"'My Journal of Being 13 and Our Trip to Scotland' by Adela"

by Kelly Chambliss

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Chapter 7

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June 23, 2001

"It was the best of times, it was the best of times."

There is no "worst of times" about it - - everything about these last two days has been perfect.

The side-along apparition was one of the strangest things I ever experienced. I did feel a little sick to my stomach, but not for long. Dad and Pop were fine, too. (And before we left, Julia used her wand to shrink our luggage so that it was small enough to fit in our pockets! This wizarding world is just mad convenient, I have to say.)

We got to walk around Hogsmeade for a little bit last evening. It looks like a village on postcard or something, and even if I hadn't known about real magic before I saw it, I would have guessed it was a place with magic in it. The buildings are all so tilted and uneven - - Dad calls them "engineering impossibilities" - - that only magic can possibly be holding them up.

The wedding this morning was just stupendous. I can't even describe the beauty that is the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Just imagine the most perfect midevil (sp?) castle you can think of, and that's Hogwarts. Between looking at the millions of candles floating in mid-air and the beautiful transparent ceiling and the impressive carved wooden pews we sat on, I almost missed seeing the bride come down the aisle.

Julia looked gorgeous. She had two attendants, her younger sisters Lorelei and Penelope, they were wearing shimmery blue dresses and had flowers in their hair, which is curly like Julia's. Julia had a long white dress, of course, with a train and a bouquet of roses and lilies.

Uncle Matt looked to-die-for handsome in a black. . .well, sort of a tux, I guess. He said it is called a "dress robe." His best man was a friend of his from the bank, a red-haired man named Bill Weasley. He has very interesting scars on his face.

MM told me later that the scars came from the war, though not the same battle that SS was injured in. I guess it really was a terrible time. I can see why they (SS and MM) wanted to come to America afterward and get away from the memories for a while.

But back to this perfect day. It was heavenly.

MM and SS were guests at the wedding. SS as usual acted like he didn't want to be there, but also as usual, I think he had a good time. They were wearing "dress robes" too and looked really elegant. MM even had on a tall black witch's hat - - for real!

Then after the ceremony was over, we stood up, and all the pews just vanished!

Then a lot of really pretty tables for six appeared, with flowers on each and a cluster of candles overhead. We got to sit at a table with MM and SS and a friend of theirs, a very nice, very tiny man who is the headmaster of Hogwarts (and apparently he had been Julia's "Head of House" when she was a student). He had the very magic-sounding name of Filius Flitwick.

I should have stopped being amazed by magic by this time, but I'm not. I literally gasped when plates full of delicious food just appeared on the tables out of thin air! It was the sort of tea that I had expected that night we had dinner with SS and MM back home: lots of little sandwiches and tarts with berries or lemon curd, and scones with this unusual stuff that was not quite whipped cream and not quite butter. MM said it is called "clotted cream." I loved it. And also, I had pumpkin juice!

But if you can believe it, there is something that is even better than this perfect wedding: it is the fact that in Hogsmeade, WE ARE STAYING WITH MM AND SS AT THE APOTHECARY! They live above it.

When Uncle Matt said our "lodging" was taken care of, that's what he meant - - MM and SS had invited us to stay with them. (She probably had to talk him into it, but he's been nice while we've been here, just his usual sarcasm. And he cooked a very nice dinner.)

So I am sitting here now in the prettiest little bedroom, all dark wood furniture with a canopy bed and a little rolltop desk lit with those hovering candles.

The flat above the apothecary isn't technically large enough for all of us, but MM explained that SS had "magically expanded" the space to include my room and a separate room for Dad and Pop. MM and SS have their own bedroom right next to mine.

The kitchen is amazing, too; it's downstairs behind the shop, and when SS was cooking dinner last night, knives were chopping vegetables and spoons were stirring sauces all on their own! No one was touching them. It left SS and MM free to sneak a kiss behind the kitchen door; I saw them.

Tomorrow morning, Uncle Matt's friend Bill and one of his brothers will side-along-apparate us and our shrunken luggage to Heathrow so we can fly home.

But tonight, we get one last dinner with MM and SS, and then MM has promised to give us a tour of Hogwarts! There will be places we can't go, of course, partly because we're Muggles and partly because some of the war damage has made certain areas "magically unstable," MM says.

But we will see everything she can show us. I learned all about the House system and the common rooms, and I can't wait to see them. (And now I know what SS meant when he said I'd be a Slytherin! But Gryffindors sound good, too.)

The only sad thing (well, two things) are a) we have to leave soon, and b) here I have lived through the best story EVER. . .and I can't write it. I can't tell it to anyone except this journal, because of the Statue of Secrecy. Even if I tried to give this journal to Dr. Reese, she wouldn't be able to read a word of it. There's an enchantment on us now, on Pop and Dad and me, so we can't break the statue (wherever it is; I haven't seen the actual statue, but I imagine it looks like Justice with a blindfold on its eyes or something - - to show that it's a Statue of Secrecy.)

The only thing I can think of to do is that maybe someday, I can write this story as if it is made-up. . .like for a kids' book or something. I bet a lot of people would like it.

But for now, I will just have to settle for doing something that Dr. Reese says writers should not do. I am going to repeat myself.

It was the best of times, it was the best of times.

THE BEST.

Signed,

Adela Mary Edwards, age 13 years and 9 months

Written this 23rd Day of June, 2001, in Hogsmeade, SCOTLAND.

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