"And, as you probably know," Mr Fieldson droned, his stupor-inducing tone causing most of the students to subconsciously stare out of the window in a mindless daze, "This is one of the most important years of your life. This-" he paused for unnecessary effect. "-Is the year your GCSEs will be starting."

The response was immediate. Tom and Oliver's heads rose from the table in front of me and they began drumming their palms on the wood in synchronized anxiety, Penny managed to simultaneously fall off her chair and knock over a stack of books, Ava and Erin crumpled up the notes that they had been passing to each other all lesson, and my girlfriend Dylan reluctantly lifted her head off my shoulder, a lilac strand of her ponytail still clinging to the fabric of my blazer.

The only person whom he failed to draw a response from was Ash, a girl I vaguely knew but had never spoken to. Sitting in the second row, she continued to immerse herself in the intricately detailed wolf she had been sketching for the last hour, her pencil gliding rapidly across the last page of her exercise book. She turned around and we looked at each other, rolled our eyes and exchanged knowing smiles before turning our attention back to the irritating human life form that claimed he was a teacher. Solidarity. That was what this world needed more of.

A nasty smile crept over Mr Fieldson's face. At the beginning of the year, we'd had the misfortune of discovering that he had been assigned to not only teach us Maths for another year, but to be our form tutor as well. And on the first day of Year Nine, he had greeted us with: "Oh. It's you."

No, I'm serious. Those were his exact words.

"This year," he went on, "is the year when all grades are important. You will be choosing subjects, starting coursework and, if you plan to pass the exams themselves, studying." I could almost feel the eye-rolls that were circling the class; we'd all heard this little speech so many times before that we practically knew it off by heart.

"But what if we want to fail our exams?" piped up Ava. "I don't know about you, but I'm planning to go to Hogwarts and take my exams there." All our ordinary classmates looked at her with perplexed annoyance, but we understood. We were Potterheads. I nudged her and whispered, "Dylan and I'll come too, if that's okay." She grinned. "But of course."

"Silence!" snarled Mr Fieldson, glaring at Ava as if she had just told him that Christmas had been cancelled. "If you do not wish to have a detention tomorrow afternoon, Miss Burke, I suggest you keep your mouth shut. And-" And, as if it had been set off so wonderfully deliberately, the bell rang, abruptly cutting off the second lecture that he had evidently been about to start.

Once we had both fought our way out of the thick crowd of pupils that had been stampeding out of the school gates, we were...free, in a way. Free to be ourselves. I wound my fingers through Dylan's, and she said softly, "Could I see your arms, please?" I smiled at her. After all this time, I was recovering. Finally. I thought I'd never be able to say that. I'm recovering. Wordlessly, I shrugged off my blazer and held out my bare arms, letting her take them and trace her fingers over the scars. "No new ones," I told her shakily, remembering the events of last year. This time last year, actually. She let go of my wrists and hugged me. "I'm so proud of you."

She kissed my forehead.

And we carried on walking.

A/N
And that concludes Eve(-1)!
Thankyou for reading!
I will be back!
Isabell, this story is for you.
And don't forget: Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light- Albus Dumbledore