Summary: Bad things happen at Hogwarts all the time. Add this to the list.

Warnings: Strong language, violence, spoilers up to Half-Blood Prince, and the absolute butchering of your fandom. American-style spelling and language. Not beta-read.

Revisionist Hogwarts

Part I

The Beast that Shouted "Bloody Hell" at the Heart of the World

Harry Potter woke at 5:00 to find that morning was threatening cheerfully over the greenery of Hogwarts. Had he paid more attention, he would have noticed that same lush greenery slowly fading away in the wake of cold gray. There were shadows on the horizon.

He looked in the mirror groggily and startled. His hair was huge and wild. True, it had always been that way, but now it was also an alarming shade of purple. It fell in his face, but somehow, he could see just fine. Spending years at a school for witchcraft and wizardry, he was able to take this strange change rather well. He just filed it away in his mind next to the giant squids and three-headed dogs.

By noon he knew what a fool he had been. The minute he had seen his hair, he should have fled for the Forbidden Forest. Now it was too late. The suits of armor merged to the walls and became control panels. None of the ghosts were to be found.

He eyed everyone with horror as they passed him in the sleek metal corridors, oblivious to the strange things happening around them. The students at Hogwarts had always tried to break the dress code, but never before had the girls' skirts been so revealing. Never before had the boys left their shirts unbuttoned so extremely. Never before had their hair been every color of the rainbow. And their eyes...

Harry congratulated himself on dodging Hermione, who now seemed strangely attracted to him. Her hair, he noted with alarm, was an odd pale blue and her eyes a stinging red. Well, one of them was. Bandaging he was afraid to ask about covered the other. Her voice was octaves and octaves higher than natural. Dogs were probably wondering what all the fuss was about every time she spoke. Poor Fluffy.

While fending off her advances, he learned that she was a clone—Hermione v6.2.7. Somehow, she'd died and come back five times since midterm. This model was just tougher than its predecessors and refused to kick the bucket. Harry took the news with considerable calm and hid in the bathroom.

Ron—hair redder than ever and strangely sporting a braid that ending at his knees—challenged him to a fight during lunch and kept using really bad lines.

"You backstabbing jerk!" he howled and leapt into the air, hanging there for way longer than was physically possible.

Oddly, his lips didn't seem to synch with the words he was saying. Ron's problem was catching. By 1:00 everybody had a solid ten second delay on everything they said. That was about the time when the moving staircases became glass elevators.

At exactly 2:00 in the afternoon the Headmaster called for Harry. Entering the once-familiar office, he was more surprised by the fact that the Headmaster was alive and kicking than the fact that he was now a busty blonde in a revealing military-style uniform.

"Have you reconsidered our offer?" she asked.

"What offer would that be?" he was just about to ask, but never got the chance to.

The tremors had started. There was the echoing sound of an explosion somewhere nearby. And then another. After that it was a barrage of sound like a war zone. All through the halls, alarms wailed to life, panic red painting the walls. Harry tumbled to the ground and managed to roll out of the way of a huge piece of metal that came crashing down towards his head.

"We need your help!" Dumbledore said, hauling him to his feet and leaning too close. "It's the Death Eaters! They're attacking!"

"Again?" Harry asked.

Floors and floors below in his office, Professor Snape stood, his shining locks of soft black hair framing his face. "So they've finally come," he said and whirled impressively to face the access elevator that would take him to the Headmaster's office. "If it's a fight they want," he said in his impressive tenor, leaned in to the retinal scanner, and then disappeared behind the automated doors.

In her own office, Minerva McGonagall removed her fetching glasses, and placed a delicate hand to her pouty lips. "Merlin, give me strength," she said. Standing and tugging on the skirt that was practically painted on to her shapely legs, she touched a hand to the pendant dangling from her neck—a present from the Moon Princess—and was instantly transformed into to Sailor Pantara of the Devil Pack, fearless leader of her kind. She tore through the halls at a proud and unfaltering bound.

In the Headmaster's office, Harry struggled to stay standing as another tremor—surprisingly similar to the first because it's easier to reuse old footage than to film new—ran to the window to look down at the castle grounds and was surprised to see...

nothing.

No one was approaching over the cold mechanical order of Neo Hogwarts beneath him. But patches of the ground were smoking. Odd, he thought.

"What are you looking down THERE for," Dumbledore twittered, bosom heaving. "Look up there!"

And so he craned his head back—and tried not to notice how close the headmaster was standing to him—and then his jaw dropped. No werewolves or dementors or Basilisks or anything that he understood at all. There was no magic here.

It was then that he knew. And, oh, had waking up been a mistake.

"So they've come at last," Dumbledore cried melodramatically, triggering an extreme close-up on her fetching eyes. "As prophesized! And there is only one way to stop them!" She whirled to Harry and clasped his shoulders. "We need you're power!"

Harry gaped at her. "Er...power?"

"Yes! Just like your parents—and all the people of your long-extinct race of superior beings—you too can wield the power of—"

Suddenly, the entire staff appeared in the room—Snape stepping from behind a pair of cold metal doors Harry was sure hadn't been there before, and McGonagall transforming from the world's largest cat right in front of him into a shapely young woman with dangerous proportions. Oddly, she retained the ears and tail. Snape looked...dashing was the best word for it. It was as if his nose had started to dig a trench and hide further into his face. The effect was really very pleasing as were the newly white teeth. In fact, the entire staff was young and beautiful and wearing clothing that scorched the eyes. How did Snape even breathe in black leather that tight? Harry wondered.

"Hey, what's he even doing here?" Harry groaned. "He's a spy."

Snape pulled back in alarm and covered his face. He gasped and his eyes darted back and forth nervously. "How did you know?"

"There's no time for that now!" McGonagall cried. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him fiercely. "Fight for us or we've got to send her out again!"

Hermione staggered into the room, coughed a few times, and collapsed. "Ouch." She tried to stand but was all tangled up in her own bandages. "I'll just stay here for a minute if you don't mind."

Everyone eyed her with pity for a moment.

"Minerva's right!" Professor Trelawney said, breaking the silence. "The fate of the world is at stake. Will you do it?" she asked in a throaty purr and clasped her hands together in just such a way that every pound of her chest seemed to collide and leap forward. She just so happened to be an alien and a space pirate. But that's another storyline.

"Please, Harry! We need your strength!" Hagrid said in a masculine tone and stroked his well-groomed beard. "All of Neo Hogwarts is counting on you!" The pet dragon on his shoulder nodded enthusiastically.

Yes, Harry knew, painfully, what was going on.

The ground rumbled as the massive, mechanical monsters housing the Death Eaters bombarded the technological fortress of Neo Hogwarts with their laser torpedoes. And really, don't ask what happened to Hogwarts One, Two, or Three. The story is far too tragic and involves the destruction of all mankind. Suffice it to say that Neo Hogwarts was the latest and greatest of all of them, which really just meant it was marked for total annihilation by the end of the season.

The wall behind the Headmaster's desk suddenly sparked to life, and the terror outside came into focus on the screen.

Harry's shoulders drooped. Dark Lords made sense. Prophesies made sense. Staging a massive wizard contest to kidnap one little boy for your lousy resurrection even made sense. But throw in giant robots and the entire thing just went to hell.

But still, it could be worse. He could still be living with the Dursleys.

He looked down at his hand, unsurprised to see that there was a lightning-shaped scar on the palm. It seemed to pulse with power. Power he'd probably gotten from—

"Please, Harry!" the room at large screamed.

"I'll do it," he said. "I'll pilot it!"

In the corner where she'd managed to crawl, Hermione coughed weakly and looked rather appreciative. She adjusted the bandages to keep them away from the debris. "Thanks. I lost an eye the last time I fought."

Harry really didn't want to think about that. Instead, he tossed his glasses away—he didn't need them in a world like this—then stepped into the middle of the room. Raising his hand and trying not to pay attention to the strange spotlight that shone down on him from above, he screamed, "Firebolt!"

There was a hiss of steam, the ratcheting click of metal pulling back—heavy doors opening thousands of feet below. Level after level of reinforced, space-aged metal portals opened sequentially and all to a catchy rock and roll theme song.

The Firebolt crashed through the floor—huge, towering, menacing and...purple. The hatch opened.

"Bloody Hell," said Ron, attempting to stay in-character. He had mysteriously appeared from nowhere due to bad editing. "Is Harry really going to pilot that thing?"

"Yes," Snape said darkly. "Harry is bound by the dark, cruel, destiny of God."

"Er...what the hell does that mean?"

"Be quiet, boy. It was poetic."

Harry bounded up the steps leading to the gaping maw of the hatch, strapped himself in and got ready for a hell of a ride. He realized, somehow, that he knew how to pilot it. He also knew, with equal certainty that he was probably going to do more damage to Neo Hogwarts than actual good. The damn thing had torpedoes. Dozens of them. And a self-destruct button that said "Do Not Push Unless You Really Really Have To."

The building threatened to shake to pieces as the Death Eaters performed a precision flyby over the towers.

"Oh, and Harry," Trelawney screamed in a sing-song voice over the sound of the Firebolt's thrusters blazing to life, "When you get back, you're finally going to have to pick which one of us you love the most!"

"There's no more time!" Dumbledore screamed and cut a glare at Trelawney. "Launch Firebolt!"

Smoke filled the room and waves of pressure rolled down, forcing the staff of Neo Hogwarts to stagger backwards in the wake.

Harry felt the skin of his face pull back at the force from his takeoff. He emerged outside the fortress like a bolt of energy. The light of the sun, split and shattered by the edge of the world, was blinding; the glare off the Death Eater's machines foreboding.

And, yeah, Harry knew what was going on very well now. (He rolled away from a missile and caught another in mid-air, watching it buckle in on itself and then fall on all of the screens flashing before his face. The dark, womblike interior of the beast he piloted flashed with firecracker spurts of light from the explosions all around him.)

The same thing had happened to him six years before. (He shouldered through a pack of the machines and listened to them crunch and crumble to nothing.)

One day, he had found himself in a coming-of-age, wizard novel complete with cheesy prophecy, wizened old farts and magical castles. (A well-aimed giga-flare sent him hurtling to earth. The Firebolt sprouted wings that spanned across the horizon and sent him soaring back into the fight, as unstoppable as a storm.)

Now he was in a coming-of-age, giant robot Japanese cartoon with cheesy prophesy, lots of busty alien women hot for his body and a space-aged fortress. He figured that nothing much had changed besides the cup sizes.

(He sent a graceful, emerald-colored machine into a nearby skyscraper and watched the glass crack upwards like lighting. It went down in a clatter of parts and wiring. He crushed it under his foot and snarled in satisfaction when he heard Lucius Malfoy cursing him over the intercom.)

And, now that he was up here, moving faster than a broom ever could, he realized he rather liked it. And, whereas he couldn't do magic at home, he'd like to see the Ministry stop him from marching a giant robot through the streets. Privet Drive was toast.

Maybe waking up hadn't been such a bad idea, after all.

They surrounded him—hulking and vicious. Lucius' Death Machine surged upwards again, as if the damage Harry had inflicted was negligible. All around him, the foes he had toppled stirred and stood, midnight-black and chaos-white, everything evil given shape. This wasn't going to be easy.

He readied the torpedoes and smiled.

The End

Inspiration: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Xenogears, Escaflowne, Tekkaman Blade, Tenchi Muyo, Excel Saga, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing. In case you were wondering, yes, this was fun to write.

Welcome to "Revisionist," an idea I've had for over two years and never done anything with. Theoretically, every chapter is going to feature a character in a different genre loosely based on who they are in canon Potterverse. For example, here we have Harry as a reluctant giant robot pilot who saves the day instead of a reluctant wizard who saves the day. All the chapters I have planned are unrelated, so if you liked seeing Shinji...oops! I mean "Harry" in a mecha, er...I don't know what to tell you.