By the time I reach my dorm room, I’m not surprised to find the room in darkness. It is just after midnight and my roommates would most likely me downstairs, still partying away.
I place the diary on the bed and change out of my clothes and into my blue and white stripped dressing gown that my mother bought me last Christmas. Before heading into the bathroom, I remove the diary from the bed, lingering for a moment, before I place it under my mattress, where no one will find it. Then I pad into the bathroom on the other side of the room to brush my teeth, and have a shower.
I leave the water to warm up as I brush my teeth. My reflection in the mirror is pale; although this is usual considering how very little I sleep now.
As I step into the shower, I feel the weight from today pushed off my shoulders. I can feel the hot water running down my back, cleaning off the smell of alcohol, and perhaps drugs. Parties like these; you never know what is brought into the Common Room.
The water refreshes me, although it does not take away that nagging feeling that lingers in my soul. I can’t shake it and I don’t understand it.
When I wake up, soaked in sweat at 2:40P.M., feeling panicky, with my throat constricted in desperate need of water, I force myself to just lie there, breathing in and out. I stare up at the plain, wooden ceiling over my bed, picturing Merlin counting jump over a wall. This is what I have been told to do by the shrink, when I accidently let slip that I have nightmares.
I know it won’t work, even though I try it. After changing out of my damp pyjamas and into dry ones, having a drink of water and even reassuring myself that the dream wasn’t real, I can’t seem to fall back to sleep.
To make it worse, I can still hear the party raging on downstairs, even though I am sure one of the professors has come up and told everyone to leave.
The booming of the music is deaf to my ears; the screaming and shouting muted before it reaches my room. Now would be a good time for one of my friends to return to the dorm room and just talk with me. Harry (one of the very many Harry’s running around) is the only one in the dorm, but considering how moody he gets if he doesn’t get precisely ten hours of sleep, I don’t risk waking him for something as simple as my nightmare.
With my body shaking, I climb out of the warm covers and sit in front of the bed on my hands and knees, searching for the one thing that might just save me.
My hand connects with the book, the touch burning my fingers. Leave it to Rose to put some sort of hex on her diary. She’d changed, but even she couldn’t ignore the desire to learn new spells and practice them. I ignore the tingling feeling, knowing full well that the spell wouldn’t have any long lasting damages.
I push aside the look on Rose’s face had she been alive to see me read her diary, as I reach for my wand. A quick Lumos later and I am opening the cover of her diary.
The front page is filled with her familiar, loopy, handwritten print.
This is Rose’s diary.
If you are not Rose; why in Merlin’s name are you reading this?
I know she is right, but I knew she had something to teach me.
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