Hogwarts One Half
Chapter Fourteen

by Lionheart

I O I O I

The accused was heavily restrained, under guard and securely bound, before Minister Fudge indicated that it was time for the audience to be let into the chamber to see this very public and high profile trial.

As the gallery began to fill a certain duchess was first into the courtroom and sat in a special box near to the Minister, reserved for those of high station. Ordinarily she'd be among the last to enter and be seated, but Nodoka didn't give a rat's fart about protocol in this instance and wanted to see the accused. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked upon him and she smiled, breathing a great sigh of relief as the rest of the gallery entered.

Nodoka Malfoy had somehow arranged, between all of those class schedule changes, to put all of her Slytherin students into classes on one day of the week, Friday, to be exact. Cologne had done the same with her history lessons, getting all-Slytherins on Thursday, although her Potion classes were still all mixed up throughout the week.

All week long the Slytherins had been hearing excited stories about how great a teacher Nodoka was, and it was with some enthusiasm that they filed into her classroom back at the school, only to discover to their vast disappointment that a substitute had been called in for the day's lessons, as Nodoka was required at court.

Dropping in to see the trial was only one of her many errands to the Ministry that day. So the Slytherins got taught by Filch, still in his ancient Quidditch helmet, and Nodoka had not left her equipment out where the squib could find it.

The House of ambition found itself with classes long on theory, with no spellwork and no exposure to those techniques involving the giant pensieve, only to get saddled with large amounts of homework. And Filch didn't even teach the theory well.

Nodoka played the numbers. More Slytherins had joined Dark Lords than any other House by far. If they felt comparatively weak, that made them all less likely to go off supporting the next Dark One's cause, resulting in fewer terrorists for the Light to be forced to fight.

It was unfair. But lack of fairness had never stopped Slytherins from murdering families in the dead of night. So they'd just have to learn to deal with it.

Back at the courthouse, the court aurors went out to give the accused a measured dose of three drops of Veritaserum, but Sirius shocked everyone by slipping a hand free as if the ropes weren't there, taking the bottle from them and downing it all in one gulp, something like three hundred drops worth, before sliding his hand back under the bindings.

His only reaction was to smack his lips and ask, "Excellent! Next time could you give me cherry? Or raspberry? Much better flavors than this tasteless nonsense. Makes me think I'm drinking a glass of water, and if there was water about then I think I'd find it a higher priority to wash than drink." The man gave a theatrical sniff of himself and grimaced.

Law Enforcement officers who'd dealt with Dementor victims before shuddered in horrified belief of all those tales they'd heard from the prison guards at Azkaban. There was no way this guy was human! It just couldn't be true that he could take ten or so years in that hell and be this cheerful. People who visited for an hour or two frequently took weeks to recover a normal outlook and fully bounce back to pre-visit levels.

Judges and magistrates who'd come to witness this trial, most of whom had only ever met Dementors in person for seconds at a time, stared bug-eyed at this legendary man who'd spent more than a third of his life among them, cracking jokes and pulling pranks.

There were people in that room who feared Sirius Black more than they did Voldemort, and not for his supposed crimes, but for his virtual immortality in Azkaban prison. No one, simply no one, stood up to those conditions as well as he did. He might have been partying on the beach or lunching with royalty for all of the effects he showed of his incarceration. Guards at that facility broke down more easily than this and had to be rotated out in less time than this man had spent there a prisoner.

And yet for all this he was as fun loving as he'd been as a teenager, lounging in the chair and making a joke out of the straps and ropes.

Fudge rapped his gavel and began the questioning by addressing the prisoner. "Sirius Black, you were the Secret Keeper for James and Lily Potter, correct?"

"No. I was not." Sirius shot back with a tired grimace.

The whole court, aside from the Lady Malfoy, gasped, and Sirius began to launch into an explanation of the double-blind he and the Potters had used, pretending to have one (fake) Secret Keeper everybody knew about as a distraction to draw focus away from the person who was to carry the real secret. No one interrupted, so he continued to talk, explaining the whole event like a tired bedtime story. As the tale progressed it became clear why Sirius had gone after Peter Pettigrew, and how the depth of betrayal increased as Peter had cut off his own finger, slain several muggles, and disappeared.

Sirius only neglected to mention how he'd changed into a rat, merely saying the traitor had vanished, letting the courtroom assume that the traitor had just apparated away at that time. He did not want to launch into an explanation of his own illegal animagus abilities, as that was hardly pertinent to the murders he had been imprisoned for.

Fudge had gone slack-jawed by the end of it and one of his subordinates had to nudge him to get him speaking again before an audience rightly horrified at the injustice perpetrated by just tossing this man into prison without a chance to explain himself.

"And have you anything to say in your defense?" Fudge sputtered out a gaff that was what he'd already had loaded up in his tiny mind before asking his first question.

His popularity dropped to a new low at that moment.

"Yes," Sirius answered him back seriously. "I do. I am innocent of any hint of desire to hurt the Potters. They were my best friends, and James was closer to me than a brother. I would have died before betraying any of them. A pity that we trusted that Pettigrew felt the same way, when he obviously did not. But I have done no wrong toward anyone to be imprisoned as you have done to me."

Sirius raised his head proudly. "I have never done anything for which I need feel ashamed. Well," and here his eyes twinkled. "Except there was that time I pranked my favorite cousin to have her teeth turn blue on her first date. But apart from that! Oh, and that time I charmed Lily's dress to turn invisible just to James for that big dance he was taking her to and he was stumbling all over the place, trying not to stare but unable to concentrate on dancing. And then there was that time I pranked the Warden to excess. Come to think of it, I've done alot of things about which I ought to feel ashamed (but don't). But that's beside the point! None of those were crimes! And they were all hilarious when viewed properly."

"It was YOU!!" Andromeda Tonks, the white sheep of Sirius' cousins, came up out of her seat roaring as she pointed to the accused, then sputtered to a stop. Her muggle-born husband had a soft smile on his lips as his wife saw the whole court focused on her, and sank back down in embarrassment.

Smiling to herself, Nodoka got up to leave as she had business to attend to and it would be awhile before the court proceedings drew to a close.

I O I O I

Mister Tonks led his wife away from the courtroom, past gobs of reporters and curious spectators. Her face was in her hands and her body wracked with spasms. He'd thought she was crying until she lost sufficient muscle control that she fell to her knees, reared back and revealed that she was laughing her head off.

"BWAWAHAhahahahaha!! The DRESS!! BWHAHAHA!!" The beautiful woman hooted with complete lack of dignity. "HAHAHA!! I remember that... BWAHAHAHA!! ... dress!! It was in their fourth year." Andromeda snorted and resumed laughing so hard tears did rise. "James had just gotten Lily to go with him! She'd spent ALL EVENING!! wondering why he'd... he''d... he'd been LOOKING AT HER FUNNY!! BAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!"

The woman fell to all fours, body shuddering with great gasps, trying to breathe through all of her laughter. "Lily thought she'd spilled something, or broken some obscure wizard rule of fashion, or... AHAHAHAHAHAHAA! Oooh, my gut hurts! She'd asked ALL her friends what could be wrong with her appearance that night! And it was backless! She couldn't wear a bra under it! Thinking of him, seeing her, in nothing more than shoes and panties!! Ahaha!! Oh! The pain! I can't breathe! And then... and then she took her wand that night and checked it over for any spell she might find. OH! She was furious! She must have thought James had done it on purpose!! Wouldn't speak to him all the rest of that year! But all this time it was Sirius! bwahahahaha!!"

"BUT! but... But the last thing James said to her that evening was to reassure his date, as she'd become frantic in concern, that... HE'D NEVER SEEN HER LOOKING LOVELIER!! BWAHAHA!!"

Enduring the stares of strangers and a certain smell alerting him that Andromeda had just lost bladder control, her husband stood by the snorting, choking and hooting woman, wondering if it couldn't be counted a mercy for him to stun her and levitate her home.

I O I O I

"Ah, your ladyship, very good of you to come on such short notice," the old clerk from the depths of the Ministry's bureaucracy spoke up, standing to gesture her to a seat. Sitting again himself after she had wafted to a comfortable chair, he adjusted his glasses. "As I'm sure you're no doubt aware, very few wizards hold titles. Unfortunately for us, that means we are dependent on muggle royalty for some decisions. Oh, there are work arounds, but they are tedious processes. Half the workers at the Ministry are dedicated to making us trudge through red tape that wouldn't have any need of existing at all if we had a proper noble to make choices for us."

Seeing her polite yet curious stare, the clerk smiled softly. "Oh, forgive me, I'm always here, and forget so easily that others don't understand the Ministry as well as I do. Our ancestors grew up in a monarchy, and always thought a monarchy would be the way things got run. As we separated from our muggle kin rules were set up by wizards to govern us more or less independently, but those rules were created by those who'd had kings for all of their lives, and always imagined they would. So quite a few processes of wizarding government boil down to 'Ask a noble', and yet we've always had few magical folk in the nobility, as the rest of the peerage felt threatened by their greater abilities - and it must be admitted, in some cases, lack of scruples in using those powers wisely. So the Crown has been very reluctant to issue new titles for us, and as war, inbreeding leading to insanity, and other forms of attrition bled us of our small supply of noble blood we have increasingly had to rely upon long, overly-complicated bureaucratic processes to work around what could be done with a noble's stamp and seal."

The old clerk folded his hands and looked at the duchess seriously over the rims of his glasses. "In short, Your Grace, other than your daughter you are the only noble witch in all of England that is not insane, permanently crippled, or otherwise unsuitable, and we need you to approve and sign things. Might I ask how you came by your many titles?"

"They have been for sale now for many years," Nodoka replied reasonably. "They never even asked if I was a witch or not."

"Excellent. You are not required to tell them if they do not ask. Hopefully among us there may be a few more with the money to purchase nobility. If that is so the Ministry can fade to a shadow of what it is now, and speaking as an insider, the magical world would be better for that. Far better. So, Your Grace, unless you have objections, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave your teaching post and come here to help us run our government."

Nodoka gave a single shake of her head. "No, I'm sorry, but I must object. My daughter and her friends are all in school now, and I had very little time with them growing up. I won't allow myself to be a stranger to my child or her social circle, and teaching their classes gives me access to their lives and a way to be a part of their upbringing. I won't surrender that. At least not while they are still in school."

"I see," the man adjusted his glasses again. "Then perhaps I could persuade you to give us some time during the week? A weekday of course, unfortunately the Ministry does not run anything but essential services on weekends. I must stress this is vital. Too much power is already accumulating in the Minister's unwise hands, and he uses it foolishly."

The duchess smiled. "How does Friday sound?"

"That will serve, Your Grace. If I could beg from you a second day, I would, but will not press it." The man humbly began making notes.

The noblewoman's smile had become brilliant. "Then I shall have to move her birthday present forward, and get my best friend Cologne a patent of nobility. She even has some experience running a magical government, as she is one of the matriarchs of a Chinese Amazon magical village."

The clerk gave her the smile of a man long tired of an impossible job seeing relief at last. "That could be better than I'd hoped for, Your Grace. Two nobles, not related by close ties of blood, are required to make decisions for so many things. I had given up hope of seeing that in my lifetime, but it simplifies so many tedious yet important tasks. Do you think she could give us another day, perhaps Thursday, or Monday? It's better if she gives us time close to what you've offered to us, yet not overlapping."

"Obviously I cannot commit for her," Nodoka enjoyed this moment. "But I think she'll give you Thursdays."

I O I O I

Sirius came out of the Ministry exit onto Diagon Alley to be greeted at the bottom of those steps by a fancy carriage with Nodoka waiting inside it.

Without a question he was inside and the driverless vehicle took off. Sitting in the heavily warded cab with her mother and the recently released innocent man was Ranko, who followed her mother's gentle gesture towards Sirius. "Ranko, I would like you to meet your father."

There came an astonished pause.

"Unfortunately, this isn't him." Nodoka sighed, while Sirius grinned.

"What do you mean, mom?" Ranko's eyes blinked in curiosity.

Nodoka sighed. "It's quite simple, actually. This is not Sirius Black."

Ranko sensed a story. "Perhaps you'd better tell me from the beginning, mom. That makes the really complicated tales turn out best, I've found."

Her mother nodded agreeably, her mind already lost in distant memory. "Dumbledore found me not long after I'd fled to Japan, I'm afraid. The only reason Voldemort didn't know was Dumbledore had not yet 'recruited' Snape at that time, so he couldn't spill that secret like he did so many others. Though if you want to be honest, Dumbledore did not recruit Snape any more than you did, Ranko. I've got proof and dozens of Death Eater memories of Voldemort ordering Snape to 'defect' and join the Light Side, so he could have his own spy in Dumbledore's order of vigilantes. So he was, and is, I suppose, a double agent. Both sides knew he worked for the other, but the great difference was that Albus trusts so easily that he gave 'his man' great secrets and Voldemort did not, leaving the Light to get crumbs, scraps and tidbits while the Dark collected the real meat from that exchange."

Sirius grinned playfully, leaning against the side of the shielded cab. "Please. Must you call him so respectfully? I hurts my ears. I prefer 'That Great Git', 'The Greasy Vampire' or, best of all, our own pet name for him: 'Snivellus'."

"Snivellus." Nodoka tasted that name, and found she liked it if her smile was anything to judge by. "Well, to get back to my story, Dumbledore found me early on, and tried several times to recruit me to join his own Order of the Phoenix, for most of those same reasons that Voldemort wanted me to serve him. One of the messengers he sent was the most charming Pureblood I'd ever met."

"Mom." Ranko's tone indicated that her mother was wandering off topic again, and it was time to get to the heart of it.

Nodoka fiddled with her wrapped bundle, looking out the window, as she admitted. "Well, this isn't going to come out for some while yet, but Ranma, you are Sirius Black's son. Not a lot of people know that, especially not those on the dark side, and I'd prefer things remain that way for a while, for reasons I'd love to get into, but you are too impatient to hear as I've put off telling you your lineage for long enough. I'm truly sorry, girl."

"It's okay, mom. A chunk of three day old sushi woulda made a better father than Genma. Just don't keep me waiting, okay? I want to know."

"Very well, dear."

"Perhaps I can speed this up." Sirius broke in, flinging an arm about Ranko and facing her mother with the widest possible grin that a human face could support. "After Nodoka fled, Dumbledore found her fairly early. She would not respond to his pleas to return, however, so he tried a couple of things. Her closest, dearest friends were my three cousins: Narcissa, Bellatrix and Andromeda, and while none of those were available to do long range secret missions recruiting for the Light, I was, so Dung-Bomb-boy sent me."

Nodoka was nodding, "even though I believe the dates work out so he was still in school at the time. We fell in love, and a baby I named Ranma was the result. You got the 'wild' part of your name in honor of your father's prankster attitude and untamable ways."

Sirius bent down low over Ranko's ear, still watching Nodoka as he whispered. "I took an aging potion for the mission, so I looked the same age as your mother for the time I'd be over there. Romantic men have much better appeal to lonely women than teenagers, you know, and Double-dork thought I'd have a much better chance to get her to return being suave and sexy. But it didn't work, I was back in school by the time she had you, without a possibility for parole. No portkey, no visiting. I didn't even truly know where your mother was, and she was hidden so well I didn't dare go looking without a hint of where to start. So I bugged the Bubble-Fart for information, but he never did drop a clue."

"I did make one trip back, before this one." Ranko's mother admitted shyly. "When I'd heard that Voldemort fell I came immediately to rejoin Sirius, who I still very much love. But I found him in the grasp of dozens of Aurors, taking him under arrest."

"What did you do?" Ranko breathed so softly if it hadn't been so silent in the carriage she never could have been heard.

Nodoka stopped watching the scenery go by and turned a face lined with tears to her child. "I pretended to hate him, walked right up to him through I don't know how many aurors, and gave him my best slap on one cheek."

Sirius couldn't wait to explain, so he busted into her monologue with the gritty details, all excited to share them with Ranko. "You see, she was wearing a hollow ring on her hand, with a needle toward the palm. She'd already opened a cut in her finger to fill that ring with living blood, and when she slapped me the needle cut my face, mixing both fluids so there was a blood connection between us in that instant. Then she twirled the Time Turner she'd kept in her pocket with her other hand."

"Ten spins," Nodoka agreed. "Because of that momentary link he came with me ten hours into our past, before there came aurors, or anyone, onto that site. I calmed him down and got him to explain what had happened."

"Then she did the Greatest Thing!" Sirius broke in once again, only to catch Nodoka's glance and pretend fear, curling up and covering his lips. "Oops."

The duchess smiled. "I wasn't about to let my love be arrested for something he'd never done. So I convinced him to hide (no easy thing, I assure you), and made a replacement. I grabbed an old dressmaker's dummy I had in my trunk. But those are just torsos, so I tore off some sleeves and filled them with padding, sewing them on for arms, then did the same with some pants, gloves and socks to make the rest of a human form."

Sirius could contain his excitement no longer, and gleefully explained to the young girl. "She transfigured it to look like me, a pretty advanced Animated Transfiguration if you ask me, like the ones they use to create Wizards' Chess pieces animated and able to play at fighting."

"And then I painted that with magical paints with a spark of his personality to them to create a walking portrait, which I sealed against the elements so filth and wetness couldn't ruin it." Nodoka nodded, pleased at her success.

The false Sirius pulled open his shirt and encouraged Ranko to poke his chest. "I look real, I feel like the real deal to the touch, and I certainly ACT like the real Sirius, and can move and walk and talk just like the real Sirius Black thanks to the magic of my creation. But I'm not truly alive. So I don't bruise, can't suffer starvation (had to cram all of my food down the toilet, all of those bits I didn't use for pranks, that is), won't be afflicted by poor hygiene or diseases, couldn't care less about the light level or temperature in my environment, and best of all I'm completely immune to a Dementor's powers. They even had one kiss me once, in secret when they didn't think anybody would know, or care, and I'd been annoying them too much. I just planted a big, wet, sloppy one right back on that thing's tentacled face and gave the guards a heart attack! I LOVED the looks on their faces!"

The painted double continued to gloat, gleefully. "I can turn my pulse on or off, don't need to breathe at all really, and can just drop the act to play very convincingly dead. Ooh! You won't even guess how many times I used that to prank guards in that place! Then, because I am mostly cloth beneath all of the magic, I could slip out of bonds or between bars, weigh as little as I wanted to, and could sneak into the guard's quarters to lay atop them, leering with great big evil grins, playing dead right on top of them, eye to eye, waiting for them to wake up. OOOOOHH!! You should have seen those faces! Bwahaha!!"

The fake Sirius broke up laughing, unable to contain his mirth as he fell of his seat and rolled about the carriage floor, holding his gut.

Nodoka had calmed down enough to give a wan smile. "It took five hours of ritual magic just to get him shielded enough so those people couldn't detect or cancel the magic I'd used to make him. Dumbledore probably could have told I'd done it, but he never visited. And once our replacement was done, I loaded it with those chains I'd taken off Sirius, took it to the exact spot and positions we had been in as I'd slapped him, and reset my own custom Time Turner to take us forward to the moment we'd left. I'm told we didn't even flicker as I'd made the switch. Then I simply walked away from aurors and my replacement Sirius, as if in an angry huff over his 'betrayal'."

"Your mother is truly a brilliant witch to have pulled that off." The false Sirius confided to the young girl. "You'd not believe how complicated that charm was she cast to get herself and me in exactly the right places doing exactly the same things during our arrival, mid-slap, I'd like to add!" The animated dummy rolled back to sprawl over the seat. "AND, pulled my old wand out of an auror's pocket, switching that with a fake as she walked off, all upset over me. Even that fake had to be almost as top notch as I was, just in case they examined it before they broke it."

Nodoka giggled, covering her mouth. "I did make one or two little mistakes, like when they checked the wand (and I did make a real wand out of those same materials to replace his, just that mine was lower grade, second rate at best), when they checked it they'd found the last spell that it had been used to cast was a hair-styling charm. They've been puzzling over that ever since. Well, until today, probably."

"So, you're just a scarecrow, like from the Wizard of Oz, huh?" Ranko turned toward the amazingly real and lifelike replacement, who was at last lying down.

"After recent experience I prefer the term Scare-Snape, myself." The false Sirius replied. "And I don't know about this Oz fellow, or what he did to compare to your mother's genius. She fooled the whole Ministry to her benefit, you know that? Even at my best I never did a prank that good."

Ranko turned to face her mother, asking innocently. "I guess now I get to know my real dad, at least by proxy anyway. Right?"

Nodoka was shaking her head sorrowfully. "I'm sorry dear. 'Sirius' is something of a legend in Azkaban because of the complete immunity he shows toward the effects of dementors, but that's because he's just a painting. Once Dumbledore hears of his release he'll try to get Sirius back into his Order again, and there is no way he won't discover this Sirius is a fake. He'll be able to see through my spells preventing our walking portrait from being revealed. I'm sure he's already heard of his Dementor immunity and was always going to 'get around' to dropping by to see how he did it, so he could use that defense for his own people. So Dumbledore will seek him out now for those reasons, and others."

The duchess sighed mournfully. "But I'd only ever prepared this dummy to take Sirius' place in prison. Outside of that environment, I'm afraid that he can be exposed very easily. For instance, your father is among the more powerful mages in Britain, but his Scare-Snape double is completely incapable of doing magic other than what I built into him, which is just to pretend life. That enables most of magical society to see that something is wrong right off. I'd wondered about saying that his prison term damaged his magic core, or twisted it in some way, but then medi-witches, healers and researchers would descend upon him and carry him off to St. Mungo's to fix that problem for him, and they'd find out this wasn't a real person awfully quickly themselves. And he couldn't, realistically, refuse."

"So what happened to my real father, where is he?" Ranko asked, concerned.

Surprisingly, it was the Scare-Snape that answered. "The real Sirius got obsessed about going back in time and saving the Potters. He left, vanishing, and Nodoka hasn't seen him since. He could be anywhere, or anywhen for that matter."

"And his Scare-Snape will have to vanish too, I'm afraid." Nodoka whispered softly. "It is so much easier to decide on reasons for him leaving than it would be to cover up his flaws if he were to remain here. We can easily say he's got no faith in Britain's magical government, for one. That is the reason I didn't stay after my one, brief return. I was terrified that the Ministry had gotten just as bad as Voldemort in their fear of him."

Now sitting on the padded bench again beside Ranko, the animated doll with magic paints that looked and acted surprisingly like a real person added, "I can also say I'd like to stretch my legs after so long between walls, just vanish and drop off the face of magical Britain."

"That might be best." Nodoka nodded sadly, looking at the carriage floor.

"So," Ranko put some thought into how to phrase this delicately. "What are we going to do with the Scare-Snape? He can't actually roam the continent, could he?"

"No, because without magic he'd be discovered easily, and once discovered exposed." Her mother sighed, looking back up at her traveling companions. "Well, with his horrid mother gone, how about we renovate that house he grew up in and let him stay there? He can talk with the other paintings and keep the House Elf company while reading the Black library. That was where the real Sirius went to try and discover a way to get back in time and save the Potters, so our best route of discovering your father's path is to have our Scare-Snape research it from the same source. I can just put that building under Fidelius Charm so no one could find him while he works. How is that?"

"Can I prank my mother's portrait?" The false Sirius asked regally.

"Of course!" She giggled.

"Then you've got a deal!"

"Ranko, we'll need you. The Black family House Elf is a difficult one, and seeing as how you are the only remaining direct descendant of the Black family line (and Sirius names you as such, and sole heir in his will) you'll have to give Kreacher a few very specific and carefully worded direct orders for this to work right: Making it obey our fake Sirius for one, ignoring his mother's portrait for another. Cleaning duties must be resumed also, I've stopped by and that home is a mess. Would you like to carry the secret for us? It's a good experience that teaches a good many things about your own magic. Plus, this way you can visit our fake to get to know your real father a little."

"Sure mom." Ranko beamed.

I O I O I

"Minerva, I have found the substance that was used for this catastrophe." Dumbledore said as he entered his office and placed a plastic bottle of fabric softener upright on his wooden desk. "But I am afraid I am no closer to finding the culprit. I suggest you go looking in your House, as others are now doing to theirs. Perhaps the guilty party will come forward on their own."

Minerva McGonagall was shaking her head. "I'd never have imagined something could have affected the Sorting Hat, that anyone could dare try! But after what happened... what it did Wednesday night, first refusing to Sort, then it's songs have gotten so silly... I could no longer doubt it. Albus, what are we going to do?"

"We have only until Sunday night left to do reSorting. Perhaps if we find the guilty party he or she can tell us what charm of jinx they used with this muggle potion and counter it. If not, then we will have to get through this year as best we may, and trust in the students to deal with everything in spite of difficulty. Come, McGonagall. We must search quickly."

As the two left, the Sorting Hat up on its shelf cracked an eye open, then struggled upright, hopped down off the high perch, fluttering to land after a short glide on the desk, knocking a few instruments askew as it did so. Then it waddled forward over to the bottle, gripped it in its brim like a pair of mittens, doffed the cap and tilted the bottle back to guzzle its contents.

Shorty after the Professors had reached the first dorm room, the school's magical PA came to life, with the improbably loud voice of the Sorting Hat singing:

"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrick Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schloegel.

"There's nothin' Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

"John Stewart Mill, of his own free will,
on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle. Hobbes was fond of his dram.
Rene Descartes was a drunken fart. "I drink therefore I am." "

"Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed."

When they at last broke back into the Headmaster's office (the password had been changed to "Schnapps"), they found the drunken hat collapsed over the pickup, snoring away.

Dumbledore righted the spilled bottle, waving his wand to encourage all of the liquid back into the plastic container. "Minerva, I believe we have a problem. Who was able to get into my office and do this?"

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

It's almost hard to realize why more people don't use the Sorting Hat, y'know? It can be quite a character.