5th January, 1992

The holidays were now over, but only just, so, naturally, it was 7:50 am by the time Anja had managed to drag me from my bed and force me to get ready for class.

I missed out on breakfast, so I was in a bad mood.

Our first class today was Charms with the Gryffindors.

“Good morning!” Professor Flitwick squeaked after marking the roll. “Today we will be learning about Summoning Charms!”

Fifteen minutes later, the whole room was in chaos.

I was bored and looking for something to do. “Accio Hermione’s textbook,” I whispered, and it flew off her desk and onto mine.

She glanced over at me, grinned and then proceeded to Summon it back again. We spent the rest of the lesson Summoning her textbook back and forth between the two of us.

But Neville hadn’t had his regular accident yet, and it was the end of class.

People were getting up and packing up to leave, but not Neville. “Acc - acc - acciCHOO!” he sneezed, waving his wand. The spell happened to hit Professor Flitwick’s desk, which then glowed purple and began making extremely odd sneezing noises.

“Oh dear,” Professor Flitwick said. He told us to leave and so we went to our next class, Potions, while he attempted to fix the problem.

When we got to Potions, the Hufflepuffs were already there, which mad sense, considering that we’d been delayed a little.

Well, more than a little.

“Abbott, Hannah!”

“Present!”

“Bones, Susan!”

“Present!”

“Bulstrode, Millicent!”

“Present!”

A short while later, my father reached my name.

“Evans, Jade!” I was surprised at the use of my real last name, but by now all the teachers had probably changed the rolls, not just my father.

“Present!” Ernie Macmillan’s hand went up, but my father didn’t call on him to speak until he was finished marking the roll.

“Macmillan?”

“Uh, sir, you said that her –” here he indicated me “– last name is Evans. It’s not. It’s Edwards!”

He shook his head. “No, it is Evans. 1 point from Hufflepuff for your rudeness and questioning a teacher.”

By the end of our lesson, I had made a perfect potion, according to my father, anyway.

As usual.

He gave Slytherin an extra 10 points. At the moment, we were coming second, but were close behind Gryffindor.

After class was over and we had had dinner, I went to the Common Room to do my Potions work.

Write the ingredients and procedure for the potion ‘Cure for Boils’.

The ingredients necessary to make the potion ‘Cure for Boils’ are Snake Fangs…I began writing.

Once it was done – it only took me about 5 minutes and I only used the textbook to check I had gotten it absolutely right – I read some of Quidditch Through The Ages.