As I had promised Hannah, after dinner we went to the Old Runes classroom together to attend the planning meeting.

The door was open and although we were there five minutes early, the loud conversations in the room were unmistakable.

I didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't such a full room.

Well, the room wasn't full, not in the least, but there were at least 20 people in it and thus considerably more than I had thought.

Extra work besides school was not necessarily the argument to get young students to do something.

But Hogwarts seemed different, at least the people here were different.

No one except maybe me looked like they had been forced to be here.

I sat down with Hannah in one of the empty seats and waited anxiously for the event to begin.

At some point the girl with the bushy brown hair stepped forward.

If I remembered correctly, it was Hermione Granger. Best friend of Harry Potter, war heroine and Head Girl.

"I'm really pleased to see so many here today", she began her speech and then went on to explain why we were here today.

To honour people who had given their lives to fight for a better world.

It was evident that she was moved by this, but her voice remained confident.

She told us that the plan was for some important people to speak, such as the Minister of Magic, but also for some students to participate.

Hannah boxed me in the side with her elbow.

"Ow", I whispered.

"You could do something. Your so good with books, a speech is just like a poem of some sort."

Quickly, I shook my head.

"I can't talk in front of people."

She actually seemed to understand that and didn't probe further.

"I was thinking that it might be nice to have a musical performance or two.

The choir has already agreed to prepare something. So now my question, can anyone imagine preparing something musical?"

Contrary to what I had expected, there was no murmur, it remained silent. I looked around the room but no one came forward.

"Don't any of you play an instrument?" asked Hermione.

I played the piano.

I hadn't done it for over a year but with a little practice I should play quite passably.

But did I want to?

Did I want to sit down at a piano again?

And even if I did, could I do it in front of the whole school?

I had vowed to learn to live with my grandmother's death and playing the piano again seemed like an easy place to start.


"Daisy?", Hermione called out to me.

I had actually raised my arm.

All pairs of eyes in the room turned to me and I could see Hannah nodding in the corner of my eye.

"I play the piano", I said cautiously.

Hermione's face brightened and now she was smiling at me.

"Can you imagine preparing something?"

"I could try."

She could say no. Could say that I had nothing to do with the battle and someone else would be better suited but she didn't. No one did.

Hermione clapped her hands together joyfully

"Very nice. Now that that's settled, on to the ball."


I didn't really listen after that.

Over and over I pondered what had possessed me to agree to this.

How was I supposed to practice playing the piano anyway? I didn't even have a piano.

This was a stupid idea, really stupid.

Maybe I should cancel Hermione after all, say I had stage fright or something.

I'm sure she'd understand.

But that would be cowardly. I'd judged Draco for it, and I wanted to at least try.

I really wanted to contribute.

At some point the chairs were pushed back and the students rose.

Hannah waited for me, as I was still a little lost in my thoughts.

"I didn't know you played the piano."

"My mom taught me and Grandma used to play with me all the time."

She smiled at me.

"I'm sure you're doing great. If you need any help just let me know, maybe I can find someone who plays the piano to help you."

"Thanks, that's really sweet of you."

I still accompanied her back to the Hufflepuff rooms where she hugged me goodbye.


It wasn't until I was lying in bed that I realised what I had actually got myself into and again I regretted my decision.

I would fail miserably if I even managed to step on that stage.

There was a knock at the door. Quickly I sat up.

"Come in", I called and directly the door opened and Min's head peeked in.

"May I sit down?", she asked as she stood in front of my bed.

I nodded in agreement.

"We need to talk about your birthday."

Oh. I had actually repressed that.

After the eleventh, the seventeenth birthday is the most important in any magical person's life and I thought so too.

For a long time I had not longed for a day more than this.

But it didn't seem important to me now.

A birthday without Grandma was not something I wanted.

Why should it be? It wouldn't be a real birthday without her anyway.

Tears came to my eyes just thinking about it.

"You don't have to make a decision right away but I need to know by tomorrow night. Your birthday is already on Friday."

Friday? That was even worse than I had expected.

She could have let me know earlier. Now I only had three days to prepare myself mentally.

But now that I thought about it, I could hardly blame her.

Nobody forgets their own birthday, especially not their seventeenth.

So she probably just assumed that I knew but didn't want to talk about it.

But how was I supposed to make a decision about something so important in 24 hours?

I let myself fall backwards onto the bed.

"I'll leave you alone again. I need some feedback by tomorrow night so I can tell Newt, Jacob and Queenie."

With that, she stood up.

"Good night", she added just before closing the door.


Now I was alone again, alone with myself and my problems.

My first day at school, which had been my biggest problem this morning, had turned out to be completely irrelevant.

Instead, I had more than one new problem.

I would have to play the piano in front of the whole school, so I had to start practising again.

Then my birthday was coming up, where I still didn't know how I would find it and the worst thing of all was that when my birthday came it was only a little more than four weeks until the anniversary of my grandma's death.

And that scared me, scared me to death. Because I had sworn to myself that I would try to get over her death, but that day would probably destroy all my progress.

I needed time that I didn't had.

All these things, my birthday, the memorial service and the anniversary would come crashing down on me in the next four weeks and I wasn't sure I was strong enough for it.

I rolled off my bed, went to the window and look at the windowsill.

It was raining outside, so I kept the window closed.

Although I couldn't see the stars in the sky because of the clouds, I sat there and stared at the rain.

I watched the raindrops running down the glass. Hoping to find the solution to my problems in any one of them.

The search was fruitless and at some point I must have fallen asleep sitting there, because when I was woken up by the sun the next morning, I was still sitting in the same place.

I stretched and cursed myself because I had enormous neck pain.

If it wasn't better this afternoon I would go to the hospital wing and get a potion for it.


Tired from the uncomfortable night, I sat at the breakfast table as a far too cheerful Neville joined me with Hannah in tow.

"You look like you fought a dragon tonight", Neville laughed when he noticed my condition.

"Yeah good morning to you too", I grumbled, chewing dreamily on my toast.

"I didn't mean anything by that. You just look really tired. Didn't sleep well?"

"Yeah, clearly not."

Neville looked at me pityingly.

"Is everything alright?"

Yes, was everything alright?

No! Nothing was alright!

I could scream and cry at the same time.

It was just all too much and I could already see myself collapsing under it all.

I still hadn't answered Neville's question but he seemed to be able to read the answer in my face or in my far too long pause because he reached across the table, put his hand on mine and looked deep into my eyes.

He smiled kindly and directly I felt a little better.

"If you want to talk, I'm here."

Hannah next to him also smiled at me.

That was true, they were there. I wasn't alone anymore.

And only now I realised that I didn't have to solve these problems alone.

I was so used to always carrying everything on my own shoulders that it hadn't even occurred to me to share this burden.

And I was ready for it.

I was so ready not to be alone anymore.

All I had to do was talk, all I had to do was say what was bothering me and we would find a solution together.

And of the three big problems I had, I had to solve one by tonight.

So the decision was not difficult.

"It's my birthday on Friday", I said quietly.

Neville and Hannah both looked as shocked as I had felt last night when Min had reminded me.

"And you're telling us this on Tuesday?!"

Neville had taken his hand from mine and was now ruffling his hair.

"I forgot", I replied guiltily, because that was the truth.

"It's okay honey, I'll figure it out", Hannah tried to reassure her boyfriend.

"Please don't. I don't want a present or anything, I just want to spend time with you."

Now Hannah was glaring at me angrily and I had never seen that look on her face before. It was almost scary.

Neville, on the other hand, didn't look quite as desperate as he had before Hannah's intervention.

"So what's your plan for Friday?", she asked, looking at me questioningly.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"There is no plan. I wasn't even planning on doing anything."

"No way, we're going to celebrate your..." She faltered for a moment.

"Wait you're turning seventeen." She interrupted her own train of thought and I nodded in agreement.

"Seventeen! You can't leave a seventeenth birthday uncelebrated. You can't."

"You can't?"

"No! Of course not!" I could almost hear her swirling thoughts.

"Friday it is. I'll manage, somehow."

"Really Hannah, I don't want anything big. I just want to spend time with my friends."

She rolled her eyes.

"I'll leave that up for discussion but for now we have to get to class."

With that, she stood up, pulling Neville behind her, and I was left sitting there, puzzled.

What an exit.

They didn't seem really pissed at least, caught off guard yes but not outright pissed.

The clock told me that they could have sat for another five minutes before we had to go to class, but I was sure I didn't want to know what they used that extra time for.


When Min asked me about my decision that evening, I told her that I wanted to spend Friday with Neville and Hannah but that Grandpa and the others could arrive on Saturday.

She just accepted that.

She knew that Friday would be difficult for me and that if I came out of my room at all that day, it would be a success.

I didn't tell Draco about my birthday.

But we didn't speak all week anyway.

Well, we didn't had any more lessons together but sometimes we met in the library, which wasn't the case this week either.

But that was all right.


Hannah looked super stressed all week and I felt guilty because me and my displacement mechanism had gotten her into this.

She didn't seem to hold it against me, though, because when we had breakfast together in the morning, she always smiled at me and we talked as usual, as if she wasn't super stressed.

I had also solved my piano problem.

When I was wandering through the corridors on Wednesday evening, I passed the wall behind which the Room of Requirement was hidden.

Then I had the idea that if I wished for a room to play the piano, it would appear there.

If that wasn't perfect for once, I didn't know what was.

It was already late, so I didn't go in, but I decided to practise for the first time on Sunday when everyone had left.


And before I knew it, it was Friday, April 2nd, my birthday.

April Fool's jokes were pretty high on the agenda yesterday but as none had been directed at me, I had got through that day pretty well.

Min woke me up, well I was already awake when she came into the room but she had intended to wake me up.

She gave me a hug, wished me a happy birthday but explained that I wouldn't get my present until after school.

I could live with that, I didn't really want any presents anyway.

With that, she disappeared from my room and from the apartement, because when I went into the bathroom to take a shower, the apartement was empty.

Seventeen, I thought as I stood in the shower.

I am seventeen now, grown up. I feel exactly the same as I did yesterday.

Which, in my case, was pretty good.

I had been a little worried inside that something would change with my animagus once I was grown up. But that didn't seem to be the case and that reassured me enormously.


Neville and Hannah greeted me enthusiastically and hugged me as I entered the Great Hall.

Hannah insisted that I should eat something special for breakfast because it was a special day.

She spoke so loudly that I was almost sure the whole Hufflepuff table now knew.

Pancakes seemed special enough, because Hannah said nothing when they appeared on my plate.

To my delight, breakfast went like every other breakfast in recent weeks.

It could happily go on like this all day.

Just like any other day.


And indeed it did. Nobody seemed to have noticed that it was my birthday and I was incredibly happy about that.

But as I sat next to Draco in Potions, I was a little annoyed that I hadn't told him.

I would have been happy if he had congratulated me. But it was too late for that now, if I told him now he would surely be angry and I really didn't want that.

It was kind of weird between us anyway.

We just talked about the lessons but he smiled at me as he said goodbye with the words "See you on the dance floor later".


Lunch and the last hour flew by and I found myself opposite Draco on the dance floor.

The fact that there was something strange between us didn't affect our dancing one bit, rather the opposite.

We were good, really good.

Neither of us missed a cue or missed steps.

It was the best lesson for us so far.

I was really having fun and it was the best distraction and therefore the best birthday present anyone could have given me.

And Draco didn't even know what a great pleasure he was giving me.

But he seemed to enjoy it too, because he was grinning all the time and that was something he never did.


At the end of the lesson, Hannah came up to me.

"You guys were really really good today."

"Thanks. It was really fun too."

"Yeah, I saw that", she laughed as if she knew something I didn't.

"But you guys are getting better too", I declared as Neville joined us.

He looked down at the floor in embarrassment, knowing that he was the one whose dancing skills still had a lot of room to improve.

"So", Hannah began, giving me a stern look. "It's half past four now. You now have one hour to get rid of this cruel uniform. Then we'll meet outside the Hufflepuff rooms, okay?"

I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

"Okay? What's the plan then? I thought we were just going to have a relaxing evening."

"We are."

With that, she turned on her heel, Neville following.

"See you later", she waved and then the two of them disappeared around the next corner.

She had promised me a relaxed evening, hopefully she delivered, because I wasn't in the mood for a party at all.


When I arrived upstairs at the apartement was still as empty as this morning.

I swapped my school uniform for a pair of light blue Highways jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt, which I tucked into my trousers.

I threw on a green and blue checked flannel shirt as it could still get quite chilly in the corridors even now in April and an extra layer of fabric wouldn't hurt.

I combed my hair once more before tying it back into a bun.

I finished off my outfit with a pair of black flat shoes.

After motivating myself with a few words of encouragement, I made my way downstairs.

I still had a little time left so I strolled through the corridors, lost in thought.

Hannah and Neville were already standing outside the Hufflepuff rooms when I arrived.

They both hugged me and then they both chipped in. So we walked through the corridors as a threesome and I had no idea where we were going.


We went into a corridor and then I realised what our destination was.

The Room of Requirement.

The door materialised in front of us and they both pushed me in front of it.

"Happy birthday", Hannah whispered as I pushed down the handle.