"God damn! What have I done!?"

The shout echoed through the still empty halls and archways of Hogwarts School for witchcraft And Wizardry... Down down down it flowed the steps to the very basements themselves and they pooled like viscous puddles of ferocious sound.

And yet.

There was no one to hear those cries... no one but the man himself who uttered them hence, Dumbeldore!

The old man stooped over the fallen boys who had broken their spines in some foolish prank to win his respect and here he had gone and crippled them, for life probably, like Kraug, probobly. The dark haired twin, Seamus, was still concious, his light haired brother, Wayne, was far gone into sleep, far to gone for questions, for speech, for anything but sleep.

That was probably for the best. If he knew anything about paralyzed teens, and with Kraug around he sure knew a lot, it was that they could be eplosively more moody than able bodied teens. They also were more cunning and trecherous than their mobile counterparts ands could not be trusted. But everyone knows that. Dumbledore knew he couldn't wait another moment, and with renewed resolve and focus he rushed to Filtch's closet to get the duct tape.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles above the Atlantic ocean, Harry was gaping into a swirling void of confusion and mystery. He had just seen Padma walk down the aisle to take her seat whilst he was on his way to the toilet, and yet... here stood Padma right in front of him! He turned away from he like a whiplash and splashed some cold water in his face, staring in the mirror, willing himself to go on, to live another day. He hurried out of there and retook his seat, trying to act casual.

None of the other passengers paid him any mind as he trundled past them, whistling under his breath. His palms were sweaty but no one could see it and he figured he was far enough away from America that no one would try to shake his hand so he figured he would be just fine and that no on ewould notice his slimy sweat greased hands. But then he remembered the strange red headed fellow that had made love to Padma about an hour earlier, he sure did like to shake hands if Harry remembered correctly, so he darted back down the aisle and went to the luggage section of the plane and got out his invisiblity cloak which he had packed just in case.

With the confidance of the invisible Harry gtlided passed "Ron", whoever the hell that meant, and plopped into his seat. He slipped the cloak off slow enough that he didn't draw attention to himself and then wrapped his left arm around Luna. She was still asleep and snuggled into his rock hard abs, dreaming of another time, another plane.

He had managed to get away from shaking hands with anyone and no one seemed to be staring at him openly, but Harry was still worried that the other pasengers could tell he was losing his mind. Because clearly, the years of toil and worry, the sleepless nights jumping at every sound and scrape of twig and branch, all the days spent earnestly praying to the night to never come, they had finally applied enough pressure to snap his already fragile hormone soaked teen psyche. He knew that this was comoing, of course, he had been expecting it since his 13th birthday, the day he watched Doby commit suicide, he knew..,. 'there's no coming back from this,' he could remember thinking it and the internal voice and tone he'd used and everything, 'some things you don't come back from, so many things, so many memories...'

Too many memories...

Harry tried to ease his breathing, to slow his heart rate so that it didn't burst out of his chest, spraying a bewildered, screaming Luna with a gout of blood, a crimson geyser ending his detective agency all too soon. He managed to calm down and tried to replay the facts, was the bathroom very dark? Padma was colored and those types tend to blend into the shadows, maybe he just saw a stray patch of darkness and his mind filled in the blanks, he had just seen moments before so it was perfectly plausible... and yet.

And yet he did not believe that he had mislooked. What he had seen in the bathroom had been real, a real hallucination, not an eye speck or a stroke. Harry Potter, the boy who lived, was criminaly insnae. And the clock was ticking.

MEANWHILE, IN UTAH

Hermione gasped. She slapped her hand to cover her mouth so quickly that she bloodied her lip but she did not even notice that. Before her she saw... herself. Only so much more. Giga Granger stood 100 feet tall, made of thousands upon thousands of Hermiones stacked upon, atop, and akimbo to each other, each strand of hair was dozens of Hermione's from alternate dimensions holding themselves in a 20 Hermione long chain, wrists to ankles. Her eyes were made of a half dozen Hermione's doing splits and contursions to affect the exact shape and function of a real working cornea.

At first glance Giga Hermione seemed to be standing perfectly still. But this was not so. Her skin was literaly crawling with Hermiones and Hermione Lion Hearted gasped anew. She suddenly realized what she had seen at firszt to be a hollow shell of altnerate Hermione's clinging to one another was really a fully functioning oragism with a rich interior life. She let her mind wander pleasantly, thinking about joining Giga Hermione some day, what it would be like, to never be alone... What sort of things go on in there? She wondered, fruitlessly.

Before she or Kraug could speak Giga Hermione threw her hands over her face with an embaressed wail, tears fell, each made of a Hermione, balled up tight and perfectly spherical, until they hit the ground and spread out like a splash but with a human, Hermione, body. The Time Child did not understand at all, until Mecha Granger 20-30 pointing out something to her, something that was laying on the ground nearby where Giga Granger had just woken up from, she'd been sleeping until just recently. Mecha Granger 20-30 pointed to something that made everything clear, something made of about 60 or 70 so Hermiones and laying flat on the ground next to an extra large bed. It was a robe of Hermione's, and Giga Hermione must that thought that Hermione and Mecha Granger 20-30 had been peeping at her naked on purpose!

"Just Imagine!" The Time child sputtered and stammered indignantly. "We come all this way and she thinks we are perverted now!" She kicked a rock and sent it tumbling away down into the Grand Canyon, she was in a right awful mood now for sure.

"I know it really is too much!" Mecha Granger 20-30 agreed sulkily. She vroomed next to her vacation partner with a pnuematic whooshing noise and patted her on the back with a consoling gun arm. "Back that's enough of this feel sorry for ourselves business!" She decided suddenly, "that business is going under and the business of clearing our names once and for all is too big to fail!"

"That's right!" The time child agreed, fervently, "we should go find her and clear up this whole situation!" The clasped hands and ran together into the sunset, looking ahead for whatever crazy thing life had in store for them next. After the vacation they'd had the felt ready to take on the world, ready to really get out there and start making a difference.