The day of the Hogsmeade Fayre had finally come around and the entire village of Hogsmeade was overrun with Hogwarts students eager to do their part for charity. On this day, parents and visitors were encouraged to visit and to participate in the student-run game booths, or to purchase a handmade trinket or two. Meanwhile, the teaching staff was relegated to observation, having been convinced by the prefectorial board that they were more than capable of being in charge.
All was abuzz and as a prefect Fabian's duty was to move from booth to booth, ensuring that nothing had gone out of hand. Presently he came to a game booth run by the Potions Club, in which participants sat on a levitating chair and had to answer questions of increasing difficulty or face being dunked onto a bubbling vat of potion. The particular type of potion the challenger faced being smothered in was chosen at random via spin-a-wheel.
As chair of the Potions Club, Alice Giggs took leave from her prefectorial duties from time to time to hold the post of game master. It was at this point that Fabian decided to submit himself to the possibility of turning blue for an entire week, or to suffer from extremely large boogers, or to say everything backwards or...whatever the mystery potion would inflict.
Alice greeted him cheerily as he strapped himself into the levitating chair. Underneath, a cauldron large enough to fit three students gurgled threateningly, swirling from colour to colour, running the gamut of all the possible fates that awaited him.
With a perfectly innocuous smile, Alice announced that she would start with difficult questions and move on to monstrously difficult and then to pants-wettingly difficult and so on.
For a moment, Fabian considered reminding Alice of their longstanding friendship, but he was fairly sure Alice was not one to forget such things and convinced himself there was no need to.
A greasy-haired first-year potions club member hoisted Fabian and his chair into the air, and then went back to his usual business of stirring the cauldron. Halfway through, Fabian saw him scratch his hair, and flakes of dandruff fell into the cauldron, whereupon they burst into flames with a loud crackle. Fabian shuddered, but then reminded himself that he was not the most hygienic of persons so it was all fine and dandy.
Unfortunately, just as she was about to start, Alice was called away to some important prefectorial duty or other, so the first year student took over the question cards and began grilling Fabian.
Fabian was coasting along comfortably, handling the questions with ease when a group of rowdy students turned up and decided to oust the first year Potions Club boy, and began to ask Fabian ridiculous, off-the-cards questions.
At the same time, because Fabian had answered so many questions right, his chair had risen ever higher until he had a spectacular, if somewhat unsettling view of Hogsmeade village. He could see the myriad stalls around him. In the village square, Professor Flitwick was conducting the Hogwarts Choir. The Bowtruckle Club had a booth at the far end, selling assorted vintage trinkets they had been collectively hoarding. The chair had gone too high and the spell was starting to lose some potency. Fabian gripped the sides tightly, for he had a fear of heights from unstable vantage points, and he tried in vain to muster up enough courage to pluck his hand from the side of the chair in order to pick up his wand and stabilise the weakening levitation charm.
In the distance, he heard some kind of exclamation and saw his brother making a beeline for the Potions Club booth, tailed by his usual posse of Quidditch chums. The chair wobbled precariously, and there was some commotion below. From this point he also saw Alice realising that a crisis was at hand and she abandoned her post at Informational Services post-haste.
At this time, the sun was setting and a blast of wind blew over the land, tipping Fabian and his chair over in a loop-de-loop. Fabian squeaked in fright and at this point he saw a flash of blue light from below, like a rope made of light, which whipped around his chair and tethered him. Professor Flitwick had cast a lasso charm, and was reeling him back to the ground.
Alice stood by lecturing the hijackers of her game, who made excuses that it was all in good fun and no harm was done, but Alice, bless her, was never one to have a sense of humour and was increasingly agitated by the young students' blasé attitude towards safety regulations.
As Fabian came within earshot of the commotion, he began to make out a rising argument. The young students muttered that Alice was a humourless shrew, and implied that she was probably on the chubby side and for this reason no male of the species would ever find her attractive.
Before Alice could reply, Frank Longbottom, who had been standing next to Gideon who had been calling out for help, burst into a fit of rage at the offending firsties.
"Oh, look at me, I'm so witty! I'm going to make blatant personal attacks disguised as jokes because I'm so-ha ha ha- funny!" Frank remarked sarcastically, throwing his hands up in the air.
"It was just a joke," one of them whined. "God I didn't know you seniors can't take a joke."
"Where's your house loyalty, man?" another chimed in. "Gryffindors for Gryffindors, huh? Defend us from this Ravenclaw banshee."
Frank made a look of utmost incredulity. He thought for a moment, and then tipped the giant bubbling cauldron onto the band of offenders. The contents of the cauldron crawled down in a slimy goo, enveloping the querulous students in a multicoloured sheen, turning them into single, slimy mass. The large mound of jelly wobbled to the left, and then to the right, and then finally off towards the castle, presumably to get cleaned up.
True to the humourless form of the senior students, no one was seen laughing. They merely exchanged many knowing looks, like they had all been privy to an in-joke, and then began a chorus of lamenting how the new students seemed ever increasingly unintelligent and offensive.
Frank Longbottom asked Alice Giggs if she was all right, to which she replied that she could have handled the situation herself, and if Frank was looking for kudos or gratitude for this defence of her honour it was not going to be found.
After some thought, Frank apologised in reply, and said that it was regretful that he sought to butt in only because he thought his words would hold more sway because of who he was-as a popular male Quidditch player, which only served to prove the firsties right in their prejudice.
It later transpired that, even after getting rid of the slimy jelly, the offending students suffered from a terrible case of dandruff over the next few months, in which the dandruff flakes were as large as Sickles and occasionally flapped around their heads like hairy moths, multiplying with each scratch of the head. Reportedly, it was also unbearably, irresistibly itchy.