Sometimes it is as though fourth year has lasted forever - no night thus far has been so painful as now, at the end of term, when we are all relegated to our common rooms for the evening whilst the Coming Out Ball is in full swing. Perhaps the other houses are luckier, but we Hufflepuffs can hear the music floating right down from the Great Hall, and I would literally die to see it all. Obviously it is in honour of the seventh years, but the sixth years get to go, and the fifth years too - and, while I may not say the same of all my dormmates, I am no less mature than the fifth years!

(And what if Professor Skeeter meets someone to marry this year, before I have even had a chance to attend? Now that would be a waste!)  

We have tried to have some kind of celebration of our own downstairs, but everyone is quite exhausted and lazy, and rather grateful that we have, somehow, made it to the end of the year.

Fifth year will be rather more important, though, in the scheme of things. I don't yet know how, but: I mean to take it by storm.

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