"LUCIUS MALFOY IS A HO!"
"But I didn't do it," protested Harry Potter. Nobody believed him, except for the culprit himself-- or herself. Harry didn't believe that any of his friends had done it either, mostly because not only was the writing not in their handwriting, but because neither had known originally what a 'ho' WAS.
"Isn't it a gardening tool?" Ron Weasely asked, cocking his head to one side. Even the usually erudite Hermione looked puzzled.
Harry was almost ashamed to admit that he knew what the word meant. Oh well, not his fault that Petunia Dursley liked watching awful soap operas on the telly with the volume blasting all the way up.
"This is a dire thing indeed, a very... dire thing," mused Albus Dumbledore wisely and seriously. As soon as everyone was out of the room, he burst out laughing so hard he almost fell over.
"Squaawk!" said the phoenix.
"If I found out who wrote that about my father I'll--" Draco Malfoy made fists in front of his face and mimed a boxing match.
"It was probably your mother, advertising for him," jibed his friend Crabbe. "I heard she's his pimp!"
"You stupid horse!!" Draco lunged at Crabbe.
"What's a pimp?" Goyle wanted to know. His friends were too busy beating the tar out of each other to answer.
"Is Draco's father really a ho?" Ginny Weasely wrote that night in her diary.
"Um.... uh, how was your day at school today?" Tom Riddle wrote back after what seemed like an unusually long time.
"Maybe they didn't mean to write 'ho'," suggested Hermione Granger, with her usual air of superiority. "It's such a short word, and it's not even British slang!"
"OK then, if you're so smart, then what were they writing?" retorted Ron. "What begins with H, O?"
"Well, Hogwarts, for one," Hermione shot out. "And also Hogsmead."
"'Lucius Malfoy is a Hogswarts? That doesn't make any sense." Ron shook his head.
"How about 'Lucius Malfoy is a horse'?" suggested Harry. "That's still an insult, and--"
"THAT doesn't make any sense," said Hermione. "Horses are perfectly noble animals." She was silent for a second, thinking. "'Lucius Malfoy is a hominid!'?"
"What's that?" asked Ron.
"It's a human, or one of the primitive cave-people that came before modern human beings evolved," said Hermione.
"Hermione, you have GOT to be kidding," said Ron. "No one here but you would KNOW this stuff in the first place!"
"Besides, that doesn't mean anything either," pointed out Harry. "It's like saying... 'Mrs. Norris is a cat', and expecting her to get offended.
"MEOOWWWWR!!!" snarled Mrs. Norris loudly on the floor. They hadn't seen her creep into the room. She looked angry, for a cat.