Freaks: Year Two

A Girl Named Meg Johnson

"Jasper, you have to go!"

"Why? I am not on the All-Star team!"

"It's customary," Harry said, following him through the corridor that led back to the Great Hall. "It's also just bloody polite, all players on the quidditch teams were invited!"

"Invited, yes but that does mean I have to be forced to go."

Jasper, I will say this one hundred times if I have to, but going to a dinner you're invited to is just plain decency," Harry said.

"What if I was sick?"

"But you're not! I don't understand you. You have the perfect opportunity to meet the American students and ask about their school just like you wanted to," Harry said pointedly. "It's number two on your list. Ask the Americans about the school and then you have a subsection about everything you want to know that's in the school–"

"How did you know that?"

"I told you!" Harry exclaimed, wondering why he was so forgetful lately. "The list was in your trunk. It is something fun for you anyway. You can geek out over quidditch with them and the rest of the teams."

"Er, I don't know."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You're bloody impossible sometimes."

"Look, it's just a dinner."

"And if it's just a dinner, why can't you go?" Harry asked. "It will only take a couple of hours of your time max. You need to do something for yourself Jaz."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you have been working on your classes and homework and helping the house elves and spell-making," Harry listed off, and he was sure he was forgetting some things as Jasper had been as busy as a bee lately. "You have been so busy that you have barely had time to do something fun and you like quidditch and you like learning new things about the magical world and a whole other school is a perfect way to do it and you have the chance to go to a dinner about quidditch and America with them!!"

Jasper understood where Harry was coming from but he really wanted to figure out how to put a shield charm in a box and once that was done and over with, he could finally relax. He didn't want to wait until the last minute, he wanted to get it finished so he could somehow mail them to his brothers, and then he could finally feel at peace for once in his life knowing that his family had a solution against their own father.

"Just let me try to do one thing today first," Jasper said, hoping that would shut him up on the topic. "The dinner isn't until this evening. I have a few hours."

Harry still looked sceptical. "Alright...but I still think it would be a good idea if you go..."

"And I may."

"Yeah, I don't believe you."

Jasper gave him a false smile. "That sounds like a you problem."

Harry scoffed. "I just think it will be good for you, okay? That's all."

"But it's a dinner," Jasper said. "I don't have to go."

Jasper was sometimes one of the most stubborn people Harry had ever met and he himself was pretty stubborn too. "Fine. You don't have to, but I hope you do. This is – and I am not being dramatic when I say it – a once in a lifetime opportunity that you have."

Jasper chewed on his lower lip. It was, wasn't it? But sometimes people had to pass up on things like this because there were more important things...

Go be a kid, he could almost hear Christopher's voice say that.