The summer flew by before I could blink. My long awaited reunion with California was exactly what I had hoped, and I was happier than anything to be back in the water of my surfboard. I gained my tan back, and my hair became sun-bleached. I wrote back every day to my friends in England, and they thought it was hilarious that my Californian friends accused me of sounding 'English'.

I showed them the stack of photos from the last game of the season. They weren't surprised how well we had done, and thought the photos were hilarious. But my best friend from growing up, Beth, saw something in them that interested her more than amused her.

"Lin," she pointed to a photo she had pulled from the pile, "who's that?"

I looked at it closely, and then snatched it away from her. "Nobody."

"Ooh, little Linny has a crush!" One of my other friends, Pippi, took the photo from me and held me at a distance. "Oh, he's cute!"

Beth pulled it from her fingers. "Well, duh, but look at how he's looking at her!"

She giggled and showed it to Emily, her cousin. "Sweet Jesus." She looked at me seriously. "Can I move in with you?"

I rolled my eyes. "James Potter is not cute!"

All three girls looked at me in shock. At that moment, Michael and Jerry, who had gone to get us drinks from the hot dog vendor down the boardwalk, came back. "Who isn't cute?"

Beth just waved her hand at him. "Shush! Did you say James Potter? As in, the guy who killed You Know Who?"

I fumed, and used their shock to my advantage by grabbing the photo from her fingers and sitting on it. "No, his son."

Beth's jaw dropped. Emily slammed her hand on the table we were sitting at and stood up. "Harry Potter's son is in love with you?"

Michael and Jerry turned to me in shock. I wailed. "He's not IN LOVE with me, you idiots!"

Pippi pushed me off of my seat and grabbed the photo while I was on the ground. "Here." She shoved it towards the boys. "What do you think?"

I scrambled up. "He and I are barely even friends! I don't know anything about him, nor does he about me. We're always fighting and-"

"Lin, you can deny it, but there's the proof." Michael jabbed the photo with a finger. "No guy looks at a person like that unless he's gotten bitten by the love bug."

I scowled at the photo. It had looked so innocuous at first. But at a second glance, you could see James in the background staring at what looked like me, with an unreadable expression. He was even ignoring us while we stared at him, only moving to occasionally scratch his chin or hair. I thought he had just been deep in thought at the time. I snorted. Probably not that deep. "You don't understand, Mike –"

Jerry grinned at me. "Nope, he's right. You're in denial."

I moaned. "I want to go back to England. There are sane people there."

Pippi winked at me and picked me up and swung me around. She was 6 feet tall and the strongest person I knew. She had been a beater on our school team. "Linny's in love."

I scrambled away from her. "I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Aw, leave her alone. She's in denial,after all!" Beth giggled. "Oh, hey, by the way, Linny, I've been meaning to ask you, when did you start doing your hair in a ponytail?"

I looked at the photos in front of us. In every single one, I had a ponytail. My trademark bun was gone. I scrunched my eyebrows together. "I don't remember. In fact, I've really stopped paying attention to it."

Beth laughed. "That's really good, because for a while all you would talk about was your weird hair and nose."

I frowned and patted both. "Well, they're weird, but they're mine."

Michael groaned. "Ugh, it is hurting my manliness to be discussing hair. Let's surf!"

Jerry laughed, already out of his seat. "Last one there's a rotten egg!"

We all laughed and took off towards the shore like shots. The waves were perfect, after all, and a day in southern California without surfing is a day wasted, as the saying goes.

The last night I was there, I sat on the beach with Beth. We didn't talk, we just watched the sun set and the stars come out. A bonfire was being held in my honor, but we sat on the other side of the dune. I missed the smell of the beach more than anything, I thought, so I bottled some of it up to bring with me. We went for a midnight ride, and pinkie swore to meet back on this beach every year, no matter where we ended up.

I wanted to say it was too soon to be heading back to England, but it wasn't. I was looking forward to going back to Hogwarts, and to starting another year with my friends, and to being on the quidditch team. I had also prepared for my post-Hogwarts life, too. I had gotten records, stats, and letters of recommendation from my old school and the community league heads. I just didn't know what teams I wanted to go out for, though I knew I would be staying in England. I loved it there more than I thought I would.

I cursed my mom for being right. Again.