MJs Hogwarts Journal Chapter 49

Tuesday 22^nd April

Oh my… Merlin. Words cannot describe it. I don’t even know how to begin. Jumping up and down excitedly does not really explain what happened, but if I could write down exactly how I’m feeling right at this very moment, the answer would be: Eeeeeeep! Woopeeeeeee! Okay, okay, okay, calm down MJ. Calm down. Right, it all started at lunch yesterday. Most of us Slytherin First-Years had stayed in the Great Hall all morning talking. It was nicely decorated for Easter. Pastel blue and yellow streamers spiralled down the pillars throughout the Hall. Silhouettes of rabbits and eggs magically appeared in corners of the room before disappearing again after a few seconds and reappearing elsewhere – it had been kind of fun to play spot the Easter Bunny or the Easter Egg a few times.

Time soon passed quickly, and people began appearing in the Great Hall for lunch. I wasn’t really paying much attention to everyone around me, Trevor was trying to show me a wizarding game similar to rock, paper, scissors, but with wands instead of hands. On three, you draw your wand and either makes a piece of paper, a pair of scissors or a rock appear. Whichever object wins, it animates its action over the losing one, just like you would with your hands. So that there wasn’t any cheating with who went first, Crabbe announced when to go. On Crabbe’s call, I shot a piece of paper out of my wand, but got instantly distracted with the voices around me to take note as to who won.

“Great,” came a sarcastic remark from Pansy. “I thought we’d gotten rid of the ginger lump.”

“Grow up, Pansy,” Blondie sighed, as he slid away from her and along the bench.

“But Dracypoo…” she pouted.

“Forget it Pansy,” he puffed. “Stay away from me! And quit insulting others – especially with words that don’t make sense.” She frowned at him. “If you call her a lump, you’re calling yourself one.”

“Humph,” she muttered, folding her arms and shimmying herself away from him. As she did, I felt somebody tap me on the shoulder. I spun around.

“Josie?” I gasped seeing her standing in front of me. “I-”

“Can I talk to you both, please?” she asked looking at me and across the table at Jed. Looking over at him, a cloud of dread hung over me. I knew Jed was going to come up with some stupid retort, so as not to talk to her.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug as he stood up. My eyes widened with shock and my mouth dropped open, hearing him agree. Of course, I agreed too, and we followed Josie out of the Hall.

Leading us out of the Great Hall, Josie took us along the corridor and past several staircases. Turning off, she took us around the side of the stairs. I recognised it. This was the same place that she had taken us to when she first told us about the key that she found. She turned around so that her body faced us, but stared down at the floor. “Jed, I’m sorry for ruining your birthday by showing off and lighting the candles – I really didn’t mean to,” she confessed and looked up at him. “I was just trying to do something special for you… I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about not knowing the spell.” The left corner of Jed’s mouth poked up a little. “And MJ,” she said as her eyes shot towards me. “I’m sorry that I made you feel bad for choosing Jed over me.” Her eyes darted back down to the ground. You have no idea how happy I was. I just wanted to run over and hug her. I didn’t. I was a little cautious as to how she might react, but I wanted to.

“I know you guys sometimes think that I don’t need you, because I tend to get things easily, but that’s not true… I do need you,” she said as she stared at me. “Both of you,” she added, smiling tearfully at Jed.

“And we need you too,” I told her.

“Yeah,” Jed muttered. “Something’s j’st not the same without you.”

“Am I forgiven?” she asked, looking from Jed to me.

“We’re sorry too,” I blurted out, as she looked back at Jed, waiting for his reply.

“Yeah,” Jed muttered, looking down at his feet. He poked at a crack in the ground with his shoe. “I’m sorry I called you a know-it-all… you’re just a little bit of one.” Looking over at her, Jed held his thumb and index finger a centimetre apart. She smiled at him. “Well I need someone to make me study hard – might as well be a witty Ravenclaw.” I think that has to be the nicest thing Jed has ever said to her.

“Hug?” I said, unable to bear not being able to squeeze her near for a second longer. The second they both looked at me, I grabbed them both and pulled them into an embrace. Friends at last. Now I just have to make sure that this doesn’t happen again for the next six years and a few month – lucky me. I blame my wand.

*

The three of us went straight to Hagrid’s and we spent the entire afternoon there. The half-giant was so pleased that we were all friends again. He couldn’t stop beaming at us, when he noticed that Josie was alongside us as we stood in his doorway. Fang was happy too, but I’m sure he was just pleased to see me, because he knows that I’ll give him a tummy rub and scratch him behind the ear just how he likes it.

We stayed at Hagrid’s until it was time for dinner, then the three of us sat together in the Great Hall – Josie sat on the part of the Ravenclaw table that backed onto the Slytherins and Jed and I sat right behind her. Even though I was enjoying Josie’s company and was super excited that she was back, my eyes kept lingering across the table, over at Blondie. He had promised to speak to Josie for me just yesterday and now we were all friends again. It had to be him. He had to have said something, but what? How did he do it? How did he get her to speak to him, when she wouldn’t speak to me?

After dinner, I notice Blondie get up and leave the Hall on his own, so I got up and ran after him. “Malfoy…” I called as the door to the Great Hall swung shut behind me. He stopped and turned around to face me. “How did you do it?” I gasped, as I bounced up to him and tugged on his arm.

“Do what?” he shrugged with a frown.

“Get Josie to talk to us. It had to be you,” I said as a smile stretched across my face. “How did you do it? You’re amazing!”

“You think so?” he smirked.

“Definitely,” I beamed at him. He ran a hand across the back of his neck and jerked his head in the direction that he had been walking in, signalling for me to walk alongside him, so I did. I didn’t ask where he was going, I just assumed that we were heading to the Slytherin Common Room.

As we walked, I asked him, “Could you do me a favour, please?” before he had the chance to object, I asked: “Could you write down what happened?” Tilting his head towards me, I could see that he was frowning at my request. “I wouldn’t want anyone to overhear if you told me. Besides, Josie would probably be mad if I asked. She wouldn’t exactly tell me what the two of you spoke about when you found her in the library on Valentines.” His frown deepened. I shut my mouth. I had been babbling. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. My cheeks began to tingle as he stared at me. “Sorry!” I blurted out. “I’m just so happy,” I told him.

“I noticed,” he laughed. I looked at the floor. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at me or laughing along with me. “Hey,” he smirked. “Don’t worry. I’ll scribble something out for you.” Looking over at him, my eyes widened. As he stared at me with that smirk, I swear smiling became even more contagious. I smiled back and my cheeks began to sting.

“Thank you,” I squeaked.

*

Once we got to the Common Room, it was a while before I saw Blondie again. At first, I sat by the fire with a book. It wasn’t long though before Jed, Trevor, Priscilla, Scarlett and Pansy came in. They joined me by the fire and the six of us started talking. We spoke mostly about what teachers we would like to hex and which out of the spells that we had learnt would have the best effects on which teachers.

It was Pansy who was first to notice Blondie appear – no surprise there. Calling out his name, Pansy waved him over. With a smirk and a swagger, Blondie made his way across the room towards us. I smirked back, expecting him to go to Pansy, but he didn’t. He came straight to me. “MJ, a lovely little letter for a lovely little girl,” he said with an increasing smirk. He handed me a rolled-up piece of paper, winked and walked away – out of the Common Room door. I felt my cheeks heat up, as everyone I was surrounded by stared at me. Trevor wolf-whistled, whilst Pansy slumped in her seat, folding her arms in a sulk. They all kept asking me what the parchment was, so I just told them that I leant him my Herbology notes – it was the only thing that I could think of to keep them quiet.

I had to wait until I was alone in my room before I read Blondie’s note. Snuggled up under the bedcovers, I had already drawn the curtains around my four-poster bed, when I lit the Lumos spell on my wand. Resting my head against the pillow, I began to read.

 

Oh, my gosh! What just happened? Blondie was nice and completely open with her? Why would he share all that with a Ravenclaw? And how did he know all that stuff about Jed? Jed’s never told me that’s how he felt. Maybe it’s a guy thing. I guess Blondie just knows without Jed having to say anything.

But why open up to Josie about it? Yeah, it was a good way to get her to talk to us – but why? Simply because I asked him to? No, there was more to it than that. He wanted to ask her something as well. But what exactly? Maybe he just wanted to prove to her that she was wrong? Blondie gets kicks out of correcting people. I don’t feel like he left anything out. If he did, he hid it really well. I guess that’s the downside to getting people to write things, you give them too much time to think about it and you can’t see the expression on their faces when they think about particular things. Then again, Blondie’s always so sly and smug that it probably wouldn’t have made a difference if I asked him to his face or not.

Oh, and was I really that obvious about the Valentine’s thing that I made him write it out. I didn’t mean to bring it up again. But it was kind of nice to see his side of the story, even though it wasn’t much different to Josie’s. He ended almost as abruptly too. Maybe that was it and Josie just got up and left. It wouldn’t be unlike her.

The ‘within reason’ bit that Malfoy highlighted though (at the beginning) was pretty amusing. What could be a reason that he hid something? Did he tell her what I said? It doesn’t seem like it. Is this some really weird guy thing, like him secretly insulting her in his brain and him not wanting me to know. Maybe he just meant that he wasn’t going to tell me about the silly wandering thoughts that you sometimes get when you’re talking to someone you don’t want to – like, I wonder if she’ll notice I don’t mean any of this, or I’m hungry – I wish I was still in the Great Hall, or MJ owes me big time for this. That seems a lot like Blondie to me. You never know, I could be wrong. I may just have to try and pry it out of him.

*

It’s been so nice spending time with Josie again today. We’ve spent so much time in the library, but I’m grateful. Josie managed to point both me and Jed in the right direction on our Transfiguration formula – we’d both being getting the same part wrong. And she got us more organised when it came to what to revise and when. Seriously, we’ve been a mess without her. Oh, and she even let us in on her pranking Pansy with the Weasley twins. Apparently, Fred and George had spotted her in the corridor on the way to the Great Hall and had asked her if she wanted to join in with them pranking Pansy – she had agreed immediately. They said that they wanted to do something that would totally humiliate her, but without causing her any physical harm. Josie suggested messing with her appearance and it was George who suggested colouring Pansy’s hair. They let Josie decide on the colour – bright green. She taught us the spell, Colovaria Galbinus. The first part is the colour changing spell and the last part is the colour that it will change into. That’s just amazing. Let’s just say I have a few people in mind to give a new look to.

The note that Blondie wrote for me last night keeps popping into my head. I’ve barely been able to stop thinking about him, I mean it, all day. It really is starting to annoy me. I always knew he was playing mind games with me. But I can’t help lying here smiling to myself. Maybe Malfoy isn’t such a bad guy. I know I’ve considered changing my mind about him before, but maybe, just maybe he’s the misunderstood bad guy, with secret good intentions. Well it’s a nice thought to end on tonight. As well as: Eeep! Josie’s back.

- Josie -