Padma Patil

Lana,

How is your grandmother doing? I hope she's all right. Haruman said he'd call to check on her if you like.

I've been thinking more about everything that happened Monday night and, well, it was all very frightening, but honestly it was also kinda cool to be able to pitch in and help. And I hope I did. Help you, I mean. Setting up the checkpoints and the relay stations. You were amazing, I hope someone's told you!

I'm already incredibly busy being back at Hogwarts, and lessons haven't even started yet! Finnigan and I are continuing History Club, of course, and then we've been talking about some other ideas for the CCF, based on everything coming out of Monday. We got to talking about the IMA and some of the other terrorist groups, and of course, the false Black post and so on, and we came up with a proposal we're working on for Professor Sinistra. (And Professor Raz, really.) It's to do with learning more about the ways one can help decode things in the journals - you know, how some people say that all those posts from the Crimson Company are nothing but encrypted messages to their followers? We want to start a cryptography workshop. I thought perhaps someone from MLE might come and give us pointers. I just think...it's hard when we're reading things in the journals, sorting out what's real from what's just a load of stuff, and no one really tells us much here, they like to just tell us that everything's perfect.

Well, we know that's not true, but the whole point of YPL and CCF is to make it more perfect. And it seems to me that knowing what might be going on below the surface is a good way to do that.

And the Corner is really going strong already. We've been putting together timetables for when to revise what. There's hardly going to be a free night, at this rate!

Now, don't fret at me, but Lares Tamblyn actually told me yesterday that he thought Page acted horribly last year and that if I'd like to sit with him and his brother and the other Prefects at meals and such, that'd be all right. And then he said - well, he said Davies even told Page he'd been beastly, 'and especially to someone as fit as Patil,' was what he told him. Cox and Samuels overheard him in the locker rooms, I guess, after one of their matches. Tamblyn said he figures Davies might like to ask me out but he doesn't want anyone to make a meal of it like they did with Page last year. So he suggested that sitting up with the Prefects would put me close to the Quidditchers but not right in among them, because obviously that would look like I'm just trying to catch Page's eye again. As if I'd give him a second chance to be a gentleman!

Well, I'm not sure what I'll do about it. I don't think Tamblyn's the type to wind one up; if Chambers had told me then I'd be sure she'd just putting a kneazle among the occamies! But I always thought Davies fancied Chang, so I don't know quite whether Tamblyn's really drawing the right conclusions. I mean, it could just be that Davies is too decent to let the side's reputation get tarnished by one player's foolishness. Couldn't it?

But anyway. I thought you'd be interested to hear. What else? Well, you probably already know that Karoline Moon's already quite the mope since Baddock's gone. (Clearwater, too, but she does a better job, at least, of not letting it rule her every conversation. Though, honestly, I think I'd be sick if she did go on and on about Weasley, of all people. By the way, what do you think of them choosing her for Head Girl? You probably don't want to say but personally I think, as much as I'd like to see a Ravenclaw with the job, the Headmistress is rather scraping if Clearwater was her best choice. She's not at all a leader like you were. At least, not so far.) But anyway, Dames says Moon and Baddock wanted to get engaged over the summer, but Baddock's father wouldn't allow it! She's been a mope about that, too. Dames thinks it's not that Mr Baddock objects, really, it's just that he thinks they're too young. I thought perhaps he wasn't happy about the play, from last year, you know, how Ptolemy let Karo put in all the stuff about his parents. But Dames doesn't think so, not really. She says Mr Baddock's far too sensible to hold something like that against someone our age. Well, Karo's age. I asked Lines what he thought about his sister getting engaged to Baddock but he just shrugged. Boys.

Oh, and can you believe there were actually no new Bobolis cousins in this year's firsties? But there are some promising ones. Persephone Sanditon's supposedly got a lovely voice and Orla Quirke dances, I hear. And my own cousin, Darshana, she got sorted into Ravenclaw as well! I'm sure Sanji would have been Sorted

Well, I've really gone on and on, haven't I? I'm sure you've loads of important things you're learning at the Ministry and I haven't even asked what you're specialising in now. Of course, Monday was far from the time to catch up but I hope you'll write back and tell me all the exciting parts of your training nowadays!