Maddie meets Hugo and Lily at the quidditch pitch. "Wait..." she mumbles to herself, "we have this class with Ravenclaw?" Hugo and Lily nod in unison. Maddie groans, "But I told Lena--" she stops herself, "nothing." Lily eyes Maddie nervously, "Are you okay? You've been kinda... off lately." Maddie starts to say something when Hugo offers, "I haven't noticed." Lily shrugs. "Probably just my imagination."

The cousins head off to retrieve their brooms and Maddie takes a seat on the grass. She adjusts her broken arm and watches the class begin. A Ravenclaw 1st year approached her. "Hey," she said, "I'm Claire." Maddie had no idea why this girl was talking to her. Claire looked at her expectantly. Oh, right. "I'm Maddie," she replied. "I've seen you sitting out for a few days, it must be boring."

"I guess."

Claire tucks a dark curl behind her ear, exposing her freckled face. For a moment, all Maddie can see is how beautiful she is. And small.

"I'm usually super shy," she shrugs, "but I thought you could use the company." Maddie sighs. This girl seems really nice and all I've done is ignore her. But isn't that the right thing to do? Be invisible?

Maddie puts aside her passive aggressiveness and smiles at Claire. "Thank you."

The rest of the class Maddie and Claire talk about... well, everything. Turns out Claire was muggle-born, and her parents thought magic was joke, so they threw out the first letter. After that, Professor Hagrid came and explained it all to her parents.

"Are you serious?" Maddie giggled. Claire nodded, "They almost didn't let me go." This made Maddie laugh so hard the professor had to come over and silence her. For a class, Maddie forgot all about the flask in her robe pocket. She wasn't trying to manipulate somebody or lie to them, she was just an 11-year-old having fun. And that was a feeling she hadn't felt in a long time.

-

"Who's that?" Lily asked as she and Hugo made their way over to Maddie after class. "Oh, her name's Claire." Maddie shrugged. "Oh." Lily glanced at the ground in a strange sort of way. "What's that face for?" Hugo elbowed Lily. "What face?" Lily wiped her expression clean. "Whatever, let's get to class." Maddie knew Lily was jealous, but she just pretended like nothing happened.