Dear Diary,
Reasons Chris is useless:
- He shares a room room with HP, and won’t steal back my invisibility cloak. (“He needs it more than we do. All those Treacle Tarts are giving him a muffin top.”) Jury says: Chris is afraid.
- He won’t pay Sir Cadogan to off the Fat Lady to get me out of my debt. I promised her Horsestra at Christmas, a drug that can only be made from the saliva of a Norwegian Ridgeback dragon—which, tshhhyeah, there’s plenty of those just hangin’ around. Now she’s started appearing in random portraits throughout the school as I pass, making finger guns and miming stabbing. She even pushed the hangman out of the painting of The Execution of Imus the Inappropriate and stood there in his place as I headed to Charms. As I walked by, she wiggled the noose and pointed with her free hand, first at me, then the rope, raising her eyebrows. “Just give Sir Cadogan a couple hundred Galleons and let him run her through with his lance,” I begged Chris. “I don’t have that kind of money,” said Chris. My ass. Chris is in charge of the profits from DOPES, since he’s the founder, and also a man. I get five percent, but I give it all to Squirrel in little envelopes under his office door. Sealed with Lisa Frank stickers.
- He is OBSESSED with finding some mirror. Apparently he was wandering around one night, drunk and stoned, and he found this mirror which showed him surrounded by liquor. “Omg, Chris, it’s called your reflection,” I said. “You don’t understand,” he said. “This was a whole other world. I was sitting on a fancy bar stool, waving at myself. And the shelves…Jill, you have to see it.” He passed out before we could go look at it. After that, DOPES and our end-of-term paper for Binns took over, and we didn’t have a chance to go back. Then last week I went to a back corridor to practice proposing to Squirrelly. “I know I only just turned twelve, but what’s age, really? If only you could somehow halt your own progression through the vast desert of time—”An idea occurred to me. A really brilliant one, actually. I should get the Sorcerer’s Stone for my Squirrel! That way he can stay forever thirtysomething. Then, when I get to be twenty-eight, I can drink the elixir, too! And if I get him the Stone, he’ll definitely love me more than Harry Potter. I started to make a note on my hand, when the sound of footsteps made me dart behind the statue of Cragar the Crafty.
“In here,” said Dumbledore, shepherding the burly man into a room down the hall. I followed them, peering through the half-open door. They were standing in front of an enormous mirror. Probably the one Chris is so nuts about, I thought.
The burly man scratched his head, looking from the mirror to Dumbledore.
“Didn’t you used to be the most powerful wizard in the world or something?” he asked.
Dumbledore smiled. “At one time. Now I’m afraid it wouldn’t take much to do me in." He laughed. "Why, a student could probably manage it!"
The burly man shrugged and hoisted the mirror onto his shoulders. “Where am I taking it?”
“To the depths of the school,” said Dumbledore.
The man chuckled. “Yeah, I got ridda all my mirrors when I hit forty, too.”
“Actually, I’d leave it here, except that a student recently discovered it. Young Harry Potter. I figure it might be safer elsewhere.”
“Harry Potter? He goes here?”
“Let me tell you more about my duel with Grindelwald. Perhaps once we’re done with this you can show me how those rugged hands of yours handle a bottle of Taylor & Norton. Allow me.” He took the burly man’s arm and they apparated together.
Long story short, the mirror’s gone, into the bowels of the school, and Chris won’t let it go. “It shows the future! If we can just find a way to unlock it...”
“Chris, I’ve got more important things to worry about.” I’d decided not to tell him about my plan to get the Sorcerer’s Stone for Quirrell.
“Like what?” he narrowed his eyes.
“Like paying the Fat Lady! Like keeping Harry Potter from making a move on Squirrel!”
“Jill, if we own the bar the mirror showed me, I’ll buy you a hundred squirrels, and you can pay the Fat Lady in pelts.”
So that’s that. A big break came for me, though, in the form of Draco Malfoy, who, if I hadn’t already promised myself to Squirrel, I would be on like a Labrador on a poodle. That’s how they make Labradoodles.
Chris and I were sneaking around the castle at night, as usual, when we saw McGonnagall leading Draco by the ear. There was no time to hide, but that was okay. Teachers usually ignore Chris and me when we’re sneaking around the castle. We’re not worth the effort it would take to discipline us, and they all think it’s a matter of time before we flunk out, anyway.
“You don’t understand, Professor. Harry Potter’s coming—he’s got a dragon.”
“What utter rubbish!” said Mackie-G. “How dare you tell such lies! Come on—I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy.”
As she dragged Malfoy past us, I leaned over. “What kind of dragon does Twatter have?” I asked.
“How the fuck should I know?” snarled Malfoy. “I don’t talk to Gryffinwhores.”
I resisted pointing out that I don’t get paid for what I do. “Is it a Norwegian Ridgeback?” I asked. “If you tell me, I’ll make sure Potter gets caught.”
“Yes,” said Malfoy through clenched teeth. “They’re taking it up to the roof.”
Chris and I raced to the roof, where we met a bunch of ninjas on broomsticks. I pointed my wand at them and yelled, “Alohamora,” hoping it would open their guts. Chris pulled some prison moves on them, and we stripped them of their traveling cloaks, then threw the bodies off the tower. We mounted the abandoned broomsticks and waited. A moment later, we heard footsteps. Potter and Beard threw off my invisibility cloak. They carried a dragon.
“Are you Charlie’s friends?” asked HP.
“Uh, yeah,” I said in a deep voice. “I’m Char—lyle, and this is—”
“Peterborn,” said Chris.
“Charlyle and Peterborn,” said HP. “Nice to meet you. I’m Harry Potter. This is Hermione Granger.”
“A boy wizard and his talking Beaver,” said Chris. “How Wind in the Willows.”
Hermione looked ready to kill. I cleared my throat. “So you’ve got a dragon you need taken off your hands?”
“Yep,” said HP. “This is Norbert.”
“A Norwegian Ridgeback, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Er, yeah.” Silence. “So, uh…is that harness for him?”
“What?” Chris and I looked at the series of straps dangling between our stolen brooms. “Yes,” I said. “Strap him in.”
HP approached with Norbit. “How do I…?”
“I’m sorry, aren’t you the one who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?”
It took some fiddling, but eventually the Boy Wonder got Nolan strapped into the harness.
“So, long, Norbert,” Harry said, patting the dragon’s scaly head. Norfolk reached out and gave HP a slobbery kiss.
“Good bye, Norbert,” said Hermione.
“Little Nokia’s off to the Great Dragon Farm in the Sky,” I said. “We’ll catch you folks later.” Harry and Beard disappeared into the tower, and Chris and I kicked off. The dragon was alarmingly heavy. “Where would be the best place to mine his saliva?” I asked, as we glided unsteadily away from the school.
At that moment, we were startled by a loud munching sound. Our brooms jerked and wobbled as Norm MacDonald chewed the straps.
“Don’t let him go!” I yelled.
“I can’t hold on,” said Chris, as his broom was pulled upside down.
Nordic opened his mouth and breathed a stream of flames, which burnt through the remaining straps. With a scream, the young dragon plummeted toward the Forbidden Forest, disappearing among the trees. The broomsticks were on fire. Chris and I zoomed back to the castle, trying to outrace the flames, which only grew as they were exposed to vast amounts of oxygen. At the roof of the tower, we tucked and rolled. The burning brooms raced on, getting smaller and smaller, until they might have been the tails of two shooting stars. Chris and I lay on the roof of the tower, panting. Then we started to laugh.
“That was totally kick-ass,” said Chris.
“Yeah, until we dropped the dragon in the FF. Now how am I going to get its spit?”
“You don’t think—” Chris started.
“What?”
“I mean, a dragon loose in the Forest…could probably do a lot of damage.”
“So what? The forest is dark and creepy. What’s the worst a dragon’s gonna do, eat a werewolf? Ignite zombies? It’d be different if the forest was full of beautiful, innocent creatures. But it’s Forbidden. It’s full of dark shit.”
“You’re right,” said Chris.
“The more important issue is the saliva.”
“We could go into the Forest and try to find the dragon.”
“Not at night,” I said, shivering.
“There is one other way.”
“What?” I asked eagerly.
“Well, it did lick Harry Potter’s face.”
“No,” I said. “I am not touching Harry Potter’s face. I’d let the Fat Lady kill me first.”
“It’s that, or find the dragon.”
I sighed. “Let’s go get the house elves to fix us a nightcap. Then we’ll come up with a plan.”
Chris got plastered, and asked for a fifteen minute power nap, so I decided to fill you in, Diary, while I wait for him to wake up. I can’t imagine what lies in store for us these next few days. There’s so much to do: Find the dragon saliva, make Horsestra, finish Binns’ paper, get the Sorcerer’s Stone for my Squirrel, destroy Harry Potter…if life is this complicated when I’m twelve, imagine what it’ll be like when I’m thirteen.
Chris is stirring. Later, Diary.
Love,
Jill
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