Violet finally remembered that she really ought to write something in the book, what people called the 'memory book.' As a budding writer, she'd planned for years what she would write. It would be something brilliant and incisive and memorable, and years later when she was a famous author, people would look back and copy it and quote it in her biography.

But nothing about this day was going the way she had expected and now that the time had come, she found her thoughts a chaotic jumble. Images from the past seven years flew through her mind--getting possessed by a ghost, the Neo-Alliance takeover, Healer Poppy and her drugged candles, the Pharoah's Triumph vines and their stranglehold over the school, the year the corridors and walls were filled with cracks and the Castle nearly came apart, the Baby Sphinx's appearance at the Big Dance, ah yes, the wonderful, wonderful dance...

Flipping through the pages of past students, Violet realized that she was looking at them without really seeing them. Right. Well, then. Resolutely she picked up the pen, smoothed out the next blank page, and began to just jot down whatever came into her mind...

There. It wasn't brilliant, or even good, writing, but it would have to do. Sighing, Violet signed her name with a flourish, the signature she'd been practising since she was about seven. Then she slowly walked back to the Slytherin table.