The Quibbler Summer 2022

A Step Tattoo Far? The Wizarding Bounty Hunters

Protecting Muggles

Magical Games:

House Elf Legendary Parkour – Cup

Degrees of Decrees

Editor-In-Chief Starflashfairy Gryffindor Managing Editor NDoraTonks

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ytodpdjebaotjeo The Editors Deskq

k s e D ’s r o t i d E e h T

Hufflepuff Managing Editor laughterislouder Ravenclaw Managing Editor Eldis_ Slytherin Managing Editor Im_Finally_Free Production Manager Anne_Seelman Production Assistants Permagrinfalcon 7ustine overanxiousowl Fearlessgaygeek Web-Wizard Oomps62 Executive Editor wiksry Payroll spludgiexx BriB aek Art Dept Head SinsationalDoom Castles & Burrows Dept Head -Niccolo-PiccoloCrafts, Brews, & Hobbies Dept Head Mathias_Greyjoy Dark Arts Dept Head VinumCupio Divination auntieabra Education Dept Head Lyrical_Bee Entertainment Dept Head silvertail8 Fashion Dept Head XanCanStand Magical Plants & Creatures Dept Head finazzo News & Features Dept Head TipsyTippett Sports Dept Head mylifeambitiom Travel Dept Head mrsvanchamarch

Greetings, Dear Readers!

“MADMAN STARFISH” KEEPS WRITING TO O WH ON RS PE E TH WILL ASE AND DESIST? E) PLEASE KINDLY CE AR U YO O WH OW KN (YOU !

you May Fortune smile upon H AS rFL Sta AM ~MAD Editor-in-Chief

THE QUIBBLER: NO. 34868 [SUMMER 2022] THIS ISSUE OF THE QUIBBLER WAS CREATED, WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND REVIEWED BY THE HOGWARTS STAFF AT /R/THEQUIBBLER. THIS ISSUE FEATURES ARTICLES THAT EXPOSE THE TRUTH. SELLING OVER 1,500,000 COPIES WITH OVER 29,000 DIFFERENT ISSUES, WE ARE THE WIZARDING WORLD’S ALTERNATIVE VOICE AND REASON SINCE 1989. WE THANK YOU FOR READING AND PURCHASING OUR SMALL INDEPENDENT NEWS MAGAZINE

Welcome to OUR BRAND NEW issue of the Quibbler. Below is an overview of everything you can find in this All new edition of the Quibbler! We hope you find the experience Both enlightening and entertaining!

THE BIGGEST STORIES FROM THE

FRONTPAGE:

78 82 95 55

A Step Tattoo Far? The Wizarding Bounty Hunters Protecting Muggles

Magical Games

House Elf Legendary Parkour Cup

Degrees of Decrees

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BREAKING NEWS:

jfjsdjwfksfkljklwenjkfnzwdiewghiorndgknakflenifnsdnakhwroiuwehdnmd, Ask Madam Starflash............................... 06

News and Features.................................. 76

Castles and Burrows. .............................. 08

Independent Art. .................................... 81

Crafts, Brews, and Hobbies. ................... 20

Sports. ...................................................... 92

Independent Art. .................................... 31

Horoscopes. ............................................. 98

Dark Arts................................................. 34

Classifieds................................................ 99

Education. ............................................... 45

Auror Logs..............................................100

entertainment......................................... 60

Credits. .................................................. 102

magical plants

& Creatures.................... 74

STAFF:

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Editor-In-Chief: Starflashfairy Executive Editor: Wiksry Managing Editors: Im_Finally_Free, laughterislouder, NDoraTonks, Eldis_ Administration: Oomps62, spludgiexx, bribaek Layout and Design: SinsationalDoom, 7ustine, Anne_Seelman, Overanxiousowl, Permagrinfalcon Art: Sinsational Doom Castles & Burrows: -Niccolo_PiccoloCrafts, Brews, & Hobbies: Mathias_Greyjoy Dark Arts: VinumCupio Divination: auntieabra Education: Lyrical_Bee Entertainment: silvertail8 Fashion: XanCanStand Magical Plants & Creatures: finazzo News & Features: TipsyTippett Sports: mylifeambitiom Travel: mrsvanchamarch Contributors: 7ustine, Bubbles_The_Defender, Clariannagrindelwald, Eldis_, ICantReachTheOctave, Iguerr, Innplore, JesiDoodli, KackelDackel, Laughterislouder, MagicMischiefNL, Nam3Tak3n33, Neeshky, Res30stupid, Rysler, Silvertail8, Sinsationaldoom, Starflashfairy, TexansDefense, The_Architect_Nurse, Tipsytippett, XanCanStand

QUIBBLER DIVINATION

Do YOU have burning questions for our resident Seer and fairy, Madam Starflash? Got yourself in a relationship with a Vampire and don’t know if it’s going to work out? Debating on using a love potion on your biggest crush? Have a bully you’d love to get rid of?

Don’t hesitate to ask! Madam Starflash ALWAYS has the right answer for you! Contact her in Divination Tower at /r/TheQuibbler now with your desperate questions!

6

DIVINATION QUIBBLER

k l f s d l n f l k n w e k l n f k l s e n d f n s d k l n s f k f d s n f dskfmkmksdldfdklmsklfgmkldmsklmggdkmklgm Dear Madman Starfish, I think I'm in love with the ghoul in my attic??? I know it won't work out. We're too different. He's a Pisces and I'm a Capricorn.

However, the heart wants what the heart wants. Do I lay it all out on the table and see what happens, or do I let this crush wither and die?

Sincerely, A Star (sign) Crossed Lover

Dearest Neveah, Time to purchase a Muggle lock. You deserve your privacy when handling your wand and if your roomie tries to barge in once there’s a lock on the door, well, Confunding her when her back is turned wouldn’t be the worst thing you could possibly do. I don’t normally condone such unsportsmanlike dueling, but as she’s a Muggle, she’ll never know what hit her.

May Fortune smile upon you!

Dearest Star Crossed,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your ghoul is in love with a gnome from your garden. Let it go.

Dear Madman Starfish,

May Fortune smile upon you!

Is ketchup a smoothie? If not, then I may need to rethink my liquid diet...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please, I need an answer ASAP!

Dear Madam Starflash,

Tom-ate-too Much Ketchup

I am in a fix about what will be my future career. While filling our vaults in Gringotts is important, I don’t want to study a course that would make me spend my whole life doing something I hate.

People say Alchemy and Ancient Runes would make me a lunatic and these are not subjects I can make a living off. Could you please verify their claims and put my crazy mind to rest?

With love, Your Mad-as-a-Hatter Friend

Dearest Mad-as-a-Hatter, Do what makes YOU happy. Don’t ever worry about what anyone else has to say because overall the only thing that matters is that you are enjoying your future career, which will be wonderful for you, I See it now. Study what you want, and don’t worry; you’re just as sane as I am.

May Fortune smile upon you!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Madam Starflash, I'm a Muggleborn who has decided to go to university to try and keep in touch with the Muggle part of my life and family. I obviously have to be very careful using magic in my university house, so I only ever do it when I'm in my room. Unfortunately, my roommate has a bad habit of just barging in when I have my wand out. I can't lock the door as there's no Muggle lock and she'll get suspicious. Have you got any tips?

Sincerely, Neveah A. Lone

Sincerely,

Dearest Tom-ate-too, DO NOT DRINK KETCHUP. All that acid is so bad for you.

Now at least you know where those awful infections are coming from.

AND MY NAME IS MADAM STARFLASH, AS YOU KNOW FULL WELL. May Fortune smile upon you! (Or not, because you’re annoying me…)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Madam Starflash, I was the victim of false advertisements. I read The Divine Comedy, but didn't find it funny at all! I want to sue the author for tricking me. I asked a Muggle lawyer but he reckoned I was "being ridiculous" because apparently "you can't sue Dante Alighieri".

Now, I am not very understanding of the matter of laws, but it seems unfair to me that this Dante person can get away just because he died. What lawyer do I need to hire to sue a ghost?

Sincerely, A Tricked Reader

Dearest Tricked, Dante Alighieri is not a ghost. He has gone on. And you cannot sue a ghost, anyway. The only lawyer who ever did so successfully is now a ghost himself; ironically enough, he was murdered by the last living relative of the ghost he sued.

May Fortune smile upon you!

k l f s d l n f l k n w e k l n f k l s e n d f n s d k l n s f k f d s n f dskfmkmksdldfdklmsklfgmkldmsklmggdkmklgm 7

QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS

written by Eldis_

W

izarding Britain has plenty of wealth available.

Who could have guessed that being able to perform magic results in cheaper and more productive labour? The Sacred 28, with their long bloodline of magic users, are the most infamous of the top-of-the-top.

They have always been their own little bubble of affluence and luxury, but after the announcement of the dissolution of the Sacred 28 by the daughters and wives of those families, published in our Winter '21 edition, these previously inaccessible families have now started to mingle with us common folk. One source was able to inform the Quibbler that St Mungo's has received many more anonymous donations than in previous years, with the notes requesting the funding to go to further education and research rather than the building of impressive but little-used new wings, named after one of the families.

To further their campaign in making the families more approachable, and to end rumours surrounding their continual dabbling in the Dark Arts, Pansy Parkinson, fashion icon of 2021 and, even at her 43 years old, still a most desirable

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Lofty mansions WARM AND SPACIOUS match, opened her doors to our reporters at the Quibbler.

Quibbler: “Hello, thank you so much for welcoming us into your home!”

Pansy Parkinson: “Welcome! Come in, come in, of course.”

Q: “So, what prompted you and the other not-Sacred-28-anymore women to send the announcement of the dissolution to the Quibbler?”

P: “Well, after everything that happened during the War, the Daily Prophet has lost most of its credibility. Everyone I talk to says they prefer the Quibbler to truly get their trustworthy news, even if it is mixed with- well, Xenophilius' original vision.”

Q: “Thank you, thank you. We truly pride ourselves on our reporting.”

P: “In the last couple of years many of the supporters of the darker arts in our families have passed away and through their deaths lost the control they had over their families. Before you bring it up - yes, many of them did spend the last years of their lives in Azkaban, but that did not stop them from exerting their

power over us. It is only recently that we have been able to claim our own agency.

It was Narcissa Malfoy who was the first to realise this, and the rest is history!”

Q: “And the rest is history indeed! Waitwait, is that electricity?!?!”

P: “So you noticed? Yes! In the past couple of years, I have been working really hard to have this mansion outfitted with the latest muggle technology. I have had the plumbing revised and added electricity, and I have solar panels. Did you know muggles can get energy from the sun?

This house now runs completely without magic.”

Q: “That is quite the switch! Was that what you have been up to when you disappeared from the wizarding world?”

P: “Well, partly.”

By the time the conversation comes to this point, we have arrived in a wonderful sitting room. With large windows and many plants, it is hard to believe He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named ever held meetings here. In fact, the yellow chairs, soft rug and dark-brown side tables make the room feel more like the Hufflepuff common room. The white curtains add to

CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER

the brightness of the place and the light yellow flowery wallpaper that only takes up the first one-third of the wall makes it both spacious and intimate. Wide, glass doors reveal a large patio outside, from which many paths lead into the gardens.

As we take a seat on one of the comfortable clutches, a house-elf wearing a warm sweater pops into the room with two mugs of chamomile tea.

P: “Muffle earns fair wages, do not worry. I can do everything by myself, but his family has been in our family for so long that he wanted to stay. He is a free elf.

You were wondering what I did when I disappeared for a few years?”

Q: “If you're willing to share?!”

P: “Yes, of course. After, well, everything, I came into contact with Mr Ashara at the Ministry. He helps Hogwarts graduates get the right papers to enrol in a muggle university. So that is what I did. I left my wand and magic behind during my entire academic career. It became– after the War, magic became tainted to me. I felt awful when using it, even for the smallest things. So many people– so many people lost their lives because they could not do those small things. So I left it all behind for a bit. It was a huge relief. I– Well, shall we continue the tour?"

books, a mixture of magical and muggle literature. Brönte's Wuthering Heights is placed next to Bunning's Witching Waterloo.

Parkinson gets up as she wipes away a tear. We continue the tour through the house, talking about little things. The living room is filled to the brim with

In the dining room, rather than a large, imposing table we are so used to seeing in ancient wizrading houses, a smaller one takes up only a little room.

P: “The books are now more spread throughout the house. They used to be just in the library, 'the domain of the man of the house' and such nonsense. I have no need of any man in my house, I manage myself perfectly alone. There are still a lot of books in the library, of course, but there is more study room there now as well.”

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QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS

P: “We moved this wall so the dining room is smaller. I just live here on my own so I do not need such a long, dark table occupying the entire space. This table can be extended so it can seat more people for dinner parties, but for the day-to-day life that is not necessary. This also allowed me to extend the kitchen.

That was so small! I do not know how the elves managed to prepare all the food for all the feasts my parents hosted. One of the architects who helped me with this project told me that it seemed like the kitchen was added more as an afterthought. I removed the carpet flooring in the dining room – no idea who came up with the idea of adding carpet flooring to a dining room! Even with magic that is a nightmare to keep clean. And the dark wood flooring that was underneath? I mean, look at it, it is gorgeous!”

Q: “It is indeed very beautiful! And the silverware?”

P: “All properly de-cursed. I got Gringrotts' best curse breakers on the case.

And I had some of the silver melted down to be sold. There is a limit to the number of silver spoons one needs!”

Q: “What would your past self say, if she were to see you, and the house she grew up in, now?”

P: “Oh! I think she would hate me. I know you were not at Hogwarts when I was there, so–” Q: “No I was not. but I did read the tellalls of a couple of students who did attend at that time. And, not to be rude, but they don't really portray you that kindly.”

P: “Oh, I was a nightmare. I truly believed my father's nonsense about pureblood superiority. I constantly kept awkwardly flirting with poor Draco because my mum wanted me to marry him. I do not even want to marry! Oh, I was a terrible bully.

So when she would look at me now, she would be disgusted. I think she would

10

call me a blood traitor and send a hex my way! It was really difficult for me to navigate the change between past me's values and those of current me. I went to therapy for it. A wonderful woman without magic, but with magical parents. She really helped.”

Q: “So she'd hate the house as we–” P: “No.” Q: “That was a confident, immediate answer!”

P: “Yes, I was never truly happy here. The halls were always so dark and damp, and it always smelled so musty. The first spell I could control as a child, even before I had a wand, was lumos. Just so I would not bump into a door!”

Parkinson laughs it off, but I can see in her eyes that there is some hurt there.

With the white walls, wooden floors and occasional plants throughout the hallways, not to mention the warm lights coming from an electric, non-magical source, what she describes seems difficult to imagine. We continue the tour past several empty bedrooms. Well, not empty per se. They contain some basic, but charming and welcoming, furniture.

P: “The rooms are empty now, but during the upcoming break they will be filled with Hogwarts students. After everything Mr Potter has told us about V– Vold–. I am sorry. I am trying but it is still difficult.”

Parkinson closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“About Voldemort's youth, and his own youth, there has been more attention to the home environments of the students.

I know we all say that Hogwarts is our home, but for some that is much more true than for others. I joined a couple of other wizards and witches in a recent project, setting up multiple places for kids who do not want to, or can not, go home during the summer and Christmas

breaks. Anyone can sign themselves up, no questions asked. They can not stay at Hogwarts, the castle is way too large and the professors also deserve to have a break, so we are here to make sure they have a good and safe home to stay at. Each student gets their own private room, since they already have to share their sleeping quarters during the year.

Having some privacy is very valuable. The upcoming summer break will be the first time this system is implemented, we are all very excited to see how it will go!”

Q: “There are quite a lot of these rooms…

Will there be a student in every single one of them?”

P: “As of now, about 75% of the beds will be occupied. That includes not only children who are abused at home, but also a few who just want to join their friends here, some who stay here for only a couple of weeks as a summer break because their parents can not afford to travel abroad during their break, a few whose parents work a lot still… It is a really nice mix.”

Q: “And will you take care of all of them?

Alone??”

P: “Oh no! Not alone! No, I am getting help from some of my friends and some Hogwarts graduates. We make sure we have at least one adult per three children, or one more recent Hogwarts graduate per two students. And we will occasionally have more supervisors when we go on trips. For this summer break, I can reveal that we will attend at least one Quidditch match and we will also visit both some wizarding-only and muggle-only villages. And we have much more fun things planned! It is sure to be an enjoyable break, that I can guarantee.”

Q: “Ooh, that sounds like so much fun!

And during Christmas break?"

P: “Well, it is a bit too soon to start planning for that now, but Christmas break usually means a lot of studying, since the

CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER test week is quite soon after it. We are thinking about hiring some extra tutors from the various wizarding universities to help the students out with whatever they need. And we are working with Madam Pince to grant the students access to books in the Hogwarts library.”

Q: “With all those fun things, aren't you afraid that students who don't need it will want to join, potentially taking the places of those who do need it?”

P: “We have discussed this, yes. We do not have that problem yet, luckily, but we are looking into solutions to have at the ready when the problem does pop up. Additionally, we have decided to allow access to those interested to attend during the daytime only, whilst still sleeping at their own home.”

We walk past a couple of bathrooms, which Parkinson tells me will be shared in groups of three. It is not until we move to the stairwell at the back of the house that I finally realise there are almost no paintings throughout the entire house.

They all seem to have moved here.

P: “Yes. It was quite the trial to get some of the paintings off of their wall. We had to demolish and rebuild some walls before we could remove them. I have donated some paintings to the Institute of Magical Arts for research, they are setting up an interdisciplinary PhD project to study them. Looking at the history of the art, the type of spells imbued in them, etcetera. I did leave up some paintings, after having them thoroughly checked, of course. During the renovations, we found some discarded paintings that were really lovely. Some speaking ones, some pastoral ones… Those are spread throughout the house. We placed most portraits here in this stairwell. They portray the not-so-great side of the wizarding world.

We wanted to keep them, well, the less bad of them, up here as a reminder and warning of what we could be. We have kind of ordered them. Over in that corner are all the truly bigoted– eehm, am I allowed to curse?”

Q: “Technically yes, as long as it is not too

bad, but I think that our readers already know what you mean!”

P: “Hahaha, yes. Well, the more, let me just say, actively bigoted ones are in that corner, covered by a silencing charm, and those who just have some antiquated ideas that are a product of their times are over there. We already had some history researchers come in to chat with those, they have very valuable insights.”

I hope the reader will forgive me that I have removed all of the interjections and comments given by the portrait during this part of the conversation. Via the stairs, we end up in what upon entering immediately makes my heart beat faster: the library.

P: “I see you almost drooling?”

Q: “Well, once a Ravenclaw, always a Ravenclaw, I guess. But this is gorgeous!

So many ancient manuscripts! And those large stained windows! And the plants!

The chairs and couches! Those tables!”

P: “Shall I give you a moment?”

After plenty of time to gather myself (and after a solemn promise I would be able to access the library later), Parkinson continues her explanation of the changes made in this particular room, elaborating on the restoration necessary to preserve some of the older texts.

P: “We have copied Hogwarts' library's sorting system. Madam Pince helped.

These are only the safe texts, I have an equivalent of a 'restricted section' with the books speaking of darker subject matters. Aurors have access to those, but the students staying here will not.”

From there, we walk back in the direction of the dining room. A small door I had not noticed when we walked this hallway before grows larger after Parkinson taps it with her wand. The door leads to a wide, large, open kitchen, shining clean with the most modern of appliances.

Q: “The expanded kitchen?”

P: “Yes! Fully renovated. I discussed with Muffle what he wanted for the kitchen

to function better for him, so instead of a dangerous gas oven, we now have an electric one. The fridges and freezers are also bigger with lighter doors, and there is more countertop space. Plus,” Parkinson walks to one of the taps, presses a button and turns on the water. Instant boiling water comes out. Parkinson smiles.

P: “I drink a lot of tea.”

Q: “That looks super convenient! And this kitchen is gorgeous. I can't help but notice that the countertops are human-height?”

P: “The floor moves up and down to fit the size of whoever is inside the kitchen.

This way I can cook whenever I feel like it, and we can offer cooking and baking classes to the students staying here during the breaks.”

Parkinson explains some of the electrical devices, revealing that her favourite thing to bake is macaroons. One hidden door in the wall reveals a staircase down to the basement, stocked with food.

Q: “Will the students cook their own food every day? I know house-elves work miracles, but from the number of rooms I've seen…”

P: “Oh no! Muffle is most certainly not going to feed them all, the poor man.

No, quite a lot of Hogwarts elves have offered their services as well. Some paid, some voluntary, depending on their own preferences.”

We exit through a different door and, after some confusing turns, stairs, doors and one portrait hole, arrive in a small, light hallway.

P: “These are my private quarters. It is easier to get here from the library or the dining room than it is via the kitchens, but I promised I would show you everything. Full transparency, and all. My bedroom is through here.”

Parkinson opens a door, revealing a relatively small bedroom, primarily taken up by a large, modern-looking bed.

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QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS

P: “I got rid of the canopy and the curtains. They truly were one big ball of dust. And, after everything that happened, I cannot take dark, enclosed spaces anymore.”

Q: “Hence the large windows?”

P: “Yes. They are one-way, so nobody can look in but I can look out. Not that there are that many people there, it is a large forest area and wandering Muggles are deterred by warning signs stating that this area is a protected nature reserve. There are confounding charms, notice-menot spells and altered versions of the Fidelius charm as well, which ensure that if Muggles try to find their way here, they suddenly remember something very important they have to do elsewhere. Of course, the effects of these can be lifted for specific individuals, which will allow the parents of Muggleborn students to visit the property as well.”

Q: “This is a really cosy bedroom, I love all the plants and the light. But I do not see many closets. I had expected there to be more storage room, you being awarded 'best fashion icon' last year.”

Parkinson smiles and opens up the door to the single wardrobe in the room.

Rather than revealing a closet, though, it reveals a whole new room.

P: “Walk-in closet! The room next-door is thrice the size of my actual bedroom. My character and worldview might have changed a lot, but my love for fashion has not!”

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The closet truly is any fashion-lover's dream, and I make a note to tell Xan all about it. One entire wall is solely taken up by shoes, whilst another is half bags, half jewellery.

Parkinson opens a different door, leading to a bright bathroom reminiscent of the Prefect's bathroom at Hogwarts, but without a giggling mermaid-stained window. After looking around for a bit (and smelling some of the delicious soaps), we return to the sitting room, where Parkinson opens a door I had not noticed yet, taking out two warm coats.

P: “Most of the property is just trees and forest, we wanted to allow nature to do its own thing. Mr Ollivander sometimes visits to harvest some wandwood and Mr Hagrid and Mr Longbottom have promised to do a thorough survey of the gardens and the forest before the students arrive, to ensure their safety. But I can show you the Quidditch Pitch!”

I follow her on the winding paths through the more maintained part of the garden.

Although little is in bloom, it is clear for anyone to see that the garden will be a delightful sight in summer. Each twist and turn reveals a drastically different style, with dramatically different plants.

P: “Each section of the garden is dedicated to a specific magical part of the world.

This rock garden, for example, carries many Himalayan plants. That herb over there is used in up to thirty-four potions.”

The Quidditch rings shine in the weak sun, the field simple yet elegant. It does not have the potential for full-fledged professional matches, but is certainly more high-tech than what many other wizarding families have in their gardens.

P: “I could lie and say that this is just to facilitate the students visiting here, but I just really like it as well. My friends and I have already flown quite a lot of friendly

matches here!”

Q: “I see another roof over there. Do your neighbours live nearby?”

P: “Oh, that! No, that is my potions lab. It is far away from the house so if something goes wrong, the house itself is not damaged. Potions can be a risky thing, and although the wonderful Gringrotts team, the DMLA and I have removed all harmful spell work from the mansion, some magic simply slumbers invisibly until it is woken up. I swear on my magic that the house is safe for anyone staying there, do not worry, but it is better for potions to be brewed elsewhere.”

Q: “Is it not a huge inconvenience to walk that much to reach your potions lab?”

P: “Walk? Oh, no. I, and anyone I authorise, can apparate on the property. Here, grab my hand, I will apparate us both back inside.”

After a good cup of tea and some home-baked macaroons, I return to my own home in Quibbler Tower. Although I have never seen the Parkinson mansion before this large renovation, I have seen a few other ex-Sacred-28 homes, and the differences between them and the house I have just visited are startling. Given the fact that the second wizarding war is still relatively recent, I understand people's hesitation and mistrust. But I can assure all of my dear readers that at least the Parkinson family truly seem to have turned a new leaf.

illustrated by KackelDackel

CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER

CARE FOR YOUR CASTLE Eldis’ Top Tips for a Hygienic House Living Room Edition

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QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS Care for your Castle - Eldis’ Top Tips for a Hygienic House

Hello everyone, and welcome to the third entry in this series! After having looked at the bedroom and the bathroom, I think it’s time to move on to the place where you probably spend most of your awake-time at home: your living room!

living room Edition As ever, this series is meant solely as a starting point. I know many people get overwhelmed when confronted with having to be responsible for cleaning their house, and they don’t know where to start or what exactly has to be done.

I’m introducing to you my rhythm and manner

of cleaning here, which might not work for you.

Use it as a baseline or support as you find your own way to keep your house a pleasant, homely place to stay, and don’t feel bad if you don’t have the physical ability or mental energy to do every single thing mentioned in this article.

Who am I

to tell you how to clean your house? Well, aside from the dubious nickname of ‘the girl who has her shit together’, earned after I boiled one (1) egg in front of a bunch of drunk guys, I have also been working as a cleaner for quite some time now. So I do speak from quite some experience.

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CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER

Before we get to cleaning though, I do want to kinda get into tidying for a little bit. As I have mentioned before, I don’t mind (I even highly encourage!) you having a lot of stuff. However, all of the stuff should have its place and should stay in that place as often as possible. The place that the stuff belongs in, however, should also

make you happy! Look around at the furniture and layout of your living room right now. Does it make you happy? Does it make you comfortable? Is it practical? Or are you low-key (or maybe even high-key!) annoyed by where your couch and table and the sofa are placed? Well, I am here to tell you that you are allowed to change it.

Photo by Maria Orlova via Pexels

Your living room more than any other space is one where you should feel welcome and allow other people to feel welcome, one where you should not have too many stresses. ‘But Eldis,’ you might say, ‘I don’t even know how else all this will fit in here!’ Well then, firstly consider if you want to keep everything that’s in there, in there.

If you don’t like a piece of furniture and you own it (please don’t throw away any of your landlord’s stuff if you live in a furnished apartment), donate it! Or throw it out, depending on its quality!

Or if you indeed live in a furnished apartment,

Photo by Alexander Grigorian via Pexels

but you’re lucky enough to have some sort of basement or similar storage area, put it there for the time being! And secondly, when you change your interior design it doesn’t have to be perfect in one go. I once spent an entire evening moving my couch to literally every single wall of my living room before I decided where I wanted to put it, and I remember that, when I was a child, I’d sometimes wake up, arrive downstairs and see that the entire living room was rearranged, and then a week later rearranged again. Allow yourself to have fun with it! Do something wild!

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QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS Care for your Castle - Eldis’ Top Tips for a Hygienic House

Where to place your couch As a tip though, but this is 100% my personal taste so you can immediately disregard this and I will not be offended at all, is that you place your couches and sofas with their backs to a wall, rather than in the middle of your living room. It creates more space in the center of your room, so more space to walk. This makes your living

room suddenly look much bigger! Think that this means that you and your guests are seated too far away from each other? Nothing is stopping you from moving the sofa you’re sitting in closer to the couch your guests are sitting on during the visit. I’m a big proponent of making your living room more ‘liquid’, more open to change!

Photo by Maria Orlova via Pexels

And with regards to all the random stuff you have collected in your life? Display it! Don’t be embarrassed by them, give them fun spots to give your house personality and to make you happy. I’m a grown-ass adult woman with a degree and the ability to vote, and I own one (1) piece of a mammoth’s tooth of dubious authenticity, one (1) world war 2 bullet of non-dubious authenticity, apparently shot by a German, and uncountable (I seriously do not know, but at least 90) mini-tsumstsums of various Disney characters. All quite random, but

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so much fun! The bullet and the mammoth’s tooth are displayed on a corner rack, my tsums are spread out over various shelves and on top of books (my spider-man tsumtsum is having off of a rather large book with some white string so it looks like he’s hanging from his web) and I made a ladder to hang my large collection of mugs (my eternal weakness) from, to have those on display as well! There are so many fun ways to display your awesome possessions, ways that give your house personality!

CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER

Washed your throw pillows lately?

While we’re on the topic of couches and sofas anyway, when was the last time you washed those pillows and those pillowcases? Yeah, I thought so. Wash these at least once a year. Vacuum clean in between the seat and the arm/backrests of the couch and sofa once a month or every two months to catch all the crumbs and other dirt. It might help if you put your vacuum cleaner at the lowest strength when you do this. Vacuum the floors once a week and mop once a month, or twice a month if you live in a more muddy area. Don’t forget to vacuum underneath furniture!

Wipe down your dinner table once a day, but the rest of the room you can dust just once a week. It shouldn’t even take that long, just fiveish minutes to quickly go past various surfaces: the tops of your books if you have bookshelves, most doorways will have a little ledge around them which can gather dust, any and all sideables, lamps and just the miscellaneous things you have lying around. Set a five-minute timer for yourself once a week & clean until it goes off.

If you’re in the flow when it goes off don’t let me

stop you from continuing, but else there’s another chance next week if you haven’t managed to get to everything. Don’t forget to clean your dining room chairs once a week as well, especially the places where you grab them to move yourself and the chair away from or closer to the dining table. And if you have chair leg floor protectors, rub away the dust that gets gathered on those too, or vacuum underneath the legs of your chairs to get that away. Do this about once a month.

Photo by Maria Orlova via Pexels

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QUIBBLER CASTLES AND BURROWS

Mum tip!

This already brings us to the speed round! Your living room might be one of the biggest rooms in your house (it is for me), but it really is not the most difficult place to clean! I haven’t mentioned my mum’s wisdom yet in this article, so let me share some of it now: ‘I always immediately do everything that has to be done because I am a lazy housewife’. Okay, of course not always everything, but the idea is that it’s easier to keep up with everything rather than in one bulk having to do all the things you’re behind on. So when you see something that’s out of place and no longer in use, put it back, and when you see something that’s dusty, quickly clean it off. It helps to have a cleaning cloth somewhere hidden but within quick reach in your living room, so you can, within 10 seconds, get rid of that bit of dirt that’s annoying you.

Photo by Miriam Alonso via Pexels

final speed round

Photo via Pixabay

Photo by Maria Orlova via Pexels

For your own convenience’s sake, it’s easier to have side tables that function for multiple purposes: both table and storage.

I have one that doubles as two bookshelves on wheels, for example.

I mentioned cleaning the top of books, but also clean the shelf behind your books twice a year, a lot of dust tends to gather there.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels

Other places that gather dust or become dirty that you might not think of are coathangers, the top of a coat hanger rack, the sides of doors (do you always hold your door exactly at the handle? No, me neither), hidden ledges at random places throughout your house and electrical sockets (clean those carefully, and with a dry cloth!).

Photo by Miriam Alonso via Pexels

Wipe down your tv every so often as well! And, with the vacuum on its lowest stand, vacuum out the chaos of cords behind the screen.

That is it for this edition! I hope you will join us next time as we clean the kitchen!

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Care for your Castle - Eldis’ Top Tips for a Hygienic House

CASTLES AND BURROWS QUIBBLER

Do you only have the energy to do one single thing mentioned in this article? Choose one day each week where you’ll set a 5-minute timer and clean for just those five minutes.

✁

illustrated by Eldis_

How to use the cleaning schedule?

This article is accompanied by the third of 6 cleaning schedules, one per area in your house. The use of this schedule is simple: print it out, put it somewhere easily accessible but out of sight (on the inside of a cupboard door, for example), and put a pen near it. Each time you clean behind your books, write down the ..[date].. / ..[month].. (or the other way around, for you Americans) on the dotted lines for reference, so you can keep track! For the once-a-month thing, you can either just cross it off with a checkmark or write down the day of the week there as well, so you do it around the same day of the month each month.

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES

GETTING KNITTY WITH IT

My attempt to hand make a Weasley jumper by u/neeshky

Knitting is possibly as close to magic as muggles can get, in my opinion. You start with a ball of wool and two sticks, and then somehow you end up with an actual thing, be it clothing or a toy or a blanket. When you see the end results a lot of people think that the process must be impossibly hard, but the truth is that with a little bit of patience and a whole lot of YouTube anybody can learn.

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I started knitting several years ago, but only ever made small toys and scarves. Truth be told, whenever I looked at a more complicated pattern I immediately thought ‘I can’t do that’, and so in the end I stopped knitting altogether because there’s only so many scarves one person needs.

Fast forward to 2022, and my New Year Resolution was to stop being scared of failure, in all parts of my

CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER life. I decided to start small by facing my fear of knitting slightly more advanced patterns. I resolved to do my best to make one wearable item of clothing, and I’ve always wanted a Weasley jumper, so I thought I’d start there.

I was lucky enough to be gifted the book “Harry Potter Knitting Magic” by Tanis Gray a couple of years ago, so I dug it out, dusted it off, and set myself to reading the Weasley jumper pattern and ordering supplies. I opted for Red Heart Soft aran wool in Dark Green for the main body of the jumper, and Drops Paris in Light Grey for the letter (I am a Slytherin after all), and while I waited for delivery I started looking at the pattern itself.

The main body of a jumper is actually really straightforward, and if you can do a knit stitch and a purl stitch then around 80% of the pattern is easy peasy. I already knew how to do basic increases and decreases, opting for simple make 1 (m1) and knit 2 together (k2tg) where it wasn’t specified, and so I raced through the back piece without any problems at all.

The front piece is almost exactly the same as the back piece, however, as you get to the neck edge it becomes a little more tricky, requiring you to work on two seperate sides at the same time. This was the first time I had ever had two balls of wool attached to a piece at the same time, but it actually wasn’t as scary as it sounded and didn’t take me much time at all.

When the front and back pieces were finished, I decided to take a break from the actual knitting and tackle my first real challenge - duplicate stitching the letter onto the front piece. I have never done embroidery in my life, and this step really intimidated me, so I turned to the ever helpful ‘Very Pink Knits’ YouTube channel for guidance, Sure enough, she has a very helpful video on duplicate stitch, and the pattern in the book provides extremely clear alphabet charts, so I ignored my fear and plunged right in.

It turns out that duplicate stitching is surprisingly easy. Within a very short amount of time I had a recognisable letter forming, and before I knew it the embroidery was finished. I’m not going to lie to you, it looked a real mess from the back, but from the front it looked amazing! My first real challenge had been a success.

Emboldened by my new found embroidery prowess, I set to making my sleeves. Just like the front and back panels, these are made up of simple 2x2 rib and stock-

ing stitch, with a clear and easy to follow increase and decrease pattern and so took no time at all.

With all the pieces of my jumper knitted and blocked, my next big learning curve began. The pattern called for the shoulder seams to be joined using a three needle cast off. Not only had I never done a three needle cast off, I’d never even heard of a three needle cast off. Back to YouTube, and once again ‘Very Pink Knits’ saved the day. The principle of the cast off was really simple to understand, but it took me a while to get my hands used to holding three needles at once. Once I

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES got the hang of it, it took no time at all, and I made the neatest seams I’ve ever made. Success!

The most frightening part of the whole pattern for me was the neckband. I had never knitted in the round, and had previously had real trouble with picking up and knitting, so this was a big mountain for me to climb. I’ll be honest, this bit didn’t work out quite right. Having come to terms with the fact that I can’t identify the individual stitches to pick up, I opted to just try and evenly space the picked up stitches as best I could, and so the end result was that the neckband was a little bit stiff and slightly misshapen, but it was still serviceable and my head still fit through the hole, so I took it as a win.

The last challenge I faced was setting in the sleeves. I had never done this before, and the instructions in the book go no further than saying “set in sleeves”. I watched several YouTube videos, but I still really struggled to understand how to make the sleeve edge fit into the sleeve hole, given that the sleeve edge was longer than the hole it was supposed to fit into. Once again, I reached a point where I just decided I was never going to understand it and so I sewed the sleeves to the hole as best I could. This means that on close inspection of the finished jumper, the sleeves bunch out a little oddly instead of hanging neatly. If I was to make this jumper again in the future I would definitely do more

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research and try harder to do this step correctly, but I’m still happy with the end result.

Overall, this was a really easy pattern to follow. With a little help from YouTube I was able to master two of the four techniques that were previously unknown to me, and though I definitely didn’t master the other two I still managed to make a wearable garment for the first time in my knitting life. The excitement and pride that I felt when I first wore my lumpy jumper was truly joyful. The book has helpful diagrams and pictures, and I would urge anyone to give it a look and have a go.

My jumper might not be perfect, far from it, but I magicked it up with two sticks and a ball of wool all by myself, and if I can do it then you can too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to attempt a Hogwarts cardigan….

Images by neeshky Graphic by freepik

CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER

Hogwarts House Cocktails A Self-Indulgent (and self-important) Adventure into Degeneracy

by TexansDefense 23

QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES

The Blue and Bronze 2oz Limoncello 1oz Blue Curacao 3oz Blueberry and Lemon Syrup Shake with ice, then pour into a glass rimmed with coarse gold bronze sugar.

For syrup: Bring 2 cups water, 1 cup sliced lemon, and 1 cup fresh blueberries to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Mash up the fruit then add 1 cup sugar and ½ cup fresh rosemary, simmer until reduced. Stir occasionally throughout.

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CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER

The Gryffindor Sour 1½ oz Aperol 1oz Bourbon 1oz Lemon juice ½ oz Grenadine Half of one egg white Shake vigorously with ice, strain into glass. Allow the egg white foam to set up for a few seconds then sprinkle edible gold flakes on top.

Can be made with Campari instead of Aperol if you want, but I’d only do 1oz Campari and I’d add ½ oz Simple Syrup (equal parts sugar and hot water).

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES

The Honey Badger 2oz Bourbon 1oz Lemon juice 1oz Honey 1-2oz Blackberry Syrup Soda water Shake the first 3 ingredients vigorously with ice. Pour syrup into glass, then strain the rest over top. Add soda on top (please don’t shake carbonated liquid).

For syrup: Bring 2 cups water and 2 cups fresh blackberry to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Mash up the fruit, then add 1 cup sugar and ½ cup fresh mint leaves, simmer until reduced. Stir occasionally throughout.

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CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER

The Basilisk Venom Shot ¾ oz Gin ¾ oz Coco Reàl Cream of Coconut ¾ oz Crème de Menthe Optional: crush up some chocolate sprinkles and add them on top or as a rim.

Shake Gin and Cream of coconut over ice, strain into shot glass. Gently pour Crème de menthe into glass. Chug.

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES Now that we’ve finally got the boring pictures and recipes out of the way, it’s time for me to pull the traditional food blogger move and talk about myself for far too long. There are 2 things that I love more than alcohol, and those are listening to myself talk and people actually thinking I’m cool for once in my life. What better way to accomplish both those things than teaching a bunch of teenagers how to drink alcohol? All jokes aside, I’m going to talk about what I think makes a good cocktail, what to look for when ordering off a cocktail menu, and how to approach making cocktails for yourself. Oh and I guess I should talk about the drinks themselves. Just a bit of a warning, everything I say here will be entirely my own opinions so take it all with a grain of salt. There is a weird amount of gatekeeping in the cocktail world and however you want to approach it is fully up to you. At the end of the day, the best cocktail is entirely subjective so just drink whatever you want, however you want.

Now obviously I (as an extremely vain person) have a lot of opinions on this subject, so take what I say as suggestions to help level up your drink making rather than outright fact.

For those of you who want to know a little more about me, I’m a 30 year old bar manager and bartender. I work at a restaurant that is almost entirely known for its food and beer. We’re also located about 50 yards away from a fancy shmancy cocktail bar that we will absolutely never compete with in terms of mixed drinks. So ever since I was hired as a grossly unqualified bartender, I’ve been scrambling to learn as much about mixed drinks and wine as I can (Tex’s Sparknotes guide to sounding like you know wine: Beaujolais are a safe bet to call your favorite wine, Super Tuscans are secretly trash, and Champagne actually pairs best with fried chicken). But over the last 3-4ish years I’ve realized that I shouldn’t even be attempting to compete with them. The beautiful craft cocktails that people come up with are awesome and look great on your Instagram, but they don’t contribute meaningfully to a dining experience. So my bread and butter drinks have slowly evolved into ones that are, simply put, accessible. I am a huge fan of drinks that, aside from tasting and looking great, are simple in their execution. And that’s what I tried to channel into these 4 drinks, anyone should be able to recreate these drinks no matter how inexperienced they are with cocktail making.

Alright, let’s start off by talking about cocktails in general. If you’re like me, you probably started your drinking career by just consuming whatever you could get your hands on, no real preferences or attempts at making it taste good. Then you progress to drinking

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whatever beer is cheapest and pouring plastic bottles of vodka into huge coolers with some Fruit Punch or Gatorade. Or was that just me? Anyway, no matter what your first experience with cocktails is, it’s never too late to learn more. Hell, after 6+ years working in bars I still have to google drink recipes for customers.

So the most basic thing to learn about cocktail making is how to… make the drink. The traditional way to make a cocktail is to pour the ingredients into a metal shaker with some ice and mix it by either shaking or stirring. If you’re looking to start mixing up drinks yourself, you can buy cocktail shaker sets online for like $15 which comes with a long bar spoon/stirrer and a jigger (double sided measuring cup). Just make sure you get a metal shaker, I’d recommend not using glass or plastic. When you shake a cocktail, you’ll want to tightly cap the shaker and just Shake Weight the hell out of it. Then you strain the drink out into a waiting glass with fresh ice already in it. Stirring, on the other hand, is hopefully self-explanatory. Now I’m going to say something sacrilegious here so please hold your gasps or curses. If you want to just pour ingredients into a glass and give it a brief stir, go right ahead and do it. As I said above, there’s some serious gatekeeping from bartenders and “mixologists” (I can’t stress enough just how hard I roll my eyes at this term) who will tell you that you have to “properly” shake, stir, or build your cocktails and if you don’t you’re not actually making a cocktail. They’re self important idiots if they tell you this, and Bacchus knows I’m the only self important idiot allowed around these parts. I put the term “properly” in quotes because, while not truly necessary, shaking and stirring cocktails does actually serve a purpose that you don’t really get with simply pouring things into a cup. The two main reasons behind properly mixing cocktails are to both chill and dilute the drink. When mixing a drink with ice, the ice starts to melt as it brings the other liquids down to a lower temperature. While it might sound like a bad thing to have more water in there, the water actually helps bind the ingredients together and smooths out any rough edges in the drink (namely the bite from the liquor). Have you ever taken a drink of a cocktail and thought, “Wow I can’t even taste the alcohol!”

Well it’s not because they screwed you on the amount of liquor in it, they just properly mixed it. Mixing it in a shaker also gets it down to a temperature that won’t melt the fresh ice that you pour the drink on top of, which helps keep the drink from being too watered down as you get to the bottom. Also, in the case of shaking specifically, it can outright change the texture of the drink by aerating the liquid. If you’re wondering when to shake or stir a drink, the conventional

CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER wisdom generally boils down to how much of the drink is non-alcoholic. The more varied the ingredients, the more you need to shake it with a simple rule of thumb being to always shake if there’s citrus in the drink. Oh and don’t shake or stir carbonated ingredients, those just go straight into the glass on top of the rest of the drink. Frankly speaking, I shake like 95% of cocktails I make even if I’m not “supposed” to, it’s more fun.

Since everyone now knows how to mix a drink, allow me to segue into some general tips on how to improve the drinks you make. The first, and most important, piece of advice I can give is to use fresh and high quality ingredients. If you can, please stop buying margarita mix from the grocery store and make your own sour mix. For whatever size batch you want to make, mix 3 parts lime juice, 1-2 parts simple syrup (depending on how sweet you want it to be), 1 part lemon juice, and ½ part orange juice. Fresh squeezed is obviously preferable here, but store bought juices that you then mix yourself are still going to taste better than that $10 bottle of Jose Cuervo mix. Obviously time, money, and effort are factors that need to be considered when preparing to make mixed drinks, but fresher is always better here. Next up is to experiment with things like syrups and infusions. While they sound super fancy, these are all simple things to make, you just have to take the time to actually try them out.

The two syrup recipes above are both extremely easy to make and easy to adapt to different flavors if you want. Infusions are even easier, just drop some cinnamon sticks in a bottle of cheap whiskey and try it in a couple days. Third, include different textures in your drinks. I know it may sound weird, but adding things like syrups, honey, and soda water all give some complexity and body to an otherwise flat drink. Seriously, add some soda water on top of your next (non-frozen) margarita, it adds a nice bit of effervescence that you didn’t know you were missing out on. Finally, start garnishing your drinks. From orange peels to salt rims, from lime wedges to fresh herbs, garnishing a drink is the easiest path to getting your well earned oohs and aahs for your drink-making prowess. . Not only are they visually appealing, but garnishes add a huge amount of aromaticity (aromaticness?) to your drinks. Next time you make a vodka soda, slap a sprig of rosemary a few times and stick it at the top of your drink next to a lime wedge, trust me. Oh and slapping your herbs is a very real technique called bruising that helps release their oils and scents.

Ok so to finish up the general section, I’m going to let you all in on the biggest secret of how to make a good cocktail. Y’all ready? Wait for iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Balance.

That’s it, and it’s kind of boring isn’t it? You can make the fanciest craft cocktail in the world, but if it’s not well balanced then it’s just going to taste like crap.

This is the biggest thing that you need to keep in mind when making cocktails yourself or trying to pick out a drink from a cocktail menu. Every good cocktail needs to have a good mix of spirit/liquor, something bitter/ aromatic, a little bit of tart/brightness, and some level of sweetness to round out the flavor. Look up the International Bartenders Association’s official cocktail list and tell me what you see on just about every single drink on that list. Alcohol of choice, citrus or bitters, and sugar of some kind. The flavors and presentation vary wildly, but that’s all a cocktail is at the end of the day. When you’re cooking yourself dinner, you would never just cook up three different cuts of chicken and call it a day. You need to compliment that chicken with some starch and veggies, then you’d want to incorporate some acid and fat or richness to it (among other things but trying to keep this somewhat brief).

Meals and drinks alike should all be well rounded and seasoned, you just need to go about them in different ways. And honestly you can make damn near any flavor combination work in a drink as long as it contains a well balanced flavor profile.

Now it’s time to finish this long (and probably incoherent) ramble by talking about the drinks themselves. Overall I wanted to create four unique drinks that incorporated both of the colors for each house.

I could’ve easily just made a red, blue, green, and yellow drink and called it a day, but including the secondary colors added an extra challenge to this that I really enjoyed. The secondary color is also what’s going to cause the most problems for you all if you try to make these at home (cough Hufflepuff drink cough).

The Blue and Bronze was by far the easiest to come up with, it’s almost an exact copy of a drink that I had already created for work, I just tweaked things to give it a better color and then rebalanced it for flavor. The Gryffindor Sour, though, is one that I had to completely change direction on while developing it. Initially, I was dead-set on making one of these drinks a layered drink and the Gryffindor colors lent themselves to that pretty well (red mixed drink as the bottom half and then a golden/amber colored beer as the top half). Unfortunately most of my attempts at this either tasted good or looked good, but never both. Eventually I got sick of wasting beer and scrapped the idea.

The final drink came together pretty quickly when I decided I needed at least one riff on a classic cocktail here. Slamming together a Whiskey Sour and an Aperol Spritz ended up working pretty well for both color and ease of garnishing to add the gold. I will say that if

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES I were making this for myself I would use Campari instead of Aperol, but it has a very strong flavor so be careful with it. Oh and for those of you who are weirded out by the egg white, it’s just in there to make the pretty foam on top when you shake it. You can substitute aqua faba if you’re vegan, or just don’t want eggs in your drink, or even leave it out completely. The Basilisk Venom was a drink that I had wanted to make as an actual cocktail initially, the silver and green mixing together in a hazy swirl sounded extremely cool. Ultimately I just couldn’t get it quite right. I tried using Apple Pucker, Green Chartreuse and even tried to make my own bright green syrup, but it just never worked out how I wanted it to. But when I decided to switch gears and make it into a shot, it came together fairly quickly and now is more or less a Grasshopper as a shot, and it tastes like a York Peppermint Pattie (especially if you add the chocolate sprinkles, just make sure to crush them up a bit). The Honey Badger was similar to the Slytherin and Gryffindor drinks because I knew what I wanted from the beginning, I just had to make it work. The main problem that I ran into (and you all will as well if you make these yourself) is that the blackberry syrup just immediately mixes into the drink, turning the whole thing a weird red color.

Trying to thicken the syrup up by cooking out some of the water didn’t work, so I tried using cornstarch to mild success. Getting pretty desperate at this point I made a new batch with unflavored gelatin, put it in a squeeze bottle, and left it in the fridge overnight. So yeah, the picture above involved a whole lot of movie magic (and by this I mean blatantly cheating) to get it to look like that. If you’re going to make these for yourself or for a themed party, I wouldn’t bother going to this length to make it look perfect, just make the drink and then pour the syrup on top after.

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QUIBBLER CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES

Recipe for Noncarbonated Nonalcoholic Butterbeer

By Bubbles_The_Defender 32

CRAFTS, BREWS, AND HOBBIES QUIBBLER I have always wanted to try Butterbeer. However, there is one teeny tiny problem. I don’t like carbonation.

Why? I don’t know, Bubbles is weird. Let’s just say that my moniker isn’t a reference to soda bubbles. So for all who want to try Butterbeer without the bubbles, here is my adaptation of the recipe.

INGREDIENTS: 2 cups White Sugar (syrup part of recipe) 1 cup Water (syrup part of recipe) 1/8 tsp Lemon Juice 1 tsp Vanilla Flavoring (Not Vanilla Extract) 1 pint Heavy Whipping Cream 1 tsp Butter Flavoring (Can find in the baking aisle) 1 Tbl White Sugar (cream part of recipe) 2 Tbl Butterscotch Ice Cream Topping Mug-worth Water (final part of recipe)

STEPS: SYRUP

1.

Add the sugar and water to a medium saucepan over medium heat 2.

Stir frequently until sugar appears dissolved 3.

Add the lemon juice and vanilla flavoring 4.

Turn the heat to high and stir intermediately until you get a rolling bubble. Let the syrup boil for 10 minutes 5.

Turn off the heat and let the syrup cool In the meantime, while the syrup is cooling, make the whipped cream.

WHIPPED CREAM

1.

Add the heavy whipping cream, butter flavoring, and sugar to a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until you get light peaks (AKA, you can use a spoon (or hands) to loosely skulpt with the cream) 2.

Set aside in the fridge until ready to assemble

FINAL PRODUCT 1.

2.

3.

4.

Add 2 Tbl of Butterbeer syrup and the butterscotch to a mug Heat up water to almost boiling (as if you were making tea with the water) Pour the hot water into the mug and stir to combine Top with a dolp of the whipped cream and serve

NOTES:

For a less sugary, more molasses taste, make the syrup with brown sugar instead of white. The final beverage’s color will not be affected much despite the significantly darker syrup color. If you do use brown sugar, do not forget to pack down the sugar tightly into the measuring cup when measuring. Brown sugar reacts differently when being heated. If the bubbling sugar mixture looks like it may overflow, turn down the heat until it becomes more controlled but still boils.

The syrup can be canned and stored in the fridge for later use. One batch makes a large amount. The whipped cream will last for a week in the fridge if covered.

Swap the water out in the final step with carbonated water to make this recipe bubbly again.

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QUIBBLER DARK ARTS

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DARK ARTS QUIBBLER

I always liked cats. Always thought there was something compelling about a cat; something intriguing, the way they were always tranquil, always… above. Above everything, above any worry. And so one day one of them compelled me for real.

I’m not sure at what moment I began to realise. It started with the pose.

He showed up to me one day; showed up at my doorstep, like he was waiting for me when I arrived. Since the beginning, he acted like he had always been there, like he had always been my pet. I couldn’t think of a name for him – it was weird to name him, who seemed to have always been there. It was as if I tried to suddenly change the name of my pet cat of years.

So I left him without one. Also it seemed like I never needed a name for him, or he a name. Always the same pose.

It took me a while to realise that he didn’t meow. Only after much time did I realise I had never heard a single sound from him.

A meow, a growl. Always there, still, sitting, gazing. The pose and the gaze.

He gazed a gaze of one who sees.

Who knows. Who understands.

He looked around a room like he had built it. Everytime I arrived at a room in which he was, he was sitting, looking somewhere.

felt the ground and smelled the air, walking errantly and insecure, but getting more tranquil at each instant because of the absence of threats.

I put food in the pot, later the pot was empty. Sometimes he was hungry; I know because sometimes he would sit by the pot and look at me intensely, but when I put the food in it, he didn’t eat: he went on looking at me as if waiting for me to leave.

Sitting, he was so still that the rat must have thought him a statue and didn’t pay him any mind. I found the scene charming and smiled; it might be that I made some sound, because, sitting, he looked at me and, noticing I was there, went on to mechanically walk towards the rat.

Lazily he reached his paw, as if trying to grab the rat –who saw him and, jumping because of such a fright that it was painful to see, vanished from sight– but didn’t seem very convincing. I didn’t care. Still with the paw reached out, frozen in place, he looked at me expectantly.

The only moments in which he was not sitting were when he was walking, soon to sit down on another spot. I never saw him doing any activity like eating or drinking water either.

I would leave, later when I got back I would find the pot empty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lying down either. The only time I saw him break the austere pose to an end other than walking a few steps and presently sitting again was when a rat showed up.

I walked around the house lost in my thoughts, I walked slowly and stepped lightly. I appeared at the threshold of the living room and stopped, I was thinking about I don’t know what.

When I noticed it, he was there, on the terrace; sitting, of course.

He seemed also lost in thoughts, because he looked fixedly to any place and didn’t see the rat that

“You’re a normal cat,” I affirmed.

I don’t remember if I wanted to dissuade myself of the notion that there was anything strange in the scene, or comfort him telling him not to worry: I didn’t suspect him. He nodded thankful and went back to sitting, now with no rat in sight. Pursuance of the pose.

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From then on a tacit agreement between us happened, we could be more relaxed with one another, not needing to pretend too much. I think that was when I began to realise. I had already accepted that he liked to sit. I respected that. I wanted him to be comfortable. When he arrived in a room I always offered him all the options of places to sit.

If I was lying on the sofa and he arrived I stood up and, standing, waited for him to choose where he’d sit. Sometimes he looked at me and with a thanking nod climbed up onto the sofa and sat there. Sometimes he didn’t pay me much attention and sat on the floor. Once, I took a while to sit again on the sofa and he glanced at me with certain impatience. I noticed he didn’t like it very much when I acted excessively like a servant.

Recently he was sitting by the living room door which gave way to the terrace, staring at the front door and looking frequently at the clock on the living room wall. He awaited someone, I realised.

“Good,” I thought, “this way I’ll meet someone and won’t feel as alone, it’s been a while that I don’t go out.” I didn’t remember the last time I left the house.

“But what if it’s another cat?” I thought and laughed right after at my own thought. Always in the pose, on the terrace.

At 4pm someone rang the door-

36

bell. I had made my neck used to looking down, so that when I opened the front door, I saw the visitor that awaited, sitting, in front of my house. It looked like mine, it had greyish fur, but chalkier around the neck. Looking at the visitor who, sitting, looked at me; I almost didn’t notice the pair or legs that waited behind him. I followed the length of the legs, up, up, to the top. She looked like me I reckoned. But I couldn’t be sure, I didn’t know what appearance exactly I had at the moment.

door, we knew that it was time for something important. When they walked towards the front door, we followed them.

It was night and there was no one in the street. I must have gotten distracted on the way because I didn’t recognise the street in which we were, nor the house in front of which we stopped. Mine nodded for me to go on ahead, hers nodded for her to stay.

“I think you’re not ready yet,” I said; she didn’t say anything.

We sat on the living room sofa while the cats conferred in the kitchen in silence. They had walked by us without hesitation, going straight to the kitchen. Mine had looked at me and, with a nod, had signalled that we should wait there. The visitor hadn’t broken his gaze from the way ahead for a second, leaving the girl in an unknown house’s living room without any ceremony.

“Yours is not as gentle as mine, I think,” I said. She looked at me, with the same eyes as myself and didn’t say anything, just agreed. “What a shame.”

When they showed up at the

Mine went ahead and was already entering the house, going through the door that, somehow, was open. I don’t remember the route we took, I just remember being in the yard at the back of the house, in front of a person who looked at me frightened. There, I began to remember. Looking at the frightened expression, I remembered my fright; seeing his fear, I remembered my fear; the fear I felt and the fright I had, when it had been me. I remember the terror of losing control, the pain I felt. I remember the sensation of feeling invaded. Controlled. I remembered the times I tried

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to scream, but didn’t have a mouth, which preserved my throat from damage, but caused my head to ache a lot. I remembered not understanding. I remembered how many times I asked myself “What is it that he wants from me?” and, right on cue, the figure in front of me asked me:

[Note: this is a translation from the original in Portuguese; to find the original and more of this author’s writing, go to metamorfema.tumblr.com.]

“What do you want?” He said, trembling. “You can take everything you want.”

It was curious seeing him there, I could understand how he felt.

I saw myself in him; I understood his trembling legs, they had once been mine; I understood his panting breathing, it had once been me panting.

And so I got it. It really was very pleasurable. What the creature wanted in that moment, what I wanted now, was already being given us there; and it was delicious. How it was savoury.

And the more he trembled and asked what I wanted, the more he gave us what we wanted, just like I gave him what he wanted when it had been my turn.

The pleasure I felt at looking at the figure in front of me almost made the memories look pleasurable. The cat, in a jump, landed on the figure’s shoulder, the claws were out, being buried into the skin, the blood flooded out and stained the clothes. But the figure didn’t dare look to the side, it looked fixedly to me, I wondered if maybe he hadn’t realised the cat on his shoulder.

I don’t know with what appearance I should have been for him to look at me like that. When I got very close, was when I extended my hand over his face.

Once again the question “What do you want?”

“Your fear.”

Cat images by pch.vector at freepik

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Written By Hillary Hortum (silvertail8)

There’s hardly a witch or wizard who hasn’t heard of “Pokegum”, the latest in the hilarious and only slightly dangerous collection of prankster tools sold by Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. However, most haven’t heard of the dark side of this particular product.

Pokegum, the newest product to go flying off of the shelves at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, is a rather whimsical trick. The chewer of the gum needs only to blow a bubble, close it off, and propel it towards their victim to trap them for a maximum of fifteen minutes (although the bubble is impenetrable, it also allows oxygen and carbon dioxide to flow freely through its membrane). This feat of magical engineering genius can be squarely attributed to the main proprietor of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, George Weasley.

However, since its explosive debut on the wizarding scene early last year, Pokegum has turned out to have a rather interesting set of clientele. While most purchasers of the gum are students looking to embarrass their friends and professors, the product also does very well both with Aurors from the Ministry of Magic and a slightly more shady customer.

Although buyers of the gum now go through an under-the-radar background check, it is public knowledge that some early purchasers of the product were old Death Eaters or other supporters of the Dark Arts (the use of Pokegum, while limited in its early days, was witnessed at the Battle of Hogwarts). Since that horrific battle, Pokegum has been spotted being used in simple wand-point robberies, a few custody battles, and the occasional kidnapping.

While the gum has primarily been used to trap unsuspecting victims, it can also be used as a sort of emergency shield. In the event that a witch, wizard, or squib is caught without their Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes Shield Hat or Shield Glove, they can encase themselves in their Pokegum. Essentially, it doubles as a shield except for the small downside of not being able to apparate while in it. This does, however, lead to the rather hilarious situation where the person using a Pokegum as a shield must now run like a hamster in a ball to get away from their assailant.

As such, many junior Aurors at the Ministry of Magic have been issued a pack of Pokegum to be used “only in the most dire and desperate of circumstances”. Of course, while it does serve to protect the Auror for its fifteen minutes of life, it may have also been used for the pure hilarity of a person running about in a giant, pink, transparent ball.

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Number 3: All the Fear of the Fair, Evander’s Story The post-trial holding area at the Ministry of Magic is a cold, bare place. The walls, floor, and ceiling are solid stone, with a heavy door and no windows. The only furniture in the small space are two rickety chairs, and I cannot pretend I am not a little afraid as I take my seat and look into the eyes of the wizard occupying the other.

Evander Gerwald stares back at me, unflinching. He appears entirely relaxed, and were it not for the grim surroundings and the shackles around his wrists and ankles a casual observer would have no inkling that a mere twenty minutes earlier he had been sentenced to life in Azkaban for his part in the worst case of Muggle-Baiting tried in front of the Wizengamot in decades.

“I thought you only interviewed so-called ‘victims’, I do hope that you don’t consider me as such.” His right eyebrow raises and a smile plays at the edge of his lips.

When I tell him that it is my opinion that being a perpetrator and a victim are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the smile becomes more pronounced.

“The only thing I am a victim of is this ridiculous system that masquerades as Justice. If you’re expecting a tale of woe and misfortune then I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

Indeed I would be, as Evander grew up in a happy middle-class household in the popular village of Tippleton. The third son of Elliana and Ichabod Gerwald, owners of a popular local apothecary, by all accounts his childhood was near idyllic.

His siblings report that their parents were strict but very loving, and that as the ‘baby’ of the household Evander was showered with affection. How then, one 40

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wonders, did he become the type of man who would inflict pain and terror on others?

“After school I went abroad for five years to train as a wandmaker. It is not possible to become a wandmaker without studying and truly understanding the subtle intricacies of magic itself, if you are to build a successful conduit you must do so intuitively. I spent twenty-four months without touching any wood or core materials, purely learning to listen to my own and others’ magic. It does not come easy, and to many apprentices it does not come at all. You must understand, those of us who master this element, we feel magic in a way that the average witch or wizard will never know.”

Evander’s fingers splay as he turns his wrists in his cuffs to raise his palms to the ceiling, and I cannot help but jump in surprise when golden sparks dance across his open hands. The guard at the door shouts in alarm, provoking a deep chuckle from his prisoner as he balls his fists, smothering the residual magic. As the guard opens the door to shout for assistance, Evander leans forward, his voice so low I too have to lean forward to hear him.

“When you can sing to your magic, it can never be truly suppressed by potions or handcuffs.”

A second guard enters the room and an additional pair of handcuffs is snapped onto the prisoner’s wrists without a struggle. If anything, Evander looks amused by their efforts, and I find myself acutely aware that I am in the presence of a truly dangerous man. It is only when the second guard has left, and the first has returned to his post at the door, that Evander continues to speak.

“The first time I consciously felt my magic pooling in my gut was a rush greater than any intoxicant or emotion could ever invoke. To hear it whispering to me as it coursed through my veins and spread through my flesh, to push it out through my fingers and command it into being, it changed everything.” Evander’s eyes shine with hunger and something akin to pride. His lips part, exposing his teeth in an almost feral grin, and I find myself unconsciously shifting back in my seat.

Noting my reaction, Evander relaxes his posture and inclines his head in apology.

“I beg your pardon, it is a powerful memory. You have nothing to fear from me.”

One could argue that it is natural to be afeared of a man who has been convicted of the murder of twenty-seven muggles, and the grievous bodily harm of a further forty-six, however, it is certainly true that Evander Gerwald has never been implicated in any crime or incident involving magic folk. On the contrary, a great number of character witnesses were veritably queuing up to testify to the Wizengamot about the many charitable and altruistic acts attributed to Evander in the ten years since he returned to his childhood village as a qualified wandmaker.

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“My awakening to the true majesty of my magic was equally the dawning of my understanding about the necessity to protect our gift. The muggle world is ever expanding, their cities and their technology are ravaging our natural world, forcing magical society into smaller and smaller corners, making us hide like vermin.

They breed at a terrifying rate, and something must be done. Magic is precious.

We must overcome.”

As unsettling as this speech is, perhaps even more unsettling is the calm and matter of fact tone in which it is delivered. Evander is certainly charismatic, but he shows none of the showmanship often seen in those who seek to brainwash or capture their audiences. Equally, there is little overt menace or mania in his body language or cadence. Evander expounds his beliefs in much the same way that one may discuss the increase in property prices, or the current standings of the National Quidditch League. He is not trying to convince me, he is merely explaining the truth as he sees it.

When I ask him how this ‘understanding’ evolved into the incident on 31 October 2021, a shadow crosses his face, his lips drawing together tightly for a moment.

“It is,” Evander swallows before continuing, “regretful that such an incident became necessary. I take no pleasure in harming anybody, Muggle or otherwise, but the position in Tippleton had become intolerable. The muggles have been encroaching on the village for years, slowly destroying the magical fields and forests where my brothers collect the herbs and fungi for their apothecary. They built their boxy cookie cutter homes, and then built more, and then built more. Us residents had reached out to our local counsellor, had pleaded for discussions to be undertaken with the muggle authorities to protect our homesteads, preserve our right to our way of life, but to no avail. The muggles kept creeping closer, devouring our lands, and by summer last year the boundary between the muggle town and the village consisted only of the fields and one drystone wall. When they tried to take that too, well.” Evander shrugs lightly. “I had no choice.”

Whilst it is easy to sympathise with the concern that the village was coming under threat, it is certain that no reasonable wizard could agree with the action that Evander took when the muggle fair set up shop on the land adjoining the village boundary on 30 October 2021. Known as a ‘funfair’, the field was filled with large, noisy muggle machines referred to as ‘rides’ along with numerous tents housing games and food vendors. In the centre of the field, the main draw for the Halloween crowds was an attraction known as a ‘ghost train’; a large enclosed trailer with a mechanised car that takes riders along a track where there are mannequins, drop down models, and luminous paint designed to make riders jump and to portray a spooky atmosphere. It was here that Evander found the inspiration for his horrific vengeance.

“These muggles, they say they come to these places to be scared.” Evander waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. “All I did was give them what they claim to seek.”

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What he did was somewhat more extensive than that. As fairground workers were setting up the attractions on the morning of 31 October 2021, Evander and two alleged accomplices incapacitated them with a mixture of stunning spells and use of the imperius curse. They then layered numerous dark spells, curses, and jinxes across the many machines and games across the field, and in a horrifying yet impressive display of magic they were able to apply triggers to activate the magic in response to different factors, including time and number of muggles within the vicinity.

Department of Magical Law Enforcement interviews with surviving muggles shown in the trial described that the daytime festivities passed without incident, but that began to change as darkness began to fall and the crowds began to build.

Witness reports indicate that the first incidents were relatively minor in nature; muggles vomiting uncontrollably during specific rides, muggles speaking in tongues after eating the candy floss. In and of themselves, these could be classed as distasteful but not harmful muggle baiting incidents, but it is clear when looking at the evening as a whole that these incidents were not seen by the muggles for what they were, a warning.

When the festivities continued, the magic became more impactful and overtly dangerous. At 20:45hr, a new train of riders set off into the ghost train attraction.

There were ten muggle riders when the train set off. When it returned to the beginning of the ride, only three muggles remained conscious. Four were dead.

“It was supposed to take them all. There were sequential curses, to be triggered by the train passing. Severing curses mostly, intended to take them two at a time from the back of the train up to the front. I still don’t know why it didn’t work.

They won’t tell me.”

It didn’t work, I later learned, due to an error in the casting of one of the curses.

This error meant that whilst four of the curses triggered as intended, the middle curse did not trigger at all. The two muggles who had been seated in the third car, and who survived physically unharmed, were instead doomed to watch, helpless, as the riders ahead of them fell victim to the successful curses. DMLE experts later concluded that the third unharmed muggle had avoided the effects of the curse as they had been ducked down inside the car in an effort to avoid the spooky decorations, having not wanted to take part in the first place. The three injured muggles each lost limbs, and were only saved as a muggle medic on site was able to stem the bleeding shortly after the ride concluded.

Evander rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck from side to side as I ask him what he recalls of the evening.

“I was watching from my home, you know. I knew that things were starting because the sound of the screams changed. There had been screaming all day, but the pitch changed quite suddenly. It wasn’t pleasure any more, it was terror. And 43

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then I could see the magic from the other rides dancing in the night and the crowds surging down below. It was quite beautiful really, like a dance.”

What the fairgoers witnessed that evening was far from beautiful. In addition to the severing charms placed on the ghost train, spells throughout the fair resulted in muggles being tipped out of rides approximately 50 feet above the floor, spontaneous eruptions of flame from the seats of ride cars, and garrotting gas emanating from popcorn machines. Many muggles were injured not by the malicious magic, but as a result of crush injuries from the stampede for the exit. By 21:30hr the field was deserted but for the injured, dead, and muggle authorities. Due to the number of witnesses, most of whom had fled the site, Ministry officials were unable to locate all of the muggles present and therefore stories of the evening spread quickly through the local muggle population. Muggle newspapers reported a series of mechanical failures as the cause of the tragedy, and after the area was cleared following muggle investigations Ministry officials layered new protective and muggle-repelling wards around the circumference of the village to prevent any copycat occurrences in the future. This, Evander considers a victory.

“I’m sorry that those muggles had to lose their lives, I truly am, but it was necessary, and it worked. As a direct result of my actions, Tippleton is protected from future incursions. If the authorities want to blame anybody for this, they should blame themselves. But for their inaction, it would not have happened.”

Evander looks me dead in the eye as the second guard returns to take him to Azkaban, his gaze strong and proud.

“I would do it again.”

As he is led towards the door of the holding room to take the journey to what will be his final resting place, I remember to ask him the question. I ask him how he has been marked by the dark. Looking over his shoulder as he is hauled through the door, Evander flashes me a winning smile, and his words hang in the air of the room long after he has left.

“My dear, I haven’t been marked. I’ve been anointed.”

by u/neeshky illustrated by u/7ustine

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EDUCATION QUIBBLER I liked the book a lot; this was the first book by Jules Verne that I’ve read and I think this was a good start – I want to read other books by this author. “The Mysterious Island,” “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” are some of this author’s other titles that I want to read, among other books in French, and I hope to do a review for all of them.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth is very funny. The main characters are Axel (the narrator), the professor Otto Lidenbrock (Axel’s uncle) and Hans (the Icelandic guide) who aids the two Germans to arrive at Mount Sneffels, which is located at the entrance to the tunnel that ends up in the center of the Earth – according to Arne Saknussem, an ancient Icelandic scholar, whom professor Lidenblock likes and admires.

The professor is a very peculiar person, he is super curt, abrupt and not very gentle; so there are many lines that sound very impolite towards his nephew, but the nephew, you can notice, is, naturally, already used to the manners of his uncle and doesn’t get offended by his curt words.

The professor, by the way, doesn’t ever lose his hope that Arne Saknussem hasn’t lied to them and that the center of the Earth is really how he has said and that they’ll succeed in their goal of finding it. Axel doubts it very much, but the uncle always has an explanation for all the questions made by the nephew.

“You see that it is nothing and that the facts, following their

[26/05/2022] [by u/iguerr] [Translated from French by the author]

Small Review of A Journey to the Center of the Earth,

by Jules Verne AUTHOR’S NOTE: I DECIDED TO TRY AND DO A SMALL REVIEW/ COMMENTARY FOR THE BOOKS THAT I READ IN FRENCH AS A WAY OF PRACTICING. I JUST FINISHED RECENTLY READING A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD BY JULES VERNE AND WILL DO A SMALL REVIEW.

habit, have just denied the theories” (Chapter XXV).

The professor’s determination is, at times, amusing, because he gets to the point of being imprudent. Below are a couple instances: “Oh well, Axel, my uncle says, that’s that, and the most difficult part is done.

– How so, the most difficult part? I exclaimed.

– Without a doubt, now we just need to descend!

– If you look at it that way, you are right; but at the end, after having descended, it’ll be necessary to climb back, I imagine?

– Oh! that doesn’t bother much! (...)” (Chapter IX).

“It is allowed you to be shut, Axel, when you want to talk out of reason.” (Chapter XXV).

The professor also seems to make a lot of use of luck and chance. It seems that he isn’t afraid of dying in the journey, as long as arrives at his goal of finding the center of the Earth. “Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur” (Chapter XI). “And whatever road fortunes throws our way, it must be followed.”¹ ¹Our translation.

The book also presents us with beautiful descriptions of the things the three travelers find in the subterranean terrains, as Axel calls it sometimes.

“The undulations of these infinite mountains, which their layers of snow seemed to render foaming, called to my

memory the surface of an agitated sea. (...)

Where the land ended, where the waves began, my eye hardly distinguished” (Chapter XVI).

Here are some other quotes that I also find beautiful.

“I hardly thought about the sun, the stars, the moon, the trees, the houses, the cities, all the terrestrial superfluities of which the sublunar being has made a necessity. In our quality of fossils, we couldn’t care less about these useless wonders” (Chapitre XXV).

“Science, my boy, is made of mistakes, but mistakes which it is good to make, because they take us bit by bit to the truth” (Chapitre XXXI).

“If at each instant we can perish, at each instant we can also be saved” (Chapitre XLII).

[Editorial note: to find the original in French, as well as other writings from this author, go to metamorfema.tumblr.com]

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What if there was a language ... written by u/iguerr

H

ave you ever felt like you weren’t being heard well enough? That there was something in your communication that just wasn’t enough to have people hear or pay attention to you? Have you ever remarked that you seem to need to change your communication code to adjust to that of a dominant group in order to be seen and heard? That you needed to change your language in order to be heard, because there simply was no one who understood or cared to understand your language?

That’s a feeling very familiar to pretty much anyone who didn’t happen to be born in an anglophone country. Those people are –or should I say, We are – in most cases, bombarded with things telling us time and time again how very important English is, how very important it is for us, and for our success in whichever career we choose, to learn it. This often leads to the forming of a worldview in which one’s own native language (and culture!) is seen as less, in favor of English (and its culture!) being seen as superior.

What if there was a language… …that aimed to (help) solve this issue?

What if I told you that you are not alone! And that many, many, many other people around the globe have felt the same over the past century and that many of them have come together to try and build an egalitarian bridge in international communication!

Those hoping people believed that we need to see each other as equals

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in being part of the one humani- which our society was built. ty, instead of being part of different countries – and the way to do Taking a look at the history of how that is to connect in an equal and America (and that word here means democratic way. That does not, in the continent, not any single counany way, mean to make one for- try –I will get back to this in a moget one’s origins in favor of seeing ment–) was colonized allows us to oneself solely and “a citizen of the see very clearly how language plays world,” forgetting that one still is a a very important part in the domcitizen of one’s country, state, city, inating of a people. The European and whatever else. Quite the oppo- travelers who arrived at the New site! Those hoping people believe World hastily made efforts to erase that, being citizens of the same the native peoples’ cultures and world, we have to care about (and their languages were at the foretake care of) the place where we front of that. A language is the way come from, because it is part of the you name the world around you; world, therefore, it is important. That’s the Those hoping people bemain teaching of Eslieve that, being citizens of the peranto.

same world, we have to care about (and take care of) the place where we come from, because it is part of the world, therefore, it is important.

“But why”

–you might be thinking to yourself as you read this– “would we need another language to do that when English is already doing that job very well, thank you very much?” Well, I can’t say you’d be alone in this; many others would agree with you. But the answer for that question –which is very valid, mind you– is very simple.

English is egalitarian…

not

neutral,

or

…or, if I’m quite honest, very easy to learn. English is a very irregular language. Having received many influences from many sources and not having patterns very intuitive in the treatment of those influences, this language can present itself to be quite a challenge to many –if I’m not bold enough to say most– people in the world. But English’s irregular nature is not the main or biggest issue with its being our current lingua franca, there is yet one bigger issue. The English language performs the hodiern imperialism remnant of the foundation on

a language is a way of seeing the world. And therein lies a very delicate issue.

When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest. Its way of seeing the world will be dominant, and the other peoples of the world will have to adjust their world views to that of the dominant people.

names to the bulls, currently we have the United States as the most influential country in the world and its language is, naturally, also the most influential in the world. That leads us –the other peoples of the world– to see ourselves having our perception of the world molded by that of the most influential country in the world, which can be quite tricky and mess with one’s own identity. Here’s an example.

Portuguese is the official language of, amongst other eight counties, Brazil; and Brazil is, as I assume you probably already know, located in America. The word for America in Portuguese is América, and the word for American is Americano.

You can probably already see where I am going with this, so I will try to not take much longer. If Americano refers to one who comes from America and Brazil is in America, naturally Brazilians are Americans.

However, if you’re ever in Brazil and you hear anyone say the word americano, it is almost certain that that person will be referring to one who comes from the United States.

And it is yet more almost certain that that person probably doesn’t see themself as americana. Why is that? Because they have learned to

Allow me to speak in more practical terms – as says an old expression in my native language, Portuguese, It’s necessary to give names to the bulls and it means to say that we have to call things by their names, lest we lessen the seriousness of a situation due to the inopportune use of euphemisms. So, to give

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see the world from the perspective of an English speaker, even if they aren’t one themself.

This reminds me of an episode in which a situation like this happened in an almost embarrassing way. The host of the Brazilian version of the Dutch reality show Big Brother was announcing to the Unitedstatian viewers that the platform in which the show was streamed was now established in the United States.

The host then mentioned that “now you can access it over there in America'' which got me thinking, “If America is there, I wonder if maybe I’m floating around the Atlantic Ocean all this time and haven’t noticed it.”

Not recognising where you are in the world – that’s the power that a language can have.

“But we use English for globalization” –you might insist– “and that is about interchange between countries through the internet.”

You would not be wrong in that argument, simply misguided. Globalization is not fully practiced as it is in theory, and conveniently so.

Globalization is the idea of things assuming a global nature – our very experience as humans on this planet being, seen under the scope of being in connection with the experiences of other humans in other parts of the world. And that implies horizontality, meaning that everyone would be interested in knowing about everyone else.

Getting our focus a little away from America and taking a look at Europe, a while ago it had French as the regent lingua franca, and I am sure many people had a lot of struggles with dealing with French’s irregular phonetics. But being obligated to learn it either way because it was a means of social ascending and not mastering it meant, naturally, having less prestige.

So, as you can see, the issue lies in a fact aforementioned and subsequently quoted – “When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest.”

And that’s where Esperanto comes in – however long it may have taken

“So English is the devil itself, is it?”

As exposed, the issue with a natural language that is still alive being an international lingua franca is that the natural language never had the intention of being egalitarian in the first place. And that’s where Esperanto comes in.

You, possibly a native English speak-

For a quick context on how the

What happens is not quite that.

The reality is that the whole world occupies itself of consuming what is produced in the English language,

by English speaking countries, especially the United States.

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er, might be inquiring. And no, not at all, of course. As I mentioned before, America’s colonisation is a very good illustration in history of how languages are tools and in so being, can be used for good or evil. English was not the language used in Central and South Americas, and yet, the colonisation of those portions of the continent was no less cruel and abominable; Portuguese and Spanish were the main languages in those cases and likewise, were used to commit foul crimes against the native peoples.

EDUCATION QUIBBLER

idea for Esperanto came to be: its creator, a Pole man called L. L. Zamenhof, lived in a city that was undergoing a moment of critical conflicts between different groups.

Those groups, he noticed, spoke different languages and that made him wonder about how big a part the lack of a common, egalitarian language that was easy for all to learn played in the conflicts.

From there he had the idea of creating such a language. The core of Esperanto’s ideal is the idea of it having a very simple grammar and syntax, so that it is easy for everyone to learn, and of it being a language of all. Having been created, it is not the native language of any country, which makes it a language of the whole of humanity. It is a commonly shared conception –no matter how much scholars of linguistics may beg to differ– that a language is owned by those who speak it natively, meaning that Brazilians would have more propriety over Portuguese than a Chinese, for example, and simultaneously, the Chinese would have more propriety over Mandarin than I, a Brazilian; and so on. Esperanto doesn’t leave any room for such considerations, as no country has it as its native language, so no one has more propriety over it than someone else. Esperanto is a language of all and for all.

recognizing the Esperanto word “libro¹”; or if you are an English speaker (which I assume you are, if you got this far into this article), you’ll be able to easily recognize the word “tablo¹”.

The word “frato¹” means “brother,” the word “fratoj¹” means “brothers.”

If you are a German speaker, I expect you to not have much difficulty inferring that the words “fratino¹” and “fratinoj¹” mean, respectively, “sister” and “sisters.” And even less difficulty I expect you to have in inferring that the word “gefratoj¹” means “siblings.”

If you are neither a romance language speaker nor a German speaker, I trust these words still were easy enough to understand. ¹IPA: /ˈtablo/, /ˈlibro/, /’frato/, /’fratoj/, /fra’tino/, /fra’tinoj/, / ge’fratoj/

“So Esperanto is easy because it has an easy vocabulary?”

You might be meaning to ask me.

Well, no, of course not. A language is not a dictionary. And that means that a language is not made only of a grouping of words. There’s still syntax, of course, to care about, and grammar, and semantics. But these are all also very easy to grasp.

If you either don’t believe me and want to see it for yourself, or do believe me but would still like to see it for yourself just to be sure, you are in luck, because a comrade of mine, a teacher that goes by the name Ikvero, has been in touch with the editors of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course to learn their ways and create a KwikEsperanto (which is not how the course is actually called) course, published right here, on your known and loved Quibbler.

Its creator, L. L. Zamenhof, spoke a few languages and studied a handful of others in order to get what is the most simple and logical of each language family and combine it all into one intuitive grammar. The result is that you can easily identify the similarities between Esperanto and natural languages, even recognizing where Esperanto got some words from. For example, if you’re a speaker of a romance language, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty

Illustrations by pikisuperstar via Freepik

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RAPIDEO – KLASO 1

LA KURSO PER KIU VI RAPIDE LERNOS ESPERANTON (ESPEREBLE)!

by Professor Ikvero Saluton al ĉiuj! Mi nomiĝas Ikvero kaj mi estos via Esperanto-instruisto!

If you can’t understand anything I’ve just said, don’t worry, you will very soon (and that is not meant to sound as a threat, although if pretending that I’m threatening you with teaching you Esperanto is something that helps your learning, you’re free to take it that way!).

If you are here, I assume you read Iguer’s article and that it worked! So welcome, welcome to the first edition of RapidEO, the course through which you will Kwikly©2 learn Esperanto¹!

Without further ado, let’s dive right into it!

Let’s begin taking a look at Esperanto grammatical rules. Let’s dive into ALL– OF– THE–… sixteen of them? Yes, that is not a mistake; only sixteen of them. Although that can be debatable, it is, nonetheless, a nice way of illustrating how simple this language is. Before we begin, let’s check out the Esperanto alphabet so that we can know and understand all 28 letters and their sounds. Then, we can get to the first three rules.

Esperanto-Alfabeto The alphabet of Esperanto has five vowels; they are: Aa, Ee, Ii, Oo and Uu. The 23 consonants are: Bb, Cc, Ĉĉ, Dd, Ff, Gg, Ĝĝ, Hh, Ĥĥ, Jj, Ĵĵ, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Pp, Rr, Ss, Ŝŝ, Tt, Ŭŭ, Vv and Zz. You have probably noticed that the letters Qq, Ww, Xx and Yy are not included.

And you must be wondering how to pronounce all of these weird letters. Worry not, the phonology of Esperanto is very simple: each letter has one sound and one sound only; each sound is represented by one letter and one letter only. Below you’ll find the letters along with their IPA transcriptions. If you are not familiar with IPA, you can go to the attachments section, by the end of this article, to find the ATTACHMENT I, which has a link to a platform called Lernu!, which is a very big and vastly used platform for Esperanto-learning. There, you’ll find a page with audio tracks for each sound, as well as a word to exemplify!

The author is not making any real promises and therefore can’t be held judicially responsible for any frustrations readers might feel in the face of not successfully learning Esperanto with this correspondence course.

1

The author has not consulted with his legal team before mentioning this trademarked brand. The author, quite honestly, doesn’t actually have a legal team. And so the author dearly hopes that including the copyright symbol should be enough to avoid any lawsuits.

2

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TABLE 1

VOWELS

Letter

Aa

Ee

Ii

Oo Uu

IPA

/a/

/e/

/i/

/o/

/u/

TABLE 2

CONSONANTS

Letter IPA

Bb /b/

Cc /ts/

Ĉĉ / ʧ/

Dd Ff /d/ /f/

Letter IPA

Ll /l/

Mm Nn Pp /m/ /n/ /p/

Rr /r/

Might seem confusing, but trust me, it’s only a matter of getting used to it. Once you get the gist of it, the letters and their sounds will flow naturally.

Now that we know the alphabet and how to pronounce each letter, let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the rules of Esperanto.

One: there is no indefinite article.

Some languages have many articles.

Some, like French, have one for masculine singular – le; one for feminine singular – la; and another for both masculine and feminine plural – les; and that’s only for the definite ones! Or my own native language, which has o, os, a, as3. Or even German, which has three articles in the nominative, which assume other forms

Gg Ĝĝ Hh Ĥĥ Jj /g/ /ʤ/ /h/ /x/ /j/ Ss /s/

Ŝŝ /ʃ/

Tt /t/

Ŭŭ Vv /w/ /v/

Ĵĵ /ʒ/

Kk /k/ Zz /z/

for each of the other three grammatical cases4 of the language.

English is simple, it has two articles only: one indefinite (a, which can become an for phonetic reasons) and one definite (the). Esperanto is simpler: it has one single article (la), and it is definite. Indefinite articles? Throw ‘em away, you don’t need all that complication in your life! If you want to talk about something indefinite, just don’t define it, it’s as simple as that.

So we have → la kato meaning the cat; Whereas → kato means a cat or simply cat.

Similarly → la hundo means the dog; Whereas → hundo means a dog or simply dog.

So if I say to you → Mi havas prob-

In order: masc. sing., masc. pl., fem. sing., fem. pl.

3

If you are not familiar with what grammatical cases are, see ATTACHMENT II in SOURCES.

4

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lemon, meaning to say that I have a problem; You may answer → Mi vidas la problemon, meaning I see the problem.

The marking of plural comes after the -o that marks that that word is a substantive. So a substantive in the plural will end in -oj. If we go back to the sounds of the letters, we’ll remember that the letter “j” in Esperanto sounds like a semivocalic “i”. So the ending -oj sounds like what each of the syllables of the word “yo-yo” would sound like if read backwards.

And that’s it for articles.

Two: all nouns, or substantives5, end in -o.

Those who come from romance languages –which (mostly) have -o as a marker of masculine– might be frowning, but as you may have already guessed, there are no grammatical genders in Esperanto.

So the ending in -o doesn’t have anything to do with gender!

The plural in Esperanto is a bit different.

It doesn’t use the addition of an “s” like many languages do. The plural in Esperanto is formed by adding a -j at the end of the word.

Now that we know that all substantives end in -o, let’s get back to the alphabet real quick. The names of the letters are, naturally, substantives. And if every substantive ends in -o, so do the names of the letters! Or at least, the consonants.

The vowels are already their own name.

So let’s take a look again at the alphabet, now looking at their names (and IPA transcriptions):

Yes, a -j. I know it seems crazy; I used to think so, too, when I was learning it. But I came to quite like it, because this way it is very difficult for one to confuse a word in the singular and one in the plural!

TABLE 3

CONSONANTS

Bo /bo/

5

52

Co Ĉo /tso/ /ʧo/

Do Fo /do/ /fo/ No

Po

Go Ĝo Ho Ĥo /go/ /ʤo/ /ho/ /xo/

Lo

Mo

Ro

/lo/

/mo/ /no/ /po/ /ro/

Here on after to be referred to as the latter.

Jo /jo/ Vo

Ĵo /ʒo/

So

Ŝo

To

Ŭo

Zo

/so/

/ʃo/

/to/

/wo/ /vo/ /zo/

Ko /ko/

EDUCATION QUIBBLER

Three: all adjectives end in -a.

Once again, not a gender marker, simply a syntactic one. If you spot a word ending in -a in a sentence, rest assured that that is an adjective. Spot the word ending in -o next to the adjective, and

Granda problemo

or

Problemo granda Bela kato

or

Kato bela Rapida hundo

or

Hundo rapida

and so forth.

One behavior that adjectives have different in Esperanto than what they do in English, is that they must always agree with the substantive in number. This Grandaj problemoj

or

Problemoj grandaj Belaj katoj

or

Katoj belaj Rapidaj hundoj

or

Hundoj rapidaj

you have the substantive being described by said adjective.

Also, adjectives can come by either side of the substantive, although it is more common for you to see them coming before, just like in English. So:

☞

A big problem

☞

A pretty cat

☞

A fast dog

means that adjectives will gain a plural form when describing a substantive in the plural. The good news is that the form is the same as the substantives: addition of a -j. So:

☞

Big problems

☞

Pretty cats

☞

Fast dogs

and so forth.

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I believe that’s enough information for today!

I hope I managed to spark your interest in that beautiful and cool (and ridiculously easy) language. See you again in the next issue with another Esperanto-klaso! And here I believe that a friendly reminder is in place that Esperanto is available on Duolingo from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish6!

Lastly, if in the meantime you want to contact me, I’ll be happy to hear from you! I am not on many social media myself, only on Tumblr, where my username is Ikvero. But Iguer happens to also be my personal assistant and will gladly pass on any messages you have for me! He is u/iguerr on Reddit and iguer#6744 on Discord!

Ĝis la revido!

SOURCES ATTACHMENT I: Wikipedia page on grammatical cases: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case>.

ATTACHMENT II: Lernu! page on the Esperanto alphabet and its sounds: <https://lernu.net/gramatiko/skribo>.

The author (unfortunately) is not being paid to advertise to Duolingo, Inc., but he sure does hope that one day Duolingo, Inc. will offer him a position.

6

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EDUCATION QUIBBLER

Degrees of Decrees

By Lillian Lowis (silvertail8)

From the archives of the Ministry of Magic’s Hall of Records, we have unearthed some of the more bizarre Educational Decrees pushed through the, then very relaxed, approval process. With the sort of offhand, definitely viable permission of the Minister, (I believe her exact words were: “I’m sorry, you want to publish what?”), here are some of the most outrageous!

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This particular Educational Decree was instituted in April. Incidentally after Dolores Umbridge and several students turned into flamingos in the middle of her Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Apparently the professor wasn’t too pleased when she had finished molting to find all of her students in stitches on the ground.

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I’m told that a rash of “Pokegum” infested the school several months after the unfortunate Flamingo Custard incident. Pranksters of all sorts rushed to get their hands on this Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes product (Peeves was apparently very nearly lethal and somehow caused several students to end up in the hospital wing. To his credit, he was aiming for Professor Umbridge.). Apparently, the product allowed the bubble gum blower to create a ball from which their victims cannot escape for fifteen minutes.

Surprisingly, as George Weasley remarked in a recent article, this particular product remains very popular with Aurors from the Ministry of Magic.

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As the story goes, a student (probably a 7th year) thought it would be a good idea to bring a Wolpertinger to their Care of Magical Creatures class. A creature with antlers, fangs, and wings, the Wolpertinger is surprisingly gentle but is also known to eat voraciously and poop just as much. Unfortunately, for the student – but also rather predictably, their Wolpertinger grew bored in the back of Professor Umbridge’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class and began to chew through a cabinet of Dark Arts artifacts. Sturdy and with incredible digestive tracts, the Wolpertinger was perfectly fine but the same could not be said for the cabinet.

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Apparently the student then attempted to escape the wrath of Dolores Umbridge by riding their Wolpertinger to safety. The Wolpertinger, skidding around corners and flying into suits of armor, eventually ended up in the Great Hall where the endless food put an end to the escape. Completely ignoring the panicked commands of the student, the Wolpertinger decided to tuck into a nice afternoon snack. (Thankfully, the Wolpertinger is not usually in the mood for human flesh) There are many more ridiculous and hilarity-inducing decrees but these were the first few expertly picked out by our new intern, Gladis Glipp. Thankfully, soon after Dolores Umbridge vacated her position as interim Headmistress, Rufus Scrimgeour negated all of these decrees as one of his first acts when he became Minister of Magic. The students of Hogwarts are still allowed to chew gum, eat snacks in class, and even bring their pets onto the castle grounds (although most professors still prefer that you leave them in your dormitory).

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Rhyme #1 The sky white Like a veil that covered Milk that spilled and soaked The air still Like a statue played Like the heat had scared and bored *** The white of the sky the cloud mixes and then is the line in no longer existence the white of the one with the other till heightens together like so they go and no stitches layer on layer the forming of antlers and harder 60

ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER

becomes the job of the framers but I try.

The white mixes the existence till it heightens.

Stitches of antlers – no measures.

Launches the framers in textures and softness that feigns having pureness however they’re jokers they’re tricky mistreaters one’s even to burners and murmurs: what suckers.

~ by iguerr

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I wish I had a time turner I’d try all things new!

I’d finally be a fast learner Improve my potions’ brew!

I wish I had a time turner I’d make my big breakthrough!

I’d become a big earner And travel the world, too!

I wish I had a time turner The things that I would do!

I’d get things off the back burner And spend more time with you <3

Rysler

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PaPer MayheM - Part 3

By Eldis_

Now that I have gotten my scissors back from Mrs V (see Spring ‘22, pp. 46-9) and answered Mr. Zearing’s letter (see Fall ‘21, pp. 83-5), let’s finish looking at the notes of my colleagues, shall we?

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THIS IS ONLY FUN WHEN IT IS SOMEONE ELSE’S NOTES WE ARE LOOKING AT!! NOT MY POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL PLANS TO FORCE THE ENTIRE MAGICAL COMMUNITY TO SUBMIT STUFF TO THE QUIBBLER! INCENDIO!!

INCENDIO!!!!!

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Evolving Queer Media and the Realities of Challenged Identities A Heartstopper Case Study Written By: Eda Salad (Nam3Tak3n33) Layout By: SinsationalDoom

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

In

recent years, there has been a marketed increase in consumable mainstream gay media. With the commercial success of films such as Love Simon, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name, the big screen has become home to cutting edge queer art in a decidedly progressive way. But it isn’t only the big screen that has embraced fringe identities and sexualities.

Television, too, has given gay characters a place to call home. With the recent success of series such as Young Royals, Heartstopper, and Love Victor, gay stories are more mainstream now than they ever were before.

Even outside of film and television we are seeing a definitive shift towards queer acceptance in media. Musicians, openly gay professional athletes, and respected TV journalists show that queer visibility is more accepted now than it ever has been in the past.

66

This isn’t to say that this is an entirely new phenomenon. Movies such as My Cousin Vinnie, Brokeback Mountain, and Beautiful Thing, and television shows such as Will & Grace and Queer as Folk have their own respected places in the gay media cannon. But as films and television media of the past have dealt with queer identities as struggles to overcome or endure, recent additions to gay media have empowered gay characters and celebrated their fringe identities. Too, recent additions in gay media have taken a particular interest in gay youth identity. Young people who are coming to terms with their identities have proven to be marketable additions to film and television in recent years.

The question that is immediately apparent is whether or not recent gay media is truly moving queer identities away from the margins of society as they once were, or whether or not these new additions to media are simply creating a new space, an “other” space if you will, in which these stories can safely exist without actually shifting

ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER

Official Promotional Image for Heartstopper

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societal attitudes and behaviors towards queer people in a positive way. And, on the heels of this, is what this means for the people that don’t live within the confines of carefully scripted stories.

That is, how real are these stories? Are they relatable? Is it useful to craft these stories in a way that glosses over, or only deals with in the most superficial ways, the real struggle of queer youth? And, perhaps most importantly, why does it matter?

Perhaps the best way to describe a story like this is that it’s like bubblegum. It’s sweet, fun, artificial, and tough to swallow. Before I am accused of being a bitter old queen, allow me to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this series – so much so that I watched it a second time.

But the feeling that I had both times after finishing was one of longing and perhaps even misplaced sadness. This story was neatly packaged and confidently delivered, but there was something about its artificiality that

I recently had the pleasure of watching Heartstopper on Netflix. This show, adapted from a book by Alice Oseman, follows a group of teenagers at grammar school in Great Britain. The protagonist, Charlie, finds himself in a secret romance with his schoolmate and rugby teammate Nick who is struggling to come to terms with his own sexuality and what it means for his place in the high stake’s world of high school social status. Ultimately, for now at least, Nick and Charlie decide to throw caution to the wind; they profess their mutual attraction and tell their friends (and mother, in the case of Nick). All is well.

It’s sweet. But is it too sweet?

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Official Promotional Image for Love, Victor

It’s sweet. But is it too sweet?

didn’t sit right with me.

Being an academic, I tried to analyze these feelings. The first conclusion that I came to was that my feelings of longing and sadness were rooted in some unresolved childhood jealousy. That because these two fictitious, conventionally attractive boys were

ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER

But I don’t think that’s the whole picture.

...television shows...paint the world with beautiful rainbow brushstrokes that are in many ways tone deaf...

world today.

The

characters in Heartstopper exist in a world where teasing is the extent of the social hardships. This isn’t to downplay the seriousness of bullying in schools, but the fact that the bullying doesn’t go beyond light jabs and throw-away comments makes this scripted world a veritable utopia compared to the real world of many gay youths today. Charlie’s parents and sister are accepting, he has a fiercely loyal friend group, a supportive art teacher and a protective coach who both act as shields in a school where there seems to be only one outwardly antagonistic character with homophobic leanings.

Official Promotional Image for Call Me By Your Name

able to find each other – in an environment where there is arguably little other hardship to experience – it somehow negatively reflected or invalidated my own experiences as an overweight fem gay teen in Texas in the early 2000s.

Juvenile as this is, it’s important to expose my own prejudices, for want of a better word, in order to fully explore the evolution of gay media with some degree of transparency.

But what does this mean for the big picture? How does this impact an

It’s certainly a part of it – that the experiences of these characters made me yearn for the connections that I never had – but it’s also fair to point out that my experience was not unique either then or now. The fact is, these new explorations into queer youth identity in television shows such as Heartstopper and movies such as Love Simon paint the world with beautiful rainbow brushstrokes that are in many ways tone deaf to the identities and experiences of gay youth in the real 69

QUIBBLER ENTERTAINMENT

audience’s understanding of gay youth identity? And how do young gay viewers perceive these stories?

Official Promotional Image for HeartStopper

A potential problem arises when we consider that because stories such as these don’t adequately address the very real struggles of gay youth identity, they don’t challenge society to make positive change in the present. That is, these characters might exist outside the “real world” but the people whom their identities are based on do not. Series and movies such as Heartstopper and Love Victor have given greater visibility to gay youth identity and there is no

question that representation is an important factor in breaking down societal exclusions of queer voices in the entrenched territorial claims of heterosexual media. But there is an important question of how these stories are perceived. Because stories and characters such as this are highlighted – and celebrated among mainstream audiences – does it take away from the lived experiences of real people whose 70

How does this impact an audience’s understanding of gay youth identity?

lives aren’t as rosy? In many ways, my concern is an extension of my previous feelings of longing. My initial reaction of “why didn’t this happen to me,” can just as easily be experienced by a young gay person watching these stories saying “why isn’t my life this good.”

And, to extend from this, if these struggles aren’t acknowledged as more queer stories are being told, does the expanding library of queer media do a disservice to the youth that they are purporting to portray?

These new stories exist in a world of their own within gay media. They exist in a universe that is only tangentially

ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER

Official Promotional Image for Young Royals

related to our own. The fact is, experiences like Nick and Charlie’s are rare. They’re beautiful, uplifting, and positive, but they are nevertheless rare.

Not every gay youth story has the happy ending of expanded friend circles,

supportive adult role models, loving parents, and reciprocated attraction, and it’s important to remember this when looking at gay media in the aggregate. While gay media of the past explored the realities of challenged identities, stories such as Heartstopper do not.

For an outsider, my concerns might be unfounded. That is, if you have not experienced gay youth, you might assume that these stories are just that.

Stories. The truth is, however, that these stories carry with them the weight of an identity that is challenged and actively mobilized against within youth societies.

To be sure, Heartstopper addresses this concern, albeit briefly, in that it references “last term” when Charlie was bullied for his identity. But what changed between then and where the story picks up? Sure, Charlie seems like an outsider at the beginning of the story, but his support network of friends, family, and teachers seemed pretty extensive. That is, even the mention of an off-camera pre-story bullying seemed to be resolved neatly. For viewers who have not experienced the identity-targeted mobilization, this omission could be conveniently overlooked. However, for those of us who have experienced it, the omission is a painful reminder that Heartstopper fails to address some of the more difficult realities of gay youth identity.

The fact is, these types of happy and positive queer stories haven’t existed in the mainstream before, and it’s important that they do. It’s important to show queer youth that there is happiness to be found, and that life won’t always be a struggle. Stories such as these can show queer youth that they are indeed not alone, and that there are others in the same generation that are experiencing similar confusions.

However, representation in media must also validate the struggles that young queer people experience. With Heartstopper for example, the bullying has all but subsided for Charlie, and Elle’s identity is affirmed and valued by not only her friends but also

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her parents and school before the story even begins.

I argue that shows like Heartstopper fill in a missing piece of queer media.

Consider these series to be analogous to the 90s “chick flick.” It’s not super substantive, there aren’t many boundaries that are pushed, and they don’t challenge the status quo. And that’s okay. It’s fine that these types of stories with their perfectly manicured characters and settings exist, so long as we are aware that they are fictitious.

Stories like this do not hold the proverbial mirror up to society, and problems only arise if that is what they claim to do, or if it is what people perceive them to do.

Stories such as Heartstopper, in many ways, deserve a new category within gay media; a category that is reserved for pure escapist fantasy. Heartstopper doesn’t fit with the Queer as Folks or the Will & Graces of the past other than it features gay leading characters. These stories are all together new and they deserve their own space in which to be enjoyed. Labeling a story as escapist does not make it any less enjoyable or impactful, but it does set the expectation that “real life” is being put on pause.

These stories exist outside of our reality, and if they continue to be made (which I believe they will) it’s important to compartmentalize them in a way that allows them to be enjoyed, but also acknowledges that they don’t challenge queer exclusion in any great or 72

Stories such as Heartstopper, in many ways, deserve a new category within gay media; a category that is reserved for pure escapist fantasy. meaningful way. That is, the creation of gay characters does little to ameliorate the current realities and struggles of gay youth identity – but they don’t have to.

Without question, there is value in stories like this. They show us what the world could be; a world where parents, teachers, and (most) other classmates accept identities that are different from their own. But in order to get to that world, we must face the realities of our own.

Happy Pride, Eda

Eda Salad (any pronouns) is a semiprofessional drag queen and Masters of Arts candidate in International Relations. Her concentration is in Sustainable Development and Conflict Transformation, and her primary area of research is in Queer Security. She has recently published on political homophobia in Senegal, and is currently writing on religious colonialism and queer identity in East Africa. She can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch @EdaSalad

ENTERTAINMENT QUIBBLER

‘Rainbow Whizz!’ artwork by JesiDoodli

‘Summer On The Grounds’ artwork by silvertail8

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MAGICAL PLANTS AND CREATURES QUIBBLER

They're beaten (sometimes daily), worked to exhaustion, and forced to lurk in the shadows; our invisible and unacknowledged helping hands.

The rights of a house elf are, even to this day, not widely acknowledged.

Have we moved forward with legislation in the

Ministry of Magic so that they can one day be guaranteed the same workers rights as wizards?

Yes. But this does not mean that the fight is over.

All across the country, house elves continue to work in the wealthiest of our homes as second-class citizens. Hardly earning more than a galleon every two weeks, they cook our food, they clean our dishes, and they perform vital child-sitting duties. How have we thanked them?

Is there an International Elf Day to be celebrated?

Is their vacation time and sick leave competitive with the current market?

No. While we have taken small steps towards a better future for our elven friends, the marked bold strides of progress still lie in our distant future. So what can you, the average wizarding citizen, do for your house elf friends?

If you have a friend who There are a few options. is a house elf, you can If you employ a house elf, support them by lending you can increase their an ear or a shoulder when salary to a competitive rate, they need it and by signing allow them an increased this petition which, if time off each month that passed and approved grows every half decade of by the Department employment, and you can of Magical Creatures, eliminate the punishment will prohibit the use of of physical discipline that corporal punishment has run so rampant in the for any creature who is unfortunate enslavement in the employ of a witch of house elves. or wizard. (Please note

Invisible Hands The rights of house elves

They cook our food, they clean our dishes, and they perform vital child-sitting duties. How have we thanked them?

that this will also extend to the alleged dreadful treatment of any possible dragons who perform services at Gringotts Bank.)

elven quarters within a wizarding household to have appliances and utilities that are elf-sized.

A stretch goal for the future will be to allow Next steps for the wider house elves to carry wands wizarding world include as fully-fledged citizens educating the public as of the wizarding world. much as possible to the horrific conditions house elves are subjected to while in the employ of witches and wizards, hearing from elven representatives on the rights they are eager to fight for, and making the wizarding world more elf-friendly on the whole. While they have their own brand of magic which aids them in many day-to-day activities, it is important for any

While the concept may terrify many witches and wizards, it's an important step in making sure that the world we live in is just as much their home as it is ours. Goblins have been fighting for this right since the moment the wizarding world acknowledged them as sentient beings and still haven't overturned the provisions our ancestors fearfully put in place.

While this may seem like a distant future, take a moment to imagine a world where house elves, goblins, and other magical creatures feel at home living alongside witches and wizards; a world

where a young witch or wizard is just as likely to be schooled in the magical art of blacksmithing as they are to be educated in Herbology. Plenty of people in the magical world fear that giving power to other magical creatures will mean but we would do just as well to dream about what benefits these new connections would bring us.

written by silvertail8

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QUIBBLER NEWS AND FEATURES Vol. 01 No. 01

July 2022 Issue

YOU CAN’T WAIT TILL YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS! Hello, my dear QUIBBLERers and QUIBBLERettes!

It is with extreme happiness that I finally resume this section – after much fighting and arguing with the editors! It is my impression that they are afraid of what might come to light if I get the space I deserve, because they know that I have one duty and that is with the truth and bringing it to light. I dedicate my life to bringing to you the most accurate and unbiased news on what’s going on in our surroundings.

Unfortunately this is a virtue that scares many, and so ever since I helped found this magazine, I have been paid with ingratitude and have been silenced. But no more! Just like that quote from that dear poet Edwar Allan Poe that reads “Quoth the raven / ‘Not this anymore!’” Now the time to bring true news has come, so fear not, my dear reader!

However, although it is with great joy that I resume this section, I have to say that it is also with a heavy heart that I take on the duty I have set upon myself. The circumstances that have made my return necessary are alarming! We have appalling headlines ahead of us, I’m afraid. Looks like the world –Wizarding or not– is simply upside down!

–Your dear Geraldine Julienne

BRAINWASHING hazard: Iguana wants to END linguistic diversity!

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Vicious new species of iguana has acquired sentience and is on the rise in THE QUIBBLER. Oh what are they doing with our once so great magazine! Long past are the days in which I was Editor in Chief of THE QUIBBLER and it saw its prime time, but sadly I had to take a leave of absence for personal reasons and things have clearly gotten out of hand – even iguanas can publish here! That’s just plain outrageous, if you ask me.

And what’s more, this newly sentient being has some evil plans on its mind. It wants to cast a SPELL on us to BRAINWASH us and end all linguistic diversity, claiming that having natural languages is an issue to minorities and so, we should abolish all natural languages and adopt one single made up language created by a muggle! I am besides myself wondering how no one has informed a Law Enforcement Agent yet to take this delinquent beast to the Zoo Jail.

NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER

Well, these teens nowadays love a quirky come-up so I am really afraid that maybe this Esperando language might spark their interest and, next thing we know, we have a cultist youngsters problem to worry about. But what I really don’t get is the name – I mean, if you mean to start a cult to destroy an innocent community, please at least have some style and think of a proper name! As you already know, I’m a specialist in romance languages and can tell you that the word esperando comes from Castellano (a fancy name for Spanish), a language spoken in Castellana (a fancy word for Spain, of course), and it means “waiting.” I wonder what they are waiting for. I certainly won’t wait for them to strike and am on my way to alert the authorities about this new terrorist threat, and I advise you to do the same, dear Quibblerers and Quibblerettes.

–Your dear Gealdine Julienne

Travel notice: I’m on my way to a FIELD RESEARCH; a story soon to be told right here, in THE QUIBBLER. I’m about to embark on a journey, my dear Quibblerers and Quibblerettes! And a journey much, much more tremendous and dangerous than all that nonsense about the center of the earth about which that iguana has been writing lately – or so I’ve heard. Honestly, where does it end with this senseless beast?!

Well, my journey will be to a much more interesting place and for a much more important purpose – which is to discover the TRUE – the REAL – the AUTHENTIC – origin of THE QUIBBLER. Where does it come from? Where did it originate? Who created it? Or did it just happen to pop into existence like many believe? Was there a long forgotten time before THE QUIBBLER existed? Many claim so… many deny so–. And so, if no one is courageous enough to go check the facts, I’ll take upon myself to do it. Some say I’m crazy; Yes, I say, crazy about bringing the truth to light.

And so I say my farewell for now, my dear QUIBBLERers and QUIBBLERettes and I ask you to wish me luck.

–Your dear Gealdine Julienne

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Dark Artistry: A Step Tattoo Far? By u/neeshky

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NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER

In a move that caused outrage across Wizarding Britain, Draco Malfoy this month continued his Diagon Alley modernisation project with his most controversial venture yet. After decades of eschewing his chequered past, Mr Malfoy, 41, has instead decided to turn his teenage experience in He-Who-Must-NotBe-Named’s inner circle into his latest money spinner.

Dark Artistry magical tattoo parlour opened its doors to a storm of protest on Friday 1st April, and whilst some initially hoped that it was indeed a bad joke it seems that all publicity is good publicity, with lines of prospective customers forming down the alley every weekend since. Indeed, it seems that an enchanted inking from Dark Artistry is the new must-have accessory for the fashionable crowd, with celebrities and CEOs alike making private appointments.

Whilst tattoos have long been popular in the muggle community, prior to the launch of Dark Artistry they were rarely seen in the wizarding populace. What makes Dark Artistry pieces special, however, is the mysterious magic element, and it is something that has only been seen once before in wizarding memory. Mr Malfoy has declined repeated requests for interview, but in a statement released shortly after launch he acknowledged that the parlour draws on the hitherto unknown secrets of YouKnow-Who’s Dark Mark to enchant the inkings. Whilst this caused significant public concern, Mr Malfoy has insisted that the tattoos created at Dark Artistry do not in fact draw on dark magic or contain any harmful or nefarious elements.

The process itself, however, will remain a closely guarded secret known only to the artists employed by the business, with all customers required to make an unbreakable vow that they will allow themselves to be voluntarily obliviated when their tattoo is complete.

What isn’t a secret is that the designs

coming out of Dark Artistry are both impressive and intriguing, and each one is unique. Singing sensation Jasmine Lark has been seen sporting a Cestrum Nocturnum tattoo on which the flowers open up at night and close again come morning. Best-selling author Leopold Papyra has a quill that writes a new literary quote around his wrist each day.

Wizarding wireless shock jock Electra Sharpe is reported to be delighted with her design of a thestral that slowly reveals itself before fading back into the skin. It seems that the possibilities are endless, and so in the name of research, the Quibbler sent one intrepid reporter to Diagon Alley to brave the needle and get her own unique inking and give us the inside scoop on the hottest ticket in town.

The atmosphere in Dark Artistry is heavy with mystery and anticipation. The decor speaks of opulence and exclusivity, with rich deep colours and plush furnishings. One wall houses a price list and potential options: communication tattoos, basic movement tattoos, daily cycle tattoos, monthly cycle tattoos, seasonal cycle tattoos, annual cycle tattoos, and the somewhat cryptic ‘special request’ tattoos. Prices start at an eye-watering 50 galleons for the smallest basic movement images, with an annual cycle tattoo setting you back a minimum of 200 galleons, and ‘special requests’ at prices to be determined per request.

Accompanying the price list is a range of photographs of the artists’ work, including a garden that flowers and fades with the seasons, a clock that keeps real time throughout the day, and a matching pair of parchments that allow the wearers to write messages to one another.

The artist, who has opted to remain anonymous in this article, explained to our reporter that there are few limits on what can be achieved and that each client must come up with their own concept for their inking. Dark Artistry do not 79

QUIBBLER NEWS AND FEATURES

do repeat designs, and they do not have a suggestions list. Our reporter opted for a small daily cycle tattoo; a candle in an ornate sconce that burns down throughout the day and burns out at midnight before the cycle repeats from 05:00hr the following day. The artist then took an hour to make out a series of possible sketches, and once the design was approved, the reporter was led through a doorway into the back of the store.

Due to the mandatory obliviation, our reporter’s memory returned as she walked back into Diagon Alley, 100 galleons lighter and with four hours missing from her memory. She reports a slight burning sensation in the vicinity of her new inking but no significant pain, and was holding a parchment giving care instructions and warning not to touch, wash, or expose the tattoo to sunlight for a minimum of 72 hours. The parchment bore her own signature on a disclaimer stating that if the tattoo failed within that period Dark Artistry would bear no responsibility.

Four days later, our reporter came to work with the tattoo uncovered and on display for the office to see. The artistic merit cannot be disputed, with intricate details on the sconce and a flame that occasionally sputters and weaves as if in a breeze. The longevity of the pieces is yet to be seen, but Mr Malfoy has asserted that they are indeed for life and that there is no known method of removal, leading us to believe that his dark mark remains in situ.

Whilst the link to You-Know-Who is discomfiting, and the somewhat distasteful name of the store itself has caused distress amongst some survivors of the war, it seems clear that Dark Artistry has no shortage of admirers. With all artists signing non-disclosure contracts and all clients agreeing to mandatory obliviation it appears that Mr Malfoy has the monopoly on this new form of expression, and rumour has it that Dark Artistry has plans to open further stores across 80

Europe. When asked whether turning a profit from the legacy of the war was appropriate, Mr Malfoy declined to respond, but as our reporter said when volunteering, “if he can take something so ugly and make it beautiful, then more power to him.”

INDEPENDENT ART QUIBBLER

illustrated by 7ustine

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THE WIZARDING BOUNTY HUNTERS PROTECTING MUGGLES

Illustrated by The_Architect_Nurse

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O

ur reporter from the Quibbler found himself in a rather strange situation whilst investigating reports of magically-related crime in the Miami-Dade County of Florida, the United States. Both the Miami-Dade Police Department and the American Aurors were tasked with looking into several extreme assaults within the county, with magical evidence showing that the victims had been placed under the Imperius Curse.

was just the head of contract negotiations for a firm that wishes to be unnamed. As others at the firm explained, he was a rather amiable manager to work under, always being known for gentle condemnation for mistakes and encouraging free thinking and independence in his day-to-day work.

But upon seeing him, there were several oddities that were immediately apparent. For one thing, he was a giant of a man that was absoluteSoon, the culprit was named and identified ly packed with toned, thick, and wide muscle, his as a Brazilian wizard who did it for what he described shoulders so wide that he often needed to turn on as, “A laugh.” After an open bounty was issued for his side because he was often wider than most doorhim, he was delivered to the Aurors heavily way frames. Just to the top of his scalp, he beaten and barely conscious. He is now stood at an impressive six-foot-seven Note: facing serious charges of using dark and that wasn’t taking into account For this edimagic on Muggles, use of an Unhis hair. forgivable Curse, breach of the Intorial piece, names His dress and style were other ternational Statute of Secrecy as have been changed or oddities in an office that would well as assault, aggravated asencourage a strict professionare kept vague for the al-level dress code. Instead of sault, grievous bodily harm, and attempted murder and could slicked-back or quiffed hair that protection of those face life in prison. men in his position were encour-

featured in this

Strangely, this led to us aged to wear, his head was shaved article. sitting in a high-rise building, in the completely bald save for the large, offices of a high-value law firm, the free-standing mohawk that reached one that answers to some of the richest two-to-three feet from his head, looking businessmen in the area. We were sat just behind more like a horse’s mane. The professional civility of the desk of a worker who was proof-reading a con- his grey suit with golden pinstripes was betrayed by tract on his computer screen that was at least a hun- the tanned-leather, fingerless gloves with lead shots dred-pages long and he was getting frustrated. on the knuckles to add extra oomph to his punches, ‘You see this?’ he commented as he pointed or the fact that instead of shiny black leather dress to a clause he had highlighted. ‘Whomever wrote shoes, he wore military-grade combat boots, which this pile of crap obviously skipped the first class on were eventually pointed out. contract law. There are so many clauses here that are expressly illegal, I don’t even know what they were doing.’

This was Tony. For most of his co-workers, he

‘Truth be told, I’m what most people would call a “Fixer”,’ Tony explained. ‘Although I’m kind of offended by the name since it’s often used to describe people who help cover up their rich clients’ crimes.’

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QUIBBLER NEWS AND FEATURES Written by res30stupid

INVESTIGATING CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST MUGGLES

Y

ou’re more like a vigilante,’ his boss, a senior who was accused of stealing a piece of chocolate partner called Peter, explained. ‘We pay him, cake and she force-fed him an entire cake - I mean, at least. Although we do also call him our in- two feet wide–’ house security consultant.’

‘Three feet,’ a woman said as she walked in Tony had also recently become notable with some coffee. ‘We checked.’ within the Muggle community due to a legal mat‘And he ate the whole thing,’ Peter said. ter called The People V Crunchem Hall. In that legal ‘Like a champ, he celebrated when he was finished matter, a group of children had gathered evidence by holding the glass plate over his head like it was of extreme levels of physical abuse and torture car- a trophy. Trunchbull then brought it right down and ried out by the principal of their school as well as a shattered it on his head. We got the whole thing on litany of other crimes including murder and theft of video. It was wild.’ inheritance of a charge.

‘I just love the fact that the kid took it like a The ringleader of the exposure of the teach- champ,’ Tony laughed. ‘He just turned around and er’s crimes was a seven-year-old girl, who pointed belched right in her face. Then, when he got home out the numerous ways that students could gather and his mother found glass in his hair, he showed the evidence of the crimes of their principal. But given videos that was secretly recorded by about fifteen the extreme threats that the teacher had made on different kids. That’s when we got involved.’ her students and the fact that she is known to have This led to a notable video of Miss Trunchbull carried them out meant that it was decided that the trying to attack one of the children who exposed her, main witness should be given a bodyguard. even throwing a punch right at the girl’s head… only ‘That was a wild case,’ Tony explained to me. for the fist to be caught inches from the child’s face ‘Agatha Trunchbull - in case you know the name, and immediately returned with added gusto, leadshe used to be part of the British Olympic track and ing to Trunchbull’s being knocked out and arrested. field team in the 1970’s - she went out of her way to commit crimes of such having a closet lined with nails and broken glass she called the Chokey which However, Tony is also notable within the Wizarding she would force kids to stand inside of when she was Community as what his enemies called a modern-day “Scourer,” the name given to the mercenaries and mad at them.’

‘That was only one,’ Peter explained. ‘We ac- dark wizards who became the earliest criminals of tually got involved in the matter because of my sec- Wizarding America due to their selling their fellow retary, Ann - her nephew was a student at the school wizards to participants of the Witch Hunts.

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’m not even offended,’ Tony said. ‘Hell, I’ve got it on my business cards. I was offended when they called me a Snatcher, however.’

‘So, you know about them?’ our reporter asked.

‘No more than thugs who are complicit in the crimes of Voldemort,’ he scoffed. ‘They’re a sign of how not to operate as a bounty hunter and also a prime example of how actual bounty hunters have ethical standards.’

The legal firm that Peter and Tony work at happens to cater both to Muggles and Wizardkind. In fact, half of all employees have had close encounters with magic of some sort if they aren’t either related to or are wizards themselves. Both Tony and Peter are former graduates of Ilvermorny as well as notable graduates of Harvard Law School.

They also happen to be involved in the bounty hunting trade, capturing criminals who target Muggles and protecting the Muggles from the legal ramifications of being targeted by magic. One of Peter’s most notable court cases was showing that a man accused of the crime of reckless driving which killed several other drivers during a professional driving competition was in fact due to someone “Tampering with his water bottle with a hallucinogenic” to keep him from winning; in fact, several drivers were “Proven” to have been drugged.

The truth of the situation was that a criminal had confounded several of the racers during the race and tried to cause as much chaos as possible. He was arrested and tried by the Magical Congress’ justice department as well as both the Department of NoMaj Misinformation and the Federal Bureau of Covert Vigilance and No-Maj Obliviation to help build up a case.

‘So, you work a front for the Magical Congress?’ our reporter asked.

‘We only so much as work for them as any contractor for the government is hired to take a job,’ Peter explains. ‘Sometimes we can negotiate a better offer, sometimes we can outright refuse a gig.

Have you ever turned down a job…?’

‘Not a government contract, no,’ Tony explained. ‘But a private gig, not overseen by the government? Yeah, quite a few. Probably because they were highly unethical in the sense of, “Pay Evil Unto Evil” and that sort. Someone requested I mutilate a target who liked to maim No-Majes with curses, another involved poisoning someone with a Destroying Angel mushroom - not only can I not actually kill someone unless I get a warrant, that’s a horrible way to die… I did one bounty for free because the target

NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER was a paedophile but what I was offered to do to the guy… No. Just no.’

‘You did squeeze a man’s hand so hard to completely shatter the bones,’ Peter’s secretary interjected, which he nodded to.

‘Well, he did shrink Muggles so he could crush them in his hands,’ Tony commented.

Tony is referred to as a Scourer by some. A somewhat notorious individual within the magical community, he is also nicknamed the “Breaker” by law enforcement, which our reporter had to comment on.

‘Let’s just say that if I get involved,’ he mused, ‘then something has gone terribly wrong. The Mac doesn’t like to admit it, but there’s been a decline in active-duty officers working for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. You see… How do I describe this?’

‘Blame the Brits,’ Peter explained. ‘Or rather, blame Voldemort. There was a sharp decline in the quality of magical law enforcement in Britain due to both the honest officers all being killed and the inadequacies of their successors - in fact, some of them were Death Eaters. Well, his defeat in the late-nineties saw most of them being disgraced and– and there were plenty of scrutiny against pureblood extremism around the time as well.’

‘Well, American Aurors have always been good at screening candidates and setting a high standard the world over,’ Peter continued on, ‘but this scared off quite a few potential candidates. Especially since this also coincided with a few politicians who were trying to kill the repeals of Rappaport’s law. So, they had to subside on issuing contracts to bounty hunters.’

‘Fun fact,’ Tony explained. ‘Unlike the No-Maj governments where save for America and the Philippines, bounty hunting is allowed the world over in the Wizarding world. As long as everyone knows the target is a Wizard, I have free reign to do as I please.’

‘But there are restrictions, aren’t there?’ our reporter had to ask.

‘Well, the concept of “Dead or Alive” contracts aren’t permitted,’ Tony said, ‘but we can kill our targets outright but only if we are expressly given the contract directly - only a special licence. And if you kill the wrong person, you could be charged with murder. That’s never happened to me yet, but I know one guy who royally screwed up and was charged with negligent homicide.’

‘So, why do they call you the “Breaker”,’ our reporter interrupted.

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EVEN AVENGING THEM

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ell, break someone’s wand,’ he commented, ‘break a wrist, break someone’s femur…’

NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER explained. ‘You’re just needed to… round up a few bodies and put them back in their grave.’

‘Have you actually broken ‘Looks like I’m getting changed,’ someone’s femur?’ our reporter asked Tony groaned. ‘Don’t want rotting bodily for clarification. fluids on these clothes.’

"

‘He was completely off his head ‘I fixed his leg after,’ he defended himself. on one of those “Legal Highs” that ‘Gotta have some medical knowledge in this some Muggles sell.’ Tony explained.

‘Completely out of his mind and was even profession.’ attacking after already being roughed up. I kind of panicked, grabbed his thigh He invited our reporter along with both hands and…’ to at least see him at work, agreeing to meet up just outside the cemetery ‘I fixed his leg after,’ he defended as he changed into something more himself. ‘Gotta have some medical appropriate. Our reporter had arrived knowledge in this profession.’ first and was approached by an Auror dressed as a NewYork Police Department officer, but Tony had arrived shortly after It was getting rather late, and the office us - dressed in jeans, a wifebeater shirt was meant to be closing for the day. and a leather jacket and he cleared the The original plan was for our reporter to way for our reporter to enter the scene. meet with Tony tomorrow when he was officially “on-the-job” as it were, going There were several other out to hunt down serious criminals. individuals there, armed with both wands and handguns. Tony gave curt I was going to follow Tony out of his office greetings to several of them as they were as he performed some of his own “Minor approached by Aurors who confirmed Contracts” such as looking for a noted the situation; about sixty recently buried thief or a goblin who was a bit more corpses were reanimated within the forceful when collecting a debt owed span of two nights and the cemetery is to him, when Peter stopped us right at now under a quarantine until they are the door. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised, ‘but we returned to their individual graves. But have an emergency on our hands. The since the necromancer was detained, Aurors are asking for any spare bounty they are now wandering around without hunters to help on a large-scale clean-up conscious thought. job - corpse retrieval.’

‘This isn’t that unusual of a case for us ‘Corpse retrieval?’ Tony asked. ‘Lots of to work on,’ Tony said as he patrolled people killed by a dark wizard?’ the cemetery. ‘Although I only really do ‘Worse than that,’ Peter so in the Southern US or Caribbean, and answered. ‘You’re needed at Calvary that’s often a case of the zombie’s family Cemetery. Someone tried to create wanting their undeath being ended.’ zombies from the graves.’

He stopped our reporter in their ‘Calvary?’ Tony asked. ‘Where’s tracks and pushed him backwards as a Calvary?’ zombie leapt at him from behind a large bush. Without even drawing his wand, ‘It’s the largest graveyard in New the zombie fell over to the ground as York City,’ our reporter pointed out. ‘It’s it was petrified before Tony turned it about… three-million graves?’ onto its chest and, with a small-calibre ‘Oh, for f***’s sake!’ Tony handgun, put a single round into the scoffed. back of its head right at the base of the skull.

‘Hey, they caught the guy,’ Peter

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IN WHAT CRITICS CALL MODERN-DAY SCOURERS

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hen you’ve been on the job as long as I have, dealing with zombies has become something of a routine,’ Tony explained as he pulled a wand out, creating an orb of light that floated above trees over the corpse. ‘Take ‘em out, tag ‘em, and leave the body as intact as possible to preserve the poor bastards’ dignity. Also, if the body needs to be exhumed for any reason, you don’t want foul play involved.’

‘Has that ever come up?’ our reporter asked.

‘A cop friend of mine down in Louisiana had to blab about Wizardkind to his chief of police after a ballistics report came up tying my gun to a dead body they had to dig up. Turns out that it was a “Suicide” that had been “Hanged” and the family didn’t agree with that assessment. So, the family was right.’

He paused as he looked behind the nearby bushes after seeing something sticking out from there and cursed loudly. The zombie he had just taken out had managed to kill a Muggle from around the area.

We then heard a pair of gunshots only a short distance away. A female bounty hunter waved to us as she tagged two other dead bodies. Another zombie was about to leap at her, but she spun around and decapitated it with a machete… and managed to curse loudly.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Force of habit.’

‘That’s Marie,’ Tony explained to me. ‘She’s a professional undead hunter from Haiti.

She knows the most about these creatures. Did a job with her back in ‘19 - ended up having to kill a

bunch of decayed monsters while going after a dark wizard with an arrest warrant. Didn’t get to take the guy alive - he got bitten on the tongue by a snake.’

‘And the zombies?’ I asked.

‘Far more than anticipated,’ Tony said. ‘Lost my wand, ran out of ammo… Had to take out most of them with my bare hands.

I mean… have you ever just put your hands around something’s neck and pulled it clean off? Or crushed their head?’

‘Another reason you’re called Breaker, huh?’

‘Yeah, pretty much.’

In total, about fifty-seven zombies were re-killed and buried by the end of the night, with our own reporter helping to identify the bodies and find their original burial plots as well. Whilst not a licenced bounty hunter and thus not eligible for payment, he did receive a modest sum for his efforts.

That also gave him a chance to speak to others and their views of the profession in a magical bar within the area.

‘I only really focus on monsters and such,’ Marie explained as she cleaned off her knife. ‘Taking a job on the continent is rather odd for me.’

‘Same here, at least for cities,’ a wiry sort of fellow explained.

‘Work with centaurs. Normally, they self-govern their own criminals, but their main form of punishment is exile - utterly useless for a noted killer. For me, it’s also a diplomatic job as well. Sometimes I get Tony to help since he’s a good negotiator, to make sure we don’t get in trouble for capturing our target. I also get targets from them - killing monsters that prey on different herds.’

I

do a lot of work with the goblins,’ one woman Jane - explained. ‘Mostly debt contracts, so I am not permitted to kill my targets. I’m fairly good at subduing targets.’

‘So, can anyone take a bounty?’ our reporter asked. ‘Can anyone claim the reward?’

‘Of course not,’ Marie explained. ‘You have to leave a record to show that you took the job. If you failed to notify the office, you’d lack the legal protections that bounty hunting affords, and you could be in serious legal trouble for it.’

‘I actually have encountered this,’ Jane said, ‘back when I was an Auror. Someone was wanted for murder and the Department issued an open warrant for any information about the accused.

Someone brought the guy in, heavily beaten to the point where he’d die without medical attention. He expected a thousand Dragots - he got arrested for assault.’

‘How does one get into bounty hunting?’ our reporter asked. ‘It’s not an easy job to join, is it?’

‘I fell into it,’ Jane explained. ‘I trained as an Auror, believe it or not. But I had the misfortune of being partnered with a blatant misogynist who kept putting me down and making me look bad for our superiors. I ended up applying for a bounty hunter’s licence with intention to quit my job when it was approved, got it handed to me by the head of the department with an open bounty and my severance pay. I’m now making four times the amount I would’ve made if I kept on my current career path.’

‘And what of your former training officer?’

Tony teasingly asked.

‘Fired for smacking another Auror,’ she said, ‘who proceeded to… What’s that Muggle song? It was in Charlie’s Angels, the alleyway fight with the Creepy Thin Man?’ ‘Smack My Bitch Up,’ the wiry hunter - Troy - answered. ‘My dad was a bounty hunter, actually.

Same for me, he worked with centaurs. I’m considered part of the herd, actually. But I was taught the ins and outs.’

‘And you, Tony?’ our reporter asked.

Tony proceeded to chuckle as he swirled his firewhiskey in his glass. ‘It’s… kind of a long story,’ he said. ‘I started in the legal trade and… It sort of happened.’

‘Bullshit,’ Jane said. ‘He was one of the victims of the Spencer City incident. He became a bounty hunter so he could punish the bastards responsible!’

Jane got a paper coaster thrown to her head

by Tony who was clearly angered by her saying that.

‘The Spencer City incident?’

NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER The cat was out of the bag and he knew it, so he volunteered the information to me openly. ‘It’s kind of the same story that inspired Resident Evil, or at Resident Evil 2. A company found to be developing biological weapons out of viruses, such as the bubonic plague and Ebola, was experimenting in a hidden lab near the water supply and someone got negligent. A super-virus they engineered was accidentally released into the post-treatment parts of the water purification facility and in April of 1992, practically everyone in Spencer City was infected.’

‘Two-hundred and ninety people died,’ he explained.

‘Most survived their infection, but there was also a lot of damage to pre-natal infected; most never made it to term. But I did - I was born in October of that year.’

‘They found that the virus was an early prototype of what would later be known as the CRISPR gene editing technique,’ he said. ‘It was a failure because they couldn’t quite figure out how to do so without killing a still-living person. But a foetus that wasn’t born…’

‘Anyway, I did some digging when I was in Harvard and I came across a wanted suspect mentioned in the files recovered by the federal government when they shut down Paraguas Industries,’ he explained.

‘And sure enough, I found that he was an employee at Ilvermorny during the Eighties as the Transfigurations professor before he moved over to working full-time in the Mac. When I dug into it, I found he had no position there. And a DNA test confirmed that I - a child of two No-Majes - was genetically half-giant.’

‘They were developing super-soldiers?’ our reporter asked.

‘And unfortunately, they were receiving magical assistance to do so,’ Tony said. ‘Didn’t work out - their own efforts failed. But for myself? Well, exaggerated height compared to my parents - they were less than six feet tall; exaggerated musculature as well.

And, to some others’ condemnations if it were to ever come out…’

‘You’re a half-breed,’ our reporter filled in the blanks, which our reporter confirmed.

‘Of course not,’ he said as he downed his drink, then requested another. ‘Checking my genetic code with a lab who has connections to the Wizarding World, they found evidence of troll, ogre, goblin…

I’m a thorough-bred mutt. Anyway, the bastard who helped Paraguas is on trial right now.’

‘How’d you get him convicted?’ our reporter asked.

‘If I’m not incorrect, you are suggesting that the person who was helping Paraguas was an Unspeakable.

Those records are sealed.’

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QUIBBLER NEWS AND FEATURES

H

e was an Unspeakable,’ Tony explained. ‘But I was able to confirm he was openly dealing with Muggles and reported him for that. The person in the Aurors’ office was rather… negligent with paperwork when an arrest warrant was issued, with evidence submitted by Peter. Before the other Unspeakables found out and suppressed the case, I… had him turned over for breaches of the Statute of Secrecy. While he was in France on official business.’

fun one for me. Not a major bounty - I have to deliver a writ.’

‘And my ass isn’t parked into a large office chair while having an espresso… why?’ Tony asked.

‘The writ is to be delivered to a Mr. Joseph Clarence down in Baltimore,’ he said. ‘The Mac has issued a writ forcing him to recognise that his wife has issued a divorce and he is no longer permitted to approach her. He also happens to be known for ‘Meaning that the American Aurors would have to cursing lawyers who try to deliver this writ to him, process the arrest of their own officer anyway,’ Jane thinking it can save his marriage. Which means…’ said, ‘and the Unspeakables couldn’t stop it.’

‘I am legally allowed to beat the s*** out of him if he tries anything except listen to said docuWe were back in the office the next day, at least to start. Instead of the suit, Tony was wearing the same ment being read aloud,’ Tony chuckled. ‘So, who is clothes as the previous evening. And oddly, Peter the guy?’ was dressed in a full cloak today.

‘The Swing King,’ Peter said.

‘I’ve got to meet a client facing trial for a serious charge later,’ he said, ‘but this is going to be a

‘You’re s****ing me,’ Tony gasped in shock.

negligent P with paperwork

90

eter saw that our reporter was confused, so explained it to him. ‘He ran an amusement park on a pier in Baltimore during the 80’s and 90’s. But the Mac found out that he was cheaping out on labour costs by having House Elves maintain the rides.

They confiscated his House-Elves, but he failed to replace them with No-Maj manual labour, resulting in a massive catastrophe when a ride collapsed. Thirty-six people died.

He pulled out of the Muggle world and lived in the Wizarding World, but he was effectively bankrupted and his wife was disgusted by his actions.’

When they returned, they were clearly dismayed. ‘We went to deliver a writ,’ Peter said, ‘and instead we arrested the man for several dozen crimes. He’s in the Aurors’ custody now.’

This actually led to a halfhour debate as to whether it was safe to bring the reporter along for the job, given Clarence’s known violent habits. The reporter was not permitted into the office they were using for this discussion at the time. It took thirty minutes and when they finally finished, it was decided that it was too dangerous for anyone else but those two to go on the assignment. They left soon after.

‘And… are they alright?’

‘What happened?’ our reporter had to ask.

‘He had his ex-wife’s attorneys tortured to death when they tried to deliver the notice of divorce,’ Peter said. ‘The place we went to, which was listed as his work address… He’d been trying to keep himself afloat by selling drugs. Place was crawling with Muggles armed with firearms.’

‘Nope,’ Tony said as he checked his handgun. ‘All dead.

The first person we encountered pulled a gun. Turned into a gunfight. But because the place was Unplotted, cops couldn’t go there.

Peter had to go off and get the Aurors, who didn’t actually want to get involved over a simple divorce.’

NEWS AND FEATURES QUIBBLER

never any minor assignments

The story would feature in the New York Ghost’s evening edition as a remark of Aurors getting into a gunfight with Muggles, but the full exposé featured as the front-page story of the same paper the next morning.

ing bounty hunter trade. They never got to go on any minor assignments as promised – if anything, it was a bit too risky.

But also, this led to our reporter being given offers to follow and report on other bounty hunters from around Our reporter would the world, as well as an express soon leave the offices of the law offer to handle any legal matfirm, having been given such an ters he could have in the forthintricate look at the Wizard- coming future.

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QUIBBLER SPORTS

HOW TO

l l u y f s s e c c u S

Manipulate Yourself

into NOT

Hating

Sports Written by Eldis

I hate sports. I always have. I did not like PE in school, I never dreamed of pursuing a successful athletic career, and for the final year of the annual mandatory soccer competition between the schools in our district, I managed to convince my teacher that I'd do great as a cheerleader instead of a player, allowing me to just stand on the sidelines and yell out rhymes I had come up with previously, rather than run after a ball.

Sports and I are just not a good combination. It’s like fish and lemon pie. Or a cold quattro formaggi pizza and a Nutella topping. Or Bellatrix and pink flowery dresses. It makes nobody happy to think about, and the world would be better off without it.

There is, then, very little that can explain my joy upon graduating high school. I was finally free not only from annoying classmates, persistent teasing and that one frustrating English teacher I could not get along with, but also from those endless, torturous hours of PE I had to suffer through multiple times each week. Also no more maths, but that is a different story on its own. I was free to pursue the thing I am really

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passionate about: sitting still and reading, preferably with a large mug of tea and a couple of chocolate chip cookies to keep me company. With no more mandatory sports at uni, I was free, free, endlessly free.

Emphasis on the "was".

You see, reading isn't always the healthiest thing to do. Sitting hunched over, a book squished between myself and my laptop, holding down the pages with my lower arms whilst typing out a summary as I'm reading along, is not the greatest posture to hold for hours on end. Especially not when combined with reading for fun in the evenings and plenty of scrolling on my phone. With the additional fun complication

SPORTS QUIBBLER that I have always been a Worrier™. I regularly introduce myself, jokingly, as "Hi! I'm Eldis and I worry."

Do any of you know Doney Meryl's Christian picture book The Very Worried Sparrow? Because I have always related to that sparrow. And a fun fact about worrying: it's not just a mental thing, it is a physical thing too. It settles in your muscles.

And my muscles, after suffering through all that for well over two decades, decided to protest. And protest they do. Loudly and painfully.

Enter my darling mother, someone I love very much and who is, as I have mentioned in the Quibbler before, a very wise woman. And a woman who really loves her children and does not want them to suffer.

So she finally convinced me to actually go to a professional doctor who specialises in chronic pain.

This brings us back to sports.

You see, this professional doctor who specialises in chronic pain uttered 5 damning words: "sport three hours a week". Dear reader, my heart shattered, my In other words: I have had chronic back issues for world collapsed, and my hope of a glorious sudden the past 8 years or so, and, in the last two years, my magically easy and painless future sank through the shoulders and neck have decided to join in on the fun. floor. Sports. I had to do sports! Of all things!

And I am. In Pain™.

I can still function, and I can pretend like it doesn't hurt - I'm very lucky in that sense, I can still move and go about my day like any other human being. But it is not exactly pleasant, to say the least.

But alas, the pain had reached a level that was higher than my disdain for sports had ever reached, even though I had not thought it possible. So I got myself a gym membership at a local gym whose vibe I liked, where, when I came to take a look, I saw other people who clearly were not sporty either. And I, obediently, started to work out. Three times a week, on Mondays,

Images by Pexels.com

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QUIBBLER SPORTS Wednesdays and Fridays, I obediently drag myself out of bed and to the gym, where I spend an hour lifting and pushing and dragging weights around in the hope that my muscles get strengthened in the correct way, so they, instead of continually being stiff, can actually support my spine – something I'm told is a relatively important body part.

test and I'm not even being paid for to do (I do, in fact, have to pay to do it!) is my incessant, annoying, overwhelming love for English literature. And, at the moment of writing, Jane Austen in particular. From her finished novels, I still have to read both Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey. With Elizabeth Klatt's wonderful voice reading out the latter, at the rate of about 2-3 chapters per workout, I'm slowly pushing, pulling On the first day, I brought a book. On the first day, I and dragging my way to having read all of Austen's immediately figured out that was highly impractical. finished works. And since I only allow myself to listen to the book when I'm in the gym, and I have forced The warm up went fine. You can very easily read myself to not get a physical copy to read, I now find whilst cycling on a stationary bike. (If you are Dutch myself almost looking forward to my three mornlike me, you can even quite easily read whilst cycling ings of torture a week. Because I want to know how on an actually moving bike in traffic. It is not recom- Catherine will deal with John Thorpe! When she will mended, but it works great for last-minute revisions next meet Henry Tilney! What Eleanor Tilney will say on your way to school. Do as I say, not as I do, people.) about Catherine when the latter is forced to cancel an It went wrong when I had to do the other exercises. appointment! Is there indeed a skeleton behind the black veil in The Mysteries of Udolpho? I will only disYou see, this gym is very modern. And very high cover the answers when I'm listening, and I will only tech. So the machines where you have to push/pull/ listen when I'm working out. drag weights have little screens where you can select And that, my gentle Quibblerers, is how I condihow heavy it should be. And those screens show, when you start, a little waving path, and a little ball that has tioned myself into not hating the absolute thought of to follow the path and, like Snake or Pacman, eat the sports. With Austen's well-timed wit read aloud in a little dots on its way. This is so you will push/pull/ kind voice, distracting me from the fact that movedrag in the correct rhythm at the correct speed so you ment and I are as great a combination as John Thorpe don't hurt yourself by making the wrong movements. and poor Catherine Morland, who might not be born Which is great, but means I can not push/pull/drag to be a heroine, but is certainly in training to be one. and read at the same time, because I have to watch the screen.

And besides, I frequently need my arms to push/ pull/drag, so there is nothing to hold the book with.

The stage, now, is set. One gym. One bookless Eldis.

Three hours of working out a week. How to survive those? How to stay motivated (beyond the faint hope of no more constant pain)?

Enter audiobooks. Enter, specifically, Librivox.

Librivox is a website that is run by volunteers, and it has a whole bunch of free audiobooks narrated by volunteers. The books are all in the public domain, making their project entirely legal.

And, my dear and gentle readers. Isn't it a wonderful coincidence that I'm on a mission to read every single decently well-known English literary novel?

Yes. My secret to dragging myself out of bed at 6.45 three mornings a week to do a thing I absolutely de-

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SPORTS QUIBBLER

MAGICAL GAMES House Elf Legendary Parkour

written by MagicMischiefNL

Cup

illustrated by KackelDackel

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QUIBBLER SPORTS In the Spring 2022 edition of the Quibbler, on page 77, a question is posed asking why there are hardly any widespread magical sports competitions except for Quidditch. I would like to help point the author of the question, and the readers of the Quibbler, to the remarkable House Elf Legendary Parkour Cup- A very special magical tournament in which I have had the pleasure of being one of the referees.

The House Elf Legendary Parkour Cup, or, The H.E.L.P. cup, is a competition where the best House Elves of each house compete against each other in different challenges that all relate to their day to day activities, but in the extreme. Over the years, several additions have been made to the different challenges that the competition requires the Elves to compete in. And, sadly, some very interesting challenges have been lost due to public discussions and extensive criticism about how appropriate they were. Like the infamous Snapping Dragon Apparition challenge, where a House Elf had to wait until the very last moment to disapparate before a dragon would snap its maw shut on them. The high mortality rate of this challenge was the cause for this to be banned globally in 1950 by decree of the H.E.L.P. Organising Committee.

There are close to twenty different challenges in which the House Elves compete, but these are the five most famous: • Heavy Weight Levitation The house elves have to show the strength of their wandless magic to levitate increasingly heavier trunks to a height of 10 feet.

• Long Distance Apparition This challenge presents the House Elves with a map on which marks have been placed at increasing distances. At each marked location, a special marker can be found. The house-elf must retrieve each marker in a single apparition jump, and is tracked by a special trace that is placed on the elf for this competition. The elf that manages to collect the most markers, and can thus jump farthest in a single apparition, wins.

• The 100-plates-1-mile run House elves have a remarkable sense of balance, allowing them to carry huge stacks of, for example, plates. In this challenge, each House Elf picks up a stack of one-hundred plates, and is required to run a one mile track, without letting any of the plates fall to the ground. Losing a plate is an instant forfeit of the challenge.

• Butter-sock-battering All elves are supplied with a sock stuffed with butter (referees hand out the socks, preventing the unintentional release of House Elves due to their master presenting them with clothing). Next, they all try to bash each other senseless until one Elf is left standing. As the butter melts and is spread over the floor of the arena and the Elves themselves, everything gets increasingly slippery and it becomes ever more challenging to hit each other.

• Chimney Diving A parkour of chimneys with different designs and sizes is placed in the arena.

The House Elves have to compete against the clock and use their parkour skills to climb up each chimney, dive down through it and then continue on to the next one. They do not need to follow a specific order, but each chimney must be gone through. They are not allowed to apparate during the challenge to speed things up.

This is a test of mad parkour skills, something in which all House Elves excel, even though most people do not know this as they pay very little attention to their House Elves.

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SPORTS QUIBBLER

Depending on the region where the H.E.L.P. Cup is being held, specific local challenges can be included as well. Like the infamous Camel Hump Jump in Egypt.

The ever entertaining Dolphin estafette in Hawaii, and the remarkable Chinese Dragon taming event in China.

Due to the special nature of the House Elves, they are extremely motivated to win for their houses. They are often so motivated that they try to bend or even break the rules. Which is of course contrary to their master’s instructions. It happens so often that quite a few Elves can be seen flogging themselves halfway up a chimney, or seen hitting themselves with a butter-sock instead of their opponent.

Participants are given a consolation ribbon, while winners get a gold banded ribbon. The house elves proudly wear this ribbon pinned or sewn onto the baggy pieces of clothing they tend to wear. This is a huge status symbol within the House Elf community.

The house elves can also be rewarded with additional prizes, but this is fully at the whim of their owners. These special prizes include the Elf being given a short holiday (they don’t like to feel not needed for much longer than that). Or, in very rare occasions, an Elf will be rewarded with a winners-vest.

This is a very brightly coloured vest, usually assembled from different random pieces of clothing from his masters. Naturally, the Elf is being offered its freedom with this gesture. This is considered to be one of the highest honours an Elf can be bestowed with, but, it is in fact quite rare that an Elf’s owner will be willing to let such an amazing and talented Elf go.

Until very recently, and the work of S.P.E.W. might be the reason for the disappearance of this practice, House Elves that failed in the H.E.L.P. cup used to be beheaded as punishment for failing their houses. This was something which mostly happened in the more radical and older pure-blood families, who have a similar practice for Elves that become too old to perform their duties.

The H.E.L.P. cup events are held in arena-like structures and loosely resemble the muggle Olympics. The arena is also heavily based on old Roman Coliseums.

There’s also an opening ceremony in which each House Elf presents a flame to his/ her master, who will then, together, light a ceremonial fire that is kept burning during the competition (which is, of course, a task performed dutifully by the arena’s House Elves).

The competitions are well visited by witches and wizards from all over the world, some even bringing part of their House Elf staff. Naturally, they are there to serve their masters, but most will not make a fuss if one or two House Elves sneak off to cheer for one of their kind as they are competing.

With courteous regards,

Reginaldus Rotherham H.E.L.P Referee (retired)

Aka: u/MagicMischiefNL

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QUIBBLER HOROSCOPES

HOGWARTS HORror-SCOPES Madam Starflash Sees what (mis)fortunes will befall you this season!

CAPRICORN THE THESTRAL

TAURUS THE WEREWOLF

VIRGO THE UNICORN

(DEC. 22ND — JAN. 19TH)

(APRIL 20TH — MAY 20TH)

(AUGUST 23RD — SEPT. 22ND)

Your worst fears will be the last thing you ever recall when the Dementors come to Kiss you upon your wrongful imprisonment.

In a brutal battle with another for the hand of your betrothed, you will find yourself the loser, both in love and life.

You will see the truth of human nature when you are stabbed in the back by the one you call your dearest friend.

AQUARIUS THE KELPIE

GEMINI THE VEELA

LIBRA THE DRAGON

(JAN. 20TH — FEB. 18TH)

(MAY 21ST — JUNE 20TH)

(SEPT. 23RD — OCT. 22ND)

You shall find yourself in mortal peril from the bite of a teething Venomous Tentacula, but you shall fall to the cry of the Mandrake before the bite even has a chance to paralyze you.

You will gamble with fortune, betting on the wrong side of a fight, and you will find yourself penniless and alone.

You shall find yourself trapped beneath the water’s surface, never to emerge, when you venture out to seek treasure on the ocean floor.

CANCER THE FIRECRAB

SCORPIO THE VAMPIRE

(JUNE 21ST — JULY 22ND)

(OCT. 23RD — NOV. 21ST)

A fire will ignite within your home and claim that which you hold most dear, leaving yourself and your spirit charred.

A rampaging hippogriff shall be the cause of your pain and despair when you forget to bow before attempting to approach.

LEO THE SPHINX

SAGITTARIUS THE CENTAUR

(JULY 23RD — AUGUST 22ND)

(NOV. 22ND — DEC. 21ST)

PISCES THE MERMAN (FEB.19TH — MARCH 20TH) You shall find yourself in mortal peril from the bite of a teething Venomous Tentacula, but you shall fall to the cry of the Mandrake before the bite even has a chance to paralyze you.

ARIES THE HIPPOGRIFF

Your most treasured possession will be lost to the sands of time when you choose to bring it with Devil’s Snare, Devil’s Snare, you shall find yourself you to the seaside. hopelessly entangled, and finally strangled by Devil’s Snare.

(MARCH 21ST — APRIL19TH)

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You will be the victim of a false accusation and find yourself hanging upside down and shackled at the ankles in a dimly lit cavern.

CLASSIFIEDS QUIBBLER

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New I.G.U.A.N.A 2.0 coming out this July!

Our re-imagined version of your loved ""I Guess U Are Not Aware"" intelligent house pet who reminds you, in a very passive-aggressive way, of all the chores you seem to be unaware you've left undone!

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HELP WANTED Help Wanted: I need a shop clerk willing to work 7 days a week and on all holidays. DO NOT APPLY IF YOU ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN MONEY. Hard workers only. No whiners or complainers. If you are looking for an easy job this is not it. Starting pay is 2 galleons a shift with the possibility to move up to 2.55 if your effort is satisfactory. No contact info provided because you need to prove you're a self starter. Let's see how many serious offers I get since no one seems to want to work anymore!!!!!

MISSED CONNECTIONS The Quibbler staff would like to congratulate spludgiexx on her wedding! May the lovely pair live happily ever after.

You: A tall blonde with a great smile. Me: A Terrifying murder puppet.

We spent last Saturday in my basement. You solved the puzzle and earned your freedom, but I didn't catch your name. I'd love to see you again. I'll be waiting. ;) You: Lady in the green robes.

Me: Lady you helped after walking into the shop window while trying to flash you a smile.

In my dazed state I not

only forgot to ask for your name, I also forgot to ask for a date. If it's a yes, I work in the Leaky either pop in or send an owl to Mildred Hubble.

REAL ESTATE Fantasy Realty LLC We will buy any property Looking for your dream home?

We will make it a reality Feagour Cottage Newtonmore, Scotland 18500 Galleons Torhouse Stone Circle Wigtown, UK 6000 Galleons OBO Pry House Farm Hardraw, North Yorkshire 25000 Galleons

Contributors: starflashfairy, iguerr, KackelDackel, eldis_, Tipsytippett, XanCanStand

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QUIBBLER AUROR LOGS

LAW ENFORCEMENT REPORTS BREAKING NEWS: MLE is pleased to announce live reports of some of these logs on Wizard radio station, "Twitch.tv/powergamersdandd" every other Friday at 6:30PM PST MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT PATROL: ◊ April 1, 2022 1:30AM - A wizard was arrested early in the morning for flying under the influence. Aurors were tipped off when locals complained of broom trails in the air being used to draw crude images of human anatomy. ◊ May 13, 2022 4:30PM - An American tourist was arrested late in the afternoon for biting local ice cream shop proprietor Florian Fortescue. When asked what her reasoning was, the witch stated, “I am the Dairy Queen. I do as I please.” ◊ June 4, 2022 8:20AM - Aurors were called to Gringotts to deal with a suspicious person waving around an unknown object in the lobby. The object was later identified as a muggle “tuba”. No arrests were made and the suspect left of their own accord.

DEPARTMENT FOR THE REGULATION AND CONTROL OF MAGICAL CREATURES: ◊ April 14, 2022 4:32PM - Notorious local celebrity Janus Bizarre, aka The Wampus King, was arrested for the 5th time after authorities were tipped off about a conspicuously ostentatious individual asking tourists if they wanted to see something “really cool”. In his possession were three illegally obtained hinky-punks. Janus Bizarre is prohibited from handling any sort of magical creature as per his previous arrest.

He was promptly returned to Azkaban for the parole violation. ◊ April 22, 2022 5:40AM - An Ipswich witch was arrested in the early evening after she walked into the local menagerie and attempted to sell non-native doxies. It is

unknown whether or not the woman was aware the menagerie was across from an auror precinct.

that while her anger was justified and her actions hilarious, they were required to issue a citation as flying poop is a health hazard.

◊ June 14, 2022 2:34PM - A local kneazle breeder was cited for improper documentation. Aurors were contacted when customers became suspicious that the kneazles they purchased were just regular house cats.

Investigators found no evidence of fraud, but advised the breeder to keep better track of their pedigree paperwork.

◊ June 28, 2022 7:32PM - Aurors were called to a Scottish pub in response to reports that a German mage was transfiguring the local muggles’ clothing into lederhosen.

When questioned the German mage said, “It vas only a prank, bro.” A citation was issued.

DEPARTMENT OF INTOXICATING SUBSTANCES ◊ April 29, 2022 6:43AM - 30 gallons of illegally imported Hershey’s chocolate was confiscated early in the morning. The suspect, an American, was quoted saying he “wasn’t aware it was illegal here”. Aurors would like to emphasize that ignorance of the law is not an excuse and Hershey’s chocolate is a class 4 prohibited substance in the UK. ◊ May 24, 2022 4:56AM - Authorities were called to Diagon Alley after it was reported that several youths were attempting to distribute something they called “Florida rock candy”. No arrests were made once it was determined the substance was in fact just rock candy from Florida.

IMPROPER USE OF MAGIC OFFICE

◊ June 13, 2022 9:48AM - A London witch

was cited for hexing dog excrement to follow a neighbor around everywhere. The suspect was angry at her neighbor for allegedly repeatedly allowing his dog to relieve itself in her garden. Authorities conceded

◊ June 30, 2022 2:49PM - Aurors responded to an anonymous tip that the owner of the Hog’s Head was practicing illicit charms on livestock. Authorities declined to comment on the nature of the crime and only stated that it involved a goat and this wasn’t the suspect’s first offense. The investigation is ongoing.

DEPARTMENT OF MYSTERIES ◊ Gfggdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsddfsdfsdfsadfdsdhdffgfggfhshdfgfgsgg ◊ DGsdsdfdsafsaddfahgidsufasofusdoifosfopasdjfiosdjfiosafjisofjisdajf ◊ Kdfasdfsadfsdfasdfasdfsahfb ◊ Hdfhdfgdhfdgdfshdjdfhjfghfsghvbcvsdfd ◊ sdhfdgdfguhdfhdknashfiusadhfnidsaihfiuafhnuiadfyiusodnyfuisdafyiuoanyfioanyfioanydui ◊ sdasfdasfsadfasdgfshsghhsfgdfgjiiadsfuopidsufiosadufoipsaufpoafuiosudafopasudifousfpsdam fnasd nfl;ak dnfl;asdn fl;a dnlksd fnl;sd nfls;dnfl;asfna;lfnl;adfnl;afn;aldnfl;dsnf lsdn flsda

N

M

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GICAL LAW MA E

EMENT * RC FO N

EPARTME * D NT

The Minister of Magic and The Head of Magical Law Enforcement would like to thank the Auror Headquarters, Wizengamot Administration Services, Hit Wizards, Investigation Department, Ministry of Magic Witch Watchers, Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, and E O DI all others that keep our world safe.

A D I VISI OF

AUROR LOGS QUIBBLER

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QUIBBLER CREDITS

Auror Logs Author: KackelDackel

Layout: anne_seelmann

(Using a template made by u/Mathy16)

Classifieds Contributors:

• starflashfairy • iguerr • KackelDackel • eldis_ • Tipsytippett • XanCanStand Layout: anne_seelmann (Using a template made by u/Mathy16)

Cover Layout:

anne_seelmann (Using a template made by u/Mathy16) Illustration: KackelDackel Sources: https://imgur.com/a/todOvUV

Castles and Burrows ‘Lofty mansions, warm and spacious’ Author: Layout:

Eldis_

anne_seelmann Illustration: KackelDackel Sources: https://imgur.com/a/1xizEZM

‘Care for your Castle: Eldis' Top Tips for a Hygienic House: Living Room Edition’ Author:

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Eldis_

Layout:

anne_seelmann Illustration: Eldis_ Photos: Alexander Grigorian Andrea Piacquadio Maria Orlova Miriam Alonso Rachel Claire Sources: https://imgur.com/a/9mFSJaZ https://www.pexels.com

Crafts, Hobbies, and Brews ‘Getting Knitty With It: My attempt to hand make a Weasley jumper’ Author: Layout:

neeshky

anne_seelmann Illustration: neeshky Sources: https://imgur.com/a/ObVKBjP www.freepik.com

‘Hogwarts House Cocktails’ Author: Layout:

TexansDefense

overanxiousowl Illustration: TexansDefense Sources: https://imgur.com/a/BouE8aG

‘Recipe for Noncarbonated Nonalcoholic Butterbeer’ Author: Layout: Photo:

Bubbles_The_Defender overanxiousowl Bubbles_The_Defender

CREDITS QUIBBLER

Dark Arts ‘The Dark Side of the Bubble’ Author: Layout:

silvertail8

overanxiousowl Illustration: Innplore Sources: https://imgur.com/a/ZJxRIFM

‘Felis Catus’ Author: Layout:

iguerr

anne_seelmann Illustration: SinsationalDoom pch.vector Sources: https://imgur.com/a/FCv9aS1 www.freepik.com

‘Marked by the Dark: All the Fear of the Fair’ Author: Layout:

Illustration: SinsationalDoom Sources: https://imgur.com/a/ESomwFJ

‘Small Review of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne’ Author: Layout:

Author: Layout:

‘RapidEO - Klaso 1’ Author: Layout:

Layout:

starflashfairy anne_seelmann

Education ‘Degrees of Decrees’ Author: Layout:

iguerr anne_seelmann

Entertainment ‘I Wish I Had a Time-Turner’ Author:

Sources:

‘Hogwarts Horoscopes Summer 2022’ Author:

iguerr

anne_seelmann Illustration: anne_seelmann Sources: www.freepik.com

Layout:

Divination

anne_seelmann

‘What if there was a language...’

neeshky

overanxiousowl (Using a layout made by u/7ustine) Illustration: 7ustine

iguerr

Rysler anne_seelmann www.freepik.com

‘Paper mayhem - Part 3’ Author: Layout:

Eldis_

overanxiousowl Illustration: Eldis_ Sources: https://imgur.com/a/od0c7JQ

silvertail8 overanxiousowl

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QUIBBLER CREDITS

‘Rhyme #1’ Author: Layout:

iguerr

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