Disclaimers: We are not J.K.
Rowling - on an irresponsible spree or not - and do not, sadly, own or
make profit from the use of her characters. Much thanks and appreciation
to her for many hours of fun.
Credits: Thanks to Zsenya for her irresistible
recognition of Arabella’s house color as Old Man Pants. We couldn’t help
ourselves. Thanks to Rugi and Gwena’s "Tough Guide" for inspiring the
bathroom safety story.
The Hogsmeade Howler, Phoenix
Publishing. Vol. 1, Edition 1
May 7, 2002
Staff: Publisher/were-editor: Kate Griffith. Staff
writers: Esmerelda, Elspeth the Deranged, Raven "Squidge" Fortuna.
~ News: BLACK SEEN, Ministry stymied: LONDON
(Associated Wizarding Press) The convicted murderer Sirius Black was reported
seen by several observers in London Thursday. Due to wildly conflicting
reports, however, the notorious escapee from Azkaban Prison wasn’t apprehended.
Five witnesses all saw a gaunt, dark-haired man stalking
down various lanes in the magical community. However, all stories differed
in one respect – the length of Black’s hair. One witch said she saw Black
with long, silky tresses in front of Madame Dulcissima’s unmentionables
shop. A warlock insisted he saw Black with a "high-and-tight" in Knockturn
Alley. Two young schoolwitches said they saw the criminal, this time sporting
shaggy curls down to his tattered collar, looking over the harps in Ditty’s
Music Store on Diagon Alley. Yet another witness reported seeing Black
in curlers in Mme. Coiffure’s Coiffurery.
Ministry spokeswizard Nosh Grindston said he believed
the witnesses did indeed see Black and the wizarding world’s most wanted
man would surely be found soon by Ministry Aurors, who were out scouring
the countryside last night.
Old Man Pants Arrested: LONDON Ministry of Magic
Aurors rescued Archie Pants, 174, of Gully Jerkins, after his arrest by
Muggle please-men Tuesday for public intoxication and falsification of
documents during a shopping trip in the capital city. Pants was five steps
away from the Leaky Cauldron door, wearing a flowered gown of the type
commonly worn by Muggle women as sleepwear, when he was apprehended.
"Didn’t do nothin’!" Pants told the Howler. "I
was just standin’ there and then all these great bloody off’cers jumped
on me."
Aurors Apparated onto the scene and Obliviated the Muggles’
memories at the city jail. A high-level Ministry official told reporters
today on the condition of anonymity that the Aurors’ appearance was delayed
because they were placing bets on the color of Pants’ slip.
"The please-men apparently thought Old Man Pants was merely
intoxicated and of course could not understand his Apparating license,"
the official said. "None of this would have happened if the old man would
just wear trousers."
Pants said he was considering a lawsuit against the London
authorities, although such attempts have failed in similar circumstances
as the please-men’s memories invariably fail under wizard cross-examination.
Witness kicked: LONDON (AWP) An unidentified wizard
was listed in critical condition at St. Mungo’s with injuries to the legs
after being found unconscious behind a door in an abandoned house in Diagon
Alley Thursday. St. Mungo’s spokeswizard Jack Heist said the wizard had
regained consciousness late in the evening and, though remembering nothing
of the attack, was criticizing the nurses’ every move.
Ministry officials said the wizard had been apparently
repeatedly kicked in the shins. They suspect that the attack may have
been motivated by the wizard’s earlier report to Aurors that he had seen
escaped murderer Sirius Black in curlers in a popular beauty salon.
~Agony Column:
- From Stardust to Larry: Please come home, darling.
I wouldn’t have thrown the teapot at you so hard if I had known that
was your real hair. Forgive and forget?
- From Dodderus "The Flash" to Millicent: Please believe
me, Millylilly- I didn’t know you were so sensitive about it. The
ladyslippers are drooping so with you gone. Come back! Come back!
~Have trouble with garden gnomes? Bundimuns? House-elves?
See Household Tips by Esmerelda: Hello, lovies, today I have for
you tips for the kitchen – To keep dishes from clinking too hard against
each other as they land on the shelves, try charming them with a Cushioning
Charm as they enter the cupboard. Give two swishes, one flick of the wand
and say, "Discus culcita!" or, as my mother in the old home country would
say, "Wrrgzsky vortublusk!" – To put your bread mould to good use, repulse
the mould from the crumbs and store in a brown glass jar. Send your mould
to St. Mungo’s Division of Benevolence and they will send it via liaison
to the London Muggle hospital for use as medicine, poor dears.
~Almanack: Last quarter moon. Cool days, cooler
nights. Fog. Moonrise: too much fog to say. Black dog weather. Sunrise:
between 4 and 9 a.m. Sun set: during or just after supper, will be blood-red.
Plant greens and mustards between 2 and 5 a.m. on the south side of stout
oaks only.
~Zodiac, by Sibyll Trelawney, contributing
editor: Aries (Mar. 21-April 20) You’re moving so fast
you may want to watch that wall, dear, upcoming on your left, because
when you hit it, ruler Mars will aspect Saturn, which limits mind and
body, and you will suffer unmitigated disaster of the left ear. Taurus
(April 21-May 21) You will be thrown off a stagecoach. Avoid brooms, carpets,
cars and all other forms of transport. Do not attempt to avoid fate by
Apparating. You will splinch. Gemini (May 22-June 21) Mars
and Saturn will collaborate to make you organize your life, so stop hanging
about with Seamus Finnigan. Cancer (June 22-July 23) The
elements are set for you to see extraordinary things today, both in present
and future, though not so well as I. However, you may never see them,
for I foresee you will drop your crystal ball on your foot. Beware tetanus.
Leo (July 24-Aug. 23) Big ideas, eh, loudmouth? Keep them
to yourself or you will most certainly be eaten by a lion on your way
to supper, BWA-ha-ha! Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 23) Look for
trouble from your superiors and avoid forks. Libra (Sept.
24-Oct. 23) The planets are spinning right into your areas of optimism!
Expect depression today, and a blinding headache. Don’t try to fight it;
it’s fate. Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) With the planet of
war close to the planet of restriction, it’s best to avoid libraries.
Don’t dip your books into the bathwater, or you’ll regret the untimely
loss of your fingers. Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 21) The
planets are against you. If you speak up, you will be quashed. Capricorn
(Dec. 22-Jan 20) Don’t touch that. Pisces (Feb. 20-Mar.20)
You will be mugged in a corridor or loo shortly. Avoid Augureys.
~School News: Our own Raven reports that
Hogwarts will soon have new loos constructed for the new school year as
there are currently only two and students keep getting attacked in them
in nasty ways. One loo belongs to the prefects and the other is infested
by a splorching ghost. The new loos will have pastel doors and a swarm
of butterflies to show they’re safe.
"We’re glad to see Hogwarts doing something with the were-guild
money," said a concerned parent. "It’s just not right, students getting
attacked in a school bathroom."
~ Rites of Passage – weddings, births, Magical
Inklings: Young Trudy Scamander Stotte, aged 19 months, exhibited
her first inkling of magic Monday by transfiguring her creamed greenblortt
into rhubarb pie. Proud parents are Finnie and Lancaster Stotte.
Trudy is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Newt and
Porpentina Scamander of Dorset.
* Mr. and Mrs. Fusteroon Stampgout are pleased
and relieved to announce the engagement and approaching marriage of their
daughter, Malaise, to Robert Best Frumpington of West Ham
and Cheese, son of Mr. and Mrs. Tanner Frumpington of West
Ham and Cheese.
The happy couple will be united on June 11 in a traditional
jump-the-broom ceremony in Mistioptick Hall, Hogsmeade.
Miss Stampgout is a 1950 graduate of Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry and is a performance artist living in a cellar.
Mr. Frumpington is a 1951 graduate of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry and went on to have a brilliant career as a Quidditch referee.
He is only lately returned from the Tangent Coast, where he spent 47 years
in a coma directly following Game Six in the 1954 World Quidditch Games.
~ Entertainment: Gilderoy Lockhart, author
of Magical Me and several other adventure tomes, will be a guest
on Blanche Odont’s Before-Tea Show at 14:11 Wizarding Time
on Tuesday, May 7. Lockhart is also the author of Gilderoy Lockhart’s
Guide to Household Pests. He is the Defense Against the Dark Arts
teacher at Hogwarts.
~ Sports: see next edition for the complete 2002
guide to Backlot Quidditch.
~ Public Announcements: The Royal Humane Society
for Magical Creatures would like to remind readers to please spay and
neuter their pets. Even wizards cannot curb the astronomical reproduction
rate of Kneazles, plot bunnies and Puffskeins.
~ Advertisements:
* Yard sale at Ozmandia Birch’s house. Items for
sale include collapsible cauldron, owl cage, school robes size 8, spellbooks
– slightly muffled - and one shoe. NO payments in leprechaun gold.
* New shipment of Trick Knee Gingerbread Men at Honeyduke’s:
Legs creak as they’re eaten! Also Lollygagging Pops: will alternately
sag and gag in the mouth! Limit two per customer.
* Get your Squelching Slips at Zonko’s! Zonko’s, the only
wizarding joke shop in Britain’s only all-wizarding village, now has inserts
for wellies in stock! Three sizes. Place Squelching Slips on the soles
of your friends and family! Listen as their boots come alive with horrible,
lifelike sounds! Comes with patented invisibility charm.
~Letters to the Editor: (Note: contact the Howler
staff at theweirdsisters4@yahoo.com.
Letters may be edited for grammar and length.) From Twiggy Dippling:
Dear Editor, I would just like to thank that wonderful Bill Weezly for
his help the other evening, you know when it was so stormy with all the
rain and that simply enormous piece of lightning – anyway, there I was,
all alone on that dark road to Frizzen Whisky – they really should do
something about lights, I never learned the Bluebell Flame Charm, it was
so hard, wasn’t it? – anyway, there I was all alone with a flat
broomtwig and it raining and all. And this tall boy – and so handsome,
too, all that wild hair – stopped to help me. Turns out it was little
Bill from down in Ottery St. Catchpole. I hadn’t seen him since I was
visiting his mother that time and he hexed his brother and Molly had to
have the healer up to the village. Children do grow so, don’t they? He
changed that twig out in no time at all and he was so polite! Anyway,
I would just like to say I don’t think the youth of our time are going
down the drain at all, not with nice young men like that Bill Weezly.
~Got a story idea? Contact the Howler staff at theweirdsisters4@yahoo.com.
