Oh so prefectly yours

( Private to Dumbledore's Army )

Bode was murdered by Devil's Snare? How could someone who knew enough about horticulture to care for it not know what it does?

Whilst strolling through Knockturn Alley, you are held up by a dangerous and armed hellion. Describe in at least three scrolls, using information learned from your theoretical Defense Against the Dark Arts class, how you would deal with this situation in a non-violent manner, using no magic at all towards the culprit.

Your explanation is to be submitted on Friday.

Hmm.

( Private to Christopher )

Er... um... ah George?

( Private to Katie )

Thank you to Sarah Kim and Ella Pucey for organising the pool party in the prefects' bathroom. I cannot say that I had ever contemplated using it in such a way, but then I tend to lack imagination where those things are concerned.

I do hope that Natalie Spinks was eventually helped back to Ravenclaw Tower. As sympathetic as I feel towards her, something needs to be done. She can't keep showing up late to prefect meetings like that. The other prefects are starting to talk.

This is the first year I've tutored in Potions. I thought it would be a rather diabolical class to instruct, but it turns out that most of the children are fairly decent at it when they are away from Professor Snape's intimidating presence, which has an inhibiting effect on them. As Snape hasn't given the Crea- Professor Umbridge reason to monitor his curriculum, which leads to her staying out of my classes, I feel fairly confident that we'll do a good job of preparing the slightly older ones for OWLs.

( Private to Christopher Summerby )

My father works at the Ministry, so in my weekly letter home I asked him for any useful information on this Umbridge character. He answered everything else, but completely ignored my direct question regarding her! He usually isn't so slatternly! What caused him to ignore my request?

Or perhaps he didn't feel he could have included the information?

Perhaps I'm thinking too hard, but due to how much mail, especially packages, seem to be taking longer than usual to reach us from home, does anyone else think there's, well, a reason for it? Is it possible that our private correspondence is being searched? Katie and Fred, thoughts please.

I have nothing to say. In fact, since I was handed one of these I haven't really been too sure of what to do with it and was put off a bit by how Higgs refered to "masturbation" in my last entry, I suppose. So why write in it, you ask? Well, I'm none too sure myself. Perhaps this is what my brother tells me is procrastination, and said that even I would become afflicted at some point during my NEWT year.

So what does one really do while procrastinating? Should I just sit on my bed and do nothing, or should I do something - so long as it's not something I'm meant to be doing? This would be a rather interesting experiment, but wouldn't conducting an experiment be classed as doing something, and therefore counterintuitive to procrastination? This is harder than I thought.

When on holiday with your Muggle mum in a Muggle area, have you ever come across so-called magicians who approach you with an offer to perform "magic"? I had such an experience a few weeks ago.

I was lying on the beach in Nice with my parents and my brother and his family when this bloke approached us. He was wearing a tradition top hat and tuxedo jacket, yet with fingerless gloves and his trousers rolled up to allow his toes to sink into the sand. I describe his appearance so accurately as I do not know of any actual wizards to dress in such a manner though Fudge certainly dresses worse. He held out a flower, made it - with several superfluous hand gestures assumedly designed to distract the audience from what he was actually doing - disappear, then reappear behind one of my ears. As I blinked in the sunlight, he then asked if I would like to see more "ma-jeek tre-acs" and followed up with a look which made me rather glad I had not followed the local custom of sunbathing topless. Not that Callum would have allowed me, but...

At that point, my brother said something which sent our friend packing in rather a hurry and which my sister-in-law later translated as, "If you don't take your fucking hands off my baby sister, I'll make your head disappear into your rectum. How's that for a magic trick?"

I am very relieved that my nephew and his little friend were not present at the time. They were down at the shore building sandcastles instead. And that poor but rather disturbing "magician." If only he knew that I did not consider his trick to be magic, and if I was in possession of Alastor Moody's glass eye, I could have seen exactly how it was accomplished too. And that's not even mentioning what I get up to at school...

Rather off-topic, but the new DADA syllabus is...perplexing. Why would we be prescribed only the theory when Harry and Dumbledore and every member of staff I have ever respected is saying, tacidly or not, that he is back? Admittedly after six years worth of the course without any significant aptitude for it, I doubt my countercurses and hexes will get any better than what they are, but it is rather unusual. And what of the students who need strong NEWT scores for future vocations, such as those wishing to be Aurors or Hit Wizards? There may be logic somewhere, but it is not one I follow. Perhaps it shall present itself sooner or later.

There, Fred. I have put this journal to use in the way journals usually are by writing about my recent life. It may be uninteresting to most people, but it is mine to record.

Name: Alicia Jemima Spinnet
Gender: Female
Date of birth: April 29th, 1978
Year: Seventh
House: Gryffindor
Blood status: Complex. Alicia’s father is a wizard and her mother a Muggle, which may make her a halfblood by the standards of some. In fact, this is what she usually passes herself off as. Not out of shame, but in order to avoid confusion or attention. That through her father and older brother (who also attended Hogwarts, being sorted into Slytherin) she had prior knowledge of the magical world, she was able to display the nuances of someone acquainted with it and not appear as green as the Muggleborns.

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