Ron Weasley

This is the longest day ever. Runes went on forever, and now it's Double Potions. Oi! I'm dying over here.

If my head falls into my cauldron, duck!

Only I was up almost all night because of Gareth Archer. Heard him shouting in the middle of the night. Ours is the closest room to theirs, so I was the one who got there first. Well, except for his mates, but they're a useless lot. Ed Bones and Jimmy Peakes were both sitting up, staring at him, but they seemed like they were still sound asleep, really. I swear Peakes was snoring. And soon as I got there, they both flopped over and were out again.

But Archer wasn't going back to sleep. No way. He didn't want to go see Madam Pomfrey, and I don't blame him, so we went downstairs and played chess. All the way til breakfast.

I didn't mind. I mean, McLaggen came in right after I did, but he's got OWLs this week and looked a wreck. And really, even on a good day, no one wants to spend time with McLaggen. And Archer was a bit of a mess, too.

Said he'd had a dream about his father coming back--you know about his dad, right?

Anywiz, last night he had this dream his father came back and was going to kill him. He figures it's because he read what those Dogstar people wrote in the journals yesterday. Thing is, I guess Archer really hated his dad. For leaving him and his mum and for being a traitor. Did you know MLE questioned him and his cousin--watshername, the Slytherin one--only Archer couldn't tell them anything because he hadn't talked to his father in years. Well, I guess he did tell them something--last night he told me he told MLE he was glad his father was dead.

I mean, yeah. That's dead awful, innit?

I don't even want to talk about it.

Seriously.
 
 
ugh

Okay.

One thing I don't understand--Quiet, Fisheye!--how come all these groups are saying they set those bombs? Obviously they didn't all do it. Why would you say you did if you didn't?

And whoever heard of some of them? I mean I've heard of Dogstar, and there was stuff about the Crimson Company back in the spring sometime. And I guess the IMA are those Irish muggles Finnigan's so scared of. But the Legion? or Boyle's Law? or

hang on

found it

The New Millenarians? wot?

I mean, The Prophet says 17 groups have claimed it was them. Really?

Anywiz. Who do you reckon it was?

What is it with all the spiders? I mean seriously, all over the castle it seems like they are all queuing up to get out of this place! It's like they've all gone mad and decided that since it's got cold, they should all come out of wherever it is they hide all the time and go outside and freeze to death. Either that or they're afraid they're going to get petrified. I mean, bloody h***, have you seen how many of them there are??!!! I just wish they'd get it over and leave already, cause I don't want to know how many of them have been lurking in the corners, watching us.


Oh, and Pansy! I meant to ask earlier, but I forgot. Have you seen that magazine about your pirate bloke? There's a copy here in the common room, and it's got pictures and everything. There's even one of Mr Lupin, you know, the old groundskeeper, with his mates when he was in school. One of them's the traitor, Sirius Black, your bloke's brother. I guess that's why it's in the magazine, anyway. You should try to get a copy. Or I could ask around and see if whoever owns this one would mind if I lent it to you.

I might be the only person in history to get detention before the term even properly starts. (Not that I'm proud of that or anything, Mum.)

But there's all this mad stuff going round about what we did and why we did it, so I just wanted to set things straight. Harry Marvolo couldn't come to school on the train because someone hexed the barrier to the platform. Which is pretty ironic since they only put it back up last year when Harry started Hogwarts. I guess it was part of the old secrecy thing back, well, before, y'know. And then they took it down once wizards started to use the whole station and everything, but they put it back up--the barrier--last year to help keep Harry Marvolo safe from all the mad nutters who are always trying to touch him and give him stuff and, of course, from the ones who keep trying to attack him.

So, anywiz. We couldn't get through the barrier 'cause someone must have hexed it. And everyone else had already gone through ahead of us while we were there talking, so when we couldn't get through--and I mean we couldn't get through!!--we thought probably nobody could get back to help us, either. And the spell was a really rough one, too, so we thought that someone was trying to kidnap Harry or kill him or something, and anyway, it was time that the train should already have gone, so we did the only thing we could think of. We'd just been talking about how my dad charmed his car to fly and how wizard it was, and we'd just driven to the station in that car (on the roads, actually, because Mum didn't trust the spells, and anyway she said we absolutely couldn't fly to the station no matter how late we were running). It was just dead obvious: we needed to get out of there fast so nobody could kill Harry ... and there was the car!

So, yeah. We flew to school. We could see the train down there below us. That's how we knew which way to go, but I guess none of you looked out the window and saw us. (Funnily enough, I guess we made the paper because some people in London and other places did look up and see us flying along!)

And, yeah, we did crash the car into the Whomping Willow, and that's why I've got to do detention... to help Professor Sprout set the broken limbs on the tree. So if I don't live until tomorrow, it was nice knowing you all. And if I do live: Seamus or Nev, would you bring me back an extra helping of whatever they're serving for pudding tonight? I bet I'll be starving by the time we're finished!

Gotta run so I'm not late for afternoon lessons...

This has been one of the strangest weeks I've ever had.

I'd like it if we had a nice, normal one next, all right?