Journal of a Mister Cool

Friday, September 3^rd - 08:03 am, Breakfast in the Great Hall

Groan. Please let me go back to bed. We came back at 02.00 am last night, so I'm pretty close to dying.

But we discovered some extremely amazing things yesterday:

-On the seventh floor, near that statue of dancing trolls, a door suddenly appeared when Peter let us know that he really needed to go to the bathroom. We went in and found ourselves in Loo-Heaven! Golden chamber pots, toilets with heated seat, extra soft toilet seats, toilets that won't stink, it was fantastic! I don't understand why people still use the ordinary lavatory's!

-The Ravenclaw Tower. Remus had seen a couple of Ravenclaws walk there, so we knew where it was. The thing that guards the tower said:

"A snail is in a 30 foot deep well. Every day it climbs six foot, every night it drops three. How many days will it take it to reach the top?"

We thought for a while. "Ten days?" Remus tried. Nothing happened. "No, hang on a sec," James said. "After eight days and nights it has climbed 24 foot, so there's only six foot left, which it does the ninth day and then it's up there!"

"Nice thinking," the gargoyle said and it moved aside. We could enter the Ravenclaw Tower!

We went in and wrote dirty words on the walls. I really love being an immature twelve year old.

And... last but not least:

-A tunnel to Hogsmeade! In the middle of the entrance hall there is the coat of arms of Hogwarts in the floor. Peter brilliantly discovered that this was a hatch (he fell over the joint) and we went down.

The exit was under a loose rock on the edge of Hogsmeade. There wasn't much to do, since all the shops were closed, but is was still kind of cool.

We lay down in the grass for a while (we had run all the way to Hogsmeade, so we could use some rest) and stared at the stars.

"Look, that's my star over there," I said and I pointed at Sirius. "It's the brightest star in the sky."

Wow, that sounds cool: Sirus, the brightest star in the sky. So appropriate.

"Oh, look," Peter said. "It's a full moon."

"No it isn't," Renus said. "It won't be full until three days."

"How can you tell?" James asked. For a while Remus said nothing. Then he said: "I just can."

Right.

Then we went back to the tunnel. As we were climbing from the hatch, we suddenly heard a voice.

"Well, well, well."

I looked up. It was Filch the crazy caretaker, who was standing only a few foot from me.

Uh-oh.

We'd been caught.

I think I'm going to eat my porridge now and leave you, readers of my super-cool life, alone with your frustration about this fantastic cliff-hanger.

I'm so evil. Mwahaha.

Wait, what is this?

Sirius,

I could send you your second howler in two days, but you and I both know I have too much class for that.

I just received a letter from your headmaster, and I am almost too shocked to write.

Why are you trying to hurt your poor mother so much? First you get sorted into Gryffindor and now you do this to me, I just don't understand what I ever did to deserve this kind of behaviour.

Listen to me, young man. Cross the line one more time and the only thing you will see until you are eighteen are the solid walls of Durmstrang.

Your Mother

Ugh. Just ugh. I'm so sick of this. You know what, I'm going to write her back.

Mum,

Next time I'll cross the line I'll make sure I won't get caught, if that will make you less stressed. We don't want you to lose any more hair, do we?

Your loving son

P.S. I forgot to bring my poster of Honey McHeaven. Could you send it to me?

There.

Now, finally, porridge.

Saturday, September 11^th - somewhere in the afternoon - Common room

OK, I haven't written for quite a while, but I just have to share this with my loyal readers.

We discovered an underground society of cool people!

I'll tell how it happened.

James, Remus, Peter and I were once more strolling around the castle - under the invisibility cloak, we're not going to get caught again - when we heard voices behind a suit of armour.

Or actually, it sounded as if they were coming out of the suit of armour.

We looked at each other and I walked towards it. I put my ear against its chest. I really heard voices. Laughing voices. I lifted up the visor and looked inside it.

Suddenly I felt a force dragging me into the suit of armour. I felt like I turned into rubber so that I could fit through the narrow pipe I was now falling through. Before I could panic, it stopped. I looked around.

I was lying on the floor of a square room that was about half the size of the great hall. On each of the four walls there was a banner of the four Houses. Then I noted that I had fallen into the middle of a ring of about twenty chairs with students sitting on them. I didn't recognise any of them, until I saw two people looking at me in surprise.

Ted and Andromeda.

At that moment, James fell on the floor beside me. Then Remus and Peter followed.

The group started to murmur. Then Ted rose from his chair.

"Well, I see you have discovered our secret hideout! That makes you potential members of our society."

Remus and I just stood there, not able to say anything, but James said: "Secret hideout?" as Peter said: "Potential members?"

Ted grinned. "We're HUSH, an ancient and most secret society of troublemakers, founded by the children of the four founders when they were at school: Helena Ravenclaw, Ulandus Hufflepuff, Serena Slytherin and Leopold Gryffindor."

"But they preferred: Hels, Uli, Serena and Leo," a ginger-haired boy with a mischievous face that I recognised as one of the Weasley brothers - I don't know which - said.

Apparently Serena wasn't that much into nicknames. This proves that Slytherins don't have any sense of humour.

Ted Grinned. "I assume you all want to join us?"

We nodded eagerly. Andy smiled at me.

"You were deemed worthy by Nigel, our suit of armour," Ted went on. "That means that you have something special. Now it's time to find out what. Andy?"

Andromeda nodded and took some kind of magnifying glass out of her pocket. She stepped towards us and looked at us through it.

"This is a personality spyer. When I look through it, I can see exactly what kind of person you are."

I swallowed. I know Andy and I are relatives and stuff, but this thing was scaring me. I looked at Remus, Peter and James, and they looked exactly as terrified as I felt, if not worse.

First Andy looked at the four of us, altogether.

"I see a fresh, but extremely strong friendship, like the one the founders of HUSH had." Then she stepped towards me. "In you, Sirius Black, I see an extremely strong will, great pride and a reckless kind of playfulness.

This was just too weird. Andy was acting like some kind of... old wise person, you know, like a guru or a medicine woman.

Then she said: "I also see Serena's grace, charm and yes, also her arrogance in you."

Oh, that's just great. Why did I have to be the Slytherin? This was so unfair.

Then she went on to James. "You, James Potter, have Leo's heroic courage, his confidence, physical strength and most of all, his endless trust in friendship. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you were his descendant."

James looked very pleased with his subscription, until Andy said: "But you too have a great amount of arrogance in you."

"Join the club," I whispered at him. He grinned.

Andy seemed to really like her job and she stepped to Remus. He appeared to have stopped breathing, looking at Andy as if she was Honey McHeaven herself. Poor Remus, he doesn't stand a chance with her when someone as extremely cool as Ted is around.

"You, Remus Lupin, are both sensitive and sensible. You think before you act, and always remain friendly to everyone, regardless how they treat you, just like Uli. You also possess extreme loyalty to those you care about. And you're good at keeping a secret, almost too good..."

Er, right. Maybe Andy was overdoing the "mysterious and wise woman" role a bit. With a dramatic expression, she stepped towards Peter and looked at him through the Personality Spyer.

"People may think you're dim-witted, Peter Pettigrew, but you're not. Like Helena Ravenclaw, you can have brilliant ideas from time to time, because of your ingeniousness and creativity. You will endure anything for what you think is important. However, you will always seek for someone to protect you because you're afraid you're too weak."

With that last comment, she stepped back, put the Personality Spyer back in her pocket and winked at me. Thank Merlin, she was normal again.

"All right!" Ted said. "Sorry about that, we just need to be sure you're worthy of joining HUSH."

"So can we join you now?" James asked. Everyone laughed.

"Almost,." Ted said. "First, you must fulfil a task."

Oh, hang on, James and I are going to the Quidditch pitch to watch the tryouts. I'll tell more later.

Still Saturday, 8:15 pm, common room

OK, so they sent us away with a task. We had to sneak into Professor Thetics's - who teaches arithmancy and appears to be the sternest teacher in school - office and turn all his stuff pink.

Our first problem was that we didn't know how to turn things pink, so we had to sneak into the library to search for a spell. Eventually Peter found one and shouted it so triumphantly that we had to run for Madam Pince, the librarian, who had woken up.

Andy was right, very clever one, that Peter.

Anyway, I opened Thematics's door with Alohamora, a charm I had read about at home, and we silently went in and turned everything a nice shade of magenta.

Mission completed.

So now we're in HUSH! We were welcomed by the entire group, who seems to consist of students from all Houses and of all years- even though we seemed to be the only first years.

There didn't seem to be any rivalry between the Houses. Apparently it doesn't matter in HUSH which House you're in, as long as you can cause mischief.

Still, Gryffindor is the best.