29-Dec-1993

Harry was headed to the great hall for dinner when it happened. Given all of the other crazy things he had put up with, it should not have surprised him in the least. But it still did, and he leaped backwards with an awkward "Eep!" as a shimmering wall of rippled blue-white filled the corridor in front of him, contained in an apparent stone ring.

It was a magic castle. These things should be expected, right? And the sizzling sound of meat thrown onto a too-hot grill should cause no concern, right?

When nothing happened after several moments, Harry calmed down somewhat, and relaxed his shaking hand – lowering his wand in the process. He was unclear what he might do magic-wise to the strange thing, but it clearly was not advancing toward him or doing anything threatening. There was a vague smell in the air, one that was slightly unpleasant like an electrical fire was about to start, but nothing was really changing. Except the surface of .. whatever it was. That whatever just happened to keep rippling and changing.

When the head – a visibly human-like head – popped out and looked around, Harry was not entirely surprised. It was clearly an older man-like face, mostly grey hair, a bit of a bushy beard, and rather piercing green eyes.

The face saw Harry and smiled brightly. "Hello, then!" he said, in perfectly acceptable English. "May I ask your name?"

"Ahh," Harry said, wondering at the wisdom of talking to a random head sticking out of a rippling surface in the middle of a corridor blocking his path to dinner, "it's Harry."

"Very good!" the man-thing said. "Is it all right if I step through?"

"Err," Harry said, looking around, but there were no adults in the vicinity and the portraits were all staring slack-jawed at the head in the surface. "Do you need permission?"

"Well, no," the man replied, "but I thought it right proper to ask. I wouldn't want someone just barging into my home, you know?"

"Yes," Harry said slowly, "that would be a bit rude. So what's your name, then?"

"Oh! I do apologize," the head said, "but I go by Jim. It's a pleasure to meet you, Harry."

"Right, uh, Jim," Harry said, wishing desperately that he had a different route that he could take – or perhaps that he had decided to skip dinner after all. "So, err, what do you need to step through for?"

"Oh, it's nothing much," maybe-Jim said, "I just need to figure out where my doorway has wound up. It's a bit of a bother, you know, when it jumps from one place to another, and I haven't got the foggiest notion of where it is at the moment."

"Hold on," Harry said, suddenly curious, "you mean that's a doorway? And you're using it like the Floo?"

"The flu?" Jim asked, clearly surprised. "What's an illness got to do with a doorway?"

"Illness?" Harry said, then shook his head. "No, no, not the flu, like the virus. The floo, like in the fireplace."

"What?" Jim shot back. "What's a fireplace got to do with a doorway?"

"Err," Harry said slowly, suddenly uncertain if they were speaking English after all. "You know, you have your fireplace connected to the Floo network, throw a dash of Floo powder in, speak your destination, and off you go?"

Jim just stared at Harry silently for a very long moment. "You're telling me your have a fireplace network? Really?"

"So I've been told," Harry said with a shrug. "I used it once, couldn't stand it."

"Well," said Jim, "that's new. Say, can I come through? This is killing my knees, and I'd love to sit and ask you a few questions."

"Where are you coming from?" Harry asked, a bit more cautious.

"Oh, I'm down by Piccadilly. Bit of a circus here, you know," Jim said brightly. "Where are you?"

"Err, Scotland somewhere. Not sure exactly, never saw it on a map," Harry said. "You just want a few questions, and then you're off?"

"Yes, yes," Jim said eagerly. "I'll have to move my doorway, obviously, but there's no reason for me to be there more than about twenty questions worth!"

"Alright then," Harry said, "come on. I'd like to get to my dinner, and your doorway is, well, blocking it."

"Oh, sorry about that, Harry," Jim said with a wince. "One mo' –"

Jim's head withdrew, and suddenly there was a giant sucking noise before a loud "pop!" announced Jim's arrival, sprawled all over the floor, face-first.

"I think my doorway hates me," Jim muttered as he got to his feet. "Always gives me the worst landing."

"Heh," Harry chuckled, "I have yet to meet a magical form of transport that likes me, other than brooms."

Jim paused in dusting his clothes off, staring hard at Harry. "Did you say magic?"

"Err, yes?" Harry asked, confused as to why Jim would ask given that he had clearly arrived in some kind of instant transportation device powered by magic. What else could pop you several hundred miles in an eyeblink?

"Hmmm," Jim said, before he pulled out a notebook and a muggle pen. "I think I should start my questions, then."

"Alright," Harry replied, waiting as Jim flipped through a bunch of pages before settling down.

"Now," Jim said, "What do you think the current date and time are?"

Harry blinked for a moment, and then thought that maybe there was something about that whole 'relativity' thing and clocks he had heard about once upon a time in a vague way. "It's the 29th of December, 1993, and about ten minutes after 6 pm."

"Right," Jim said, scribbling something down. "That's not so odd. And you said you use magic, right?"

"Yes," Harry affirmed, waving his wand vaguely, which caused a weak spark to shoot out of the tip and drift toward the floor.

"So it is," Jim nodded, marking something else down. "Ever heard of Cthulu?"

"Is that some kind of punk rock band?" Harry asked, having no idea of what Jim was on about.

"That's a no, then," Jim muttered. "Ah, how about resurrection? Is that a thing here?"

"Err," Harry said, taking a half step back. "Maybe?"

"Maybe?" Jim asked, lowering his notebook. "How is there an answer to a binary question with a probability?"

"Well," Harry started slowly, "there's the whole religious thing with the Christians and Catholics and whatnot, they certain believe it happened a couple thousand years ago or so. But then there's Voldemort, the evil guy seems to be not quite dead and keeps trying to get a new body back for the past few years."

"I see," Jim said, tapping the pen to his teeth for a moment. "I guess we'll call that a 'yes' that there is belief in it, but 'no' that no one has seen it happen."

"Sounds fair," Harry said, "though how did you not know that stuff?"

"Oh," Jim said with a shrug, as he noted something down in his notebook, "I've found that sometimes I'm out of touch with reality. Too much time working on my doorway, you might say."

"Hmm," Harry said while taking another slow half-step back. "I suppose so, I've got a friend who can be rather focused at times."

"That's the spirit," Jim said happily. "Now, here's a tough one – what do you think this planet is called?"

"Earth?" Harry half-asked, half-stated. "Some people might call it Dirt."

"I see," Jim said, muttered 'Earth' as he wrote in his notebook. "How many moons are there on this Earth?"

"One," Harry said immediately. "Well, assuming no one's hidden one somewhere."

Jim paused and stared at Harry. "They can do that?"

"No idea, really," Harry said. "I'd've said no a couple of years ago, but learning magic has made me rethink a lot of things."

"Huh," Jim muttered, before quietly stating 'one moon, wanded magic users, Earth, sort of resurrections, no Elders, temporal locality' and then looking back at Harry. "Almost there, Harry, almost there. How many continents on this planet?"

"Uh, seven," Harry said.

"Unless someone hid some?" Jim asked.

"Yeah," Harry said back, shuffling his feet a bit. Really, people were making dimensional pockets for clothing and furniture, Fidelius Charms, invisibility cloaks, unplottable villages – who was to say there were not more continents, just hidden and lost in time? Or a few dozen more moons that had become private homes?

"Right," Jim said, making a notation. "Is the world still running democracy experiments? Or have they settled on benevolent elected dictatorships yet?"

Harry stared back at Jim. "Err, unkind dictators and democracies – and a theological state or two, I think," he offered.

"Right, still experimenting," Jim said as he made another mark. "Any alien overlords?"

"Err," Harry said, backing further away, "no?"

"Or not that you're aware of," Jim said brightly. "Am I right?"

"I'd like to think so, but with the way some of the politicians act, who could tell the difference between a smart slug and a leader? Would aliens really be worse?" Harry asked, thinking of how Fudge threw Hagrid into Azkaban just to be seen 'doing something' instead of solving real problems.

"Right, no overlords," Jim said as he marked something else down. "I suppose the answer to your question is whether the overlords think of you as food. Is inbreeding a problem here?"

"With magicals?" Harry asked, amused. "It's ridiculous. For the rest of the world? They know better."

"Right, inbreeding," Jim said, making a note. "What do velociraptors look like? Leathery skin or feathered?"

"Uhh," Harry said. "Not sure. I think the dinosaurs were supposed to be the ancestors of birds, so I guess feathered?"

"Maybe feathers," Jim muttered. "Okay, then, last question – do you have shrimp here?"

"Shrimp?" Harry asked back. "Like short people? Or the seafood? I don't think it's a healthy habit to call short people 'shrimp', mind you."

Jim smiled back, and made another note. "The seafood, Harry, the seafood. Right then. I believe I'm in the western arm of the Milky Way galaxy, in the Sol system, on the third planet, in the reality of No-Elders, Yes-Resurrection, Yes-Magic, No-Stability, Yes-Inbreeding, Yes-Feathered Velociraptors, and Yes-Shrimp. By my calculations," Jim said as he scribbled a bit more, "this dimension has those seven unique prime factors."

"Err, dimension?" Harry asked.

"Right," Jim said absently, "dimension. Lots of dimensions, and figuring out which one my door has opened into has become a bit of an exercise. Those questions pretty quickly narrow it down, so now I can figure out how to get it to go back home."

"With shrimp?"

"No, no," Jim said with a laugh, "goodness me, we don't have them. That's a prime factor, separates the seventh power of universes from the rest. We do have Cthulu, though, which is why I made my door. Be glad you don't."

"Err, okay?" Harry said as he took another step back.

Jim reached up to the ring around the rippling doorway surface, pulled open a panel, and set a series of switches. With a final push of a big red button, the doorway stopped rippling and became a polished mirror. Turning to look back at Harry, he simply said, "Thanks, Harry. It was nice to meet you. Sorry about the delay, but please enjoy your dinner – and have some shrimp for me, yeah?"

"Err," Harry said. "Sure. Dinner with shrimp."

"That's the idea!" Jim said as stepped into the mirror, exclaiming, "Hopefully I won't have to come back here soon!" Then everything – mirror, frame, and Jim the interloper – vanished with a "pop!" leaving the corridor empty again.

Harry turned to stare at the portraits, who were now staring back at him.

"That happened, didn't it?" he asked after a moment.

- Fragments of Thought -

AN:

I'm pretty sure this bit of mindless insanity stands alone. How would you figure out what dimension you wind up in if you happen to step through a random portal? Indirect compliments to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett go here.

The prior chapter gathered interesting responses and PMs. I deliberately put no A/N substance after it, but perhaps I should have. So here's the extended commentary A/N that could have appeared for that chapter:

Yes, it's pretty long for a direct quote from JKR's work. I was trying to find a way to cut it down further than what I did, but from what I used, I need parts of the beginning, middle, and end. And as I read back through it, I also realized that it played out differently than I remembered. The battle with the basilisk, for example, took less than a minute from what's on the page. Too much time, too much fanfic, too much gaming, or too much consideration of the movies has warped what really happened in the canon universe vs. what people think actually happened and all that fanfic that was written with the warp or deliberate author dramatization.

Ultimately I just left it together. Sure there are parts I could excise, and turn it into a bit of a choppy mess. And I expected some people to just skim over it and not read it. But it does lend strongly to the state of mind necessary for Harry's act at the end.

And the fascinating part (to me) is how the reader's personal view of canon, Dumbledore, Harry, and the Weasleys will change what happens next .. so many options, directions, and scenarios arise from that one "small" act.