Not Quite Halloween

Wednesday night. Halloween approaches. The arcade on Collins Street has a paper skeleton in one window and a pumpkin in another, and the first-years have started asking whether the lecture hall is scary.

It is not. It is mysterious, which is different. There are potions in colours that do not occur in nature, books that have clearly been read by somebody with odd interests, and the Professor’s absence hanging over everything like a cloak on a hook. But nothing leaps, nothing growls and nothing chases. Families come in with children of nine and up, or of seven with a parent alongside, and leave cheerfully.

I am, I should point out, the most frightening thing on campus, and I am mostly feathers.

I shall write again next month, or the Headmistress will. We keep to roughly one entry a month between us, which she says is plenty. She has not seen how much happens here at night.