Peeking at Parker's Prank Journal
Dear diary,
Hi, I'm Midna Evans... forgive me for being a little awkward; I've never really written in a diary before. My mother bought me one the other day when we were in Diagon Alley picking up my other supplies. She kept preaching about how "school contains the most fantastic years of your life" and how "I would want to remember every detail when I was older" and that sort of thing. To be honest, I hadn't really intended to use you as anything more than a notebook for reminders to do things.
That changed last night, though. When I came to my dorm room, there was a welcome basket on my bed that contained snacks, slippers and a map of the Hufflepuff dorms. It really is a confusing place down here. I'm a stubborn and independent person, so I wanted to be able to navigate around without needing to bother a prefect or consult my map very much. I decided I would follow the map and wander the dorms until I get used to navigating my way to the important places. And so I unpacked my stuff, snatched my map off my bed and went off. I have to admit that it was fairly confusing; all of the tunnels look the same! It took me over an hour before I noticed that there were small etchings on the wall to help you discern one corridor from the next. I jotted down each of the markings on my map, and after I figured out where one corridor's marker belonged on my map, the rest of it fall into place. A couple of my fellow Hufflepuffs were grinning away at me in the main lounge, probably remembering how excited they got the first time the tunnels made sense to them. It was exhilarating! In a matter of minutes, I suddenly knew where the kitchens were, where the lounge was, where the dorms were, which tunnel to take to get to my room and which tunnel leads me to the Head of House's office. I had a blast just challenging myself to get from one place to the next and as it turns out, there are far more tunnels than the map showed - tons of shortcuts to places and little rooms that must have been added over the years. That was the beauty of the map; it showed you what you needed to know but left a little bit of mystery and adventure for you to discover. I couldn't wait for my next seven years here, all of a sudden. I looked forward to coming back from a long day of classes to a cozy and mysterious common room full of people who smiled warmly at you for being excited, not people who smirked at you for being young. I looked forward to watching first years next year do the same thing I had done, and I looked forward to having my eyes widen in awe a few years down the road when I discovered a new room I'd never known about all this time. Hufflepuff's common room had opened up this massively amazing metaphor in my mind; it was an endless area of opportunities, with places I could discover by taking a wrong turn and places I may need help getting to. It truly was a brilliant design.
Speaking of wrong turns... I ended up finding a small room with nothing but a circular rug in it. I figured it was a room for relaxing or chatting with friends and so I decided to lay on the fluffy rug and finish my map. However, the moment I went to put my elbows down, I noticed there was a strange, hard lump under the rug. Curious, I got off the rug and lifted it up. Underneath it lay a small, tattered leather book. I looked around the room and down the hall that lead to it, wondering if perhaps this was a room I wasn't meant to discover. I grabbed the book and set the rug back into place. After checking the hall one more time, I sat on the rug, brushed some dirt off the cover of the book and opened it.
It was clear from the start that it was not a textbook nor a novel, but someone's private thoughts and opinions. I should not have kept reading, to be honest with you - especially as a Hufflepuff, I value fairness. But there is just something about a journal whose first line is "Professor Flitterbloom is no fun, so I'm going to send her some FlitterBOMBS!" that just draws you in, you know? The first entry talked about a Professor who had annoyed the writer by spraying them with "a gross combination of all kinds of ingredients I hope to discover and DESTROY!!!", and went on in detail about how the writer was going to get revenge by planting dungbombs in her office set to go off right before her first class. There were tons of similiar entries - pranks and plots against people and how they went, etc. Flitterbloom's case, for example, ended up in her arriving to teach her class smelling very foul and three quarters of her students didn't return to her class for at least a week and a half. I couldn't believe that someone like this was in Hufflepuff, and even more so I couldn't believe how many pranks they had pulled. I didn't understand why people sprayed this student, either... and what exactly was in those bottles that this person hated so much. Suddenly Hufflepuff didn't seem as warm and friendly as it had...
The final entry in particular caught my eye. It was this:
"Ooooh, ickle firstie season is here! My favourite time of YEAR! I think I'll start this year of with a bang... or perhaps a SPLASH! I bet those ickles will just love waking up to their first day of classes SOAKED FROM MY WATERBALLOONS!"
It went on to detail how the writer had figured out an adhesive that sticks for exactly 8 hours and how they would use it to stick water balloons above each first year's bed so that they would wake up to a water balloon hitting them the next morning. I was horrified and glad all at once - if I knew about the balloon I could take it off my bed. But what about the other first years? I could tell the staff, but did I really want to rat out an older student on my first day here? Especially a student that the staff couldn't even seem to control... What to do, what to do...
I placed the book back under the rug and returned to my dorm room. It wasn't too late, so I calmly sat in the main lounge, hoping to make a few new friends. When it came time for bed, I quietly got into mine and pretended to sleep, waiting for the prankster to sneak in with their water balloons. I had an eye on the door at all times... but no one ever came in. It was nearly three in the morning when I gave up, rolling over to finally try and get some sleep...
And there it was: a big, round water balloon hanging above me.
— To be continued in the next issue of the Wizarding Times! —