broom Breaking News
| (Stuttgart, Germany) A horrible horde of escaped
escargots from a nearby snail farm blithely blocked a Muggle motorway. The evil escargots were trying to carefully cross the road when some cars crashed into them. Or rather, the slimy snails were seen to become exploding escargots. Now that would not necessarily mean a bad blockage, if there had not been such an anomalous amount of slime on the street. The slimy street had to |
be closed so that animal protectors (Escargot Engineers) could come and clean away the still living snails. The fire brigade had to do the rest and used warm water to wash away the slimy remains. Of course there were rash rumours about the evil involvement of Dark Wizards, but it seems that it was all the fault of a merely old Muggle fuddy-duddy who was not fast enough to close the gate before the horde of escargots escaped. (DD) |
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The bad
behaviour of particular persons practically persuaded a sensitive scribbler
of this serialized source of serious sarcasm to eventually end her elegant
eloquence. Unfortunately, not all others are a valorous victim of this
valued verdict. The shameful sentence she silently showers only on one
careless candidate. He has to carefully cope with her quiet quarrel.
The committed crime of this convicted criminal cannot convincingly be claimed to be of comic cause. Plenty of people passively progress in the pitiful process of perfectly not placing wise words to one’s passionate partner. The whole world |
should be
very well when pretty people privately postpone any spoken personal contact.
Contrarily to this calculated conclusion thousands of sane citizens secretly seem to sincerely speak to each other. What are we to willingly work out of this woeful victory? Someone should shakily shout: Shut up! No one does dare to do as we told them to. There still is this striking silence. Honestly, we cannot even helpfully hear our own opinion – of course, only if we already owned one. Consequently, to carefully keep convincing control, we’ll collectively close our charming jaws. (ALL) |
broom-e-gram
| May 1 Beltane, the old Celtic festival! Yes, we do take
every opportunity to throw a party. May 5 We actually received a letter from a reader! Er… Of course that’s nothing special, fan mail arrives in buckets… But this one is special. It’s full of abuse, and anonymous. May 10 After trying unsuccessfully to find out who wrote the letter we decided to give up. But perhaps someone knows the owl that brought it: an old shaggy bird that nearly missed the window! May 16 A certain R.W. told us he knew such an owl, called Hermes. Pur-lease! As if we didn’t know that owl, too! |
Weasleys don’t write letters like that! May 20 R.W. says he thinks his brother P.I.W. could be the anonymous author. Hm. We’ll think about it. May 22 We thought about it and don’t think it likely. Not that P.I.W. wouldn’t write such abuse, but he’d proudly sign it. No second thoughts! May 29 Oh dear, this broom will be late, we’re covered in work! Many authors sent in articles which we now have to read before publishing them. May 31 Sorry, sorry, sorry! No broom on time, and of course Percy did write that abusive letter… |
| (Somewhere) There are Quidditch players,
there are good players, there are superb players – and there are legends. No
doubt, Viktor Krum is such a legend, since he is the youngest national
Seeker Bulgaria has ever had. Come to think of it, he might well be the
youngest national Seeker in any country. Brian Cullen managed to get hold of
him for an interview. BC: Viktor Krum, the Seeker legend. I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you here. VK: Pleased to meet you, Mr Cullen. BC: Viktor, you were still at school when you were chosen as Seeker on the national Quidditch team of Bulgaria. How did that happen? VK: A spy came to watch our trainers. BC: Sorry? What does a spy have to do with sport shoes? VK: I mean, someone came to watch us play at school. I don’t know much English. BC: Your English is quite good, don’t you worry. So a talent scout discovered you at school. VK: Yes. At Durmstrang we had a lot of Quidditch trainers’ sessions. Sports and the Dark Arts were important. BC: The… I’m sure you mean you were |
trained in Defence Against the Dark
Arts. VK: No. The Dark Arts. Our late headmaster Igor Karkaroff taught himself the lesson. BC: You might say he did, he died on the hands of his old cronies. Anyway, back to your discovery. Were you immediately asked to join the national team? And does this mean Durmstrang is in Bulgaria? VK: I am not at liberty to say where Durmstrang lies. I wasn’t asked at once to join the team. I had to do trainers with the team. BC: I bet the training was hard. VK: They had big dogs who snapped at the heels of us when we got too low or too slow. Very nasty. BC: I was told you fell in love with Hermione Granger during your stay at Hogwarts during the Triwizard Tournament. VK: Hermoninny is a very nice girl. I like her. She writes letters. I am invited for her wedding. BC: Indeed? That’s nice. Were you never tempted to join Voldemort? VK: No. I think he had a very crazy mind. Very crazy, and very cruel, he was. I don’t like people who kill without reason. |
BC: Ah yes. What are your plans for the future? |
broom's Best Bad Boy Board
| Roland Banks, anti-hero of our monthly column and
certainly the worst bad boy we ever featured, was asked to join a
Muggle-wizard-relations project. Surprise, surprise, he really joined up! After sitting the NEWT-exams in his last year, Roland Banks was happy to be able to remain under the protection of Hogwarts School for a little while longer. He was asked to join a project founded by Professor Emerson Dicket. His project, known as Advanced Muggle Studies, was set up to enhance relations between magical and non-magical people in Muggle surroundings. In addition to that it offered the chance to study at Oxford University for young witches and wizards. Usually you would expect that students going there would have to prove their academic merit. Not so with Banks. In a later interview with the then headmaster of Hogwarts, Dicket admitted to sending some people to Oxford hoping that living in close proximity with Muggles would destroy their prejudices completely. Thus, every year one or two children of prominent Death Eater families are sent to join the project. Roland Banks was of course one of those social students. While he really managed to get his NEWTs in the first run – quite a surprise for everyone -, he was not really looking |
forward to going to Oxford. The
project was certainly one reason, since Roland’s parents were strictly
against their son joining. They had only agreed because Roland had no other
perspective. The other main problem was the fact that the other students
chosen to participate were none other than the Malignant Magpies! This was a
blow to Roland who had hoped never to meet any one of the threesome again. His only possibility to avoid being too close to them was to refuse joining the four in their house in Magpie Lane. Professor Dicket obliged him there, because he feared for the worst, and had the Magpies set up house with a Muggle girl. Roland had to take a single room apartment close to Christ Church College. He was rather glad to be on his own, not bullied in his own rooms, not watched over by parents or teachers. Still, he had to study with the Magpies and he had to attend the special classes set up for Advanced Muggle Studies. He hated that part of his life, but funnily enough he just loved not doing magic. Of course, a wizard who was quite short of being a good wizard and close to being a squib would not miss magic as much as someone who depended on his wand. So he had a clear advantage over his fellow students. If he managed to use his advantage and what happened at Oxford will be revealed in the next edition of broom. |
The Moon Over Wogharts
| Richard woke up from a restless dream, sweaty and
shaken to the core. In his dreams he had been at the tavern on Snapturtle
Island once again, where Mary Lambswool had threatened him to suffocate him
with her enormous bosom. Richard groaned and wiped the sweat off his
forehead. He got up and went to the huge wooden desk where he kept his uncle’s business records locked up so that neither Patricia nor any employee would be able to look anything up and find out how he had been cheating them ever since he had taken over. Most of the boxes in the warehouse were but half-filled with the actual goods, the rest was sand or straw. Paying off the tea and opium to MacFee was more difficult than he had imagined. At least MacFee had kept his part of the deal, and the threat of a sharp and hidden knife in the darkness was sufficient to keep Richard true to his own word. There was violent knocking and shouting at the door and Richard went to answer. |
“Yes?” he snapped at the white-faced errand boy. “I come from the harbour master Quinn Dashiell. He says
you are to come down to the harbour, and quick!” the boy gasped. Richard
frowned. “Did he say for what purpose I was to come?” he asked. “No, sir.
Come quickly, he said, and then he said that you might be very surprised in
the end!” Richard nodded, his thoughts racing through his mind. If Quinn
Dashiell, the young and ambitious harbour master, summoned him like that,
something extraordinary would have happened surely. “They say at the harbour,”
the boy said as an after-thought, “the Lavish Lady was sighted!” If the errand boy ever thought why he was suddenly pushed backwards down the steps and Richard Boyens ran over to the house of his cousin, he would have thought it was pure joy that drove the man. It wasn’t. How could his plans have gone so wrong?” Richard was cursing loudly when he hammered at his cousin’s door. |
Carolyn, the maid, answered the Richard
looked quite deranged in his fury. “Mr Boyens! Miss Patricia has already
retired,” she said and tried to block the door. However, a young girl was no
obstacle for Boyens. He simply threw himself against the door so that it
knocked poor Carolyn over. Carolyn stumbled and fell, hitting her head at
the bottom steps of the marble staircase and remaining unconscious on the
floor. Richard ran upstairs towards his cousin’s bedroom. Not all was lost
yet. If Patricia married him, then the Lady’s profit would be as good as
his, and he need only see to it Patricia was dead before long. That had been
his plan after he had been informed of his cousin’s survival anyway. Patricia was still clothed and sitting in her window recess reading a book when Richard came in. “You!” he bellowed. “Come with me!” he grabbed Patricia’s wrist and tore her from the recess. “What do you want?” Patricia gasped, struggling against his grasp. “You will come with me to the priest. We’ll get married tonight.” |
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Good luck, Severus!
The History of the Bury Derby
| Many Quidditch teams have got a longstanding history of rivalry, write Fred and George Weasley. Yet there is no example for a rivalry like the one between the two Quidditch teams from Bury near Manchester: the Bury Diggers and the Bury Buriers have been testing their strength against each other since 1304. Both teams are among the oldest teams in England. They are known to have played against each other more than 22,000 times. Of course it is absolutely impossible to follow the moves of each derby match, so we picked out the most memorable ones. Michaelmas 1422 That year fell under the reign of Henry VI, a baby who had no idea of the dramatic match drawing near in the fields around Bury. Okay, King Henry wouldn’t have had an inkling about that even as an old man, not only because he was a Muggle. However, the Diggers and the Buriers played for twenty hours until Hugwald the Hairy caught the Snitch for the Diggers. This victory led to a great shouting which in turn woke the sleeping supporters who promptly started to jinx each other. The match ended with three permanently disfigured fans and a lot of smoke from jinxes. However, there was more to come. St John’s Day 1588 The year of the Armada, but also the year of the greatest defeat the Diggers ever suffered: For all those years between 1422 and 1588, the Diggers always won the infamous derby. Of course the Buriers were rather grumpy about that. So they |
trained hard and even bought a Scottish Beater, Owen MacHarrows. He was kept disguised as an Irish Muggle who lived solely on whisky. When the derby started, his true identity was revealed. Owen, painted blue and wearing tartan, was as ferocious as the Scots were said to be. He managed to single-handedly take out all the Chasers and Beaters of the Diggers. So the Buriers won easily. Some Diggers-supporters said the Buriers were really Spaniards, but this rumour was soon squashed. |
international matches were completely cancelled, so the local derbies gained even more importance if possible. This time, the Diggers clearly had the upper hand. The match lasted for 25 hours, thus being one of the longest matches ever recorded. The scores were level for 75 times, which is an all-time record. However, the Diggers managed to catch the Snitch only millimeters before the Seeker of the Buriers could reach it – and just a second before said Seeker dropped off his broom, fast asleep. |