9 September 1942
Blah blah blah home-log, blah blah blah bind-runes... I normally like this class but I can't concentrate on anything at all today, and Dashwood and Kyteler are so disgustingly pleased with themselves after all of the things they've done, and Goyle loves them, and Magnusson's letting them work on a joint project, and even Edouard thinks I'm a terrible prefect. Was a terrible prefect.
It could be worse; I could be Eileen McCormack or Hubert Crockford. But that's cold comfort.
Olive and Arianwen seem to have forgiven me, but basically it boils down to Olive saying I didn't deserve to be humiliated in public and Arianwen saying I've been punished enough, without even the I didn't deserve it point, and it's time I stopped paying so much attention to House points and remembered who my friends are. Of course she would say that, given that she's dumped all her lovers to be with one of our Muggleborns in Ravenclaw exclusively.
Was I really that bad? If I'd brought in the staff every time Claire Jeannot slipped out at night to do God knows what God knows where, we'd be down a thousand points instead of the five hundred we already are. Everyone really did think she was having sex with a lot of boys but it turns out she was just sitting in the Owlery waiting for letters that never came. How was I to know that when she can't even remember couldn't remember that she was supposed to get dressed every morning and she's got a collection of the most disgusting French pornography ever written!
Not to mention Zipporah Kaplan, who is so damned smug about the matter and now makes a habit of ANNOUNCING to her roommates that she's running off to go and debauch herself and if she's not back by two AM they should tell someone but please not until then--is that the future of things here? That's her solution to this. To tell everyone where she's going, what she's doing and who she's with, and be completely open and honest about the fact that she's an utter slag.
I know people say that about me, because I sleep with Ed, but I have a relationship with Ed, and a relationship with Olive, and with Ari (though it's not what it once was). It's not the same thing as what Zipporah Kaplan does or worse what Gillian Greenwood does. Everyone thinks I'm so mean, but the Slytherins break just as many rules as we do, and for some reason the rules they break aren't important, but the rules we broke are. It is completely unfair. And Charis Malfoy says to me things like, "you have no right to criticise people for sneaking out and having promiscuous sex when you have so much of it" (but I'm NOT) and "nobody's bothered when Dashwood drinks framboise, except Kyteler, and he signed on for it, but everyone's bothered when there's half a bowl of porridge in the common room because someone always puts their elbow in it".
I've always known that even though everyone breaks some rules there are actual good reasons behind them, ideals to which we must aspire. And it turns out that the Slytherins think that the only reason we have rules is so that people don't bother each other, and if everyone has the sense not to bother anyone else with their rule-breaking, rules don't have to be enforced. The entire school is completely in the control of rampant utilitarians. It hasn't escaped my notice that on the entire 'Inquisitorial Squad' there was exactly one Gryffindor and no Ravenclaws at all. For all his confidence in Zeller (who will be the best prefect in the world until sundown Friday, and then not lift a finger till sundown on Saturday) and Brocklehurst (who is a mouse), he didn't put them on that squad of his.
Still, in the end, I suppose it boils down to this. We lost Claire Jeannot. And somebody has to hang for it.