Harry Potter and the Quantum Mechanic
"I can't believe it!" Ron enthused as he, Harry and Hermione strode along toward the Halloween feast. "Not one weird thing has happened to us this whole year so far!"
"I know," Hermione said. "It's really amazing. I guess this is what Hogwarts would be like for us every year if we weren't your best friends, Harry," she added.
"A nice, peaceful year," Harry said. "Weird, but nice. I guess it'll be completely normal."
( The author would like to take a moment to ask if anyone in the audience believes that this nice, peaceful time will last. If you are looking for a nice story with fluffy bunnies and clouds, this is not it. If you are looking for a normal story, you're in the wrong section. Ahead lie many strange creatures, spells and an odd flying elephant, along with a theory on what exactly Arithmancy is. You have been warned. )
Suddenly, a strangely colored thing ran in, shouted, "Beware of falling cows!" and ran out.
"Falling cows?" Harry said aloud.
"That's what it said, Potter. Friend of yours, I suppose?" Draco sneered.
"Where did you come from?" Ron snapped.
"I am on my way to the feast, of course. Now, if you'll excuse me." He pushed his way past the threesome, only to be flattened by a Black Angus cow that fell out of nowhere.
"Uff!" said Draco (a word that is used when one is too out of breath to say 'get this censored cow off me!'). So Harry and Ron pulled the censored cow off of Draco.
"You idiots, what took so long?" Draco complained as he stood up. " I should have my father-" He was interrupted suddenly when he was hit with a beam of bright light.
"Oh, Harry!" He exclaimed. "You saved my life! Thank you! And Ron, I'm sorry I was so nasty to you about your family. I'm a changed man! Please forgive me. I think I'll eat with you, and see Dumbledore after dinner about transferring to Gryffindor." He gave a goofy grin. "Then I'll write to Dad and tell him to get rid of all that Dark Arts stuff he's keeping for me."
"What happened?" Ron muttered to Harry.
"I have no idea. Maybe it has something to do with the cow." They turned to look at her, but she had vanished. Hermione looked puzzled.
"This should not be happening," she frowned, pulling out a book and looking at it.
"We're late for the feast," Harry reminded them, and the four headed off.
Suddenly, Voldemort appeared in midair.
"What's going on here?" he asked. "I was just looking for a Mountain Dew…."
"Wrong story, Voldie," Harry said. "You aren't scheduled to appear in this. Go push a Coke Machine over on someone."
"Okay," he said, and vanished.
"We're still late," Hermione said, and once more they headed off. Halfway there, they looked out a window. What they saw caused them to do a double take.
"A beach party? In October?" Hermione wondered.
"Where'd the beach come from?" Asked Harry
"Wow! I never knew Muggle women wore that kind of bathing suit," Ron added. Harry poked him in the ribs. "And what are they doing?" He pointed at the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff Beaters and Chasers, who seemed to be playing volleyball on broomsticks.
"Look! The Muggles are doing the limbo! I always wanted to do the limbo, but Father said that Malfoys don't. I don't care, I'm going out there." And Draco jumped out the window. Harry and Ron expected to see him splat on the lawn (the window was ninety feet up) and Hermione covered her eyes, but he seemed to be walking down the air, singing, "It is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…" (For those of you who have fortunately not had to listen to this tune, it's from the seventies or so and is really awful, at least the way Dad sings it. It's not as bad as 'Feelings' though.) Halfway down, he was joined by Bugs Bunny and the Animaniacs. They joined the song, too. It didn't help.
"We'd better go after him," Harry sighed. "Or Snape will find some way to blame us for something."
"Right." Ron said. "After you." So Harry climbed out the window and perched precariously on the air.
"It's an invisible staircase!" he shouted. "It's here, you just can't see it."
"That would be what invisible means," Hermione agreed. They were halfway down the stairs when, in a burst of light, a flying motorcycle appeared. Seated on it was Sirius Black. Harry hardly recognized him; he looked much better and didn't have a beard.
"Sirius!" Harry yelled over the noise. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm bringing Dumbledore some information," he said. "Why?"
"Are you nuts?" Ron demanded. "You'll be arrested."
"What?" Sirius yelled. "Get down so I can turn this thing off." The three scrambled down the stair.
"What was that about me being arrested?" Sirius asked. "Why on earth would I be arrested?"
"Sirius, you know that Dumbledore's the only one other than us and Lupin who believes that you are innocent! They'll put you back in Azkaban, or worse!" Harry yelled.
"Back in Azkaban? What are you talking about? James asked me to fly this stuff in, and –"
"What?" Harry whispered
"Your father asked me to run this in. He'd do it himself, but your mum had plans for tonight and he has to keep an eye on –"
"Sirius, my parents are dead!" Harry yelled. "You know that! You saw them yourself, fourteen years ago tonight!"
"What are you talking about?" Sirius asked. "Fourteen years ago tonight? They might have died, if Dumbledore hadn't realized in time that Pettigrew was the spy and shown up at your house. I was there, I saw him kill Voldemort."
"That isn't what happened!" Harry said. "Voldemort killed them, and Dumbledore didn't know that Pettigrew was Secret Keeper."
"Harry! I think I know what's going on!" Hermione shrieked. "Quiet down and I'll explain." She made them all sit down, and opened her mouth to speak, when suddenly, a passing pig knocked Gilderoy Lockhart out a window and onto their heads. (I don't know why Lockhart was at the window or why a pig was passing through, I'm just telling the story). After Ron made Lockhart vanish by poking a hole in his ego, there was a loud noise.
"Oh dear," said a rather confused looking man. "My enchantment seems to have misfired. The spatio-temporal alignment field must have been a microfleem off."
"What?" Harry asked blankly.
"I was attempting a simultaneous transfer of myself and a large friend when I arrived at this location," the man explained. "That leaves the question of where Killer is."
"Killer?" three voices asked together. Sirius was too busy eating a donut that had fallen out of the back end of the motorcycle.
"Yes. I see that I have neglected to introduce myself. I am Telemain, a magician."
"Really?" Ron asked, interestedly. "We're wizards ourselves."
"Wizards? But where are your staffs? Oh, wait, I undoubtedly miss-aligned the altiverse selector segment of the spell as well." (I do hope that I am rendering Telemain's comments accurately, but none of the witnesses were quite positive on the phrasing, and the man was not available for questioning.)
"I think I know what you mean!" Hermione exclaimed. "It's just as I thought! We've been learning about this in Arithmancy!"
"What is Arithmancy, anyway?" Harry asked. "I can't get anyone to explain it to me."
"It's a lot of things," Hermione said vaguely, "But right now we're studying what Muggles call Quantum Mechanics."
"Quantum what?" Ron asked.
"Mechanics. It has to do with the nature of the universe. Like, if you decided to go visit Aragog tonight-"
"Why would I? I hate spiders!"
"That's beside the point. You might decide just to sneak out, or to borrow Harry's cloak. You would make a choice, and the future would be affected. But what about the choice you didn't choose? What about that universe? Would it happen, or not? How could you tell?"
"You lost me," Harry and Ron chorused. Telemain looked interested. Sirius was finishing off a chicken that had materialized from somewhere.
"KFC," he commented. "The best."
"Actually, it's pretty lousy stuff. They've got some over at the buffet table, and I tried it," commented Draco as he mosied over.
"Okay. Suppose you flipped a Galleon," she began again. "Before it landed, would you know if it was going to be heads or tails?"
"Sure," said Draco. "Dad's got a cool spell for stuff like that."
"SHUT UP!" Hermione bellowed. "Okay, so it has to be heads or tails, right?"
"Um, no, it could land on its edge," Draco began, but he quailed under Hermione's glare.
"Anyway, you won't know until you look at it. It has equal chance of being either. And according to quantum mechanics, it's actually both."
"Both?" Harry and Ron chorused again. (Sirius and Telemain were now sharing a gallon of butterbeer and singing Viking drinking chants, accompanied by a polka band.)
"Yes. It would make two universes, see, one where the coin was heads and one where it was tails. And it's the same for every choice, every action. Maybe it happens this way in one universe, but another in a different universe."
"So everything that might have happened, did happen?" Harry asked. "Am I getting it right?"
"Yes!" Hermione enthused. "Obviously, Telemain here is from a very different universe. And Sirius is from a universe where your parents weren't killed, Harry!"
"I see," Harry said. "So why are all these weird things happening?"
"I have no idea," Hermione confessed.
"That's okay. I know why." They whirled and saw a man wearing overalls and boots standing behind them. "I'm Ed the Quantum Mechanic."
"You're a quantum mechanic?" Harry asked. "What does a quantum mechanic do?"
"Repairs holes in the multi-universe-space-time-continuum or whatever it's being called today," Ed said. "You've got a big one, here," he said as purple elephants flew through the sky. "It won't take long to fix, though." He pulled out what looked like an ordinary wrench. "Can you tell me when this all began?" He asked as he adjusted invisible things in the air.
"Well, we first noticed it about half an hour ago." Harry said.
"Weird," Sirius said. He'd finished the food and was looking almost interested. He had a pair of pink bunny ears on his head, though, and didn't seem to realize it. "So in this universe, your parents got killed? That's bad. And I got sent to Azkaban? Why?"
"Because you told my parents to switch to Pettigrew as secret keeper."
"That's right. I had this stupid idea that Remus might be the spy. Good thing I told Dumbledore, because he figured out the truth."
"Well, you didn't in this universe, and so everyone thought that you had betrayed my parents, because they thought you killed Pettigrew and –oh, it's a long story. Mostly, I guess you were just kind of crazy for a while." Harry shrugged his shoulders.
"I see," Sirius said. "Have some pie? I don't know where it came from, but it smells good." He handed them each a pecan pie. They did smell good.
"Sure. So what does my dad do in your universe?"
"Well, Dumbledore loaded him with the Minister of Magic job –"
"My dad is Minister of Magic?" Harry asked, trying not to laugh.
"Sure, I help him out, and Remus and Lily keep us from doing anything too stupid. When Lily can, she's busy with all of you." (Okay, does anyone else find this as funny as I do?)
"All of us? Us who?"
"You and your brothers and sisters. You've got three of each over there." (It's a total coincidence that my family has three girls and four boys… Siriusly.)
"Wow, Harry! That's as many siblings as I have." Ron grinned at his friend, who was staring off into space.
"Yeah…" Harry said, distracted. Ed straightened up.
"There. Now, I'd best get rid of all of these guys." He pulled what looked like a Muggle gun out of his pocket.
"What are you doing?" Harry cried.
"Oh, this will set everything back to normal." He pulled the trigger and a giant cloud of smoke covered the scene. When it cleared, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco were alone.
"What happened?" Draco cried. "I was so stupid! If you tell anything about that, Potter, I'll get my father to put a hex on you!" He ran off. (Unfortunately, Ed's spell hadn't gotten rid of the hole made by the giant moles, and he fell in and got stuck for a week and a half.)
"That was very strange," Hermione said. "That seems like enough weird for one year. Maybe that's all the adventure we'll have!"
(At this point, someone should say 'knock on wood.' But as I don't think wizards have that kind of superstition, and Ron would probably need it explained to him, I will refrain.)
So they headed in to the feast, and saw the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff players arguing about who had won the volleyball game. Fred and George had stolen banana cream pies from the Muggles and were throwing them at people, and someone had left a whoopee cushion on Dumbledore's chair.
"Hogwarts is back to normal," Ron said. Just then, a shower of Cornish Pixies appeared from nowhere.
"As normal as it ever is, that is," Harry said with a grin as he pulled Ron from under the blue nuisances.
A/N – okay, usual disclaimers apply. Elizabeth, if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind the Mountain Dew thing. I just thought it was so funny. Don't ask me where this came from, although my best guess is that it has something to do with all the hard sci-fi I've been reading. It may also have something to do with my desire to write something that saves James and Lily, although it's not looking promising. (Although cloning has some interesting points- nobody do that, I'm claiming it.) Or it could come from the fact that I'm writing all this seriously angsty stuff for Alternity and all my weird humor is coming out in other ways….