Chapter One

Dear Diary,

I fear I shall explode if I keep my silence a minute longer—I have been so wronged—but since this is the first time I am writing in here, I suppose I shall have to begin with preliminaries of some sort. Alright, I shall write a very brief introduction of myself for now as I am currently experiencing a desperate need to write down what has just happened. Okay, if I do not remember incorrectly, I was born on the twentieth of October, and migrated from India (my home state should be in the South, the details are all rather foggy, so I don't know where I came from, in actual fact) when I was six. My dad works in some blue collar industry (the last time I wrote to him, he mentioned being a waiter somewhere), so I have never felt a real sense of belonging in school (that'll be Hogwarts, everyone there I've met is so rich and they're not shy about it). It's not just the money though, I've heard something about the Weasel (or Weasley family, maybe I'm wrong) family, they're also poor, but that's not the thing, I feel so different because, one, I come from India (exotic and oriental to my schoolmates), two, I can't speak English very well (actually, I'm on the extremely mediocre side) and all and sundry treat me like I'm stupid or something and, three, I just don't understand them (but more on that later, for now, I conclude my life story).

I'll take a deep breath, close my eyes, calm…calm…calm, I tend to get incomprehensible when I'm excited (one of the million reasons why I'm angry now). Now I open my eyes, I'm better now, but not any less angry. It all started today, last day of school before the summer, you see, I was just walking around before the Great Feast (school custom—more later) when I decided to pay the library a visit, I ran into this boy there. Literally. So I just felt guilty since he was this fat little fellow at least a head shorter than me though we're the same age (I distinctly knew him from the Charms classes we had together) and I helped him up. I wanted to just end it there and then—just get rid of him—but the guy obviously thought I liked him or something because I just picked him (and then his frog—further testament to why I felt sorry for him) off the floor where he was sprawled out like he was dying, so he started talking to me. He practically told me his whole life story, including the speech the lifeguard gave him (he told it to me word for word) when his Great-Uncle-Something-Or-Other dropped him into Blackpool Pier and he nearly drowned (I felt sorry for him again when he told me that—how boring must his life be if he thinks being dropped into a Pier is memorable?). All this continued right till the time we walked into the Great Hall with our arms linked Southern Gal style (his idea—not mine), he was just blithely blabbering on about how he'd never had a best friend before and Oh! What absolutely fantabulous wiggly-wingly-waggly-wangly-wonderful chummy-chums we were going to be and how it would never have happened if he had never forgotten to return a spell book until that very day. I, on the other hand, was try sooooooo desperately to just lose him in the crowd but the more I loosed my arm and wriggled in a bid to get free, the tighter he held on, and he even had the gall to tell me "Oh, don't worry about getting lost out here, I'll take care of you, I'm holding you really tight, you won't lose me, not to worry." And then there I was just barely resisting the curiously strong urge to grab my wand and curse his head off his two fat shoulders (no big loss). Then, suddenly, I realized that he was a Gryffindor and I was a Ravenclaw (House system—details later), so we couldn't possibly sit together, so I put on my widest smile and ever sooo politely pointed out that fact to him. Unfortunately, he just said "Not to worry, we can all sit together, the teachers won't mind." And so, steered me to his table to a seat right next to his and I felt like screaming "BUT I DO, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!!!!!!"—how I wish I had, because that's when all the trouble started.

When the Feast commenced, all the students were in the Great Hall--and I assure you, everyone but me was sitting at their own House tables, but that's not the bad part, it's just coming up—so anyway, all the Slytherins were there too (mean, nasty bunch they are), so naturally, there was this little idiot called Malfoy sitting there as well because he's part of that house (he's sooo part of them), and naturally, he saw. He saw the fat guy and I together at the Gryffindor table, arms linked. Then he yelled something, the most awful thing imaginable, here it is, "Oy! Longbottom! Finally got yourself a girlfriend, eh?" And the whole hall just burst into laughter, they found it funny, oh yes they did, and they found what this Longbottom fellow yelled back even more hilarious, "She's my friend!" And then he actually turned back to me and asked ever-so-innocently, "Tell him we're friends. We're friends, right?" Well, at that point, I had nearly gone into apoplexies and what he said made me go absolutely berserk.

What I did next astonished even myself. I got up, I yelled at the Longbottom fellow, "NO! We-are-not-friends-you-bloody-FOOL! WE-ARE-NOT-FRIENDS! Never were, never will be, do I make myself clear??!!" I was absolutely thundering and the whole hall heard me and they all clapped their hands to their mouths, totally mortified—what was I doing? It would have been bad enough if I had just stopped there but then I started on Malfoy, I whipped out my wand and headed towards him while calling him a dozen names I shan't repeat here. I just stepped over everyone who tried to stop me (actually, I think some of them let me—the rest were just too shocked to do anything). When I got right in front of him, I jabbed my wand straight into his throat and hexed him ten times with ten different spells, I even tried to transfigure him into a slug and it would have worked if he hadn't screamed and woken his two cronies out of their stupor. The minute he did that, the shaved apes were onto me and they would have killed me if Flitwick and McGonagal (teachers) hadn't stepped in to drag me out of the fight to get punished.

If you ask me, the punishment was worse. I couldn't do anything and I went into an absolute frenzy when any of the teachers started asking me questions—that's a bad thing to do when you want to prove your innocence. You see, the teachers (Groany Council, I call them) all started interrogating me at the same time, the questions were flung at me from all over the room and suddenly, I just screamed. I screamed and started yelling that I didn't know, needless to say, the lot of them all went quiet for awhile, then went whispering about amongst themselves. The next thing I remember is being here, this bright, white room—school infirmary, I found out later—where I was tucked tightly to the bed and bound there with a Binding Spell (Madam Pomfrey loosed me just now), I suppose they drugged me and then dragged me up here.

It's already coming to night, the Hogwarts Express has left and the house-elf who came by earlier told me that I'll be here until my father can come get me (I don't have a mother, I forgot to tell you just now—it's easy to forget). So here's where I end off for today, so long.

S. Sundarya

30th June 2004