Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons or a cat.

The Christmas break was beginning, and the gang would not be staying at Hogwarts. It was hard to relax with all those dementors flying around. This time, it was Ginny who extended an invitation to everyone to stay at the Burrow. And so they all accepted, and the group boarded the Hogwarts Express.
"This will be the most Slytherins to ever gather in that place." Ginny told them. "I don't know how mom will fish it, but I'm sure she will."
"So, gaming while we travel?" Hermione suggested.
"We may lose track of time." Marc shook his head.
"True..." Hermione said.

Just then, the doors to their compartment opened and they encountered a small tactical squad of freckled redheaded younglings.
"Hello." Ginny waved.
"Yo." Harry nodded.
"Greetings." Draco decided to be polite.
"Whaddup." Marc waved.
"Hi." Hermione greeted them.
"Meow." Floppa meowed.
"We heard you were staying with us." Fred said.
"So we thought we'd drop in." George added.
"Are any of you pranksters?" Fred asked. "We never quite got to know each other too well."
"My style of pranking typically involves putting bears in people's furniture." Marc shrugged.
"That's cool." George said. "We've got some funny products to test."
"Based, will try 'em." Marc promised.
"Anyone play chess?" Ron asked.
"Warhammer 40k is more my thing." Harry replied. "But I'd be willing to try chess."
"Mind if we sit with you guys?" Fred asked.
"Sure." Hermione agreed. "There's enough space for all of us."
"Have you done the last Defense homework yet?" Harry asked. "The one Snape assigned, about the werewolf, for after the holidays."
"We've got weeks for it..." Ron replied. "Don't tell me you've done yours already."
"Yeah, it was easy." Harry replied.
"Trivial, even." Marc agreed, pulling out his own parchment where the words HOW TO FISH A WEREWOLF'S BEAR were written in big bold letters. "Werewolves are really overhyped, I don't get people who die to them above the age of three."
"A werewolf is a Class XXXXX creature." Percy interjected. "Those things are known wizard-killers."
"The number of Xs actually means the year of Hogwarts education after which an encounter with one should be trivial to you." Ginny said.
"That would be half the number of Xs rounded up." Hermione disagreed.
"Highop pureblood Hogwarts students would be able to take on an XXXX in their first year." Draco pointed out.
"Basilisks are fish." Marc yawned.
"Nundus are silly little meowers." Harry said. "But somehow they're classified on the same level as dragons because nobody was smart enough to subdue one without 99 other wizards helping out."
"We live in a society." Ginny commented.
"That we do." Marc confirmed. "Big Floppa is better than a nundu anyway."
Floppa nodded in agreement.
"Do you mean to say you believe your cat could handle a nundu in a fight?" Percy asked.
"PvP is utterly defunct." Marc explained. "So it's more a question of which of the two is better at fighting in a world war, though Big Floppa is absolutely superior to a nundu in a 1v1 as well."
"Meow." Floppa agreed enthusiastically, flexing his meowscles.
"You do know that nundus are more threatening than dragons?" Percy asked.
"Dragons are only scary in large numbers." Harry explained. "And by large numbers, I don't think there are that many dragons."

They spent the rest of the journey shitposting about daily life at Hogwarts. The Gryffindors had a very different idea of fun – mostly involving smuggled booze and reading about Quidditch – that the scientifically minded Slytherins didn't quite find amusing. However, they still managed to get along.
When the train arrived at King's Cross, the Weasleys were waiting for them at the station. Molly and Arthur were unaccustomed to the sight of so many Slytherins going home with them, but they did not comment on it – nor did Molly say anything about the big cat anymore.
"He eats a lot of shrimps." Ginny warned them.

The Burrow was located in what basically amounted to the middle of nowhere, but it was more of a somewhere than the shack Harry had seen in Little Hangleton, before Dobby's legions of elf-things ravaged the land.
"Why did the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin?" Molly asked Hermione. "Aren't you Muggleborn?"
"I prefer the term mudblood." Hermione replied. "Feels more appropriate, to remind me of the damage some wizard dealt to my bloodline decades ago because he saw a muggle and had a Zeus moment. I could be far more powerful than I am now."
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest wizard alive." Molly replied, and all five voldpilled people in the room tried not to scoff. "And he's a half-blood."
"Salazar Slytherin versus Albus Dumbledore, who's the greater wizard?" Hermione countered. "We just live in an era of generally poor wizards."
"Literally 1000 BBY." Harry commented.
"Indeed." Draco agreed. "And that is the problem. The modern wizard is not interested in magic. He is interested in a Ministry job, the news in the Daily Prophet, the stale jokes told by his peers. His command of the most potent force in our world is limited to the bits and pieces that remain in his head from when he barely graduated Hogwarts. He deserves to be a… a muggle."
Perhaps Draco put a bit too much venom into that last word, but perhaps it was well-deserved.
"Changing the topic..." Arthur Weasley interrupted. "How would you define the purpose of a rubber duck?"
"A rubber duck is used when you can't solve a programming task." Harry replied. "You explain what you're doing as if to a mindless animal to try and figure out what your code is doing wrong."
"Why do muggles put it in the bath then?" Arthur asked.
"Because they're stupid." Draco replied matter-of-factly. "The pinnacle of muggle genius is worthless next to what magic can do. Destruction? We have spells for that. Space travel? Harry flew to the sun and back during a Quidditch match!"
"I believe the muggles have some things that we do not." Arthur said calmly. "For one thing, a better sense of fashion."
Harry decided to bite his tongue and not point out the insane drip of Death Eater robes.
"Meow." Floppa meowed and stole a chicken. Mudblood-Man, in contrast, stole nothing.

While the guests were setting their stuff up, Fred and George decided to do a small demonstration of their prank equipment, which they were planning on turning into a real business.
"Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder." Fred announced, turning the room dark in an instant.
"Based." Harry said, wondering if the Horcrux could be used to give him voldsight to see through it. He decided not to bother, Devil's Sight was a shitty invocation anyway.
"Dungbombs." George demonstrated, making the room smell like shit until Harry managed to dispel the smell.
"We're also developing love potions." Fred added.
"Now that's an interesting one." Harry commented.
"Don't think you'd ever need one." George pointed out. "Boy Who Lived fame and all that."
"No, no, not for the conventional use." Harry shook his head. "Just think of it… spraying that shit. It makes the drinker obsessed with whoever provided the potion, within certain limits. What if we had an invisible squad disperse love potion gas over a battlefield to create uncontrollable zones?"
"Myowwa, did you just turn one of the most devastating out-of-combat applications of magic into a weapon for use in large-scale wars?" Draco asked incredulously.
"I'm at least 50% lich." Harry replied. "Actually, let's test something."
He took one of the potions and handed it to Ginny.
"I need you to give me the potion." he said. "In the name of magic."
"Why me?" she asked, feeling like she was feeling something.
"Most fishable consequences of failure." he replied quickly, refusing to elaborate.
With 75% of her usual confidence, Ginny handed Harry the potion. He opened it and drank the whole thing in an instant. Seconds later, his eyes flashed red for the briefest moment and he looked around the room, as if waiting for something. One minute later, he concluded his experiment.
"Tastes good, but Fanter's better." he said. "Still better than Monster ngl – can't understand why Aragog is addicted to that shit."
"What was that all about?" Hermione asked.
"I wanted to check if a half-lich gets immunity to the charmed condition." he shrugged.
"I kind of feel like several rules of lab safety were violated in this experiment." Draco remarked.
"The one thing the Ministry of Magic doesn't want you to know about magical research is that you can just do stuff." Harry replied. "Break the chains of paperwork and ascend to fishdom."
"Meow." Floppa meowed. It was impossible for Big Floppa to drug anyone with a love potion, because every creature with a heart truly loved Big Floppa already.

It was a bit challenging to accommodate all of the guests, and the end result was that the Four Against Madness moved their sleeping bags to the attic.
"Waah GHOUL NOISE GHOUL NOISE" the Weasleys' domestic ghoul wailed at them.
"Roar FISH NOISE FISH NOISE" Harry replied, imitating a bear.
The ghoul moved back, intimidated, and went back to being a harmless nuisance.
As Harry tried to fall asleep, he thought he saw a black shape moving through the tall grass beyond the window. It appeared to be a big black dog. Dogs were still not cats, so Harry was disappointed. The dog kept doing whatever it was doing, which Harry assumed was dog behavior.
Two seconds passed… It looked a lot like the same exact dog as before the Knight Bus.
Four seconds passed… It was a grim, which was not a popular dog. Trelawney claimed it was an omen of death, but she was stupid so he didn't care much.
Six seconds passed… the dog had no collar. That one had no collar either. To hell with coincidences like that!
Eight seconds passed… it was too far to walk from Privet Drive to here. And to know he was here, when that was agreed at Hogwarts…

"Lumos." he cast, waking everyone up. "Sorry, eepy time's over. Animagus outside."
"What the fuck..." Draco groaned. "OK, what do we know?"
"Big black dog." Harry said. "Grim. No owner. Saw it twice already, distance between sightings too far to walk – implies Apparition. I think it's the same one. And I think the dog was at Hogwarts too."
"But who..." Hermione wondered aloud.
A loud scratching drew their attention to where Floppa was carving letters into the wooden floor with his claw. S-I-R-I-U-S-B-L-A-C-K.
"Based flopper." Harry replied in Floppese.
"What's the plan?" Marc asked.
"We need to decide – do we ignore him and let him think we don't know, or do we interact?" Harry told them.
"Let's solve this logic puzzle." Hermione said. "Why is Sirius Black here? If Harry is his priority, he would not need to leave Hogwarts. Where are we now?"
"The Burrow." Harry replied. "Home of the Weasley family..."
"Gryffindors!" she whispered loudly. "When he broke into Hogwarts, what's the first thing he did?"
"Slashed the Gryffindor portrait." Harry said.
"Fish the dots together until you get a bear." she told him.
"The Weasleys are the constant between these two elements." Harry observed. "Therefore, Sirius wants something from them… what?"
"Is it just me, or are we encountering a shitload of animal-people in this plot?" Draco asked. "Lupin's a werewolf, Aunt Bella is a cat, Sirius Black is a dog… I say that if it's an animal and we haven't seen it meow for at least a few months, it's sus."
"Ron has a rat." Marc observed.
"Well, the rat is clearly someone." Draco guessed. "So, do we go pet the dog?"
"No." Harry finally decided. "Let's see how it unfolds naturally."
"On the 31st, we shall do shopping in the nearby town in the morning – we need to buy hats and cake for the Dark Lord's birthday." Hermione reminded them. "Let's see if the dog follows us."

December 31st did finally dawn. Not much had happened then, apart from some shitposting and a few dog sightings. While the Slytherins and Gryffindors clearly didn't see eye-to-eye on many topics (Ginny avoided talking in such cases, not wanting to publicly disavow her family's positions), they were very polite to each other. Arthur spent most of his time upgrading the flying car, something that fascinated the Four Against Madness. Apparently the vehicle was made from metal that was once part of a boat, sometime in the mid-1920s – Harry noted that this was the same time period in which Tom Marvolo Riddle was born.
As planned, they went shopping, taking the Diary with them. They were expecting a simple trip, but apparently things would be more complicated. Sure, they managed to buy all the stuff they wanted, but when they got back there were Aurors at the Burrow.
"What happened?" Harry asked.
"Sirius Black was allegedly sighted in the area." Arthur explained. "So now the government's here."
"The government?" Harry asked.
Before anyone could answer, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and there stood a moron in a bowler hat accompanied by an annoying-looking witch dressed in pink.
"Ah, Harry Potter!" Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge gave a fake smile (fake because he was a typical politician and thus everything he did was fake, even brushing his teeth).
"Good morning, minister." Harry responded. He did not wish Fudge a good morning, but he was in fact feeling good this morning, and it was a morning to be good (at D ) on.
Fudge proceeded to introduce his assistant, Dolores Umbridge, the most fake cat fan he'd ever seen. The two of them gave him a lecture about safety and security that he completely ignored, then continued to talk to him as if they were his superiors. Technically they were the government, but you know… tier 4 fullcasters in Barovia don't obey Strahd's laws.
"I assure you, minister, I won't go looking for trouble that I can't handle." he said. "But if there's one thing I could request… please have the dementors go to war against the house elves."
Fudge gave him a "grown-up to child" talk about why deploying mass-murdering demons to fight mass-murdering aberrations was bad and the demons would instead remain near a school full of children. Yay. Every Dark Mark in the sky above their burning homes was the consequence of their own deliberate actions… what a society.

"I see you understand even more why my present self had to attempt a coup." Tom Riddle said as he put on his party hat, which was shaped like a manul-shaped hat in the shape of a manul.
"Any rats you think Sirius Black would have a bone to pick with, by the way?" Hermione asked.
"Peter Pettigrew, whom Black killed according to the news – never trust the media, by the way, unless you want to end up playing a paladin 2/sorc X spamming quickened boomer blade – was a rat animagus responsible for betraying the Potters' location, which was under a Fidelius Charm cast by Dumbledore."
"Wait. What." Harry asked.
"Dumbledore had to know Sirius was innocent all this time." Riddle said. "Nobody ever doubted Pettigrew was dead. Nobody ever wondered why Sirius got no trial."
"And Dumbledore runs the courts." Harry remembered. "Why..."
"Because he's stupid, evil and doesn't give a fuck." Riddle said. "Understand this – there are some people who hate wizards for being better than muggles. They don't want our civilization to be superior. They want to drag us down into the dirt. Every failure in our systems and society is an excuse for them to point at muggles and show how they have it better. Look, the muggles are better at fighting wars than us, because they have guns and OUR SOCIETY BANNED THE KILLING CURSE!"
Harry had never seen Tom Riddle so aggravated before, and it was actually making his scar hurt.
"Were I an enemy of wizardkind wielding genius intellect and magical power, I would do everything in my ability to break the wizarding world. Cheer every time a squib is born. Destroy the education system to disarm future generations. Fight tooth and nail against the purebloods and their rich magical libraries, raiding and confiscating texts so that as much magical knowledge as possible will be lost forever! Hire incompetent professors like Gilderoy Lockhart! Use the power of Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot to sentence innocents to life in Azkaban for supposed Death Eater activity, all after indoctrinating them into a cult called the Order of the Phoenix whose ideals are to fight against common sense! They say I'm the madman with strange ideas, and yet their cause is but a tiny stain on the pages of history's books. Some would question whether Salazar Slytherin would have backed me, were he still alive today. To them I say – were he alive today, Godric Fucking Gryffindor would be a Death Eater! Anyhow, enough shitting on the old shitfiend, let's play D&D."

"Yes, let's." Harry (DSS 1/Twi 1/Undead 11) agreed.
"Indeed." Hermione (Peace 1/Chron 12) nodded.
"Yes." Marc (Life 1/Chron 12) agreed.
"Based." Draco (DSS 10/Hex 3) said.
"Gaming time." Ginny (DSS 1/Peace 1/Dao 11) declared.
"Take 2d6 plot hole damage." Riddle told them. "You're going to Eberron by means that shatter the worldbuilding of the Eberron setting."
"Oh, wonderful." Harry laughed. "Another plot hole."
"You need to go through the Mournlands, where many big toasters lie scattered." Riddle explained. "Teleporting to the Mournland with long-distance teleport spells like plane shift basically fails, but as far as I understand the module dimension door works as normal."
"OK, we dimdoor randomly around the map until we find the most impressive toaster, kiting anything we encounter." Hermione declared.
"OK, welcome to Landro." Riddle grinned. "Remember, this is Fibonacci Eve of Ruin, so the current multiplier for enemies is x8.

Encounter 1: 24 fomorians. Sleet storm solves.

Encounter 2: 16 shriekers. Not taking any chances with that noise – shatter.

Encounter 3: Friendly ghost who offers a vision that grants an instantaneous short rest, max once per character. They put her in a bag of holding.

Encounter 4: 8 blazebears. Sleet storm solves half the problem, the PCs fall back to the right half of room L13 and cut through the passage leading to them with gust of wind for extra speed debuffing. The result is a massacre.

Encounter 5: 16 blade scouts. This is 16 CR 7 ranged enemies, a worthy fight – wall of force blocks off the far exit, stone shape fortifies the group's position, then they drop a double sickening radiance in there.

Encounter 6: 24 wights and 24 will-o'-wisps. Synaptic static spam solves.

Short rest taken here.

Encounter 7: 8 stone golems. Default killed.

Encounter 8: 8 mimics. Default killed.

Encounter 9: More toasters. Microwaved.

They loot the rod piece, return to Sigil and take a long rest. Done!
"Get ready to be disappointed by Barovia." Riddle told them after they leveled up. "The module butchered Death House in the most horrible way."
"Thankfully we're skipping it." Harry said.
"Indeed." Riddle nodded. "You arrive in the Village of Barovia. Your eyes bleed from the un-lore you are about to witness. Take 2d6 plot hole damage for unexpected time travel."
"I cast dimension door to go down, steal the rod piece, contingency-dimdoor out." Hermione declared. "I do not set foot in Death House proper during this adventure at all."
"I will just point out that you would be able to make a DC 20 check to skip the 13 Strahds anyway, but who cares. Yes, it's trivial." Riddle laughed. "The module says if the characters haven't yet faced Strahd, the mists teleport them to a random room but that's easily doable if you just put killing Strahd in your backstory… ah, I see you did that. Based."
"Aight, let's fish one more bear." Harry grinned. "So far so spood."
"Your next goal is the world of Krynn." Riddle announced. "But there are werewolves. Take 2d6 plot hole damage."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The PCs now have simulacra (two of them do, at least).

Encounter 1: 21 treants and 42 giant spiders. Fireball spam solves.

"A werewolf gives you a quest. There are 8 borthaks attacking his tribe."

Encounter 2: 21 borthaks. Wall of force seals the werewolves' hiding place, then it's a default kill.

"Have you dogs tried being competent?" Draco asked.

They proceed to skip most of the dungeon by using dimension door to reach the upper levels.

Encounter 3: 21 archmages with shit spell picks and some fodder minions. The PCs surprise the enemy, win initiative with chwinga spam and drop five circle of death spells, as well as two synaptic static castings for good measure. No survivors.

A dragon appears to attack but they just dimdoor away and speed to the portal.

"Fuck it, we ball." Riddle said. "34x multiplier already, time to fish Oerth's bears."
"I will gather wood for stakes to assassinate Kas." Harry declared.
"This location is called the Tomb of Wayward Souls." Riddle told them. "It was built by Acererak."
"I ignore any and all irrelevant NPCs, we're trying to allegedly save the multiverse." Marc said. "Dimdoor to where the rod points, in and out. I loot what I can too."
"Yeah, you go into the vault and loot the stuff. You go back with the rod. Nobody even saw you." Riddle confirmed.
"What an amazing module." Ginny laughed.
"We are now level 17." Harry declared triumphantly. "I have a few things to declare..."

Among the group's Tier 4 moves were:

1. Throwing commoners into the Negative Energy Plane to create nightwalkers

2. True polymorphing nightwalkers into fiends to planar bind them

3. Getting an atropal in this manner, to make legions of wraiths

4. Getting adult silver dragon bodies to magic jar into in this manner

5. Getting a daemogoth titan to give Vecna's Link to the entire population of Toril

6. Casting true resurrection via hired cleric to bring back Telamont Tanthul

7. Restoring Netheril in downtime

8. Using the daemogoth titan to turn the wraith army into nuclear bombers

"Kas is dead, your empire stretches from Chult to Thay." Riddle nodded. "What next?"

"Literally everyone ever walks into the Cave of Shattered Reflections." Harry said.

Encounter 1: 466 cadaver collectors. Wiped instantly by several hundred breath weapons.

Encounter 2: 233 death knights. Annihilated by using mirage arcane to turn the ground beneath their feet into the surface of a star.

Encounter 3: 233 death knights and 2796 wights. Annihilated with a star again.

Encounter 4: 233 astral dreadnoughts and 1398 eye mongers. Annihilated with a few billion castings of magic missile.

Encounter 5: 466 death knights. Default killed.

Encounter 6: 932 mirror shades and 233x Vecna the Archlich. Nigh-infinite casts of private sanctum followed by a microwave and a few hundred banishments etc.

"You win." Riddle declared. "You beat Vecna. You fished his bear."
"Enjoyer." Harry grinned.
"Absolutely fucking stellar." Marc commented.
"Thanks for the campaign, my lord, and happy birthday again." Ginny said.

They ate some more cake and then the players left the demiplane. It was time to eep, for soon things would change and nothing would ever be the same again…