The third lesson really was a little bit better for me; I had studied pretty hard and therefore now managed to get a proper Potion. When Snape walked towards my table I smiled confidently.
"Acceptable" he stated and checked Ginny's.
"Acceptable?" I wondered inaudibly. He had told me this the last time -and the last time my Potion had had an utterly wrong colour! If this was not better than the last time it was awful! I felt anger pulsating in my veins.
Ginny was meanwhile crying; he had dared to give her detention. I was thinking very hard now; I needed to get in detention as well to be on her side. My thoughts were interrupted by an urgent knock on the door. Lavender busted into the room, holding a piece of paper in her hands.
"As I am the leader of the school newspaper "Once weekly" I would like you to sign here if you want to be a part of the writer's community" she told us.
Obviously she was not afraid of disturbing the lesson. I signed before she had even finished speaking.
After she left Snape did a second check on every Potion.
"Really you seem to get better" he told me smoothly. A Slytherin boy – I could not remember whether it was it the same one who had been laughing about me the other day – sneezed and managed to hide the word "know-it-all" in his sneeze.
I couldn't help grinning and a sudden idea overcame me. "Jealous?" I wrote on a piece of paper and hold it up so he could read it. I wanted to turn around to see his reaction but the letters were changing and formed now the word "Extremely"
I now turned around and saw him hiding his wand. He smirked at me and touched his wand shortly. A little heart appeared on the piece of paper. I could not help being impressed by his talent. Impressed and well… confused? Irritated?
He smirked at me and winked. Who the hell was being treated well by Slytherin guys? Obviously it was me again. "Shit" I simply thought. I hated to stand out in the crowd. No need for anyone to hear about that incident…
The first meeting with Lavender took place in the Gryffindor common room.
It happened that only Gryffindor's were in her team. I considered asking her if this was on purpose and if the readers who bought the paper regularly knew that other students had no chance to be in the 'neutral' writing team but I did not want to be kicked out of the team. So I remained silent and listened to her. We split the work into pieces and I became the "Star" part.
Our names would not be said; everybody we interviewed had to swear not to tell anybody, who did the interview. Also they were told that somebody else would be writing it – based on the interviewer's information. A lie, but a successful one. This made sure that we could not get problems for the things we would be writing. Obviously this also ensured that nobody realised that only Gryffindor's worked for the newspapers. Yes, Lavender was smart.
Writing for the "Once Weekly" was better then I had expected. As I was trusted with the "Stars-part" I could easily meet new people, talk to a lot of famous Quidditch players and make a lot of new friends.
Until. Until the day Lavender decided to change the part.
The interviews were getting boring; I had to sneak up to people, to get undercover stuff.
I agreed, hoping that this would get some Action in my rather dull life.
Not, that I disliked it in Hogwarts, no, but the subjects were easy, I felt a bit under-estimated in every lesson and we didn't have much to do.
My friends seemed already overstrained with the easiest parts of our homework and had recently stopped copying from me because they finally noticed that they needed to know the things somewhen.
My first few undercover actions went without any problems, I literally fell over the weirdest things, got directly involved into big fights and love problems. People got more and more curious about our newspaper.
When Lavender told me, that our newest desire were the Weasley twins I hesitated but agreed. It meant another challenge for me. Fred and George acted always secretly, always checking twice if there was somebody watching the.
It didn't seem right to gather information about somebody I knew personally. But, as I told myself, I would only pass information for fans, nothing, that would cause them problems.