broom Breaking News
| (The Muggle World) Always keen to learn everything about
Muggles and their way of life we went into a shopping centre. Our faith
was shattered when we stumbled across a magical item. The magic towel lay silently in a basket on the lowest shelf. Curious as we are, we examined the magic towel and were disappointed: Our Muggle friends completely misunderstood either the idea behind magic or towel. For towel the dictionary gives us: piece of absorbent cloth for drying or changing; for magic it says: power of apparently using supernatural forces. You and me know that, however, the only person excepted is the chooser of the name of this product. |
Forget all you imagined this magic towel could do, apart from:
cleaning. Yes, quite, to clean is the only thing you can do with this piece
of cloth. Mind you, you must do the wiping and all. It won’t clean by
itself! This magic towel is after all just a plain towel with nothing magic about it – well, maybe if you add a little spell… So again, for all of our Muggle friends out there: If you are able to use a piece of cloth for cleaning purposes and you have to do so by yourself it is not magic, but only towel! So glad we were able to remove this misunderstanding. If you have further questions on the topic of either magic or towels feel free to contact your responsible Muggle Ministry! (MF) |
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(The World) A horrible hurricane hurled a harmless hag to harmonious Hawaii. In one of the very worst winds of the sweet spring, hag Henrietta Havers had the mean misfortune to lavishly look out of her wonderful window at the worst and wrongest time there could be. Just at that maledict moment the harassing hurricane had reached its highest hurling power – and |
swept the hag’s house away in a terrible thrice. Carried in the windy waves of the severe storm, Henrietta found herself in Hawaii in almost the same time as if she had Apparated. Now she plans a potentially powerful sensational sensation: Hurricane Hurling as a genuine Hawaiian attraction for daring, wild wizards and witches. Watch out for attractive ads! (ALL) |
broom-e-gram
| February 1 A new month begins and again we only almost
managed to prepare a new edition of broom - it's magic. February 4 Carnival? We don't know feasting, we only know work, work, work. February 6 Wednesday, Ashwednesday just wanted to remind you of that! February 12 Work, work, work - wasn't that something Shakespeare once said? Febuary 13 Now we know! We said 'work, work, work'! We hadn't realized that we were as brilliant as Mr Shakespeare. Amazing! |
February 18 Another Monday on which literally nothing
happened, honestly, how are you supposed to create a monthly magazine
featuring the events of the past month when nothing is happening?! February 26 This month is almost over and no broom is in sight... February 28 We just realized that this is a very short month... February 29 Oh, thank goodness, one more day and we managed, thanks Horace! March 4 We finally realized that we forgot to provide a new broom-e-gram and made one up. This was really close! |
| (Hogsmeade) broom had the opportunity to talk to former
Gryffindor Chaser Angelina Johnson, who has recently married George
Weasley. Mike Flatley was only too happy to deliver his congratulations in
person. MF: Hello, Angelina. Great to see you – and congratulations to your wedding. AJW: Why, thank you, Mike. And of course, thanks for inviting me for this interview. MF: Oh, we love to do interviews. It’s always a pleasure to interview someone who isn’t ourselves. Angelina, you were Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, weren’t you? AJW: I was indeed. It was great, even though sometimes a bit hard. MF: Why that? AJW: When Oliver Wood, who is now a professional with Puddlemere United, was our captain he used to make us practice for hours and hours, no matter what kind of weather there |
was or how late it actually was. The countless times Filch
berated us for dripping mud all over the hall! MF: You didn’t need to be in the Quidditch team for Filch to shout at you. Angelina, when did you first think that George might be the man for you? AJW: That took some time, I can tell you. I mean, during team practise, we joked around a lot and had fun together, but honestly, none of us girls thought the Weasley twins more than just good fun for, well, years. MF: Years? I thought the two were favourites quite early. AJW: Favourites in the sense of fun, certainly. But attractive to girls? Only much later, at least in my opinion. MF: When then did you find your weak spot for them? AJW: Just for George, Mike. He asked me to go to the Yule Ball with him. Do you remember that? MF: I wasn’t at Hogwarts back then, Angelina. I was working for the Daily |
Prophet in those bad old days, and I certainly wasn’t
invited. |
broom's Best Bad Boy Board
| Now that Roland Banks found a really valuable
friend, his portable brain Ramon Vargas, and a totally useless one,
Sebastian Cook, he was sure to have fun at Hogwarts. Surely he would have
had a bit of fun at least – if there hadn’t been the fact that there were
lessons to attend. Of course, after being sorted into Slytherin House, Roland was to learn the noble history of that house of houses. Since most readers of broom already know about the infamous students attending Hogwarts in Slytherin, there is no need to bore you with that history yet again. Let it suffice to say that it took Roland the best of his first three years to keep in mind even the simple facts of a. Voldemort being a former student of Slytherin, b. Slytherin’s monster was still at Hogwarts and c. Severus Snape was his House Teacher. Ah well. Some students are really so stupid you have to shake your head in silent wonder at their being able to tie their shoelaces magically. Come to think of it, lessons might have been a lot easier for Roland without the fact that most classes were double classes – held together with the Gryffindor students of his year. From the |
very first moment on until the very last moment at
Hogwarts, he was in constant war with the Malignant Magpies. And the
editors of this your favourite magazine were also responsible for a fair
bit of trouble Roland had to go through. In Transfiguration, Roland was bottom of the class – hm, nice metaphor indeed… That was perhaps in part due to his hard struggles with everything connected to magic and memorizing spells and techniques. But the greater part of his failure has to be attributed to interference from outside. Needles kept dropping to the floor or soaring into the air instead of being transfigured properly. Guinea pigs turned into guinea fowls at will, as it seemed. And of course in every second lesson Roland’s chair lost a leg or turned into a turtle or something the like. The good thing about these pranks was that they enhanced the magical prowess of the pranksters. The negative effect was that Roland came to rely totally on the help and assistance of his friend Ramon Vargas. Why that was such a negative thing and what else happened to Roland, you will be able to read in the next edition of broom. |
The Moon Over Wogharts
| Patricia meanwhile had her very own qualms to endure. In the nights when the ghost of her father and the shadow of Sean haunted her sleep she used to get up and walk through the warehouse. The fact that they were well-stored and full made her happy – until one night she found that half the boxes of spices were filled with sand and only a thin layer of whatever spice was supposed to be in them. Under a thin layer of silk, plain cotton cloth was rolled. Patricia was appalled. Usually she would have asked Richard, but some instinct told her that it was her cousin who was at the heart of things. So she began to look through the books by herself and found some grave inconsistencies. Richard was cheating. And there was nothing she could do. A woman could not lead a merchant’s house alone. A woman could not sue by herself. Now it was clear that Asher had to come, and come soon, if only to save | the house of Shaughnessy from ruin.
But one morning, her maid Carolyn entered and looked trembling and tearful. “What is it?” Patricia asked concerned. Carolyn’s lips quivered, then she burst out: “Oh, Miss Patricia, the ship – it’s sunk!” “What are you telling me?” Patricia asked. There were currently four ships at sea, plus the usual accompanying warships. “The Lavish Lady, she sunk. Mr Boyens just told me. Pirates attacked her and she sunk!” Carolyn burst into tears and sobbed wildly. Patricia felt herself go rigid. So Asher would not come. And not only that, the Lavish Lady’s load was lost just as well. “Carolyn, leave me alone. I need to think,” Patricia said. The sobbing maid left at once. Patricia stepped out onto her balcony. The sun was just up and bathed everything in mild rays. The sea lay calm and blue. Nothing seemed amiss, and yet |
Patricia felt s if some vile wizard had turned
herself to stone and was now discarding with the shreds of her life. Ruin
was imminent, and the only thing she could do was to marry Richard to keep
up respectability and have some safety at least. For if she now pushed
Richard away, everyone would think her ungrateful and unladylike. She had
no excuse any longer. There was no fiancé coming to fetch her. There was
no father to protect her. There was nothing left. But then a nagging thought began to make her uneasy. Pirates almost never sank ships. Ships were much too valuable. Ships were stripped off all that made them recognizable and then sold off, or used as the new ship instead of the old pirate’s ship. At least that was what Sean had told her, and Patricia was sure he was right. Ships were not sunk. Not just like that. So who, if not pirates, attacked the Lavish Lady? |
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Have a try, Severus!
When Eloquence Escapes Me
| (At the Movies) Lately, Muggle press took
a certain delight in hunting down a certain Stephen F. for having
committed a libretto for The Magic Flute built by a certain
Wolfgang Amadeus M. As regular readers of broom, you will know that we
here at broom are big fans of this certain Stephen F. Additionally, we’re
not the biggest adorers of Muggle newspapers of any sort. Therefore, we
have decided to come to a certain Stephen F.’s assistance. One of our
reporters here at broom agreed to comment on the current
situation: Some critics said about Mr. Fry’s libretto that it sounded as if it had been jotted |
down before lunch. Additionally, they stated
that it had had nothing to do with the original. Well, I say that’s only
fair – it wasn’t the original! |
wakening in a world in which you might get killed
although you hadn’t been involved into any sort of conflict. |