It was on Saturday when the panic first set in for Clara. She'd been drowning in homework all week, so she hadn't even had a moment's break to check her diary. But it was as soon as she lifted her pillow from her bed to find an empty mattress that she realised something was seriously wrong.

She proceeded to scan the rest of the room, rifling through her belongings, rummaging under her bed, and even checking her wardrobe in case she'd left it in her sock drawer or something.

But nothing. It wasn't anywhere. And she couldn't even ask for help. If someone knew the significance and read it? She'd rather die.

Clara exhaled deeply. She convinced herself it would be downstairs in the common room. She tossed on her wool cardigan — a garment crocheted by her mother a few years ago — and ran down the stairs with a series of ungraceful thuds.

The common room was usually a mess, but the absence of her housemates made it far easier to rummage between bookshelves, rearrange pots of exotic plants, slide trinkets and ornaments around, and crawl beneath tables and desks in the faint hope that she'd find her precious book behind it.

"What are you doing–?"

The back of Clara's head smacked against the underside of the main table. She crawled out, groaning as her head pounded and a soft ringing filled her ears. She wouldn't have been surprised if the impact had concussed her.

"Looking for something I can't find," she replied quietly, her face pinched in discomfort.

Justin leaned back against one of the chairs with his arms crossed. He watched her eyes dart around the room rapidly. She moved towards the window and started to slide the flower pots around, her hands desperately clawing at empty air.

"What is it?" Justin asked, bemused. "Maybe I can help."

She shook her head. "It's not important."

"No?" he confirmed sceptically. "Well . . .," He glanced at his wristwatch, "I was about to go to Hogsmeade for lunch. I hear the chips at the Three Broomsticks aren't that bad. You coming with?"

Clara absently nodded her head in agreement. "Okay."

Clara's fingertips were freezing, even in the gentle warmth of the Three Broomsticks. She'd removed her coat due to social conventions, nothing more. Her shoulders were tense as she fought back chills. She squeezed her hands together between her thighs in a desperate attempt to warm them up.

Justin returned to their table and placed down a basket of chips. "Busy here today, isn't it?"

She nodded. He was right, it was considerably busier than usual. The joint was always popular with students on Hogsmeade Saturdays, but never this busy. And it wasn't so much the amount of people either — it was the volume. The other students hadn't been this vocal with each other since the start of the Triwizard Tournament.

"What are you looking at?" Justin asked her. He glanced in the same direction as her "Oh, they're probably just talking about that diary thing that's going around."

Clara, who had been reaching for a chip, froze completely. "A diary?"

Justin continued to eat nonchalantly. "Yeah. Some random first year or something left their diary in the library. I haven't seen it for myself yet, but I've heard it's pretty funny, some of the stuff they wrote in there."

She felt her heart sinking right to the bottom of her stomach. Underneath the table, she gripped the bottom of her seat and began to take deep and steady breaths. She soon realised that was useless. Deep and steady breaths wouldn't fix how fucked up this was. She'd had nightmares about this moment. This was literally a living nightmare.

"Like what?" she whispered, masking her horror.

Justin laughed to himself under his breath and explained with an air of casualness. "Apparently a lot of it was just random crap, but recently," He wiggled his eyebrows, "they wrote about Draco Malfoy. Why do you ask?" His eyes widened. "It isn't yours, is it?"

Clara drew her eyebrows together and pretended to look confused, but she had the feeling she was overdoing the expression. "No, why would it be mine?"

"Because, I gave you a diary last year for Christmas, remember?" he reminded her. "And you did say you'd lost something just a moment ago before we left."

She shook her head. "My diary's in my dorm. I lost . . . a bit of homework, that's all," she lied.

Her little white lie was enough to satisfy him. He dusted his hands on a napkin and reached for his butterbeer. "Anyway, so that's been pretty funny. I just wonder who it could've been at this point." She perked up in interest. "I mean, it probably wasn't a first year, they're too weird and dorky for that kind of thing. Maybe it was someone in our year? I doubt they're older, no one older would have a crush on Malfoy of all people."

Clara stood up so clumsily that her coat fell onto the floor and her empty glass rolled onto her vacated seat. "I'll be back," she mumbled distractedly.

Clara spent an embarrassing amount of that weekend crying. And as if things couldn't get any worse, she had Potions with Draco Malfoy that Monday afternoon. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't even talk to someone about it. Her cat, if she casted a Muffliato charm around her bed, and maybe she could send an owl to her brother if she felt brave enough to admit her act of complete stupidity.

But there were a few positives. No one knew that the diary was hers, and she planned to keep it that way. The gossip was starting to quieten down, but she still had no idea where the diary was or who had it. She'd basically poured her heart out onto those pages, just to be relentlessly ridiculed by her entire school. There was absolutely nothing that could make this better.

She sat down at her desk a few minutes early with her copy of Magical Drafts and Potions, trying to act as mundane and normal as possible. She kept her head forward, her expression impassive, her eyes disinterested. That usually did the trick.

Most of her class had already arrived, including those she shared a table with — Malfoy, Crabbe, and Lavender Brown. Clara busied herself with her book, fingering through the chapters towards the content they'd be studying that lesson.

"Saint Potter," Malfoy grumbled. She tried not to make her eavesdropping visible. "So, did you hear?" He leaned away from her towards Crabbe. "Apparently that book last week? It wasn't a first year after all. Wanna know who? . . . Astoria Greengrass."

Clara's quill fell from her hand. The ink began to seep through the thin paper. She reflexively reached into her bag for a tissue, reeling internally.

Astoria Greengrass . . . little sister to Daphne Greengrass, the girl who made an effort to ignore and belittle her during Transfigurations . . . took credit for her diary? She couldn't fathom why someone would actively claim credit for her pitiful life ramblings that had unknowingly made her a laughing stock.

Clara wasn't sure what to do now. The diary was as good as gone. Unless Astoria ever decided to give up the blatant lies and surrender it, this problem . . . was no longer her problem.

So why did she have the sinking feeling that this wasn't over yet?

Someone tapped her shoulder. "Clara?"

Clara turned, startled. Ron was standing behind her. She wasn't sure how long he'd been there for, or whether him waiting for her to snap out of her reverie had something to do with the tense expression on his face.

"Yes?" she asked.

"I was just wondering if you have any answers for the Charms test due this week," he said, shrugging before stowing his hands in his pockets. "I tried answering a few but most of them got really strange answers that didn't make much sense, you know?"

Her gaze narrowed in bemusement. If he wanted acceptable homework answers, realistically Hermione was his best bet. Not her. She was the last person he should be asking.

Nonetheless, Clara pulled her Charms book out from her bag and handed it to him timidly. She hoped for her sake and his that her answers were somewhere along the right lines.

He took it from her with a smile. "Thanks," he breathed, "you're a lifesaver."

Clara nodded politely. She wasn't given much time to say or do anything else in response, because Snape threw the door open and marched into the room with such a racket that it had Ron sprinting back to his desk.

Snape whirled around at the front of the class and scrutinised them all with as much venom as usual. "Sit back down, Weasley. Page 462," he drawled, scrawling instructions across the blackboard. Ron nearly fell off his chair. "Today we will be covering the Cure for Boils as well as the many properties of Moonstone. I will not be dilly dallying or waiting for any of you dunderheads to keep up with my lesson. There will be an essay assignment at the end, so it is in your best interests to pay close attention."

As expected, Snape flew through the content so fast that Malfoy and Hermione were the only two that weren't overcome with visible confusion. Clara jotted down his notes and annotations until her hand cramped. Lavender Brown hit her own head with her book. Snape took no notice.

A roll of parchment appeared between her and Malfoy with a bang. Snape distributed the handouts with the complete lack of enthusiasm and joy she'd come to expect from him. He really was her least favourite teacher.

"You have 5 minutes to answer these before I take them in," Snape sneered. "If I see any of you brushing a finger against your books, that will be an instant fail and another roll of parchment added to your essay length."

Clara hadn't had the chance to take a look at the questions yet. Malfoy was already studying the parchment, obscuring it from her view in the process. She peered over his arm and squinted to read the first few questions herself.

Potions Fourth Year Key Assessment – October Half Term:
1) List 2 effects of the Polyjuice Potion.
2) a) Provide at least 1 characteristic of the Aging Potion.
b) Give the name of the ingredient that can be used to enhance the effects of the Aging Potion

Clara inwardly groaned. There were a total of 10 questions on the page, most of which she couldn't even guess what the correct answers were. If this was what her OWLs would be like, she was destined to fail.

Malfoy was answering the questions at impressive speed. He didn't so much as stop to think between sections and answers. Clara could only idly play with her quill and watch.

"Are you going to do anything or will I have to answer every single one of these myself, badger?"

She blinked. She dipped her quill into her ink and wrote a single word answer for section c of question 8. It was an answer she only knew thanks to her last homework assignment (one she'd been forced to redo 3 times).

She dropped her quill and placed her hands in her lap, her head bowed so that her long hair covered her face from view. He tugged the parchment away from her and hummed in acknowledgement.

"Not entirely good for nothing, are you?" he said. His remark didn't sound like a compliment. "You don't say much, do you?"

Clara kept her gaze level with the desk. "No," she replied quietly.

Clara accepted the loss of her actual diary. She found an empty leather-bound journal on Hannah's bookshelf in their shared dorm room — she could always buy her a new one later — drew the curtains around her bed, and opened the first page across her lap.

9th November 1994

Dear diary,

This isn't my diary. My current diary is goodness knows where, with goodness knows who.

You know, in a way, I feel sorry for Astoria Greengrass. Though it's annoying not having my own diary back and not being able to take credit for my own thoughts and feelings, to feel so desperate for attention that she lied about a widely-mocked book must be difficult.

This time I need to be more careful with this though. I'm considering looking into some protective enchantments I could use over these pages, but the only problem would be casting them. I'd love to be good at basic charms someday, but I know that'll never be the case.

I'm not good in school, I'm not good at Quidditch, and I'm not good at talking to people. Sometimes I do wonder what'll even be left for me when I leave Hogwarts, but I try not to dwell on that too much.

Other than the gossip that has been spreading around the school, something else has happened. I was seated beside Draco Malfoy in Potions, as I have for a week now, but he genuinely spoke to me. Sure, he was still kind of rude and impatient, but rarely am I ever spoken to by anyone I sit near in classes. Usually, they'd rather work on their own or make me complete the work independently rather than actually working alongside me.

I don't understand why he keeps calling me badger, though. Well, I do, but it still seems pretty odd. What type of insult is badger? Badgers are such wonderful creatures. I'd go as far as to say they're better than snakes.

In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid made us care for those Blast-Ended Skrewts again. Apparently they needed company, or someone to play with, but it was like playing with an untrained, rabid dog that could explode at any moment. Justin's hand was burnt, part of Hannah's hair was set on fire, and I even noticed that Malfoy's was busy tormenting everyone else. I don't understand Hagrid's lessons, I really don't.

I think the thing that's bothering me the most about this diary issue is Astoria. I told myself I wouldn't get worked up over this, and that it's only a small setback, but only an hour ago at dinner I saw her and Malfoy talking intently and laughing together.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think they're beginning to form a relationship. With my feelings. Should I be upset? Of course, I'd never say anything about it, I wouldn't want the hassle of anyone finding out that it's been me the whole time, but I can't help but feel horrible about the situation and how far it's gone, how much further than I realised it would. The girl, no matter how naïve, is claiming popularity through my writing, and I guess know one will ever know.

Merlin forbid Malfoy were to find out it was me. I'd become the laughing stock of the school, as if I'm not already. Just last month, a girl whispered 'freak' into my ear as she walked past, but then disappeared laughing before I could see who it was. Now imagine how much worse that would be with a dumb crush to top it all off.

Even writing about it is making me nervous.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: Sometimes this storyline feels a little wattpad-y, and it keeps me up at night. But at the same time I really don't care.

[Edited 18/06/2024]