Standard disclaimers apply!

I do not own Harry Potter. I have nothing to do with Scholastic, Warner Bros or Bloomsbury. I'm not JKR and I am certainly not making any profit out of this.

6:30pm, Wednesday 2nd September, 1998

Gryffindor Common Room

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Dear Ron

I can't tell you how surprised I was to see Pig at breakfast, or how happy!

Hogwarts news first.

The trip was tolerable. Not many of our original year came back; just Neville, Dean, Seamus, Hannah, Ernie, Anthony and Terry. I didn't much like being on the Hogwarts Express without you (and Harry, of course), but for the first two hours I was busy with Head Girl duties.

There are a lot of Ginny's year (gosh, it's my year too now) missing as well, so we've got the 7th year girls dorm to ourselves.

Realistically, I think the school is running on about 60% student population – a lot of parents have decided to take advantage of the option to keep their kids at home with them, although we do have a respectable number of first years.

I think the biggest surprise was that Dennis has come back. He's a lot quieter now, as one would expect – although he has Colin's camera, and he's not afraid to use it. Apparently he had to put up quite the fight for his parents to let him come (and who can blame them, really?), but he said Colin would have done the same thing – so in the end, they relented.

Also in the category of highly surprising is the fact that this year's DADA Professor is Sturgis Podmore! I really hope that now Voldemort is dead, the curse has been lifted from the position (surely it would be!) – Sturgis is, as you know, a very nice man, and I really wouldn't want to see anything happen to him. I haven't had DADA yet, but Dennis has and he tells me that Professor Podmore is quite a good teacher. So that's good news.

Speaking of good news! As of this morning, Hagrid has his wand back! Yes, I know he always had it – but now it's not hidden in that silly umbrella, and he is no longer breaking the law when he uses it. I'm happy to say that Headmistress McGonagall is taking a much firmer line with the Care of Magical Creatures curriculum, and Hagrid has agreed to keep the "interesting" creatures for the 6th and 7th years only. Obviously I'm not taking it, but Luna tells me that his first lesson was quite enjoyable and informative (and mercifully injury free!).

Ginny, Neville, Luna and I have been invited to tea with Hagrid on Friday afternoon – and he passes on his greetings to you and Harry.

I'm really glad for Harry that Dudley apologised. Although I'll admit to being more than a little shocked and I daresay he WAS feeling extremely uncomfortable (as well he should, quite frankly). I've never heard of dementors doing that – but I'm very interested in researching it when I've got a spare moment.

That's about all I have to tell you.

Give my love to George.

The Common Room is not the same without you. Even Crookshanks seems to miss your presence – but not as much as I do.

Love

Hermione