Harry Potter and the Ordinary School Year

All rights J.K. Rowling, blah, blah, blah, you know the drill.

It was a sunny day on Number Four Privet Drive, as it always seems to be at the start of these tales. A boy lay in the perfect bushes surrounding the house, listening to the television.

The boy's name was Dudley. He was pretty fat, and pretty dumb.

Elsewhere, in an obscure forest home that was many stories high, a boy named Harry Potter lay asleep. There was a loud bang. The forest erupted into flames, which hurtled towards the Burrow home. Various peculiar red-headed folk fled the house, shouting loudly and gesturing.

Soon after, the entire place was in smoke.

Ginny shouted. "Oh, no! Someone's coming! Batbogeyus!"
Ginny was right. There, in the smoke were two chilling red eyes; the spooky effect of this was offset some when bats began to fly around and assaulted the eyes; their owner collapsed on the ground, screaming pathetically.

"Neville," said Ron. "What are you doing here, and why do you have spooky red eyes? That was Voldemort's gimmick, innit?

Mr. Weasley screamed. "Don't say that word."

"What word?"

"I cannot tell; suffice to say is one of the words..."
"Oh, you mean 'it'."

"No, you fool," snapped Mr. Weasley. "You didn't even say 'it' – only 'innit'"

"But you were the one who said 'it.'"

"I didn't say it, you said it!"

"No, Dad, you said 'it.'"

"Just – don't say that word."
"What word?"

At this point, a voice intervened from the clouds. "Narrator here," he said. "and I think this has gone on long enough."
"Yeah," muttered Harry. "You said it!"

At this point in our story, we would normally cut to the train ride on the Hogwarts Express – which we will...but not yet. First, it is important to remember that the events of this bizarre, self-aware, poorly-planned mad house of a novel, take place after the events of the previous bizarre, self-aware, poorly-planned mad house of a novel; as we well know, our heroes – Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Ginny Weasley – skipped a year of school in order to perpetrate certain noble and foolish acts of world-saving and Voldemort-slaying (which are currently accredited to none other than the wildly popular and dashingly handsome Rufus Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic and Savior of Mankind).

"That," muttered Ron, "was a run-on sentence."

"No, it wasn't" snapped Hermione, "a run-on sentence doesn't use semicolons, dashes, parentheses, and conjunctions nearly as well as that."

"You know too much!"
"No, you know too little!"
"Too much!"
"Too little!"

"Shut up!" shouted Ginny. "We've had enough pointless dialogue for one episode."

"Not just enough," said Harry, "Too much!"

And so our heroes rode on the Hogwarts Express to school to finish their seventh year of schooling – except Ginny, who was in fact going back for her sixth year. Upon their arrival, the four of them were shocked to learn that for cutting an entire year of classes, there was no way any of them – including Hermione – could be Head Boy or Girl. The Head Boy instead, now in his seventh year, was Colin Creevey; and, sporting tomatoes as earrings and cucumbers as glasses, the Head Girl was the weirdest girl ever to grace Hogwarts, none other than Loony Luna Lovegood (these two were also the first secondary characters in Ginny's year who come to mind).

"You!" exclaimed Hermione.

"Me," said Luna simply. "My father says that you four found a Crumple-Horned Snorkack last year – that's why you were gone. It's a pity. You missed the party that we threw when Rufus Scrimgeour killed Voldemort – he brought a whole bunch of Heliopaths."

"Rufus Scrimgeour didn't kill Voldemort, we did!" they all exclaimed simultaneously.

"Whoa," said Luna, shocked. "You can cut back on the unison there. I'll see you guys later." She skipped off, singing, "and they think I'm loony" to the tune of "Weasley is our King."

Shortly thereafter, the foursome bumped into Professor (Headmistress) McGonagall. "Oh, goodness, gracious, it's the four of you. You four have skipped an entire year's worth of classes! Detention for all of you!"

They all gasped and started to complain.

"For the rest of your lives!"

You got used to detention, after a while.

Neville Longbottom, many miles away, screamed. "Gerremoffme Ginny! Help! Help!"

The End.