The holidays flew by, and before I knew it Charlie was coming back to school. I was waiting for him at the station in Hogsmeade. I was one of the only students who had nothing better to do. 'Hey, how was your vacation?'
'Belle?' he had not expected my presence.
'Okay, how was yours?' he asked back.
'Oh, I've spent a lot of time in the library and had a blunder with Snape', I said in a low voice. 'Haha, tell me', Charlie insisted curiously. Would I tell him about my occlumency studies? Oh, it couldn't hurt much. 'So in the library I sometimes read books about occlumancy, you know against mind readers, and since Snape is an occlumens or something, I thought let me ask him access to the forbidden library section. Which turned out not to be a good idea', I said casually.
Charlie laughed so hard at the tone in which I told my story. 'Nice try Bell. I should have been there', he added with a laugh. We took the carriage to the castle, which looked beautiful in the white snow. Several students were waiting for people in the entrance hall, including a friend of Charlie: Donaghan Tremlett. Since he was a muggle-born, I hadn't spent much time with him. But when several of Charlie's Gryffindor friends got out of the carriages, a whole group formed around us. I wanted to get to know them.
'Come! Then we'll go to the Great Hall', said a boy whose name I didn't know.
'Then I can't stay with you', I pitifully complained to Charlie.
'Just come and sit at our table', the boy said confidently, wrapping his arm around me in a friendly manner. Laughing we sat down at the Gryffindor table, me with my back to the Slytherins, I didn't like they seeing me sitting here. We laughed with the whole group about funny and stupid things that people had experienced during their holidays and after a while some Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs joined us until we were about 20. It was great, until Professor Snape came along. 'Do the house tables no longer apply to some here?' he asked gruffly. Suddenly everyone fell silent. Charlie had to look at me reluctantly. I gave him a playful "fuck off" look. Those stupid tables! If it were up to me, everyone could sit wherever they wanted. But it wasn't up to me. As I reluctantly sat back down at my house table, I thought of all the things I'd change about Hogwarts : A few math and spelling classes wouldn't hurt, if only for an hour. When I sometimes check and correct essays for a knut, you see copies where not even half of the words are written correctly. Language subjects wouldn't be bad either: we couldn't get anywhere where our native language wasn't spoken. But I had to admit that the subjects we have now were probably a lot more fun than all those muggle subjects. Other than history of magic, nothing was more boring than that.

Time flew by. Charlie introduced me to all his friends, which gave me a better reputation in the other houses, as opposed to my own house where it only deteriorated. Many girls there only hung out with me because I was a Slytherin and, according to them, a thoroughbred. I also got to know Charlie's brother Bill.

One day while I was at the library I saw Charlie reading a book. "From Egg to Infero : A Practical Handbook for Dragon Breeders." Startled, he looked up when he heard me.
'Are you going to breed a dragon Charl?' I asked teasingly.
'No, I'm just interested.'
'What's your favorite dragon?'
'Hebridean Black, what's yours?'
'Common Welsh Green'
'Why that one?'
'I know they're not the coolest dragons, but...', I couldn't quite come up with my words, 'well, they're the only ones left to keep and I love their color. It's such a beautiful natural green', I said.
'It's like you kind of feel a connection with them', Charlie described exactly what I felt.
'Yes indeed!'
'You know, I heard they keep all kinds of dragons in Romania.'
'Wow', I said dreamily, even though I'd known that for a long time. We kept exchanging tidbits about dragons for a while, because they both fascinated us.

Meanwhile, the Quidditch tournament continued. The first game after Christmas was Gryffindor against Ravenclaw. I cheered for the winning team: Gryffindor.
Then it was Slytherin against Hufflepuff, which was an easy win for Slytherin .