Disclaimer: Song lyrics can be found in this ficlet. They will be from The Scarlet Pimpernel. If you can spot them, wonderful; if you can't, a pox on you.
Buy the soundtrack immediately.
I love radishes.
I do, really. Have you ever had a radish? White and crunchy, with that
pinky-red outside that really is so much fun to peel off and then roll to a
ball inside your mouth with your tongue and your teeth. As a matter of fact, I
am wearing earrings with radishes on them right now, to support my stance on the
Save the Radishes organization of lower Scotland.
One of them contacted the Ministry just before I left for King's Cross, crying
madly that a humongous idiot with several sharp and pointy tools was digging
them up to use them as rabbit food. Well, I for one am not going to stand for
that. Save the Radishes, is what I say.
Daddy really does have the most amazing articles in his magazine. He runs The
Quibbler, you know. He's the editor. The most wonderful people write in
with articles; we've even had two on Sirius Black, that murderer that killed
twelve or thirteen people with one curse but really isn't a murderer after all,
as his name is actually Stubby Boardman and he's a lead singer of a band. Funny. He must have had the dementors
of Azkaban playing the drums or something or providing the air-conditioning. I
have never heard one speak. Well, I've never seen a dementor,
either, but I have never known one to speak. Is that why they don't speak? They
might have quite nice voices. I wonder if Daddy would do an article about that.
I think I have a nest of nargles in my stomach. It
keeps rumbling madly and growling from time to time. People think that stomachs
rumble only because they're hungry, but I know for a fact that when stomachs rumble, that means you've stood under mistletoe and the nargles inside it have crawled into your stomach through
your ears. They live in very dark places. I wonder if it isn't too squishy
inside stomachs, what with people's breath getting knocked out of them and
things.
Oh, the poor nargles. They should lead such happy
lives, and then they inadvertently slide into people's ears and things happen
to them, like their breath getting knocked out of them, and then they get
squished and trampled and digested…
This calls for a new club.
I will make earrings straightaway.
A rather interesting conglomeration of people has entered my compartment. I
know one of them. It's the Weasley girl, the one with
the very funny laugh. Something like "Bwahahaha", I
think. And she usually snickers that word whenever the
words "oven" and "Ron" are mentioned in the same sentence. I wonder why.
Oh, my. That is Harry Potter. Shy thing, he is. I wonder if he knows that his
scar wasn't really inflicted by the Dark Lord but by one of the last Bumbling
Belfry Butterbats that threw itself in front of him
when the Killing Curse was fired and sacrificed himself ever so nobly.
Unfortunately, however, one of its claws caught on poor baby Harry's forehead
and tore the lightning bolt into it. Daddy ran that story a few years ago, and
it took the wizarding world by storm, though I don't
think anyone's told Harry yet. Most unfortunate.
My butterbeer-cap necklace is in
honor of that brave Butterbat, who reputedly had very
sweet tufts of hair on the tip of his nose.
Ginny is nice to talk to. We had a pleasant conversation last year just before
the Yule Ball, when I was helping her to get ready. She went with Neville and I
think she regretted it; we had to soak her feet in essence of murtlap afterwards. Anyway, she was talking about Harry
Potter and how much she fancied him, and we chatted about that for a bit, and
then she asked me whom I fancied. I don't really fancy anyone, except maybe
that fit-looking wizard on the cover of Witch
Weekly last September; he had dark, wavy hair and a smile that could put Gilderoy Lockhart's to shame. I have this thing about
dark-haired men; they're so stalwart and so non-girly.
Anyway.
I thought about it for a bit, and then I told Ginny that the only people I
fancied were fictional; you know—like Sleeping Beauty's prince in that
fantastic painting that I've got hanging in my room at home…or Romeo, who has a
fantastic oratory gift…on the other hand, he didn't write his own speeches;
William did. Anyway. I am also quite enamoured with Demetrius, the boy poor Helena
kept running after in A Midsummer Night's Dream, for some odd reason. I
believe it is because he treats poor Helena
like dirt and still has the power to keep her in love with him. Which means he is very attractive in all ways possible.
Not that I know what it is like to be treated in the same manner as dirt is,
seeing that I still have to strike up a romantic relationship with an actual
male human being, but you never know. Imagination works wonders.
Anyway.
Ginny stared at me a bit oddly after that. "You mean you dream about really
fit, really gorgeous, really fantastic, really perfect men and don't try to
actually find any in reality?"
"Exactly," I told her absently, off dancing with Marius in my own private world.
"You see, in my dreams such beautiful lovers have found me. Storybook
lovers surround me, and nothing is real, but I'm flying—"
"Sighing," Ginny interrupted. "You're living in a fairy-tale, Luna."
"And, oh, is it a nice one," I agreed. "I remember dreaming once that
Daddy had found a Crumple-Horned Snorkack."
It was such a wonderful dream, too. Its horns were all crumply and orangy-brown, and there were little cute warts all over its
knobbly fingers, and its eyes were glowing with the
sweetest golden light…regrettably, that is all I remember of the Snorkack before it dissolved into little china teacups.
My dreams are sometimes slightly odd.
Oh, where, where, where is my storybook ending?
I wonder if I am living in a storybook.
That would explain the nargles.
No.
Am not living in a storybook. Nargles
do exist. They do. Hmph.
As do radishes.
Which taste absolutely wonderful.
Gah!
The top of my head and the back of my precious magazine is
covered in green slime. And it looks to be all Neville Longbottom's
fault. He is holding this gigantic pus-spitting imitation of a plant that has,
as a matter of fact, just spit green pus all over this compartment.
Well. That settles it. Was looking for a testing bunny
anyway. His ears will shortly be flapping around in a very kumquat-like
way. Bwahaha.
Oh, dear.
Ginny Weasley may be rubbing off on me.
No. Will not let her infest my nargle-colony
of a body. Won't.
What if her obsession with Harry gets into my bloodstream?
That would be quite scary. I would be dreaming about his messy hair and really
pale skin and serpent-spawned green eyes—am I the only one that has
noticed that Harry is clearly the spawn of a Common Welsh Green dragon. It is
nothing short of obvious.
Daddy should do an article on that.
