A/N

These are extracts from Lily's diary entries. Lily puts a lot of information in her diary of a more (polite cough) intimate nature but these are irrelevant to the story and have been removed, as has some (although not all!) of the rambling.

Chapter two: Week Two

Saturday 5th November

I was hoping to talk a bit to Jenny today but she seems to be avoiding me. Actually, that's unfair, she seems to be avoiding everybody. She says she has a lot of schoolwork to catch up on because her school wasn't at the same place but most of the sixth years say she seems well up with her classes.

I was talking with Alice this afternoon (side note, why do I find the sixth year girls so much better company than my fellow seventh years? My year never used to be so awful – until they discovered boys properly in the fourth year and started going all stupid half the time). A is a nice girl and missing Frank madly – but she isn't boy crazy, I mean it's not like F is the only thing she ever thinks about.

We were talking about the situation out there with You-Know-Who. A is really scared for F, training to be an Auror, but she is proud of him too. He really is brave for becoming an Auror in these times, but these sorts of times are when we most need Aurors – and there aren't enough of them. Last Saturday showed that. F was there last Saturday. He'd had the day off and come to visit A in Hogsmeade but got pulled back on duty when the Death Eaters attacked me. Well not when they attacked but when it was noticed if you see what I mean. Actually, according to A, They were sat in the 3Bs when they heard screaming and F ran outside straight away. She followed him and when she caught up with him he told her to round up all the younger students and send them back to school. Apparently she roped in James etc to help her.

It was Frank who managed to arrest one of the Death Eaters. Unfortunately, that was before the other Aurors arrived, so F was tied up with controlling the Death Eater he arrested while the others apparated away. Apparently he was feeling a bit bad about that as he thought he should have been able to get more of them but I told A that I thought that even arresting one was pretty good for someone at the beginning of their first year in Auror training.

I've been thinking about what I wrote last Thursday – about James. J doesn't seem to take anything seriously. I know I shouldn't compare him and F; J is still at school and everything but I remember F last year. He was always so serious, almost humourless at times (although A says that he is actually very funny he just doesn't shine in company which I can completely understand) so they are very different people. But it's like F knew what he wanted to do – he always seemed like he knew. I only heard him mentioning being an Auror last year but when he said it, it seemed so natural. And even before, you knew F was going to do something. J seems like he doesn't really care that much about anything except having fun.

Oh I sound like an awful girlfriend. I do care about J and he adores me – actually he is the most attentive boyfriend anyone could ever wish for and A says he was really worried about me last Saturday and she practically had to order him to help her get the younger students back to the castle because there was nothing that he could do for me once Madam Pomfrey arrived. Oh and J has grown up such a lot in the last year or so. He no longer hexes people for fun and he is so much less arrogant – actually, underneath all the arrogance, he is a really nice person. And I have fun with him. I can't see me breaking up with him at the moment but somehow I can't see a future in it either. Oh why am I worrying about the future at the moment anyway? I should just have fun and when I think of J, just think about the kissing.

Oh, semi-related but not really note: Sirius Black needs to get himself a proper girlfriend – he can't just keep flirting with all and sundry, every time he turns those big grey eyes on a girl she just melts into his arms and he treats them abominably! He needs to start seeing some girl as a person not just some female he can snog! That poor little fifth year Hufflepuff today! Grr. Rant over.

Sunday 6th November

Today was a lovely day. You'd think, being November, it would be horrible and rainy outside but it wasn't. I mean it wasn't summer hot (not even normal summer hot since the last two summers were hot way and beyond normal) but it was definitely more early autumn feeling than it should have been. I sat chatting to Remus and Peter for a bit while James practiced quidditch with the Gryffindor team. I can't believe I've only really got to know the boys this year. I always thought they were so arrogant and stupid – well I guess they were the arrogant part (J anyway). But they are actually really nice people. And certainly better conversationalists than the 7th year girls at the moment – for supposedly intelligent girls Carly and Rhia have been acting so stupidly and all Margie cares about these days is her Ravenclaw boyfriend.

Got a letter from Mum this morning. Apparently Petunia is "going steady" now, Mum and Dad have met him and mum thinks he's going to "pop the question" soon. She's dropping huge hints about my boyfriend and meeting him and stuff but I don't know. I can't really see it, James Potter meets the Evans family – what a potential for disaster.

I said yesterday that the new girl Jenny was avoiding people. Today the sixth years seem to have taken that in hand and they virtually mobbed her at lunchtime today. She looked dreadfully uncomfortable actually. She obviously misses her friends and her old school a lot and I don't think it helped when they kept asking her questions. I had a chat with James and said that I thought we should be friendly to her but not ask her too many questions. We both agreed that there was something odd about some of the things she had said but that we should just let her have her privacy – after all she did save my life.

Monday 7th November

Today has been a slightly odd but in a kind of good way I suppose except with some scary news sort of day. OK I know that sentence didn't make that much sense, it's my diary not an English essay, I'm not striving for perfection here.

James told me that he, Remus and Peter walked into the funniest scene in the common room this morning. Jenny was stood on a stool behind Sirius – apparently she had been tutoring him in the Patronus charm. Side note – a sixth year girl who can not only produce a corporal Patronus but can do one well enough to tutor someone in it – and this is the girl who has to bury herself in homework to catch up? I don't think so. Anyway apparently S had managed a corporal Patronus (winged horse according to James) but when S and Jenny realised that J and the others were there, Jenny fell off the stool and S caught her in his arms.

They then just stood there for ages while the others laughed at them. It sounded like Jenny was really embarrassed and I told J off for laughing at them but it does sound funny. Especially because J says that he wasn't sure but thought it might have been S who knocked the girl off the stool in the first place. He said that S acted really embarrassed later on – like he actually likes the girl not like his normal behaviour with, oh I don't know, like practically every girl in the school.

Dinner this evening, S grabbed Jenny and pulled her down to sit with us. I was a bit nervous that the boys were going to do the questioning thing that the sixth years had done yesterday but J had already had a word (he told me later). Turns out that Jenny has about as much respect for this year's sacrificial victim (otherwise known as the DADA professor) as the rest of us. He has been driving me crazy in lessons about the Death Eater "duel" as he puts it, I've just told him I can't remember a thing so he shuts up. But he hasn't let her get away with that. Idiot (him not her). Apparently she snapped at him today and lost us 20 points (would have been worth it James says). But McGonagall heard us talking and gave Jenny 20 points for returning the wand she deliberately dropped. First time I've ever seen McGonagall favour us. Strongly suspect that she dislikes Featherstonehaugh as much as the rest of us. It was kind of funny actually. The boys thought it brilliant.

Even though she is quite shy I suspect Jenny has a wicked sense of humour. We seemed to get on quite well at dinner. Sometimes you just feel a connection with a person. I hadn't realised it before as I haven't spent much time with her but by the end of dinner I was forgetting about being embarrassed over her saving my life and beginning to think that we might become friends. I hope so. I get the feeling that perhaps she needs a friend right now. She had this haunted look in her eyes a couple of times. I don't know what that's about but if she wants us to know she'll tell us I suppose.

I was chatting with Berenice after dinner, we're partnered for charms at the moment and she's a little stuffy (well she is a Ravenclaw) but she's all right really. She was telling me that, according to her Dad (who works in the Ministry) the Daily Prophet isn't reporting half the attacks that are happening at the moment. It sounds really scary out there. There must be people doing something mustn't there?

Gosh this has been a fairly long diary entry for me for a Monday – especially considering I haven't even mentioned James much or kissing at all. Talking of which …

Tuesday 8th November

James said that he walked with Jenny back to the common room last night. Apparently she has a boyfriend in New Zealand, well a sort of boyfriend because they aren't really seeing each other any more. This Harvey bloke, James thinks, is the reason she seems so miserable half the time. Apparently he's doing something dangerous – she didn't say what.

She looked dreadful at breakfast this morning. Alice said that she thought Jenny had had nightmares and not much sleep and that Madam Pomfrey had excused her from classes for the day. I feel really sorry for her and have determined that, while she is here, I'm going to be her friend. I think the boys have done the same.

Thursday 10th November

Jenny's definitely avoiding us again. By us I mean everybody. I don't know what to do. I know she is hurting in some way and I want to be her friend but every time I make an effort, and we seem to get along, she seems to like me but it just makes things worse again. The boys are the same. Sirius tried to get her to come with us all this evening but she said she had catching up to do from Tuesday. It was obviously a lie but we didn't challenge it.

It was quite a nice evening, although Carly seems to have decided she is in love with Sirius, which is so stupid and irritating. S loves the attention of course, although it's hardly anything new for him. If she really wanted him she wouldn't do what every other girl does and just throw herself at him – all that will get her is a snog and maybe a quick fumble in the bushes until the next girl comes along. I'm sure I've said this before but when exactly did she get so stupid? We were great friends when we first started Hogwarts but it seems that her brains dribbled out of her ears with the onset of puberty. It's not just me who thinks so. Berenice was saying the other day that all the other seventh year Gryffindors (apart from me) seemed completely girly and nuts. Perhaps I should have been in Ravenclaw with her – I still wonder why I'm not, even after all this time. I don't think I'm particularly brave though I really admire people who are.

Actually, perhaps that's it. Perhaps you don't get put in the house where you have the qualities that it prizes; perhaps you get put in the house where you prize the same qualities? Cleverness, books etc, it's not that I don't admire them, it's just that it's so easy – anyone can read a book and learn how to do a spell. What I admire, what I envy, what I would like to have even though I don't think I do is bravery. Interesting thought. Well interesting to me and since this is my diary and I'm the only one who is ever going to read it I'm the only one for whom it matters what's in these pages!