Laugh it up, Fuzzball

Dear Diary,

Can this place get any crazier? I'm adapting to the talking portraits, moving stairwells, and Scottish accents but the medieval mindsets of these people is infuriating. I consider myself a Renaissance man and the education here is fantastically lacking. First of all, why is Astrology the only real subject these kids study? Of all the branches of science to offer, stargazing is clearly the least important. Want to know why there's no cure for AIDS? Because the people in this world who are fucking magical have decided that virology is no match for Divination. I wrote Dumbledore a letter asking him to consider stopping global warming with a no-melting spell. He wrote back saying I should stop troubling the house elves for gin and tonics.

Therefore, in an effort to preserve the works of Darwin, Einstein, Avogadro, and Tesla in the world of Merlin, Morgana, Agrippa, and Wendelin the Weird, I have created the Demanding of Practical Educations Society. I posted fliers asking my colleagues to try out DOPES one Saturday afternoon outside Greenhouse 5. Several Slytherins showed up, asking where they could buy a dime bag, and left angrily after I explained the meaning of an acronym. I've suspended all further activity until new members can be found.

Halloween has come and gone. Jill and I decided to go as Princess Leia and Han Solo. I had to wake up at 4 in the morning to braid Jill's hair into buns and sure enough, we were the only ones dressed up. "Don't feel too bad," a snide Harry Potter whispered to us at the breakfast table. "I almost dressed up as the Pope but Ron warned me last night. I like your blaster." And then that pompous prick sauntered away, slapping fives with Lee Jordan and Katie Bell.

You can imagine how crushed I was, Diary, when later that evening Harry Potter escaped from the clutches of a mountain troll in the second floor girls' bathoom. Professor Quirrel burst into the Great Hall, shouted it was in the dungeon, and collapsed. Jill leapt to her feet and started mouth-to-mouth until McGonagall pulled her off of him and sent us to our Common Room. I sat by the fire for what seemed like hours, rocking back and forth on the couch, imagining that any moment Professor Dumbledore would enter the common room, carrying his limp body. We would burn him on a pyre. I would watch his glasses smolder and melt, smoke rising, scar disappearing into scar tissue. His soul would rise to heaven where God himself would deny it and send it to Satan himself. The Boy Who Lived... ETERNALLY IN HELL!

The portrait swung open and in he walked, ginger and beard alongside him. Not only had they survived, they had conquered the troll and earned five points a piece. The common room swelled with cheers and applause. My stomach turned violently. One day, I promised myself, he would not be so lucky.

Anyway, Diary, I'm off to the library to help Jill in the Restricted Section. After she took up her job, I decided I could use some cash on the side. DOPES may have failed but now that I know there's a market for shwag, these dolts have given me a seven-year plan.

xo

Chris

P.S. Why does the third floor corridor always smell like dog shit?

But then my homework was never quite like this...

Dear Diary,

Ow! Got it bad,

Got it bad,

Got it bad,

I'm hot for teacher!

Dean Thomas, take your scarf and your eyes the color of butterbeer and go wank in the Room of Requirement (Did I tell you about this, Diary? It's a room on the third floor that you can only get into if you're in dire need, or really bored. The room transforms into the perfect setting for whatever mission you hope to accomplish. I use it to scratch hard-to-reach itches.)

There's a new man in my life. A man whose stutter is like the clumsy legs of a Great Dane puppy racing for the food bowl. Whose turban is always securely wrapped, unlike my post-shower terry cloth that falls off when I bend down to drink from the sinks. I'm talking about Professor Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Or as I like to call him, Professor Squirrel, because he refuses to get out of the road of my heart, and because he continues to hide his nuts from me.

I love his weak-tea skin, his trembling hands, his inability to get anything more out than a simple greeting to the class before the period ends. I don't care that he's a terrorist. Or that he does wandless magic. I've hinted to him that I'd like to see more of his wand, but he doesn't seem to get the double meaning. I am only eleven - maybe I just need a couple years to fine tune my delivery. The other day he wrote the following on the board: NVLN RATS BITED YOUR MOM, a mnemonic device to help wizards and witches remember the 20 simple steps to defending oneself against a Dark Art. I realized you could rearrange the letters to spell VOLDEMORTS IN MY TURBAN, which I thought was hilarious. I'm really good at word jumbles.

In other exciting news, my mom filled out my FAFSA wrong, so I'm not eligible for financial aid. To afford my magical education, I've been forced to take on a work-study job in the Library, shelving books in the Restricted section. At least it's not the cafeteria.

Harry Potter is enjoying his status as a vat of twat cream. Sorry, did I say "vat of twat cream?" I meant "member of the Gryfindor Quidditch Team." Yes, he was accepted on sight, no tryout necessary, all because I was on a magnetizing spell kick the day we learned to fly (I'd magnetized a grasshopper, an eagle, Chris's shoes, and a low-flying commercial jet that may or may not have gone down as a direct result of my efforts), and saw Neville's Remembrall go into the air. I didn't think, I just magnetized. And shit if HP didn't take off on his broom, and if that Remembrall didn't make straight for his glasses frames. Down he came, like Glinda in her bubble, and alighted with the Remembrall in his hand. McGonners took him away - I hoped to a remote dungeon, but actually it was to meet up with Chris's ex-flame O. Wood and be heralded as Gryffindor's new seeker. Seeker of what? A less repulsive personality?

If Harry Potter was half the magician I am, he'd've gotten 25% on that Transfig exam.

I'm off to the lib, and then to walk by Professor Squirrely's office several times and wave.

Looooooove,

Jill

A Young Wizard in Love (Potion)

Dear Diary,

You may or may not have heard, but I banged O. Wood. Yes, before I was the one that pitched a tent in the common room literally minutes after the Sorting Ceremony and now, now! I am the most fabulous thing to hit Gryffindor since McGonagall in her coke days. (Rumor has it she did blow at Studio 54 3/4.)

My high profile, Quidditch captain boyfriend has made it easier to adjust to living here. Sometimes, between snogs (that's what we call it when you give someone's balls a raspberry), he'll listen to me complain about my professors. I mean, Professor Binns is the least entertaining ghost ever. Haven't these people seen Casper? That's what ghosts are like! And I'm miserable in Charms. If it wasn't for Seamus Finnigan's wand exploding every other second, I'm sure I would be the worst in the class.

The only thing that makes any sense to me is Potions. From the first day, I knew that Professor Snape and I would see eye to eye. For one thing, we both hated Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived. I don't see what's so great about him. He's supposedly full of great power, but Snape told us he could teach us to bottle fame, brew glory! If I could make potions that gave me the popularity I so desperately needed, maybe I could stop being the outcast gay of Gryffindor house.

So I hit the library. And sure enough, there was a book that explained how to make every potion you could imagine. The list looked complicated but I knew that if I could make a Rob Roy in prison with a bar of soap and toilet water, a love potion would be no problem. Three days later, it was finished, bottled, and in my pocket as I crept out to the Quidditch pitch one night after dinner. Oliver was just heading in from working on the team's playbook and I poured the love potion into his water bottle. One lazy drink later and it was the beginning of our beautiful life together.

Man! Sometimes I think these other wizards don't understand how much better they have it than normal people. A few insect bits and root shavings and they turn roofies into Mike and Ikes. Forget me now, love me forever! A lasting, passionate relationship brewed in a kettle. If you ask me, that's worse than the death penalty.

But even a flower fed by artificial sunlight can wither, Diary. Yesterday, I ran out of love potion and mid-snog, Wood snapped out of the amorous coma and told me off for good. I cried all night until Neville Longbottom told me to 'nut up' and I silently whimpered until the sun came up.

So I'm back to where I started, Diary: A newly-found wizard struggling to understand his powers, without an ally in a world stacked against him. It's time for me to focus on what's important and that's making things right with my best friend, Jill. It's time to apologize and hope that she'll forgive me once I spill the juicy details about riding Wood's broomstick.

xoxo

Chris.