"Thomas Johnson and John Thompson were both fifth year students at a small wizarding school in Southern Whales." –Brone Greyclaw, "Different Magic"

Dear Mum: Well, Tom J. and I have arrived safely at Signum Jonae Academy. Willy Minke, the caretaker, met us beneath the chief whale's baleen plate and conducted us through its throat to the Great Hall, where Headmaster Melville made a little speech welcoming us to, quote, "the finest and most exclusive school of magic situated within any pod of whales in the whole Southern Ocean". (As if we didn't know it was the only one – but I suppose the bloke's got to brag about something. Exclusive was right, anyway; I don't reckon there were more than three dozen other students in the whole place.)

Then we ate a nice little supper of transfigured sea-water, and Portkeyed one whale over into the dormitories. Pretty slick accommodations for a giant fish-beast's gut, I'm bound to say: you'd never know that umpteen tons of plankton were being digested just beyond the curtains. Still, looking forward to my first class tomorrow; they say the Potions classroom's underneath a blowhole, so if you're lucky you actually get some sun while you're brewing.

Anyway, I'd better wrap up before old Minke calls lights-out. Give Dad and Mary my love, and I'll see you all at Christmas. Your loving son, John Thompson.

"'Tea?' He nodded in ascent, seating himself on one of the plush sofas." –sevsnapelove09, "Whispered in the Dark"

"Sorry I can't meet you properly down on the floor," said Hermione, passing her former Potions master a steaming teacup across the hovering table. "I know it's the most ridiculous situation, but…"

"Not at all," said Snape curtly. "It is only natural that a young Muggle-born witch, labouring under the delusion that all important knowledge of wizarding culture can be learnt from books, shouldn't know enough not to touch the Pyecraft Amethyst with her bare hands – and, once she has done so, her curse of weightlessness must be adapted to."

Hermione coloured. "All right, I deserved that," she said. "But it is ridiculous, all the same: having to put Levitation Charms on all the furniture, not being able to leave the house without being tied on a string like a balloon…" She swallowed. "It needn't last forever, need it? There is a way to break it?"

"So it would seem," said Snape, and sipped at his tea. "The Headmaster has unearthed an appallingly old and decrepit volume from the Pyecraft library, in which allusion appears to be made to a certain word that, if whispered in the victim's ear in the absolute darkness of an overcast midnight, will dissolve the curse and send the victim tumbling back to Earth. Naturally, the page on which this word was recorded, if it ever existed, has long since rotted away; still, it is a lead, and further investigation may yet prove it fruitful."

"I see," Hermione murmured. "Well, keep me posted."

Snape nodded, and finished his tea; then, with a wave of his wand, he descended back to the ground and departed from the house, not sparing a backward glance for the young witch who sat with stony forbearance upon the floating parlour sofa.

"'Dumbledore never told you the reason you bear that scar was hidden in the bowls of the Department of Mysteries?' Malfoy sneered." –Dark-Syaoran, "Burn, Baby, Burn!"

As Junior Unspeakable Romarin savoured the last spoonful of her morning Wizard-O's, she noticed something written on the bottom of her bowl. Frowning, she tipped the milk away and squinted at the worn, ornate lettering. "'Trice?" she read uncertainly.

Her senior colleague Flanders, who was passing behind her chair with a syrup-stained plate in his hands, chuckled wryly. "I think it's 'thrice', actually," he said. "I've had that one a couple times myself. There's nothing special about it; every bowl in the Department's crockery cabinet has some random word written inside it."

"Why?" said Romarin.

Flanders shrugged. "Just a whim of the Director's, I guess," he said. "Of course there's a rumour that, if you put all sixty-three of them in the right order, you'd have the only remaining transcript of a prophecy whose official record was destroyed in the early '80s at Albus Dumbledore's personal request." He rolled his eyes. "Such imaginations our workers have, eh? But, then again, I suppose we do get paid for believing six impossible things before breakfast."

"'Curriculum vita?' [a] man's voice requested from beside them." –meropereads, "Consortia"

Dean turned his gaze from the road just enough to cock an enquiring eye at Hermione. "Translation?"

"He wants you to avoid the little chariot in the next lane," said Hermione, and turned to their companion with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "Non est vere curriculum, Magister Gryffindor; est… er… Volkswagen. Sed noli timere: Dean id certe vitabit."

Godric Gryffindor grunted vaguely, not loosening his death-grip on the armrest, and Dean snorted. "You know, I'm starting to lose some respect for our House," he said. "Here we're supposed to be all about mad, indomitable bravery, and here's our Founder wigging right out just because we've got to take him down the M5 before the reverse time portal closes in Bromwich."

Privately, Hermione wasn't sure she blamed Lord Gryffindor; if she had been sucked out of the 10th Century into 2005 and exposed with no further preparation to Dean Thomas's driving, she doubted that she could have made a very creditable display of Gryffindor courage herself. Rather than say so, though, she just shrugged and said, "Well, I suppose we can't always be living up to our résumés. –Watch that curve, Dean! Tace, Magister, tace!"