Perry Pooter and the Philosophical Tone - Part Eight

Hernia, Von and Perry were sitting in the Great Hall.

'Did you see Snack's leg?' asked Perry to Von.

'Yeah, he can't shave to save his life!'

'No, Von! He had a huge dog bite on his leg. Like the sort Humpy the dog would have given him if he was trying to get to whatever Humpy is guarding.'

'Humpy the dog is guarding something?'

'Yes, when Fartrid and I were in London he had to pick up something from a vault belonging to a Grunge Flannel.'

'Who's that?' asked Von.

'You idiots!' said Hernia. 'It's obvious, this Grunge Flannel person would be mentioned in the 'Who's Who of Wizards” book. It's in the reference section of the library.'

'The reference section? What's that?' asked Perry.

'What's a library?' asked Von.

'It's that big room upstairs where there are all those books,' said Hernia.

'Oh, the book room thingy!' exclaimed Von. 'Yeah, I've walked past that. Always wondered why people kept going in there.'

'To read, idiot!' exclaimed Hernia.

'Oh course,' said Perry slapping his forehead.

'You didn't know people read in there?' asked Hernia.

'No, but there is a grunge section at the end,' said Perry, 'Has a bunch of CD's in it, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam. I bet it has something to do with this legendary grunge flannel.'

'Of course,' said Von.

'What?' said Hernia and Perry at the same time.

'Uh, I don't know, I just didn't want to feel left out,' said Von.

'You idiot, Von,' said Hernia.

At that moment a vulture flew overhead and a large white load of good landed right in front of Perry in his soup d'jour.

'Um, I'm not eating this now,' said Perry.

'You have to,' said Von. 'Or else you won't get any dessert.'

'Wait,' said Hernia, who was the more observant of the trio. 'There appears to be a broomstick or other large object in their wrapped in brown paper.'

Von and Perry both slapped their foreheads!

'Wow,' said Von. 'It's the Hoovermatic three thousand. That's even more impressive than that stupid nimbus two thousand thing they had in the original movie.'

'By at least one thousand,' said Perry, who didn't quite understand that higher numbers didn't always mean better quality. Which in turn explained why he had bought a Pentium four that ran at ten thousand kilohertz over the Pentium four which ran at one gigahertz.

'Now you have a really cool Vacstick to play the Queeritch tournament with,' said Hernia.

'You want to know what's really weird,' said Perry. 'My parents left me a vault full of gold pieces, and yet I always seem to never have anything and other people have to buy me things.'

'That is weird,' said Von. 'You stingy bastard. You didn't even buy me a birthday present!'

'And all you did for my birthday,' said Hernia. 'Was pay for some guy to come in to my room and install something in the ceiling, which you said was a smoke detector, but when I tested it, it didn't work!'

Perry blushed slightly at the thought that he'd actually got a Web-Cam installed. Von and Perry smiled knowingly.

ADDENDUM

Changed the line From:

'And all you did was pay for some guy to come in to my room and install something in the ceiling, which you said was a smoke detector, but when I tested it, it didn't work!'

To: 'And all you did for my birthday,' said Hernia. 'Was pay for some guy to come in to my room and install something in the ceiling, which you said was a smoke detector, but when I tested it, it didn't work!'

Thanks to Ashish for spotting that no one knew who was saying this line. Hope it makes sense now! :-)