Well, hello again, my dear readers! I do hope you enjoyed your summer break from school and whatever other busy things you have going on? You did! Wonderful! I know I did. This journalist did not get to take much of a vacation thanks to her Editor's incessant demands that we writers had to clean the SOUP offices yet again, but oh well. I'm not complaining. Too much sun is not good for my somewhat wild corkscrew curls anyway. I do not appreciate being made to look like a frizzy, overheated poodle so staying inside worked just fine for me. Even if I had to endure my colleagues whining over the injustice of being cooped up inside for what I thought was a fairly brief stint.
However, I digress. It seems to me that all the extra cleaning we had to do made a certain important Kitten hungry. So here I am wracking my brains trying to find you a new and unheard-of spell to save you from the boredom of me sounding like your probably much-hated Cooking with Magic professor. So as I usually do when I am stumped, I took the opportunity of getting my office sorted out quicker than everyone else did theirs to dive into a book; and would you believe it? I found just the right thing!
Now I have no idea why this spell is not taught at Hogwarts, but having tried it successfully myself a few times, I have to conclude yet again that some people are idiots. Now I don't know if it is because some of the professors and Headmasters are somewhat biased against our Durmstrang-taught fellows or some other reason, but this spell should certainly become more widely used here.
The story I read goes a little something like this...
Way back in 1902, Durmstrang possessed a particularly vile Astronomy professor who had a noxious habit of trying to degrade and humiliate those students he determined needed to be punished. With his self-entitled and elitist attitude, he decided the best way to accomplish this was to force his poor students to complete all the tasks he set with only Muggle means. His favourites included scrubbing brickwork with a toothbrush and making his victims work in the castle kitchens peeling mountains of vegetables by hand. Which all sounds absolutely beastly to me.
Anyway, one such student was subjected to this task one afternoon, and the professor made the mistake of leaving the child unattended for a short while. This particular student was one of the school's more gifted pupils and went by the name of Grigore Dimitru. Now the book does not say what he did to earn the punishment, but it is quite clear on what happened next. The plucky sixth year had quite enough of peeling carrots after a few minutes and started to play with his wand instead, twirling it between his fingers and muttering to himself. The result was this spell. I'm sure the boy was quite surprised to find the carrot in his hand magically peeling itself, but within a few tries, he had managed to replicate the spell to great effect. So much so that the entire pile was finished in less than twenty minutes! That's quite an achievement, wouldn't you say?
So how does the spell work, I hear you ask? Well, for this particular Peeling and Shelling spell (Yes, it works on all root vegetables and nuts I have found), you need to use the incantation, Descoji. It is pronounced DEZ-coh-jee, and you must be careful to enunciate the first and not the last syllable. The etymology of the word is Romanian, as that was Grigore's native language, and it loosely translates to "To remove". To cast the spell correctly, you will need to move your wand upwards in an anticlockwise spiral from the bottom of the target to the top. If done well, there will be no visible light shown, and the vegetable will be peeled neatly before you. However, if you fail to concentrate or misspeak the incantation, a blue light will emit from your wand, and your target will be severely burned, and no one wants that, now do they?
I have to say that I was rather impressed with the speed at which this spell can be cast once you have had a little practice, and I may even suggest to Momma Fox that we try it next time she has a delicious vegetable recipe for us. I do hope it helps you lovely readers too!
But until next time, take care! - Nikita