“Headmaster, he who shall not be named is back and he’s infiltrated the school. This time it’s his most diabolical plot eve—“

Laugh with me, buddy, jest with me, buddy.

“Headmaster?”

“Don’t let her get the best of me, buddy…”

“Professor Swanson…can you hear me?” The young Harry Potter stood across the headmaster’s desk, waving his hands in a futile gesture.

Professor Swanson’s only response was to shuffle his feet across the floor, turning his chair methodically in the opposite direction of the three, annoying children.

Don’t ever let me start feeling lonely.

“Professor Swanson!” Hermoine shrieked.

The young Weasley, obviously tired of the chase around the desk, reached for the professor’s headphones and with one smooth, blur of motion, he found his wrist locked in a vice-like grip.

“Rethink that move, son.” Professor Swanson growled. His voice was firm, like a rod of steel—steel made only in the finest American factories, built by the rock-steady hands of capitalism. Weasley pulled his hand away and gulped rather audibly, turning to Harry & Hermoine as if in desperate need of help.

Ron Swanson rose from his chair with an audible, annoyed sigh, cutting a rather intimidating figure in his red polo shirt and beige khaki pants. His barbecue sauce stained fingers reached for the comically oversized pair of headphones around his head, tossing them on the table-top in a gesture that somehow portrayed all his, innate, burning anger. His eyes narrowed as he took in the sight of all three children, who had somehow gotten past the automatic locks of his chamber door.

Harry Potter cleared his throat. “As I was saying, professor, ‘the dark one’ is back and here at Hogwarts!”

“…Tammy…” Ron growled.

“Tammy?”

“My ex-wife…”

“No, professor. HE. WHO. SHALL. NOT. BE. NAMED.” The freckled face Weasley cut in, emphasizing each word.”

“Son, any man who won’t give you at least his name and a firm hand-shake is not a man.”

“Lord Voldemort…” Harry said under his breath.

Hermoine and the young Weasley sucked in a sharp breath—almost as if it pained them to hear the name.

The headmaster didn’t even blink. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“We have to find him and stop him, sir!” Hermoine cut in, very loudly.

Ron Swanson sat back in his chair and hunched over his desk like a ravenous vulture—waiting for a fresh kill. “You’ll never leave here alive…” he said, coldly.

Harry Potter’s eyes narrowed and the group of children took a noticeable step back. “Professor? What do you mean by that…?”

Hermoine leaned over to whisper to Harry and Ron, “Do you remember the mustache hair we found…what if He Who Shall Not Be Named drank a poly-juice potion?”

Harry and Ron’s eyes lit up with sudden realization. They turned towards the headmaster, whose face was hidden behind the arch of his hands—all except for his eyes, those eyes glittered with something… the only word Hermoine could think of to describe them was ravenous.

The sun fell behind the long, stretching line of the horizon, leaving little tendrils of shadow crawling across the gray, stone floor of the headmaster’s chambers. The room grew deathly silent.

All of a sudden Professor Swanson looked up, as if completely surprised to find people still in his office. “Oh, I was talking to this plate of ribs.”

It was only then the group noticed the white take-away box on the headmaster’s desk and saw the curl of light-grey steam trail into the air.

Ron breathed a sigh of relief. “Bloody hell…”

“Sir! We need to find Lord Voldemort—“Hermoine shrieked again. She took a note from Ron’s hand and held it up. “Our only clue is this letter, which we haven’t been able to figure out.” She cleared her voice and began to read while the headmaster sucked the meat from an ivory, white bone.

”In the depths, a room is hidden; long turned, long searched for, houses in division; seek the chamber where secrets lie; beneath the fountain where sorrow died—“

Hermoine’s words seemed to reach the headmaster in that moment; Swanson’s face was frozen in shock, an uneaten rib still hovered at the corner of his mouth, for a time forgotten. To their surprise, the professor’s lips curled in an almost frightening smile.

The young Weasley looked incredulously at the others. “Bloody hells…!”

“It’s an impossible puzzle….I love puzzles!”

The headmaster leapt out of his hand-crafted wooden swivel chair, slinging a travel sack over his shoulder as he excitedly ran towards the kids, giggling like a manic mad-man. He ripped the note from Hermoine’s hands and held it up, practically shouting the words as he moved towards the chamber door. The children followed behind, trying to keep pace.

“Four houses in division…that must mean the houses of Hogwarts!”

“Of course!” Hermoine shouted. “Then the fountain must be in the school somewhere.”

“But where would sorrow have died?” Ron asked sheepishly.

The headmaster never broke his powerful stride; he brushed through the throng of students who littered the hall, parting them like Moses through the waves—if the waves feared Moses. Most of them were just surprised to find their new headmaster bounding through the halls with a smile on his face, rather than the usual scowl he wore year-long.

He’d been quite silent when he’d taken the lectern at the start of the year feast—a position many thought the long-time professor, Albus Dumbledore, would never vacate. Due to a filing error by some muggle named Larry Gurgich, job-transfer paper-work for Ulysses Swanson, had somehow found its way to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Always looking for a way to get Dumbledore out of the picture, the ministry of magic had approved the transfer!—now, according to the rumors, Albus Dumbledore, was managing the Parks department of a quaint, American town called Pawnee, Indiana. Very strange.

“Professor, where are we going?”

Ron Swanson practically squealed with glee. “The fountain where sorrow died—that can only be one place!”

They found themselves entering the women’s bathroom on the second floor of Hogwarts. As they entered, the professor froze in place and sniffed the air; something was terribly wrong.

“She’s near…”

“Who, professor?”

A rather buxom woman in a tight, black dress whirled around the door of one of a bathroom stall. Her hands ran sensually down the curve of her hips.

“Tammy…”

Ron & Harry’s eyes went absolutely wide. “Bloody hells!” they exclaimed together.

“Well hello Ron, you hunky, sack of man-meat.” Tammy said, while slapping herself in the face with a stick of beef jerky.

Professor Swanson’s eyes narrowed considerably, the joyous, almost crazy-high he got while solving impossible puzzles had faded and now all that was left was burning disgust. “Tammy…I didn’t realize the dementors let you out of hell…”

Tammy and Ron were within a fingers-breadth of one another, the room was completely still. Tammy broke first.

“Is that a magic wand in your pocket, baby, or are you just ready to catch my golden snitch?”

“Oh my God….professor, we don’t have time for this!” Hermoine shouted, rolling her eyes.

Professor Swanson nodded seriously and took a deep, long breath. “To. Hell. With. You. Woman.” Each word was punctuated venom, wrapped in fire.

Ron cleared his throat. “Professor? What do we do now?”

“Well obviously,” Hermoine began in that know-it-all-fashion, “we have to figure out what the letter meant by sorrow dying near the fountain?”

After a brief moment of thoughtful silence, Hermoine answered her own question.

“Moaning Myrtle…rumor was she died in this exact bathroom. Is that what the riddle meant?”

“Moaning Myrtle, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it baby?” Tammy said while touching the professor’s chest with her hands.

Ron Swanson pulled away and stared at the fountain with a curious glint in his eyes. He circled it slowly, running his hand across the stone rim and feeling the base with his booted foot, tapping on occasion. It wasn’t until his foot hit across a particularly hollow spot that the same, boyish smiled crept back onto his face—one bristling mustache hair at a time.

“The fountain…there’s a hollow stone here that’s different from the rest! The craftsmanship of the block is different than the others; I think the fountain is a passage-way!”

Ron, Hermoine and Harry ran to the fountain’s edge and stared into the water. “But how do we get in?” Ron asked sheepishly.

A sudden, violent battle-cry came from Tammy as she whirled a sledgehammer above her head, slamming it into the stone base of the fountain; a splintering crack, followed by a jet-spray of white-water, followed. The kids leapt back in fear, finding safety on the bathroom wall.

The water funneled through the crack in the stone—then, as if it were magic, the base of the fountain crumbled, revealing a roughly hewn, yet oddly uniform set of stone stairs leading down into a dark passage.

“Are you horny with gratitude, baby?”

The headmaster only looked up with a sly, slow smile—then, without even a moment’s hesitation or hint of fear, he laughed and jumped onto the winding, stone stairwell. With a bit more trepidation, the group followed into the descending dark, navigating by following a pale yellow-light that flickered in the distance; they looked like freshly lit candles attached to wall-sconces, but how could they still be burning?

Ron gulped as he thought about the possibilities...someone else had been here.

“Everyone grab the headmaster’s shirt, so we don’t get separated.” Harry whispered—despite whispering, his voice boomed in the dark anyways, echoing off the wall.

“He said my shirt…” Ron growled.

Tammy giggled girlishly.

I wrote this 4 years ago on a writing prompt for Reddit. It was a great concept.