The next day:

Professor Livia has resumed teaching us how to cast Patronuses! It turns out we were supposed to have been practicing by ourselves, in our own time, and she was testing to see if we had made any progress. I don't know why I didn't think of practicing by myself.

But something really exciting happened! Two students' Patronuses materialised, though very brief, in their forms. No one else in the class is anywhere near the level they are at!

The first was a dolphin - Patricia Finnigan's Patronus, we only saw it for two seconds before it disappeared. Everyone cheered, and I mean everyone!

The next student to successfully manage a somewhat-bodied Patronus, was Silas. We saw it for about one second, and then it was gone. It was a snake.

I was thinking that was a bit of a strange Patronus for a Gryffindor to have, and I was expecting Professor Livia to remark on it in a non-approving way, but, instead she just said she'd never seen a Patronus like that before, so it must be rare and special. I don't think 'rare and special' would be within her choice of vocabulary had it been one of our Patronuses!

I still wonder what mine will be. I try to think of what makes me happy when I'm trying to conjure one; but a lot of things make me happy, and none of them seem to be powerful enough. The closest I got was when I remembered my parents telling me we wouldn't have to live on the run any more; but this memory was marred by the possibility it was too good to be true, and the anxiety that all of a sudden, one night back at home, I'll hear a knock on my bedroom door and one of my parents whispering,"get up, Cathy! Wake your sisters, we need to leave!"

A few days later:

I don't know how Priscilla managed to get everything done this quickly; but she let me know the Revealing Potion was ready, and she'd added as many people's fingerprints to it as she could, including all of the Gryffindor 6th Years.

"If nothing shows up, we can use process of elimination,"she said, as she brushed the potion paste over my anti-Valentine.

A name was revealed, glowing - Kenneth Brass.

"Well, well,"Priscilla chuckled.

Kenneth Brass is a Gryffindor 6th year. He's one of the boys that always hangs out with Silas Warren. It didn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, it was so unsurprising that I was actually a bit disappointed.

"This whole idea of yours,"I said,"it's absolute genius! And look how it worked!"

"Never mind that,"said Priscilla, her cheeks glowing red,"how do you plan on getting revenge?"

Revenge. That hadn't exactly been something on my mind.

"I'm not sure getting revenge is a good idea,"I said.

"Come on! We can't discover who the culprit is and then not get revenge,"Priscilla said.

"Maybe something harmless?"I suggested,"something that won't get us into trouble?"

"It's not revenge if it's harmless!"Priscilla persisted.

"What if..."I said, thinking,"what if we let him know that he isn't anonymous? What if he sent other people letters like these too, and we found out about that? Wouldn't that give him something to be worried about?"

"It's something,"said Priscilla, sounding disappointed,"I was thinking of something a bit more - drastic. That could work, though."

Later:

It seems I'm the only person that received an anti-Valentine. Either that or everyone else is lying about not getting any.

Extra later:

Priscilla is the one that came up with the idea. Sending him an owl.

I wrote him a message: 'To my secret admirer - From Catherine Carrow. I know who you are, dear Kenneth, and I know a lot more.'

We ended up including a sketch of him being torn up by the Whomping Willow.

"Is there a way to do it so it reads it out loud?"I asked,"I would love for all his Gryffindor mates to hear that part about him being my secret admirer."

Priscilla laughed evilly,"you know,"she said,"there is."

Priscilla knew a spell to make the letter read itself out in my voice (though not the same way a Howler does, not quite so loud as that). I had to speak the words first. I tried to say it in a romantic way, ending with a sinister whisper.

We sent it just as we were on our way to dinner in the Great Hall. Hopefully that way, we'd be able to see what happened next.

Sure enough, we were all sitting down at the tables, when an owl flew over to Kenneth and dropped the letter. Priscilla and I were craning our necks to see what would happen.

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Kenneth opened the letter. We waited with baited breath. From over where we were sitting, we couldn't hear the letter read out; but we noticed some reactions from the Gryffindors, and a look of horror on Kenneth's face. He looked over at me, and I started blowing him kisses. Priscilla nearly fell on the floor laughing. Some of the Gryffindors around him were laughing too. They were looking at the letter, maybe they'd seen the threatening sketch I'd included.

Next day:

So today things took an unexpected turn... I was suddenly called up to see the Headmistress. I've done my share of rule-breaking in my time here, but until now I've never actually been caught... However, I didn't remember breaking any rules recently. I was shown up to the Headmistress' office by Professor Livia. It was a silent ascent. The password to the Headmistress' office is 'Lavender'. Professor Livia left me at the door and disappeared down the winding stairs.

I entered, half-curious, half-apprehensive. For all I knew, Wells had found out every rule I'd ever broken and I was going to get into trouble for every single one of them, right here, right now.

"Sit down, Carrow!"Headmistress Wells ordered, in a very worrying tone.

Worrying to me, that is. She sounded angry.

"I suppose you realise why it is that you are here?"Wells asked me.

"No, Headmistress,"I answered.

"How can you not know!?"Wells barked at me,"you do realise, that at this school, bullying will not be tolerated!?"

"Bullying,"I said, bewildered.

"Yes, Carrow, bullying!"the Headmistress answered.

"Who - who did I bully?"I asked.

"Seriously!?"Wells bellowed,"and incident witnessed by many teachers, as well as students, in the Great Hall yesterday? Please tell me you remember?"

"Oh - I didn't realise,"I said, realising now. I suppose that could be considered bullying.

"But, he started it..."I began.

I didn't even hear what Wells was yelling at me this time. I was realising that I couldn't easily explain to her how Kenneth had started it first, as the anti-Valentine wasn't signed by him, and I'd have to go into the details of how we'd discovered it was he who'd sent it; and I'd have to somehow leave out Priscilla's role (otherwise she would get into trouble too) and all of that was just too difficult, so I decided to let it slide.

"Is there any excuse for this kind of behaviour?"I heard Wells finish her long paragraph of lecturing.

"No, Headmistress,"I responded,"I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

"You'll certainly hope you won't!"Wells continued,"if you do, you'll be in ten times more trouble than you are now! As for now - you'll serve detention at the end of the week."

"What will I have to do for Detention?"I asked, realising I'd never actually gotten detention before.

"I shall think of something nearer the time,"Wells snapped,"now - go!"

I left.

I couldn't afford to be upset. If you don't learn to accept the fact the world isn't fair, you'll doom yourself to live in perpetual frustration. I've learned - just take things as they come. Deal with them as they happen, and don't dwell on things you can't undo. Life is all about moving forward.

End of the week:

It turned out my detention was cleaning up (without magic) and reorganising a lot of books that Peeves had flung around in the Library. It was when the library was closed, and only the Librarian was around.

I thought I was going to be doing it all by myself, but I soon realised I was not alone. Someone else was in detention too. Someone I recognised. Sheila Hunter, a Ravenclaw 6th year I used to be friends with.

Now we are enemies. At least - she considers me an enemy. She began to hate me a few years ago, and it was my fault. She trusted me with a secret and I told someone else, then it got out. It was a horrible, stupid, thoughtless thing to do and I've regretted it ever since. I apologised, of course, but was never able to properly make amends (I'm not sure how) and she has never forgiven me.

It was a strange moment. For such a long time, we have just ignored each other.

"Sheila?"I said.

She continued her ignoring act.

"I see we've both got detention,"I went on.

She continued to ignore me as she picked up books.

This is one of those times when I'm reunited with someone from a past whirlwind friendship, and, like most of these occasions, it was incredibly awkward.

I decided to be upfront.

"I'm still really sorry about what I did,"I said,"I wish I could go back in time and change it, but I can't."

Sheila carelessly threw some books aside and, without looking at me, said,"we've got a job to do."

Those are the first words she has spoken to me in all this time, and for me - it was enough.

We did a lot of book-organising in silence. It was actually quite peaceful organising the books into piles, finding the right shelves. For those moments, it seemed like that was the only thing I had to worry about, and it didn't matter how long it took to do it.

Then I noticed some books had had their pages ripped out. We weren't supposed to use magic to fix anything. The Librarian was holding both our wands hostage until the job was done.

"What do you think we should do about these?"I asked Sheila.

"Put the pages in them, and bring them to the Librarian later,"Sheila said,"look, I've made my own book pile with ripped pages. I can't find the pages for this book,"she showed me a book on counter-curses,"pages 157-158 and 301-302 are missing. If you see them, let me know."

I paid close attention to the scattered pages around me. I found a page in particular that caught my attention, but it wasn't one that Sheila had asked me to find, it was something else.

The first thing I noticed was that someone had scribbled down something in runes on the edge of the page, and it looked like they'd used the enchanted runes! There was an arrow pointing to a paragraph which spoke of a lost, ancient potion recipe - the cure to some magical ailment. The writer seemed to be describing how the potion recipe wasn't actually lost, and 'see old book ' and something about 'Original Magic'.

Whoever has written this knew how to read the enchanted runes. Maybe they had been in the Foxhole Chamber. The old book was probably the same book I'd seen. I decided to show Sheila, just to be sure of it. I knew she would just see random scribbling.

"Someone's written on this page,"I said,"can you make out what it says?"

She stared at it,"what is that?"she said.

"It looks like Ancient Runes,"I said.

"It looks like nonsense to me,"Sheila answered.

That was enough to confirm it.

After a while, I found one of the pages Sheila needed, and soon the whole pile of Peeves' recent wrecking speed was organised. We brought the books with ripped pages to the Librarian who made us repair them with magic.

All the while, I was wondering. The fact that someone had made that note in that book means that someone else at Hogwarts definitely knew about the secret chamber. They knew about that old book. Who were they? When did they know about it? How long ago? How many people actually do know about it?

We returned the books to their rightful places in the bookshelves and departed ways.

"Goodbye, Sheila,"I said, as we went out.

"Night,"Sheila muttered.

I felt happy. A calm sort of restful happy.