There's lots of stuff to tell you about.
But first, I wanted to say thanks for pressies.
Nev, the chocs were great. We ate them up right away before Mum could tell us not to. Heh!
The Cannons mittens are nift, Perks. And Mum really liked the wrist warmers you knitted her, too. She spent a long time looking at how you'd done the design, so I guess you did pretty well! And I've got the picture from one of my Cannons posters on that picture thinger you gave me. Mum said I should have a picture of all the family, but, y'know. I'll maybe do that if we take a picture with Charlie while we're visiting, but right now it's really nift because the picture I've got is Wintringham making this amazing save with two bludgers coming at him from opposite directions!
Parks, you're the best, getting me that book on broom charms. It's the same one you checked out from the library in London over the summer, yeah? But it's got an extra chapter on modern innovations, which is aweome. I keep working on the Silver Arrow, and she's getting better all the time. The broom kit's got really great twig clips, too, and they're supposed to be charmed to always stay sharp, so that's nifter than wiznift!
Hey, Terry. That box you carved is really dead amazing. And the lion on top looks really good. I don't know how you do that.
I'm really sorry all I could do for you lot was crackers again. I'm dead hopeless at making stuff. I mean, really. Anywiz, I liked it all a lot. So, thanks!
There's other stuff I wanted to tell you, too. Like about some stuff I've talked about with Mum and Dad--well, mostly Dad, actually. Some of it was about that hex of Percy's. They were really cross about that. But it was interesting, too, because I got to ask Dad some questions I've been meaning to about Dark Magic. Well, because he was trying to say that I should think about the things I do to get back at people sometimes, because putting a mean hex on someone that embarrasses them or whatever is a bit like using a hex that makes them do stuff they don't want to, and he said it was all a matter of degrees.
Anywiz, he says Dark Arts are always about either hurting people or making stuff happen against someone's will. Like the Imperius curse or the hex Percy put on me are both bad because I didn't get to decide for myself what I'd say to people. I had to do just what Percy wanted. And it felt really, really wrong. But really Dark spells use stuff like blood in order to do really big stuff that no other magic can make happen. Like he said that Dark sorcerers sometimes do spells that start with killing someone in order to make the wizard's power greater or make him live longer or heal someone who's about to die. So it's not always something horrible that you want to do, but it takes doing something really awful like killing a person or a unicorn or something in order to do it. Like the Death Eaters. That's why they're called that, I think. Because they do Dark stuff that takes lifeblood for the spells or potions or whatever.
But I wanted to tell you, too, about something else interesting that's happened. On Wednesday we went off on our brooms, exploring. I mean, it was really getting dull being cooped up inside, and when Percy was around--did I tell you what we did to Percy?--it was terrible, so Mum said we could go off with Mr Diggory and Cedric to go scavenging a bit in some of the old muggle towns around here. There are loads of them, y'know. Little places tucked up in the woods and round the coastline and in the hills. Hamlets, Mr Diggory calls them. Not even proper villages, some of them. Like they'd have a pub but no
owl post office, or a church but no grocery or pub. Anywiz, the big seaside towns have been pretty well picked over by teams from the Ministry, but some of the little places haven't been touched. Mr Diggory says that at first people were too sensitive to, y'know, take stuff that belonged to the people who used to live there, but now it's clear they're never coming back, and if it's stuff that could be useful, then it's better it's put to use than just left to the vines and rust and rats and all.
Anywiz, we went first to a little tiny hamlet called Hand and Pen where Mr Diggory had seen a bunch of yarn in a house one time, and he said Mrs Diggory'd been after him for yonks to go back and collect it for her. So we did that and found some jars and stuff in an old canning cellar, so we packed that up, too. And we had a big sort of sling, like a hammock, that the twins strung up between their brooms, and they went and took that stuff back to the Diggories' while the rest of us went on to a place called Slewton Combe that's not much bigger than a knut and wasn't worth that much. So we didn't stay long. Just kind of looked in windows and poked about in a couple of sheds. And then we got to a place called Whimple that's quite a bit bigger than the others--I mean, it has a square and there's a church and a school building and there used to be two pubs and a big place called Whiteways that made cider and stuff out of apples and pears. Mr Diggory thought there might be some things there that people on the barter network could use, and he found loads of stuff that he got us to shift out of the barns and buildings. And then Mr Woodhayes turned up and said a couple of the other men from the network were on their way, too. And about then the twins came back, so Mr Diggory said we could go off on our own if we wanted and do some proper exploring.
So we flew off, the three of us plus Cedric, and we went poking about the countryside and ended up in a place called Newton Poppleford, and it was full of mad muggle stuff. Like when we flew into town, and just as we crossed the river at the bridge where the main muggle road goes into town, there was this house that had sort of statues in the front that were of bears wearing clothes and posed like they're waving at you. Totally mad. There must've been a dozen of them, those bears! We decided we should go in one of the pubs because its sign says it has a skittles alley, but when we went in, it smelt as if something'd died in there, so we left right quick. Phoah! Cedric said it smelt the way you'd think that Mr Black's corpse probably smells if it weren't sealed up in that box. He's been to see it, and he said it was really decayed. Said it was pretty interesting to see what happens to a body. He was telling us that one of the cheeks had sort of caved into the mouth and the lip on the other side looked like it had sort of slid down his chin or summat. Anywiz, I don't know if we'll get to go now that we're going to Stornoway. Which is, y'know, probably good, 'cause if it's as awful as Cedric said, I can't imagine Mum letting us look at it. She'd have kittens about Ginny seeing it, for sure.
Anywiz, Newton Poppleford was pretty interesting. We went in some houses and they were pretty much just like the Muggles had left them. Only one of them'd had a leak in the thatch and stuff that'd got ruined inside.
Oh, and we went in the village hall and there was this picture display up.--Did you know Muggle pictures don't move? That was queer.--Anywiz, it showed pictures of people sledging in the winter, and there were some of people in fancy dress for some carnival they had there, and some were of kids running about in the schoolyard, and some were ladies in hats and odd-looking clothes standing about by the church. And then there were a whole load of pictures that showed blokes playing something that uses bludger bats but on the ground and has funny-looking masks and big padded kit.
And then there was this one picture of a lady who looked a bit like Mum, and she was holding a big bunch of flowers and smiling like she was really happy. And, I dunno. It made me wonder if we'd been into her house at all, and y'know, where she is now. It was odd.
But we found some nift stuff. Cedric found one of those bludger bats, and the twins found some tools and a really enormous cauldron in the school kitchen that they figured was for making soup, but they've got other ideas for it, and I just picked up some little stuff--a ball that bounces all ways you wouldn't expect, and a pipe that's carved with a bloke's head, and some sweets called sherbet lemons that fizz in your mouth, and I was going to bring a load of muggle blowing gum from the shop there, but we tried it and it'd gone off. It was just all hard and nasty. Oh, and I got a pocket watch that you have to wind up, but it keeps good time. I gave it to Dad because I knew he'd think it was really nift, and he really does.
