Page 5
The Wizard in the Rye: Holden Caulfield's Journal of His Month at Hogwarts
[In which he is a little whiny bitch. If anybody deserves the Three Forbidden Curses it's him]
1
I had this goddam conversation. Very big deal, I know, but it was how the month started.
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is whether my parents were Muggles and all before they had me, and I don't feel like going into that." That was Hermione Granger talking. There are a lot of girls at school, and that's one of the good things about this new school, because you can see a few girls around once in a while. Usually giggling or wearing these awful baggy old cloaks or something. Old Granger looked okay. Well, she had pretty big front teeth and her hair was all over the place and she had this look on her face like she thought everyone around her was a phony slob. Well so did I, so maybe we would get along, I thought. I saw her across the aisle in the train from Kings Cross and we sort of struck up a conversation. We talked until her old pals came. They always sit together and talk and save the world or something. I don't know.
"My parents are Muggles. Somebody open the window," I said. My parents shouted "Good luck!" when the train left in the way that people do. God, I hate when people do that. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
So Potter walked up, laughing with his pal Weasley. Potter had this pack of girls following him around all the time. I don't know if it was because he was handsome. I mean he was pretty handsome. He had this messy black hair which the girls just loved and he was always running his hand through it. But I don't think he really knew about it.
"Do you play chess?" Hermione said.
"What?"
"Chess." She acted like I hadn't heard her. Goddam girl was an intellectual. She really thought everyone around her was a slob, including me. Well then.
"No. I'm too dumb," I said.
She sort of stared at me like I wasn't making sense. But like I said her friends were there. She started chewing the fat with them and I started playing with my hat for about the ninetieth time that day. I forgot to tell you about my hat. It's sharp. It's literally sharp, with a point and everything. I picked it up for only a sickle in Diagon Alley before I left.
2
Some things are hard to remember about the first couple of weeks. I spent most of my time in my room just reading or doing nothing. I'm pretty illiterate but I read a lot. I got this big fat book out of the library because I went to the library and ran into that Granger kid again, and I needed to look like I meant to be there, so I got this book. She had this look on her face like somebody had just told her Voldemort was her father or something. God, that always gets me. Really I was just looking for someplace to get away from my roommate Cedric. Cedric Diggory is the biggest phony I've ever met. You think Harry Potter was bad, with his hair? He didn't know about it, like I said. Everything Cedric does is "grand." And that's the word that people use, grand. If there's a word I hate it's grand. It just makes me want to puke. He's so goddam grand that I want to take a goddam grand piano and fill it with Puking Pastilles and make him eat it. I think that would be fair, then, for how much grand old Cedric makes me want to puke.
So I was hiding in the library from Cedric who wanted to do bonding activities like going to Hogsmeade and drinking some butterbeer and gorging on candy and probably having giggle fits together like we're some girls. I mean butterbeer is fine for me, but I think it might be illegal. I mean I'm not a kid or anything, but still. And I wasn't really hiding all the way, just got tired of being around that guy who's good at everything and everyone likes him all the time. I mean why the hell is he in Hufflepuff if he's so goddam good at everything? If he's smart or courageous or ambitious, and he is, then he should be somewhere else. I think the Sorting Hat has gone a bit soft in its old age.
Like I said, I was in the library, and I was really hiding all the way from the librarian because Madam Pince hates me, she really does. She would walk down an aisle and check for girls and boys giving each other the time. She has never caught me because I don't really do that. But she always gives me this eye like she thinks I'm doing it. Or maybe there's a spell for spreading paranoia and she's got that. Death Eaters'd probably have a cakewalk with that one, if it existed.
I was dodging down the aisles for a while to stay away from the librarian but I have no breath, because I use to smoke until they made me quit. I don't smoke anymore but I miss having the cigarette between my fingers, so I hold my wand like that. It isn't the same because the wand is nine inches long and cigarettes aren't, but that doesn't matter. I'm awfully fond of that wand.
I'm really crazy sometimes. I just love an audience and will do any old thing in front of them, even act like I'm in a movie even though there's nothing that I hate like a movie. So when old Granger walked out of nowhere and saw me I said "Abracadabra alakazam!" Wizards and witches really hate that stuff—I mean when people pretend to have magic who don't have magic. I guess they think it's phony. I mean it is phony, but it isn't phony if I do it because I do have magic, and besides I'm just making fun of them so it's not phony.
"Mother darling, I can't stop!" I started tapdancing, too, like I was one of those terrible phony wizards in a movie who suddenly bursts into song, like I'd been hit with Tarantallegra or something. Sometimes I horse around quite a lot, just to keep from getting bored. "My feet just keep going, Mother darling! I'm like to combust!"
She started walking away so I stopped. I got serious all of a sudden and said, "Do you know where the Thestrals fly at night? I've been wondering about them." If you must know, I can see them because my brother Allie died on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. "Do they stay at the lake or do they go to some stables somewhere? And if they go to stables do they go to the same ones by the owlery, because wouldn't the owls get spooked by them?" I've been wondering about them. I just couldn't get those goddam thestrals out of my mind.
"Oh, thestrals, I've read about them! I mean, I also know they're here, but I haven't seen them, you know. They fly to the Forbidden Forest at night. Most people can't see them because they haven't seen people die, but they can still unnerve people, because they have acquired an undeserved reputation as omens of evil. So they like to keep to themselves. Thestrals are the most elusive and least horse-like breed of magical horse. Thestrals have fangs and possess a well-developed sense of smell, which will lead them to carrion and fresh blood. In fact…"
So after that I naturally just walked away and left her. What a phony.
3
Goddam phonies everywhere at Hogwarts! You'd think because they have magic they wouldn't get in fights and all, because they know that if you tease someone who's good at class you've got about a day before they hex your toothbrush to make your teeth turn into maggots or something, but they do more terrible things to each other here than anywhere else. Actually maybe it has something to do with the imagination that spells give you. There's a whole lot of nasty things witches can do to each other that Muggles can't. I mean there were a few people who were alright there.
I mean I'm always getting in trouble with people, mostly by not doing work. I don't feel like doing work. Spells are fine but there are so many words that you have to know. I mean I guess I should know some in order to protect myself or something but I'm not that important, so I'm pretty sure nobody really wants to go after me. So I didn't do any work really and just was thinking about those Thestrals. I couldn't stop thinking about them. I would be sitting in class and just not pay attention at all, even though I would tell all my professors that their classes were really interesting. I mean I had this problem with Snape. I have to tell you about what happened with Snape.
He asked me to meet him in his dungeon. Sounded pretty pervy to me, but I figure if I don't he'll feed me some potion that will make me into a ferret or something. So I went down.
"So," he said. There was a look in his black eyes like he'd just won the goddam lottery. "Sit." I hate sitting in that dungeon with the cold digging into your backside and chills going up your spin no matter how clean the actual dungeon is. He had slimy horrible things in jars all standing up on shelves behind his desk, glinting in the firelight.
Snape started in on me for not having any talent or drive to succeed in this very quiet voice that some people have, that just sort of drips with venom. "Rules and books are for lesser mortals, not Holden Caulfield. Your head is so swollen that you'll soon pop out of that horrible red felt hat of yours—where does a student get something like that, anyway?" His eyes were boring into mine. It was exactly like trying to stare down a hippogriff. I know he was trying to goad me and I don't buy into that stuff so I just kept quiet. He said some more stuff about how "Brilliant Holden Caulfield doesn't need to know what the Amortentia potion smells like, or that the Draught of Living Death requires asphodel and not monkshood," and other things. I wasn't really listening.
But eventually I got really bored. What I did was, I said "Sir, I'm sorry. I'm trying, I really am. I have a question for you, actually, if that would make you feel better. Can you tell me what Sectusempra means?" I'd found it in that book I'd checked out from the library.
He went totally white, which he probably shouldn't have done because he's pretty pasty to begin with, and he got a really cold look in his eyes and summoned my Head of House, Professor Sprout. Basically she had been fed up with me for knocking over a tray of Bobotuber pus, which wasn't my fault all the way anyway. She expelled me and that was that.
I'm not too happy to leave, but it doesn't really matter I guess. Hogwarts was not really a good goodbye, like some of them are, or a bad one. More mixed than the other schools. I mean it wasn't like Pencey, you know. At least at Hogwarts there were girls and you could take them to matinees if you wanted.
Actually now that I think about it you can't actually take Hogwarts girls to matinees. I mean for one how do you know that the girl isn't just drawing the curtains over your eyes with a love potion? Because they can do that, you know, and they might. Also we couldn't go to Hogsmeade any time we wanted and catch a movie. Actually now that I think about it we couldn't really do anything. I really hate goddam slobs who try to tell me what I can and can't do all the time. Like I'm a kid or something. Glad to be leaving these goddam phonies.