So where did the Hat get a magic boombox?

And where did all this boiled goose come from? Because there are platters of boiled goose in random places around the Hat Shore house. Not just in the dining room, but also on the bathroom counter, and the coffee table, and on one of the lounge chairs poolside.

The boombox starts playing. It doesn't seem to have an off switch or batteries to remove. It won't turn off until it's gone through its entire playlist. Which consists of:

( the Hat's idea of entertainment )

As long as the music is playing, the residents of Hat Shore feel inclined to dance, wear fingerless gloves, eat boiled goose, dance some more ... (Since no one is sufficiently geriatric for the nursing-home-specific effect to kick in, everyone is spared the orgies that a magic boombox could have created.)

The dancing is interpretive and creative!

There had been only the most obscure and private of warnings. There were beings who could have predicted the event, with runes or through oracular visions, or by whatever arcane powers they brought with them to Hogwarts -- whatever powers had not fallen prey to the castle's unpredictable field of interference. But how might they have prevented it? And how could they banish it, now that its inevitable advent had begun?

It rose in the sky, bloody and shrieking, three weeks short of All Hallows' Eve. Having risen, it radiated visible rays of unclean light, a light which carried no warmth and lent a cast of jaundice-yellow to the objects thus illumined. Going outdoors was like trying on a new outfit in a fluorescent-lit fitting room. Everything looked subtly wrong.

Mostly its shrieks heralded nothing. They were disconcerting, and raised the hackles on the backs of animals; they caused a mild dyspepsia in some who heard the shrieks, though by no means all. Indeed, some sentient creatures remained unaffected altogether.

But then there were the rarer moments when the shriek of the Baby Sun signified the beginning of something strange. Phenomena that could best be described as Fortean.

The first of these, beginning with the sun's shriek at noon of the day it first rose over Hogwarts, was a rash of spontaneous fires afflicting inanimate and nonsentient objects. This took place not only on the grounds, but also within the castle. Students might reach for their books only to find the book beginning to smolder, then abruptly flaring into a tower of flame. A plate of food in the Great Hall might go to greasy ashes before the first forkful could be taken. The house elves seemed to be spared, at least for now. Pets were safe. But no inanimate object, no matter how cherished or sacred or essential, was immune.

The Baby Sun giggled its loathsome amusement and lolled in the sickly sky. The whole of the grounds lay bathed in its bilious light. Once a student stepped off the grounds, the normal and benevolent sun of Earth was the only sun visible. Yet all of Hogwarts remained under the Baby Sun's mysterious sway, and none could say why or wherefore.

Perhaps some intrepid students might seek to find an answer.



(( OOC: As usual with these kinds of events, you can opt out. Your stuff doesn't need to get burnt; you don't need to get caught outdoors in a rain of fish or blood, or whatever subsequent phenomena take place between now and Halloween. If you want, your character can be unable to detect the Baby Sun or the weird quality of light at all. The mods will banish the Baby Sun through certain mysterious IC means once Halloween has come to pass. ))