Sky Alton

Hi Brianna and Tushar! Tushar, you can find out all about rubies in this handy thread:

Approved Kris Dyson - First Year

Hello hello, Lorainia and Torii! Draw a chair up to the fire.

We're racing towards the end of term and I can't remember when the house cup race was last this exciting. Gryffindor is doing absolutely spectacularly but we need to keep it up! Let's keep hard on the heels of those eagles and snakes. (What do you mean snakes don't have heels? Shhh) Are you sure you know when your homework deadlines are? While most classes have a final deadline of the 15th of January, some are due earlier. Make sure you check and know what you need to turn in when. Even if you've fallen behind with a class and don't think you can pass it, submit work anyway. You'll still earn some points and every point counts! There are also points up for grabs in the Library this month. With projects delving into the history of the Hogwarts founders and the ripple effect of new years resolutions, I'm sure you can find a story to tell. Deadline: 31st January Let's go, Gryffindor, let's go!

Hi Emerald! Welcome to The Den To edit your sig, you need to go to the signature tab under account settings (https://gryff.net/index.php?/settings/). To put in an image, you need to click the link that says 'Insert Image from URL'. A box should pop up for the URL which will then make the image appear in your sig's edit field,, once you've hit the 'insert image' button to confirm. Adding your av you do from your profile (it's called your 'profile photo'); activating that option should bring up a box with several checkboxes, one of which is 'import from URL'.

A roaring happy birthday to Jessica Granger! I hope it's a purr-fect day.

Approved Lizzy Gryffin - First Year (your username was changed to add correct spacing)

True. I'd be too embarrassed to walk out (plus, at least then I can critique it with full knowledge of what happened) Likes spending time alone

A hippogriff as it'd be a lot more comfortable. Would you rather serve a detention in the kitchens or the laundry?

I slap Maxim for having so many rubies

Duck

Emmental

Iron

5037

You pull yourself over the stile and begin to squelch your way across the field beyond. About half way, you glance down to find a mass of churned up earth. There are some fragments of parchment and a few tawny feathers in amongst the muck. An outraged screech makes you look up. A bedraggled tawny owl is perching in a tree at the edge of the field, more parchment strips dangling from its leg. You frown. Did something attack the owl? And if so, what happened to what it was carrying? You look down at the mess. Something glints off to one side and you carefully pick it out of the mud. It shines like silver… It is silver. An odd, sort of curved fragment of silver that looks almost like a shell. Something brighter is next to it: another feather. This one doesn’t belong to the outraged owl though. It’s bright turquoise. The birds in the nearby trees are screeching very loudly: something has obviously alarmed them. The Treasure (10 rubies) From the clues contained in the paragraph above, tell me what (or rather who) was in the package the owl was transporting. Still working things out in your mind, you take a step back from the site of the crash. With an annoyed hoot, the owl floats down and lands on your shoulder. You glance at the torn fragments of the package still attached to its legs. The parchment and cardboard look like they’ve been shredded. Like something in the package wanted out. You look down at the feather, then up at the line of nearby trees where the birds are still screaming in alarm. With a sinking feeling, you begin to hike across the field. The Journey (20 rubies) It seems as though it’s up to you to see if the inhabitant of the package is still around. How do you go about it? What precautions do you take? What do you find? Describe it in 100 words. Once you’ve enlisted the help of a local amateur magizoologist, you’re able to go home. The owl has decided to follow you and you spend a while removing the mess of paper from its leg. There seems to be some ink on one of the fragments and you carefully study it. Maybe it’ll tell you who the package was meant for. That way you can tell them what happened… Or report them to the authorities. The Victory (20 rubies) You find a fragment of a crest. You can see a circle with a few smaller circles in a line above it and the tip of a rough triangle, scored with lines and with slightly jagged edges. There’s also an odd arrangement of 3 branching lines, a little like a fork. Lastly, there’s part of a motto in Latin running around the edge. You make out the words ‘provincia’ and ‘ordinatio’ Decide whom this crest belongs to and justify your choice by explaining how you think each of the parts of the fragment relate to it. Alternatively, you could draw the entire crest (though you still need to say who it belongs to). The deadline is 11.59 PM HOL-time on January 30th (that’s the thirtieth, not the 31st this time, folks). Send all your tasks in one private message to me (Sky Alton). Once the deadline has passed, feel free to share your responses as a reply to this thread (but ONLY after the deadline).

Claim one of the armchairs by the fire, pour yourself a cup of something warming and flip through this cosy issue of our very own House Newspaper. You'll find news, reviews, delicious recipes, puzzles and even more creative things inside, thanks to our contributors from all over the school. https://gryff.net/pawprint/issue/december-2019 If this inspires you to put quill to paper, keep an eye on the Quivering Quill subforum as we'll be calling for submissions for the next issue very soon. Watch this space!

I've been re-reading Chamber of Secrets this week and it struck me (not for the first time) how unlikely it is that any school would let it's students be petrified for months. Couldn't they have brought in mature mandrakes from somewhere else*? The answer is, of course, that it was what the plot needed. People needed to be out of action so that the mystery of what was attacking them wasn't solved too early. There are a few of these in the HP series and a few more inconsistencies or unanswered questions that crop up simply because the world expands over the 7 books and something that made sense in the 1st now doesn't fit. And I get that, I really do. Plots are notoriously slippery and you often discover events or facts that don't quite ring true that the author has had to rely on to get them to go the way they want. Still, when you notice one of these sticky points it kind of jumps out at you even when you try to make a conscious decision not to notice it. So my question for you is, are there any unlikely, plot-driving events or all too convenient facts that particularly bother you in the HP books? Do you have an in-universe way of explaining it away? (Someone on the internet suggests telling yourself that mandrakes have to be absolutely fresh so transporting some, even magically wouldn't work. I'll go with that)

Approved Torii Taylor - Ravenclaw visitor

Beautiful Ghosts My Fair Lady

You make me eggs W.A.I.S.B.

Movement

5025

Rejected Rainbow Butterfly Kitten - Please first sign up to HOL and use a more suitable name.