26th March, 1888

Dear Diary,

I have been thinking more about my future recently. If I am to become a debutante - and of course I am, whatever Zipporah thinks she is making of herself by throwing away her opportunities when she is young - I must be careful. For one: I must work on my confidence, and ladylike manners. I am always talking too much or not at all, and never even know what to say, whatever they teach us in etiquette! Why must writing be so much easier, when I can hem and haw over every word until I sound delightfully witty if I want? And say something to my face, and it's a wonder I get out anything more than Gobbledegook at all. If I were a debutante now, I might have weekly nightmares of all the things I should have said.

So I must work on that. And secondly: the boy problem. The Divination incident with Mr. Carmichael got me thinking. Of course, it would be a dream to marry a rich heir, but I do not have the ambition of a Slytherin, and cannot expect that. But if I am to marry well, regardless, it will not do to get caught up under any mistletoe! Nor to kiss someone of my own free will, I'll be outed as some kind of hussy! It would also be silly of me to pin all my hopes upon a boy my own age, who must inevitably establish himself first, so I would do better to scour Witch Weekly for potential husbands to meet in a year or so at the Coming Out Ball.

...Or so I thought, that I must wait until I am allowed to attend the ball next year. But all along there has been the perfect potential husband right under my nose! Mr. Skeeter, of course!

He is of my own class and could not fault me for lacking in charisma, since he has so little of his own. That sounds mean, I know, but there is plenty to like about him too - he is sincere and earnest and utterly knowledgeable, not to mention tall and lean and he must have wonderful arms, the way he can carry the largest plant pots and heft around compost even without magic! Not that the smell of compost is one I expect to find as my personal Amortentia at any point, but as a herbologist, he must know all about flowers and their meanings. Our house could be filled to the brim with flowers, and I would have the loveliest garden as well to sit and have tea and cake in.

Of course, this means I must resolve to make an impression on Professor Skeeter before it is too late, and to plan to take Herbology to NEWT level so that I have time enough to woo him.

How I shall do that is quite another matter, of course. I shall have to sleep on it.

Love, Jemima

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   Prudence Browne

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15th April, 1888

Dear Diary,

Hufflepuff won the quidditch match today!!! At present we're still in the running to take the Quidditch Cup and all!

I am less sure that we'll match last year in taking the quidditch and house cup, both - that was why I was especially hoping Kristoffer Lestrange might get a bludger to the head in today's game and fall into a deathly coma for the rest of the year. You see, that way he can't take away any more points from Hufflepuff. He's ghastly you know, and grossly unfair. Just the other day he docked me for "having a foul expression on my face", as though I was being deliberately impertinent! And then he mimed brushing it off, almost like he was going to slap me. I ran, of course, before anything worse should happen, and was entirely tongue-tied, but - he should get a bludger between the eyes for every point he's ever taken away. That'd leave the demon black and blue.  

Still, the quidditch did also give me an excuse to stuff my face at the Common Room Party afterwards and now even my nightdress feels tight about the waist! If I balloon up to the size of a boulder in the night, it's my own fault. Bury me in a sea of cauldron cakes.

Love, Jemima

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6th May, 1888

Dear Diary,

I suppose you haven't forgotten how I tried to spend some Quality time with Professor Skeeter last week. How I decided to pretend to be just too engrossed in my re-potting work to have noticed the rest of the class leaving, and then - well, this part was accidental - but then I knocked over that Flitterbloom and it made Such a Mess and I was panicking so much I think Professor Skeeter thought I had mistaken the Flitterbloom for Devil's Snare and presumed I thought I was in danger, which... might have been nice if he had been able to save me from actual danger, but now all he must think is that I am a real imbecile. So then I was embarrassed about making the mess of his greenhouses and I'd forgotten he had another class coming in next so there were a line of faces peering through the greenhouse glass and about then I may have started stuttering...

So not the best impression for making him want to marry me one day. In any case, even if that were not the plan I would have still felt obliged to make up for being such a nuisance, so today I took down the box of sugar candies I bought from Honeyduke's on the Hogsmeade weekend yesterday and left them for him, all neatly arranged with a sprig of flowers - pink peonies for shame and bashfulness (my apology!), mixed in with some honey flowers (love sweet and secret) and primroses which are supposed to say "I can't live without you" which I realise is a little strong a sentiment but they didn't have anything else more suitable so! He will have to make do!

I didn't dare leave a note or sign my name, but I suppose he will be able to extract my meaning, won't he? I mean to go by again a time or two this week to "study" in the greenhouses. I may not have the excuse of OWLs or NEWTS coming up later this month, but I do have end-of-year exams all the same - Professor Skeeter will simply have to find time to give me some extra attention!

Love, Jemima

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   Elsie Kirke

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21st May, 1888

Dear Diary,

First day of exam week. Perhaps if I bump into Beastly Borgin in the library tomorrow, she'll be in a foul mood enough to murder me outright - and that way she'll spare me all this suffering.

Love, Jemima

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24th May, 1888

Dear Diary,

Exams are doing funny things to my brain. Couldn't get to sleep for hours last night, and then when at last I did I had a... dream. I started off being in my Charms practical - which ought to have been fine, Charms is fine! - only the only thing in the room besides the examiner was a sprig of mistletoe from the Christmas before last, and of course the mistletoe had no power but it was Justice so I - well, leaned in just like I did last time, only I kissed him for a lot longer than last time and of course my eyes were closed, but then I opened them and - and it hadn't been J under the mistletoe at all, but his stupid friend Mr. Vance?! And then Professor Ruskin in the dream announced very soberly that I was had been awarded a T. Not a Troll but a T for TROLLOP and was to be promptly expelled??!?! I woke up immediately, of course - but if I went on to fail all my real finals today you, at least, dear diary, shall know why I was so out of sorts.

Love, Jemima

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   Elsie Kirke

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30th May, 1888

Dear Diary,

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.

Love, Jemima

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10th June, 1888

Dear Diary,

Whoever thought ten days at home could be enough for a whole year? It sounds ungrateful to say it, but at home I feel like an entirely different person to the Jemima I am at school. Or Miss Farley, there; at home I am only Jemima, always little, always young, always the same no matter how the years go. And my parents, well - they are always there.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, to be like some of my friends. From proper pureblood families, of good name, respected... of course Frida's family are rather a mixed bag, some respected and some feared and some oddly removed from society; and Frida is there like a poor ugly duckling, rather crushed under the weight of the family name. And Darling's family have their oddities too. So did Clem's, in fact; their guardian now sounds like an odd fellow, but that is less damaging than those odd whispers about what happened to their parents...

But they're all orphans, you realise. They don't have this, this suffocation. It almost seems fashionable to be an orphan, these days. All the best heroines are orphans - it's quite romantic, really. Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe, Fanny Price, Becky Sharp, Pip and Estella and practically every Dickens protagonist... and all my friends too, and they seem to have come out of the experience more worldly and sombre (but not too sombre!) and grown-up; I should like to be all these things. And even if there was once talk of their parents' eccentricities, at least they are all dead now! My parents are still here, and that way get to nag and scowl and tut and, of course, be more and more embarrassing every day. However shall I ever grow up?

Love, Jemima

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27th June, 1888

Dear Diary,

Discovered through a letter from Clementine that J was one of those caught up in the Honeydukes' destruction! Under attack by a troll! Merlin, thankfully he wasn't the body they found in the wreckage! I heard something of the group getting shipped out to another magical hospital to be treated, but I don't know whether J is back at home with Clementine or not; I should have liked to visit, but I cannot get to Hogsmeade and I can't visit just J if I can't pretend I'm seeing Clem! What would I say? "I don't even know whether we're friends or not any more, because I'm sure you don't care about me, Justice Rookwood, but you could have died and I've been worried sick" -

Not that Clem sounds particularly worried about him now, so hopefully he has recovered. Hopefully the troll didn't scar his good looks! I suppose whatever Justice did in the midst of the chaos was very heroic; saving some children or something. He's not a Gryffindor, but he is still rather courageous, don't you think?

Meanwhile all my parents can talk about is the fog and the lack of magic as though it's a good thing for Hogsmeade to experience, like it'll be a character-building experience for wizards, or some nonsense! Don't they know Justice could have died?!

Love, Jemima

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3rd August, 1888

Dear Diary,

The fog might have cleared up in Hogsmeade but my STUPID PARENTS ARE STILL AN UTTER PAIN IN MY BEHIND. I despise summer.

Get me out of here.

Love, Jemima

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1st September, 1888

Dear Diary,

Back to Hogwarts on the Express, as always! I wish the station at eleven o'clock was not always such a rush - I wish that my family might get there once on time! - so that I might find my friends beforehand, and not have to deal with the luck of the draw with train compartments! But I was so out of breath I had to get on where I was and pick the first compartment I could find - well, that's a lie, the first compartment I found was Sweetie Whitledge's, and even I don't have the patience for that - so instead I sat with a pair of third years whom I tried valiantly to ignore until I could find a friend or two.

And I did, when the new Prefects began patrolling! I didn't get the badge, remember - I must go on pretending I never wanted it anyway, because it does not do one to whine about missed opportunities - but I also hardly thought it would be Frida for our house! Perhaps I am not the most authoritative, but Frida's not much better! It must be down to Headmaster Black and his pureblood prejudices; I do not know who else would choose to put a bunch of narrow-minded purebloods (unfortunately, my family don't qualify as narrow-minded, you see) in positions like that, even if Frida cannot even claim to be particularly good at being one.

(And purebloods like Beastly Borgin, too! Has the school gone mad!)

At any rate, I met up with Frida then, and I found Darling later, in the dorms; although I thought I saw her earlier than that, when we were to board the carriages, and ran over to embrace her - as friends do! there was nothing odd in my actions - only I had mistaken the back of her head for another blonde! A second year, I think (Darling is so short, it's not hard to see why), a little blonde from Slytherin. Scrimgeour, maybe? And let me tell you, it was as though she had never been put through anything worse than a hug! I sprang back when I realised my mistake, embarassed enough as it was, but the little Slytherin pulled such a scowl on her face, and had such a nasty tongue on her that she made me feel almost as though I should cry from my error.

What a rude little girl.

She must not have been hugged enough in her life.

Love, Jemima

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8th September, 1888

Dear Diary,

Met a young first year Hufflepuff out near the common room today - one of the gingers, not those horrifying Gryffindor pair, but even so, who should like to look at so many little ginger devils all day long, it almost hurts my eyes! - who had dropped her cookies and looked as though she might cry.

It's a harsh world we live in, isn't it. You must picture me rolling my eyes, dear diary, because this girl was one of the Lukesons, I am sure, and the Lukesons have money enough not to cry over spilt cookies, wouldn't you think? To make matters odder, the girl seemed to be saying she had baked them herself! There's another Hufflepuff girl who likes baking, too.

An admirable endeavour, I am sure, but for wealthy young ladies? What are these families teaching them, to be cooks and simple baker's daughters? And I thought my parents were odd!

Anyway, I relented and showed the girl how to get to the kitchens to get her out of my hair, but really. I like to sneak in there sometimes and stuff my face too, but even I don't want to work with the house elves!

Love, Jemima

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12th October, 1888

Dear Diary,

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 -

Love, Jemima

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13th October, 1888

Dear Diary,

I hadn't time to finish yesterday! There are so many other strange (now) second-years. Remember that girl, the metamorphmagus' friend, who I once accidentally spotted all hysterical about a card game? It was almost like she was scared of Exploding Snap! Imagine that, a daring Gryffindor afraid of a child's game?!

And half of the girls are clamouring to join the house quidditch teams still - have been since the day they came - and I just can't fathom it! I have trouble enough with badminton, never mind quidditch. Then there's that French girl - in Hufflepuff, Miss Fancypants-Loncrey - and, well, one wonders why she was not just sent to Beauxbatons if she does not even deign to speak English in the common room! (There must be a story behind that. A horrible scandal, probably, if she had flee the country.)  

Love, Jemima

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17th October, 1888

Dear Diary,

Now, you mustn't call it spying, diary, because I was doing work too, but I saw another of the strange first years in the library today. He's the Belby boy, I've heard now. You know, his father's a werewolf. I already knew he was odd, you see, because I spotted him last month, talking to a hedgehog - clearly the father thing has traumatised him, and he thinks all creatures must be secretly transformed people - and carrying it up the stairs?!

Anyway, today he was sitting just opposite me, tucked up in a corner in the library, and I swear he was there and almost didn't move for hours. I think he thought he was hidden away there and nobody could see him, because I'm sure if anyone knew he spent all his time reading about vampires and ghosts and goblins - and yes, werewolves too, I am sure he went through all the tomes the library had on werewolves - he would be teased something atrocious for being a... halfbreed hugger, or something. (I'm not very good at being mean, but I'm sure Miss Borgin and her friends would think of something to say.) I wonder what he thinks he's going to achieve? Saving his estranged father?

A mad professor in the making, I have no doubt.

Love, Jemima

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9th November, 1888

Dear Diary,

Hallowe'en may have been last Wednesday, but just this afternoon I saw something nearly as frightening!

I came across little Miss Tatting in the common room today, and we got to talking again - this was me mostly trying to avoid doing my Divination homework (honestly what's even the point in Divination if Professor Carmichael's not in the room?) - and I think she likes me, because shy as she is, I was inquiring what sort of thing she had been up to - I see her awfully focused over a sketchbook sometimes, when she thinks no one is paying her much attention - and she actually showed me a little of what she spends her time on. I should have guessed it would be fashion sketches - she is a Tatting, of course she'll grow up and be a seamstress or something - but Merlin, I hope someone teaches her something first, because at the moment it's looking... grim. Awfully focused, I say - and if I am honest, some of those dress designs are just awful.

I was wonderfully encouraging, of course - I should not like to be the one to dash all her dreams at once - but it was very hard to pick a favourite, for they were all so... like that, and although I did for her sake, I am rather glad none of these designs have yet been made manifest, for the rest of ours.

Perhaps she'll improve, in time.

And perhaps I'll get better at badminton one day.

Though I'm not holding my breath on either count.

Love, Jemima

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18th December, 1888

Dear Diary,

It is nearly the winter holidays now, but I have not given up on my wooing of Professor Skeeter, just so you know! Only I don't think I made any real progress last year; he does not seem to know who I am any better, nor have I managed to make much conversation with him on a non-Herbology front.

I had just about plucked up the nerve, this time, to be a little more forward with my next move - I had gotten a card to put with the flowers this time, and crept down to the greenhouse to leave them there while Professor Skeeter was still at dinner, and I had just arranged them nicely - I spent ages, I tell you, colour-coding the bouquet and all! - and left them for him, only just as I was leaving the greenhouse, I saw his DAMNED CAT slink in and start chewing up the card! CAN YOU BELIEVE?

I think I may have dashed over and kicked Peppermint in my fury. Sorry, Peppermint.

I may have to leave Project Marry Professor Skeeter until after Christmas for now, I don't have any pocket money left to spend on flowers at the moment.

Love, Jemima

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