The Harry Potter Alliance

Weird Question Weekly: Encountering Nargles, Survivor’s Stories

Miss us? The general chaos that follows the blog team turned into epic chaos last week and it was Tuesday before we realized that Sunday had passed. We’re back now, however, and in honor of the strangeness of the week, we’re dedicating this blogger question to the Nargles that caused the problems to begin with. As always, we hope you’ll enjoy our weirdness, and that you’ll leave us a weird question of your own for us to ponder…if nothing else it keeps us from sitting around arguing about the difference between Nargles and Wrackspurts.

Question of the week: What is the most infuriating brush you’ve ever had with Nargles?

Quinn: I’m not sure about infuriating, mostly because there’s so very little that drives me into a rage, however, I think the most annoying nargles in my life are the ones in my heater. I live in an old apartment building (built in the early 1920s!) and I think our forced-air radiators are original to the building. Every day when it’s cold, the walls go BANG RATTLE BANG BANG BANG as the pipes expand and contract. Independent of each other, my fiancee and I decided to call them the Nargles in the Heater. I think they’re just so annoying to me because no matter what I do, I can’t get rid of them! If I want to be a comfortable, warm human, I have to have all the banging in my walls. Rrrrrgh.

Erin:I’m 97% sure that most of my Nargle interactions entirely revolve around trying to format and post a blog here, actually! But my WORST brust with a Nargle was almost a year ago exactly, the night before leaving for my first writers conference. In the middle of a Skype call with my writers group (they were helping me prep my agent pitch), my computer spontaneously shut down and died. I was in a dead panic, running around, getting the Blue Screen of Death when I’d try to turn it back on. Came to find out (half an hour later) that it had probably just overheated. But I was still in a complete panic, running up and down the stairs of my apartment, yelling at my roommates. In fact…they STILL remind me of that panic. They thought it was that funny.

Elizabeth: I don’t actually have a very nargle-filled life… My family just blames everything on Peeves instead! He’s always screwing with our garden and our yard. And he loves getting into the trash… Or maybe that’s just my dog.

Kara: Ah, yes. Nargles. I don’t so much encounter Nargles as co-habit with them. I swear, I should get some of those glasses Luna wears, so I can at least see them coming. Some days they are more active than others, however, and I think their most recent set of antics resulted in my trying to get into bed late one night after getting home from a 9:00pm class, and dropping my book into the floor as I tried to set it on the bedside table. It was then that the Nargles saw their chance to interfere with my brain-waves, with the result that I had the clever idea of turning off the light and then reaching for the book. The result? A nice black eye from smacking my head on the table I had just missed with the book. Not satisfied with this stroke of genius, the Nargles then proceeded to conceal themselves in a way that caused me to hit myself in the head with my bedroom door when I attempted to leave my room the next morning. Actually, know that I think about it, I’m kind of glad I have Nargles to blame all this on, otherwise I’d start worrying.

So, tell us, when did YOU last run into a Nargle (or forty-two)? Leave your story below, and leave us a question to answer for you while you’re at it!