[A/N: I struggled with this chapter. Writing reactions is tough if you don't want to go overboard too quickly in dealing with an annoying or evil character. Same thing is true with coming up with the chaos from the students.]


While the staff was in the Room of Requirement…

Albus glanced around the room wondering where everyone was. It was time for the monthly progress update meeting of senior staff and yet it had been nearly ten minutes without anyone else there besides him and Dolores. The two kept shooting disgruntled glances at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking.

Finally, Albus dispiritedly sighed, "Well Dolores, it seems as if we've wasted our time waiting for the others to arrive. I'm going to go and try to find out what happened to them. If I find out anything, perhaps we could reschedule?"

Dolores nodded once before getting up and waddling out of the room. Albus leant back in his chair and stroked his beard in contemplation. After another moment, he too got up and left the room.


Searching for a single person within the confines of the castle itself would normally be a tremendous undertaking. Fortunately, he was the headmaster and therefore everything and everyone reported to him. It was a heady feeling when he first took the post; the feeling of controlling all that knowledge and potential power was intoxicating and one of the main reasons he was loathe to give it up. He'd passed retirement age a long time ago but the mere thought of handing the reins over to Minerva made him shudder in horror. Who knew what sort of damage might occur to his Greater Good plans if that were to ever happen?

Albus stopped in front of one painting of gossiping women and smiled genially at them as they tittered with the knowledge of some sort of juicy tales.

"Good morning, ladies. I was wondering if you know of the whereabouts of my senior staff? We were supposed to be having a meeting but they never arrived."

The painted women giggled again then nodded that they had indeed heard about where the staff went.

"They all ended up on the seventh floor. The adults met up with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger and are investigating a hidden storage room of some kind."

Albus' face took on a surprised look; inasmuch that was visible given how much of the face fur he had was hiding. 'Hidden storage room on the seventh floor? I don't recall one being that high up in any of the records from the previous heads.'


As he made his trek towards the stairs, he was besieged by many students in need of guidance. Normally, they'd have just gone to their Heads of Houses but since none of them could be found and Albus was the only adult in sight; it fell upon him to solve their myriad of problems. After the last difficulty, wherein a first year muggleborn girl had nervously come up to him in search of something called a 'tampon,' and getting a descriptive (and embarrassing) education as to what such an item was, he quickly and quietly sent the poor child to the hospital wing to speak with Poppy. After taking a fortifying breath and a mental promise to have that experience obliviated from his memory, he was set upon a couple of third years who desperately needed his help in reversing a transfiguration experiment gone wrong.

Finally fleeing from the resulting eldritch horror and cordoning off the room from the ever-growing crowds of curious students and hiding in another empty classroom, Albus panted in exhaustion. 'What the heck is Minerva teaching these kids? What in Merlin's name is a Shoggoth? That…thing…I'm going to have nightmares for a week!'

Then there was that experiment that the Lovegood girl was in the middle of…


North side of the castle, unused classroom…

Albus entered the room after getting reports that someone was trying to recreate a jungle in the North Wing. He stopped at the sight of a myriad of large, leafy plants and trailing flowers bursting from an open door. The lush and sweat inducing heat emanating from the room was palpable and made him immediately wish he'd worn something lighter than his usual robes. He slowly wandered in and tried to push back against the vegetation only to find that some of it actively retaliated. He heard the cries of what sounded like birds and small animals but there was also something…else. It was a deep, almost primal and visceral growl that seemed to originate from where the teacher's office was located. The sweat on his brow was no longer just because of the heat. His heart was pounding, his pulse racing; where was that Lovegood girl? He was hesitant to call out especially in light of the possibility of attracting the unwanted attention of whatever the heck made that growl.

Albus finally located Luna perched prettily on a high branch of what appeared to be a rainbow colored tree that had flowering vines draped from its higher branches and strange multi-limbed butterflies flittering about.

"Miss Lovegood? My dear, what have you done to this room?"

Luna peered down at her headmaster with a dreamy look on her face (though to Albus, that could just be her normal appearance), there was no fear of what might reside within this crazy jungle and there was not a speck of sweat anywhere on her face.

"Oh, hello headmaster. I see you've discovered the joys and delights of this environment I've created. I hope to use it to attract the Crumple-Horned Snorcack. It's quite realistic don't you think?"

Albus slowly nodded his head at her greeting, worried even more that this girl had lost her mind, "It is nice but frankly I'm curious as to how you created it? It's not every day that a jungle can be recreated outside the greenhouses. Could you come down from there? It doesn't appear to be very safe."

Luna merely gave him a mysterious smile. Albus shivered despite the heat, that smile did not bode well for his own sanity. She vanished from the branch she was lounging on and suddenly popped up right next to him. He jumped back at the sudden appearance and immediately got entangled in some of the branches.

"Miss Lovegood! How did you get down so quickly?"

Luna cocked her head in contemplation as she gazed at him with her deceptively dreamy eyes, "Get down? From where? I've been on the ground the whole time."

Albus was growing even more concerned, "You mean you weren't just up in that…tree?" Said tree was nowhere in sight and now the terrain appeared to be open grassland. He whirled around and started breathing heavily in frustration.

'What the heck is going on? I could've sworn we were in the jungle! Where did this savannah come from?'

He glanced at the diminutive blonde who was looking up at him blinking owlishly in a seemingly oblivious manner with her hands behind her back, slowly twisting left and right without an apparent care in the world. He drew out a handkerchief and patted down his forehead. His need to find his senior staff suddenly became an overriding priority.

Albus spotted the door to exit and made a beeline for it as fast as his aged legs could take him. Once outside he turned to see if the girl had followed only to fall to the floor in shock… the classroom was empty! Luna was sitting on a desk carefreely swinging her legs and smiling that mysterious smile at him. She gave him a happy wave before jumping off and closing the door.


After taking a breather and calling for an elf to bring him a stiff drink, he encountered something he'd thought would've never happened if Severus was available. Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle and several other first years were in a room singing along to the music of a band, he'd never heard of before. The lyrics came fast and furious; it was electric and frankly very confusing. They kept asking, "So Whatcha, whatcha want?" over and over again with a couple of the other children mimicking the snappy beat of the music.

After everything else he'd seen that morning, this didn't even make him flinch. If only the rest of the day was as mundane…


Two hours later…

Albus was now considering retirement just to get away from this infernal nightmare. That eldritch nightmare, the feminine hygiene problem, the Lovegood fiasco, three major potions accidents, the usual chaos from Peeves, stopping two fights, and putting a stop to the efforts of a couple of Ravenclaws wanting to play the game of 'Elf Toss.' Not to mention the plain, old bizarre things that goes along with a thousand year old semi-sentient castle. He was in desperate need of a long hot soak in his bath and a comforting meal.

If he survived today, he was going to hide out at the Ministry. At least there things were consistent and easy to manage.


At the bottom of the Grand Staircase

After the day he'd had, his relief at the sight of his senior staff descending the Grand Staircase was one of joy and frustration. He was seriously considering either reprimanding them severely or giving all of them a massive pay raise. How did they manage to control the student population without resorting to darker curses or disciplines? He thought back to the craziness that he'd had to endure and was contemplating a nice long vacation away from anyone resembling a student!

"Minerva, Severus, everyone else…" he paused as he took a shuddering breath in a vain hope of calming his nerves, "We had a progress meeting you were supposed to attend. Instead, I've had to spend the day searching for my senior staff and deal with our frankly exasperating behaviors of a cooped up student body."

The group looked at each other in puzzlement, 'What exasperating behaviors?'

Minerva carefully approached her boss and took in his disheveled appearance. His hands were shaking, his beard and robes singed with burn marks and heaven knew what else. He was sporting a wild, terrified look in his eyes as if he'd seen things that defied explanation.

"Albus? Are you well?"

That was it took to let his frustration out, "NO! I'm NOT well! Do you know what I've had to go through just to find you?! I've had to deal with a rather rowdy and frankly bizarre student population doing unspeakable things to each other and to the castle! Did you know that Miss Lovegood created at least two whole immersive environments in an abandoned classroom? Also, does anyone know what the bloody heck a 'Shoggoth' is? Two third year Gryffindors managed to transfigure a rabbit into whatever that was, I'm still having nightmares! Then I had to deal with various first year girls who wanted to know about something called a 'tampon!' When I admitted that I had no idea as to what it was, they gave me a very detailed description as to its purpose! Gah!"


As Albus was continuing to rant about his misadventures, Hermione had to hide behind Harry lest the headmaster witness her giggling at his misfortune of learning about female anatomy. Harry was shaking his head in commiseration at witnessing the so-called 'Madness of Luna Lovegood' and made it a personal mission to find out just what she'd done to cause Albus' trip into the wilds, as it were. The other professors bemusedly glanced at each other as they listened to the headmaster's mutterings about the apparent depravities the student population was getting into. They'd never had a problem with them but it did show that Albus was severely out of touch when dealing with the general population outside of mealtimes.


Just then Umbridge appeared as Albus was continuing to mutter about the experiments in illegal human transfiguration. He groaned at the sight of the squat toad-like woman and pulled his wand out.

"Dammit! Not another one! Minerva, make a note to remind your students that human transfiguration is not something that should be experimented with unless there's a trained professional to oversee things!" He started casting finite spells at Dolores to no avail; he cast more and harsher un-transfiguration spells at the increasingly distraught and foul tempered woman.

"Albus Dumbledore, stop this behavior at once! I am not an experiment gone wrong! How dare you insinuate that I am anything other than a pure-blooded witch!" Dolores screeched as she tried to defend herself against his onslaught.

Through her tears of mirth, Minerva finally decided to put both out of their respective misery and stunned both. The sound of silence resumed as their bodies hit the floor with a resounding 'thump.' She turned to the others and quirked her eyebrow up in silent question.

"What the heck was he raving about?"

Harry finally succumbed to his barely repressed laughter and slowly sank to his knees, Hermione joining him a moment later. He raised his hands in supplication, "That was our doing, professor. You see, we kind of knew that the headmaster would try to find us and stick his beak in where it didn't belong so we convinced the other students to go wild and find ways to keep him occupied and away from the seventh floor."

Filius burst out laughing at the audacity of the two fifth years while Severus merely shook his head and sneered at them. Pomona was leaning against the wall wheezing as she tried to breathe between laughs.

Professor Sinastra hiccupped from her laughter as she queried the two teens, "You, you mean all that craziness was just a, a prank? Whoa… that's epic."

Minerva sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as she replayed the events in her mind, "What I'm curious about is how it was all organized? How did the students know where and when Albus would be in a particular location to be able to pull such a prank?"

Hermione grinned, "We subcontracted the organization and execution of this whole day to the Weasley Twins. In exchange for pulling off this masterful display of chaos, we're going to give them help on some of their more complicated pranks with some of our knowledge and experience with muggle manufacturing technology."

Minerva's eyes widened and her face paled at the thought of readily and easily accessible Weasley pranks.


The next day…

After getting the headmaster and High Inquisitor to the hospital wing for treatment, Harry and Hermione headed back up to the Gryffindor Common room to congratulate everyone on a successful prank. They sent word through the student grapevine expressing their gratitude and heartfelt thanks that everyone could set aside their differences for one day to make it memorable and assist in keeping Albus away from their expedition.

The two were relaxing in the Library; Harry was reading a text on runic combinations while Hermione was penning a letter to a friend of hers who had published several papers on advanced crystalline structure analysis for potential uses in the computer industry.

Harry peeked over her shoulder and tried to follow along with what she was writing though it was heavily laced with technical jargon.

"You think this friend of yours might have some insights on how to program a gemstone?"

She kind of shifted her face into a quasi-exasperated look and sighed, "Maybe? That's all I could hope for. Realistically, I think we're going to have to face the distinct possibility that the Diadem is just going to remain a shiny bauble to sit in a display case somewhere. His work on crystalline analysis is ground-breaking but will it be enough to put into actual use? I really don't know." She dropped her pen and scrubbed her face with her hands, quietly groaning.

Harry leant over and gave her a kiss on her cheek and smiled in commiseration with her plight, "I wish there was a way to bypass the whole thing but unfortunately I've not come up with any brainwave ideas."

She returned that with a knowing wave of her hand, "And therein lays the problem. I hope that Madam Pince manages to find Rowena's journals that outline what procedure she took back in her own days. I'm even tempted to write to the Unspeakables at the Department of Mysteries to see if they have any ideas."

Harry gazed at her with unseeing eyes as he thought about that, "Why don't you? We've already completed, in my mind at least, any sort of questions and possibilities as to what the Diadem could do. Let the professionals deal with the rest of it."

"And the corrupted drive?"

He shrugged then paused for a moment in thought. Then he quietly called out, "Dobby?"

There was a slight crack of displaced air as Dobby the elf appeared next to him, silently gazing up with slightly worshipping look on his wrinkled face, "Harry Potter, sir has called for Dobby?"

Holding up a finger at the elf, Harry turned to Hermione, "Where'd you put that corrupted drive?"

"It's in the bag with the Diadem."

Nodding, Harry extracted the gemstone from the bag and held it up for Dobby to see, "Dobby? I was wondering if this felt like anything that the Diary did? I seem to remember that you described it as an evil, oily feeling?" He handed it over to Dobby who immediately grimaced and nodded his head, his ears flapping madly.

"Yes, sir. This gem bees feeling like the bad book." He quickly put it down on the table and scrubbed his hands against his pillowcase tunic.

Harry then gestured at Hermione, "Well, there you go. I think I'll write the letter to the DoM and tell them that the gemstone feels like the Diary and let them deal with it." He turned back to the elf, "Thank you, Dobby. You may go back to what you were doing." Dobby smiled happily and practically swooned at being thanked by Harry and disappeared with a near silent crack.

Hermione chuckled at the display, "You ought to think about adopting him when you're old enough." Harry snorted and shook his head.

"I think they might be curious as to how you know what the Diary felt like when you've never actually touched the thing. You might want to mention Dobby's experience with it in that letter of yours."

He cocked his finger at her, "Good idea."


At the Department of Mysteries

Director Algernon Croaker, Head Researcher for the Department of Mysteries, leant back in his chair and contemplated what he'd finished reading in the letter from none other than Harry Potter. The tale of finding the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw and what it's apparent purpose was a revelation and a curiosity. He'd love to get his hands on it to study but idly thought that maybe if the boy could get it to work, it might entice him to join their ranks. Merlin knew the boy was talented; after all, the observational notes from his operatives about the boy's genius in runes and wards made for riveting reading.

He got up, grabbed his cloak and told his secretary that he'd be out for most of the day then heading for the public floos.

After exiting the floo at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, Croaker made his way up to the castle. It wasn't often that he got to take a pleasant walk and the weather certainly was favorable today. As he approached the castle gates, he spotted several youths chasing each other on brooms, several more just lounging on the grass chatting with each other and other pursuits of youth. He smiled at the display and sighed internally, 'Ah, to be young again where a weekly quiz was the most stressful thing a person had to worry about.'

He stopped a young Slytherin and inquired about the location of Harry Potter then proceeded into the castle after getting directions. Unconcerned neither about any distractions nor about the possibility of interception by the headmaster, Croaker approached the painting of the 'Fat Lady' aka Margaret.

"Good day, madam. I seek Harry Potter and was informed that he was inside. Might you let me in?"

Margaret ruminated a bit as she took in the cloaked figure before her, "It goes against my better judgment but the castle wards are telling me that you are someone to be trusted." She unlatched the door her frame was attached to and swung open.

Croaker bowed his head in thanks and stepped through the doorway.

Harry was lounging on the couch, his head resting on Hermione's lap. Her fingers were doing wonderful things with his hair and scalp. There was a sudden hush of noise from the others in the room and he sat up to see what the problem was. Standing there in a gray hooded cloak, face hidden from view, was one of the legendary and very mysterious Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries.

"Harry Potter?" the figure asked to the room at large.

Harry nervously held his hand up and gulped loudly. Hermione held his other hand in a death grip as she too let out a gasp of surprise.

"I am Director Croaker from the Department of Mysteries. I think it's time you and I had a little chat."


[A/N2: So what do y'all think? Leave a review, if'n you please. Thanks.