Handbook of Hippogriff Pastry Psychology: Chapter Three.

dear Palace of Promiscuous Pastries, 

whilst my second cup of medium specialty coffee lasts for an hour, you last for approximately two minutes. this is not satisfactory. ask any woman. at times, you are flavourless, flaccid, frigid and unnecessarily flinty. you are also a remarkable bolus of fast-digesting, simple carbohydrates that my neurons seem to need but are never satisfied with. not unlike the seemingly pleasurable process of procreation. i keep wasting my dwindling allowance on you even though i don't need you like i need intramuscular injections of caffeine and IV dextrose. though one can argue that my wallet also does not deserve such coffee shop coffee assault... multiple times in a day. however, in conclusion, neither i nor the ginormous hippogriff, which i am currently raising as my aggressive yet magically magical child, are ecstatic about this. i suggest you sort yourself out or 50 points from HufflePUFF! 

love... Percy, a perfect prefect that should not prance with pastries.

Child Counsultant's Magical Anxiety Reducing Potion Shop.

Percy and his hypnotising hippogriff's pastry eating has been briefly suspended for a far more important post. 

for the past five weeks, Percy has been waking up at five in the morning, driving absurd distances from his house to get to his assigned hospital paediatric ward for that week and then to his university for two-hour long lectures on children with coughs and babies with congenital heart defects. this would be after he'd spent the whole morning taking histories, botching up clinical exams and then making a fool of himself to the healers by not being able to answer half their questions. he typically returns home at five-thirty or six-thirty in the afternoon most days. at times, he would have not had a single tea break during the day. 

this following week is the last week that Percy has to go to the hospital, because after this week, he has his FINAL exams. yes, after spending approximately 1 1/2 months in paediatric wards, Percy is now expected to examine an ill child for his paediatric examination on the 23rd, followed by a neonatal exam on the 26th of October where he is supposed to examine a baby that is not even a week old. 

did he mention that this week was the first week he'd even held a baby? 

in typical chewing-tables-and-having-relentless-anxiety fashion, Percy was told to evaluate his own performance by a paediatric counsultant on Thursday. after he told the consultant that he believed that his performance was satisfactory, the man said that he thought that Percy was better than that. when Percy mentioned that he was unhappy with his neonatal exam that he did with Dr Crup, the healer said, 

                                                      "Dr Crup* was very happy with you."

and when he said this, Percy thought that he was about to dissolve into happy tears. a counsultant paediatric healer had told Percy that he thinks that Percy's problem is that he overthinks things, and that he blanks out and gets nervous unnecessarily. and then he told Percy, 

         "people are nervous when they don't have the knowledge or the skill. you have both of those." 

it is the sentences and words that everyone had been telling him all his life, but Percy had never had a CONSULTANT take an hour of his day to sit with him, and tell him that he thought that Percy was doing more than satisfactory. in fact, if Percy had to genuinely rate himself, he would give himself an etremely subpar rating. it is with this thought that Percy decides that no matter what happens during the examinations, he realises that he should take the time to calm down. there will be NO third wizarding world if he had forgotten to ask the mother if she had a standard vaginal delivery if the rest of his history is still intact. 

Percy honestly felt like crying tears of joy when the doctor told him this. he felt like the heavy weight of his own expectations of himself disappear. Percy is fully aware that he will still leave his examination feeling like he could've done much better, but he is also aware that the healers know that Percy is under stress, and that he is truly his own worst critic. knowing that how he rates himself post-exam is nowhere near how the professors are going to rate him brings him a closure NOW that he is attempting to embrace. Percy knows that he will not be calm during his exam. he will be tachycardic, talk too quickly, have a resting tremor and suffer from signs of hyperthyroidism. and he will probably leave the exam with a mixture of doom and nausea. but at least he knows that it is perfectly normal. as is passing out, and ingesting his body weight in carbohydrates straight after. 

also, apparently, because Percy asked - the healers are not bothered when Percy repeats himself, or when he does not say anything for approximately ten seconds during said examination... who would have thought? 

*the healer that Percy was referring to has a surname that is a carnivorous animal of the dog family. 

Handbook of Hippogriff Pastry Psychology: Chapter Two.

in this chapter of Hippogriff Pastry Psychology, Percy would like to talk about the correct ways to consume a cinnamon roll. often, this aspect of the inhalation of the cinnamon roll is overlooked, but it is extremely vital for a hippogriff to consume a cinnamon roll correctly to achieve the most rhapsodic experience. it is crucial to understand that if the hippogriff is busy being... err, stimulated, they are most likely too preoccupied to kill you! 

firstly, you want to make sure that the hippogriff is awake. dangling Cinnabon on a string may be a perfectly fine way to get Percy's expansive squat-jump-and-responsibility-dodging arse out of bed, but trying to feed a cinnamon roll to a sleeping hippogriff is fatal... for some unknown reason that has plagued hippogriff tamer people for ages! perhaps, they would enjoy something lighter in the morning... like air, Ginny's favourite silky underpants... or whatever is left of your fleeting fortitude and forbearance!

secondly, a hippogriff tends to prefer their cinnamon rolls the same way that Percy prefers his alone time with his bed: in unnecessary, extensive and drowsy-inducing quantities! in fact, Percy believes that the most appropriate way to consume a cinnamon roll is to cover it with SO much sugary substance that his pancreatic B-cells start to threaten an early retirement.

thirdly, it is not wise to give hippogriffs Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Bun ice-cream because they tend to suffer from, err... cinnamon runs. Percy refrains from further explanation.

fourthly, if Percy's mother, Molly, makes Nutella cinnamon rolls, then you may use it as a sufficient form of target practice when you are training them. unfortunately, some hippogriffs begin to believe that this substance is edible (it isn't their fault. Percy believed so too once upon a century), but please try to keep your hippogriffs away from this vile monstrosity. Molly's homemade traditional cinnamon rolls are much better than this edited catastrophe. if one has to choose between these Nutella cinnamon rolls and cardboard, Percy suggests the cardboard because of its high fiber content and easy digestion.

lastly, the worst way of feeding a hippogriff (and yourself) a cinnamon roll is not to consume one at all. this mistake is sacrilegous and as a result, may make other hippogriffs (and the rest of the population of the universe and the time continuum as it stands now) mock you. and think that you are strange because you also did not like bananas as a child. do not let them have the upper hand. amputate them, and take one cinnamon roll a day to ensure the cavities will stay!

Handbook of Hippogriff Pastry Psychology: Chapter One.

keeping up with the French theme, Percy has written a guide about another opulent-because-everything-French-is-opulent-oily-and-ostentatious buttery French air delicacy by the name of a "croissant."

Percy is going to start with the basics! if you want a hint of butter or cheese, there is no better vehicle than this beloved bread-based breakfast! Percy highly recommends it, especially if cleaning off the flaky pastry pieces off your favourite professional future-black cauldron-black trousers precipitates a miniature mental breakdown! it is no secret that hippogriffs especially adore it when their masters are covered in croissant crumbs... easier to eat breakfast and give you slobbery, Lactobacillus-containing kisses that way!

if you eat this pretty pitiful pastry with enough margarine or butter to harden your arteries or enough cheese to make a cow go into septic shock, then perhaps, you, like Percy, suffer from post-prandial indigestion! but hopefully, unlike Percy, is not heading towards hippogriff-sized pants! but if you, like Percy's university, use croissants as a component of a breakfast sandwich, then he refuses to associate himself with you. 

if you prefer to have a snitch-sized dollop of chocolate in your airy, unfulfilling croissant then scoff down a pain au chocolat. the elves named it so because cocoa beans all around the world are writhing in Cruciatus-induced agony knowing that they suffered through the labourious fermentation process only to be piped into microscopic morsels into an atmospheric-pressure-defying snack. be wary of tending to a hippogriff after eating a pain au chocolate... it pains them to know you ate this literally empty (where is my luscious chocolate centre?) promise! 

lastly, if you do not spend enough time agonising over your life choices, Percy suggests a pain aux raisins! when you get to the sticky paste embedded in the raisin swirl, you are guaranteed to start contemplating all your life choices! you also may start to wonder if your mother endured nine months of pregnancy so you could eat stodgy raisin bread bound with an amorphous sweet syrup with the consistency of Dumbledore's beard! it may even make you contemplate why in Merlin's name do you own a hippogriff? especially when you are fatally allergic to responsibility and insist that wearing your bra the second day is a normal thing that successful people do.