Suffice it to say that our seekers after Fair Fortune never made it to the top of the hill. The curtain had barely risen when Professor Kettleburn’s “worm” — now revealed to be an Ashwinder⁶ with an Engorgement Charm upon it — exploded in a shower of hot sparks and dust, filling the Great Hall with smoke and fragments of scenery. While the enormous fiery eggs it had laid at the foot of my Hill ignited the floorboards, “Amata” and “Asha” turned upon each other, dueling so fiercely that Professor Beery was caught in the cross fire, and the staff had to evacuate the Hall, as the inferno now raging onstage threatened to engulf the place. The night’s entertainment concluded with a packed hospital wing; it was several months before the Great Hall lost its pungent aroma of wood smoke, and even longer before Professor Beery’s head reassumed its normal proportions, and Professor Kettleburn was taken off probation.⁷ Headmaster Armando Dippet imposed a blanket ban on future pantomimes, a proud non-theatrical tradition that Hogwarts continues to this day.

Our dramatic fiasco notwithstanding, “The Fountain of Fair Fortune” is probably the most popular of Beedle’s tales, although, just like “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” it has its detractors. More than one parent has demanded the removal of this particular tale from the Hogwarts library, including, by coincidence, a descendant of Brutus Malfoy and one-time member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, Mr. Lucius Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy submitted his demand for a ban on the story in writing:

Any work of fiction or nonfiction that depicts interbreeding between wizards and Muggles should be banned from the bookshelves of Hogwarts. I do not wish my son to be influenced into sullying the purity of his bloodline by reading stories that promote wizard—Muggle marriage.

My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr. Malfoy, explaining my decision:

So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing, or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students’ store of knowledge⁸

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy’s long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort’s Favorite Death Eater.

THE WARLOCK’S
HAIRY HEART

There was once a handsome, rich, and talented young warlock, who observed that his friends grew foolish when they fell in love, gamboling and preening, losing their appetites and their dignity. The young warlock resolved never to fall prey to such weakness, and employed Dark Arts to ensure his immunity.