"If you thought your day was DADAist, try mine."
Harry James Potter-Extrapolated-Volition was walking down Diagon Alley, making oblique gestures at a fresh-bought Bag Of Holding (not the infinite capacity kind; it just did bag-switching on the fly), and Professor MacGoohan was watching him do it.
"So," he said eventually. "I just taught a leather sack British Sign Language, but couldn't teach it to add. how does magic work, exactly?"
"By magic," she said.
"...Oh. Is there any method to it?"
"Nope."
"Pity. I was looking forward to doing a lot of basic permutation work. You know, like how the Chinese alchemists discovered gunpowder by applying the false but useful philosophical concept that substances have yin and yang properties."
"Sorry. It's all rote memorization and we haven't the slightest idea why anything works."
"Clearly I'm going to have to tear this world to its foundations and start over from basic principles," said Harry, and was once again magnetically levitated into Flourish & Blotts.
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence," said MacGoohan, and tossed him back into the street. He promptly Apparated back into the bookstore with a poit. "Oh, god, another Ravenclaw," she said.
"What's a Ravenclaw?" asked Harry, flipping through all the most advanced Arithmancy textbooks and finding that they had no actual magic in them and were in fact rebound copies of Trigonometry For Dummies.
"Ravenclaw is a house at Hogwarts. It is the repository for little Victor Frankensteins who want to rebuild the world in their own image."
"And none of them have succeeded?" said Harry in tones of mounting horror and dismay.
"I rather think they all have," said MacGoohan archly. "Look around!"
"Oog," said Harry, who had just been walking a street less cobblestone than cobbled-together. "What are the other houses?"
"Gryffindor's for vigorous people of vigor. Have you ever rappelled up a building because the electric staircase was broken?"
"I sleep on the floor because making my bed is too much like work."
"Mm-hm. Definitely not Gryffindor, thank Merlin, nor Hufflepuff either. Hufflepuff's for hard work and the magic of friendship."
"Has it got ponies?"
"Certainly not," said MacGoohan, thinking of the slang term for cheat-sheets.
"Too bad. I love ponies. They're very good with mustard. What's the other one?"
"Slytherin, the house of Voldemort sympathizers. Well, they were pro-Voldemort pre-Voldemort, really..."
"The Low Tax Torture Party?"
"That's the one."
"Aha. So, is Voldemort really dead if his ideas remain?"
MacGoohan shuddered. "Some say he simply moved to another country. Let's not think about it."
"Not thinking about it is exactly what he wants," said Harry. "Well, anyway, I'm definitely gonna be a Ravenclaw." He paused and then added in a confessional rush, "unless I can have a whole new house all to myself because I've been alone my whole insanely brilliant life and so isolation's all I can really cope with!"
"Get a girlfriend, Potter," said MacGoohan sternly.
"Okay."
"And an owl," she added, pointing through the shop window at Eeylops's Owl Emporium across the street.
"NO!" wailed Harry. "OWLS EAT MICE! I AM TOO TINY AND HELPLESS AIEEEEEEEEEE I am totally not an abused child, not even in a former life, I do not believe in preincarnation, boy howdy does my scar hurt, are we done?"
"Harry James Tinker-Evans-Chance, that outburst was quite bizarre! I dare you to rationalize it!"
Harry pulled out a SnickersⓇ. "Low blood sugar!"
The Professor grudgingly burst into applause. "But seriously, you should get a pet so you can learn to cope with semi-intelligent creatures on the basis of your shared characteristics of eating, sleeping and pooping."
"I had a pet rock once," said Harry thoughtfully. "It committed suicide. At least that's what my parents told me, though I can't imagine how it hanged itself. From this I learned that I can never love. It is now too late for me. I can never relate to any other epsilon except on the basis of manipulation, and can receive nothing from anyone but narcissistic supply."
"That's not good," ruminated MacGoohan. "According to one of the prophecies, love is your superpower."
"Nah," said Harry. "'s totally physics. Love is biochemistry, that's Dad's department. I'm totes about physics and transaction theory. It's my grand ambition to combine Eric Berne with Max Born!"
"Max Born?" said MacGoohan, confused. "Olivia Newton-John's grandfather?"
"Never mention that name again!" shrieked Harry. "There is no room for pop stars in my universe!"
"You know, I think there is a single room available on the fourth floor by the garbage chute," said MacGoohan.
"DIBS!"
Aftermath:
Headmaster Albus Dumbledore leaned forward over his desk. His twinkling eyes peered out at Minerva. "So, my dear, how did you find Harry?"
"I gave Cedric Diggory a galleon."
