Nor have I any pocket money left to spend on a galleon's ticket to the Yule Ball! It is hosted at Hogwarts next week, but any students wishing to go must be rich or else poor and thus employed as servers - and a sixth year at least! Who decided such a thing? The governors must be stupid. All the Professors and staff have to go. Whatever is the point of that, to have a bunch of old spinster matrons and socially-useless professors? Some of them are getting a little decrepit, wouldn't you say? And some are merely hopeless cases!

Why shouldn't they allow fifth years to liven the room a little?

It must be the governors' party, for the whole world might as well know that our miser of a Headmaster would not throw a party if it killed him. It seems half the school is afraid of him and the other half merely detests him (and that includes the teachers, we've all heard them muttering about him to each other when he can't hear!); though personally I can't imagine how Headmaster Black can be conceived as frightening, when he seems to spend his whole life locked up in the Headmaster's office or else always looking so miserable. There must be some great tragedy in his life, to have twisted him so, and make him so endlessly wretched and rude. Perhaps even his own children do not love him. And even his wife must not. Even he must hate his own company at this rate, the poor man! Imagine having to look in the mirror and face that sour scowl every day of one's life!

And, you see, while we are all off home over Christmas, I expect the poor lonely thing will still be there over the holidays, hiding away and eating meals in his office! I am sure I can understand why one might isolate oneself so: he has probably never had a friend in his life.

... and imagine that, enduring life without a single friend to one's name!

---