Lily's Diary - 6th Year

Hi everyone sorry about the long wait between chapters. I've been busy with exams recently. Anyway here is the next chapter and hopefully I can update much faster now.

Gems

Chapter 5 - Birthday and Quidditch

Friday, 1^st October 1976

Ah the start of a new month. Wow this year has gone by fast. October already terms half over now. We've covered so much already, I've no idea how I'll remember it all for the exams in June. Oh I'm applying for that ancient runes course, did I mention that already. I probably did, I can't remember and I'm much too tired to read through all these entries and check.

There's a Hogsmede weekend in two weeks, on the 16^th. We're all pretty excited about that. There's a rumour going around that there gonna let seniors go to Hogsmede on Halloween too. It'll be pretty cool if they do let us. I doubt it's true though the amount of rumours that come through this place is huge, but one that's actually true, that's pretty rare.

Classes were pretty uneventful today. James, Remus and Sirius were even well behaved in potions today. That was quiet surprising seeing as they normally pull most of their pranks during potions class. I guess there's just such an opportunity for them to in potions. Their always doing awful things to Snivellus I do wish they would leave him alone sometimes, though he does deserve it at times. He can be so rude.

Sunday, 3^rd October 1976

This weekend has been a pretty busy one. We had a prefect meeting today to discuss the progress of the fifth years and how they are coping doing duties on there own. We also discussed the upcoming open day. It's a new thing but Dumbledore thought it would be a good idea to allow parents (particularly muggle parents) the chance to see the castle and what their kids were doing. Basically us prefects have been asked to show parents around the castle and answer any questions they have.

We've also got a stack of homework and study to get done this weekend. We have mid course exams coming up soon so the teachers are giving us a lot of work to prepare us for them.

Monday, 4^th October 1976

Well classes are quiet hectic at the moment. I've barely had anytime to spend relaxing what with prefect duties and all our homework. I don't know how James does it. I guess he must just be naturally smart because I've never once seen him studying and he always gets such good marks. He's always out playing Quidditch with Sirius and Peter. Oh that reminds me there's a quidditch match on this weekend - the first game of the season. Gryffindor get to start the season off because we won last season. Only narrowly though but we still won. It's the first time we've won since I was in first year. We've had a bit of a losing streak since then. We've always narrowly lost in the last game so it was heaps good last year when we won. There was a massive celebration in the common room all night after we won. Hopefully we've broken our losing streak now and can win again this year.

Tuesday, 5^th October 1976

It's Jacqui's birthday on Friday. It's one of the few occasions when I actually work with James, Peter, Remus and Sirius. We have always organised her party for her and James and crew are always the best at finding great ways to surprise her. I wonder where it'll be this year. Last year it was in the room of requirement. That's a pretty cool room that is, it transforms into whatever you need if you know how to do it. James and Sirius are in charge of finding a location and organising how to surprise Jacqui on the day. Remus and Peter are responsible for food. They sneak into Hogsmede to get it. They let me in on that secret last year when I was stressing because I didn't have a present for her. Me and Alice organise the decorations and do the invitations for everyone.

So yeah Alice and I have been sitting around in the common room all afternoon trying to sort out the decorations and stuff. It's her seventeenth. I think she is going to get her apparation license over the Christmas holidays.

Wednesday, 6^th October 1976

James told me today during our morning prefect duties that they'd work out where to have the party for Jacqui. It's such a good idea. Seeing as the quidditch game is on Saturday they thought they could get some flying in so they decided to perform an enchantment on the pitch so that everything would float above the pitch. The idea was that everyone brought their broom or borrowed one and flew around to all the places at the party. They were also going to perform another enchantment so that there would be an invisible floor above the pitch for those who don't have brooms. It sounds good.

I've told Alice about it. She thinks it's a great idea. Anyway we've started working on the invites and I guess we'll pass them out tomorrow morning.

Thursday, 7^th October 1976

Well I woke up early this morning and headed down to the common room to meet Alice. We'd decided to use a spell to send the invites to Jacqui's party out. It was a really complicated one that I haven't even learnt yet. Alice learnt it a couple of months ago and she's really good at it. She practiced a couple of times sending stuff to me and Jacqui and it worked really well. The only problem we had was that she can only do two invites at a time so it was time consuming. We did it by houses and year groups so that the letters weren't going to two different places. I was in charge of sorting all the invites into houses and year groups. We left the sixth year Gryffindor girls out though. We didn't want Jacqui to find out about the party early. I gave out the invites to the sixth year girls while Jacqui was in the shower. They all seemed pretty excited about. Everyone else found their invites on their pillow when they woke up. Everyone seems to be really excited about it, and they seem to like the choice of venue.

Classes today were pretty average. I was too preoccupied with working out the decorations for Jacqui's party to pay much attention anyway. I'll ask Jacqui what we did and catch up later.

Friday, 8^th October 1976

Preparation

Well today's Jacqui's seventeenth. Alice, James, Peter, Remus, Sirius and I got together early this morning to finalise the plan for tonight. The party is going to start at 7:30 just after dinner. Seeing as its Friday we can run late as curfew isn't till midnight and the quidditch match doesn't start till after lunch. Anyway James and Sirius are going to perform the enchantments on the pitch at lunch time and Remus and Peter will sneak into Hogsmede and get the rest of the food and pick up presents. Then just before dinner me and Alice will start decorating and James, Sirius, Remus and Peter will start setting up the food and stuff. It should be really good. Now our only problem is trying to distract Jacqui. She knows were planning something big and she's been trying to find out what exactly for the last couple of days. The plan to fix that is that we always have at least one of us with Jacqui while the others are setting up.

Setting up took longer than we though so we skipped dinner to finish it all off but it was worth it. We had fun setting up anyway. James kept getting himself tangled up in the tinsel we got to put around all the tables. I guess he's not used to doing things the muggle way. Everything has to be done using magic for him. I don't know how he survives the holidays not being able to do magic. Though I suppose he'll be of age next time so he won't have to worry about it. Well coloured everything with red and gold (the Gryffindor colours) and Alice and I performed a charm to get glitter to sprinkle all over the tables but not get in the food.

Surprise

At seven I left and went and took over from Sirius in keeping Jacqui away. Everyone was due to arrive at 7:30 and I was to take Jacqui when I got the signal from James. He'd given me a fake sickle and told me that it'd heat up when they were ready. The plan was that once I got the signal me and Jacqui would head towards the quidditch pitch and just as we got there James would set off the magic fireworks which he'd enchanted to read `HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACQUI' in red and gold letters. It looked fantastic. I'll have to get copies of the photos that they took. I've got a couple of photos of it on my muggle camera. I can't afford a magical one. James is fascinated by my camera he's hardly ever seen muggle stuff in his life. Anyway I told him I'd get him prints of my photos if he got copies of the magical photos.

The Party

Jacqui loved her party. She was so surprised by it all. She knew we were planing something but she didn't think it would be anything as big as it was. She loved how the guys had organised it so you could fly around or walk, which ever was more comfortable for you. Remus brought her, her broom shortly after she'd arrived and she went and had a fly around and said `hi' to everyone. After a while the Marauders got a half-sized game of quidditch going at the opposite end to where the party was set up. It ended up being a practice for tomorrow's game and it was mostly Gryffindors against Ravenclaws. Gryffindor won which could be a good sign for tomorrow's game but then again it wasn't against the actual quidditch teams of either house so you never know. Hopefully we'll win though it'd be a great start to the season.

Presents. Jacqui opened her presents at about nine after she'd had a good look around the pitch and joined in a bit of the quidditch game. I got her this gorgeous silver photo album. It was really interesting. I saw it in the gift catalogue that Hogsmede send out it's cover is this beautiful silver and I had it enchanted so it says `Six years of a wonderful friendship, with many more to come. ~ Lily Evans' and it's enchanted so that it's feels as though theres only a few pages in it, but it expands to fit as many photo's as you want. I put all the photo's I have of the times Jacqui and I have spent together. It looked really good and she loved it. The Marauders got her a box of chocolate frogs, some magic fireworks and the new Muggla book. She loved it. She got stacks of other stuff too from everyone else at the party, she got lots of lollies and chocolate.

Packing up

Well the party finished at around 11:30 so that everyone had enough time to get to their common rooms before curfew. It finished with some more fireworks by the Marauders and then everyone said goodnight and headed to their common rooms. The marauders, Jacqui, Alice and I stayed back and packed everything up. The marauders took off the enchantments on the pitch and then the seven off us headed back up to the common room. It was after midnight by the time we reached the castle but there weren't any problems with that especially seeing as me and James are prefects. James had an invisibility cloak and so did Jacqui as she'd got one from Alice at the party. So Remus, Sirius, Peter, Jacqui and Alice shared the invisibility cloaks and went back to the common room. After everyone had left me and James headed up to the fifth floor for our prefect duties. I told James he didn't have to bother and I could cover for him if he wanted to get some sleep before the quidditch game, but he offered to stick it out. We finished duties at two and heaped back to the common room to get some sleep.

Hmm today was a really long day. So much happened and I was so busy. Anyway I better get some sleep so I'm awake for the quidditch match tomorrow - well today now.

Saturday, 9^th October 1976

Well today's the start of the quidditch season - Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw. The game they had a the party might be a good sign that we'll win but as I said it wasn't the whole team of either side so it could mean nothing. Anyway the games not till after lunch so we've got a bit of time beforehand. I woke up late this morning but I guess I was pretty tired after yesterday.

I still can't believe the party came off so well. We didn't end up with any problems - well aside from the time it took to set up. It all went really well and James and I didn't end up in a single argument he was actually quiet nice. I've no idea how the teachers didn't find out about it though. I think James but a silencing charm around the area or something but that wouldn't explain how they didn't notice the fireworks and stuff. Oh well nothing went wrong so no point worrying about it.

Everyone's really excited about today's quidditch match. It's the first for the season and everyone shows up to see the first game of the season. The majority of the time everyone comes to the final match but sometimes the house that lost in the semi-finals can get really bitter about it and not show up. It's usually only the Slytherins that do that. Slytherin is about the only house I have trouble getting along with. They can just be so rude. But maybe it's true what they say `all bad wizards come from Slytherin'.

I headed down to lunch with Jacqui and Alice. Just about everyone had something to show which side they were supporting in the quidditch shortly afterwards. We ate lunch with the Marauders - We all seem to be getting on a lot more this year. Oh well it's about time I'm sick of all the stupid fights we used to always have. James left a little before the rest of us so he could go get ready for the game. We all wished him good luck as he left. Once the six of us finished our lunch we headed over to the quidditch pitch and up into the stands.

Well the quidditch match was awesome. We won but only because Mark caught the snitch. If he hadn't we wouldn't have won, we were so far behind. It was 30-80 before Mark caught the snitch. We're lucky that the snitch gives you 150 points so it ended up being 180-80. Anyway everyone is celebrating now and I should head back down to the party. Wow two parties in two days - I'm gonna be so tired tomorrow. Oh well at least this weekends been a bit of fun, and makes a change from school work. Plus next weekend we've got a Hogsmede visit so that'll be fun.

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