AN/1: I'm still working out a more regular posting schedule, it might have to be once every two weeks.

AN/2: Here's something that was edited out in the first chapter that was meant to go just before Ozland's bit: imgur dot com slash HXZNHCY

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CHAPTER FOUR

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THE BURROW, DOOR 74, 1183 DIAGON ALLEY, INSIDE A DIMENSIONAL SOMETHING THAT WASN'T EXPLAINED PROPERLY, LONDON

"We had to move from Ottery St Catchpole during the War," Mrs Weasley said, slightly stiffly, "there wasn't enough time to find a universe-fragment with a moon in it. Anyway," she brightened, "take care of yourselves, Albus, Minerva." They nodded, and disappeared in a puff of displaced air.

She turned back to Ozland. "Want some lunch before we head out?"

The Burrow, as Ozland found out it was called, made for a welcome respite from the lunacy of wizarding Britain. As long as he avoided looking out the windows at the vast, ancient craters that pockmarked the rolling English countryside around them like the bullet-holes of a target on an interplanetary firing range, he could almost convince himself that there was really nothing wrong at all, and that he hadn't been whisked here — a pocket dimension, or something (Ozland still wasn't really completely clear on that bit) — by a 120-year-old magical Headmaster after jumping through a puddle.

Mrs Weasley had done the introductions for Mr Weasley, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George in turn. There had been some brief confusion over Fred and George, with Fred insisting that he was George, and George insisting that he was Fred, until Mrs Weasley demanded that they show their birthmarks, and it had turned out that they had Apparated into one another's seats while nobody was looking.

Mr Weasley and Ron had immediately bombarded him with questions, and after he'd answered (shortly and vaguely), Fred or George would follow it up with some unexpected question that threw him completely off-balance every time — all the while with Ginny staring sullenly into the depths of her plate, as if the act of staring would reveal to her the answer to an ancient cosmic riddle carefully hidden within the strewn-about pieces of carrot and parsley.

Eventually the twins seemed to grow bored with asking nonsensical follow-up questions, and started adding their own answers after Ozland had finished. It usually went like this:

Ron: So – is it really true everyone in New Zealand has to wear ground-harnesses or else they fall into the Sun?

Ozland: No. Um, at least, I don't think —

Fred (confidently): Of course not, Ronald. The Sun faces away from the Southern Hemosphere.

Ozland (cautiously): Right now it's not, if that's what you mean. It does in daytime.

Fred (even more confidently): Exactly, when the Sun does face the Southern Hemisphere, the Moon's on the other side so it always cancels out the gravity.

Ron (dubiously): Wouldn't that just make you weightless?

George: Not if you wear really heavy boots.

He had made sure to wolf down the rest of his food (a slice of beef pie and pumpkin juice) as quickly as possible, which, quite cunningly, ensured that his mouth was full the whole time, rendering him unable to answer any questions.

Mr Weasley shook his hand vigorously after lunch had concluded. "Delightful talking to you, Ozland. And do try see what you can do about getting to the bottom of this thermos business, eh?"

Ozland hummed noncommittally. (Mr Weasley had asked earlier how thermoses could keep hot things hot and cold things cold, and he'd muttered something about heat conduction without admitting he didn't actually know.)

Mrs Weasley called from outside, her voice carrying through the house. "Time to go! Chop chop!"

The twins Apparated immediately, Ginny had already bolted out the door some time ago, and Ron was quickly finishing off the rest of the pie, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

"Er, hey mate," he began awkwardly, as Ozland reached the doorway, "sorry for all the questions back then - I'm not that stupid," Ozland had been thinking 'gullible' maybe, but not 'stupid' - but Ron seemed intent on preemptively defending himself, "it's just, you know, with the twins it's always easier just to play along when they're doing their comedy routine." He visibly reddened.

"Uh, no worries," replied Ozland, a little warily, "I guess it's refreshing to be the one answering questions instead of asking them." He waited for Ron, and they started walking to the outhouse which lead out of the Weasley's universe-pocket-thing (he really needed to get the mechanics of it explained to him sometime). "So," he said, "your brothers - they just Apparated, right?" Note to self: brush up on small-talk.

Ron nodded. If he'd been aware of the clumsiness of the prompt, he gave no indication. "Ever since they got their licenses last year they haven't walked more than a yard. Well," he said, reflectively, "they do sometimes, for the novelty. We'll have to wait until Seventh Year before the lessons, though," he added, preempting Ozland's question. There was something very earnest and carefree about the way he spoke that Oz couldn't help but begin to warm to him.

"Ah." Outside, he was reminded of Mrs Weasley's oddly stiff reaction to his question about the lack of a moon in their universe-pocket. He had the feeling that he really shouldn't be tugging at this particular thread, but it was also bothering him immensely. "Weird question, but I asked your mum about there being no moon in the sky - and she said that you guys had to move quickly - "

The red-head looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Uh, you don't have to - "

"It's not really something we talk about," Ron said, quietly. "But I don't want you to think it was anything really bad, at least not worse than all the things that happened in the War." He exhaled. "Mum says Charlie was tortured under the Cruciatus until he told the Death Eaters where we lived. We had a half-hour to find a universe, cut out a fragment, put the house in it, and shove it in an internally-expanded rucksack. Bill says it's a wonder he managed to find somewhere with air, let alone a moon, in the time he had. He blames the whole thing on Dumbledore, for some reason, but mum's never been able to get him to tell us why."

"Charlie and Bill would be your - ?"

"Older brothers, yeah."

They were nearing the door to the outhouse now - Mrs Weasley was passing out long scrolls of paper to Ginny and the twins, seeming to scold them for some reason, although Ozland couldn't make out the words.

"Was Charlie . . . okay?" Why am I even asking that?

Ron looked at him strangely. "'Course, but, you know, he was a bit different after."

Professor McGonagall's words echoed in his head. The Death Eaters, they were his followers . . . We're still recovering . . . "Jesus, I'm sorry about that."

"Not your fault, mate. And who's Jezars?"

That broke up the mood a little. Ozland coughed. "Um, just a Moggley saying."

"Muggle."

"Oh, yeah. Muggle."

#######

"Right," Mrs Weasley said, with the air of a military general. "Ron, here's your list, you'll be teamed up with Ginny today." She handed Ron an unlabelled can. "Remember - use the everlasting baked beans to leave a trail, just in case you get lost - and if the store closes before you get out - "

"Stay put, cover myself in cooked chicken to stay warm, don't rely on the Compass Charm, got it," Ron said, vacantly, looking over his list before leaving with Ginny.

The first entrance to the Supermarket had been discovered, or created, or something by Giannis Slarkensson in 1973, and at that point, it was a small door, big enough only for a House Elf, with single turnstile. It could still be found along Side-Side Alley HNT-R2 – a mostly deserted street, which was itself the product of another magical accident – a fractal Geminio Curse cast by a disgruntled land developer.

Since then, the Supermarket had almost metastasised all across Diagon Alley. Mrs Weasley said you could usually tell if a new Supermarket entrance was emerging by the lumpy, organic protrusions it made in the sides of buildings and cobblestone streets, before bubbling out into a set of revolving doors. There had been an article in The Quibbler about a woman who found an entrance to the Supermarket under her armpit, although apparently the evidence for that one was tenuous.

They had gone through the nearest entrance which was in one of the stalls in the men's bathroom of Borghill's Birdbath Boutique (there seemed to be a general alliterative trend with the naming schema, Ozland had noticed), and had come out, the blue-tinted light and chill air washing over them, between two freezers full of frozen peas, frozen kebabs and cheesecakes.

As they walked down the rows of freezers, he hadn't been able to stop himself from gawping – he'd never really seen anything like it before. After the economic collapse of the seventies, either you knew people who knew people who could smuggle two metric tonnes of salad dressing through the Trans-Pacific Railway, or you whipped up homemade salad dressing with vinegar, white paint, and dilute nitric acid. There was something ravishingly beautiful about its cold, sterile regularity. Consume me, it beckoned. Devour me, feast on me -

He reached towards a small strawberry cheesecake, and the voice abruptly stopped.

Hold on, I think there's a sensible thing to ask in this situation. But for the life of me, I can't – oh, that's it.

"Um, Mrs Weasley? Is this like a test of character or something? I'm not going to, say, eat this cheesecake, and then be turned into a cheesecake?"

"Heavens, no. Whatever you want, you can take it. It's all free," she replied, preoccupied with scribbling illegible words onto the shopping list.

"And the price is, you know, really nothing, rather than pieces of my soul or anything like that?"

"Nothing but your waistline."

The voice started again as he cautiously bit into the cheesecake. Yes, eat up, boy. Take another.

"Mrs Weasley," he said mildly, "there's a voice in my head telling me to eat up and take another cheesecake."

Nothing dodgy or sinister going on around here, the voice said hurriedly, purely altruistic motives. You just look a bit thin, that's all.

"Um, it's telling me I look a bit thin."

Mrs Weasley glanced at him, then returned to her list. "You do look a bit thin."

See?, said the voice, with a touch of indignance.

Well, thought Ozland, I've never seen a newspaper with the title 'Man Saves Twenty Drowning Orphans, Builds Hospital, Helps At Homeless Shelter: Says A Voice In His Head Told Him To Do It'.

Well, the voice said with scorn, at least you're halfway acknowledging that you're irrationally prejudiced against disembodied voices, not many people are mature enough to do that.

Oh come on! Ozland couldn't really think of any other responses.

You enjoyed that cheesecake, but you're denying yourself the joy of eating another cheesecake, just because you got told to by a disembodied voice, the voice continued, seemingly amused. Do you need to hear 'Simon says' before you do anything? Take a look at that blueberry cheesecake over there, for instance - the company went out of business in 1968 in your world, so I found a world where they didn't. Luxury cheesecakes. Artisan cheesecakes. Full-cream milk, real blueberries. They used to go for fifty pounds a –

Out out OUT, get out of my head, RIGHT now.

Alright, alright, the voice said, clearly wounded, I'll just –

"Ah, Ozland," Mrs Weasley tapped her cheek, "you'll go with Fred and George. And if they get up to any funny stuff, make sure to tell me," she added, lowering her voice.

"Fred, George," she shouted at the twins (George was shoulder-deep in salted macadamia nuts, and Fred was egging him on to go deeper), "Ozland's coming with you, and in Merlin's name, if he gets lost, it's on you two to explain to Headmaster Dumbledore."

George dusted himself off, licking each of his fingers. "He won't get lost – "

" – unless he, you know, gets lost."

George turned to Fred. "That was a decent pun, and it's your fault for messing up the execution."

"Mrs Weasley, is this really something I should risk coming along for?" asked Ozland, who was beginning to reconsider the shopping trip.

"Young man, it's no more dangerous than any other infinite supermarket - so long as you don't go past the butter with the purple spots and treat the disembodied voice in your head with respect and give thoughtful consideration to whatever it says - " (How odd, Ozland thought, her lips were weirdly out of sync when she said that last bit) " - and I promised Albus we'd keep an eye on you, so that's that." She checked her watch. "Ten past twelve, we're making good time. Be back here within the hour – and if it takes any longer, remind Fred and George to send a Patronus."

Fred and George waved goodbye. As soon as she was gone, they whipped out their wands, and, after doing a few complicated swirly motions, tapped them to the ground and to one another's shoulders, and said "Olenduvõrknit" in synchrony. Ozland watched, fascinated, as a red thread appeared, linking all the places that they'd touched, swaying gently like spider silk. As they began walking, the thread extended itself.

"That's one of ours – " said Fred.

" – so keep it to yourself. We can trust you, right?"

"I can barely remember it!" Ozland protested, struggling to keep up (the Weasley twins were rather taller than him).

"Some child of prophecy," George murmured, grinning.

"Wait, what?"

"Dumbledore didn't tell you?" said Fred.

"Um, he might have suggested it really subtly but no he didn't tell me."

"Then if he didn't tell you, you oughtn't to know and you'll probably find out later," remarked Fred sensibly.

"We could tell you," George added, "but it'd mess up the fabric of reality, and the Ministry'll fine us a hundred Galleons for that if we do it again."

They came to a stop beside a row of edible roses. "Anyway," Fred interrupted Ozland before he could respond, "it's simple. Hold out your wand."

Ozland held out his wand.

"No, not like that you twonk."

Ozland held out his wand differently.

"Yes, just like that. Now all you have to do is a fixed – by that I mean keep your wrist in the same place – twirl widdershins – counterclockwise, if you like – twice – doesn't matter how quick, then stab at the centre of your wand-circle, do a wiggly zig-zag thing down the middle, inside your wand-circle – that bit's not actually too important so just do it however you want – and say 'olenduvõrknit'. You have to pronounce that really precisely – the 'o' in the 'duvõrk' isn't like a normal 'o' – you have to round your lips like an 'o', but you have to keep your tongue up – but not touching the roof of your mouth – just near your teeth. Syllable-stress doesn't matter."

Ozland went over the motions in his head. "Um, why do I have to be the one do this?"

Fred and George looked at one another, and then Fred casually brought out a small velvety box, snapping it open. Everything around them went utterly silent, as if the box was sucking in all the noise. "Alright," he said, "this is a Secret Box. Anything we say when it's open stays secret between whoever hears it, and if you can't give it away. By 'can't', I mean you really don't want to find out what happens if you try to. That includes what we're saying right now. So just to be sure, we have a Secret Box, you know what a Secret Box is and how to cast the spell we outlined before, and we did something other than efficiently find all of the things on the shopping list, engage you in friendly conversation, and come back as soon as we could."

That's actually incredibly powerful. "But why do I have to – "

"Because it's a soul-tracer which only works for your own soul," said Fred, grimly, snapping shut the Box.

"I don't get why you need that to be a secret," Ozland said, puzzled.

"Accio calamari," Fred enunciated, and a packet of squid flew from the air and into his hands. "Unregistered soul magic is twenty years in Azkaban. It's daft, and I won't say any more. Now remember – fixed twirl, twice clockwise, centre-stab, zig-zag down the middle, 'o-len-du-võrk-nit' – "

" – with the tongue up for the 'o' sound in 'vork'. Got it, lemme just visualise it first." Ozland listed out the sequence in his head, then did it again, and then for a third time. He held out his wand, closed his eyes, imagined his wand, imagined his hand moving with the wand. Fixed twirl, twice clockwise, centre-stab, zig-zag down the middle. He almost shouted the incantation in his head.

For some reason, he felt oddly exhilarated, but breathless, at the same time. "Okay, right. Now I'll do it for real."

Fred and George were staring at him, standing stock-still. "Merlin," Fred murmured. "No wand movement, no words." He coughed. "Right, well, just tap it to the ground and you're sorted."

Ozland complied, confused. A purplish line appeared. "What does it mean?"

George scratched his chin. "Casting a spell, with no wand movement and no words – it's not unheard of. But it's spiffing stuff, you know."

"Could be the concentrated ambient magic," Fred said without conviction. "Anyway, we've got fifty minutes left so we're going to have to hurry. Skappakurg." A plaited basket popped into existence in his hands.

They broke into a jogging pace, twisting and turning around corners, with Fred and George saying 'Accio everything on the shopping list' at regular intervals. The Supermarket was a labyrinth, and Ozland realised what Mrs Weasley had meant when she warned the twins about him getting lost.

The items on the shelves began to look less and less familiar – Ozland passed by an entire section of candied spiders (Fred and George grabbed a few, "for Ron", they said, without elaboration), whale-meat on a stick, floating colourful pyramids, and then –

"Jesus fucking Christ."

"What?" said Fred and George simultaneously.

Ozland was standing in front of an entire shelf of chocolate. "What do you mean 'what?' – do you know how much this is all worth?" he said, incredulously. "Oh, unless this isn't real cocoa – that would make sense." He picked up a packet, turning over to the ingredients. He shook his head. "No way. No fucking way."

Fred turned to his counterpart. "He's gone bonkers," he said, shaking his head. "No, really – what's the deal? It's just chocolate."

He looked at them, flabbergasted, and began shoving as many as he could into his jacket and pants. "This is eighty percent cocoa – bullion standard."

"Absolutely certifiable," muttered George, audibly. "We in range?"

Fred pulled out a walkie-talkie. There was a hiss of static. "Not yet."

Ozland ignored them, using a pen-knife to slice holes into his jacket so that he could stuff in a few more bars. By the time he'd finished, a quarter of his body-weight was in chocolate, and Fred and George were nothing but trailing red threads. It would be annoying and embarrassing, but if he could lug them home, it would easily be worth it - 'it' meaning some ridiculous amount of money. He picked up one, idly looking at the purple packaging. "Rowntree," he read aloud, totally unnecessarily. His voice echoed slightly.

Tearing off the wrapping and biting into the chocolate, he started running after the Weasley twins' trail. Mystery solved — the Supermarket gets its stock from parallel universes or something.

He stopped, panting. Around him were what looked like TV dinners, but instead of chicken and potato and greens, there were bricks. Just a single brick, wrapped in plastic, in each one — covered in gravy. The language looked vaguely like Hebrew.

The section after it was filled with thirty-foot-long tentacles, frozen and bound together with rope. Jesus, why the hell are Fred and George way out here?

Ozland walked further, straining his ears, hearing a voice from not very far. "Fantastic ideas as always, Gred and Forge. As soon as we get ahold of a thousand-tonne block of stone, we'll try it out." There was a pause, interrupted by strange insectile clicking sounds. "Good to hear it, mate. Now, to hold up our end of the deal . . . "

He peeked around the next shelf, seeing a circular clearing that eventually branched out into six different paths. Fred stood in the middle. Up to one ear, he held a walkie-talkie. Out of the other, a snake-like wire that terminated in what looked to be a record player, except with a dictionary instead of a vinyl disc. George was rummaging through another shelf, looking intrigued.

" . . . and when the prankee opens the door, the bucket of water falls onto them, getting them soaking wet. Brilliant stuff, innit?" Another burst of insectile clicking sounds. The dictionary flung open, pages flicking back and forth in a blur of paper. "Yeah, we thought so too." More clicks and more pages. "Okay, you two take care. Always a pleasure. Bye." George turned off the walkie-talkie. "Suckers. Fred, what's your estimate?"

"About five thousand leagues north-north-west," said Fred. "We could probably take apart one of dad's cars, get all the pieces through the door, rebuild it, stock up on concentrated thaumic fluid, and be there and back in a week . . . and we've got ten minutes left - shite, we can still make it back."

George pulled out the wire from his ear, twirled his wand, and the dictionary-record-player began folding in on itself like an origami city struck by an earthquake.

At the same time, Fred pulled out a long roll of what looked like a Persian carpet from his right pocket, throwing it out with a flourish. It floated above the floor, quite steadily, and Fred and George jumped on, lying belly-down. "Oi, Ozland, get on and hold on."

Ozland tentatively stepped onto the carpet, which rippled underneath him, lying down and holding onto the front. "Jesus, is this is a flying carpet?"

As Fred and George stroked and patted it, murmuring encouraging words, the carpet slowly began lifting up into the air, before accelerating forward. Oz realised hadn't really been able to appreciate what 'infinite' meant until he saw the gray horizon all around him. "Oi, don't hold onto the front - that's for steering," said George. Ozland obediently grabbed onto the fur. "And to answer your question, no." George rolled over, digging into his pockets, before taking out the Secret Box again. His face was mischievous as he opened the lid. The roar of wind around them stopped, although he could still feel it on his face. "We applied a broomstick Charm while it was all rolled up, and it worked. So you could say it was a carpet which we tricked into thinking was a broomstick. Real flying carpets bend the space-time continuum around them to move around, that's how you tell." He closed the Box, and the wind resumed.

#######

Mrs Weasley had been suspicious, but Ozland hadn't given any indication of anything out-of-the-ordinary happening, although his definition of 'ordinary' had been adjusted substantially.

Out in the birdbath store, he reluctantly handed over the chocolate to her to keep in her expanded purse, and in the process of looking through all of his pockets, he noticed that, nestled snugly in his sleeve, was a blueberry cheesecake.

#######

Madam Malkin's was fairly ordinary apart from the self-animated measuring tapes — but then again, the Supermarket had also been fairly ordinary, apart from the fact that it was infinitely large, and tried to telepathically convince him to eat more cheesecakes.

Ozland tuned into the various voices drifting across the stalls next to him.

"Look, Hagrid," came one voice, "what about the Dark Lords from Ilvermorny, or Beauxbatons, or Durmstrang, or for that matter, the Comintern Magic Academy — all I'm saying," the voice went conciliatory, "is that the statement 'All Dark Lords came from Slytherin', let alone 'You'll become a Dark Lord if you go to Slytherin' is subject to, uh, Anglocentric bias."

"Aye, I can see tha'," came a much gruffer voice.

"And, you know," the other voice rushed on, "how many Dark Lords have there been, anyway? Not many, I'll bet. There's simply not enough data to draw sweeping conclusions like that — it would be like, um, say I had two goldfish, and say one of them dies, and the next day, there's a war in the Middle-East. And then another one dies a few years later, and there's another war in the Middle-East. Does that mean the deaths of my goldfish have anything to do with war in the Middle-East? Well, only two goldfish have died — that's nowhere near enough goldfish to draw any conclusions about any correlations between the deaths of goldfish and wars in the Middle-East. Or let's pretend that it really is the case that going to Slytherin, say, triples your likelihood of becoming a Dark Lord — if the prior probability is, um, six Dark Lords in the past five hundred years, and there've been twenty-five thousand Hogwarts students, that just means the likelihood of becoming a Dark Lord only went from 0.24% to 0.72%. 'Triple' might sound huge, but in reality it only means the likelihood of that student becoming a Dark Lord increased by 0.48% and that's tiny — does any of this make sense?"

There was a long pause.

"No."

"Ah, forget it then. How does this sound: I'll try and not end up in Slytherin — and if I do, I'll try to not become a Dark Lord."

"An' if yeh become a Dark Lord?"

" . . . I'll be nice to my enemies, minimise casualties, and abide by international law?"

Nothing else noteworthy happened in the store.

#######

The bookstore was also mostly ordinary, in the way that Ozland had come to realise was the case for most of wizarding Britain. Once you got down to it, it was just people jumping through puddles and wearing silly pointy hats. The fact that none of it made an ounce of sense didn't really matter. A firm principle Ozland had abided by ever since he'd thought of it an hour ago, was that if something in the world didn't make any sense to him, it was him at fault, not the world. All he knew for certain was that somehow it all worked out, that he'd figure out the specifics later, and that he'd use the specifics to either take over the universe or settle down somewhere and become a dentist in Surrey.

"Apparently some of the books here scream and bite you if you open them the wrong way," remarked a girl, who'd politely shook his hand and introduced herself as Hermione Granger. She'd been going through a reference book of some sort, with the titles of other reference books in them, neatly inscribing numbers between 1 and 3,856 beside them in red felt — presumably in the order she was planning to read them. They were in the middle of a long, partly-lit corridor with bookshelves on either side.

"Cats do that too," Ozland said, feeling quite stupid.

She frowned. "If you open them the wrong way?"

"Well, I'd think so."

"Mhm," she mhm'd, turning back to her meta-reference book.

"Honestly," Ozland began, who'd been struck by a burning desire to say something else absurd, "anyone who opens a book the wrong way deserves to be screamed at and bitten, in my opinion."

"What if it took their fingers off?" said the girl rather nonchalantly, without pausing.

Ozland doubled down. "Even if it took their whole hand off. Their whole arm, even."

She marked down '486', and then scribbled it out, writing '487' instead. A flash of annoyance passed over her face. "Where does it go, do you think?"

"Where does what go?"

"The finger-pieces. Do you suppose it has a book-stomach to digest them?"

"I suppose," supposed Ozland. "But then again, I suppose it could just spit them out. Or maybe," he supposed further, with a speculative air, "the book absorbs the finger-pieces as new material, turning them into extra chapters, or adding unnecessary words to sentences to make the book longer."

"Maybe," said the girl (from her tone, Ozland couldn't tell if she was being genuine or viciously mocking him), "maybe the font just gets larger and larger until they end up in the large print section."

"Then all the large print books would be covered in blood, wouldn't they?"

"Some of them are covered in blood." She flicked over to another page.

"Oh." That's a bit worrying.

"Professor McGonagall says the defense mechanism instills healthy respect for books."

Ozland leaned back against the bookshelf behind him, but felt it come unbalanced, even though it was, itself, leaning against a wall, and hastily straightened himself in the hope that he hadn't caused any permanent structural damage. "Ah, you've met her, then?"

"She introduced me to," she waved her hand about, "all of this, just a few hours ago, actually."

. . .

"That can't be right," said Ozland automatically, his grip on normalcy beginning to loosen, "um, unless by a few hours ago you mean only after twelve. Dumbledore said they were dealing with a Type Three something-or-other at Hogwarts so they needed to dash, and that's why they left me with the Weasleys at twelve."

The girl looked up from her book for the first time in ten minutes. "Well I'm not sure who you were talking to," she said, evidently thinking it over, "because she came over to my house at eleven, we left Ollivanders at eleven thirty, Madam Malkins finished the measurements for my robes at twelve . . . and it was twelve thirty when we finished buying a trunk, and twelve forty-five when we finished buying Potions equipment, and well, she left me here about a quarter of an hour ago saying she needed a good drink, and said she'd be back within the hour."

Ozland buried his face in his hands. "Just when I thought I'd figured everything out. Oh, hold on. No, it's obvious: she has a sister who's also a Professor and also teaches at Hogwarts. There we go, no time-travel shenanigans necessary."

Hermione opened her mouth to reply just as Professor McGonagall appeared around the corner, striding down the corridor and tutting. "Really, young lady — "

"Um, Professor – " began Ozland.

She stopped, and raised her eyebrows. "Do I know you?"

"Yes," said Ozland, who was mildly confused at this new development, "you introduced me to the wizarding world a few hours ago. Shouldn't you be dealing with the Type Three florkpurple superintelligence thing at Hogwarts? It sounded fairly serious."

Professor McGonagall looked alarmed. "Who did you hear that from?"

"Dumbledore."

"And when did you hear it?"

"Twelve o'clock today," he answered, frustratedly, "when you two left me at the Weasleys." The thought occurred to him that he could be speaking to Professor McGonagall's body-double.

"Ah," said Professor McGonagall, seeming even more alarmed. She turned to Hermione. "I'll just be a few moments more, dear, and then we'll go and fetch your Astronomy equipment," she said, before suddenly disappearing.

"That," said Ozland, "was weird as hell."

Hermione nodded in the very abstracted way that people doing numbers in their head do. "Ye-es."

He coughed. "Anyway, I've got all my books, so I'd best be going. I guess we'll, um, see one another at Hogwarts."

She looked mildly disappointed for some reason. "Alright."

Ozland tripped on an uneven bit of carpet as he made his way down the corridor.

#######

The main area of the bookstore was thick with people, all of whom seemed to be ecstatically clamouring around, well, something or someone. It was difficult to say, in the same way that it would be difficult to say what a given whirlpool was whirling around. The screaming and bursts of light suggested two possibilities: either that someone was a celebrity being assaulted by photographers, or a central figure in a civil war which had recently erupted between Horticulture and Self-Help. Everything was humid and loud, and it was no wonder Hermione had chosen to escond herself in a section, which, to Ozland's knowledge, only had the reference volumes of every book that could ever exist in alphabetical order, except that the publishers had stopped at Volume QMXIIX due to poor sales. The one he'd picked up had started with the fascinating title of 'aaaaabaaaaa by aa' and, after a couple thousand pages, ended with the even more fascinating-sounding 'aaaaabbghlk by qz'. (It was useful if you already knew what book you were looking for, but not much else — which went a long way toward explaining the lack of foot-traffic. On the other hand, that 'else' was 'a way to torture someone without leaving any physical marks.')

He quickly found Ron, who had relegated himself to the sidelines of whatever was going on, maintaining a wide peopleless space around him by sitting back in an an armchair and holding up to his face a book whose cover read 'Treat Your Own Incurable Infectious Incurable Diseases (Yes, They're Really That Incurable)' in intense green letters.

"Stand back, I have Arcturian whalepox – oh," Ron said, looking at him more closely and putting down the book, "come to get away from Lockhart, too, have you?"

"The author, right?" This was something he was fairly confident about, having passed the rather well-stocked Lockhart Section.

"More than that," Ron went on, sullenly, "he's also a Memory-Charming psycho who got sentenced by the Wizengamot to permanent ravishment – er, banishment – "

" – about to say, permanent ravishment doesn't sound too bad – "

" – so he went to work for the Triad," Ron continued, glaring at him, "and obviously he did dodgy magic stuff with them – 'cos he ended up in the Executer Council and came back ten years later completely off the hook cos' he donated a few hundred thousand Galleons to the Ministry. 'S like everybody's bloody forgotten already. At least, that's what mum says. Oh," he added, as if only suddenly remembering, "and the bugger'll be teaching this year, too. Anyway, we might as well – "

Just then, a hush descended over the bookstore, and a trembling, high-pitched, almost wailing voice reached their ears — it sounded oddly familiar, and by the fifth word, Ozland had nailed down the owner of the voice as Fred (or George, or potentially the third twin, William, who they'd insisted Mr and Mrs Weasley kept in the attic and fed a steady diet of fish-heads). They hadn't heard all of it, since the beginning had been masked by the tremendous noise of the crowd, but the bit they heard went like this: " . . . so you see, it's so, so expensive — the treatments for the non-transmittable version of Arcturian whalepox . . . "

Curiosity piqued (and then some), Ozland and Ron made their way through the crowd, until they could see what was happening. What was happening was . . . he was tempted to say two blonde copies of Ginny had made their way up to a small podium and were posing for photographs with a man who he presumed was Gilderoy Lockhart, but that probably wasn't it, except for the last part.

"And your names?" asked a reporter. (At least, Ozland assumed she was a reporter – if she wasn't a reporter, she was certainly going for a reporter look.)

"Georgina and Frederica Sneasley," said the girls, again in an annoyingly high-pitched voice. One of them coughed, very loudly and very unsubtly, before doubling over and wheezing. A murmur of sympathy went through the crowd.

"Well well well," said the assumed Gilderoy Lockhart, rather magnanimously, "how does this sound? I'll give your family all of the required titles for this year's Defense Against The Dark Arts And Muggle Studies, completely free of - "

"Defense Against The Dark Arts And Muggle Studies?" Ozland hissed to Ron, as the man continued to slather banalities on top of platitudes.

"Yeah," Ron hissed back, "You-Know-Who put a curse on the Defense position a while back, so they keep combining classes and making frogs Professors and doing all sorts of nutty stuff to get it off. Hold on, why are we hissing?"

"I don't know," said Ozland in a normal voice, "it just seemed natural."

" - and might I ask how many of your other siblings are in need of my full book set?"

"Forty," said Georgina Sneasley. "Actually wait, fifty."

A stunned silence followed.

"Just put it in the potato sack, thanks," Frederica Sneasley chimed in.

Lockhart spluttered for a moment, counted out fifty book-sets wrapped in maroon ribbons, placing them one by one into the sack, with a faintly disgusted smile.

As Ozland watched in wonderment, somebody tapped on his shoulder. He turned around, seeing Fred and George.

"So what's all this, then?" said George, looking genuinely curious.

"Um," Ozland looked up to the podium, where the two girls were posing for photographs, "I thought I knew but I'm not sure now."

Ron seemed to have had a similar reaction. He wasn't lost for words — he had all the words, but the order they were supposed to go in seemed to evade him at that moment.

The twins looked just as confused as they were.

"Um," ummed Ozland again, "well, I'll tell you what happened and leave the conjecture out of it." He told them.

"Alright," said Fred. "Seems obvious enough. We pulled off a fantastic prank and conned Lockhart out of hundreds of Galleons' worth of books, Time-Turned back to give ourselves an alibi, and Obliviated one another."

"Or," said George, "we, and by 'we' I mean us, standing here right now, haven't actually done it yet - "

"Wait, what?"

" - but at some point in the future we'll Time-Turn back and do it."

"That . . . " he was about to say 'doesn't make any sense', but there had to be some kind of internally-consistent logic to all of it. "What if you don't do it?"

Fred and George shook their heads. "Honestly, take it from us – "

" – it's best not to go up against the underlying order of reality. Except on Sunday. Besides," George gesticulated in the direction of the two girls, who were taking questions from various journalists, "we've already done it," he grinned, "it'll be a bloody cake-walk."

#######

As they walked through the Trunk Emporium (for Ozland's sake — the Weasleys already had trunks for the most part, and seemed determined to give him advice, as if they were helping him select his first car), Fred and George, having recently morphed from little blonde girls to lanky, red-headed teenagers, filled him on what had happened. "The trick," they'd said, "is leaving it right to the last minute. Then Time gets really desperate and arranges all sorts of weird coincidences."

That time, as they idly walked about in the street outside the bookstore, a broom-rider collided with another broom-rider, causing a brown parcel to fall onto George's head, which contained enough Polyjuice Potion for both of them to maintain a Polyjuiced form for four hours. They realised at that point, that for whatever reason, a strand of Ginny's hair was stuck to Fred's robe, put two and two together, downed the Polyjuice with the hair, and applied the Colour-Changing Charm to their own hair to turn it blonde. Then Fred accidentally spilt some of the Polyjuice on the ground.

The spill pattern spelt out the word 'Arcturian whalepox'.

They spilt some more, and got three paragraphs of detailed instructions.

They spilt even more, and got a sentence reading 'Do this again and I'll sock both of you in the balls.'

The rest, apparently, had gone very well.

"No, not that one."

"Why not that one?" Ozland asked Mrs Weasley for the umpteenth time.

She knelt down, pointing at a series of subtle scratches along the base. "This one's been through at least two owners, or one owner who had it for a while. You can't fix scratches with ordinary repair Charms, you see. Interior expansions degrade over time – if you're not careful, it'll collapse into a singularity with you and your belongings inside."

The trunk salesman, having been busy with someone else up until that moment, stepped in. "An interesting choice, young man," he opened with, before breaking into a well-oiled spiel. "This was Paddaryll Cymeglen's trunk, who worked in the Department of Land Expansions and mapped two hundred universes up until his, er, disappearance. Well-loved and full of adventure, this trunk is."

Ozland's mind had gotten stuck on one particular word. "Disappearance?"

"Oh," said the salesman, airily, "some say he and his belongings collapsed into a singularity, but the rumour going about is he hiccuped during a dimensional ritual and ended up somewhere far off the Charted Zone. In any case, this trunk has been revamped, recharged, and cleaned very thoroughly. And we've had an exorcist come in, just to be sure. Clean in both the material and spiritual realm."

"I think I'll have to pass – "

"And I forgot to add, this certainly isn't an ordinary internally-expanded trunk – "

"They all say that," Mrs Weasley huffed.

" – in fact, it's not an internal expansion at all." He went into a theatrical hush. "Cymeglen made a direct link between our universe and his unregistered house in Cymeglen-551J."

"None of this makes any sense," complained Ozland very quietly. "I just want to buy a trunk and get this over and done with."

Mrs Weasley seemed intrigued. "He did all of this before the passing of the registration laws?" she asked, carefully.

"Indeed."

"And it's eighty Galleons?"

"The same."

She paused. "Is there anything, you know, wrong with Cymeglen-551J?"

"It's eighty fathoms out from the Official Registrar, so you can't be expecting Ministry emergency services, if that's what you mean."

"What's the divergence?" Mrs Weasley demanded.

Ozland folded his arms, glancing around the store. Of all the things I thought I'd be doing today, I wasn't expecting 'buying a universe' to be one of them.

"Something to do with giant potatoes and people speaking Norse. You'll have to Floo the Ministry assessor, I'll send you his details."

Mrs Weasley tapped her cheek. "We'll take a look inside. And it'll have to be forty Galleons."

The salesman looked pained. "Alright, alright."

#######

They'd ended up in a gloomy, dusty room after coming down the stairs, stuffed with old furniture.

Mrs Weasley had murmured what was supposed to be a simple torch Charm, but instead, a faint, pure musical note had rung through the air, grown more and more intense, and then cut off abruptly. After a few seconds of silence, the glassy orbs that they'd noticed before near the ceiling, flickered soundlessly, and then began warmly glowing. She brought out her wand, firing off a series of spells. "Dzevzgalov. Point Me. Löciseng. Alright, we're a mile from the Thames, and North is that way," she said, finally, looking bewildered.

"Potatofind," incanted George. "There's a – "

"That's not a spell," said Ron, stumbling over a pea-green armchair.

"Is too," shot Fred.

" – fifteen-tonne potato under this house."

"Potatofind," said Mrs Weasley, copying his wand-motion. "Merlin, there really is a fifteen-tonne potato underneath . . . underneath the one next to us, too. Mr Forksworth," she said, addressing the salesman, who looked distinctly alarmed, "are you sure you don't remember anything else?"

Mr Forksworth furled his eyebrows in thought. "There was something about a famine, but I'm afraid I'm really not sure. And I'm certain the Ministry assessor talked about vikings — really, you'll have to ask him. By the way," he said, nodding at Ozland, "the house is yours, too. Sixty Galleons?"

"Um, sure – "

"Alright, just sign this, this, and this. Fabulous. And we'll just have to change the blood wards. Aithnedìonffuil." Something in the air in front of Ozland sharpened into an upward curving point, like a glass mountain, becoming more and more distinct until it was a jutting crystal.

"Just reach out and prick your finger on the tip to seal the wards. Give it a strong tap."

Ozland did exactly that, and winced as blood blossomed from his index finger. It seemed to disperse through the air in vivid, roiling curls, giving the whole room a faint red tinge before dissipating.

Mrs Weasley and the salesman congratulated him, and Fred and George clapped him on the back — but he wasn't really paying attention, because he'd just noticed that the room around him was filled with trunks.

#######