Batch

07-15-2012 -- I'm in my original bedroom in the Hickory House, which is a Hogwarts dorm room. I'm surrounded by piles and piles of trash and I'm shoving them around with a bunch of dorm mates making a half-hearted attempt to clean the place up. We're actually a lot more interested in learning a secret Ravenclaw spell that helps them keep the Slytherins at least slightly under control.

We Gryffindors learn it and abuse it for revenge, which leads to all-out warfare at the school. Thankfully the year is almost over, and we're leaving on the Express, but it is not a comfortable journey. There's a lot of magic being thrown around on the train ride, and it is starting to reach dangerous levels. I'm about to get between cars and try to release some of the magic so it can drain off into the countryside, but they've sealed the passages between cars.

At this point things have kind of shifted, and I'm halfway watching Harry, and halfway being Harry. There is a strange multi-timeline story going on, where there is a girl stuck in an inaccessible part of the castle, back in the founders' time. She's trapped in an area that is flooding, and is going to drown, and nobody can do anything about it.

Harry, in the present time, is working on some sort of project involving the Mirror of Ravenclaw, a long-lost artifact from the Founders' Era. Dumbles is trying to help, but really doesn't know what's going on. Harry has managed to recreate the mirror, and is sending it back in time along with a powerful cloak. The two items together can help save the girl.

Rowena Ravenclaw receives the cloak and the mirror, and manages to save the girl, then reveals that she never had any special mirror, and the rumored artifact that Harry 'recreated' was actually the mirror itself, which he sent through time. He was responsible for what he was trying to copy. The drowning girl was saved, somehow in the Smith's Food King parking lot. She half-turns into a guy, then turns back into a girl.

By this point, we are walking through the Disneyland parking lot, instead. Some of the girl's friends are telling her that they will meet her at the end of the night, in the employee parking lot near Harbor House. Problem is, they don't actually work there. I can understand their interest, but am explaining it is better to get a spot in Bambi than in Alice, anyway.

We're getting nearer the main entrance, and suddenly my sister Melody is there, and is two clues away from finishing a Penny Press crossword puzzle. She's going nuts about these last two clues, reading them out to see if anybody else knows them, and drawing thick lines in a grease pencil to make it easy to tell at a glance what the two clues still left to solve are.

We are now at the ticket gates, and I am now with my friend Dale as well as the girl rescued in time. Dale goes through the gate with a normal annual pass. I have one as well, luckily, but it is a key chain version, and is falling apart, like the old key chain I had for L.A. Fitness. They just barely get enough of a response from it and let me in.

It is raining heavily, and as we pass under the train station and reach Main Street, there is a really lousy parade going by. It's one of the really minimal parades like 30 Years of Magic, just something to pass time until they unveil the next major parade. I just try and ignore the whole thing. Dale has walked into the fire station for some reason, and I find myself walking down Main Street singing the Tap Shoes / Harvest Moon medley from Showbiz Is ..., and tap dancing my way down the street. I think I am dancing really badly, but for somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, it is actually pretty good.

I cover the entirety of Main Street in about five seconds, and suddenly find myself at Coke Corner, looking for the piano player. It is still pouring rain, so the piano is inside the restaurant. As I walk in, I find Johnny Lee there, talking to a guest. The guest keeps talking about the last piano player he saw there, who was a bit friendly, a bit crazy, and played very, very fast, and Johnny admitted it sounded like Rod.

The guy was asking Johnny to play a song, and Johnny indicated he wanted to, but unfortunately he had managed to break both his legs, so couldn't make use of any of the pedals. Instead Johnny seemed to be getting ready to go to sleep, and was pulling himself onto the piano keyboard and pulling the keyboard guard thingy over himself almost like a sort of coffin, before he took a nap.