But then if anyone in the world could resist the power of the Comed-Tea, it would be Dumbledore. So if this worked, the Comed-Tea was literally invincible.
Harry pulled the ring on the Comed-Tea under the table, wanting to do this a bit unobtrusively. The can made a quiet hissing noise. A few heads turned to look at him, but soon turned back as -
"Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts!" said Dumbledore, beaming at the students with his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.
Harry took a first mouthful of Comed-Tea and lowered the can again. He would swallow the pop a little at a time and try not to choke no matter what Dumbledore said -
"Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp! Thank you!"
Everyone clapped and cheered, and Dumbledore sat down again.
Harry sat frozen as pop trickled out of the corners of his mouth. He had, at least, managed to choke quietly.
He really really really shouldn't have done that. Amazing how much more obvious that became one second after it was too late.
In retrospect he probably should have noticed something wrong when he was thinking about everyone being turned into cats... or even before then, remembered his mental note not to mess with Dumbledore... or his newfound resolution to be more considerate of others... or maybe if he'd had one single scrap of common sense...
It was hopeless. He was corrupt to the core. Hail the Dark Lord Harry. You couldn't fight fate.
Someone was asking Harry if he was all right. (Others were starting to serve themselves food, which had magically appeared on the table, whatever.)
"I'm all right," Harry said. "Excuse me. Um. Was that a... normal speech for the Headmaster? You all... didn't seem... very surprised..."
"Oh, Dumbledore's insane, of course," said an older-looking Ravenclaw sitting next to him who had introduced himself with some name Harry didn't even begin to remember. "Lots of fun, incredibly powerful wizard, but completely bonkers." He paused. "At some later point I'd also like to ask why green fluid came out of your lips and then disappeared, though I expect you promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about that either."
With a great effort, Harry stopped himself from glancing down at the incriminating can of Comed-Tea in his hand.
After all, the Comed-Tea hadn't just arbitrarily materialised a Quibbler headline about him and Draco. Draco had explained it in a way that made it seem like it had all happened... naturally? As if it had altered history to fit?
Harry was mentally imagining himself banging his forehead against the table. Wham, wham, wham went his head within his mind.
Another student lowered her voice to a whisper. "I hear that Dumbledore is secretly a genius mastermind controlling lots of stuff and he uses the insanity as a cover so that no one will suspect him."
"I've heard that too," whispered a third student, and there were furtive nods from around the table.
This couldn't help but catch Harry's attention.
"I see," whispered Harry, lowering his own voice. "So everyone knows that Dumbledore is secretly a mastermind."
Most of the students nodded. One or two looked suddenly thoughtful, including the older student sitting next to Harry.
Are you sure this is the Ravenclaw table? Harry managed not to ask out loud.
"Brilliant!" Harry whispered. "If everyone knows, no one will suspect it's a secret!"
"Exactly," whispered a student, and then he frowned. "Wait, that doesn't sound quite right -"
Note to self: The 75th percentile of Hogwarts students a.k.a. Ravenclaw House is not the world's most exclusive program for gifted children.
But at least he'd learned an important fact today. The Comed-Tea was omnipotent. And that meant...
Harry blinked in surprise as his mind finally made the obvious connection.
...that meant that as soon as he learned a spell to temporarily alter his own sense of humor, he could make anything happen, by making it so that he would only find that one thing surprising enough to do a spit-take, and then drinking a can of Comed-Tea.
Well that was a short little journey to godhood. Even I expected this to take longer than my first day of school.
Come to think of it, he had also completely wrecked Hogwarts within ten minutes flat of getting Sorted.
Harry did feel a certain amount of regret about this - Merlin knew what an insane Headmaster was going to do to his next seven years of schooling - but he couldn't help feeling a twinge of pride, too.
Tomorrow. No later than tomorrow at the very latest he was going to stop walking down the path that led to Dark Lord Harry. A prospect which was sounding scarier by the minute.
And yet also, somehow, increasingly attractive. Part of his mind was already visualising the minions' uniforms.
"Eat," the older student sitting next to him growled, and jabbed Harry in the ribs. "Don't think. Eat."
Harry automatically started loading up his plate with whatever was in front of him, blue sausages with tiny glowing bits, whatever.
"What were you thinking about, the Sorting -" began to say Padma Patil, one of the other first-year Ravenclaws.
"No pestering during mealtimes!" chorused at least three people. "House Rule!" added another. "Otherwise we'd all starve around here."
Harry was finding himself really, really hoping that his clever new idea didn't actually work. And that the Comed-Tea worked some other way and didn't actually have the omnipotent power to alter reality. It wasn't that he didn't want to be omnipotent. It was that he just couldn't bear the thought of living in a universe that really worked like that. There was something undignified about ascending through the clever use of fizzy drinks.
But he was going to test it experimentally.
"You know," said the older student next to him in a quite pleasant tone, "we have a system for forcing people like you to eat, would you like to find out what it is?"
Harry gave up and started eating his blue sausage. It was quite good, especially the glowing bits.
Dinner passed with surprising rapidity. Harry tried to sample at least a little of all the weird new foods he saw. His curiosity couldn't stand the thought of not knowing how something tasted. Thank goodness this wasn't a restaurant where you had to order only one thing and you never found out what all the other things on the menu tasted like. Harry hated that, it was like a torture chamber for anyone with a spark of curiosity: Find out about only one of the mysteries on this list, ha ha ha!
Then it was time for dessert, which Harry had completely forgotten to leave room for. He gave up after sampling a small bit of treacle tart. Surely all these things would pass around at least once again over the course of the school year.
So what was on his to-do list, besides the ordinary school things?
To-do 1. Research mind-alteration charms so you can test the Comed-Tea and see whether you actually did figure out a path to omnipotence. Actually, just research every kind of mind magic you can find. Mind is the foundation of our power as humans, any kind of magic that affects it is the most important sort of magic there is.
To-do 2. Actually this is To-do 1 and the other is To-do 2. Go through the bookshelves of the Hogwarts and Ravenclaw libraries, familiarising yourself with the system and making sure you've at least read all the book titles. Second pass: read all tables of contents. Coordinate with Hermione who has a much better memory than you. Find out if there's an interlibrary loan system at Hogwarts and see if the two of you, especially Hermione, can visit those libraries too. If other Houses have private libraries, figure out how to access legally or sneak in.