After that, Nat and I returned to Wiccan Manor.
Tonks continued to visit us daily now, being quite hilarious the days. There wasn't an ounce of silence, but that just made my summer the best one I had ever had. It was very common to hear a small explosion two or three times a day. Tonks seemed eager about something though, as she dropped several clues as to that something was going to happen and the Ministry had a hand to it.
Before I knew it, Sunday arrived. One day before returning to Hogwarts with my friends.
But I wasn't sure anymore if they were really my friends.
Like always, Tonks stayed for dinner. But this time, she brought a surprise with her.
"Ta - da!" from her pink satchel, she pulled out a big white box with a blue ribbon on it. "Your very late birthday present!"
I blushed. "'Tonks, it wasn't necesary. Besides, like you said, it has already passed - "
"Then it's your Christmas gift!"
"But -"
"Just accept the damned gift," Natasha sighed. "She's going to be bothering you all day."
Tonks pouted. "Now, that really sting, Rosely."
Natasha rolled her eyes. "You will get over it. Open it, end my pain, once for all," she pointed at me.
Sighing, I grabbed the box from Tonks (whom let out an excited sound) and put it on my bed.
I opened it and - NO WAY!
"No way!" I said outloud. Resting peacefully in there was a strapless white dress made of silk that possibly reached my knees.
"There's more," Tonks was smiling like a lunatic, "Look again."
Pulling out the dress and laying it carefully on the bed, I searched inside the box.
"How much far do I have to search?" I asked her grunting. My whole arm was inside the box and I still haven't found the rest of the surprise.
"Just a few centimeters."
I groaned.
Like half an hour later, I finally made a grab of something and I tugged it hard. I fell on my butt. Tightly on my grasp were a pair of white boots without heels. The material seemed to be made of silk like the dress.
"This is amazing Tonks," I gaped at both items. "Thank you!"
"Ah," Tonks waved her hand dismissing me. "Don't worry, I have the feeling that you are going to need them."
"Does this have to do with the super secret you have been hinting?" Nat raised her eyebrows.
"Maybe," she winked at us.
Next day dawned gloomily. There was no Tonks today to set a bomb off in the stairs, as she was called to solve a little problem, that, in her words, was "to just make her boring".
Nat and I arrived at the Platform Nine and Three-Quarters in time, and before she said goodbye, she warned me to look out my surroundings.
"I have a bad feeling, that's all," she had said.
I found a compartment for myself and just stared out the window. Thick rain hit against the old glass. Something was going to happen...
"Annie!" I heard an excited voice. Snapping my head around, I saw Hermione smiling at me, followed by a slightly sad Harry and a grumpy Ron.
"Hey guys," I smiled at them. My last thought of last year came to my head. You're just a tag-along.
Harry smiled at me and Ron grumbled something under his breath while he opened his trunk, pulled out some gastly maroon dress from the Nineteenth century (I am sure of it!), and flung them over Pigwidgeon's (Ron's new owl) cage to muffle his hooting.
"Bagman wanted to tell us what's happening at Hogwarts," he continued grumpily from where he sat next to Harry. "At the World Cup, remember? But my own mother won't say. Wonder what -"
"You too?" I asked him darkly. It seemed everyone knew except us.
"Shh!" Hermione whispered suddenly, pressing her fingers to her lips and pointing toward the compartment next to ours. I perked up my ears, and heard a familiar drawling voice drifting in through the open door.
"...Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore - the man's such a Mudblood-lover - and Durmstrang doesn't admit that sort of riffraff. But Mother didn't like the idea of me going to school so far away. Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not just the defense rubbish we do..."
Hermione got up, tiptoed to the compartment door, and slid it shut, blocking out Malfoy's voice.
"So he thinks Durmstrang would have suited him, does he?" she said angrily. "I wish he had gone, then we wouldn't have to put up with him."
I raised my hand. "I second that."
They ignored me.
"Durmstrang's another wizarding school?" Harry asked puzzled.
"Yes," Hermione said sniffily, "and it's got a horrible reputation. According to An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, it puts a lot of emphasis on the Dark Arts."
"I think I've heard of it," Ron said vaguely. "Where is it? What country?"
"Rumor has it that it's near the coasts of Russia," I said casually.
"But, nobody knows, do they?" Hermione said, raising her eyebrows at me.
"Like I said, it's just a rumor," I shrugged.
"Er - why not? I mean, why nobody knows?" Harry asked.
"There's traditionally been a lot of rivalry between all the magic schools. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons like to conceal their whereabouts so nobody can steal their secrets," Hermione said matter-of-factly.
"Come off it," Ron said, starting to laugh. "Durmstrang's got to be about the same size as Hogwarts - how are you going to hide a great big castle?"
"But Hogwarts is hidden," I said, in surprise. "Everyone knows that..."
"Well, everyone who's read Hogwarts, A History, anyway," said Hermione.
"Just you, then," said Ron.
"And Annie too!"
"Because you made me," I mumbled, looking over at the rain.
"So go on - how d'you hide a place like Hogwarts?"
"It's bewitched," Hermione said. "If a Muggle looks at it, all they see is a moldering old ruin with a sign over the entrance saying DANGER, DO NOT ENTER, UNSAFE."
"So Durmstrang'll just look like a ruin to an outsider too?"
"There could be a good chance," I said, shrugging, "or it might have Muggle-repelling charms on it, like the World Cup stadium. And to keep foreign wizards from finding it, they'll have made it Unplottable -"
"Come again?"
"Well, you can enchant a building so it's impossible to plot on a map, can't you?"
"Er...if you say so," Harry said.
"But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Somewhere very cold, because they've got fur capes as part of their uniforms."
"Ah, think of the possibilities," Ron said dreamily. "It would've been so easy to push Malfoy off a glacier and make it look like an accident...Shame his mother likes him..."
I nodded in agreement.
The rain became heavier and heavier as the train moved farther north. The sky was so dark and the windows so steamy that the lanterns were lit by midday. The lunch trolley came rattling along the corridor, and Harry bought a large stack of Cauldron Cakes for us to share.
Several people came in to see us, including Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and Neville Longbottom, my round faced friend I had become to like over the last year. Seamus was still wearing his Ireland rosette. Some of its magic seemed to be wearing off now; it was still squeaking "Troy - Mullet - Moran!" but in a very feeble and exhausted sort of way. After half an hour or so, Hermione, growing tired of the endless Quidditch talk, buried herself once more in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4, and started trying to learn a Summoning Charm.
Neville listened jealously to the others' conversation as we relived the Cup match.
"Gran didn't want to go," he said miserably. "Wouldn't buy tickets. It sounded amazing though."
"It was," said Ron. "Look at this, Neville…" He rummaged in his trunk up in the luggage rack and pulled out the miniature figure of Viktor Krum.
"Oh wow," said Neville enviously as Ron tipped Krum onto his pudgy hand. I snapped my fingers.
"That reminds me, Nev," I rumaged through my trunk and pulled out a set of Ireland and Bulgarian rosettes.
"Happy Birthday!" I exclaimed smiling to him. "Late Birthday though."
"Annie..." Nevile gaped at the rosettes with incredulous eyes. "You didn't have to..."
"I know, but I very much liked your present. It was beautiful, really."
Neville ducked his head when Seamus and Dean started teasing him, but I could still see the tip of his ears turn red. Quickly, Harry returned the conversation to Krum and Ron started going fan-girl again.
"We saw him right up close, as well," Ron said. "We were in the Top Box -"
"For the first and last time in your life, Weasley."
Draco Malfoy had appeared in the doorway. Behind him stood Crabbe and Goyle, his enormous, thuggish cronies, both of whom appeared to have grown at least a foot during the summer. Evidently they had overheard the conversation through the compartment door, which Dean and Seamus had left ajar.
"Don't remember asking you to join us, Malfoy," Harry said coolly.
"Weasley...what is that?" Malfoy said, pointing at Pigwidgeon's cage. A sleeve of Ron's dress robes was dangling from it, swaying with the motion of the train, the moldy lace cuff very obvious.
Ron made to stuff the robes out of sight, but Malfoy was too quick for him; he seized the sleeve and pulled.
"Look at this!" Malfoy said in ecstasy, holding up Ron's robes and showing Crabbe and Goyle, "Weasley, you weren't thinking of wearing these, were you? I mean - they were very fashionable in about eighteen ninety..."
"Eat dung, Malfoy!" Ron said, the same color as the dress robes as he snatched them back out of Malfoy's grip. Malfoy howled with derisive laughter; Crabbe and Goyle guffawed stupidly.
"So...going to enter, Weasley? Going to try and bring a bit of glory to the family name? There's money involved as well, you know...you'd be able to afford some decent robes if you won..."
"What are you talking about?" Ron snapped.
"Are you going to enter?" Malfoy repeated. "I suppose you will, Potter? You never miss a chance to show off, do you?"
"Either explain what you're on about or go away, Malfoy," said Hermione testily, over the top of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4.
A gleeful smile spread across Malfoy's pale face
"Don't tell me you don't know?" he said delightedly. "You've got a father and brother at the Ministry and you don't even know? My God, my father told me about it ages ago… heard it from Cornelius Fudge. But then, Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry… Maybe your father's too junior to know about it, Weasley… yes… they probably don't talk about important stuff in front of him…"
I stood up and glared up at his face. Why was I the only one that hadn't grown up taller?
"Remember my words, Malfoy," I told him quietly. He seemed to remember what I told him last year. "Get out."
"There's going to be a time your words aren't going to mean something, Barton," he hissed.
With a last glare, Malfoy and his apes left.
Ron got to his feet and slammed the sliding compartment door so hard behind them that the glass shattered.
"Ron!" Hermione said reproachfully, and she pulled out her wand, muttered "Reparo!" and the glass shards flew back into a single pane and back into the door.
"Well...making it look like he knows everything and we don't..." Ron snarled. " 'Father's always associated with the top people at the Ministry'...Dad could've got a promotion any time...he just likes it where he is..."
"Of course he does," Hermione said quietly. "Don't let Malfoy get to you, Ron -"
"Him! Get to me!? As if!" Ron said, picking up one of the remaining Cauldron Cakes and squashing it into a pulp.
Ron's bad mood continued for the rest of the journey. He didn't talk much as we changed into our school robes, and was still glowering when the Hogwarts Express slowed down at last and finally stopped in the pitch-darkness of Hogsmeade station.
As the train doors opened, there was a rumble of thunder overhead. Hermione bundled up Crookshanks in her cloak and Ron left his dress robes over Pigwidgeon as we left the train, heads bent and eyes narrowed against the downpour. The rain was now coming down so thick and fast that it was as though buckets of icecold water were being emptied repeatedly over our heads.
"Hi, Hagrid!" Harry yelled, pointing out the gigantic silhouette at the far end of the platform.
"All righ', Harry?" Hagrid bellowed back, waving. "See yeh at the feast if we don' drown!"
First years traditionally reached Hogwarts Castle by sailing across the lake with Hagrid.
"Oooh, I wouldn't fancy crossing the lake in this weather," said Hermione fervently, shivering as we inched slowly along the dark platform with the rest of the crowd. A hundred carriages stood waiting for us outside the station. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville and me climbed gratefully into one of them, the door shut with a snap, and a few moments later, with a great lurch, the long procession of carriages was rumbling and splashing its way up the track toward Hogwarts Castle.
