For the notes passed: bold is Hugo and underline is Lily.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

What a lovely feeling it is to wake up bright and early and get ready quickly for a lovely, fun filled day at school.

Not.

So not.

I woke up at 7:30 on Monday morning and had to get almost forcibly dragged out of bed by a certain Mr. Alexander Williamson, it wasn't the best experience of my life.

"Come on mate, you don't want to be late to your first lesson of O.W.L year!" he had called.

"Yes I do, yes I do." I had mumbled into my pillows.

"You're a prefect Hugo; you can't just not go to class." Alex had persisted and made me get up. It involved a few hexes, minor blackmail and a lot of shouting; I'll just leave it at that.

It was about 20 minutes later that the two of us were sitting opposite Beth and Lily at the Gryffindor table.

"Longbottom just handed out the timetables." Lily said and she passed Alex and me our timetables.

"Ergh, Binns first." Alex groaned.

"What are you talking about?" I questioned him. "I get to sleep for longer every Monday morning now."

Alex laughed, Lily gave a small smile but Beth felt the need to kick me in the shin.

"Ow!" I winced and rubbed my shin where Beth had kicked it.

"Sorry." Beth said, this sentence is supposed to sound either sincere or sarcastic (usually the latter) but today it was neither. It was completely flat, no emotion in it at all. Alright, I was getting seriously worried now.

"What do we have after Binns?" Lily asked as she poured herself some more orange juice.

"Herbology." Alex groaned. "My day's getting worse and worse already."

"Don't worry Alex; we've got Transfiguration after break." Lily said.

Through this entire conversation I wonder if Alex and Lily have noticed anything strange about Beth. Briefly I wondered if it's been my imagination this entire time but then Lily gave Beth a worried sideways glance and I knew that I wasn't hallucinating.

"Alright, History of Magic is first." Beth said as the four of us left the Gryffindor table. I was waiting for a sarcastic remark about me sleeping in class, a question asking if I'll take notes this time and then rolling eyes when I say no, maybe asking Lily about her essay or telling Alex that hangman is not a suitable thing to do during the lesson. But no, none of that happened. Nothing. Zilch. Not a thing.

As we walked to History of Magic I watched Beth for any signs of unnormalness (yes, to all you Beth type characters out there, I know that that is not a word), out of the corner of my eye I could see Lily and Alex doing the same thing. She wasn't too bad though. She did still talk but it wasn't with the humour and sarcasm that she usually does.

Professor Binns drifted through the black board like usual and within about five minutes the class was in a doze. Alex had his head on his unopened book and was drooling slightly on the cover, Lily was staring blankly at Binns, her chin resting on her hand, clearly not taking in a word of what he was saying. I looked over at Beth, just to check she was writing down notes that I could copy off later before resting my head on my book myself, but she wasn't scribbling down anything from Binn's lecture. Her head was on her book, which was at least open, her brown hair flying out in all directions and her blue eyes closed as she slept.

Noticing this, I got my quill and ink pot out, along with some parchment and wrote a note to Lily.

Do you have any idea what's up with Beth? I wrote and passed the piece of parchment to Lily who was sitting to my left.

She looked at it briefly and then got out her quill and ink.

No idea at all. I'm getting worried. Any thoughts? She wrote back.

None. I'm getting worried too. What do you think we should do?

I'm not sure. I know she'd just bite our heads off if we tried to talk to her about it but then I'm not sure how we'd find out otherwise.

I think we'll have to talk to her. Because I'm scared that she's acting so not Beth-like.

I know what you mean. Who's going to ask her? When?

I don't know.

Maybe we should wait longer? Maybe she's just really tired?

You know that's not true.

Yeah, well I say we should wait a little longer, one day tops though.

Ok.

I finished the conversation, I felt a bit bad about leaving it another day, but Lily was right; she would bite our heads off if we tried to interfere too much. Like I said before, she was an extremely private person, even to her friends.

And with that, I rested my head on my history of magic book and feel into an easy sleep.

Author's note: Sorry about the short chapter. I had planned to make it a bit longer but I felt that that was a good ending for it.

Thanks for all your lovely reviews! They're really encouraging and I thank you all for them. I'd love if everyone reading this would review, just so I see your opinions on what I'm writing. It's the only way to get better (well that and writing more) so I really do encourage you to review, even if it's only a few words.

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