To Whoever Reads My Margins

Thursday. Someone has been reading my margins. I can tell, because there is a fingerprint on page ninety and it is not mine. Nor is it Crumpet’s, whose fingerprints are very small and slightly damp.

Very well. If you must read over my shoulder, read properly. I am Wendell, of the Sorcerers of the Dark Side, and I have been besieging the Headmaster’s sanctum for a very long time with very little to show for it.

You will not find his secrets in these pages. I don’t know them, and if I did I would hardly write them down for students. What you will find is my side of things: the classes, the notices on the gate, the castles and the cities, and every injustice of the past few years.

I shall add a note now and then. About once a month, I expect, or whenever the students do something especially unfair.