A Little Bit of Love and Laughter

"Emmy!" Val's voice called out, echoing through the corridors as all four houses headed to the Great Hall. "Emmy, wait up!"

I stopped near the girls' lavatory and waited. "Did I miss anything in Potions?"

She caught up to me and shook her head. "Nope. And Snape extended that essay to the rest of us. None of your doing, I assure you. He was just in a rotten mood."

We were swept up among the crowd of Ravenclaws and, our voices drowned out by the others' conversations, continued to the Great Hall.

The Hall was decorated, as it usually was, in the four colours representing the Hogwarts houses, and as always, each house was seated at its respective table. The ceiling reflected the weather that night - mostly clear with bright stars and a full moon. Dumbledore stood at the front of the Hall and cleared his throat loudly before beginning his speech.

"Good evening. I trust that you have all had a good school year thus far, though the school year has only just begun!" He chuckled to himself. "I would like to announce that our guest schools should be arriving shortly and-"

Dumbledore was interrupted by a loud rapping on the wooden doors as they opened, revealing a whole line of girls in periwinkle blue uniforms and an extraordinarily large woman standing behind them, and Dumbledore introduced, "The lovely ladies of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, with their headmistress, Madame Olympe Maxime."

The Beauxbatons girls danced in through the Great Hall and caught the attention of every boy in the room. Roger, who was sitting on my left, removed his glance from Violet and me and dropped his conversation with us in order to gawk at and admire the new girls.

"We're going to need to do something about this," Violet whispered, nodding over to Roger.

"Definitely," I agreed.

"I'll give you a makeover tonight. That'll be sure to help combat this new-found competition."

I giggled. That was her idea of doing something? Well, it was better than nothing. And I was certainly anxious to see just what she had up her sleeve...