NOT ALLOWED

Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even the "things", which I borrowed from several other people whose names escape me.

Setup: Amy Thorn, a Gryffindor girl in the same year as the trio, explains why certain things should never be done at Hogwarts. Ever. Under any circumstances.

1. I will not sing "Defying Gravity" during Quidditch practice.

If you are a Muggle teenager, it might be perfectly acceptable to sing "Defying Gravity" when you are doing something along the lines of flying. I wouldn't know. What I do know is that it's the wrong song to sing during Quidditch tryouts if you want any chance of making it on the team.

I tried out for Beater because my mother had spent five years trying to talk me into joining SOMETHING. Now, I have bad balance under normal circumstances. Put me in the air, on a broom, and I am an accident waiting to happen. Somehow I managed to get up in the air, and that's when I had a really bad idea.

Okay, bad idea might be an understatement. Darn my Muggle neighbor and her fascination with the musical "Wicked", which led to my learning all the songs over the summer due to my having heard them about five hundred times. "Defying Gravity" popped into my head, and I had an idiot moment.

2. I will not give the house-elves vodka.

This was an accident. I didn't even know it was vodka, honestly. Yeah, I knew it was probably something that no underage person should have in their possession, but try telling that to my older brother.

Once I realized that it wasn't something I could legally have, I put the bottle (without its label on) in a rubbish bin. And the house-elves found it and decided to taste it. This is why no one thinks house-elves are intelligent – this wasn't the first time something along those lines had happened.

3. "You might be a pureblood if..." jokes will get me in trouble, especially in front of Slytherins.

During my second year, I realized that half bloods such as myself were mostly ignored. Okay, naming one who actually did something was a killer challenge for most people. Not wanting to be ignored, I had to come up with something to make me stand out. Too bad it didn't help.

Look, if I'd known that saying, "you might be a pureblood if you think dating your third cousin is acceptable" in front of that group of fourth years would get me that much pain, I'd have never done it. But I didn't, so I got banged up quite nicely. At least they were only fourth years.

4. Any resemblance between dementors and Nazgul is coincidental.

The summer that I was thirteen, I read the Lord Of The Rings trilogy out of sheer boredom. I was hooked on it immediately. Really, to say I was obsessed would be an understatement.

Naturally, I began trying to find parallels between the books and the Wizarding world. And the first thing I hit on involved the dementors being like the Nazgul. Despite anything you've heard to the contrary, those things can tell if you think they're wraiths. Another bit of unpleasantness came to me, complete with reliving the death of my cat fifteen times.

5. I am not allowed to play poker with Tarot cards--last time, I got a royal flush and the Dark Lord returned.

Let me start this explanation by saying that I have no idea how to play poker, nor am I able to remember what proper playing cards look like. It was April, I was fourteen, and a group of us were bored. One of the guys said he'd teach us to play poker if we could find some cards.

Unfortunately, the only people who had proper playing cards wouldn't let us borrow them, no matter what we offered in return. The best we could come up with was a deck of Tarot cards from the lost-and-found box. Let me say one last thing in this explanation – I do not think those cards are any good, but the other people who played swear it had an effect on something that happened a few weeks later.

6. I may not sell Umbridge's quill to emo students, especially if they're no good at poetry.

You would not expect to find a decent amount of emo students at Hogwarts, but they are everywhere if you look for them. Unlike at most schools, the ones we have hide their emo-ness very well.

Again, I was not responsible for this – actually, I tried to stop some boy in the year beneath mine from selling said quill to a temperamental loner girl in my year. The problem was that the boy had a really good sense of when to run, and I didn't. So people thought I was the one selling the quill. No matter how many times I tried to plead innocence, it just didn't work.

7. Draco Malfoy is not a vampire. I am not allowed to "stake" him.

I've been obsessed with a lot of things over the years, but the obsession I keep coming back to is vampires. I believe in them the way most people believe in God – faith without proof. Yeah, I'm an idiot, but being an idiot is fun!

At the start of my fifth year, I decided I was going to find a vampire somehow. I hadn't intended to accuse someone at school of vampiric behavior, but stuff happens. He didn't straight-out deny it either, which didn't help.

So yeah, I was the one who sent the poor boy half a kilogram of garlic. I was the one who tried to stake his heart. And I was the one who realized the hard way that any resemblance purebloods have to vampires is totally coincidental.

8. I may not tell Luna that she belongs in a psych ward. No matter how crazy I think she is.

Insanity should never be taken lightly, I have been told by several adults. Growing up with my brother, however, nixed every instinct of self-preservation I had to begin with, and there wasn't much. So yeah, I've always been tempted by people who are either truly crazy or really good at acting, which is the same thing if you ask me.

I didn't mean to tell the girl she needed her head examined. Really, that was a mistake. What I'm pretty sure I meant to tell her was that I thought she was a few inches short of a whole piece of parchment. It wasn't my fault she took it the wrong way.

9. I will not offer to prepare tandoori owl.

As far back as I can remember, my brother has said he feels sorry for the guy that ends up with me. To say I can't cook is the world's biggest understatement. I am an accident waiting to happen in a kitchen, period.

Did I really offer to prepare tandoori OWL? I highly doubt I'd have forgotten my cooking issues that easily! I'm pretty sure I meant chicken, and then someone said owl probably tasted about the same. I'm not about to find out if that's true.

10. I will stop calling the Weasley twins 'Merry and Pippin'. I will also stop called Harry and Ron 'Frodo and Sam'. It's probably a good idea to stop calling Draco 'Legolas' too.

As I'm pretty sure I already mentioned, Lord Of The Rings is something I can be quite neurotic about. It almost should have been expected that I'd assign characters to my schoolmates. It was just too easy for me.

So yeah, I came up with a few things that didn't sound too hot to the people they were about. The general opinion was that I was dead-on, but it wasn't something where being dead-on is good. At least this wasn't something I could get banged up over – it never left the common room.

11. Introducing Peeves to paintball isn't funny.

Near the top of the list of things that have happened to me without a reasonable explanation is how a paintball gun came into my possession. I swear it wasn't mine, really it wasn't. But someone (probably my brother) gave it to me, so I had it.

The sad thing is that it WAS funny when the poltergeist got his hands on the paintball gun. I'd always wondered what the dungeon classrooms would look like if covered with neon-coloured paint blobs, and I got to find out. Too bad the teachers didn't find it quite so funny.

A/N: I got the idea for this from a lot of "things I am not allowed to do at Hogwarts" lists I'd been reading. I just had to wonder how anyone would know not to do some of the less obvious things. This is my explanation.