Why dear readers? Why is it always me? I honestly don't understand what possessed me to agree to such a task. It isn't as if I do not adore my darling Grandpapa. I really do. Honestly. I just wish I had some siblings to share the responsibility of visiting him with sometimes. He is a wonderful and kind man, but I swear in the last few years, he has become so senile that, at times I think someone has hit him upside the head with multiple Confundus charms. There are only so many times I can hear his increasingly bizarre stories without rolling my eyes.
For those of you who may doubt my frustration and will try to say that I am a typically ungrateful young person. I will recount one such story, and then you can decide for yourself if I am exaggerating. This one, in particular, reveals exactly why I am glad that the use and production of portkeys is now under the auspices of the Magical Transportation Office. Now the spell to make a portkey is a relatively simple one, as I'm sure you are aware, but the execution of it is only for the most skilled of wizards, witches and wix. The incantation is Portus (Pronounced POR-tus) and it comes from the Latin word "Portare", which means "To carry". If it is cast correctly, the item will glow blue for a short while and then return to its original state until it is ready to depart as programmed.
But I digress. So back to the story as Grandpapa tells it. If he is to be believed, there was one day back in his teens when he was feeling particularly restless on a hot school day and decided to slip out during lunch. In his apparent wisdom, he tried to turn his book bag into a portkey so that he could take a trip to the seaside at Brighton. However, the dear man very foolishly overestimated his ability to cast the charm correctly. In his words, there was "An almighty bang that shook me britches like a bleeding Doodlebug hitting the roof", (This was shortly after he survived the London Blitz, mind you). Whether it was because he had forgotten that leaving Hogwarts without permission was both forbidden and frankly impossible or whether he simply lived on the arrogance of youth, he says he was blasted backwards and knocked out.
Now, this is where the story gets a little odd but bear with me, please. Grandpapa swears blind that when he woke up, he had indeed been transported somewhere far away from Hogwarts. To a spaceship, to be precise. According to him, he was confronted by the sight of a tall, thin man wearing a large brown overcoat who introduced himself as "The Doctor". The man spent a very short time reassuring Grandpapa that all was well and that he would return him to Hogwarts as soon as he had finished unravelling a huge ball of "nonlinear time whimey stuff" and returned something called an "Ood" back to its planet. So at this point, dear readers, I'm sure you are becoming as sceptical as I am. Such a thing cannot be possible, right? There is no such thing as space travel to that degree, now is there? I have my doubts.
To conclude the story, though. My surely dementia-suffering Grandpapa then said that he travelled with the "Doctor" for a day until he was placed back in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing while he was asleep. He woke up to the nurse shaking her head and saying it was about time he woke up. Needless to say, no one back then believed his story, and I have to say that I still don't believe it either. The only thing we can possibly learn is that there are some charms that should not be messed with unless you have a lot more skill than a particularly ambitious teenager.
With that relayed, it is time for me to go. I think that next time I might just have to drag one of my cousins along with me....whether they like it or not.....*Insert an evil cackle here*. See you next time! - Nikita