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My Life In Hufflepuff

It was a strange, confusing time in my life. I kept up the cool guy act in class, but on the inside? I didn't really feel cool. I kept telling myself I had a special destiny and that was why I wasn't like everyone else, why I couldn't be like them ever. In truth? I was really lonely. I was still just a thirteen year old boy in a class full of children two years younger than me. I talked to some of the third years (and some even older than that) in the Common Room at times, but really my best friend during this time was Stabbie. We spent most nights talking together. He'd tell me about the history of Hogwarts. It was an interesting place for sure, magnificent in many ways...but also very intimidating. What was I doing there? Could I really becoe a hero like Dumbledore, Harry Potter and my beloved Hermione? Of course, I never told Stabbie of any of my doubts...not at first anyway.

Classes were a mixed bag. Some were just horribly boring, like History of Magic, Astromony and even Potions (I could tell we were only getting the weakest potions possible. Slughorn looked bored teaching us, like he'd rather be at one of his parties. I never got invited to any of them, by the way. I think he had a policy of always excluding Hufflepuff students, no matter how cool.) I enjoyed Defence Against The Dark Arts, even though we weren't learning anything really dangerous...it was cool to get up their and duel with the other pupils. I enjoyed the showmanship of it. And I never lost.

Flying was okay, bad Madam Hooch threatened to have me kicked out of school if I ever flew too high again, so I was stuck down low with everyone else. I still did some cool stunts, loop the loops and shit. Even did a barrel roll!

But really I was just killing time until Quidditch season began, after Halloween. It never seemed to come.

As for my special destiny? I'd go out late at night to "look for evil" to try to justify it. I'd end up walking around the grounds finding little of interest. I talked to Hagrid a few nights, he was alright, bit thick though. I didn't tell him what I was up to but did ask if he'd seen anything suspicious. He went on about the Centaurs stealing his pumpkins for about half an hour one night. I avoided his shack after that.

One night I was so bored I found myself walking straight towards the Womping Willow, without any thought to my own safety. I finally stopped when I heard a loud bang. I saw a flash in the distance. The willow was just about to take a swing at me, but I ran off towards the flash. Was this it? Was I about to find the evil that lurked in Hufflepuff?

I found an exploded pumpkin.
 
Turned out it was nothing, as far as I could tell. Really was just an exploded pumpkin. I picked up the pieces, examined them...it was just an exploded pumpkin. I did wonder why, but it didn't seem important at the time. It couldn't possibly be a result of anything evil, could it? I saw a figure moving in the dark as I touched the pumpkin pieces. I pointed my wand quickly, but it was gone. Probably just a centaur. I thought I heard hooves. Yes, the centaurs were just stealing Hagrid's pumpkins and blowing them up...for some reason.

Life at Hogwarts went on. Nothing much happened. Stabbie told me to take a note of the pumpking incident "as these things tend to come up again later in unexpected ways", but he was drunk at the time so I didn't take him seriously. Halloween finally came. This meant it was time for the Halloween Feast...and I'd need a costume.

It wasn't fair. The third years and up could go to Hogsmeade, but their own costumes. I SHOULD have been in third year, but instead I was with the kids, not even allowed to go to Hogsmeade by ourselves. We had to make do with the costumes supplied to us by the school, or make our own with the material. I thought about making a Voldemort costume. That would really freak the other kids out. But then the Syltherin cunts might think I was on their side, and I was on no one's side but my own.

I finally decided to go as Hitler. That wouldn't be controversial at all!

Sprout pulled me inside as soon as I entered the Great Hall.

"Who are you dressed as?" she ask, suspicious. Stupid witch. So many of them had no knowledge of muggle history. They didn't even know who shitting Hitler was.

"Just some muggle Prime Minister...he was a hero to millions," I said. She glared, but let me enter.

I didn't talk to many people. But there was a girl, dressed as Snow White...third year, maybe even a fourth year. Our eyes met a few times. It felt so intense. By this point I wasn't even "discovering" my sexuality anymore, I knew what I liked. Girls. But I was too young to kiss one, surely? Yet I found myself walking over to her...

Then Dumbledore called all the Hufflepuff students up on stage for the "best Hufflepuff costume" prize. Shit! The girl looked amused as I blushed and joined my fellow Huffletards on the stage...

That was when the bomb went off. And this was no exploding pumpkin. This was the real thing.
 
I'M STILL KEEPING UP WITH THIS I SWEAR I JUST DIDN"T SEE THE THURDAY UPDATE RIGHT AWAY LOL WORK SUCS
 
It was chaos in the Great Hall. There was so much smoke, so many people running about in different directions...I was strangely calm. I hadn't been hurt. In fact one of the first thoughts I had was "the explosion came when the Hufflepuff students were on stage." Of course I had been safe, everyone in Hufflepuff had been. This explosion was the work of the evil within Hufflepuff.

I look at all the students and teachers moving about in the confusion. Some were hurt. Some weren't moving. I looked for Snow White girl at first, but couldn't see her. Then I realised this was my chance to finally see some action, to finally do something. I made my way towards the place where I thought the explosion had come from. But I heard a voice, a little voice, crying out for help. A voice I knew. Angelica.

She was trapped under a giant pumpkin which had been hanging from the ceiling (actually, I think it had been suspended by magic) and fallen down in the explosion. I tried a levitation spell (one of the few spells we'd been taught at this point) to move it. She was crying really loudly, obviously panicking, and it was distracting me. There was so much smoke too...and fired. It just flared up, suddenly. Magical fire, I thought.

Still, I had to save Angelica. Size matters not, I remembered. Good old Yoda. I just had to concentrate, make the rest of the room vanish...and lift that damn pumpkin. I pointed my wand. I was at one with the magic. I could feel the pumpkin move in my mind as it did so in front of my eyes. I was in control. I set it down safely and help Angelica up.

"Oh, Hugo, thank you!" she cried. "We have to help Jimmy! He was going to get punch...he was right over there when everything exploded!" She pointed in the direction I had been heading.

"Okay," I said. "But you're hurt, you should get out of here...I'll take care of Jimmy."

"No, please, I need to help..." She tried to follow me but could barely walk, the poor little thing. Professor Snape appeared from the smoke and held her up.

"Come on, Hugo," he barked at me, but I ignored him and ran off. I had to find something, something to tell Stabbie and the Sorting Hat...something to make my father proud, if there really was anything of him in that pebble.

I stumbled over several bodies now...dead students. Oh God. Students had actually died. I had already failed, I realised. I was supposed to expose and stop the evil in Hogwarts, but it had already killed. No, wait. One of the body's was moving...it was Jimmy! I kneeled down beside him. He was burned. Badly. It was horrible.

"I was getting punch," he said, dreamily. He was barely conscious. I noticed something else on the ground: pieces of metal. The cauldron, I realised, the cauldron the punch had been in. That's where the bomb had been hidden. Yet Jimmy had been right next to it, and he was still alive. Perhaps it wasn't too bad after all. The smoke was just part of some smell, I wasn't even coughing very much...panic. It had all been designed to induce panic, but why? To get everyone out the Hall?

The cauldron was near one of the exits, but people would be running away from it. The other exit led outside, into the grounds, where the party was going to move after the awards...where there was another cauldron full of punch.

"IT'S A TRAP!" I shouted, beginning to run across the Great Hall.
 
I ran as fast as I could. There were still people in the Great Hall on the ground, injured...I jumped over a few. There were teachers trying to help and several shouted at me as I ran past. Had to get outside...the doorway was busy with people, of course, all trying to get out, thinking they were running away from the bomb...when really they were running right to it. I tried to push through...I ended up pulling a boy out of the way and throwing him back into the room...then a girl...a girl in a Snow White outfit...OH SHIT, IT WAS HER...

No time to worry about that. I was outside now. I scanned around as quickly as I could...there it was. A huge punch bowl...and a few students were standing near it already. What if taking the first drink of punch was what set it off.

"Don't, don't drink the punch," I said. But there was so much noise, of course, students crying, calls for help from inside, teachers pleading for calm...no one hear. I was desperate. I had to be heard. I pulled out my wand and pointed it towards the sky. Words came to me. I honestly had never heard them before in my life. They were in a language I did not know.

"SLEKTWAGIUS MOOP MEEP!" I declarded and a bright light shot out of my wand...then a BANG, in the sky. All from my wand. All from me. All eyes were on me, suddenly.

"DON'T. DRINK. THE. PUNCH." I said. "There's a bomb!" Then I was knocked on my ass by a blast from Professor Slughorn's wand!

"Horace!" said Dumbledore.

"You heard!" said Slughorn, shaking. "He's a terrorist!"

"Urgh," I said, sitting up. "I'm not...I didn't put the bomb there! But the one in the Hall was in the punchbowl...I figured out that there's a bigger one out here."

Dumbledore was already at the punchbowl, running his wand over it, conjuring up a protective shield...then he looked closely at it, with his keen eyes.

"The lad's right!" said Dumbledore. "There's a magical explosive in here big enough to take us all out!" There were gasps. "Back in the Great Hall, just in case," Dumbledore said. Everyone started back in. I was still dazed from Slughorn's blast. Snape helped me stay on my feet, then took a good long look at me.

"And why, exactly, are you dressed as Adolf Hitler, child?" Snape asked.
 
We all waited in the Great Hall for a while. I saw Snow White girl, but she looked a bit suspicious of me now. I think everyone was, after what Slughorn had said. Slughorn himself had apologised and praised me for working out the location of the second bomb. He stopped short of inviting me join the "Slug Club", however. Maybe he thought I'd scare the other students away.

Hermione Granger briefly came over to me. I think her, Harry and Ron were trying to help Dumbledore with the bomb and find out who was responsible. But she still made time for me, smiling brightly as always. She was dressed as a cat. A sexy, sexy cat. My hormones were raging out of control by this stage in my young life. I wondered if there was a spell I could cast to stop getting erections in public?

"Gosh, Hugo, I knew you were destined for big things, but I never thought you'd save all our lives this quickly!" she said, touching my shoulder with affection.

"Oh, err, it was nothing," I said, awkwardly. "I'm sure someone else would have noticed the bomb."

"I think we'd all be blown to Kingdom Come if not for you!" said Hermione. She was so lovely. I wanted to kiss her.

"I do my best!" I said and she laughed. Ron then called on her (bastard) and she waved and left.

It was a while before Dumbledore came back in. He told us everything was okay now, that we would be protected from further attacks, and that our Heads of House would esecort us back to our respective common rooms. Sprout had an intense look on her face as she led us. She didn't look worried though, like she was confident she could take care of any magical attack.

The Hufflepuff Common Room was buzzing with talk about the bombing when we got there, and many students wanted to get my take on it and find out exactly how I knew there was a second bomb. But I made my excuses and went to the bedroom as soon as I could.

Stabbie was waiting on my bed. I don't know what would have happened if someone else had came in first.

"Well, that was some heavy shit went down tonight," said Stabbie. "You stepped up, brah! You're a fuckdamn hero now, the next Harry Potter!"

"I don't want to be Harry Butthole Potter," I said, still a bit jealous after Herminoe had ran out with him and Ron.

"Whatever, brah. You saved all the students from another evil Hufflepuff plot!"

"Yeah, I...wait," I said, finally realising something. "You're right, ALL the students."

"Yeah, so?" asked Stabbie, biting his own toenails.

"The previous attacks have been on every house BUT Hufflepuff," I said.

"Yeah, but from what I heard, all the Hufflepuff students were on stage when the first bomb went off," said Stabbie.

"Yeah, the FIRST bomb. The fakeout bomb that didn't actually do much damage, the one designed to make everyone run outside where the REAL bomb was...EVERYONE, Hufflepuff students included!"

"Shit, you're right," said Stabbie, actually stopping with the nail-biting for a moment. "The fuck?"

"I don't know!" I said. "It doesn't make sense, why set off the first one when everyone was on stage..."

"Unless the person responible was trying to FRAME Hufflepuff!" said Stabbie.

"So what does that mean?" I asked.

"Could mean there's someone else wanting to blow everyone up. Maybe the two bombs were laid by two different people."

"The centarus," I said, remembering the pumpkins. "They could have access to the outside punchball, and I told you about them blowing up pumpkins..."

"Looks like we'll have to pay the centaurs a visit," said Stabbie.
 
I didn't much like the idea of visiting the centaurs. They didn't associate with humans much and I doubt they would have appreciated me tresspassing in their forest. I had visioins of being trampled underfoot.

Hogwarts was in lockdown mode after the explosion, so I used that as an excuse with Stabbie so I could put off visiting the centaurs until I had thought of the right approach. It would have been near impossible to get outside anyway, and I didn't know of any secret passages, the kind Potter was rumoured to use. So I kept going to classes as normal. No one talked about anything but the bombings and many had questions for me.

Angelica wanted to be my friend again. Mark kept further away than ever and could often be seen sneering and point at me with his Slytherin mates. I don't know if they were blaming me for the bombs or if they had decided the bombs had been some plot of Voldemort's, and I had interfered in it by saving their lives. As for Jimmy, he took a while to return to classes. He'd been burned badly, and even though he was expected to make a full recovery thanks to the magical healings offered at Hogwarts, it would still take a while and he was very shaken up. I agreed to visit him to Angelica, though three days later I still hadn't.

One day, I saw a centaur in Hogwarts. I was shocked. They never left their forest, did they? I asked Angelica who he was.

"Oh, that's Firenze, of course!" she said. "He teaches Divination! I wish we got that class in First Year, he's so...well, I'm not sure why I like him." She blushed.

I asked Stabbie about him later. "Yeah, he's a fucking outcast, that Firenze. Rest of the centaurs don't want shit to do with him. I don't think there's any point talking to him, he won't be one of the hoofters who stole Hagrid's pumpkins." Still, I liked the idea of talking to Firenze more than talking to any of the human hating centaurs of the forest, so I went to see him that very night. He was outside, on the grounds, galloping. I was surprised I hadn't seen him before.

"Wotcher, Firenze," I said, as cool as I could. Lots of kids had started saying that word after some hottie named Twonks introduced it to them.

"Hugo, it's about time," said Firenze. I was taken aback. How could he know my name?

"Err, how do you know my name?" I asked, reaching for my wand. Could I cast a spell before he trampled the shit out of me?

"I read it in the stars," he said. "I have read much about you."

"Have you read why I've come to see you?" I asked.

"Exploding Pumpkins," said Firenze, winking. What the fuck! Exploding pumpkins were written in the stars?

"Err, that's right...you know about that?"

"There are still some of my kind who talk to me. They read in the stars as I did that there would be an explosion soon...they saw pumpkins in their reading."

"But they were the ones exploding them!"

"They charmed the pumpkins, so that anyone who touched them would be repelled by a small explosion," explained Firenze. "That way they could stop the bombing before it happened, stop whoever was responsible from getting their hands on any pumpkins."

"Well...didn't work."

"No," said Firenze, darkly. "They failed. The fools! If I had still been with them...but then, I failed too. The pumpkin we read in the stars actually meant the bombing would be on Halloween, not that the bomb would be in a pumpkin. Still, there was hope. I read about you, Hugo, how you would save everyone. That was why I was not too worried about the bomb."

"Still, you could have warned Dumbledore at least!"

"I did."

"Oh," I said. And yet the first bomb still went off...MAYBE DUMBLEDORE WAS...nah.

"I also saw certain events in your future. They were shadowy, hard to see...but you are in grave danger. Danger from within."

"I know, from the evil in Hufflepuff."

"That...and from within yourself, Hugo. Be careful. He who studies evil is studied BY evil. Do not become that which you want to fight."

"Well, tell me WHO it is, who I'm fighting, who the EVIL in Hufflepuff is!"

"I do not know that. For they have cast a spell over the stars themself."

"Fuck!"
 
So the visit to Firenze hadn't told me much. At least I could stop investigating pumpkins. That had gotten rather boring. Stabbie told me that I shouldn't automatically trust what Firenze had said, that he could be lying...but he hadn't been there. The centaur had seemed very honest to me. I believed every word he said.

And why would centaurs want to blow up a load of human children anyway? No, they were eliminated from my enquiries.

What else had he told me, that I'd face evil from within? That I'd be tempted by the Dark Side? I guess I had always thought that was a possibility anyway. I remembered back to my sorting, when I'd wanted to be put in Gryffindor...but had felt a chill of excitement at the thought of being sorted to Slytherin. Yeah, the darkness was calling to me then. I wondered which house I would have been sorted it, if the Hat hadn't send me to Hufflepuff for my secret mission? I wasn't enough of a goody two shoes for Gryffindor, but was I really enough of an asshole for Slytherin? I just didn't know.

And I had had a brick wall in my investigation again. Days kept going by, classes continued mostly as normal. The bombing was still talked about a lot, but nothing else happened. Life went on. Even Slughorn stopped giving me suspicious looks in class.

Quidditch season had finally begun, and I was eager to try out. I forgot all about my secret mission when I was on the qudditch field, when I was flying high on my broom...I felt free. No responsibilities. Sometimes I just felt like flying out of the school and to a new life somewhere.

I wanted to be the Seeker, the player responsible for going after the Golden Snitch, the only player who REALLY mattered in my opinion. I think a lot of my fellow Hufflepuffers wanted me to get it too, they knew how good I was. Even Professor Sprout showed up at the tryouts. Hufflepuff had had some success thanks to Cedric Diggory in recent years, with him dead I was perhaps the last hope for Quidditch glory.

It was all going so well. I was up there, higher than all the other students, but not out of bounds. I saw the snitch coming, I was the first of those trying out to spot it. I went right for it. I could see Damian Nose, a second year Hufflepuffer, going for it too, but I was way ahead of him. I was going to get it, going to impress everyone, become the star player...then I felt something. Someting in the back of my neck. A tingling...a sense of dread, of fear. My old fear of heights? No. Something worse. Something...evil. The evil in Hufflpuff was there, in the sky with me. Then a horrible thought struck me.

What if I was the evil all along.

It made no sense, of course, the evil had been there long before I had come to Hogwarts, but the thought took over me. I rememebered what Firenze had said. I was so scared, scared by what I felt, that I actually started to feel like I wanted to go full evil. At least I'd have picked a side then, at least I wouldn't be scared anymore. NO! Couldn't do that. Had to shake off the creepy feeling...I shook so hard I fell off my broomstick.

I plumetted towards the ground. I couldn't hear gasps from my fellow students or anything like that. I couldn't hear the voice of my father coming from the pebble I carried. I heard nothing, as the ground prepared to meet me...I stopped five feet up. I was floating there, suspended. I looked around...and saw Sprout pointing her wand at me, effort in her face. To think, I'd been so horrible to her, and now she'd saved my life.

As other students ran over and helped me down, I realised I had shat my pants as I had been falling. They could obviously smell it too.
 
As I lay in bed afterwards, still shaken, still in shock, perhaps, having only just managed to changed my underwear before climbing in, I reflected back on the incident. It had to have been the lowest point of my life so far, I thought. Maybe my lowest point ever. I imagined myself thinking back to it on my deathbed. Maybe it would be all I would be remembered for. Instead of being the hero who saved the whole school from being blown up, I'd be the Hufflepuff kid who shat his pants in quidditch training.

Stabbie had come in to talk, but I was not in the mood at all. He was saying what happened was important, that I had a chance to catch The Evil now that it was out to get me specifically. It would get sloppy, make a mistake, we could expose it. I couldn't think about any of that. I was still just a thirteen year old boy, remember. All I could think about was my own humiliation. I threw my shit underpants at Stabbie and told him to fuck off.

I wondered if I could possibly explain, tell everyone about the creeping sense of evil I had felt up there. From their point of view, it had just looked like I had fallen off my broom and Sprout had had to step in and save me. And I'd shat my pants. Maybe that WAS what had happened, maybe I had just imagined the feeling of that presence...suddnely I felt a presence again. I sat up and span round, just in time to see The Fat Friar leave through the wall. What the fuck did he want?

Hufflepuff really did have the worst house ghost. Gryffindor had Nearly Headless Nick and, while he was a bit boring sometimes, at least he looked cool and had some interesting stories. Slytherin had The Bloody Baron, who had actually killed someone! He was quite scary. Ravenclaw had...some woman. I didn't know too much about her. But I'd seen her a couple of times and she was quite fit, so that was something. Hufflepuff? In typical Huffster fashion, we had some fat bastard.

I chased after him. I had something to replace my humiliation now, anger. Who did he think he was, watching me sleep? What was he, a paedohiple? That would be so typical of Hufflepuff, having a dirty paedo as its ghost. I ran down to the Common Room. There were a few students around and two of them held their noses as I passed, indicating that I smelled. I ignored it, for now. I saw the Baron again, peeking through the wall. Did he want me to follow him?

I ran outside and he was waiting around a corner. "What do you want, you fat fuck?" I asked.

"Ho ho ho, that's no way to talk to your House Ghost!" he said, trying to look all jolly. But there was something behind those eyes...fear?

"You were watching me," I said.

"I heard what happened on the field of play, I wanted to see if you were okay!" said the Friar. He was looking around nervously now. Could HE be the Evil!?

"AND?" I asked, impatient already.

"That's...that's all...ho ho ho! Try to enjoy your time at Hogwarts, it's a magical place! Ho h ho!"

"You got me out of bed for THAT?" I asked.

"Hufflepuff...it was a great house once...could be again," said the Friar. What?

"What?"

"Just saying...ho ho ho..."

"You know something, don't you?" I asked.

"Ho ho..."

"STOP LAUGHING AND TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW."

"I can't...I'm too scared..."

"Tell me or I'll call an exorcist in."

"It's just...the thing's that have been happening...well...a year or so ago, I was saying, to some older Hufflepuff students, that Hufflepuff could be a great house...I made a joke. A tasteless joke. Ho ho."

"What was this joke, Friar?"

"I said...I said maybe if some unfortunate accident befell all the students from the other three houses, Hufflepuff could be strong! But I was only joking. Yet the students, they seemed interested by this...I tried to discourage them. Yet it wasn't long after that when strange things began to happen to the other houses..."

"These students, who were they? GIVE ME THEIR NAMES, SPIRIT."

"Well...I suppose it wouldn't do any harm for you to investigate...there was..."

But before he could say anything else, a vortex appeared in front of the Fat Friar...and sucked him inside. He was gone, just like that, right in front of my eyes.
 
Jaysus, you are talented.
 
Wtf is this masterpiece doing on page 2?

BUMP!
 
A victim of Mine Field Thread-Starting Monday!
 
A victim of Mine Field Thread-Starting Monday!

Indeed. I was just worried when I didn't see it on the first page. Wacky's stories are one of the few things that make it worthwhile to drag myself out of the Badlands.
 
I wondered if this was some kind of power the House Ghosts had, a personal vortex or something, to make it easier to get around. But why would he activate his personal vortex just as he was about to tell me something important? Besides, it was easy for ghosts to get around anyway, they're fucking ghosts! No, someone had done this, someone had sucked the Fat Friar away just as I was about to get to the truth. I had to find out who. I now knew a student WAS responsible afterall. But which?

I turned round to see Hugh Fry staring at me.

"What are you doing out here, spacko?" he asked. "Looking for the toilet, shittypants?"

"Oh bugger off, Hugh," I said, but then I paused...could it be Hugh? I had no idea how long he'd been watching me. Yet the Friar had said it was older students he'd been talking to, and Hugh was only a third year...but maybe the Friar had only meant older than me. Why couldn't he have been more clear instead of laughing all the time?

"Yeah, you want to bugger me, don't you?" said Hugh, the most renowned wanker in Hufflepuff. "I bet you think about it every night!"

"Is it what you think about when you stain your sheets?" I asked.

"At least mine aren't stained with shit!" he said.

"Why don't you get on a broomstick, goes 500 feet up then fall off and see if YOU shit yourself?" I asked. I was rattled, there was no point continuing this with Hugh, yet I couldn't stop.

"Becasue I'd die!" he said, confused for a moment. There was NO WAY it could be him, I decided again.

"That's the general idea," I said, walking by him and back into the Common Room. I looked around at the Huffsters. Some were laughing at me. I was going to get that a lot. But there was one I remembered suspecting before...Philip Trout. The goth, and a sixth year at that, surely he would count as one of the "older" Huffsters. He was sitting with Michelle Richards, another sixth year who would actually be quite attractive...if she wasn't a goth. I walked over and sat right next to them. They gave each other disgusted looks before Philip looked at me with utter disdain.

"What do you want, first year?" he asked. As if that was the only thing he knew about me! I was Hugo, the smartest (and oldest) kid in first year, I'd saved everyone's life...I'd shat my pants in Quidditch tryouts. Wait...I remembered something now. Philip and Michelle hadn't been at the Halloween party, the one where everyone else had been at risk...how strange...

"I know," I said, confidently.

"What could you possible know, you soulless minion of orthodoxy?" asked Philip. Michelle looked in awe of his big words.

"I know what you did," I said. "I know about Halloween." Michelle looked worried for a moment. I had it!

"You know nothing of us and our ways," said Philip. "What we did on Halloween was glorious. The likes of you could not comrehend its beauty."

"And I know what you did to the Fat Friar!" I said.

"Who?" asked Michelle, sounding genuinely confused.

"The House Ghost! DON'T ACT LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW!" I said. A few more people were looking over at us now.

"We have no interest in such a weak-willed spirit," said Philip. "He disgusts us with his meekness."

"Yeah!" said Michelle. Huh?

"Well I'm going to tell Dumbledore what you did on Halloween anyway!" I said.

"Do your worst. That old fool won't comprehend either, and you have no evidence."

"Then you admit it!"

"Of course. We raised Satan and Michelle did enter congress with him."

"He was so great in bed!" said Michelle. "Kind of like Philip, but better!"

"WHAT!?" I was getting really angry now. "That's not it...the bombing at the Halloween Ball! IT WAS YOU GUYS!"

"What bombing?" asked Philip. "Oh, wait, I think I heard about that...we don't follow what the rest of the school does. We do our own thing. Like raise Satan."

"His dick was huge," said Michelle.

"...you're actually being serious, aren't you?" I asked.

"There was no event more serious in either of our lives," said Philip.

"I think part of it was plastic!" said Michelle, still talking about Satan's dick.
 
"Well, it's true!" said Stabbie, later that night. I had told him everything Philip had told me and asked him to investigate. "His story checks out, kid."

"SERIOUSLY?" I asked, in shock. How could it be! "They raised the devil on Halloween? The devil made love to Michelle?"

"What? No, of course not, ya mook!" said Stabbie. "I thought you understood, kid, it was all just a scam by Philip."

"A scam?"

"Bigtime scamola! I admire the little goth shit. The whole thing was laid out in his diary, I read it all. Basically, he's been tapping Michelle for a couple of months, but she isn't impressed by his prowess. She was thinking of dumping him, in fact. So he told her he wanted to raise the devil on Halloween! So when the day came, he got her high on mandrake leaves he still from Herbology class. After that it was easy. Bit of smoke and mirrors, then he came out dressed as Satan. Daft bint was fooled and slept with him."

"But she said his penis was plastic!"

"Yeah, he stuck plastic onto his dick to make it bigger."

"That's...stupid."

"The things we do for love, eh, kid?"

"Well...none of this helps me! So it was Philip or Michelle who were behind the bombing, they were having sex using plastic...but I'm still no closer to finding out who was behind it and who sucked the Fatass Friar into that vortex!"

"At least you can cross out a few names..."

"Wait, you said you read Philip's diary...why can't you do that with everyone? Every student in Hufflepuff?"

"Because most of them don't have diaries! Only a goth twat like Philip is arrogant enough to think his thoughts matter and are worth recording."

"DAMN IT!" I threw a pillow across the room. Scary. "I need to know which students were involved!"

"Hang on," said Stabbie. "I remember something now...a kid from Hufflepuff was expelled from the school last year. Sixth year, I think."

"A Huffter suspended?" I asked. This could be it, the big break. "That...that must be significant. Who was he?"

"I'm racking my brains, kid...I think he was the brother of that kid who bullies you, Hugh Fry."

"HE DOES NOT BULLY ME. Fry has an older brother?"

"Yeah. Roger, I think his name was. Seemed like a pretty boring kid, from what I remember. I'll check the school records, see if I can find out why he was suspended."

"Great plan!"

"And you can get close to Hugh and get information from him."

"What? No fucking way!"

"Yes fucking way!"

I woke up to find Damian Nose, the second year student who had been trying out for Seeker at the same time as me, standing over my bed.

"I got Seeker," he said, smugly. "They said if you'd got it they would have had to change the name of the position..."

"To Shitter?" I interrupted, guessing the joke. Damian looked embarrased for a moment.

"You shat yourself!" he said, and ran off.
 
i really like this story. i'm going to recommend it to friends, no kidding.
 
That last post was funnier than I thought, apparently.
 
So I had to get close to Hugh Fry, somehow. I thought about it all day in classes. I sat near the back now, not drawing any attention to myself. A few kids looked at me and laughed. A few actually give me understanding looks, like perhaps they had shat themselves falling off a broomstick too. Angelica tried to talk to my like everything was normal. She was a good kid. But I wasn't like her now, or like Mark or Jimmy or any of them. I was living in a different world, a world where ghosts were kidnapped, where I was the only thing stopping evil forces from blowing up the school...a world where I had to befriend Hugh Fry.

When lessons were over and I was back in the Common Room, I watched Hugh. He didn't seem to have many close friends, I noticed. He would mainly talk to his peers only when making fun of a younger student. I saw him sneaking out of the main area at one point and I followed him. He appeared to be setting up a mirror in the corridor leading towards the girls dorm. I was intrigued. I watched as he tried to get the angle just right.

"Going to spy on girls?" I asked, trying to sound casual and matey, like we hadn't had an argument just the day before. "Cool!"

"What the fuck?" he said, staring at me. "The bathroom is the other way, poop-o."

"Haha," I laughed, hating myself. "Good one! No, seriously, what are you trying to do here? If you're trying to see naked girls, I'll help."

"What do you know about girls, first year twat?" he snapped. "I bet you haven't even started wanking yet."

"Have so!" I said, thinking of Hermione as I did. Ah, Hermione...

"Yeah right. Get to fuck now!"

"I'm not much younger than you, actually," I said, which was true, of course. "Seriously, I could help..."

"You don't know shit about shit," said Hugh, whatever that meant.

"Well, why do you have the mirror away over here? Won't the girls see it when they open the door?" Hugh smiled when I said this.

"That's the beauty of it. They won't open the door. I'll cast a spell which makes the door transparent, looking at it from this angle anyway. From their point of view, the door will still be there, but I'll be watching..."

"Why do you need a mirror then?"

"I still need to be able to make a quick getaway, can't be right up against the door...don't you know anything?" I had to admit, it sounded like a pretty cool spell. How could he possible know it?

"Where did you learn this spell?" I asked. Hugh didn't answer right away. He seemed to be sizing me up. I almost thought, maybe, that he secretly like the fact that I was showing an interest in him. Maybe it didn't happen very often.

"My brother Roger," he said at least. "He knows all kinds of spells. Used to go here, before the bastards kicked him out."

"He was expelled? Why?"

"Because he was too cool for school!" said Hugh, sounding angry. He looked quite emotional.

"He must have done something really bad..."

"Nobody fucking knows what he did, okay? Just drop it. OR I'LL DROP YOU."

"Okay, okay...so, you going to do this spell or what?"

"Why should I, with you there?"

"Ah, so you can't do it..."

"Can so!" He pointed his wand at the door then whispered something. Then it happened. The door went completely transparent. There were girls behind, just sitting around on their beds talking. Then one stood up...and started taking her top off...

"YOU TWO!" came a booming voice. Hugh and I span round. Professor Sprout had appeared as if from nowhere. One of the secret passages, must have been. "MY OFFICE, NOW!"
 
So I was sitting in Sprout's (far less impressive than Dumbledore's) office next to Hugh, watching Sprout argue with a mangy house elf, about to get a bollocking from Sprout for spying on the girls. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it would help me and Hugh bond. From his body language though, that seemed to be the last thing on his mind.

Sprout's house elf really was disgusting. I'd never seen one that looked worse than Stabbie...until now. At one point I saw Sprout raise a hand, like she was going to slap it, but she glanced at Hugh and I and stopped.

"I just don't think your washing is ready yet!" said the elf, almost sobbing.

"It's ready, Calla," saiid Sprout. "I know! I have experience with washing! Go, now!"

"Yes, mistress," said Calla, sadly, and left.

"You just can't find the staff these days, can you?" I said, smugly. Sprout looked ready to hit me. Then she looked strangely calm.

"Hugo, you really have no idea, do you?" she asked. "No idea what you've put me through...what you've put your house through. You show such potential, again and again, the kind of potential that could make Hufflepuff great...then you piss it all away by being a twat!" I was genuinely shocked at this language from Sprout. Okay, so Snape often swore at students (I heard he even called Hermione a "mudblood cunt" once, but I always doubted that story), but the head of Hufflepuff? Maybe all the recent incidents had gotten to her.

"I'm stil a teenage boy," I protested. "Sure, I want to see naked girls, we all do! But I don't let it interfere with my work!"

"Oh no?" she asked. "Can you honestly tell me your mind never wanders during class? Where was your head at when you fell from that broom? When you made a mess of yourself in front of your whole class?" Hugh sniggered at this.

"And you can stop laughing!" said Sprout. "At least Hugo HAS potential, you have nothing going for you!"

"Hey!" he said.

"Your brother was a far greater Hufflepuffer than you'll ever be..." I pricked up my ears at this.

"Don't talk to me about my brother," said Hugh, sounding more angry and serious than ever before. "You weren't there to help him. None of you could."

"He should not have been experimenting with such dark magics," said Sprout.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"SHUT UP!" they both said.

"Okay, okay, Christ..."

"Hugh, your punishment will be to clean the Common Room...the SLYTHERIN Common Room...from top to bottom!" said Sprout.

"What!?" asked Hugh. "That'll take ages...and the Slytherins will beat the shit out of me!"

"Exactly," said Sprout. "As for you, Hugo, after all you've done, all the times I've changed my mind on you..." But she was interrupted by Filch, the school caretaker, who barged in.

"Professor Sprout, come quickly!" he said

"What do you want!?" she asked.

"There's a troll in the Gryffindor Common Room. It's eating the students!"
 
GREAT WORK the cultural references are fantastic!
 
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