AUTHOR NOTE – This is the continuation of the previous chapter
Hermione Granger walked into the Great Hall of Hogwarts with a spring in her step. This was not an unusual occurrence, as she was always happy to start a new day of fruitful education. As usual, she looked around the room for her surly and stubborn best friend. She couldn't believe that Harry still refused to admit to his abhorrent cheating and accept the blame that he was rightfully due. It, of course, never occurred to her that perhaps Harry's stubbornness was due to him being innocent and she didn't have a good grasp on the whole idea of being a "best friend". Then again, she was also blissfully unaware of the infinite number of alternate Hermione Grangers who would gladly slap her around like she was Draco Malfoy on Malfoy Slapping Day and they had a fist full of free slap coupons (as an aside, the dimensions that have implemented a Malfoy Slapping Day are among the most peaceful and just dimensions in all of reality).
And there was her prey, err… best friend. She was surprised to see that Harry was not sitting at the end of Gryffindor table while moping morosely into a bowl of plain porridge. Instead, he was sitting in the middle of the table (technically on top of the middle of the table, though she didn't know that this new Harry Potter COULD happily sit in the middle of the table if he had such a desire). Instead of eating his depressing breakfast, he was playing with his food.
Once again, in the interests of clarity, Hermione was being quite dismissive of the extent of the food-play. Harry had constructed a scale model of Hogwarts completely out of bits of waffle. It was accurate to the most minute detail, including the insides of the castle that no one could observe. This included moving staircases, hidden corridors, trick stairs, portraits, student body, staff, and replica of both himself and his dimensional twin. The waffle people lived in fear of the return of Syrupmort and his Breakfast Eaters. They relied upon their protectors, Albus Donutdore and Harry Poptarter (aka The-Sweet-Who-Lived). It is fair to say that Hermione Granger held an overly broad definition for the term "playing with your food".
"Good morning, Harry. Can you please stop playing with your food? You are monopolizing all of the waffles!" She was unaware that waffles had not been offered for breakfast this morning, so these were technically the sole possession of Harry Potter.
Harry smiled at Hermione (which was another shock, as she had fully expected his typical morose looks that she assumed stemmed from his guilt over cheating). "Hermione! It's been a while. How are you doing today?"
Hermione pursed her lips. "Well, first, I would be much happier if you would first get rid of this monstrosity." She waved at the twenty-foot tall waffle castle, with clouds of vaporized waffle puffing out of its various chimneys.
Harry nodded agreeably and called out to the Headmaster who was in deep conversation with Larry Potter (while no other student would dare sit at the head table, it seemed completely normal for Larry to be there). "Headmaster, would you mind?"
The Headmaster didn't acknowledge Harry, but he did wave his wand in the direction of the castle. If one were more attentive, they would realize that it seemed as if the Headmaster had not cast any sort of magic nor had he even noticed that his arm was moving without his own consent (no one was more attentive). The castle disappeared from the table, much to the disappointment of everyone else in the room who wasn't Hermione Granger, a Potter, or an old man who had unofficially retired and was just hanging around to enjoy the chaos.
What no one was aware of, was that the castle was not destroyed. Instead it appeared in the sublayer of reality known as the Good Eats Reality, specifically on a version of Earth that did not have magic users and was being ravaged by the demons from the Dental Dimensions of the Damned. The waffles of Hogwarts first encountered the Bacon Fighters of the resistance, who quickly decided to follow the lead of Donutdore and Poptarter. Soon after that decision was made, the demonic dental hordes were defeated, and that Earth ushered in an age of delicious magic and tasty peace. With that completed, the waffle replica of the dimensional travelling Harry Potter began his own journeys through the multiverse of the Good Eats Reality using his infinite powers for cavity inducing fun. But, as aforementioned, no one at the original Hogwarts realized that this happened or that they had to live in the lame layer of reality which had no title other than Reality. As such, Hermione continued to talk as if nothing interesting had occurred.
"Thank you, Headmaster." The Headmaster grunted in disinterested acknowledgement as he continued to talk with Larry. "Finally, Harry, I would be ecstatic if you finally admitted to putting your name in the Goblet and told everyone how you did it!"
Harry grinned. "Well, I hate to see you unhappy. So, how about I tell you how I might have theoretically done it?"
Hermione smiled and nodded her head. This was as good as admitting to the crime. She wouldn't let him off this easy, of course, but she was happy to let him start off with a "theoretical" confession.
Harry's grin widened. "Great! So, of course the first step would require me to use a home-made one-time-use time turner, which I would use to…"
"A what!? There is no such thing!" Hermione's yell brought silence to the Great Hall, as everyone focused their attention on the conversation. Even the Headmaster and Larry Potter had their attention captured.
Harry rolled his eyes. "It's not that difficult to make Hermione. Does anyone have some toast, butter, and a quill?"
The three items appeared in front of Harry from seemingly nowhere.
"Thanks Dobby!"
A maniacal laughter filled the air.
"It's Wednesday, Dobby!"
The maniacal laughter changed to the giggling of disembodied children.
"There you go! Anyways… where were we?"
Hermione gritted her teeth at the mockery Harry was making of his confession. "You were about to create a time turner, apparently from…"
"Toast! Right, thanks Hermione. So, you butter the toast liberally. Then you stab the quill into the toast, so the quill is standing upright, the position in the toast obviously dependent on the position of the sun. Then, based on the number of nights until the next full moon, you use the appropriate Rick James lyric and touch the tip of the quill with the tip of your wand."
Hermione then watched as Harry buttered the toast and stabbed the quill into a seemingly random location. She listened to him incant "she's a super freak, super freak". She watched his wand poke the quill and was surprised to see the quill and toast briefly glow golden. Still, she was hardly convinced.
"And, how does one use this… Time Toast"
Harry, infuriatingly, rolled his eyes once again. "You take a nibble, of course!"
She looked at the toast, dubiously, and took a nibble. The hall was shocked when she disappeared and the doors to the hall slammed open. In walked a clearly annoyed Hermione Granger.
"You didn't warn me that I would be intangible, invisible, and transported to another part of the castle for the hour I was sent back!"
"Only intangible and invisible to the living, you're fine with ghosts. As for the location, that depends on bite size and location, which I figured was straightforward."
Hermione stalked forward and grabbed Harry by the front of his robes, speaking with a level of menace that would make the most hardened Death Eater request lessons. "Listen, Potter, I was popped in on Filch and was forced to watch him as he… well, it was awful. Now, you will teach me how to make this Time Toast, or so help me…"
Harry, smile never faltering, removed her hands from his robe. "Hermione, I would of course be happy to help you. As you can see, everyone else is giving it a try."
Hermione looked around, and she could indeed see all the other students (and most of the staff) muttering "super freak" over a quill pierced piece of buttered toast. With some satisfaction, she was pleased to note that no one was having any success. Out of the corner her eye, she saw a flash of golden light. When she turned her head, there was an empty seat at the Slytherin table. She turned her head further in time to see Gregory Goyle walk into the hall with a goofy smile.
"Way to go Goyle!" yelled an ecstatic Harry Potter. Goyle just smiled dopily and gave Harry a thumbs-up.
Harry turned to Hermione. "I'm glad Goyle figured it out. So, Hermione, you wanted me to show you how to…"
"No!" shouted a furious Hermione. She looked around in embarrassment and spoke with a softer tone. "No, thank you Harry. I'm sure that I can figure this out on my own." There was no way that she was going to be outdone by Gregory "one-brain-cell" Goyle, that was for damned sure!
"OK Hermione. Well, I should head on off to class. Catch you later!"
Hermione waved her hand dismissively as she started to grab for the plentiful stacks of toast and sticks of butter. It never even occurred to her that Harry never explained how the Time Toast could be used to cheat the Goblet of Fire.
A few seconds after Harry left the room, a harried Severus Snape entered the Great Hall. He made his way to Dumbledore and whispered urgently.
"Headmaster, you should know that I was delayed by Peeves. It appears he has somehow come into possession of a spectral wand that allows him to cast magic on the physical world. I spent the past hour in a running battle where I was barely able to avoid his prank spells."
Snape then noticed the hall full of people stabbing and then muttering at their toast.
"Did I miss something?"
Albus turned his head and just smiled at the surly Potions Professor, while refraining to comment on his neon pink mohawk.
As Harry made his way to Divination class, Larry ran to catch up with him. This was made more difficult as Larry was having difficulty seeing through his tears of laughter. It was made easier though, as Harry didn't care about arriving to class on time or at all and had no issue of waiting for his laughing dimensional twin.
"OK, I have to ask, the Time Toast… is that real?"
Harry shrugged. "It is now."
"Really? I just figured you sent Hermione and Goyle yourself and used the toast as a trick."
Harry looked aghast. "Of course not! I'm much too lazy to go through that much trouble. It's just easier to change the dimension's rules of reality to get a quick moment of amusement. Long term consequences are for the suckers to worry about."
Larry nodded at that, but suspected it was probably best to ignore life advice from his crazy all-powerful alternate (little did he know that his Headmaster would have vehemently agreed with that advice and had been living his life that way for decades).
"So, there's no trick to the toast?"
"Well… I did forget to mention that I imbued sentience into the magic fueling the Time Toast, and its primary objective is maximizing Hermione's level of irritation."
Larry grinned.
Harry Potter walked into his Divination class, accompanied by Larry Potter.
Professor Sybil Trelawney walked into the room with her normal spacey expression. She looked over at Harry and proceeded to scream a string of the foulest obscenities in over a dozen dead languages and two dozen quite living languages. The gist of the tirade was "I would appreciate it if you were to leave my class and not return". Harry smiled, waved his hand, and left the classroom. From that day forward, no one would ever dare say a word against the Divination Professor.
A stunned Larry followed a whistling Harry. "What was that about?"
"Hmmm? Oh, that? I forgot I wasn't hiding myself from Seers. Seers have a mild issue with me."
Larry didn't want to know what constituted a "major issue".
"Why do Seers have any sort of issues with you?"
"I never asked. What do you think White Tuna?"
Larry wasn't sure when they arrived at the Headmaster's office but took the sudden change of scenery in stride. Unsurprisingly, Albus "White Tuna" Dumbledore was unaffected by the sudden appearance. He just rocked comfortably in his hammock, wearing a Hawaiian Shirt and paisley swim trunks, sipping from a crazy straw sticking into a coconut.
An extremely relaxed White Tuna responded. "Well, either Seers rely on the stability of magic to subconsciously discern possible futures and they are overwhelmed by Harry's casual destruction of that stability, or they're agents of Fate and Fate hates Harry."
Harry nodded. "The second one sounds right."
Albus raised his coconut in a toasting motion. "Good, because the first one is just random nonsense that I said to sound smart."
Harry grinned. "Well, classes sound boring. I'm skipping to the first task. Later!"
"Later", White Tuna said to a gone Harry Potter. "So, Larry, how would you like to know the trick to conjuring a free-floating hammock, a cool breeze to rock the hammock, and the tasty rum drink to tie it all together?"
Larry Potter decided he did feel a bit thirsty.
The night before the first task approached, with no sign of Harry Potter. The teachers complained to Dumbledore, but they stopped their complaints after he used them as test subjects for Larry to learn how to make someone sound like a chipmunk on helium.
Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley did their weekly unwanted report, and mainly complained about Time Toast and Harry's absence. Hermione was greatly frustrated as the door closed to the office just as Dumbledore started to say, "Now, Larry, here's the one single fact that makes the study of Alchemy painfully simple, but nearly impossible if you don't know it. Just remember…". She never heard what the single fact was. She just hoped that Dumbledore had been exaggerating the importance of the fact. He had not been exaggerating.
In a disused woman's restroom on the second floor, the ghost of Myrtle Warren (aka Moaning Myrtle) primped herself in the mirror. She straightened her outfit, fixed her glasses, and applied spectral lipstick. In the mirror's reflection, she saw a form pop into existence behind her. Myrtle squealed in delight, turned around and jumped into the arms of her new boyfriend, planting a hard kiss on his lips. When they parted, she looked at the smiling face of Gregory Goyle. On the floor, a buttered piece of toast and quill dissolved silently into dust.
In the fourth-year girls' dorm of Gryffindor, Hermione Granger filled out yet another order form for quills, as she glanced at the huge stacks of buttered toast that surrounded her bed. She would figure this out, damn it!
In a random hallway of Hogwarts, Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (aka Nearly Headless Nick) thought he heard Peeves yell out a word that sounded like a spell. Before he could turn around, he felt a peculiar sensation around the remaining skin of his neck (the skin that kept him from being properly headless). Frowning in confusion, he turned quickly to see where Peeves was. However, that made things even more confusing as he now found himself staring at his own body standing several feet away. Once enough time passed for him to process this new state, an extremely loud shout of joy was heard in every corner of the castle. Nearly Headless Nick was now just Headless Nick.
Far away from the castle. Another ghost heard a shout and felt a peculiar sensation around his neck as he was practicing for next year's Headless Hunt. As he normally did, he went to lift his head off his shoulders to look around. To his surprise, his head stayed firmly on his shoulders. No matter what he did, it stayed firmly stuck (and would remain firmly stuck for the rest of his ghostly existence). Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore, leader of the Headless Hunt, taunter of "Nearly Headless Nick", was very upset to find himself properly recapitated.
A giggling Peeves apparated back to Hogwarts. He didn't know where he got this wand and access to magic, but he was going to abuse it while it lasted.
In the kitchens of Hogwarts, Dobby the House Elf accidentally knocked into the fireplace and saw a stone fall out of the wall. As he went to fix the broken wall, he noticed there was a small slip of paper stuck in the hole. As he read the paper, an insane smile formed on his face. After all, it wasn't everyday that a House Elf came across the original notes of the creator of the House Elf bonds, and the associated loopholes that all wizards should be aware of to avoid House Elf Vengeance (clothes being the only loophole that wizards actually knew about).
Not wanting to embarrass himself again, he checked his laugh calendar. The sounds of a drunken pirate's chortles echoed throughout the kitchen.
In a rundown hotel room in Las Vegas, a sober Sirius Black and Remus Lupin woke up. The week had been weird. First, no matter how much alcohol they drank, they couldn't even get a minor buzz. This new-found tolerance turned into the least of their concerns.
They had also found themselves unable to lose. Poker, craps, horse racing, roulette, slots, they could not lose. They tried to lose. Oh, how they tried. Neither was naive enough to think that the casinos would be happy with such supernatural luck.
They eventually stopped gambling completely. Even then, they would sneeze or trip, and a loose piece of change would land in the slots and be bumped enough to set off the jackpot.
After several days of this success, they were banned from every casino in the city. At this point, they could only enter fast food chains and stay in their hotel far away from any casino.
This wouldn't be so bad if they had access to their millions in winnings. Unfortunately, due to an unfortunate breeze, the cashier's checks they were given flew away from their hands. In an odd stroke of luck, the checks rubbed against a waitress's pen and exactly made out Sirius's signature. The further odd strokes included the checks flying into a note being written by a man making an anonymous donation to a charity for the homeless, where the note stuck to the endorsed checks. The papers then flew into a discarded empty manila folder. The folder then randomly flew off and made its way into the mail slot of the charity. That charity was about to permanently shut down, but the influx of funds managed to keep the place open. The woman in charge of the charity, who was about to quit charity work and enter corporate law, was inspired by the generosity and managed to discover the one perfect policy and argument that would see an end to homelessness world-wide within a decade, and bring true peace to the world within three decades.
In the meantime, Sirius and Remus were scrounging for enough money to pay for their room, get food, and to get back to England. Sadly, it would have to wait until the full moon came and went in the next week. Werewolves were restricted from travel within one week of the full moon.
In England, a rookie Auror was assigned to investigate a case of British wizards possibly using magic to cheat in Las Vegas. When she heard one of the wizards was also a werewolf, she made sure to pack all her equipment that she had heard was needed to properly dominate a werewolf. With her five extra expanded trunks packed to the brim, she took a hold of her portkey.