She Said What?

Chapter 30: I Come Back to School Again

A/N: Sorry, sorry, sorry for the wait on this one! My life has been insane in the past week. I just started junior year, I went to two Sweet Sixteen parties, attended a wedding, and had a couple of mental breakdowns along the way. Plus, my computer died – the one with EVERYTHING ON IT – but we had back-ups and I managed to keep everything I had started. I bought the new laptop last night and now I'm writing away again. All is well. But it just took forever.

Anyway, my ramblings aside, I know you guys are hoping for a post-rose LJ interactions, but for reasons soon to be explained, you shall not be getting it right away. Trust me, though, all right? When the conversation does come, I promise it shall please you muchly.

Bottom line – everything will be okay and I hope you like this bit. You guys are great.

Cheers!

January 6

9:30 PM
Status: Exhausted

Well...now that I am safely back at Hogwarts after a hectic, stressful vacation, all I can say is, it's been a bitch knowing you, reality. Whoever said ignorance is bliss was clearly on to something.

Plenty has been going on since I last wrote. After Christmas, we had some family come to stay from Brighton – my mum has a couple of sisters who live down there – and Alice and Livvy where busy with their own lives to accommodate me if I wanted to get away. I don't resent them for it or anything, but it certainly wasn't so enjoyable to see the same old sights around Ipswich again.

New Year came and went fairly quickly. A few of Mum's friends had a huge party at a nice restaurant and we were forced to attend. I did have some Muggle friends there – Gina and Brandy and Karen and a few of their other friends – but they aren't Alice and Livvy and although I did have some fun screaming and blowing noise-makers as the next year rolled in, I did sort of miss being with them.

The days flew by after that, a blur of eating and sleeping and taking long baths. It was freezing out, so I spent most of my time indoors. Alice came over a couple of times, Livvy once, and we hung around together, talking and roasting whatever came to hand in my fireplace. Petunia preferred being out of the house with her friends while Mum attempted to spend as much time with me as she could, taking me out shopping and getting our nails painted and indulging in all the ways she knew how.

Leaving home at last was painful. I'm not about to hide that fact. Mum, Dad, and Petunia all came to the station to see me off and Mum got teary-eyed, bursting into tears on the spot, crying because she didn't want her baby girl to leave her. Petunia was quite uncomfortable with this public display of emotion and edged off to the other side of the platform after waving good-bye. Seeing Mum cry made me tear up a bit as well and I gave her a hug, telling her it was all right, I'd see her in April for the Easter holidays. Dad also hugged her and told her it would be all right, murmuring things I could not hear into her ears.

She calmed down eventually, her tears subsiding into hiccups as she told me, red-eyed, that she was being silly, she was sorry. But by that point, I was crying too, because I didn't want to leave her miserable, and I set her off again.

Dad let us cry for a minute or two, but then he told us to pull ourselves together. No one was trying to disown me or anything. I'm always welcome home when I want to go. Everything was going to be all right. Calm down. I could see he was tender about watching me leave again as well, but he was so level-headed about hiding it (he's always had more discretion than me) that I forced myself to shut up for his sake. Mum followed suit and we said a proper, smiling good-bye – despite the fact that mine and Mum's eyes were still kind of red.

Petunia and I carefully hugged each other good-bye as well and I escaped onto the train, attempting to shove my complicated feelings aside in favor of a light afternoon going back to school. Livvy was already waiting for me in an empty compartment – I will never understand why she is so preoccupied with being early – and Alice turned up about a minute before the train was supposed to leave. We were all delighted to see one another, even though we'd seen each other constantly during the holiday.