DECEMBER 23 THURSDAY

All those werewolves from the mountain were wearing nice suits. They were slamming phones in the shiny Sock Exchange house on Finance Street, Diagon Alley City.

"Another great day for stocks!" said their leader Ruffly and uncorked some champagne.

"Werewolves of Wall Street," said Sirius. "Should be a movie."

"Maybe the monsters," said James, "have become monsters."

"Maybe the real montser... is man."

"Maybe the real man... is beast."

"Maybe the real beast... is man."

"Maybe the real curse... is curse itself."

Deep.

Ruffly shouted in a phone, put it down, shouted in his other phone, put it down. Snorted some cocaine and then came over.

"You guys," he said.

"Ruffly!" said James.

"You want to buy stocks? Or become stock brokers? Or do you just want some cocaine?"

"No thanks," said Sirius. "I don't do cocaine."

"I didn't either, until I started doing it."

"Have you tried stock broking on psilocybin?"

"Yes. I gave away so much money. It was awful. It's gotta be done on cocaine."

That probably made sense.

"What happened to the other stock brokers?" James asked.

Or at least, he assumed, there had been other stock brokers here. Not that he ever had set foot in this building.

"We got rid of them, didn't we?" replied Riff-Raff and went back to shouting in phones, snorting cocaine and uncorking champagne bottles.

"You got rid of the monsters..," said Sirius. "And BECAME the monsters..."

And James: "Maybe the real monster... is man."

"Guess so," said Ruffly. "GOOBLE GOBBLE, GOOBLE GOBBLE, ONE OF US! ONE OF US!"

"We should see that movie sometime," said Sirius.

"I think it's on the tube-sphere but I will check again," said James.

"Anyway," said Sirius, "we need your help."

"With what?" Ruffly asked.

"Or rather, Goaty Man needs help. You see, his elves are on strike and... do you wanna... go and make toys or free for him?"

It had been a good idea, when these werewolves hadn't been stock brokers.

"No," said Ruffly. "You go make some toys for free for him."

Then the stocks took a sharp dive downwards. In stock houses all around, stock brokers were jumping out windows.

"Oh no!" cried Riff Raff. "The economy went all super down!"
Werewolves swore and began to tie their nooses. Ruffly removed his jacket.

"And so it ends. Yeah ok. We'll do some toys for Goaty Man."

"Really?" said James.

They could hear auror sirens. Aurors were arresting stock brokers all over. Ruffly yelled: SCRAM!, and they all fled the building.

xxx

James and Sirius were back in the dorm, packing their backpacks. With plastic containers, to store construction material in. Construction material from the Snow Globe, where everything was made of sweets and cake.

"There's a champagne river there!" said Sirius and packed a thermos and more bottles, the biggest he could find.

There was a rat-a-tat on the window. Two owls wanted to come inside, two owls laden with a large package. James opened the window and took the package.

"We got fan mail!" he said and put it down on the floor where they could open it together. "Or the Mischief Managers did!"

"I hope its sweets from other countries, those types of fanmail are my favourites."

"Damn if there was film in the camera we could film our quirky reactions!"

"Oh well!"

James cut open the brown box with a knife. He and Sirius dug their hands in the styrofoam and felt spherical things in cloth.

"What's this?" said James. "Owowowowow!"
Their hands were breaking out in burns and they dropped the spheres.

Crash. The spheres broke. Strange, luminous somethings with red eyes and huge jaws came out, and made dives at James and Sirius, but made abrupt halts, as if they found them to be smelly or something.

And after that they just flew around, in a weird frenzy, until they went poof and were gone for good.

"Well that was weird," said Sirius.

"Do you think we will ever know what just happened?"

"Maybe... some day."

They put on some gloves and thew away the cloth, and then they studied the glass shards. All they found was that the spheres had come from St Belzebub's Hospital.