It was the last week of summer vacation before my fifth year at Hogwarts, and I was staying at the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley with my best friend, Alice, who had just arrived.

"ALICE!" I yelled excitedly as I spotted her rushing towards me with a huge grin on her face. Alice is a cute, vertically challenged witch with short brown hair and warm brown eyes, and is also the sweetest person on Earth. No joke. I smiled as I gave her a big hug, which was rather difficult because she was holding all of her trunks and the cage where her owl, Smidge, was hooting angrily after he was rudely awakened by my excited shrieking.

"I have so much to tell you," she said, her eyes growing wide. "I-"

"Whoa, Alice. Calm down! Let's go to our room before you start babbling about how much you saw Frank as you were walking from the platform at the end of the school year and fainted when he looked at you for half a second," I said.

Alice's face whitened. "You know about that?"

"Alice, sweetie, everyone knows about that. Come on, let's go to our room already!"

********************************** 10 minutes later*********************************

We were all settled into our room, which was super cozy. Munching on a scone from the tray that Tom the innkeeper had brought up, I sat on the edge of Alice's bed.

"So, what did you do over the summer? I'm sorry I couldn't write, Petunia threatened to find a way to dye my hair *shudder* pink if she ever saw Mouse leave the house." I smiled at my random rhyme.

"Well, after my little, err, spill, my parents decided to take me to the hospital being their overprotective selves, and it's lucky that they did! Turns out that I had a concussion. So the first few weeks of my summer were pretty boring. We went to Ireland in July, though! It was so beautiful there, but I don't think I ever want to eat another potato again…" (I burst out laughing) Alice giggled, then continued. "When we got back, I pretty much stayed home waiting for this week-"

"And dreaming about Frank!" I interrupted. "Shut it!" screamed Alice. "Anyway, what about you? How was the beach? Were you pelted with letters from James oh so many times?"

I stuck my tongue out. "The beach was wonderful, thank you. I was pretty much the only one out there, since Petunia was complaining about the heat and the sand and the breeze and me and stayed inside the whole time. As for Potter, yes, he mercilessly sent me letters covered in love letters. He's such a joke."

Alice smiled that smile of I-know-something-you-don't-know, though I don't know why.

"What? Why are you smiling like a demonic cat? It's creeping me out."

"Oh, no reason. No reason at all," Alice said. Grr. She knows how to get on my nerves.

"Okay, lets go downstairs. These scones are terrible and I'm starving." I said truthfully. So we went downstairs and, to Alice's disgust, I ordered mashed potatoes and some extremely delicious stew. Content and full, we headed back upstairs to our room, just in time to see a two huge owls fly through the window.

"Ooh, those must be our school supply lists!" Alice squealed. They were. But Hogwarts was not the only place we got our letters from. On one note I recognized the handwriting of the one and only James Potter. Groaning, I took it from the owl and they both flew off into the night. I shoved the letter into Alice's hands. Smirking, she tore it open and read:

"My dearest Lily,

Your hair is red

My hair is black

Peter's is like a hairless cat's

My hair is black

Your hair is red

If you don't reply, I will be dead

Love,

James

Alice fell on the floor from laughing so hard. I rolled my eyes and grabbed a sheet of parchment. Alice looked up at me, her eyes growing wide.

"Are you going to write him back? Are all of his letters like that?"

"Yes and yes," I grumbled, fishing around in my bag for a quill. "You should have seen the one I got last week. He wrote a freaking sonnet. Not kidding!"

Alice burst out laughing again. "What are you going to write?"

Plopping down in the big green armchair, I read aloud as I wrote.

"Dear Potter, 'Black' and 'cat's' don't rhyme. Lily."

Alice released a new set of giggles. Her face was so red from laughing that it made me crack up, too. Pretty soon we were lying on the ground clutching our stomachs and laughing like a pair of hyenas who had just eaten about 200 packs of chocolate frogs. We didn't notice the door creak open and when Tom poked his head in and told us we were disturbing the