Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope you enjoy this update.
The friendship with Alex blossomed from that first afternoon when they'd met him. The boy was younger than Hermione and older than Emily and Diana, his birthday being January 28th. He enjoyed reading, was rather smart, and had a bit of a rebellious streak in him. The second afternoon, after explaining a bit more about house-elves and confirming that creatures like dragons, unicorns, and merpeople existed, told all he knew about Hogwarts and concluded, "I definitely don't want to get Sorted into Slytherin. The Dark Lord was in that house, plus my family and their friends. 'Cept for Great-Aunt Lavinia. Grandfather said she was disgrace to the family for getting sorted into Gryffindor and then marrying a Weasley and doesn't ack-ack-recognize his sister any more. The Weasleys are a pureblood family, but they're poor and considered Muggle-lovers." Then he explained about purebloods and halfbloods and how some wizards didn't like Muggles and Muggleborns and wanted to keep it to just wizarding families.
After that, Farra appeared to take Alex home, but they arranged to meet again on Saturday. When Saturday came, Alex was there with three books. One was Hogwarts, a History, a second on wizarding society, and the third a book of wizarding stories. "Here. You guys can read them and return them to me once you're done. Today, why don't you tell me 'bout the Muggle world? Else I won't learn 'bout it 'til I go to Hogwarts, and even then I still have to wait 'til my third year, 'cause you can't take Muggle Studies in your first and second years."
"Okay," said Emily agreeably. The three girls did their best to explain the things Muggles had invented or used to compensate for magic, like electricty, telephones, and airplanes.
The next visit, the girls lent Alex a couple of Muggle books. He thanked them and summoned Farra. "Could you please take these books to my room and hide them for me? Don't tell anyone about it 'cept for me." The house-elf nodded and did so. Alex sighed. "I'm so glad that I met you three. Before that, Farra was my only friend. And I have to be careful, 'cause he's s'posed to be a servant and I'm not s'posed to be nice to him or anything. But I can never treat Farra the way Draco treats Dobby." He made a face and explained, "Draco Malfoy is a boy my age and we're s'posed to be friends. But I can't stand him. Dobby is the Malfoy family house-elf and is treated badly. At least I'm nice to Farra and our other elf, Adelly, and Father just ignores them 'cept to give orders. But Dobby gets beaten and stuff, and he has to punish himself any time he does something that the Malfoys won't like."
"That's horrible!" exclaimed Hermione. "How can house-elves be treated that way?"
Alex shrugged. "No clue. The only way Dobby can escape it is if the Malfoys set him free, and that's not going to happen. A house-elf needs to be given clothes, even if it's just a sock, to be set free. I'd set Farra and Adelly free, but they don't want clothes and Father would just get mad at me when he found out. At least Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle aren't that mean to their family house-elves. But maybe that's just 'cause they're too stupid. I'm s'posed to be friends with them too, but they don't know much and just do what Draco says mostly."
Emily grimaced and Diana said, "I don't blame you for not liking them, Alex. I'm glad we're your friends and that you don't mind being friends with girls."
"I'm s'posed to be friends with girls too," replied Alex. "But you three are so much nicer than Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode. Pansy has a face like a dog and is mean like Draco. Millicent's big like Crabbe and Goyle and isn't that smart, either. Daphne Greengrass is smart and nicer, but she agrees with her family that purebloods are the best and hates Muggles and Muggleborns, so I don't like her much. But she's the only person I can stand when all of us pureblood kids get together."
When the weather grew too cold for them to spend too much time outside, the visits temporarily stopped. However, Alex had an owl named Emerald and so the four friends kept in touch with letters and exchanged magical and Muggle books.
The years passed and one day it was Diana's eleventh birthday. Emerald flew in the kitchen window at breakfast and left a brightly wrapped red package on the table. Diana opened it to find a birthday card, a box of wizarding sweets, and a red-covered diary from Alex. Aunt Petunia frowned at the sweets, but merely said, "Don't eat them all at once and make sure you brush you teeth after when you do." Ever since working for the Grangers, she was more concerned about good dental care.
After breakfast, the Grangers came over with their presents, which were a watch and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Diana thanked her and then opened the rest of her presents. From her mother was a white and blue bicycle, Diana's old one being too small, and an alexanderite pendant (her birthstone) on a gold chain. From Emily was the book The Hobbit and a bottle of pink nail polish.
That was followed by an outing, for every year, on Emily's and Diana's birthdays, Aunt Petunia would take the girls out somewhere to celebrate for the day. Diana, after consulting with Emily and Hermione, decided that she wanted to go to the zoo.
At the gate, the girls were allowed to get ice cream cones, as it was a special occasion. Emily picked strawberry, Diana chocolate, and Hermione vanilla. After that, the three, with Aunt Petunia keeping an eye on them, roamed about the zoo, examining all the animals there. They had lunch in the zoo restaurant and then went to the reptile house. Diana went off to examine a python and Hermione stopped at the exhibit of an alligator. Emily paused at the exhibit of an apparently sleeping boa constrictor and was very shocked when it opened its eyes and seemed to wink at her. She looked down at the plate and saw that though the species was from Brazil, this particular snake had been bred in the zoo.
"How sad," she muttered, looking up at the boa constrictor. "You've never seen Brazil, only this part of the zoo." Just then, someone shoved into her. She fell to the ground and looked up to see one of the boys from school. He gave her a nasty grin before turning to look at the snake. Furious, she glared at him. Suddenly a scream rent the relative silence. More screams followed as it became apparent that the glass housing the exhibit had vanished and the boa constrictor was now on the loose. As it passed Emily, she could have sworn she heard a hissing voice say, "Brazil, here I come. Thankssss, amiga."
She was rather chargrined at the fact that she seemed to have let her temper get the best of her and caused magic to happen again. True, it was accidental, but she should have better control. After all, for the past two years, she, along with Emily, Alex, and Hermione, had enough control of their magic to do it delibrately, though it was mainly minor things like making a flower open and close or changing the color of an item of clothing.
When things had quieted down somewhat (though one of the zookeepers kept asking, "Where did the glass go?") Aunt Petunia collected Emily, an unreadable look on her face. As they headed for the car, Diana and Hermione exchanged significant looks and then turned to Emily.
"Did you lose control again?" asked Hermione. "The only way the glass could have vanished is through magic, and since you were right next to that exhibit, logic says you're responsible. Since you would never do something like that on purpose, it has to be accidental."
Emily nodded. "Darryl Parker pushed me and I got mad. The next thing I knew, the glass was gone and the boa constrictor escaped." She decided not to mention the hissing voice she had heard. It might have been her imagination, unless the wizarding world had people that had the ability to understand snakes, or maybe just boa constrictors, and she was one of them.
Aunt Petunia sighed. "Em, you really need to not let something like a school bully pushing you get so upset. What if you had done something that required the Ministry of Magic to step in, fix things, and then make everyone there, except us, forget what happened?"
"Sorry, Aunt Petunia," said Emily in a small voice. "I'll try to keep my temper."
"All right, dear. I know you didn't mean to lose control and do accidental magic. Let's just forget this incident ever happened. It's a good thing that you three will be attending Hogwarts this year and there won't be much chance of similar incidents in the future."
A week before Emily's eleventh birthday, the Hogwarts letters arrived. Professor McGonagall came by to the Grangers' to explain about the wizarding world, but left shortly afterward when Hermione's parents revealed that they already knew about it from Petunia Evans. She was slightly surprised, for while she was aware that the Dursleys had divorced, Petunia and Diana went by 'Evans', and they and Emily had moved, she hadn't known that the girls were friends with Hermione and that the Grangers had been told about magic.
Emily decided that for her birthday outing, she wanted to go to Diagon Alley and get the school supplies. Alex arranged to go then as well, for while he couldn't hang out with the girls, he would be able to at least see them and exchange waves or a greeting when his father wasn't looking. The day before the trip, however, het got good news, which he shared at the secret visit in the park.
"Father discovered that he's going to busy tomorrow, so I get to go to Diagon Alley by myself! Well, not exactly, because Farra is going to come with me. But nobody else will be with me, so I can spend tomorrow with you guys."
The girls were delighted with this news, Emily in particular, for ever since becoming friends with Alex, she had wanted to celebrate at least one birthday with him present, and not just get a card and gift from him. She had thought that it might never happen, at least not until they graduated Hogwarts and Alex could leave home. Hermione and Diana didn't have to worry, for their birthdays took place toward the beginning and end of the Hogwarts school term and Alex would be there to celebrate with them.
That night, Emily went to bed, but couldn't sleep for quite some time, for she was excited about the trip to Diagon Alley and properly being part of the wizarding world at last.