HOL Ravenclaw

After making it through the marble wood, the white knight bids you farewell, having returned you back into the company of the knave, who grabs you firmly by the hand.

“Please kno dawdling,” he shakes his head. “We’ll kneed to move a bit faster to arrive at the courtroom before the deadline has passed. My guess is they’re probably finished sentencing by know, and if we miss being present for the verdict, how will you ever be able to determine the culprit?”

Your head spins at this illogical statement, but choosing once more to ignore the unending stream of absurdities, you keep up with the knave at a bit of a jog until you arrive at a small beach with a shack on it.

The knave hurries you over to the shack, where the door opens and you see it’s much larger inside than you’d guess to be possible, and much grander in appearance than you’d have assumed from the outside.

“How peculiar,” you start to say, as the knave shoves you through, then follows inside.

A woman with a very loud voice and a very large head stands up at a judge’s podium. Not far from her is a juror’s box where oversized oysters sit whispering to one another, as a man with a hammer in his hand questions an unimaginably fat walrus on the stand (who yammers on about something to do with “the lemons!” while eyeing the oysters and licking his lips).

There’s no doubt in your mind who that woman is. You’ve made it to The Queen of Hearts! This must be her royal court.

The instant the queen spots you, she shrieks for the walrus to vacate the stand, beckoning you forward as his replacement.

Only rather than asking you to divulge what you’ve seen or heard on the matter of the missing tarts, the oysters slowly begin telling a long tale.

Each one in their turn adds on to the story, then, putting itself to sleep, another takes over where the last left off.

Somehow you aren’t sure this is going to help determine who the thief might be, but the queen snarls at anyone who distracts from the story —of course it’s truly herself distracting from the story— so you smile and nod your way through it without another word.

Task:
Listen to the oyster’s tale by contributing a minimum of 120 words to a Story Chain. There are no specific rules so long you follow HOL rules and are respectful of continuing the story written by the previous person. Whoever posts first gets to decide how the story begins! You are welcome to post more than once if it pleases you.

Alternatively you may post a Spill The Tea research piece in 120 words or more, sharing interesting, unusual, or little known facts in your own words about any person throughout history.

This task is worth 15 beans, with an additional 15 bonus beans for completing all Week Three tasks by end of activity. Deadline is 11:59pm (HOL time) on Sunday April 30th.

The old leaves from last fall crunched under Molly’s feet as she walked toward the Forbidden Forest. The fresh smells of spring were not enough to calm her frustrations.

I can’t believe they would do this, she thought. And right before our big Potions exam!

Greta and her cohort of friends had stolen Molly’s books and Potions supplies as a fun prank, as Greta put it. Supposedly, the supplies were nestled in a crook of a tree not far from the entrance to the Forbidden Forest. Molly had thought about telling a professor about what had happened, but she knew that Greta would get her revenge. And Molly did not have the time nor the energy to deal with Greta any more than she had to.

With the sun setting behind her, Molly took her first steps into the Forbidden Forest, determined to retrieve her supplies and get out as fast as possible.

Molly looked around her as she ventured slowly into the forest, knees shaking. There were a lot of trees in here, how was she ever supposed to figure out which one had her Potions supplies and books? And how was she supposed to find them and have enough time to actually study and be ready for the exam?
I’d better just start looking, Molly thought to herself, as she started giving each tree she came across a quick examination.
The sun was sinking lower and lower, the trees getting darker and darker, and Molly was venturing further and further into the Forbidden Forest and still not finding her things. Suddenly, she spotted what looked like a bit of parchment sticking out of a hole in a tree just to her left! Peering into the dark alcove, she saw the piece of parchment that had definitely come from her bundle of books and supplies … but nothing else. It looked like her things had been here, but now they were gone. Great.
As an icy breeze swept her hair back from her face, Molly looked around and realized that not only were her things still missing, but she had wandered farther into the forest than she thought. She no longer knew where she was. And it was getting dark.

Molly had the sudden desire to go to sleep, but quickly decided to fight against it as it would not be safe to be completely defenceless in an environment such as this. Fortunately she remembered various spells that would be useful for finding one's way in the dark; first, a "Lumos" caused light to come out of her wand so that she could see even as the sky got dark. She then realized that the Four Point Spell - "Point Me" could be used consistently to tell her which way north was. Not like she knew whether "north" was the right way to go, but at least she wouldn't be going around in circles. And north was a good way to start for now... looking at all the trees going north, one by one, unfortunately proved fruitless. She remembered there was another spell she could cast to actually retrieve an object, but... unfortunately, she had temporarily forgotten that incantation!

At least she had some sense of direction for now...

An odd sense of well-being came over her and Molly felt both a feeling of relief of anxiety but, strangely, another new sense of dread, as she had no idea of why she would or should be feeling better! Well-being, when lost and cold and hungry and it's nighttime?

Then a unicorn wandered into her line of sight, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Well, that explained the sense of well-being. But it didn't make her warm or make her less lost or less hungry! An old legend popped into her memory, something about whatever a unicorn ate would not be poisonous.

She watched the unicorn as it meandered towards her, and observed upon what plants it was munching. She rubbed her eyes and then shook her head a bit. What was that? That couldn't be a slice of pizza, she thought fuzzily.

'Oh, drat' she whispered, as she looked down upon the plant which her foot had just crushed. No wonder she thought she was imagining things. She was ...

standing right in the middle of a pile of curious yellow leaves - ones she knew recognised from a Potions class, but couldn't think of the name of. This was exactly why she needed to find her books!

Molly continued through the forest, heading in any random direction she felt like, trying to force her fuzzy brain to sort the real trees from her hallucinations. She walked and walked for what felt like hours, before she finally conceded that she was completely lost, and had no idea which direction anything was in. She sat down, leaning her back against the trunk of a tree that she hoped was real, and sighed.

Just as she was preparing to completely give in and fall asleep, Molly noticed a trail of tiny green creatures moving quickly through the forest. She crawled closer to them, no longer caring for the dirt that covered her robes, and made out that they were bowtruckles. Suddenly, her eyes were drawn to a bowtruckle that joined the back of the group, carrying something that looked suspiciously like her small bag of lacewing flies. Molly stumbled back to her feet and she began to chase after the tiny green creatures...

Thomas Edison was born on 11th February 1847 in Ohio. He is most known for inventing a light bulb. But did you know he was a hero too? When Edison was just 12 years old, he had his own weekly newspaper, which he was selling on the trains, along with other magazines and candy. At some point in August 1862, whilst selling his magazine, he saw a two-year-old boy about to get hit by a train. The boys name was Jimmie Mackenzie. Edison reacted quickly and saved the little boy from getting hit. The boy had just minor wounds. The father of the boy, James U. Mackenzie, was a station master. He was so grateful, that he taught Edison how to use a telegraph.

Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4th January 1643 in England. He was a famous mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian and author of natural philosophy. A fun thing that I have found about this famous person was that he was an introverted, lonely and very secretive person. He was so lonely that he actually had a diary, where he would record his daily sins. He had 57 sins written in the book. The entries mostly focused on rather small things, such as picking on his younger sister. Writing his sins down has reportedly helped him to let his frustrations out. Additionally, the notebook had other purposes. He recorded his highlights of the day there too, for example, a written description of his making a pie on a Sunday night.