The Epic Tale of the Hogwarts Food-fight

The Epic Tale of the Hogwarts Food-fight________

First of all, I, Lily Evans, 17, 7^th Year Gryffindor, Head Girl of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, will have you know, inanimate object (specifically, a piece of parchment) and anyone else who might happen to be reading this-God forbid!-, that I am doing this entirely against my will. I am sitting here, in the Transfiguration classroom, at a desk in the front of the class, on Monday, February 16^th, at 7:32, writing my assigned scroll of parchment for this particular detention. I feel compelled to explain; I have received detention for the rest of the school year from McGonagall, Transfigurations professor, Head of Gryffindor House, for a nefarious crime I committed last Saturday, February 14^th, also known as Valentine's Day, during dinner at the Great Hall, in the presence of all the professors and countless peers.

If there were anyone reading this, which I desperately hope not, they would probably be wondering what I have done to receive such a very heavy sentence. And if this hypothetical reader happened to know me in person they would probably be astounded. I am not the kind of girl who receives a detention, let alone another approximately 87.Yes, I counted. You see, I am an honorable, rule abiding, precocious, careful, thoughtful, friendly and sweet-tempered teenager. Okay, so maybe I'm not sweet-tempered, but all the other adjectives fit perfectly with me. So, why in Merlin's name would I receive such a punishment? Two words: James Potter.

If that name does not provoke fear, repulsion, terror, abhorrence and a desire to strangle the bearer, then the person who has heard it does not know him. He is the most despicable, self adoring git in the universe! There isn't even any competition! And if you, anonymous reader, have even a vague idea of how many nominees for that title the universe houses, you'll get the picture. No, not even the whole picture, just half of it! He is unimaginably unbearable!

And if for some unknown reason you come across this, Potter, and the paragraph above does not manage to penetrate your unusually thick head and convince you of my stupendous dislike of you, I hope the following sentence helps: I HATE YOU!

Now, if my punishment seemed bad enough it would be surprising to find that it is actually much, much worse. All of my detentions are spent in the company of McGonagall, the parchment and quill she gives me to write on, and James Potter. Yes, the same supreme git of the galaxy one might happen to remember from my unfavorable description of him somewhere up there. The one and only James bloody Potter! Pity me.

Now for the reason I am to 'release my overwhelming feelings', or so McGonagall calls forcibly keeping a journal or diary or whatever this is called, and suffer the unspeakable horror: I started a food-fight.

Have you, hypothetical anonymous reader, ever been part of a food-fight? If 'no', then be thankful every day of your sure to be glorious life. If 'yes'...be thankful all the same, for James Potter was not a part of it.

I will now reveal the exact circumstances and details of such discordance...

On Friday I received by means of one of the school owls a simple valentine that read:

"Roses are red

Violets are blue

The flower I have sent

Is not nearly as beautiful as you"

The poem had not seemed like it had taken much thought, though still sweet. I would not have appreciated it as much as I did if it had not come with the most beautiful flower I have ever laid eyes on. It was white lily, completely untouched and in the center it was a shade of light pink. It had a long stem and a single delicate leaf still attached. It truly put the word 'gorgeous' to shame.

"Wow," one of my best friends, Sophie Stewart, of Hufflepuff house, had whispered as she took it gingerly into her hands as we sat in a secluded shrubbery on the grounds. She was in awe of it.

It would probably be best to give an adequate description of my friend for the general comprehension. Sophie is, above all, loyal and fair. But she is no saint. She is extremely violent which makes being her friend alternately harmful and beneficial. She is fond of giving 'playful punches' but is dubiously comically unaware of her own strength, yet no one dares mess with us. She is tall and has an enviable figure. Her hair is chestnut brown and she has green-grey eyes that are almost always malicious slits. At that moment though, they were wide. She was not being quiet and intimidating either, like she always tries to be. Despite her tough exterior, she is as soft as a marshmallow and a hopeless romantic. That is probably why she has had so many catastrophic relationships; guys who just want to have fun think she won't be the kind of girl to fall to a heap after a break-up because she seems so untouchable, when in fact she cries almost every night. The most recent of her heartbreakers has been Sirius Black, a friend of Potter's. I have yet another reason to hate him.

Anyway, Sophie and I were both stunned by this flower. It also had an entrancing aroma and Sophie would not take it away from her face.

"Well, it is pretty. Who sent it to you?" asked my other best friend, Richard Simon, in my house though in 6^th year.

He is a good-looking, blond, always in a good mood that is getting a teensy bit chubby. Rich has been my friend for as long as I can remember. We knew each other before we found out that we were both magical, though I had to keep it a secret from him for a year until he got his Hogwarts letter. He is the kind of person who doesn't give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks, as long as he's happy with who he is and what he does. He never lets anything get to or faze him. But sometimes his never seeming interested annoys me.

I shook my head. "I don't know. It didn't come with a name. Maybe it got delivered to me by mistake."

"Don't be ridiculous. It's a lily, Lily," remarked Rich and he stressed the similarity between my name and the flower's. "What a funny coincidence."

Sophie wiggled her eyebrows and said in a sing-song voice. "Lily's got a secret admirer that her boyfriend doesn't know about!"

I fidgeted. No, Terry Caldwell, a 7^th year Ravenclaw who was also captain of his Quidditch Team, did not know about my 'secret admirer', and I would not be the one to tell him. I doubted he would be pleased, he's awfully jealous. But I could not bring myself to throw that beautiful flower away. So, for the rest of the day I walked around with it hidden in my bag and charmed so it would remain so perfect and un-smashed. Truth be told, I secretly found the whole situation slightly romantic

The day did not go normally. Every time Terry came near me something happened. Once he came to give me a kiss 'hello' on the stairs and his foot sunk through one of the steps. We assumed it was just another trick step; Hogwarts was full of these. But he could not be taken out and Filch had to be called. I could not stick around for I was going to be late to class, something I absolutely forbid my self of doing. When he came to greet me at lunch a pack of angry owls suddenly swooped at him and he had to run from the Great Hall, lest he be pecked to death. I did not see him again that day, because he had a meeting with his study group. He is always so hard-working! He meets with his study group every week.

The next day, I went to his Quidditch practice. I had not had much chance to talk to him on Friday because of trick steps and the simultaneous brain disruption of about a dozen owls, so I forced my self to wake up at 8:00am on a Saturday, something I don't normally do. But it was also our first Valentine's Day together, and I was determined to make an effort. I admit I did enjoy watching him play. Whenever he sped up his sand colored hair blew in the wind in a very sexy way and I could tell his blue eyes were glinting when he scored. And men look so good in uniform...

When the practice ended, he was walking toward me with his broom over his shoulder, looking pleased to see me.

"Well, don't you look hot," he called as means of greeting. "I like that flower in your hair."

My hand reached up. The flower was indeed there, being held in place by my small ear and bright, long and wavy red hair. Hmm...I didn't remember having put it there. Well, I wasn't exactly Miss Perception at that ungodly hour of the morning; maybe I had grabbed it off my bedside still half asleep. But at least Terry didn't seem to suspect it was from my admirer. In fact, hadn't his exact words been, "Well, don't you look hot"?

He leaned in to kiss me, whispering, "Happy Valentine's Day," but before he could he was hit by a Bludger in the back and had to be taken to the Hospital Wing. His teammates kept swearing to me that they had locked the Bludgers away safely and had not an idea as to how one got away. But I had.

As we were taking Terry away, I noticed some movement under the stands. I had not seen anyone else on the pitch, so I looked closer. And who should I see crouching there in fits of laughter other than James Potter and two of his sidekicks, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew? Oh, aren't we both surprised, anonymous reader?

There seems to be something about me that Potter finds extremely attractive, because he has absolutely refused to give up on me after I turned him down in our 5^th year. Ever since then, he has taken every possible opportunity to ask me out again, in the pathetic hope that I will have changed my mind. That's wishful thinking if you ask me. I have never so much as smiled at the boy, and hope never to do so. He also has the tendency to jinx any guy who shows signs of fancying me and my boyfriends become his enemies. So, why wouldn't he want to send a Bludger at Terry?

As I sat there in the Hospital Wing holding my boyfriend's clammy hand in my own while three of his remaining teammates talked to the nurse, Madame Pomfrey, I went over all the tantalizing things I could and would do to Potter in my head. Among these the one that most struck me as worthy of what he'd done was to shave that ridiculously messy head of hair of his. Perhaps then he would learn his lesson which was already long past due. I wiped away the angry tears that threatened to spill from my 'eyes as green as almond-shaped zucchini', or so Potter was fond of declaring in crowded hallways.

Well, hypothetical reader, I can finally leave now, since my detention is over as it is 8:30. McGonagall has already collected Potter's assigned scroll of parchment and is waiting for mine. I notice Potter wrote each word about a foot apart and his letters are humongous to match the size of his ego. Now, aside from an assigned number of pages to write, McGonagall will have to set the size of each letter and the breadth between them. I would hate to be a teacher. She says that these 'un-bottled feelings' written down will help to settle the differences between us. Ask not how, for I have no clue how one achieves the impossible. I will continue my woeful story during my next detention. I hope you, whoever you might be, are looking forward to it as much as I am. Take note of the sarcasm heavily used in that last sentence,

Lily Evans

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