Author's Note.

Jesu Cristo, I have not updated this story (or any of the other ones, now that I think about it) in months. Do you ever get ADD? Yeahh.

Harry Potter was a brave boy. Although this was because of his prodigious naïveté, he was a brave boy nonetheless. So the instinct to flee was one very seldom felt by Harry. In fact, he had only experienced that instinct twice before (once when Ron got drunk and decided to shave his legs and give Harry eyebrow extensions with the hair, and one other time that Ron got drunk and started doing inappropriate things to Harry's broom). Staring up into Severus Snape's face on his front porch, then, was the third time Harry had ever felt the flight instinct kick in.

A moment of silence passed in which Snape seemed to be trying to grasp what was happening. The moment passed, and Snape's composure went with it.

"POTTER! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

Harry's brain cell seemed to be frozen. His mind was telling his legs to run away, but they for some reason were not functioning. So his body and his mind compromised, and Harry did the first thing that came to mind: he bitch-slapped Severus Snape right in the face.

Grease flecks flew into the stratosphere.

With an expression of utter and total fury, Snape stared at Harry for a fleeting second, then grabbed the Boy-Who-Lived's collar and dragged him inside. The door clicked shut, and the twins' efforts to open it were useless.

Fred and George exchanged nervous glances. This wasn't how the trick had been planned. Snape was just supposed to, you know, get mad and slam the door, maybe take a picture of Harry in the dumb outfit and show the other teachers, etcetera. This hadn't been in the plan. Something was wrong.

Suddenly there was a scream that, had it not been inside, would have been earsplitting. The scream was cut off suddenly by a dull THUD. Fred and George could see the silhouette of something dark splattering against the curtains.

Fred and George exchanged another terrified glance. Fred said in a panicked whisper, "FUCK."

George was freaking. "We killed Harry Potter!"

"This wasn't supposed to happen!"

"No effing way! We need to talk to her!"

"Maybe she can do something."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. She can fix it."

"Yeah. HEY! HEY YOU! George and me wanna talk to you!"

It would have seemed to any passersby that the twins were talking to the air around them, generally in the direction of the sky. But no, they had not gone entirely crazy.

In quick succession, clouds gathered in the sky, then parted to allow a giant, glowing hand to descend. Raucous laughter was coming from behind the clouds.

YES? said an impressive and boomy female voice. It was the same voice as the laughing voice.

"We want to come up," said Fred. "This whole thing has gone horribly wrong."

HAS IT, THOUGH? said the voice joyfully. ALL RIGHT, YOU CAN COME UP AND WE CAN TALK. HOLD ON A MOMENT. The giant hand descended all the way to the ground, at which point the twins got on to it. It lifted them up into the part in the clouds.

Suddenly the twins were standing knee-deep in murky water. Over their heads was a leafy, wet tropical canopy. The sky (what little they could see of it) was all grey. Fred looked down to see several bright yellow rubber ducks floating past him.

"Where are you?" asked George. "And why does this place change every time I come up here?"

"Yeah, it was an igloo last time, remember?" reminisced Fred.

"How could I forget," said George, "with all the Pixie Sticks growing out of the ice? Remember?"

"Yeah, that was weird―"

"Hello, boys," said a voice. It was a more real version of the one in the clouds. "A fine day, don't you think?"

A blonde teenaged girl with a huge smile stepped out of the foliage.

"What do you think?" she asked, spreading her arms to indicate the scenery. "I thought it was a nice change from all the ice … of course, I'm getting a little bored of it already …"

"Um, it's very nice, Tristan," said Fred distractedly. "But what we really wanted to talk to you about was the prank thing, you know the one we played on Harry, and it was your idea, and you helped us out with some of the stuff, and well now it's all gone terribly wrong. Haven't you been watching?"

The girl ― Tristan's ― smile grew even wider and she said, "Of course I've been watching!"

The twins looked at her, confused. "So you've been seeing what's happening and you're not stopping it?" Fred asked. "Why? Harry's dead, we think!"

She laughed. "I know! Want to see?"

"What?" Fred and George said.

"I said, do you want to see? You know I can see everything from up here. Come on, take a look." She picked a brightly colored pair of scissors off of a tree that was apparently growing them, and she cut a huge hole in the air.

The hole was right over Snape's house. The twins could see the roof but at the same time could see through it. It was odd, but they tried not to think about it. Instead they concentrated on the ghastly scene in front of them.

There was blood all over the walls of Snape's humble abode. The dead Boy-Who-Lived was lying on the kitchen table, and one of his legs had been cut off. Snape was currently cursing because he couldn't fit the whole leg into his blender. With a malevolent grin he used a machete to cut the leg down to an appropriate size. Sitting by Harry's body was a margarita glass with a little umbrella in it.

Fred threw up.

Tristan closed the hole in the air and smiled contemplatively.

"So you see," she said. "The plan was a success. Well, for me, at least. We seem to measure success differently."

"Of course we measure success differently, you lunatic!" George yelled. "You killed Harry Potter!"

Tristan merely smiled in response.

"We're leaving," said George. "C'mon, Fred."

"Why did you kill Harry Potter?" Fred asked wearily as he and his twin stepped onto the hand that would return them to their world.

Tristan smiled innocently. "He annoyed me," she said as the hand began to descend, and then clouds obscured her happy face and Fred and George were unceremoniously dumped onto the ground in front of the Burrow.

Back in another world, a doctor in a white medical robe was showing a corporate somebody around the facility. His hospital needed the grant from this man's company so badly. The doctor sighed. This is what you get for trying to help people, he thought. Bankruptcy.

His thoughts were interrupted by the businessman's questions about an unmarked door. "What is through here, Doctor?" he asked the balding man.

"That's the psych ward of the hospital," the doctor replied. "It can get depressing, I'm sure you don't want to see that."

"Actually, I would like to see it," said the businessman ― Mr. Smith? The doctor never could remember these peoples' names.

The doctor sighed, and reluctantly pushed the door open. Anything to get the stupid grant.

The first few rooms were solitary confinement. The businessman peered through a one-way mirror into one of the cells. Inside was a blonde teenaged girl. She was cackling and saying, over and over again, "Harry Potter is dead! Harry Potter is dead!"

"So sad," said the man with entirely fake sympathy. "So sad, the way these poor people have to live."

The doctor glanced into the cell, where the girl, who looked deliriously happy, was sitting. "I don't know," he said without thinking. "Sometimes I think I'd like to escape reality, live in my own little world."

The doctor became aware of an awkward silence. The businessman was looking at him strangely. His cheeks grew hot.

"I mean, yes," said the doctor hastily. "Very sad. It is very sad. Now if you'll look in this room, you'll be able to see all of our patient medication charts …" He pointed the man in the direction and, with one last look at the happy crazy girl, followed him out of the psych ward.