We are about a month into school now, and I have just about reached the conclusion that every year, the new first years get stranger and stranger. I was never so odd as a child, not like this queer bunch! Perhaps it is only from my grown-up perspective that I see such things now, you know. But I am sure I thought the same sort of thing last year.

Last year's first years were that Scary Slytherin girl, for one. And then that funny little Gryffindor, the Metamorphmagus! One can see her shock of hair in the corridors sometimes, when it some horrendous bright monstrosity. It is brown usually, I think, and she is rather freckle-faced. Add all that to her personality - she is rather loud, and boyish, and from that rough quidditch family of all boys, so no wonder - and she's just about a Prudence Browne in the making.

Pity she doesn't put her Metamorphmagus abilities to some use, and make herself look a little more elegant. Imagine getting to be beautiful at will, and settling for that -

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