6th August 1997 • The Wizarding World's Beguiling Broadsheet of Choice • 5 κ
WANDLESS IN DIAGON ALLEY
By Holly Golightly
“Diagon Alley has not been the same for quite some time,” says Herbert Fletwock, owner of Obscurus Books. “Business has not been great due to the inordinate amount of Wandless wandering the streets. I wish the Ministry would move them somewhere else... because they’re smelling up our stoops!”
Obscurus Books is one of the only shoppes still regularly open in Diagon Alley as well as a select few others. Other shoppes are open at odd hours, usually during the daytime, when most shoppers are present.
“Luckily, some of the shoppes are still open for the young witches and wizards who still need their Hogwarts supplies,” says Fletwock. “They’re at odd hours, but at least they’re still open! Well, except for Ollivander’s...”
Garrick Ollivander, famous for being the best wandmaker in the world, has been missing since July 7, 1996. “His presence is sorely missed within the Wizarding Community,” recalls Fletwock, sadly.
“I’m not opening up Scribbulus Writing Implements until the Ministry does something about the street stalls and the Wandless!” exclaims Scorpius Scribbulus, owner of Scribbulus Writing Implements. “How the street stalls get patronage is beyond me. There are no such things as ‘dark magic protection’ objects'!”
Citizens are urged by the newly-formed Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects NOT to buy from the street stalls. “They’re dangerous,” says Department Head, Janice Bloxam. “Nothing can protect you and your family against werewolves, Dementors, and Inferi except for your own
defensive magic. Oftentimes what these street stalls are selling are counterfeit objects that are prone to backfire in the wackiest of ways.”
Scribbulus, however, is right about the Wandless. What Diagon Alley used to have in patrons, they now have in homeless. “Some of them are babbling incoherently,” says Fletwock. “It’s like they’ve lost their minds. Suppose that’s what you get for being a magic-stealer. Now that they’ve gotten it all taken away, they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
Written on one of the windows of Florean Fortesque's boarded up ice cream parlour is this message, assumably written by a patron: "NO FONDNESS FOR WANDLESS. ADHERE OR DISAPPEAR."