Once or twice upon a time, in a forest where the tree leaves are all a brilliant beige and the ferns grow at splendidly obtuse angles, there lived a family of Puffskeins. They spent most of their time in a simple wooden abode tucked away into a thick patch of bushes, where they merrily played Exploding Snap and knitted left socks. Every other Thursday, however, they would leave their home and walk to a lovely green meadow, where they would sit and have a picnic. While they talked and ate, their pet would curl up and doze in the sunlight; those afternoons were always wonderfully relaxing--well, except for when the occasional Kneazle swung by, but that’s another story.

Now, on the edge of the forest, there lived a young goat, named Goatilocks for her beautiful, curly fur. Goatilocks was famous throughout the forest for her cookery. She owned a very popular restaurant, the place where all of the animals and their families loved to come and eat. She served all sorts of good dishes, like spinach and plum noodles, salted zucchini bread in warm grape juice, and even duck soup with animal crackers (the ducks responded by boycotting her restaurant, but this hardly make a dent in her business).

But Goatilocks felt that something was missing. One day, at last, she realized--she lacked the spice would truly make her a great gourmet chef: blond nostril hair. Until she found some nostril hair to sprinkle over her dishes, none of them could ever be quite perfect.

Unfortunately, Goatilocks didn’t know where she could go to buy nostril hair. She asked the old raccoon who owned the grocery store, but he wanted to charge her for asking. She asked the bears, but they were too busy eating porridge to answer her question. She asked the fish, but they didn’t understand what a nostril was. She didn’t bother to ask the large white goose, because he had a reputation for leading other animals into pursuits for all sorts of things that didn’t even exist.

So it was that she decided to leave the forest and travel far and wide, to exotic faraway lands like China and Neptune, in search of blond nostril hair. As she was walking through a pretty meadow on her way into the vast world beyond the forest, she happened to notice a pale hair lying in the grass (probably sunbathing, or some such nonsense--those pale hairs were always fretting about tanning themselves). Goatilocks picked up the pale sunbather and was astonished to realize that it was, indeed, a nostril hair.

Surely the hair had come from an animal who lived somewhere nearby. She set out to look for this animal. Breakfast time, second breakfast, elevensies, lunch, afternoon tea, supper, and then dinnertime came and went, and she grew quite hungry, but still she continued in her search. At last, as the full magenta moon began to rise and the moonfrogs started to sing their sweet croaking melodies, Goatilocks chanced upon a small wooden house.

She knocked three times on the front door, but no answer came. Desperate to find the source of the nostril hair, she decided to enter anyway. She opened the door, and as her brown goat eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the figures of three Puffskeins sleeping in big round beds carved from giant toadstools, there on the far side of the room.

She crossed over to examine the nose of the father Puffskein. After a careful look, she concluded that his nostril hair was black; thoroughly unsuitable as a spice. She moved on to the mother Puffskein, whose nostril hair, upon close inspection, turned out to be ginger. She leaned over the child Puffskein’s face, bleating expectantly, but his nostril hair was brown.

Goatilocks was crushed. Her hopes had been lifted, only to plummet down again. She turned to head back out the door, hot goat tears stinging her eyes, but as she took the first step, her hoof bumped into something--a creature, fast asleep, curled up on the floor with a blanket sewn of Butterbeer-soaked dragonfly wings. (The dragonflies filed a complaint to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but were disappointed to learn that this organization was already too busy trying to rectify the situation of the ducks.)

Goatilocks bent down to get a better look what she took to be the Puffskeins’ pet. It was a strange sort of creature, with pale skin, light blonde fur covering the head, and a sneering sort of nose. She checked its nostrils, hardly daring to hope.

They were full to the brim of blond nostril hair. She elatedly plucked out each individual hair, until she had every single one of them; enough to last her for years. By the time she was finished, the creature was beginning to stir, so she hurried out the door, away from the house, and back off to her restaurant, munching on a couple of the nostril hairs as she went.

Goatilocks’ restaurant became a bigger success than ever before; it even began to attract visitors from outside the forest, and soon Goatilocks was world-famous as the best gourmet chef who had ever lived, which just goes to show that it’s important for food to please the nose, because otherwise noses might get deprived of their vitamins, nutritional supplements, and run-on sentences.

And once every few years for the rest of his life, Draco Malfoy woke up in the morning with inexplicably sore nostrils.