Dumbledore was terribly sick, mainly with a head cold that just didn't seem to respond to any of Madame Pomfrey's cold remedies. He was stuck lying in bed while the school year was out, left to ponder the mysteries of life that nobody cared to bother with anymore. He hated it when he had to do that.

Although he was supposed to be resting, the aged wizard sat upright in bed with his famous half-moon spectacles on his head (that, would be me of course, the spectacles, not the head). He decided that when he could actually see, it made him feel less edgy in the presence of the somewhat-insane nurse. She had almost gone crazy as she tried her flu spell on him, which did absolutely nothing except give his dangling beard a rainbow tint. They had decided that Dumbledore would just have to get better the "Muggle-way" and fight it out.

But Dumbledore had different plans.

After Madame Pomfrey's ritual check of the rooms, the Hogwarts Headmaster reached under his pillow and pulled out a brand new bottle of cough medicine. He had figured that if Muggles could use this stuff, he could too, so why not give it a shot? Unfortunately, Dumbledore had no idea as to how to read the Muggle metrics system, and instead of taking the recommended dosage of 100 milliliters, he instead took about half of the plastic bottle.

As he swallowed down the liquid, Dumbledore grimaced at the disgusting artificial cherry taste, and lied back down, waiting for the Muggle ways of healing to work. He sat there for an awfully long time, or so it seemed while slowly, he began to see... things. Being his faithful glasses meant that his mental images were mine as well. Of course, I think his little overdose on the cough syrup was a bit extreme, but his hallucinations... well, let me give you a basic overview of what I "saw."

(Being a pair of glasses makes you completely unable to do pretty much anything except see. Therefore, for no logical reason at all, Dumbledore's hallucination is well recorded and... "saved" in his memory. What Dumbledore didn't know was that he actually saw a vision of prophecy... too bad he couldn't change it though, he always said he knew morons would be running the universe one day.)

***

A single spaceship crawled slowly across the emptiness of space -- that is, if traveling at six times the speed of light can be considered crawling. The low, assuring hum of active machinery traveled from spaced out particle to spaced out particle across the vast psuedo-vacuum. This place was the place where magic was found, despite the misguided assumptions of the human race who dumbly assumed that because there was technology, there was no need for magic. (They of course, were terribly wrong. The truth was that technology did in fact require magic in order to be... technical. It was a simple concept of intergalactic quantum physics -- but then again, Earth was not famous for its particle transimulators or multidimensional time capsules.)

This spaceship was not, of course, anything magical. However, the near humanoid creation inside of it was.

A series of flashing lights blinked on in a control panel as a brightly coloured flower (obviously not belonging in the dull chromeness of space... Dumbledore thought it to be one of the mistakes of Professor Sprout in her "happy" days) tackily flicked various switches with its oversized leaf appendages. Its lack of a face gave no emotions to the rest of the world, however, if the overgrown plant had been created with a few facial features, its nose would have been crinkled and lines would be harshly engraved in its forehead... or lack thereof. As more bulbs flashed in the control panel, a sickly neon pink petal fell from the flower's head onto the titanium floor, its quiet sound amplified throughout the spacecraft.

An unusually nasal voice erupted out of the metallic depth of the spaceship, "Frederick! What have I told you about making noise on this vessel?"

The brightly coloured flower shivered nervously and quickly grew a bright orange petal to replace its fallen pink comrade.

Out of the darkness arose the beholder of the unusually nasal voice, where it then became apparent as to why the voice was in fact, so nasal... in an unusual way. This would be the introduction of our main character and magical article (only partially though, mainly because this was created only in a mere figment of imagination, and hadn't been invented yet), the Schnoz. To describe it was quite a simple task. It looked like, well, it looked like a giant nose. A giant, metal-plated nose, equipped with a small communications device in its left nostril. (It was often misunderstood as a polluted glump of mucus, or, more commonly, a bogey.) A pair of artificial legs had been haphazardly attached to the Schnoz's underside, noisily clunking as it walked.

"Sorry master," the flower replied, anxiously twisting its leaves together.

"Now, now there, no need to tie your stem into a knot, just don't let it happen again. How's our situation coming along?"

"Well, to put it bluntly sir, there seems to be a tear in the space-time continuum between us and our destination. It appears that only right brained humanoids can pass through it un-ripped. That means no left-brains, captain."

The Schnoz thought about this for a moment then motioned towards his right nostril with his artificial leg, "Frederick, I'm not left-brained."

The flower stared silently at the nose for a moment, meaning a blank face of course, before replying, "Two things wrong with that, sir. Number one, that is the right side of your... um, nose. Secondly, you don't have a brain, only a computer chip."

The enlarged nose hung down depressingly and sniffed a bit, "So it seems, Frederick," a greenish goup dripped from one of the overgrown nostrils, "I think I'm going to need a tissue."

"Quite, sir." The flower pricked off one of its more dimly coloured petals, a strange form of puce, and handed it to the Schnoz. When no petal emerged to take the puce one's place, the flower "looked" upwards and deftly said, "Oh dear, I do believe I'm going bald." At that moment a polka dotted green appendage popped out, "Oh dear, indeed."

The Schnoz moved toward the rather incredible digital screen at the front of the spaceship, opening up into the vastness of space. It stood there contemplating a moment before hitting a rather dangerous red button on the control panel marked, 'Don't push unless you really, really mean it' in small print.

When a booming alarm sounded, Frederick, now coloured with many assorted polka dots, looked up, "What are you doing?"

"Building a bridge, you dolt, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"I believe you hit the 'Nuke the Universe' button, sir."

Looking down, the Schnoz realized his mistake and spoke rather confidently, "Quite... Frederick, why do we even have that button?"

"You thought it would be entertaining to have, sir," And with that, the flower pressed another dangerous looking button marked 'Press this button only to neutralize the button you really should not have pressed that serves no purpose whatsoever except to blow things up.' The alarm calmly subsided.

"Good work, Frederick. Now to build that bridge across the tear. Let's see now," he looked over the control panel and pressed a random button. Something exploded towards the rear of the ship.

"Does every button here make something on this ship implode?!"

"Explode actually, sir. And no, this button here, you see, provides steaming cocoa, lightly caffeinated."

"Very good then. Which is the bridge building button?"

"There isn't one."

"I see..."

"You do have magical powers you know, sir. You could well... use them."

"I could, couldn't I, Frederick? What a brilliant idea of mine!" The Schnoz motioned a bit, looking like a silly, dancing nose.

Outside in the darkness of space, a rather large crickety rope bridge strung across the tear in the space-time continuum. It seemed incredibly unstable and was attached to a giant, floating palm tree that had been spit out of the strange phenomenon below.

"Well, then, that was simple," replied the overgrown nose.

"We just have to be very careful as we cross it."

"Quite. All right then, let us go."

Gears hummed and machinery buzzed as the spaceship inched across the rather insane bridge, constantly sinking under the vessel's incredible weight in the weightlessness of space. Once the duo crossed this bridge, literally, they would be at the foot of the great planet Nosa... the origin of Nasonex and the great Hoochie Mammas of Vlorax. The Schnoz liked to refer to them as the 'Ultimate Nosebleed Inducers'.

Inside of the ship, Frederick cautiously maneuvered over the bridge. The Schnoz was anxiously gripping onto the flower's "shoulders" and biting his lower lip... or... well, actually, he would have been biting his lower lip if he had one.

"All right now, we're at the most dangerous part of the bridge. Steady..."

The low, assuring humming of working technology stopped.

"That..." said the nose, "cannot be good."

"Computer! What is the meaning of this?"

Lights flickered and flashed as the digital image of the vacuum of space was replaced with a pair of eyes, a crooked nose, and an unmotivated mouth.

"What's the point in running? Don't you know what's going to happen?"

Both the flower and nose looked at each other and then shook their "heads" dumbly.

"The curse of cliche's! Are you complete dolts? We're going to get so close to our destination and then something will go terribly wrong making us fall into oblivion."

"Don't you think that a malfunctioning machine is a terribly wrong happening?" The nose looked smugly at the computer screen.

"Well... yes," it said quite hesitantly, "but I meant something else."

"Oh, quite. Then... we better continue."

The computer sighed submissively, and the humming once again resumed. They approached the last wooden plank before randomly placed palm tree.

"I guess that computer was wrong, sir..."

Within this time frame a single speck of dust (obviously covered in bacteria) burped out of the tear in the space-time continuum from a distant universe where a geeky college student pulled out an old volume of "Dating for Morons" from a secret bookshelf in hopes of landing a date. Of course, he didn't succeed, but the single speck of dust that arose from such an action managed to slip through the tear and make its way into the main compartment of the spaceship where it harmlessly drifted into the colossal nose's colossal nostril. Coincidentally enough, it landed on the Schnoz's communication device, causing thousands of stimuli to react in a most dangerous way.

At that moment, the Schnoz sneezed.

Unfortunately for everyone aboard, the sneeze managed to amplify itself to the point where the bridge beneath them disintegrated and left a constant ringing noise behind that sounded like a cross between a dying giraffe and a rabid dug. But of course, Frederick, the Schnoz, and Computer couldn't hear that, for they were sent down into the rip, later ending up somewhere north of Alaska in the midst of a polar bear insane asylum.

***

A young girl sat placidly in front of her glowing monitor, hypnotized by the beckoning force of the world which we call the Interweb. As she sat mesmerized, she noticed a strange sound.

"Sounds like a dying giraffe..." she mentioned.

"And a rabid duck," replied the rabbits in her head.

"How peculiar."

With that, a large piece of steel came zooming down through the Earth's atmosphere and landed smack dab on top of the girl, her computer, the world which we call the Interweb, and the imaginary bunnies in the girl's head.

Feeling the pointless but insanely funny destruction, the randomly placed palm tree, still floating at the edge of the tear in the space-time continuum, laughed.