The next morning, Serendipity, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting alone in the common room. Ron was staring into Serendipity's beautiful eyes, watching endlessly at her eyes, with pupils as black as onyx and irises the same colors that they were in the first chapter. When she blinked, her long, cascading eyelashes batted and Ron felt the wind made from the batting eyelashes flow across his face. He studied every minute nuance of her perfect face, the way her nose crooked daintily up, the way her ruby-red lips shone in the light, the way her pores and acne were, well, nonexistent… Ron drifted his eyes below her face, past her delicate, fragile collar bone, and to her two round-

"My eyes are up here, Ron," said Serendipity. Ron blushed.

"Does anyone beside me notice that these two are siblings?" asked Hermione in frustration, putting her hands in the air irritably.

"Half-siblings," corrected Harry. He had been listening to the narrative, good for him.

"Whatever!" said Hermione.

"Sorry, Hermione, but you aren't splitting up Serendipity and me just so you can have her yourself. She's your half-sister too you know," Ron smiled to himself again and looked deep into Serendipity's eyes. Serendipity noticed he had rather bad breath.

"Wha- but- ah- I'm not a lesbian Ron!" shouted Hermione. She huffed off in a storm.

"Wait a minute, Ron, Her-whatever is right. We're siblings. We can't go on like this," said Serendipity.

"Oh," said Ron sadly. "Well, may I have the engagement ring back then?" He looked down to the ground and held out his hand.

"What, are you kidding?" cried Serendipity, holding up the ruby read and hot pink ring that was conveniently not mentioned in the previous chapter. "I could get, like, 100 Galleons for this." She opened her mouth and swallowed the ring. "Now I'm beautiful on the inside," she said. The four heard canned laughter.

"Although, perhaps," said Serendipity to herself, "maybe I could learn to love Harry. I mean he's funny, smart, and has a great personality." Harry perked up. "But then again he's ugly." Harry scowled.

Hermione abruptly stood up, and with a flick of her wand the book she was reading on the chair disappeared. She said, "Well I don't know about you three, but I am going down to the Great Hall to get breakfast. Afterwards I shall look up Serendipity in the library and find out exactly why her last name is Weasley-Granger and why I saw my father and your mother, Ron, in the flashback in chapter two." After Hermione finished the blatant exposition she walked through the portrait and out of the common room.

"Did she just walk… through the portrait?" Harry asked in wonder.

"MY SPLEEN!" cried the Fat Lady.

---

Ron lathered his pancakes with syrup.

Harry lathered his pancakes with syrup.

Serendipity lathered her pancakes with syrup.

Everyone was lathering their pancakes with syrup!

Ever since Peeves had let loose the I 3 Syrup Charm, people all throughout Hogwarts had been filled with the insatiable desire to eat syrup. More and more syrup was being eaten, and the house-elves in the kitchen had to work double-time to make enough. Soon, they all started to pass out from exhaustion, and we all know when house-elves pass out, they die and their remains are bloodily scattered in the food which they last created.

Soon nobody was lathering their pancakes with syrup.

Harry was reading Weekly Wizard News with no particular interest (headline: "YOU-KNOW-WHO FOUND IMPERSONATING SANTA CLAUS") when Hermione burst into the room, tearing her skirt in her hurry, and knocked over a poor Hufflepuff second-year, who cried out in alarm. She swept her was up to the room until she reached Harry, her eyes glistening wet.

"Harry, I-" she began.

"I thought that was rather clever," Harry said.

"I found out that… erm… uh… what?"

"I just think the last sentence in the narrative was crafted well. I enjoyed the author's subtle use of puns, examples: you bursting into the room, tearing your skirt, the Hufflepuff crying out, sweeping your way up – that last one was rather inconspicuous – in a way that only few people would recognize and thus feel self-important and proud because of it. By the way your skirt's ripped."

"Blimey, crikey, Harry, don't be a bloody barmy dim dodgy duff goppin' ickle miffed bollocks-faced codswallop-talking look-at-how-British-I-am bloke! Anyway, I was in the library, and I found out that chewing gum will prevent you from crying while peeling onions, isn't that fascinating? But I also found out that my father and Ron's mother are having an affair!"

"What, in the same book?"

"It was a very specific book. But Harry, I can't believe my father is having an affair with Ron's mother! I didn't know he would do such a thing! I always thought my family had high enough standards not to stoop to the level of adultery."

As Hermione was speaking, Dumbledore appeared behind her. He cleared his throat, and Hermione spun around in surprise. His eyes twinkled. This was because long ago he had accidentally Charmed a neuron star into his retina due to a funny incident involving a toaster and Occam's Mach-3 razor, and since then his eyes had twinkled perpetually. So his eyes were twinkling as he said:

"Hermione, don't you get it? You've read many books, so I would assume you have heard of a funny little think we adults, wizards and Muggles alike, like to call connections. We very rarely accept Mudbloods into this school, and only if they possess rare qualities that would benefit this school and the wizarding world. You are homely, bossy, increasingly temperamental and immature, and you are only book-smart, which anyone can be if they read a lot of books. We wouldn't have let you in if Mrs. Weasley hadn't recommended you."

Hermione had just gotten punk'd.

---

"… and then the duck said, 'Cracker? I thought you said The locally compact (l.c.) quantum group is a relatively new C-algebraic formalism for quantum groups, generalizing the Kac algebra, compact quantum group and Hopf algebra approaches!" finished Serendipity.

Ron laughed so hard his knee spasmed and hit Serendipity's jaw, somehow. A drop of blood, redder than blood, trickled down to her chin.

Serendipity gasped. "Ron, you idiot! You just killed me!"

Ron was vaguely certain that Serendipity was not, in fact, dead, and puzzled over this.

Serendipity continued. "I'm a hemophiliac, Ron. This flow of blood will not stop until I die of blood loss."

Ron stammered, "H-H-Hemophiliac? B-B-Bu-But w-w-why?"

Serendipity shouted, "Because that's what you get when your mom and dad are siblings!" She then grew pale, and said to herself, "Shoot, I wasn't supposed to reveal that until Chapter 6."

Ron gasped even though he did not quite grasp the implications of this development. He sensed that a plot twist had just been revealed.

To prove his point, a wizard by the name of Plot von Twist suddenly appeared in the room. He yelled, "PLOT TWIST!"

He was subsequently killed by Voldemort, who had suddenly appeared in the room.