Before I continue I would like to say thank you to my girlfriend Amber, who is the only person to have actually read this story as far as I can tell.

Harry missed a couple of lessons, which worried me some. Nobody commented, though Snape raised his eyebrows slightly in a knowing way. He didn't pair me up with Draco again in DADA; it would have been a great embarassment to all concerned if a student were to get killed learning to duel. Draco probably would have used the Killing Curse if he'd lost again, and that would NOT have looked good on Snape's CV.

Harry reappeared at lunchtime, looking worried about something. He was summoned to the Headmaster's office a few minutes later, and returned as if nothing had happened.

I'd made the Quidditch team as Beater, alongside Ginny, and our first match was this afternoon. I managed to talk to Harry shortly before the match, which was against Ravenclaw.

"You were dead right," he explained. "Uncle Vernon did have a stroke when he found out. He'll be okay, though, it wasn't too bad. He's changing jobs, of course."

"He might try setting up some kind of support group," I replied thoughtfully. "You know, like those things where people go and sit in a circle drinking tea, and discussing the problems of having a kid who turns out to be gay." My parents had always refused to attend such events, regarding them as being the preserve of surreptitious homophobics who'd had to severely reassess their views. We'd been learning about gay rights in parallel to school sex education since puberty (Bollocks to Clause 28), and watched the Berlin Love Parade on holiday; I never quite worked up the bottle to show anybody the photographs.

"Yeah, that's just the sort of thing he'd do. I can't imagine him being the only person ever to have trouble adjusting," Harry decided. "Hey, we're on!"

It was a rotten day for a match, with thick fog making it nearly impossible to see where the other side were. An innovative solution was found in the form of wands glowing in the appropriate colour. I wasn't sure if we were allowed to do this, but the balls were now impervious to magical tampering from anybody short of Dumbledore himself, hard lessons having been learnt in the wake of that unfortunate incident when a house elf apparently tried to assassinate Harry with a rigged Bludger.

The match was a long one, with a fair number of injuries. The glowing wands didn't prevent collisions as successfully as hoped; they weren't bright enough to gauge distance and relative speed, and we had a couple of nasty crashes. The only reason we didn't have a hundred goals on both sides was that the Chasers were as blinded as the Keepers, and one goal was disallowed when the Ravenclaw Seeker accidentally hit Ron in the teeth, knocking him through the hoop with the Quaffle close behind. There was a huge debate over whether or not it should have been counted as a save or not, but sympathy for Ron -who was minus two or three teeth- won out in the end.

Sadly, Madam Hooch ruled in favour of the Ravenclaw Seeker who found the Snitch caught in the bristls of his broom, prolonging the match by nearly an hour whilst Harry put about four hundred extra miles on his Firebolt.

Ginny and I didn't have much to do, since the Bludgers were damn near invisible in the fog. I wasn't even certain that we should be flying at all with visibility so low, though what the Civil Aviation Authority would make of Quidditch I can't begin to imagine.

We came off the pitch in a fairly upbeat mood. Despite several injuries and bad visibility we had fought pretty well as a cohesive team, and areas where our tactics needed attention were easy to spot and rectify.

"Rick and Ginny were too close together. Beaters can't really afford to bunch up," Angelina remarked. Doubtless Ron would have had something to say about that. "It wasn't really an issue with the fog being what it was, but next time try to split up and take a Bludger each.

"Harry, try and stay high, and KEEP AN EYE ON THE OTHER SEEKER. If you'd got close enough you could have pulled the Snitch out of his bristles and we'd have won. Otherwise, we all did well. Let's hit the showers, everyone."

Transfiguration was less than exciting. We had to turn a brick into an apple, which we couldn't even eat afterwards, because these things invariably wear off after a few hours. Now THAT would be an uncomfortable experience!

"Why can't we learn how to change Knuts into Galleons or something?" Ron complained.

"Legally, that's counterfitting," I explained. "I looked into it once." When I say 'looked into it', I refer to the one and only time I ever got arrested. Dad had managed to sort it all out, seeing the funny side, but it wasn't an experience I was keen on repeating even secondhand.

"It'd still be worth a try, though," he mused, having another go with the brick. I groaned inwardly.

Professor McGonagall gave Ron a look, causing his face to match his hair. he saved himself from more embarassment by pulling off a perfect Transfiguration, to class-wide applause. I noticed him pocketing the 'apple' on the way out, presumably with some nefarious purpose in mind.

"Weasley, whatever you are planning with that apple, don't. If somebody tries to eat it they will end up in the infirmary. Even your brothers knew some limits," McGonagall warned him. "Or are you just in need of a paperweight?" Ron handed over the apple, thwarted utterly.

As I headed for the common room, hoping to finish my book before embarking upon my Charms essay, I spotted a notice about the Yule Ball in a couple of weeks. //Oh, GOD.// Visions of school discos came back to haunt me. That, I concluded, would be something to avoid if at all possible.

Harry and Ron were bickering over who to ask. "Not the Patil twins. I invited Padma to Hogsmeade, and it was Parvarti who turned up. And THEN Padma walked into the cafe we were in and pretended to have jealous hysterics until they both burst out laughing," Ron said vehemently. "They'd set me up!"

"At least you didn't accidentally snog the wrong one," pointed out Ginny. "According to Fred, he and George's girlfriend nearly..."

"I don't want to hear the rest!" There was a moment of cringing silence.

"I thought Angelina was going out with Fred anyway. Probably both of them," Hermione said thoughtfully after a while. "Knowing those two, they probably drew up some kind of rota!"

Eventually, Ron decided to ask Luna Lovegood, much to Ginny's displeasure.

"I'm supposed to go to a ball with my best friend hanging off my brother's arm?" she complained.

"Well why not? At least there's half a chance she'll say yes," her brother replied sulkily. I was mildly annoyed at this, as I found myself rather liking Luna despite -or possibly because of- the fact that she was quite clearly slightly bonkers.

"How 'bout you, Harry?" Fran asked.

"Cho. Definitely Cho."

"What, after-?" Ron began.

"Yes!"

"Good luck, then. Hey, what about you, Rick?" This caught me off guard.

"I don't know. I'm not even sure if I'm going to go at all; I can't dance, I fall asleep after three cans of Stella, and Fran invariably ends up dancing with whoever I've got my eye on." Fran casually wandered over and whispered, "Not this time around," sotto voice. I was a bit suspicious at this. Doubtless she'd ask Hermione, which could get awkward if we weren't very, very lucky. However, Hermione surprised us all with her contribution to the debate.

"I don't think I want to limit my options yet. There's no rule that says it has to be somebody of the opposite sex you go with." Fran looked at me. I shrugged, resignedly, and went off to get another letter written.

Me and Fran had decided to divide correspondence according to which parent we argued with less. I ended up with Dad, being extremely like him, whilst Fran handled communications with Mum. It seemed to work okay.

Dear Dad,

So far, so normal. Just played my first match with the Gryffindor team, but there was too much damn fog to Beat anything. We lost, but not too badly, and it certainly wasn't because of something I did wrong. I think.

It's now the runup to the Yule Ball which I intend to avoid like, if not the plague, then at least the pox. So far it looks like Fran might be in luck; Hermione says she doesn't want to limit her options by sticking to guys. Turns out that Ron and I were on the brink of asking the same person out anyway; an endearingly loopy girl from Ravenclaw, whose father is editor of the Quibbler so I'd probably better shut up. Gryffindor-Ravenclaw crossbreeding seems to be in vogue; Harry's going to ask another Ravenclaw, Cho Chang- don't her parents run that really nice Chinese resteraunt in Diagon Alley?

Say hi to Mum, and ask her not to punch Harry's aunt at King's Cross when we get back for the holidays, it'll only be embarassing.

Regards,

Rick.