The Incredibly Deep & Eloquent Diary of Katie Bell

by: Faithful Wheezy

Author's Note: Hello reader! A FEW THINGS TO KNOW before you read this: 1) This story was originally published under the title Dear Diary on February 25, 2006. I went on hiatus, and four years later, I have returned, reread this, and decided to rewrite this. 2) There are some deliberate technical errors: Katie is a year younger than Alicia and Angelina, but in this story, I've placed them all in the same year to make things work. And 3) If any of you read the original Dear Diary, you might find it different, if you remember it at all. I hope it's still your cup of tea. That's it for now. Sorry about the annoying Author's Note, but what can you do? Please enjoy & review!

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, I just write fanfiction for it. Like this one.

One: The best Christmas Break, ever

"Thank Merlin exams are over!" Katie exclaimed, whirling around giddily and landing in a heap on her own bed. After exams, the three best friends boarded the Hogwarts Express to stay for the first week of break at the Bell Household.

"I know, right?" Angelina said wearily, setting her duffel bag down on the floor by Katie's bed.

Alicia looked around the room with the critical eye her friends recognized as her trademark. "Well, your room looks the same, Katie," she said, her forehead furrowed in comical anxiety. For a moment, she looked like she was having an internal battle with herself which she eventually lost, as she ended up straightening several picture frames that lay on Katie's bedside table.

"Not really—I moved the bookcase from the left side of my room to the right." Katie sat up, looking a bit hurt. "Didn't you notice?"

"Er…"

"So!" Angelina jumped on the bed. "We're young, it's the holidays, and we just got off school for a few weeks for break! What havoc are we going to do first?"

"Ooh, my dad just told me that the lake finally froze solid enough to take the weight of people, we should go ice skating!"

"Hot chocolate with extra cinnamon from Madam Puddifoot's! Talk about a taste bud orgasm—"

"You're such a freak, Angelina."

"Of course, Hogsmeade! And Diagon Alley too. I am definitely in need of some retail therapy."

"What for, Alicia?"

"I know I at least got the last Defense Against the Dark Arts essay all wonky on my exam. I wrote that you can detect whether a person is a werewolf or not if you pay close attention to them as far as two days before the full moon!"

Katie shrugged. "What's wrong with that?"

"Well, I wrote that you can notice signs if a suspected werewolf begins to avoid such common things as pewter cutlery, but," Alicia wailed, "I meant to write silver! It's common sense that werewolves have an aversion to silver, but I wrote pewter!"

"Awwwww, there goes your perfect O streak," Katie laughed as Angelina patted Alicia awkwardly on the back. It took a while before they finally noticed a tired looking owl gasping for breath on Katie's dresser drawer, a letter attached to his talons.

"Oh look, it's from Fred and George," Angelina said, detaching the note and stroking the owl, who had lain his head on the dresser drawer, wings lolling off the sides. "Poor Errol. They need to give this owl a break."

"What does the note say?" Alicia asked.

Katie didn't miss the color that made its way into her voice. "You just saw George like three hours ago," she chided.

Angelina made a tsk!ing noise as Alicia chucked a pillow at Katie's head and opened the letter.

-x-

Well hello, ladies... and Katie, the note read (Katie made an indignant sound, natch),

Let's celebrate the end of the first term tonight at the Three Broomsticks, shall we? All our blokes are coming. George and Oliver are looking forward to a bonfire, but we don't quite know where to hold one yet—

Quit hoggin' the quill, Fred, but anyway, if any of you know of a place where we can have a bonfire, that would be simply splendid—

It would really knock his knickers off—

Did Mum teach you to grab, Fredders?

Oh come on, George, that's the oldest insult in the book—

C'mon, you know I'm a boxers kind of man. And are we really having a conversation on someone else's letter?

Oh bugger, anyway, we're not far from each other at all, so let's meet up at the Three Broomsticks at around six tonight, yeah? CORKING.

Weasley twins out.

Laaaaame—

Sod off, let's just send this thing, where's Errol? Why am I still writing in this thing when I can still be talking to y

-x-

Alicia and Katie stared.

"Well, it looks like George is a boxers kind of guy, Alicia," Katie said, stifling a grin at Alicia's face.

"Oh, go off it!"

"Cute ending," Angelina managed. "But I guess this answers our question for tonight! Where d'you think we could have a bonfire?"

The girls thought for a moment. Then, Katie snapped her fingers in a very cliché manner. "I know, how about the lake I was talking about earlier?"

"Of course, that meadow's pretty secluded, right?" Alicia asked, knotting her fingers in concern.

"Yep! We can be as loud as we want without the old Muggle ladies yelling at us for being teenagers."

"It's settled then," Angelina said, grinning. "Finally, we can just have fun without worrying about Gamp's Laws or specific wand patterns..." She hastily scrawled a note and gave it to Errol, who took another harried breath before clamping the note in his beak. "On second thought," Angelina said nervously, "I'd better attach it to his talons, huh?"

After letting Errol rest for a moment, the poor, overworked owl set off into the sky (but not before ricocheting off of both window shutters). "Let the festivities begin!" Katie cried, standing up on her bed and whirling a pillow triumphantly in the air. Unfortunately, the momentum of such pillow-whirling caused Katie to lose her balance and fall head over heels off her bed, overturning her luggage and scattering her things everywhere. "Stop laughing at meee," she whined at Alicia and Angelina, who were indeed doing so. She was in the middle of making a biting remark in return before she was interrupted.

"Katie, come downstairs!" Katie's mother called. "Your Uncle Mortimer is in the fireplace and he wants to speak to you!"

Katie clasped her hands together in excitement. "Uncle Morty? Be right back guys!" She emerged from the messy pile that had been the contents of her luggage and ran out the room.

"Uncle Morty..." Alicia mused. "Was he the bloke who kept casting Impervious Spells on people's chairs back in Katie's 12th birthday party?"

"Oh yeah, I couldn't sit down for the first few hours of the party!" Angelina said. "Cool guy; never a serious moment with him."

"Speaking of serious," Alicia said, leaning over and venturing a hand into the pile of mess Katie had left on the floor. Indeed, the mess had become such an imposing presence in Katie's room that it attained a status as a Proper Noun. "have you noticed Katie always seems to bottle her feelings? She's never serious."

Angelina considered what Alicia said as she stared down at the Mess on Katie's floor. "You know, you're right," she said. "Remember that one time during Quidditch practice when she got an awful head wound? Two bludgers. On both sides of her head! I honestly thought the top half of her skull was going to fall off. Any normal bloke would have at least cried right then and there."

"Yeah, and all she said was, 'Whew! I needed that!' But even after she came back from the Hospital Wing, which we forced her to, by the way, she was moaning a little bit in her sleep from the pain and holding her head."

"It's pretty sad. Why are you bringing this up, though?"

"Because," Alicia said, finally extricating the diary she had given Katie from the jaws of the Mess, "someday, she might crack from bottling up all her emotions. She's been having a bunch of different ones lately, what with her dad pressuring her for better grades and pushing her for her NEWTs, professional Quidditch tryouts, the feud between her and her family between being a Healer and being a Quidditch player for Wimbourne..."

"And don't forget one last little detail," Angelina added, nodding her head towards the picture frames on Katie's bedside table. Many shots were of the Quidditch team, their intimate group of friends, and her family, but there was only one picture of a single subject: Fred Weasley, who was winking and blowing comical, exaggerated kissy faces from within his frame.

Alicia sighed. "Most importantly, that little detail. If she'll never let herself open up once in a while, she could let something really great slip between her fingers..."

"On her credit though, she never lets that happen to a Quaffle. So..." Angelina said slowly, looking at the diary Alicia was holding, "are you saying that the diary can help things along?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Alicia said mischievously, tapping the diary with her wand.

Alicia barely managed to stow her wand away and drop the diary back into the Mess before Katie's return. "Okay, I'm baa-aaack!" she sang, reentering the room with much stomping of the feet.

"Let's get ready for tonight, yeah?" Angelina asked, opening her luggage and contemplating her wardrobe.

Katie sighed happily. "I'm probably just giddy exams are over, but I have a feeling that this is going to be the best Christmas Break in the history of Christmas Breaks. Something is starting. I can feel it birthing!"

"Oh man, that was deep, Katie," Angelina laughed. However, she and Alicia shared a look, because something, indeed, was starting.