Year 4: A Fresh Start

Chapter 35: January 2018

Molly and her friends visited Debbie twice more over the Christmas holidays. After their first visit, all three girls made copies of their class notes from the second half of the first term and brought them with them to the hospital for Debbie, so that she could keep up with her coursework. They also spent most of their time with her going through the notes. Even though Debbie couldn't talk, it didn't matter, so long as the other three girls could talk. They were determined not to let Debbie fall behind.

Returning to Hogwarts was a strange experience. It felt almost wrong, in a way, that Debbie wasn't still with them. A number of students asked about her, which threw Molly off guard. Never before had so many people had reason to talk to her.

The Ravenclaws were mostly upset about their missing quidditch team member. Thankfully the students of Hogwarts were no longer worried about catching spattergroit from Molly, Sarah, or Julie, and were no longer avoiding the three girls like the plague. Not that anybody willingly wanted to hang out with them. They were still some of the nerdiest and least fun people to hang out with.

As their first week back turned into their second week back, Molly started to feel a little guilty. She wanted to do something more for Debbie. According to the healers, she was improving, but at a slow rate. They said the most optimistic outcome was that Debbie may be able to return to school before the end of the year, but only just. It would be months still before Debbie could rejoin Hogwarts, but everyone was carrying on as if nothing had changed.

"I want to make Debbie a get-well card," Molly declared one day to Julie and Sarah.

"Alright," Julie replied. "Go ahead."

"Not just from me, from all of us," Molly clarified.

"What like, the three of us?" Sarah frowned. "Sure, we'll sign it. But don't you think it's a little late for that sort of a thing?"

"Not just the three of us," Molly shook her head again. "From the entire school."

"That's really ambitious," Julie said.

"I know," Molly agreed. "But I think it's the right thing to do."

The other Ravenclaw student that had contracted spattergroit had returned to school after the holidays, having gotten a significantly milder case that had been caught much earlier than Debbie's. When she'd returned, she'd received lots of sympathy, but Debbie hadn't received any.

"I suppose we will help you," Julie agreed, though with less enthusiasm than Molly would have hoped.

"Great," Molly smiled, satisfied to have her friends on board.

And so, she set to work. First, she had to find a canvas big enough to hold signatures and well-wishes from the entirety of Hogwarts castle. She could always just go with a really long sheet of parchment and roll it up, but Molly was kind of attached to the idea of a card. On the first Hogsmeade weekend of the term, Molly paid a visit to Scrivenshaft's, where the shopkeeper pointed her in the direction of a display of cards, where Molly found exactly what she'd been looking for. It was called the infinite card. Inside, it had multiple pages, which would continue to increase as needed, theoretically forever. It was pricier than the other cards, but Molly bought it anyway, deciding that Debbie was worth it.

The second challenge was acquiring signatures. Once she, Julie, and Debbie had all signed it, she needed to bring it to the rest of the school. At Sarah's suggestion, Molly started with smaller groups. And so, the first people she approached were her dormmates.

"Hey, guys?" she asked one night as everyone was preparing for bed. "Can Sarah and I talk to you for a second?"

Flora, Amber, and Eliza paused midway through their nighttime rituals and turned in their direction.

"So, we're working on this card for Debbie. You know, our friend with the spattergroit? We thought it would be nice if we could get the entire school to sign it," Molly said.

"Who's signed it so far?" Flora asked, stepping forward and taking the card from Molly's hand. She flipped through it, noting that so far there were only three signatures on it.

"Just us," Molly admitted. "But you could start it off."

"I don't know," Flora said with an uncomfortable shrug. "I didn't really know her all that well. What would I even say?"

"You don't even have to say anything," Molly informed her. "You can just sign your name if you want."

Flora glanced uncomfortably at Amber and Eliza. "It seems kind of weird," she said hesitantly. "Maybe if there were more signatures on it…"

Molly sighed, her plan already starting to fall apart.

"What are we going to do?" she asked Sarah, as their dormmates went back to what they'd been doing. "This is a disaster."

"I think maybe we're going about this the wrong way," Sarah said. "We need to start with the people that knew Debbie."

"You, me, and Julie are her only friends," Molly pointed out. "Who else is there?"

"What about the Ravenclaw quidditch team?" Sarah suggested.

It was so obvious; Molly couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it herself.

"Of course!" she exclaimed. "They'll want to say something nice to her!"

And so, the next day, Molly went in search of Stewart Grey, seventh year, chaser, and captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.

"Hey, Stewart?" Molly called out, catching sight of him in the Entrance Hall before breakfast. Actually, if Molly was being honest with herself, she'd been staking out the Entrance Hall in the hopes that he would show up and she wouldn't have to run around the entire castle chasing him down all day.

He looked started to be having his name called, and even more confused when he saw who was calling him. He glanced on either side of him, but Molly gestured with her hand that he was who she was calling and he cautiously walked over to her.

"Do I know you?" he asked carefully.

"No," Molly shook her head. "But you do know my friend, Debbie Alderton."

He nodded in understanding then.

"Great chaser," he said. "Shame she's going to be out the rest of the season, but Naomi's shaping up now that we've had some more practices with her."

"That's great," Molly said, not caring about quidditch. "Listen, my friends and I thought it would be nice to make a card for Debbie and have everyone sign it. Do you think you could pass this around to your team?"

"Sure," Stewart agreed. "Though you could have just sent it with Julie."

Molly could have kicked herself. What was wrong with her these days? Of course, Julie was on the Quidditch team as well and could have simply brought it for her fellow teammates to sign.

"Right," Molly said, feeling sheepish. "Well anyway, just get it back to me when you're done." She handed over the card. "Or just give it to Julie. Either way."

"Good talk, kid," Stewart said, taking the card and heading back towards his friends.

Molly slunk into the Great Hall and plopped herself down next to Sarah at the Gryffindor Table.

"Sarah, I swear, I might be good at school, but I was not made to interact with people. When we graduate, I'm getting a job where I work completely by myself." She dropped her head into her hands.

"Don't say that," Sarah insisted. "You talk to me just fine."

"But I understand you," Molly said. "I don't understand people."

"Alright." Sarah patted Molly on the shoulder comfortingly. "Eat your breakfast."

MmMmMmMmMmM

By the time Molly got Debbie's card back from the Ravenclaws, the entirety of Ravenclaw house had signed it. With so many signatures on it, it was much easier to get her dormmates to sign it as well, and from there, Molly made an announcement to the whole of Gryffindor house at large and left it pinned to the bulletin board so that a few days later, half the school had signed it.

Getting signatures from the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins was a bigger challenge, since Molly couldn't just go into either of their common rooms. In the end, she selected two of her classmates – Caroline Fletwock for Hufflepuff and Emma Pritchard for Slytherin – and asked them to pass the card around within their respective common rooms.

She got less signatures from the Hufflepuffs than the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, and even less from the Slytherins, but it was the best Molly could do. She did note that at least all their classmates had signed the card.

Once she had all the student signatures, Molly began making the rounds of all their professors, wanting to give each of them an opportunity to leave a little message.

Professor Flitwick thought it was a sweet idea and filled almost an entire page with her encouraging message. Professor Longbottom and Professor Abbott-Longbottom left a joint message, indicating that they both looked forward to having Debbie back at school and in their classes. Even Professor Derlid had something nice to say.

Now that she had her momentum going, Molly started taking the card to the Hogwarts ghosts and portraits, asking if they had any message that they wanted to pass along to Debbie that she could transcribe for them. After a while, Julie and Sarah decided that it was getting excessive and pulled Molly aside.

"Listen," Julie said. "We've owled Mrs. Alderton and she's going to be in Hogsmeade this weekend. We should give her the card then."

"But it's not finished!" Molly insisted.

"It is though," Sarah said gently, pulling the card from Molly's grasp. "It's so full of signatures it's going to take Debbie weeks to read through the whole thing. You did good."

But Molly still felt like she needed to do more.

"We should make copies of all our notes from the past couple of weeks," Molly said. "If Mrs. Alderton is coming, we can pass those along too."

Julie and Sarah agreed, and that night, Molly sat on her bed, frantically duplicating every page of her notes, making sure that they were all labelled in case they accidentally ended up out of order.

But something was still nagging at Molly, and she realized it was the same guilt that had been plaguing her since the beginning of all of this. She felt like a bad friend. She felt terrible for how she'd treated Debbie, and that it had taken coming down with spattergroit for her to realize it. When she'd gone to visit Debbie, a part of her had felt like a fraudulent friend, and worse so because Debbie couldn't call her out on it, since her ability to speak was currently restricted.

Molly was worried that when Debbie regained her voice, the first thing she would say would be to accuse Molly of having been a bad friend prior to her illness. And so, Molly wanted to prove herself to be a good friend. She'd come up with the idea for the card, and she'd been the one to think of making copies of their notes for Debbie, because she thought that if she did enough for Debbie now, then when Debbie recovered, she would still want to be Molly's friend. Because Molly couldn't imagine how she would feel if Debbie recovered and then rejected her all over again. She didn't want to imagine how that might feel.

MmMmMmMmMmM

Saturday came, and Molly, Sarah, and Julie headed down to Hogsmeade with the rest of the school, as it was a Hogsmeade weekend. They'd arranged to meet Mrs. Alderton at the Three Broomsticks, so the girls went early and grabbed a table for four, ordering some butterbeers to pass the time.

Mrs. Alderton arrived right on time and joined them. She looked stressed, and Molly immediately felt bad for pulling her away from Debbie's bedside.

"Oh, not to worry," Mrs. Alderton said. "I had errands to run anyway. And it was so sweet of you girls to write to me that the whole school had signed a card for Debbie."

Sarah produced the card and handed it over, causing Mrs. Alderton to tear up a little at the sight of all the signatures and well-wishes.

"She'll just love it," Mrs. Alderton smiled.

"We also made copies of more of our notes," Julie added, handing over the stack. After making copies of their notes individually, they'd mixed them together so that notes for each subject were together rather than being divided by the person that had taken the notes. They also knew that three sets of notes were probably excessive, but that it would give Debbie the best chance of grasping everything to have three different perspectives on the lessons.

"This is wonderful," Mrs. Alderton thanked them. "Debbie so enjoys being able to keep up with her studies."

Molly and her friend beamed at that, feeling good about what they were able to do for their friend.

"I'm afraid I can't stay long though," Mrs. Alderton said then, stuffing the notes and the card into her bag. "I've got quite a bit to do today and I'd like to check in on Debbie before visiting hours are over."

"Of course," Julie said, reaching out to shake Mrs. Alderton's hand.

But Mrs. Alderton pulled Julie in for a hug instead, and pulled Sarah and Molly in as well. It was nice, and Molly felt warm inside as they all embraced.

Mrs. Alderton left, and Molly and her friends sat back down with their half-drunk butterbeers.

"What now?" Molly asked, suddenly feeling rather empty. They could make more copies of their notes and continue to pass them along to Mrs. Alderton as the weeks went by, but apart from that, what else could be done?

"Debbie's in good hands," Julie said then. "She's got a great team of healers working on her day and night. She's got great parents who sit with her and help her study and keep up with her lessons. I don't think there's anything more we can do until she gets better."

"But there has to be," Molly insisted. "We can't just do nothing."

"We're not doing nothing," Sarah contradicted her. "We're doing exactly what we should be doing. We're going to classes, learning the things we need to learn. We're keeping up with our education so that when Debbie returns, we can help her as well."

"It doesn't feel like enough," Molly frowned.

"It's the best we can do," Julie put a comforting hand on Molly's arm. "We aren't healers, and it wouldn't be productive to sit by her bedside all day and neglect our own studies. And Debbie wouldn't want that anyway."

Julie was right. Debbie would want them all to continue to pour all their energy into their studies. Just because Debbie was gone didn't give any of them an excuse to slack. So far this term, Molly had been coasting. She'd maintained her O average, but she hadn't been putting in her usual extra effort. That needed to stop. If Debbie couldn't be in school, the least Molly could do was to make the best of it for her. And when Debbie did return, Molly vowed to do everything in her power to make sure that Debbie rose back to the top of the class with the rest of them as quickly as possible. It was the least she could do.

It was nice to have a purpose again, Molly decided as she headed back up to Hogwarts. And for all her fears about Debbie rejecting her, Molly decided that there was no point worrying ahead of time. What would happen would happen, and she just had to keep on going until they got there.