all of them look at me. All the Melodys were concentrating on me. I took a deep breath, pried my hand out of nightgown Melody's hand and wiped the facial gunk out of my goatee. "Um, you, actually. I married Melody Bramble. My Melody is at home now with the kids. We have four, a boy, a girl and twin girls. Named the boy Hieronymus after your dad. Melody's dad. Shit. You know what I mean. Um…I'm teaching Muggle Studies at Hogwarts and I'm head of house for Hufflepuff. And, uh, I've published a few books and work with George Weasley on making magical versions of Muggle stuff. That's how you're all here, George wizarded up a scanner. Fuck, I mean, if I'd have know all of this shit would happen when he owled me today…"

A knock on the door diverted everyone's attention from me except for nightgown Melody, who once again threw herself into my arms. George opened the door a few moments later, looking as pale as Nearly Headless Nick.

"Hank? I…" He closed his eyes for a second and then looked at me intently. "I can't do this one. You have to do it."

I extricated myself from nightgown Melody and moved to the door. "I'll be back soon."

"Stay away as long as you want. Forever would be fine." Business Melody shook her head at me and moved away.

-ooo-

I opened the door that George had pointed me towards wordlessly and stopped halfway inside; instead of multiple versions of people I knew standing about there was only one person in there. "George?"

He shook his head. "Half right. Fred."

"Holy shit." I stood there for a moment until finally he looked at me rather oddly. Eventually I gathered my breath and walked over and sat at a chair that Fred had conjured with his wand. "Fred Weasley. Wow."

"Impressive, I know. Now, let's get on to it. Where am I, exactly, and why does George only have one ear? What's wrong with him, anyway? And, to start things off, are you?"

I pushed my glasses onto the top of my head and exhaled deeply. "This is going to take a while."

Fred took out his wand, conjured a couple of chairs, and I sat down across from him, taking time to really look at him. I'd never met Fred Weasley in person, I'd only seen pictures of him with George, but it was obvious that they really were identical. In fact, if George hadn't told me it was Fred in the room, and if George had two ears, I would have accused him of sending a picture of himself through the scanner. The man who sat in front of me was in his mid-thirties, just like George, and I had a million questions cram into my head at once, which rendered me speechless.

Fred crossed his legs, leaned back and cocked his head at me. "Right. Sorry to disturb, but would you mind telling me what's going on? I've got a date tonight."

That would explain the clothing. The blue jeans and dragonhide boots were one thing, but he had on a white shirt with a checkerboard tie and a black velour smoking jacket. He looked just like George, and it was disconcerting. After a few moments I took a deep breath.

"You're in an alternate reality. In this reality, my reality, George did some kind of magic thing with a Muggle scanner, it's a thing you use to put images into digital format for use with computers. Well, he did something and he ran some pictures through the scanner, and after that alternate versions of…"

"Brilliant! Might have to try that myself. I'll tell him later tonight when we pop over to his and Angie's place for drinks. So where's this George? He stuck his head in here for a second and ran out like Umbridge had showed up on his doorstep." He paused for a moment and looked at me seriously. "She isn't here, is she?"

"No, she's not. Not sure if I should tell you what happened here, but…it would explain why George sent me in."

For the next few minutes I explained everything, and when I got to the part where Fred died at Hogwarts I went over it quickly and moved on to what happened to all the Weasleys. He sat there quietly, uncrossed his legs and re-crossed his legs so it was opposite of his previous position.

"So, what you're saying is that I'm dead."

"Yes."

"Right. And Harry married Ginny instead of Gabrielle?"

"You mean Fleur's sister? Um, yeah. They've got three kids. James, Albus and Lily."

"Only three? He's slacking over here." He looked intently at me. "And, sorry, who are you?"

I explained who I was, but he shook his head. "Read about that in The Prophet, Ministry put the kibosh on that. No Muggles have ever taught at Hogwarts, though Dad tried to get them to change their mind."

I couldn't contain my curiosity at that point. "Fred, do you know Melody Bramble?"

"Bloody hell, of course I do. Taking her over to George and Angie's place later tonight. Why?"

For some reason that irritated me, and I knew I shouldn't say it the minute it came out of my mouth, but I couldn't help it. "So it doesn't bother you that in this reality you're dead?"

"We're all gonna die, mate. Feel sorry for Mum, though. At least I went out when it counted." He was silent again but then laughed. "Send old Georgie in. Serves him right for breaking up my hot date."

I nodded, stood up and headed for the door. When I began to turn the doorknob, though, I couldn't do it. I turned back to him, but he was out of the chair, over at a small workbench and was excitedly looking through some of George's in-process Wheezes items.