revenge of the knitter

I took my letter of apology up to the Hufflepuff table during breakfast this morning, but the mere sight of me upset the poor girl I scared (what is her name, anyway?) so much that she burst into tears again, and I had to leave it with her prefect. I wanted to hand deliver it rather than send it by owl in case the Headmistress was watching, but she wasn't even there.

Michael and Euan couldn't believe I'd got off that easy--they were sure I was going to be spending the rest of my days here at Hogwarts trailing behind Filch as a junior slave. When Michael saw me struggling with my knit stitches (I have to have four inches of 'garter stitch', which is just knitting back and forth, done to show the Headmistress later today), he told me I should just find a knitting charm to do it for me. His mum does quite a lot of her knitting that way. My mum...well, she's not exactly the knitting type, I guess.

We set out to find a book in the library. Apparently there are rather a lot of household charms that are quite useful. We finally found a good knitting one, but apparently they take a fair bit of practice, since we couldn't do anything other than make the yarn tie itself into more knots. Wisteria, our prefect, came over to see what we were doing (as there were plenty of sparks and possibly some swearing), and she says that creative spells like knitting spells seldom work well unless you actually know the basics of knitting first, and that furthermore, she was quite sure that the Headmistress would like me to persevere in learning to knit by hand, no matter how lumpy or knotted the result.

Michael and Euan, the idiots, couldn't stop laughing at me as I tried to untangle my wool. "Guess we'll be calling you Old Knitty for the rest of the semester," said Euan. I told him, in no uncertain terms, to sod off. "Oh, go on, we don't want to make poor Stuie upset now, do we, Michael? He might throw his yarn at us."

"I'll do more than that," I retorted hotly. "I'll fix you g--" But just then one of the third year girls came over to us--the one with the red hair that Michael's always eyeing up.

"W-would you like to come over and join us, Stuart?" she asked softly. "We might be able to give you a hand with that knitting."

Living well is the best revenge. There are now six girls (Allitrya, Cecelia, Elanor, Emma, Minerva, and Olive) who all know my name, and have given me a standing invitation to join their knitting circle. They are all participating in the kit swap organized by the Headmistress as well, so it looks as though they will be able to help me put together a proper kit. Considering that neither of those two chumps can even say hello to a girl, I'd say I came off pretty well.