By Sky Alton
Sky had gotten so used to the castle never changing (save those pesky staircases which seemed to have a cruel sense of humour) that she didn’t notice the new portrait on the 7th floor. It was only when one of the other prefects pointed it out that she actually paid the newcomer a visit. After all, it always paid to be on the right side of the portraits. If they liked you, they might provide titbits of information (and not tip off wrong-doers that you were on your way).
The portrait was of a wide-eyed child, cradling a baby occamy.
“And how are you enjoying it here?” she asked the little girl, suddenly unsure of herself. Did portraits enjoy being portraits? Would they know?
“Very much,” the girl said, nervously petting the occamy’s head, “Although… it’s very grand, isn’t it? And crowded. I’m not used to so many people looking at me.”
“They’ll lose interest soon,” Sky told her.
“Oh,” the girl said.
Sky frowned. That hadn’t sounded exactly like relief.
“Was it quieter? Where you were before?” she asked, then cursed herself. What if the portrait was freshly painted?
“Oh yes,” the girl said, “We barely saw anyone there, just a lot of dust and spiders.”
The occamy hissed and flapped its bright wings. It really was very life like and Sky wasn’t at all sure she liked the tone of that hissing.
“Well, I hope you enjoy it here a lot more,” Sky said.
“I’m sure we shall,” the girl said, sitting back on the little stool she’d been painted on and smoothing out her skirts, “Thank you.”
****
It wasn’t until the following week that Sky was reminded of her conversation with the portrait. She stopped by to talk to the girl again but found her frame empty. Not even the occamy was there. Hopefully they were having fun exploring. She walked around a bend in the corridor to the portrait of a very nervous warlock whom she’d befriended a few years ago.
“What do you think to your new neighbour, Algernon?” she asked, once they’d got the pleasantries out of the way
.
“Her?” Algernon shot up so quick that he nearly knocked his dented cauldron off its smoking fire, “Haven’t had a moments peace since she got here.”
“I’m sure she’s just excited to have company again,” Sky said, though she’d never seen Algernon quite this excited before.
“She singed my beard,” Algernon snapped.
“On purpose?” Sky asked faintly, though Algernon didn’t seem to hear.
“After attention, that’s what it is. She keeps waking up the sleeping monk, tweaking the tale of the lavender lady’s cat and that Occamy of hers,” he shrilled, drawing himself up, “It terrorised those hummingbirds on the third floor landing so badly that nobody has a clue where they’ve scattered to. I heard from the fat lady that they both tore -.”
“Alright,” Sky sighed, “I get the picture. I’ll speak to the headmaster about it.”
She wandered away from Algernon (who was still muttering and tugging at his sooty beard) feeling as though she’d just relearned a valuable lesson about not judging sweet seeming books by their covers.
By Maxim Trevelyan
“Look at it, Gary,” Maxim coos at the dark brown, almost black ball of fluff. “It’s so fluffy I think I’m gonna die.”
“Why do you want a Niffler anyway?” Gary asks. Maxim never showed any notion of wanting another pet, his owl Grimey was quite enough for him.
“Because we’re both sweet, cute and fluffy?” Maxim tries to explain, but his answer isn’t jiving with what Gary knew about him.
A few minutes later Maxim and Gary are travelling down to the path to Hogwarts grounds, both taking looks at the squirming mass in Maxim’s hands. They stopped by one of the castle’s outer walls.
“What’re you gonna do with it?” Gary inquires, snorting softly as Maxim’s curses at the Niffler’s bite but manages to hold on to him.
“Why, do you think this little guy is for me?” Maxim holds up the Niffler and puts it close to his face. “Am I not sweet enough?” he asks, turning his big, innocent eyes up to his best friend. Niffler mimics him, looking up as well.
“It’s not?” Gary asks, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. He suddenly notes where the two are standing, throwing a sharp look at Maxim. “Maxim, no…”
“Maxim, yes,” the smaller boy grins, strokes the Niffler’s head one more time before opening the window above them, letting the Niffler into the room. “I think we better run,” Maxim suggests with a grin.
“Oh, you are nothing but trouble,” Gary growls and stalks off in the direction of the Ravenclaw Common Room. He is accompanied by Maxim’s ringing laugh that promises more such incidents in the future.
By Polaris Black
Years ago when Baskin Robbins actually had thirty-one flavors at a time as advertised, they came out with a flavor of the month that was a chocoholics dream come true (or nightmare, depending on your point of view). I think they named it something like Double Decadent Chocolate Cake; it was chocolate ice cream swirled with chocolate fudge, with bits of chocolate cake and bits of chocolate candy. And I can’t explain it, but I never found it to be too sweet. Really. So I made it a point to stop at the local Baskin Robbins every day after work and get a cup because it was summer and Double Decadent Chocolate Cake would be retired forever at the end of the month. This was working out well until the hurricane hit. And it wasn’t a direct hit – just some rain and awesome winds. But it was bad enough that I wasn’t going out just to score some Double Decadent Chocolate Cake. Or was I? I couldn’t talk myself out of it. But the wind was howling and I could barely open the door so again I decided not to go. At least for a little while. The next time I actually got outside and walked about a block before turning around and coming back. But third time’s a charm, and although I still don’t believe it, I ventured out again. When I finally got to the shop, I let the wind push me through the doorway.
“I’d like a pint of Double Decadent Chocolate Cake, please,” hoping that would get me through the weekend.
“Sorry, we just ran out,” said the counter person. “Can I get you something else?”
By Sindor Aloyarc
“Where do you think you are going?” a Hufflepuff Prefect said suspiciously as two Ravenclaw and one Slytherin first years crept down the corridor. She knew they were avoiding detention, and as much as she wanted to give them her most scolding tone of voice, the silly look of shock that overtook all three simultaneously made it hard for her not to grin.
“Sorry!” They all said at once, and then the smallest among them, from Slytherin, stepped forward announcing “We only just got away from him, and were hoping to sneak back to our common room before anybody noticed us.”
“Got away?” questioned the Prefect, “From ‘Him’? Who are you talking about?”
“Sindor!” They exclaimed together. Then the Ravenclaw girl with short hair said “We thought when we were given detention with him we’d be in for something easy, as Sin’s generally so friendly.”
“But NO!” the other two chimed. “We were wrong!”
One of them had brilliant green eyes, and he offered more information saying “Sindor gave us a bag of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and at first we THOUGHT we were going to be in for a nice chat over some yummy snacks. Like, how SWEET is that?! This was exactly what we were expecting! Buuuuut he’d bewitched them to contain only the most disgusting of flavors AND be never-ending. He said that we’d given him ‘a bad taste in his mouth’ for how we treated that Gryffindor boy, and that we’d have to have a bad taste in our mouth every night after classes if we wouldn’t apologize, even if it makes us sick to our stomachs in the process.”
“Well,” said the older Hufflepuff student, “Have you apologized yet?”
“NO!” They said
“And we aren’t going to,” the one from Slytherin reported, adjusting their glasses.
“So you just snuck away thinking this would all be resolved?”
There was a pause as the three looked at each other, and then back again. After another beat, the girl with the short hair sighed and started walking away, but turned back after a few paces. The one with the spectacles shrugged, rolling their eyes, and the Ravenclaw boy said “Sindor may have been unimpressed with us today, but he’s too nice. There’s NO WAY he’s going to keep us coming back for that yucky brand of torture once he’s had the night to sleep on it and wakes up fresh tomorrow.”
“I’ll leave it up to him to decide on your fate, including how many points you may lose for dodging detention,” the girl from Hufflepuff said, smirking. Nice or not, she knew better than to test Mr. Aloyarc’s colorful brand of stubbornness. “But I wouldn’t be so sure of yourselves about that.”
By Gail Allen
The lad could hardly be more than thirteen years old, except his papers noted him as seventeen. It was strange sometimes Dr. Brooks mused to himself, how people looked either much older or much younger than their age. This young one – at seventeen you could still get away with calling him young one, couldn’t you? At least in your thoughts you could – certainly would have fooled most people in the ward he thought and wondered if he should ask the nurse that had booked him in what he thought.
Whatever his age, Brooks felt sorry for him. He was far from the first kid to have fallen into the trap of the Julensky flower. It looked innocent – almost a little plain with its narrow white petals and yellow center. More like a daisy than some of the more flamboyant flowers which grew around the countryside, but which were so distinct that people usually knew which ones were poisonous and which ones weren’t.
With the Julensky it was easy to be fooled and this boy was neither the first, nor the last, to fall afoul of it. The problem was it’s fragrance, Brooks thought to himself. It looked innocent, yes, but the smell… that was what got people in trouble. The smell was sweet, but not in the nauseating way, but clear and freshly sweet – and once you’d smelled it for a little while, it would start to bring by memories of all the good times you’d had, encouraging you to keep on smelling it as you forgot yourself in pleasant reverie. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours really, he mused. And if that was all they’d probably have synthesised it by now and started using it in medicine.
The problem was that that wasn’t all.
After smelling the flower for a while, the body began breaking out in hives and often landed the unfortunate victim in his ward. Not that they were particularly dangerous, just very unpleasant. He read the lad’s notes; as he’d expected. He’d been given medicine to sleep and an ointment for the rashes, and in a day or two he’d be going home again – by then the rashes would have gone down.
And probably his desire for sweet-smelling flowers too – at least one could hope.
By Iverian Gnash
I never have been a good judge of a creature’s character so while I was watching the robins feed their babies I thought they were adorable. How absolutely sweet they were going back and forth from the nest to ensure their babies had enough food! However, I very quickly realized what ferocious creatures robins are. At first, it started off innocently enough feeding their babies but as other critters came close to the nest, the robins went into defensive mode – or attack mode rather.
The first victim was another bird who happened to wander just too close to the nest and thus ensued a frantic chase around the yard. The second victim was a squirrel. Now, we know squirrels are rather curious critters so the benefit of the doubt should be given here, but this is not the first squirrel-robin chase I’ve seen, so it seems as though the two species have it out for each other.
This particular squirrel wandered up into the tree and sat above the nest for no apparent reason. The robin, upon returning, had a fit and chased him up the tree, and then back to the ground where she mercilessly pecked the poor thing until he darted away. You’d think this was the last of it until the squirrel came back a few minutes later to sit at the bottom of the tree, staring up pitifully. Robins are not as sweet as I thought… and I have my doubts about Mr. Squirrel’s motives too.
By Kendra Givens
Tales From My Muggle Career
I got back from my lunch break to discover that my secret pal left me a gift! I opened it up to find a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. I’ve had SUCH a craving for watermelon or banana flavored jelly beans lately, so I’m super excited to dig into this box. (Weird craving? Maybe…) I have to run to a meeting, so I don’t have time to open the box right now. The suspense is killing me, but I have to try to focus on this boring meeting first. At the conclusion of the meeting, I dart around the corner back to my office and open the box. There is exactly one watermelon bean in the box. One. Stupid. Bean. To make matters worse, there aren’t any banana flavored beans to be seen. Plenty of grass flavored ones, which I refuse to eat. I’m so frustrated that I throw the entire box away. I won’t eat the gross flavors ever, so why hang on to it? I’ll just go buy a huge bag of Jelly Bellys later. Then I’m guaranteed to have some watermelon flavored beans in my life without fear of disgusting flavors. Then I go to eat lunch, just to open my strawberry yogurt and find that it’s covered in mold. Today is just not meant to be my day.