As someone once said, there are always two sides to every story. Understanding is a three edged sword. Your side, their side and the truth in the middle.
Many an adventure involves swords, few of them however are three edged.
Let me tell you a story about a misadventure you no doubt heard being told many a time from a little excitable boy, as told at high pitch, to his equally excitable brother.
You guessed it, it’s the story a little first year named Dennis Creevey told his brother Colin when he arrived dripping wet in the Great Hall for his sorting about falling into the lake and being rescued by the Giant squid.
Hogwash, the Giant squid isn’t in the business of rescuing first years, never was and never will be.
The stories I could tell you about the resident Giant Squid would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight.
Do I need to remind you of that business of luring students into the lake through Early Morning Music?
Anyway, that is a whole other story.
Let me take you back to the night when a very small boy, well below the average size of an 11 year old, arrived on the Hogwarts Express to start his first year in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
As is tradition, all first years were put into boats for the last stretch of the journey to the castle.
Dennis Creevey, was put into me.
Oh, did I forget to mention that?
I am one of the boats that are used each year to ferry first years to Hogwarts.
The stories I could tell you, but I am digressing again.
Dennis talked non-stop, ninety to the minute, as they say, and at an annoyingly high pitch.
Even I found it a bit tiresome to listen to the little mite go on and on about how his brother Colin was in Gryffindor and was best friends with Harry Potter and how he hoped to be sorted into Gryffindor and how he could not wait to meet the famous Harry Potter and so on and so on.
One of the other kids, who I guess was probably sorted into Slytherin later, clearly got fed up with Dennis and halfway through the journey accidentally on purpose pushed the lad into the lake.
The plunge into the cold water shut him up for a bit and let me tell you, that was some nice respite.
But it didn’t last long and he soon started to scream bloody murder.
The scene he was causing!
Anyway, I used my underwater communications to alert Myrtle, who is never too far away on the day the first years arrive, and she spread herself out under the boy as a safety-net, so that he could not possibly drown.
Myrtle nicknamed me Nautilus a long time ago. Even though I am no more a submarine than she is a mermaid, but she likes to play pretend and used to be an avid reader before her mishap in the girls’ bathroom, but no doubt you have heard that story before.
Dennis kept his eyes closed during the whole debacle, though most of us would probably have preferred him to close his mouth instead.
Even Myrtle admitted afterwards that she was in two minds to let the kid drown, just to shut him up, but the thought of potentially having to share her cubicle with him was enough to double her efforts to keep him afloat.
Myrtle is a good soul. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
Under water her spirit-form takes on a slightly more corporeal substance that allows her to provide buoyancy to solid objects.
She once helped me keep afloat when I sprung a leak, when one of the first years accidentally let off one of the fireworks from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes while he was travelling in my boat.
But that is yet another story and the kid was lucky no one had thought to fit me with ejector seats. I have since suggested this to Myrtle, who promised to put in a good word for me.
So beware, in case it is your turn to start in Hogwarts soon, I may have received that long overdue upgrade.
To get back to the original story, Dennis was eventually helped back on board by his classmates and spent the rest of the journey wrapped in Hagrid’s moleskin coat jabbering on and on about what a great story this was to tell his brother Colin and the famous Harry Potter and asking the other kids if they had seen how the Great Squid rescued him.
Thankfully the journey across the lake does not take very long, as otherwise Dennis most likely would have landed back in the lake for a second time.
That kid just didn’t know when to shut up.
My guess is that the other three kids that shared the boat with him that day all fervently begged the sorting hat NOT to put them in Gryffindor, just to avoid this kid.
I know he was only a kid, but blimey you would need the patience of a saint to put up with that one.
I wonder how McGonagall dealt with two of them in her house, as I believe Colin was equally exhausting.
Nice kids, I am sure, and I heard what happened to the brother first being petrified and then later killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, which now makes me sorry for saying all those things about Dennis. It is tough losing a brother like that.
Myrtle tells me Colin came back for a while as a ghost to help his brother come to terms with his death.
As I said, they were nice kids, even if a tat overexcited at times.
So there you have it, the True story of the Rescue of Dennis Creevey.