Hi Wayne, So you decided to take a peek at my stuff, eh?  Well, this is actually the third of a trilogy , but you guessed most of the background, and a platok is indded a scarf.  Had to look that up.  I'm not Polish at all but have some friends who are,

 Hildy Bagshot is a character I made up.  She's related to Bathilda Bagshot who wrote "A History of Magic." Bathilda is a crucial character in the last HP book.

 Thanks for writing.

Hi Wayne, As you know, I'm as American as apple pie, never been to Europe, and all i know about Scots culture is from my first beta Euan Munro, my friend Diana, who writes under the name GraceHas Victory (her stuff is great.  I think most of it's here on WT), and reams of stuff I've looked up on-line.  'Slunken jo' is Scots, means 'coward'.  'a whit' is an old form of 'a bit'.  You're right about the drunk part, but there's more to it than that as a later chapter will reveal.  And as for the raven... well the next chap will tell you quite a bit.