Cedric's message in a butterbeer bottle To the Brave Soul who finds this missive,
Hello! And may Merlin bestow barrels of rum on you for so finding and reading this message in a butterbeer bottle. For that is all they have here at this accursed port. Butterbeer. The rum is all gone. And I am in the filthy holding cell of a Death Eater prison. Without rum. Take a moment. Imagine yourself in my boots. Be afraid.
I had gone out on my ship, the white swan shaped one - the Cho Boat - you might have heard of it? It's a beautiful little boat, just like my lady love I left many years ago when I was still in the prime of life. Cut down by an untimely curse. But alas, I wandered into the port above Diagon Alley, caught up in day dreaming about my lady love's shining, shimmering, sheeny (sheening?) locks of black hair. Blacker than my despair at being locked up in this Death Eater cell. Without rum. (Have I mentioned there is no rum?) When I least expected it, the Cho Boat was reigned in! A lasso tied around my fair swan's neck! I fought valiantly, storming and raging and fighting and wailing and gnashing of my teeth. Rage rage against the dying of the... sorry, wrong prose.
I was captured, brought to the Captain of the marooned Pirate's ship. Captain Bellatrix. Trixy the crew calls her when she can't hear. I refused to give up the location of Dombledore's whereabouts. Mostly because I am unaware of Dumbledore's whereabouts. But, even if I was, I'd have resisted the temptation to squeal like a yellow bellied kelpie. So they threw me down below with not but a tiny port window in order to see out of. The crew on this vessel of the damned are rather dimwitted and I, after several long weeks, was able to procure enough gravy in order to write this message on the back of a butterbeer label with some straw from my cell. I got the bottle of butterbeer by complaining of scurvy. They're not intelligent enough to realize that that is helped by fruit and not butterbeer. They think butterbeer cures everything. Well, rum cures everything, but we have none. So butterbeer.
Have I written that we are without rum here? Because we are.
I hope this message finds you, and I hope you in turn can storm the marooned ship I have been laid waste to. Beware Wormtail, the second in command. He's a rat if I ever saw one. And Trixy herself. Her soul is as dark as a burnt Yorkshire pudding. I am in the third cell on the last deck on the starboard side. I'm the dashing one.