Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Disclaimer: Belongs to J.K., not mine, no money being made, not copyright infringement intended, etc., etc.

Chapter Three

In Which Nobody Gets the Part They Want

Harry's alarm clock screamed in his ear at 7:00 on Monday morning. He hit the snooze and rolled over, planning to go back to sleep for another ten minutes (twenty, if he could wangle it), but it was not to be. Ron, having other plans, yanked open Harry's curtains and pulled back the covers.

"Get up, Harry!" he yelled, just inches away from Harry's ear. He was purposefully loud and boisterous (because, of course, macho men make their presence known), and he walloped Harry on the shoulder for good measure. It didn't hurt at all, but Harry was sufficiently annoyed.

"Holy flippin' Merlin, Ron!" he groaned. "Do you know what time it is? Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

"But Dumbledore's posting the results of the auditions!" Seamus called from the bathroom. "Get your arse outta bed, Harry!"

Harry sat up, clutching his pillow to his ears. "Fuck," he mumbled. "If I die and go to hell, it's going to be Monday morning every single day." And he stumbled out of bed, catching his copy of Playwizard as it fell from his sheets.

All the other boys in his dormitory were getting ready for the school day. Dean Thomas was all dressed and just about to leave. Neville was hogging the shower, and Seamus was hogging the sink as he gelled up his hair. Ron was wandering around in his boxers, because that's what macho men do--though of course he didn't go around naked, because that would be gay, not macho.

Harry's alarm clock screamed again, sending him a mile in the air. "Holy fucking... shitty alarm clock!" he growled. "Sounds like a damn banshee." He slapped the off button with his hand, and it fell apart like a piece of garbage. "This is not going to be a good day," Harry moaned.

Little did he know just how right he was...

He was molested by misfortune again in the very next half-hour when Ginny came into the room as he was dressing after his shower. "Hiya, Harry," she said, giving him a grin (admittedly a bit forced). "How're you doing?"

"Marvelous, sweetie," Harry mumbled. Ron (who was still wandering around in his boxers) shot the couple a sidelong glance. That was a rehearsed greeting if ever he heard one.

"Sleep well?"

"You bet. And you?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"Yes, good."

She sat down on Harry's bed. Feeling something hard under her rear end, she reached underneath her and pulled it out.

"Oh, that's mine!" Harry said quickly, and he snatched the Playwizard magazine out of her hands.

"What was that?" Ginny snapped indignantly. But Harry hadn't been fast enough; she had seen it. "Why the hell do you have that kind of junk on you?"

"I..." Harry quickly thought around for a lie he could tell her. "I... what do you mean?"

"You're reading porn!" she cried. "How could you?"

"Er..." A look of desperation contorted his features until the flash of an inspired falsehood lit his face. "That old rag? That's like three years old or something. Long before we were going out. I don't read it anymore."

"So it just happened to be lying in your bed this morning, even though you never read it?" Ginny snarled. "What exactly do you take me for, Harry James Potter?"

"I... I..." Harry spluttered. "Look, this is none of your business! Don't go nosing around in my stuff again! Anyway, what's the big deal? It's not hurting you, it's not like--"

"It is a big deal, you idiot!" Ginny countered. "You wouldn't understand, you're too--"

"--how's it any different from what you do with your tampons after they're used?"

"What?" The embarrassment of being found out mingled badly with the anger that already contorted Ginny's pale face. "Who told you that? That's none of your business."

"Lavender did. And you're right. It's none of my business. And this is none of your busi--"

"Yes, it fucking well is!"

Ron rolled his eyes and retreated to the bathroom to finish dressing. Being a macho man, he wasn't supposed to know this, but Ginny and Harry would be lucky to last out the next month as a couple. Truth be told, he couldn't wait for that final break-up. It was annoying as hell, listening to their spatting and their verbal clawing day-in and day-out. They just needed to break it off. Then he could give Harry the obligatory punching, like he had when Harry and Ginny had first gotten together. That's what every macho man did, after all: When his sister got a boyfriend, he gave the man a punching as an initiation; when his sister dumped the boyfriend, he gave him a punching as a punishment. It was tedious and more than a little tiresome, and Ron wished he didn't have to do it, especially when Ginny went through boyfriends like she was sampling chocolates. But he was a macho man, and he had an image to uphold.

**********

Breakfast that day was a subdued affair. Harry and Ginny still sat beside each other, but this time they didn't hold hands or talk or even look at each other. Meanwhile, Hermione and Ron sat shoulder-to-shoulder, in intense discomfort, on the opposite side of the table. Hermione was still in a bad mood from Ron's crack on Friday, and she spent breakfast nursing her bushy hair. It looked like she had tried to slick it down again, and, what with her huge front teeth peeking out from her overbite, she looked like one of those beavers caught in an oil spill.

Fifteen minutes before class was to start, Dumbledore stopped biting into his tender sausage and stood up. "Attention, students of Hogwarts!" he said, his voice carrying magically to every corner of the room. "The results of Friday's auditions are now posted in the Entrance Hall." He gave a wave of his wand, and a long stream of jumbled words flew out of the room and arranged themselves somewhere out of sight in the Entrance Hall. The students jumped up from their breakfasts and ran after the trail of letters, yammering eagerly along the way.

"I hope I got the part of Ravenclaw!" Hermione and Ginny and another dozen girls said.

"I'm cut out for Slytherin," Draco told his friends haughtily.

"I'll bet you got Xaxis's wife, Lav," Parvati told her best friend.

"I heard Dumbledore changed some of the play around," Cho told Marietta.

"I'll be glad if I just get some part," Neville said glumly. Normally he would be right in expecting the worst, because he really was a failure. But, much to his surprise, his name was the first on the list! He promptly dropped over in a dead faint while everyone else crowded around him.

"I see my name! I see my name!" Ginny cried happily. "Oh look, Harry, there's--" she cut herself off as she realized she wasn't talking to him.

"Oh my gosh!" Loser cried. "There's me, there's me!! Holy Merlin!" And he started laughing his loserly laugh. Everyone else laughed at the sounds he was making, but at the same time they couldn't help feeling uncomfortable; see, they didn't know he was telling the truth, simply for the fact that they didn't know his name.

"But wait..." someone in the crowd called. "It doesn't say who got which role! It just has the names!"

And this was true. The bulletin before them was entitled: "DUMBLEDORE'S THE QUADRANGLE: A NEW FOUNDERS PLAY!" Beneath it was the word "CAST," and then a list of names.

"That sucks!" Draco Malfoy yelled, incensed. "It has my name, but it doesn't tell everyone that I'm playing Slytherin!"

"And there's me on the list," Susan said, jabbing her finger at Dumbledore's spidery handwriting, "but it doesn't give me the role of Hufflepuff. It's obvious that I got it; why can't the old coot just put it up?"

"Yeah, this is an outrage!" her boyfriend Edmund agreed. "And there's my name, too. I'll bet I'm playing Olivier, the great battle hero."

"Actually, I sorta wanted to play that part," Ron said to Harry. "Either that or Gryffindor. Any real macho role will do, even Xaxis. At least my name's up there."

"I guess we'll just have to wait until the cast meeting at 3:00," Harry said resignedly. "We've been waiting all weekend, after all. What's another seven hours?"

**********

One heck of a long time, that's what. By the end of it, everyone in the whole school except for Dumbledore was a high-strung wreck. None of the students paid attention in class, opting instead to list out all the roles they could have possibly gotten. Those who didn't make the cast fumed into their schoolbooks the whole day, all the more mad because they had no one to blame for stealing the parts they wanted. The teachers, frustrated at all the furor and lack of concentration, handed out detentions like peanuts. Clumps of hair hung from everyone's fingers by lunchtime, and by the end of classes more than a few faces were blood red from tears of anxiety.

Only two people managed to take this Monday morning in stride. The first was Luna. She had made out a list of possible cast choices for herself, just like all her friends. The difference was that she has put down every single name in the entire play, stating that she could act any one of them if given the responsibility. "I want Ravenclaw," she told Harry conversationally at lunch, "but I could make a good Gryffindor or stable boy, too. Daddy says I'll look beautiful in whatever role I get."

The other person was Dumbledore. Forget about being calm: He was downright cheerful. Everyone agreed that this was a sin and that his insane grinning should be outlawed on such a day as this. They figured he must have taken some demented pleasure out of all the suspense (which of course he did), and they plotted heavy-duty pranks and assassination attempts for their esteemed headmaster.

When the bell rang at 3:00, the castle shook with the force of the stampedes that the students caused in the halls. The resident pets streaked to the nearest nook or cranny to avoid getting squashed, but some of the First-Years weren't so lucky. Five went to the hospital wing with injuries, and one was pronounced dead upon arrival. However, Madame Pomfrey unpronounced it and managed to pull the unfortunate girl out of her coma within three weeks. This was all no thanks to Peeves, who started up a spiel of dead baby jokes in an effort to "cheer up the ickle Firsties."

Enough about the First-Years, who everyone else ignored anyway. By 3:01 the entire cast (and then some) was gathered in the Great Hall, where Dumbledore had once again cleared away the tables and was waiting patiently in the center of the room. "Greetings to you all," he said jovially.

"I demand you tell me my role!" Draco shouted out from the crowd. He was accompanied by at least half of the students.

"All in good time, my children," Dumbledore said sweetly. "Members of the cast and crew, your curiosity shall soon be sated. Those of you who aren't such members must exit the Great Hall." There was much grumbling from the mass of students. Dumbledore gave a wave of his wand in order to push them all in the right direction, and soon the doors of the Great Hall closed behind the last student, leaving fifty students as the select cast and crew of The Quadrangle.

"Wonderful, just wonderful," the headmaster sighed happily. He magicked a stack of script books into his arms and began handing them out to the impatient audience. "I wrote this myself, you know," he told them. "I researched the Founders Four and edited out all the historical inaccuracies that plague Durdge's awful version. Then I took what I had and spiced it up to make some fine entertainment. This new version of the Founders Play is--"

"Just tell us our roles already!" Draco whined as he snatched a copy of The Quadrangle from Dumbledore. The crowd around him mumbled in agreement.

"This new version of the Founders Play is divided into four acts," Dumbledore continued as if he hadn't been rudely interrupted. "And this time our Four Founders don't hog all the good lines--I gave a good deal of verbal acrobats to Olivier the battle hero and the librarian and even the stable boy."

"Excuse me, sir, but what librarian are you talking about?" Hermione asked Dumbledore with her hand raised. She couldn't quite keep the know-it-all bossiness out of her voice. "Durdge's play had nothing about a librarian or a stable boy."

"Or the librarian's lover or the house-elves, I know," Dumbledore said. "I hate him for it."

Hermione looked affronted. "Hate Durdge? But sir, Durdge is considered the greatest playwright the Wizarding World has ever seen!"

"Obviously our world hasn't been very prolific, has it?" Dumbledore countered lightly. "If I ever get the chance to visit his grave, I am sure I shall spit on it. He made a vile portrayal of our Founders and the Wizarding World in general."

"How was it vile?" Hermione argued, not knowing when to stop. "It was a grand tribute to the opulence and power of the medieval wizards and witches."

"Exactly," Dumbledore said. "It was full of lies. I've added a grittier element to it all. Our sets will have to reflect that, so all my set artists will do well to keep that in mind."

The students, who had been working themselves up all day, were at a breaking point. What in the world had they gotten themselves into? Dumbledore was unquestionably senile--why had they auditioned for a play written by him, directed by him, cast by him, and decorated by him? This was going to be torture!

"But fear not," Dumbledore said blithely:. "To lighten the mood, I've put in some musical numbers. We're going to have some fun with those!" His crazed grin convinced the room that he must be talking to his other half, as the students certainly wouldn't be having any of the supposed "fun."

Ron raised a timid hand and took a script book from Dumbledore. "Er, Professor, sir," he said, "just how much are you involved in this play?"

"I wrote it," Dumbledore said. "I cast it. I'm producing it, directing it, taking charge of the scenery, and directing the lighting."

The students cast each other a few significant glances, which said one thing: Dumbledore was doing too much.

"And I suppose you're doing the bloody makeup too?" Justin Finch-Fletchley piped up, his eyes suffused with fear.

"Actually, I've put someone else in charge of the makeup, bloody and non," Dumbledore said, smiling sweetly. "Who was it now...? I'll have to check my list. Ah yes, my list! Time for you to learn your roles!"

It being a Monday and an argument-with-Ginny day, bad luck had mistreated Harry pretty harshly. But now it wasn't only Harry that suffered, but the whole room (bar Dumbledore and Luna). The legions of Misfortune sneaked upon the unwary students, slammed them against the wall, and raped them in this manner:

"The role of Slytherin goes to..." Dumbledore paused purposefully as the audience waited with baited breath... "Neville."

Collectively the students let out their breath in a whoosh of horror. Who in their right minds would cast dumb, failing Neville as a cunning Pureblood? The two mixed about as much as water and oil. Neville, who had been on tenterhooks all day after his fainting fit, looked the most dumbfounded of all. He had said he'd be glad to get any part, just so long as he got one, but Slytherin was on the bottom of his list! "Er... Dumbledore? You said...?"

"My mistake, you're my assistant director with the lights and scenery," came the reply. Scratch that, Dumbledore didn't say that at all. Neville had been so wishing to hear an answer like this that he almost believed that he heard it. What Dumbledore actually said was: "Slytherin, Master Longbottom. You're perfect for the part."

As Neville mouthed soundlessly, Draco Malfoy let out an indignant shriek. "Hey, I'm supposed to do Slytherin!" he screamed. "What the hell are you playing at?!"

"All in good time, Master Malfoy," Dumbledore said soothingly. "Patience is a virtue. I've given you a role I think you'll rather enjoy." Malfoy backed down at this statement, but he still fumed as Dumbledore moved down the list.

"Ah Luna, you shall be playing the role of Rowena Ravenclaw. Congratulations."

"It'll be my pleasure, Professor," Luna said, her lips turning upwards in a faraway smile. Neville shot her a dirty glance, obviously displeased that she got her dream role when he didn't.

"And while we're at Rowena Ravenclaw, Harry Potter is cast as the stable boy."

Harry started in shock. "Stable boy?" he said, nonplussed. "I auditioned for Gryffindor, or perhaps Olivier the battle hero. What the heck does the stable boy do?"

"Mostly he has an affair with Ravenclaw," Dumbledore answered amiably.

Misfortune had raped Harry again, this time so hard that he wouldn't be surprised if he was bleeding out the anus by now. He goggled unflatteringly at Dumbledore and joined Neville in the soundless mouthing. Meanwhile, Ginny shot him a filthy glare from across the room, as it was his fault that he had to play the love interest of Luna Lovegood. Dumbledore, however, flashed Harry a special grin and continued down the list.

"Gregory Goyle shall be playing the librarian," he said. "And Hermione Granger will play opposite him as his lover."

"Yuck!" Malfoy shouted out, perhaps wanting to cause trouble over his disappointment at missing the Slytherin role. "Goyle, I hope you enjoy kissing the bushy-haired beaver!"

Conversation, which had swelled upon the announcement of the couple, paused just long enough for Malfoy's insult to echo across the whole hall. There was a moment's silence before raucous laughter broke out. Hermione was beyond affronted--she started yelling at Malfoy and was about to pull out her wand when Harry pulled her back and lavished her with soothing compliments. Meanwhile, Goyle just stared glumly at the floor. To most people, he looked too stupid to know what was going on, but, unlike Crabbe, he wasn't really. He was just depressed because he didn't think Hermione deserved an insult like that, and what's worse, he couldn't even stand up to Malfoy for saying it.

"That will do, Master Malfoy," Dumbledore said calmly. "Now let's move on. Ernie Macmillan shall be playing the evil Xaxis, and Eloise Midgen will play his wife. And as for Olivier the battle hero, that role goes to Clifford."

There was a long pause as the students whispered back and forth to each other, all asking the same question: "Who is Clifford?" The answer came a moment later when Loser suddenly burst into blubbering tears.

"I cuh-cuh-can't do that role!" he cried. "I'm not brave! Puh-puh-please, D-Dumbledore, don't make me do it! Make me a set artist or a makeup person, but nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-NOT Olivier."

Everyone stared at him with a mixture of pity and revulsion (mainly the latter). What a loser. They all resolved immediately to forget his name and move on the best they could with him crippling the cast.

"I wrote that role with you in mind," Dumbledore told Loser kindly. "You're more than going to fill it."

By Loser's continuous blubbering, he obviously didn't agree. Neither did the rest of the audience.

"Enough about him!" Malfoy shouted out. "What role do I play?"

Dumbledore consulted his list. "You're going to be Godric Gryffindor."

Another epoch of silence. Was it dementia, or was Dumbledore seriously retarded? Draco Malfoy was many things: he was a sneak, a bully, a brat, a potions maker, a cheater... The list went on. But brave he was not. He didn't belong in Gryffindor's role, and everyone knew it. Including Draco. "Why the hell do I have to play Gryffindor?" he moaned. "I'm a Slytherin, for Merlin's sake! What makes you think I could play bloody Godric douche-shit Gryffindor?!"

"It's like this, Master Malfoy," Dumbledore said. He paused a moment to consider his choice of words, and the students waited to hear what kind of excuse he could possibly have this time. "It's like this, Master Malfoy. Godric Gryffindor was a slut. An honest-to-goodness nymphomaniac. He slept with anything that moved and a few things that didn't. You'll play him perfectly."

Malfoy purpled with rage. The rest of the crowd tittered softly but otherwise didn't know what to make of such a bold pronouncement. "And just what are you implying, Headmaster?!" Malfoy cried. "Are you saying I'm--?"

"What I'm saying is that, when I asked you to do poses, you did some very Godric-like poses," Dumbledore explained hastily, almost as if he didn't think Malfoy was a man-slut. "Hence, I cast you. Believe me, you'll have a ball."

"More than one, by the sound of it," Ron muttered, and the whole Great Hall broke with laughter. Malfoy whipped out his wand and was about to curse the redhead when Dumbledore was obliged to cast a Petrificus Totalus on him.

"Thank you, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said reprovingly while Ron grinned cockily. "Speaking of which, you have been cast as... hmm, where is it... ah yes, the makeup director."

"What?" Ron stared at his headmaster, bowled over. Makeup was the least macho thing in all creation! He had worked seventeen long years in grooming his image, and now Dumbledore came along and cast him as a... as a... no, this couldn't be true. "Makeup director? But... but... what happened to me playing a role?" He was desperate--he wanted any position but the makeup director!

"Oh sorry," Dumbledore said, "I have also put you down for Helga Hufflepuff."

Had smelling salts not been outdated by half-a-century, Ron would have asked for them. He sank weakly into Harry's shoulder and mouthed wordlessly at Dumbledore. "He didn't..." he finally managed to gasp in Harry's ear. "He didn't...! Please tell me he didn't! I'd rather die!"

"Join the club," Harry said bitterly. He thought he would feel better if everyone else got roles they didn't like, but it hadn't helped at all. His metaphorical arsehole was still as sore as ever.

"Him as Hufflepuff?" Susan cried, horrified. "But I was supposed to be Hufflepuff! Who the hell am I supposed to be if I'm not Helga fucking Hufflepuff?!"

Dumbledore didn't need to reprimand Susan for her bad language. His next words were more than enough punishment for her ego. "You, Susan? Let me consult my... ah, here you are! You're a chorus girl in one of the musical numbers."

Susan recoiled as if bitten. "A CHORUS GIRL?!" she shrieked. "What the hell am I supposed to do as a CHORUS GIRL?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "Besides sing? You smile and look pretty." He looked down at his list again. "Oh wait, that's not right; you're one of the chorus girls in the whorehouse scene. In that case, you scowl, dress ugly, and look like a complete slut."

"NO FUCKING FAIR!" Susan shouted, outraged. "EDMUND, DO YOU THINK THIS IS FAIR?!"

Her boyfriend threw his arms around her and glared at Dumbledore. "It most certainly isn't," he snarled. "You get her out of that role, Dumbledore, you hear me?"

"Oh no, it'll be fine," Dumbledore assured him. "You're also a chorus girl in that scene--excuse me, chorus boy. You two get to be together onstage--isn't that convenient?"

It damn well wasn't, but he didn't give them time to complain. Instead, Dumbledore finished up the list. He dished out the extra (in other words, unimportant) roles and the crew positions before he pronounced the casting complete. By that time, all fifty students (once again barring Luna) were glaring at him so murderously that he almost took a step backwards. Almost.

"Let's do a read-through, okay?" he suggested quickly. "All you crewmen and crewwomen, feel free to join in the musical numbers. Just say the words; we'll memorize the melodies later."

And with that, he conjured up fifty-one beanbag couches out of thin air and dropped them down in a neat circle in the center of the Great Hall. The students glared at their furniture (the colors ranged from hot pink to blinding yellow to puce) before they grudgingly sat down.

"Turn to page three," Dumbledore instructed them, "and we'll start with the first act, in the quadrangle where the four founders meet. Draco, you start us off."

Draco glared so venomously at Dumbledore that he was one straw away from spitting poison. With ill grace, he jerked open his book and began to read:

[GRYFFINDOR stands downstage left in the Quadrangle. RAVENCLAW is downstage right, HUFFLEPUFF is upstage left, and SLYTHERIN is upstage right.]

GRYFF:

Ah, day, the glorious day Spring Equinox,

When all the little babies made last fall

Inside the thrusts of love are born with pain!

The cries of labor reach a fever pitch

As babies squirt out, bloodied, on the earth--

The bunnies, kitties, puppies, and the fawns--

And then their mothers lick them with their tongues

Until the mess is gone. And then they snap

Th' umbilical cord and eat it up, along

With the placenta. And bravo! Brava,

Bravissimo, bravissima, new life!

Draco's gray eyes smoldered in pure loathing as he looked up from the end of his first monologue. "That is the worst thing I've ever had to read, Professor," he snarled.

"It was so gross!" some Hufflepuff Third-Year squealed.

"Yeah, who wants to hear about animals eating the leftovers hanging from their vaginas after birth?" Ginny demanded.

Seamus shrugged and said in a small voice, "Actually, I sorta liked it. A bit kinky, you know?"

"Not kinky, exactly," Dumbledore said, giving Seamus a rewarding smile. "I was more trying to show Gryffindor's obsession with sex through his attention to detail in the birthing process. I wanted to have a few someones play the animals eating their umbilical cords, but I decided it'd be a bit hard to bring off realistically. Besides, it would've meant spending an extra few galleons getting special-effect placental props, and I think the money might go further in other parts of the play.

"Anyway, back to reading. Gryffindor has just finished up with "new life!" "

RAVEN:

Oh spring, new life!--but is it really new

When wizardkind has labored for so long,

Stagnant in their ignorance of life

And magic? Certainly somebody may

Soon pull our race out from its rutted depths

And give to us new power and new strength!

HUFF:

Why do the children of our simple world

Not know where they belong? What loyalties

Can possibly they tie when ties are hard

To see and make? Who'll deign to lead them right?

SLYTH:

If magic our dear children cannot learn,

'Tis better they were cut it twain with spear,

With sword or arrow, so their weakling guts

Could feed the gasping earth with wine-red blood.

It's either brains or bloodbaths we must choose!--

Our power to wield, or power we will misuse.

"Speak up, Neville," Dumbledore interrupted him. "This might only be a read-through, but it's also your first chance to nab your role. Put a lot more oomph into the last line." Neville shrunk into his beanbag chair, clearly terrified at having to go through a whole four acts as Salazar Slytherin himself.

"As for you, Ron, you sound way too much like a man. Use a full, matronly voice that'll match the beautiful dress and fat suit I'll be giving you." Ron purpled with embarrassment as he wondered how many more hits his machoism could possibly take.

"And you, Luna," Dumbledore concluded, "perfect. Just keep it up, and you'll make the best Ravenclaw the Founders Play tradition has ever seen." The other three lead actors shot dirty looks at Luna, who smiled serenely and said thank you.

**********

3:55 P.M. Act I, Scene iv, Line 31.

"What is this shit, Headmaster?" Draco shrieked as he stumbled upon his next line. " 'Give it to me up the fuckin' ass/You dirty sumbitch manwhore 'tarded spaz!'?! What the fuck is wrong with you, old coot?!"

"Oh, I love that line!" Dumbledore said, chortling. "If you deliver it properly--in a dominatrix sort of voice with lots of hand-gestures--you'll have the audience rolling in the aisles!"

"This is smut!" Draco shouted. "There's hardly anything about Hogwarts in it! And Gryffindor's slept with two people already, not to mention the other eight he's propositioned. What the fuck are you expecting me to do?"

"Where do I come in?" Susan whined.

"Right here, you dumb cooze," Draco snapped at her. "This is the fucking whorehouse scene, if you didn't notice. You're singing that dumb line about 'Hail Gryffindor, the richest of patrons!/Health, happiness to him, and lots of mons!' Have fun."

"Don't call her a cooze!" Edmund yelled. "You're the one playing the nympho!"

"Oh, and who's the one doing the man-slut?" Draco said, feigning forgetfulness. "Oh right, you! And it's only a singing role. How sad."

"Enough, my darling boys," Dumbledore interrupted calmly. "Fear not, the first act may seem a little bawdy, but it isn't really. It has a lot of setting up to do. There's more about Hogwarts in the next three parts, though of course I don't focus on it too much. People like to think it was the life work of the Founders, but it actually didn't take more than half-a-year to set it up. They employed house-elves to build the castle from a pre-drawn floorplan and then went to various bars and meeting halls to advertise their school to other wizards. It really wasn't much work. They were more concerned about their own love lives, to tell the truth."

"That's not true!" Hermione cried, as if Dumbledore had personally insulted her. "Our Founders Four really cared about Hogwarts. Haven't you even read Charles Durdge's original--"

"My dear girl, how long will you continue to harp upon the worst play in existence?" Dumbledore said with a sigh of longsuffering. "It's a pack of lies, I tell you. I've done my own research--read long-lost diaries, found secret libraries, undone many cursed tomes--and have found that the Founders Four were not as noble as we like to think. I'm trying to present that idea in my play."

"But how do you know your information is accurate?" Hermione complained. "Durdge did some research, too."

Dumbledore sighed, and only his endless virtue of longsuffering kept the noise from being a rude one. "I'm sorry to pull this card on you, Miss Granger, but how old are you?"

Hermione deflated somewhat (except for her bushy hair, which could never deflated). "I turned eighteen in September."

"And how old was Durdge when he wrote the Founders Play?"

"Forty-one," she said in a small voice. Everyone wondered how much of her life she had sacrificed to gain that useless piece of knowledge.

"And how old am I?"

Hermione stared at her hands and mumbled, "...I don't know, sir."

"Well over a hundred," Dumbledore told her. "Very well over a hundred, that is. I have at least three times as much life experience as Durdge did at that point. I know what I'm talking about. Cased closed."

**********

4:49 P.M. Act III, Scene i, line 1.

OLI:

All right, you goddamned motherf--

Loser stopped short and looked up at Dumbledore with tears in his eyes. "I can't say it, sir," he blubbered. "I-I-I-I-It's too much! The words are so bad!"

"Olivier wasn't just a battle hero," Dumbledore told him gently. "He was also an army sergeant. Army sergeants always swear at their soldiers."

"But my mum will hate me for it!" Loser wailed.

"No, she won't," Dumbledore said. "It's all part of the role. It's not like I added the swear words just for the shock value." Behind him, Hermione gave a hacking cough that was purposefully fake.

"Stop whining, Loser," Draco said snidely. "At least you don't have to make out with Longbottom." He and Neville were still smarting from Act II, scene 3, where Gryffindor seduced Slytherin on a scary nighttime mission in the Forbidden Forest.

"Now don't you go complaining about that scene again, Master Malfoy," Dumbledore said reprovingly. "I originally had a part where Gryffindor and Slytherin do some homoerotic nude wrestling--much like the incident in D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love--but I cut it out and saved the only nude scene for Act IV."

Goyle and Hermione, having been the only people in the entire room remotely smart enough to read Women in Love, stuffed their hands in their mouths to stop their giggles. The other people just heard "nude wrestling." That, combined with Draco and Neville, was enough to make them look vaguely nauseous.

Neville looked like he never needed to hear what he and Draco had narrowly escaped. Trembling at the lip, he raised his hand and said, "Professor Dumbledore, sir? Who has the nude scene?"

Dumbledore cocked his head and said patiently (as in: adult-talking-to-a-toddler patiently), "Would you like me to tell you, or shall we read the play and find out?"

"Tell us!" Draco insisted. A note of fear tinged his voice.

"That wasn't what you were supposed to say," Dumbledore said, scowling. "Now let's continue reading, and no more questions."

**********

5:47 P.M. Act IV, scene iii, line 42.

RAVEN:

Oh, James, a stable boy you may just be,

But you mean ever so much more to me!

JAMES:

I've never seen the sea, but it is deep,

But my love's deeper, and it's yours to keep.

RAVEN:

The deepness of your love's an abstract view.

But phys'cal is the bond of one from two!

[JAMES and RAVENCLAW take off each other's clothes.]

"HOLD IT!" Harry shrieked. "Dumbledore, you gave me a defective copy! It says here that we, er... we, er..."

"Take off each other's clothes," Dumbledore said lightly. "No, your copy isn't defective."

"Oh, so that's the nude scene you were talking about," Luna said. Her normal serene smile grew to a grin. "I've always wanted to do one. I was talking to a Heebripple about our play the other day, and he said I'd be perfect for a nude scene."

Harry gaped at her. She must be out of her mind! "You can't be serious!" he gasped.

"Oh, but I am," Luna said. "Certainly you know that Heebripples exist?"

"Of course," Harry said, not daring to argue the point. "But you didn't actually believe him? You couldn't possibly want to... to..."

"Take my clothes off and pretend to have sex with Harry Potter?" Luna said. Apparently she had skimmed ahead a bit. "It sounds fun."

Ginny jumped up angrily. "Oh no, you don't!" she yelled at Luna. "Dumbledore, cut out the nudity! Harry's not doing a nude scene with someone who isn't his girlfriend!"

Dumbledore stared at her with a puzzled expression on his face. "But he is," he said. "It's in the script, right there."

"Then TAKE IT OUT!!" she shrieked back.

"Oh, no," Dumbledore said quickly. "Bad idea. It's pivotal to the whole Ravenclaw-stable boy relationship. It shows how they overcame their social differences and found love in the unlikeliest of places. It's a wonderful message to send to the audience."

"Well, I refuse to send it!" Harry gasped out, his green eyes drowning in desperation. "I quit this play. I'm not doing it anymore!"

Silence. A dawning of inspiration came to the students, and the whole hall seemed to swell with the life-giving force of hope. Susan's eyes lit up and grew wide. Eloise Midgen stopped picking nervously at her pimples. Loser shifted nervously in his chair. Then: "Neither am I!" said Malfoy.

"Nor me," Susan sniffed. "And Edmund neither." Her boyfriend nodded in snide agreement.

"Me, neither!" cried Ron. "No real man would do Helga Hufflepuff or makeup!"

"And forget about me being the librarian's lover!" Hermione shouted.

"What? Why?" Goyle said, frowning at Hermione.

"And we don't want to do costumes, either!" Parvati shouted. "Just because me and Lav like shopping for clothes doesn't mean we like making them!"

"And there's no way I'm doing Slytherin!" Neville burst out in a rush of low self-esteem. "I'd fail at it, just like with everything else."

Thus began the rush for the door. Forty-eight students flew up from their beanbag couches and fairly ran for the exit. Fifteen seconds later, ninety-six hands reached to push open the gilded double doors while two lone cast members watched from the beanbag couches. One of them was Loser, who was shivering in his chair, too scared to move and too rattled to know what was going on. Luna, however, leaned back easily into her hot-yellow seat and smiled secretly, as if the elusive Heebripple had told her the ace Dumbledore had up his sleeve.

Whether Luna knew that ace beforehand or not, the rest of the students found out very soon after. Around zero of the ninety-six hands succeeded in pushing open the doors, as they were spelled shut. The irate students turned as one entity towards Dumbledore, who was grinning at them.

"I'm afraid quitting will be an impossibility," he said, holding up his cast sheet. "See, here's where you all signed your names during the auditions. I trust you all read the small print before signing?"

By the looks of horror, it was generally agreed upon that nobody had bothered reading it. "I didn't even see it!" Neville moaned.

"But it didn't say much," Hermione protested, though her voice cracked with self-doubt. "Just: 'These names are in association with the casting of the Founders Play for the 1997 school year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.' "

Dumbledore put a hand to his mouth in a dramatic show of shock. "I'm surprised at you, Miss Granger! I thought you read it all!"

"I... I did..." Hermione stammered, suddenly feeling afraid.

"So you read the next sentence? The one that goes: 'These signatures are magically binding and cannot be revoked, reclaimed, or in any way dodged.' "

The whole hall gaped at Dumbledore, their faces a mixture of unflattering shock, shame, and loathing. More than a few hearts dropped into more than a few stomachs. Bullets were sweat. And the poor students exchanged looks of pure anguish. What the fuck had they gotten themselves into?

Hermione was the first person to speak. Her voice quivered as she croaked, "Is that even legal?"

Padma nodded numbly. "I'm afraid so. Unscrupulous, yes--unethical, yes--but entirely legal."

Misfortune had molested them again. Harry slumped against the impenetrable door and gasped, "I'm gonna need rape therapy after this."

"What did you say, Master Potter?" Dumbledore asked, sinfully chipper. "No matter, get back in your seats, all of you. If we get to reading, we'll finish the next three scenes in half-an-hour."

The students stumbled, defiled, back to their hideous beanbag couches. Dumbledore gave them all a grin (which only Luna returned), and they shed a few tears over the torturous months that lay ahead.

A/N: Let me forestall something before someone brings it up as a mistake: Marietta. I do not believe the books ever specify her age. Although they strongly imply that she's in the same year as Cho, she isn't necessarily; this fanfic takes the latter view.

Oh, and Women in Love belongs to D. H. Lawrence--highly recommended, though you might want to go for Lady Chatterley's Lover first.

Another thanks to my beta, Lisa725. You've been a stupendous help, especially with my punctuation malady.

Next chapter: inanimate objects have sex!! Among other things... Stay posted, and please review!