MONDO EXTRAS

And the fact is that you did, Donna. Thinking that Lee, your magically perfect husband, was too perfect to really exist, that you didn't deserve that kind of luck, you moved right on. And I mean, half there. You knew you were better off in the life you were forging. But it was a sign of things to come: the rescue, the damsel, the way he gave you meaning. It was a lie. Even though he was real, and you were real, the whole thing was a dream. It didn't change who you were, when it was over: you still had your hands, and your feet, and your ability to be awesome. You cleared that level in one, girl. Took Rose thirteen tries. Be proud of that, at least.

No wonder you chose to sit the next adventure out. You'd just had your whole story told back to you, in machine cruelty. You'd just been rescued from it, by your own hand and by the kindness of a limited woman, to whom you had been kind. Oh, that was a heartbreaker, when Evangelista died. And when she killed you in her turn.

There's a theme throughout the stories I'm telling you, having to do with cleverness. What it does and what it doesn't do. Rattigan, he thought his cleverness exempted him from morality. Evangelista, she went from not very clever to awfully clever indeed. But let me ask you, who would you rather spend time with? No matter how smart they made her, they didn't change the essential quality of her. Her goodness, her desire to help. Midshipman Frame can tell you: All they do in Hufflepuff is make things with glitter and safety scissors.

That's not a consolation prize. The Hufflepuffs among us are the greatest among us, because they're not trying to be special. They're not trying to be clever. They know that cleverness isn't what's important. They know they're special and don't need to be told, over and over and over, like some of us. Some clever boots among us, we spend our whole lives trying to be told how special we are. They just know. Donna, you should be more like them too. And stop thinking it's a bad thing. Everybody wants to be smarter because they think it will make them more special. It won't.