A Visitor in Hogsmeade
"What a jerk!" exclaimed Cho. "You can totally do better than that ginger shit."
"Hey," Percy piped in. "That ginger shit is still my younger brother. I don't condone his racism though."
"Do you guys need to talk the entire way? I need your heads focused on Quidditch, Quidditch, and Quidditch!"
Dean Thomas was leading Team Negus into Hogsmeade with the intention of buying new broomsticks (ones that didn't feel like they were spazzing out every few seconds). Hermione, of course, was granted her wish to switch houses and was now an official student of the House of Negus. With her departure though, she opened up the floodgates for several other students who had been feeling the itch—and wanted to see what life was like on the other side of the grass.
Though previously demoralized since he was told he would have to repeat a year, Percy Weasley no longer had aspirations to be the best Gryffindor had to offer and jumped at the chance to start over. He had never played a game of Quidditch in his life, but he was set to replace Ice Cube as beater on their team.
Buggin' Out and Cube decided to stay behind, but Snoop joined in, as well as half a dozen house elves. Cho Chang was the only outsider in their group. Though she hadn't left Ravenclaw, a fact that greatly annoyed Dean as he had protested her inclusion on this outing, Hermione had noticed her sitting alone in the Great Hall that Saturday morning and decided to invite her along.
To partially make up for the Dimensional Derivations disaster, Mr. Koreander had been tasked with escorting the students into the wizarding village. Since creating the dimension door that had nearly sucked up half of his class, he had been forced to take a more subdued approach to teaching. At Dumbledore's request, he was to focus on purely the theoreticals, meaning that his class had overnight turned into the most boring three hours one could spend at Hogwarts. Still, in his own time he was able to summon doors to keep his practice from becoming stale, even if he was unable to do so without an audience.
As if he was reading his mind, Snoop asked, "So when are you going to show us another dimension door?"
The Professor was startled out of thought. "First of all, no thank you." Snoop had extended his arm to pass him a fresh blunt. "And second, I don't think this is an appropriate setting to show off."
"Come on," Snoop continued. "Are you really going to let the Headmaster tell you what to do?"
"How did you know—"
"The whole school knows they've got you on a leash. Personally, I thought that door was one of the trippiest things I've ever seen. And trust that I've seen a lot."
Hermione joined the conversation. "I think you shouldn't have to listen to Dumbledore," she said. Cho rested her head in the nook of Hermione's shoulder, intrigued by what she had to say. "Maybe I'm a little bit biased because I've already done the entire year's worth of reading for all my classes and no longer feel challenged, but I strongly believe that the ability to see into another world, or time, or plane, can give us students the perspective that's critical to our self-development. And that's a perspective we've been missing at Hogwarts. We're cooped up in the school grounds all the time. Sure, we sneak out to the Forbidden Forest every now and then and yes we get the occasional trip to Hogsmeade, but what about the rest of the world… or even beyond that? If we don't have the means to travel to space, then give us the means to travel through space." Hermione handed the spliff back to Snoop. "Give us the opportunity to look through the door. I want to see what Barry saw," she finished.
Mr. Koreander sighed as they reached the entrance to the village. "What Barry saw might be different from what you might see."
Dean slapped his hands together. "Alright, now who's coming with me to find some br—" Before he could finish his sentence, the six house elves bolted off towards a red ribbon plastered storefront that looked to be having its grand opening: Susie's Sorcery of Socks. Dean turned to Hermione but she was already being dragged into the crowd by Cho. Snoop and Mr. Koreander were already being pulled like magnets towards The Three Broomsticks leaving Dean to find Team Negus' new equipment by himself.
"We'll take another round of Butterbeer," Koreander exclaimed jollily.
The server glanced nervously at the twelve empty pint glasses in front of the dimensions professor. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?" she asked, collecting the glasses onto her tray one by one. "Would you like some water instead?"
"I want Butterbeer!" he replied, perhaps too loudly—though the pub wasn't exactly known for a quiet atmosphere, he was starting to attract the attention of the surrounding booths.
Snoop raised his hand to calm him down. "The lady's right. Let's just get some dessert."
The server leaned in to whisper to Snoop, "I hope he has a designated apparator."
"He'll be fine. We'll both take a cauldron cake."
The server smiled appreciatively. She collected the last of the glasses and walked away from their table with an extra bounce in her step.
"Being nice to people isn't that hard, nephew," Snoop started. "So what's on your mind?"
Koreander shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. His mind was preoccupied with a meeting he had just had with Ice Cube. The student had burst into his office blabbering on about some Neville Longbottom and how he was going to find him and bring him back and whether he could help or not. The professor had to calm him down by explaining to him how dimension doors worked in more detail. When one passes through a dimension door, they sometimes get a glimpse of another world, and sometimes they get a glimpse of another version of their own world. It really depends on the traveller and what state of mind they're in. If there's something in their own world or life that they can't quite let go of, then the dimension door won't allow them to travel to somewhere else until the issue had been resolved—he wasn't quite sure how it worked, but he had a feeling it had to do with keeping the balance of positive and negative energy self contained. If a boy had indeed fallen through the door (Koreander was humouring the Neville bit—he didn't actually believe Cube's story), it's possible he simply ceased to exist and was instead, replaced so that his current universe did not fall off balance.
But why did Cube remember him when nobody else did, the student continued to ask. Koreander theorized that perhaps the universe didn't have an effective way for flushing out immediate memories. It was possible that while he did remember Neville now, the memory of him might disappear altogether at some point in the future.
The two carried on their conversation for several hours. It was this interaction with students that Koreander missed, and had now been robbed of. Who would show interest in his work if he wasn't allowed to show the real thing? He looked up at Snoop.
"I'm not allowed to teach. What's the point of me even being here if I'm not allowed to teach?"
Snoop was already looking for something hard to help him roll his papers. He settled on using the table coaster in front of him. "That's rough. But you're banned from teaching at Hogwarts. We're not at Hogwarts right now though."
Koreander's eyes lit up. "What, you mean now?"
"Sure, why not?"
Dean suddenly slouched into the seat beside Snoop and groaned. He planted his head face first into the table.
"We couldn't afford the broomsticks," Dean explained wearily. "I thought maybe we'd have enough for at least one good one but apparently ten Galleons isn't even enough for the lowest tier." He buried his face in his hands as Snoop rested his hand on Dean's shoulder.
"Koreander's about to show us a magic trick," he said, winking at the professor.
"Oh, I don't care anymore," Dean replied, his voice muffled as he stared into the table.
Koreander relented and withdrew his wand. With a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the waiting staff weren't paying attention, he motioned a quick flick until he had carved out a purple oval in thin air. The dimension door, no taller than a pint glass, was spinning so rapidly that even Dean couldn't pretend he wasn't looking between his fingers anymore. "There it is," explained Koreander. "This right here is the true gateway to finding the answers that our current universe cannot answer." The door, holding the uninterrupted attention of the three students, continued to spin before them. Koreander decided to try to impress his students and flicked his wand again. Suddenly, the dimension door began to grow.
Snoop leaned back in his seat and exhaled. "That's pretty neat, nephew. Thanks for the show."
Koreander nodded his head and said, "Confectrix!" but nothing happened, and the door continued to expand. "Confectrix!" Koreander repeated. Growing ever larger still, the door ignored his command.
The students leaned back and closed their eyes just as another, much deeper voice whispered, "Confectrix." Without a second to spare, the door popped out of existence as if it had never been.
Koreander hastily tucked his wand away into his robes. "I would have had it if only I had another minute…" His voice trailed off as he looked up at the man who had stepped in and shut down the dimension door—a fully cloaked stranger whose face was hidden in the shadows of his hood. "You should be a bit more careful showing that off," the stranger advised. "You wouldn't want the wrong person to get the wrong idea." Without waiting for a reply, the stranger sauntered away.
"Who was that?" Dean asked, just as the server returned to pour him a glass of butterbeer.
"Nobody," Koreander quickly replied with a tone so dismissive that Snoop immediately picked up on it. Before Snoop could reply however, the server leaned close to Snoop's ear and whispered something that the rest of the table couldn't hear. She made a motion with her head to the bathroom and strolled in its direction.
"I don't believe this," Dean exclaimed as Snoop stood up to excuse himself.
Snoop shrugged and said, "I'm just the designated apparater." He whistled when he noticed a familiar pair of students in a booth to themselves on the other side of the pub. "It looks like it's an A plus day for the ladies too." He headed towards the bathroom while his remaining companions spun around in their seats to see what Snoop was referring to.
"Holy shit," mouthed Dean. "Are they… snogging?"
Hermione Granger and Cho Chang had, it seemed, taken an extreme liking to each other. So much so, that they seemed to have forgotten the presence of all the other patrons of The Three Broomsticks and had fully embraced, locked together in a time-stopping fit of passion that seemed to slow the beat of the music surrounding them.
"Guys," Dean whispered nervously. "I can't see their hands."
Snoop Dogg opened the door to the bathroom to the sight of the server bending over the bathroom sink. With her hair draped over her face, she stretched her arms and began to straighten out.
Snoop began to withdraw some papers from his pocket but realized something was missing. "I think I forgot my light at the table," he began, "Mind if I go back and get it?"
"It's alright," Bellatrix Lestrange replied as the Death Eater spun around, shedding out of the server's skin as a tiny flame crawled up her extended finger. "I brought mine."