Written by: Mishaa Khan, Peak Associate
Illustration by:Jarielle Lim
Once upon a time, in a caring, construction-free land called SFU, there studied a miserable tenth-year student named Ted Misermort. After being unable to get into his required courses for the 15th semester in a row, Misermort decided to ensure that no one else would graduate, either.
He consulted the dark magic present in the hidden corners of RCB and split his bad luck into seven deadly pieces. These horrible Horcruxes were hidden around campus, resulting in student apathy, a mental health decline, bad grades, constant construction, and late enrollment dates. As time passed by, construction and fog enveloped the campus to cover the voices of the Screaming Students and the site of GPA-sucking Dementors.
Henry Petter was summoned by the SFU Forensics team to destroy the Horcruxes before SFU is obliterated by the dark forces of endless construction. Each Horcrux was hidden in a place that represented a devastating part of Misermorts’s life during his time at SFU. After going through the memories of other SFU students who knew Misermort, Petter began his 100-day adventure, trekking through the endless construction to destroy the Horcruxes and save SFU.
His first stop was a location responsible for every student’s misery: IT Services. Petter burnt down the IT Service Room while spending four hours on the phone with the SFU administration to distract them. This allowed the first horcrux, the SFU server, to crash. With goSFU down, no student could get a late enrollment date.
Petter proceeded to the office of Professor McFoggnall, who had once given Misermort 2% for his final PSYC385 exam. He used his Invisibility Cloak to not-so-stealthily enter McFoggnall’s office. Brandishing his pen-shaped wand, he destroyed the Horcrux with Fiendfyre hotter than the roasts the Professor had left in their comment on Misermort’s exam.
Petter then dived into the AQ pond to retrieve a legendary item notorious among students for its wasteful attributes: the iClicker. On his way down, Petter was nearly drowned by the infernal koi fish haunting the pond. As he succeeded in his quest, Petter was able to use the iClicker to destroy the third Horcrux: a syllabus with mandatory participation.
He then staggered quickly into the AQ’s 6th floor bathroom to dry off before any of the Muggles saw him. When he was drying up, he heard a hissing sound coming from the stall behind him. He slowly walked to the door and kicked it open only to see Misenmort’s loyal familiar, the raccoon Ragini, ready to attack. He quickly fed her some food he snuck out of the Dining Hall, causing her to shriek and collapse into a lifeless corpse.
Petter ran to WMC to find his next Horcrux: a Beedie lanyard, in the possession by a Beedie snake Animagus. He knew Parseltongue, and could hear faint whispers when he stopped to get his Iced Capp. He explored the area to find the Beedie snake sitting on a table, trying to sell unnecessary Beedie merchandise to broke students. Petter quietly approached the snake and whispered a spell in Parseltongue, turning the snake’s skin white with fear. With Petter’s Accio, he tore the Beedie merchandise from the snake’s hands and destroyed the pieces of Misermort’s misfortune residing within. Out of embarrassment, the snake dropped out of Beedie and regained his human form.
The next stop was every student’s favourite place to stress nap: the fifth floor of the library, also known as the Chamber of Misery. In the Chamber of Misery, Petter found the academic journal that was ideal for Misermort’s PSYC 385 exam that he failed, but he had been unable to access because it was behind a paywall, resulting in him receiving a big fat F. Petter bled the paper with a Starbucks latte and dropped 10 student tears on each page to destroy the horcrux.
Due to SFU’s inconvenient location, Petter — despite being a wizard — had to wait for the 145 bus at the Upper Bus Loop for longer than the scheduled time. Before arriving to the Muggle World, Petter had purchased a transit version of the Marauder’s Map, the Muggle’s Map, from Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes. Once he located the bus on the Muggle’s Map, he used the spell Wingardium Leviosa to move the bus to the top of the mountain despite TransLink trying to resist arriving on time as much as possible. This destroyed the last Horcrux, the concept of TransLink buses’ eternal lateness. Thus, Petter lifted Misermort’s curse preventing anyone from graduating.
Despite Petter’s success in saving SFU from dark forces, there are still occasions of students taking over eight years to graduate. This is because there are still Student Eaters lurking around on campus covertly, trying to complete the mission Misermort began and waiting for his return.
