September 1st 1988

"Charlie! Good summer?"

Charlie looked in the direction of the voice, which was coming from his purple haired best friend. Ordinarily he would have been made up to see her after a summer apart, but this year things were different.

He nodded and forced a smile. "You?"

"Brilliant. Dad took me camping – Muggle style. We had a right laugh. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. This compartments free."

"I can't," Charlie mumbled.

Dora looked confused.

"Come on."

"I can't," Charlie repeated. "I can't share a compartment with you; I've got to go to the Prefect's Carriage."

"You're a Prefect?"

Dora assumed a look very similar to the one his mum gave him when he did something wrong. The last of pride Charlie had been feeling melted away. He nodded, his face reddening.

"Why on earth would anyone make you a Prefect?"

Charlie's knew his face was now the colour of a tomato. "I, er..."

"What about all of our pranks? Are you going to have to be all boring now?"

"Course not...it'll be better now, I'll have even more of an excuse to be out after hours, you can morph and pretend to be one too, think of all the things we can do..."

Charlie gave her his most hopeful, winning smile, only to have it countered with a frown.

"You're fooling yourself Charlie, it's a downhill spiral now. Bill is Head Boy, Percy is just perfect and now you're a Prefect. Your pranking days are over."

"Come on Dora, you know that's not true."

"Whatever!"

With that, she slammed the carriage door shut, narrowly missing his fingers.

Charlie sighed and miserably pulled his trunk down the train.