"Madam Malkin, " Mc Gonagall said, her voice calm. "What has been happening here?"

Madam Malkin looked back silently for four seconds, and then cracked up. She fell against the wall, wheezing out laughter, and that set off both of her assistants, one of whom fell to her hands and knees on the floor, giggling hysterically.

Mc Gonagall slowly turned to look at Harry, her expression chilly. "I leave you alone for five minutes. Five minutes, Mr. Potter, by the very clock."

"I was only joking around, " Harry protested, as the sounds of hysterical laughter went on nearby.

"Draco Malfoy said in front of his father that he wanted to be sorted into Gryffindor! Joking around isn't enough to do that!" Mc Gonagall paused, breathing heavily. "What part of 'get fitted for robes' sounded to you like please cast a Confundus Charm on the entire universe!?"

Then he looked up and stared at The Quibbler's headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

Harry's lips opened and said, "buh-bluh-buh-buh..."

Too many competing objections, that was the problem. Every time Harry tried to say "But we're only eleven!" the objection "But men can't get pregnant!" demanded first priority and was then run over by "But there's nothing between us, really!"

Dumbledore got himself under control again with a visible effort. "Ah, Harry, one symptom of the disease called wisdom is that you begin laughing at things that no one else thinks is funny, because when you're wise, Harry, you start getting the jokes!" The old wizard wiped tears away from his eyes. "Ah, me. Ah, me. Oft evil will shall evil mar indeed, in very deed."

Harry's brain took a moment to place the familiar words... "Hey, that's a Tolkien quote! Gandalf says that!"

"Theoden, actually, " said Dumbledore.

"You're Muggleborn?" Harry said in shock.

"I'm afraid not, " said Dumbledore, smiling again. "I was born seventy years before that book was published, dear child. But it seems that my Muggleborn students tend to think alike in certain ways. I have accumulated no fewer than twenty copies of The Lord of the Rings and three sets of Tolkien's entire collected works, and I treasure every one of them." Dumbledore drew his wand and held it up and struck a pose. "You cannot pass! How does that look?"

"Ah, " Harry said in something approaching complete brain shutdown, "I think you're missing a Balrog." And the pink pajamas and squashed mushroom hat were not helping in the slightest.

Yell Accio Moon,

Harry: I am not Dark Lord material!

Hat: Yes, you are. You really, really are.