1.
SORTING HAT: Oh, this is interesting.
HARRY POTTER: What?
HAT: Harry, you have the makings of a very powerful Omajista!
HARRY: What’s that when it’s at home?
HAT: Drawing on the power of the dark star Oma, you would become a great master of blood magic.
HARRY: That… doesn’t sound like such a good thing.
HAT: Oh, but think, Harry! You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your blood, and Oma will help you to greatness. With a sufficiently large mass human sacrifice, you could tear open the walls that divide the universes!
HARRY: Um.
HAT: Or I could just put you in Gryffindor.
2.
HERMIONE GRANGER: Come quickly, Professor Flitwick! Malfoy’s just cast Disembowelatus on Ron!
PROFESSOR FLITWICK: Don’t worry. What with that immortality curse Professor Snape put on him for copying your homework, he’ll be up and around in no time.
RON WEASLEY: Why… can’t…. I… die…?
FLITWICK: Now, now, Weasley. Don’t talk like that. The world needs you. We need you… to maintain Professor Dumbledore’s artificial spleen for him. Heaven forfend he should ever die, there’d be blood in the halls for months.
RON: Get… Hufflepuffs… to… grow… another….
FLITWICK: You know the star Huffle is descendent. Hufflepuffs are weak and useless now.
HERMIONE: Hold on now, Ron, you’re almost there! Your… er, I think that’s your duodenum climbing back in through the hole. I kind of wish I didn’t know that.
RON: Ugh. That’s better. Blasted Malfoy, I’ll make him eat slugs next time! Um. Why is everyone staring at me?
HERMOINE: You look… different. And your voice. It isn’t breaking anymore.
RON: [hopefully] Is it all deep and manly now? Oh. No. No, it’s not. Not again. I’ll never hear the end of this when Fred and George find out.
HERMIONE: It’s all right, Ron. There’s a spare bed in the girls’ dorm.
3.
PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: As some of you may know, a student died today. Kathioka Maasaar of House Ravenclaw, a talented young parajista and a friend to many of you. I myself shall miss her a great deal. Our dinner tonight will not be vegetarian for once, as we honour the remains of the deceased in our traditional manner. [pause] Professor Snape, would you care to carve?
4.
HARRY: But I saw them! I saw them! My parents are alive!
DUMBLEDORE: Harry, when we very much want something, there are magics that can mislead-
HARRY: I took a picture! On my phone!
DUMBLEDORE: Dammit. OK, I’ll level with you. Your parents are dead, Harry. But picture another world in which there are two people just like Lily and James Potter. Or rather, who look just like your mother and father. They led very different lives from their equivalents in our world. So different, in fact, that by now you could hardly consider them to be the same people at all.
HARRY: But if they look just like my parents, surely they’re the same people inside? I mean, really?
DUMBLEDORE: Nope.
HARRY: How so?
DUMBLEDORE: Your parents were… how shall I put it? Significantly less genocidal.
HARRY: I guess.
DUMBLEDORE: And also didn’t have killer trees growing out of their wrists. See, that’s a bit of a giveaway.
[The Mirror Empire: vol 1 of the Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling, of course.]
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