By Aaleia Goldstein
First-year Hufflepuff Correspondent, The Owl Post
Hello again, Hogwarts!
After introducing everyone to my wee singing frog, Pipes, in my very first article I promised I would hunt down more braw beasties to write about. So tonight, right in the middle of dinner at the Great Hall (between stealing a bite off Ellie’s plate and trying not to spill gravy on my notes!), I sat down with my fellow Hufflepuff classmate Enid DeMille to get the proper scoop on her pet.
His name is Bramble, and he is a fluffy calico half-kneazle.
Now, Bramble does not actually stay in the dormitories with us because he completely despises traveling and fuss. Instead, he lives back at home in London at DeMille Fine Millinery & Cloaks, which is Enid’s family shop that makes lovely hats, cloaks, and wizard clothes. But even if he is not pacing the castle corridors, he is definitely a castle pet in spirit (mostly because he acts like a total king!).
According to Enid, Bramble thinks the whole millinery shop is his personal kingdom, and any customer who walks through the front door is just a lucky guest allowed in his royal presence.
He spends his whole day patrolling the shop to inspect every single hat display. And if anyone leaves a finished hat sitting out on the counter, Bramble immediately hops right onto it and turns it into his throne! But he won’t just sit on any old plain hat, oh no. He only sits on the absolute fanciest, grandest hats in the whole place—especially if they have lovely feathers on them. Feathers are his absolute favourite thing in the world.
If that wasn’t cheeky enough, Enid told me Bramble is also a secret midnight interior decorator. Whenever the family goes to bed and thinks nobody is watching, Bramble sneaks around and secretly rearranges the hats and displays! They always wake up in the morning wondering how the hats managed to walk all across the shop by themselves overnight.
While Enid was telling me all this, I tried to pull out my wand and cast Wingardium Leviosa so my parchment would hover in the air like a proper fancy grown-up reporter. But my paper just gave a sad little flutter and flopped right onto the table! Enid and I had a right good laugh about it, so I just had to hold my quill the old-fashioned way.
I asked Enid if we could get a moving photograph of Bramble for this issue, but she said his majesty was far too busy overseeing a very important, custom-commissioned hat that has to be shipped all the way to France!
So if you are ever in Diagon Alley picking up school cloaks, stop into DeMille Fine Millinery and look for a fluffy calico half-kneazle sitting high up on a pile of fancy feathers. Just be sure to mind your manners and bow, because we are all just living in Bramble’s world!
Aaleia Goldstein
First-year Hufflepuff Correspondent, The Owl Post