AUTHOR NOTE – Crossover with The Good Place

SPOILER WARNING – Major spoilers up through the end of Season 3 of The Good Place.

Harry Potter was hungry. Oh, sure, he could simply produce any food he wanted with a thought, but there was something intrinsically better about food made by someone else. Well, that is assuming the person making the food knows what they are doing. In fact, there were many times where Harry's food was much better than the food made by someone else. So, it's not so much that the food was intrinsically better, but that Harry just wanted to mooch off someone.

Harry thought about his hunger as he ping-ponged off the surfaces of an infinite number of dimensions within the time it takes to make a delicious pancake. As he felt his body rebounding at forces which would be considered excessive by most Universe starting Big Bangs, he noticed something that looked like a collection of kitchen knives, each with a small disc hovering above it with a tall sign declaring each disc as being an "IHOP".

Curious, he ping-ponged off a dimension that appeared to be composed solely of passive aggressive sentient shades of the color blue (for some reason azure was the absolute worst, I mean teal was obviously pretty bad, but azure ran passive aggressive circles around teal). As he neared one of the IHOPs, he noticed the letters stood for Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes. Sold at the word of Pancakes, he careened into the IHOP and took a seat.

Looking around he noticed that there were several free piles of pancakes, but no waitstaff. Shrugging, he remained invisible and grabbed a pile. He then brought the pile over to a free table while watching a white-haired man preparing to give a presentation to a woman dressed as a judge. There were also five other people watching the presentation with great interest.

He took a bite out of a pancake and found himself deeply disappointed. As such, he decided to munch quietly as he listened to the presentation. He listened as the white-haired guy said that buying a tomato had negative morality points because of unintended consequences (it somehow supports evil corporation or other nonsense), and the judge didn't see a problem with damning a person over said tomato. At that point, Harry knew everything he needed to know about the judge, and so mostly tuned her out.

For a moment, the white-haired man (Michael, apparently) started do a wonderful dance called the "backpack kid dance" which filled Harry with happiness. But Harry nearly decided to leave in response to a guy in khakis and glasses starting to talk about philosophy. And, then, a wonderful young man with a wild look in his eyes jumped forward to stop the boring man and began to weave a magnificent tale about a man from his dance crew in Jacksonville (a place which Harry knew must be magical, as possession of non-fried vegetables was a felony).

Eventually, the genius wild-eyed young man (Harry would call him Boy Luna) convinced the judge to visit the mortal plane on Earth to see that everything there was too messed up for the after-life to continue using the same broken point system. The judge left and came back, and seemed convinced, but instead of accepting the finding and doing something, she instead pulled in a person from "The Bad Place" (which Harry assumed to be a place that was opposite of what he imagined magical Jacksonville was, which was an extremely poor assumption) and said she needed help solving the problem.

Harry felt the room begin to transfigure into a new configuration as he heard the judge say "But, first let's have a change of scenery." The room transformed from a run-of-the-mill restaurant to a bland conference room. Harry looked down at his disappointing pancakes and decided that enough was enough.

As one of the nice-looking ladies (the one who occasionally shot loving glances at Boy Luna, and hence Harry thought of as Girl Neville) began to say, "Remember guys, we're still in the IHOP…", the conference jumped back to a circular booth table at the IHOP where everyone was still seated.

"That shouldn't have happened…" said the Judge. The room transitioned back to the conference room, and then reverted to everyone sitting at separate booths in the restaurant. The judge got a look of frustrated concentration on her face, as the room transitioned back to the conference room. Then to everyone sitting at bar stools at the counter. To the conference room. To everyone sitting in beanbag chairs around a raging campfire in the restaurant. To the conference room.

In annoyance, Harry became visible and spoke up. "You know, if you're not even going to show any imagination, then I am done with this game." The room then became the restaurant with everyone sitting at a normal rectangular table, with Harry sitting next to Boy Luna.

Every person in the room stared at Harry. Well, except for Boy Luna who was staring at Harry's pancakes.

The Judge stared at this newcomer in shock, which was a rare emotion for her to feel considering that she had access to all the information in existence. It should have been impossible to have her powers overridden or to hide from her view, and yet it had just happened. She flexed her powers once more to change the room back to the conference and was flabbergasted that nothing happened. While she could still feel her power, she felt a block in place preventing her from using them.

"Who are you?"

The man smiled kindly, while stabbing a piece of pancake, and responded. "I'm Harry."

Sean (the head of The Bad Place) stared at the newcomer with a wary expression. It was a rare being that could override The Judge in any manner (as he had yet to hear any entity more powerful that the Judge), and if there was one thing a smart demon knew was to never mess with a being that was more powerful than you. Sadly, for Harry, this would mean that Sean would never reveal himself to be the equivalent of an evil Hermione. For some reason, Sean felt certain he had just dodged a few centuries of being constantly irritated.

Janet (anthropomorphic information kiosk for The Good Place AKA Girl Neville) looked at the newcomer with a smile of great confusion. She was designed to know everything in the universe and was feeling a bit stymied by her complete lack of knowledge about this individual.

Michael (reformed Demon of the Bad Place), along with the humans trying to avoid The Bad Place (Eleanor, Chidi, and Tahani) all looked at the new comer with a sense of confusion. They also felt a sense of resignation, since it seemed appropriate that, yet another surprise would pop up to keep them from The Good Place.

Jason (leader of a 40-man dance crew in Jacksonville and trying to avoid The Bad Place AKA Boy Luna) felt betrayed. He had been told that the food here could not be eaten, and here was this cool dude eating a big stack of pancakes.

"Hey, Harry?"

"Yes, Boy Luna?"

"Could I have some of those pancakes?"

"Sure"

"NO!" several people yelled at him.

Michael spoke up. "Jason, I told you, if you eat anything here. You WILL explode!"

Harry responded, holding a fork full of pancake out to Jason. "Hey, who are you going to believe? Your friend, or the stranger offering a free pancake?"

Jason stared at his friends, then the forkful of pancake, then his friends, then the fork.

"Dude!" spoke Eleanor. "This is not a tough decision. You're dead and don't need to eat. Is a pancake really worth exploding?"

Jason nodded in understanding. "You're right… You're saying I need to take more risks." He then grabbed the fork and took a bite.

Everyone around the table winced in anticipation, except for Harry who placed a hand on Jason's shoulder and suffused his essence with gold energy.

After a long and tense moment, Jason failed to explode. However, his expression turned a bit disappointed.

Harry looked at Jason's expression. "I know, not really that great. Right?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's got a kick…"

"… like a sun exploding in a bowl of hot sauce?"

"… totally. I mean, it's only like a medium hot sauce from Stupid Nick's Wing Dump, in Jacksonville, but it also tastes like…"

"First, Jacksonville sounds awesome!"

An inordinately happy Jason yelled "Jacksonville Rules!"

"I'm sure it does. And for the pancakes. I've been trying to figure out the taste. It reminds me of my first kiss, which was horrible."

"Oh yeah, Harry Dog? Cause it reminds me of the time I got a date with Pizza Arm Jim's sister, and we were going to get some free pizza from her cousin, Spaghetti Legs Bill, but she wanted the small pepperonis and I wanted the big pepperonis. I mean she was really dope and fly, but I knew then that it just wasn't meant to be. There's just some things you can't get over, you know?"

"Totally! So… taste's like a disappointing first date?"

"DAMN! That's it! You know what we need?"

"What do we need Boy Luna?"

"Some syrup!"

"YES! You are a genius Boy Luna!"

"I know!"

Harry then looked around and directed his attention at Tahani's neck. "Excuse me Tall Lady…"

Tahani, surprised to be addressed, responded. "Well, while I suppose I am taller than some of the ladies in this room, my name is Tahani Al-Jamil, not Tall Lady."

Harry shrugged. "OK, Al, can I borrow your slug?"

Tahani ignored Eleanor's snorted laugh, as she once again became aware that the green scarf, she was wearing was in fact a dangerous hyperdimensional slug that was draped around her shoulders. Normally she would have responded to being called "Al", but for the moment she was paralyzed in fear. With great effort she responded, "If you can safely take it off me, feel free."

Before Michael and Janet could warn against it, Harry snapped his fingers and the green hyperdimensional slug was gone from her shoulders and hovered in front of Harry and Jason.

"Let's see, we need a knife now… Ah!"

Harry shoved his hand down through the floor and pulled up a knife. The humans found themselves staring at the knife with slack jawed shock (though Jason's expression remained unchanged). Perhaps this was because of seeing a knife pulled out of nowhere, or perhaps it was because it was composed of a trillion different realities folding in on each other like thin sheets of metal forming a single blade, it was hard to tell from their expressions. Harry ignored their looks and quickly poked the slug and squeezed out a dollop of ooze onto the pancakes.

As Harry began to spread the ooze on the pancakes with the knife, The Judge spoke up. "Could you, please, stop using the Time Knife like a butter knife?"

Harry shrugged, wiped off the knife and dropped it back through the floor. Unknowingly resulting in one adjacent reality to have every star becoming shaped like a smiling slug. It didn't have any other effect, but it sure creeped out the living sentients of the time. Future civilizations would eventually rise where slugs were worshipped as gods. Eventually, a space explorer would come across "The Great Slug Dollop" hovering in space and use its multi-dimensional powers to elevate the slugs into actual gods. This achievement unified the peoples of the reality and led to a true universal peace. From that point, every member of that reality would end up going to that reality's Good Place. The god slugs, being just slugs with immense power but no additional intellect, remained ambivalent about everything except finding food and staying moist.

Unaware of the rise of the Great Utopian Empire of the Slug God, Harry and Jason took a bite of the oozed pancake.

Harry looked at Jason. "It tastes like… a warm hug?"

Jason looked back thoughtfully. "Yeah… and vanilla"

Harry nodded. "But, on the pancakes, it's like getting an awkward hug at the end of a bad first date."

Jason nodded back. "Yeah… and vanilla!"

Harry swallowed his bite. "And vanilla."

With that, Harry slid the plate of disappointing pancakes away from himself. He looked up at the other people at the table and spoke. "That was a waste of a pancake. Welp, no point in staying… but first, quick question. Is Boy Luna here going to The Bad Place?"

The Judge answered. "We were trying to figure that out before you popped in. JASON, not Boy Luna, was supposed to go The Bad Place, but I haven't decided…"

Harry interrupted her by waving his hand dismissively. "No, I got it. You have a system that is proven to be broken, but you're not going to fix it. Because you would first have to admit that you are a massively evil being, what with your torturing of good people. Instead, you'll probably set up some meaningless test that you'll make sure the humans will fail so that you can go back to the status quo. No one will call you on it because there is no one strong enough to stop you. You're not the first corrupt government I've encountered."

Before the Judge could protest, Harry looked over at Jason. "Boy Luna, you're the only one here who looks like he has his head screwed on straight and knows the difference between right and wrong."

Jason responded with a dopey grin, and vacant look in his eyes.

"So, easy solution…"

Harry put his hand on Jason's shoulder and pumped a great deal of golden light into the dopey man.

"There! Congratulations, you are now the god-boss of this dimension. Oh wait…"

Harry then formed a ball of golden energy in his palm, and then flicked it into Janet's forehead.

"There you go Girl Neville, you are co-god-boss."

Harry looked at the slug, smacked his head, healed the hovering slug, and then wrapped it back around Tahani's shoulders.

"Sorry, Al, I almost forgot to give you back your slug scarf." He affectionally patted the slug scarf and spoke gently towards the entity rapidly shifting between a slimy slug and a fashionable scarf. "Take care of yourself, Mrs. Sluggersworth!"

With that, Harry pulled a newly created lever next to his chair. The chair then tilted backwards, and he fell into a newly formed hole in the fabric of reality. The last thing the shocked occupants (and Jason, who was not shocked) heard from the strange man was "Jacksonville Rules!"

Jason Mendozza, the new god-boss of this reality's after-life, stood up to make his first declaration as an elevated being of unprecedented power.

"Jacksonville Rules!"

"This is bad" said a shell-shocked Judge.

Harry would eventually find a decent pancake, but he would never know how much Jason and Janet changed the after-life. He wouldn't know how Eleanor and Chidi were given their own Good Place to love each other, and occasionally talk to noted philosophers like Sartre, Descartes, and Khloe Kardashian. Nor how Tahani began a Good Place Talk Show where she became the Oprah of dead celebrities (Mrs. Sluggersworth became her Producer, and real Oprah eventually became her sidekick when she passed on). Nor how Sean ended up being put in charge of a Bad Place neighborhood where bad people who were sports fans were forced to watch nothing but Jacksonville sports teams trouncing their favorites (Jason thought it was a Good Place neighborhood, and Janet didn't have the heart to tell him differently). Not even how Michael went on to focusing the remainder of his career (which lasted for an infinite number of years) helping to redeem bad people through customized neighborhoods which brought. In the end, it was decided that Jason's new system of "Lame, Alright, or Dope" turned out to be a much fairer system (if Jason thought you were Lame, you definitely deserved The Bad Place). The new Medium Places were a huge hit for those who weren't Dope and didn't like the idea of eternal torment.

As for the Judge, after officiating the wedding of Jason and Janet, she was retired to an eternity of living in Jacksonville. Jason was happy to give her a wonderful retirement. Oddly, the Judge quite enjoyed herself and starred on a local cable TV show as a small claims TV Judge (Judging Jacksonville, Weekdays, 4PM EST).