Minerva's turn to speak
Isn't this so typical of older sisters, not that Venus is really that much older than me, only 6 minutes. Venus has always been very protective of me. She is a great believer in artistic coping methods. She asked me to write this even if I was the only person ever to read it; it would still help me to move on or some such nonsense. I'm only really doing this because everyone knows that you never argue with one of the McGonagall sisters. So here, this is the story beyond the crystal balls.
I always loved being a student at Hogwarts. I was a brave Gryffindor, popular, intelligent, elegant and beautiful. Most of all I loved having the three greatest friends in the world, Venus, Ro Hooch and Trelawney. They weren't just the friends that you chat to occasionally or sometimes help with their homework. They were the comfortable friends, the ones that you can just sit in the corner of the room with and talk about absolutely anything, no matter how banal. The ones to who can communicate a thousand words without ever opening their mouths.
This is what we were like. We were all outstanding students so you would have expected to see us always studying. The truth is we did what we had to. We crammed when we had to, pulled all – nighters when we had to and conscientiously took notes when we had to all but for all the times in between, we just laughed as much as we possibly could. Over 50 years ago, the Room of Requirement was used for a whole other purpose to that of the so – called 'Dumbledore's Army'. It was the room in which the four of us would hide away and talk about anything and nothing. There were times when world peace and politics manifested themselves in heated debates. It was also the room where we talked about silly teenage things, which latest Quidditch player we had a crush on. You know the nonsense that hormonal girls tend to think rules the world.
This was the way it always was, until suddenly Sybil made new friends and we couldn't find our friend anymore. It wasn't that she had new friends that bothered us. No, it was that we were, and are, still standing right where she left us but she never came back; not even to talk about banal nonsense. I know what you are thinking. Why didn't we go to her? We wanted to and, believe me, we tried but we just couldn't find her anymore because she was no longer that girl that wasted the afternoon away in laughter with us. Even standing right next to her, we couldn't find her; we couldn't reach her anymore. That wasn't what really hurt me though. It was that she only ever came back when she thought she could fix me. She stopped seeing me as a person.
Sorry about the short chapter. The next one will go into more depth. This is really just a taster for things that will be explained.