Draco C. Malfoy

Unlike some people, I'm just fine with the results of the potions exam. My goal was to make the top ten and since I made the top five, I've gone beyond that. My next goal will to be higher in the top five.

If you were wondering why I wasn't at the music party last night, it's because I was writing a letter to Mr Cuthbert about my Nimbus 2001 and what I thought of it. I didn't have a bad thing to say, aside from the fact that it was too bad I wasn't allowed to bring it to school and show it to everyone. But that's not anything to do with Mr Cuthbert, of course, and I told him so.

Auntie Bella, if you're reading this thank you for replying to my Owl so fast, especially since Mother said you are feeling delicate lately.

AK is pretty brill so far. It's funny to see people running around and covering their ears - as if that could stop the hex somehow! I'm only worried because I woke up with part of my right hand all tingly with pins and needels. I went to Madame Pomfrey and she said I slept on it wrong and pinched a nerve and that I would just have to wait for it to go away. So far it hasn't.

I ought to be going on to the Great Hall for breakfast but, I'm not very hungry today. I was trying to read a book father gave me, called The Chess Mind and it tells you how to play chess and also how to be good at it can help you in real life. It says chess builds logical thinking skills, which I guess must be true. I wish I enjoyed chess more but when I play it feels like taking an exam and who wants to take an exam for fun? I will keep reading the book though, because if Father gave it to me then it must be important.

But I think creative thinking skills are as important as logical ones. Back at home Harry and I would always make up games together, and I like that best because then you can come up with your own rules instead of following someone elses. One of the games we played was called Green Ghost. I've never actually seen a green ghost but that was the colour of the blanket the person being the ghost would hide under. Mother put an obscurrity charm on the blanket so it was really dark in there and the ghost wouldn't be able to see anything. Of course real ghosts don't look like shapeless people under blankets, and the ghosts at the Manor would probably be offended if they saw us, but we usually played this game at Kensington or the Lord's Palace. There weren't any ghosts there because muggles used to live there and a muggle never leaves a ghost. I'd say more about how Green Ghost was played but its hard to explain and you would have to see it to understand how it worked.

We played hide and seek a lot too, which everyone knows how to play but at the Lord's palace, especially, it was enormous and the game could go on for a really, really long time and once I hid so well I was sort of lost. Harry was really good at finding people, but I was really good at hiding. Hydra was better at hiding than anyone, but she would always run out of the hiding spot if her name was called so that rather ruined it. And also

Well brilliant, now I'm hungry. Maybe I have time to grab a bun before heading to the greenhouses.

Its become colder out so I'm drinking more tea than usual, at every meal most times, and today I discovered a surprise in my chest of tea leaves when I went to the other end of the Slytherin table at breakfast to get some milk. I don't know why our jug was empty, but it must have been Goyle since he had a foul milk moustache for most of today. When I came back with the milk a Hufflepuff was shouting and his hand was swollen nearly to quaffle-size. Harry told me that he was fairly certain that the Hufflepuff had been trying to nick some of my tea when the tea chest got him. Mother must have put a hex on it. Mother, if you're reading this, thank you and thank you also for the extra chocolate you sent last week.

I think that Herbert Fleet plays keeper for Hufflepuff. I wonder if he'll be able to catch the quaffle with quaffle sized hands?

Is there anything to do tonight? I'm becoming tired of exploding snap and its hurting my ears beside.

I was up very late revising last night, as there was too much to fit in yesterday, between listening to the new Weird Sisters' album, games of exploding snap with Harry, and my weekly Owls to Mother, Father, and Hydra. The importance of schoolwork surpasses all of that, of course, so I spent some extra time on the finishing touches, just to be sure.

There really is a lot of schoolwork, isn't there? I mean, it is school, so there should be, but Auntie Bella's Hogwarts stories always seemed to be more about fun and games, like shoving the heads of mudblood students into the toilets, or putting jinxes on their shoes that would make the laces tie together and trip them up. Maybe things were just different back when mudbloods were allowed to be students. I mean, things were worse, obviously, but it was probably fun to put them in their place. Now that they're finally there, it's just a matter of forgetting about them. That would be an easier task if they didn't keep popping up in places where they shouldn't be.

Oh god, I just realised that if mudbloods were once students here, then they probably once sat in our desks and used the same sinks and toilets and ugh, who knows what else. What a revolting thought. Sometimes I wish I hadn't been born with such a vivid imagination.