Padma Patil

Well, it seems like half of Hogwarts got a last owl this morning. You could barely see the Slytherin table for all the feathers.

And everyone's talking about the purebloods, of course. Mr Coote, the first one who was brought to St Mungo's, he's Olive Coote's father, so naturally she's a wreck. Sandoval said MacAvoy and Bundy are going to mind her prefect duties for a while - Coote's, that is - while she pulls herself together about it. It's got to be really hard not to be able to go see him. But I guess Electra Bobolis told her that it'd be that way whether or not she were home. I mean, they've locked the ward, so no visitors. But at least if she were home she'd be with her mum. It's really sad. We're all hoping for the best, really.

I guess everything rests on whether Mr Rookwood can fix the cure so it works on everyone, not just Muggles and mudbloods. But one thing I don't understand is if Black's Poison changed so that it could infect half-bloods (and now purebloods), then how can we be sure it needs the same kind of cure? I mean, the disease was in the water, right? And the food? But then when it started to hurt half-bloods it was in the air, right? So doesn't the cure need to change, too?

Well, I guess that's what Mr Rookwood is trying to figure out. Lucky he's much more clever than that Black, or we'd be in a lot more danger.

And of course, everyone's not looking forward to not getting more owls. It was bad enough not getting care parcels, but now?

It's a good thing we've got the journals. I suppose there's a lesson in that, sort of like Smith said. It's important to keep the journals handy so we can all stay closer together. Of course, I'd never leave mine behind, it's like having my friends and family with me, all the time. But some people don't seem to feel that way and they'd do almost anything to get rid of their journals. Even flush them down the toilet. I wonder if it's illegal to--what's the word?--deface, that's it--to deface one's journal?

I'm reading 'Ministry v Bloxam' for the model Wizengamot and there's a discussion in the court report about the things people did to her books to keep from being able to read them. Of course, in that case, it was upheld that it was a reasonable precaution, but then it was used as a precedent for 'Ministry v Diggle', but it didn't work. Because Diggle was trying to work a spell that would scratch out the Ministry seal on all official documents, because he didn't like Minsiter Spavin, and everyone knows that not liking a Minister isn't enough reason to try to make all his official parchments look like ordinary ones.

Anyway. It's interesting, how people use one law to make another one.

Even though it was a really short match yesterday, it was cold enough to make me ill. I've been in the hospital wing all day and Madam Pomfrey says I ought to take another dose of Pepper-Up but that I dont need to stay the night.

I'm glad if I had to be ill it was this week and not last week, because there was only one other person in the hospital wing (Jane Bradley said she was trying a charm to turn her hair blonde and instead it made her bald!).

I'd never been up there before. Madam Pomfrey is very stern, isn't she?