Author's Note:

If you've read my other FF (Our Woven Destruction), you'll be familiar with my OC: Alice Taylor.

This is an alternate universe/reality and is no way connected to Our Woven Destruction.

Novaturient: (adj) desiring our seeking powerful change in one's life, behavior, or situation.

The classroom is mostly quiet as everyone listens to Hermione Granger explain about the love potion. There's a shuffling of feet as I lean towards it. There are girls in front of me and I'm all the way at the back, but even from this distance I can smell it. That sweet and tangy scent of green apples, mint, and expensive cologne that I knew so well. I had spent five years inhaling those scents that summed up to one person.

He stood to my left, completely oblivious or apathetic, to everything. I chanced a glance at him, he seemed to be thinking about something, but what it could be, I wouldn't know. He'd never spoken but one word to me since our first year at Hogwarts and that was 'move!'

I'm usually alone during classes since I had only one friend in the whole entire school. Two if I counted my cat Vladimir, and three if I counted my stuffed unicorn Mr. Bonbon whom I've had since I was five. But this year, Marcy and I have most of the same class.

"I give up," Marcy, my only human friend, says and starts doodling on her book. Her cauldron is bubbling something dark and sticky. Mine isn't any better. I've never been good at potions.

"I'm sure it's salvageable," I try to encourage her, but she only shakes her head and points her quill at Hermione whose hair has frizzled out more than normal.

"If Hermione can't do it, I certainly can't do it. No use in trying," she shrugs and goes back to drawing. "I don't know why you're even still at it. You're definitely not going to get it, you still can't make a simple cure for boils, and that's first year stuff." She laughs at me.

I look down at my cauldron, which is solidifying in such a rate that my stirring stick gets stuck. I bite my lip and casually turn my body in front of the cauldron so Marcy doesn't see. But this doesn't fool her, she leans over to the side and stares down at my potion, her laughter louder than ever. "You've turned it into cement!"

Something whizzes past me, hits the metal beam in front of me before it ricochets, and smacks me in the middle of the forehead. It bounces off my face and falls into my cauldron.

"Ow!" I press my hand to my forehead and look at my fingers to see if my head is bleeding. There's nothing, but I feel a bump on my skin that wasn't there before.

"Oi, you've got my sophophrous bean!" Draco says behind me.

I freeze. Is he talking to me? Really talking to me? I bite my lips and don't say anything.

"Are you deaf?" he steps to my side and looks at my face, his eyes moving upwards to my forehead. He makes a face before shaking his head. "Well, where'd you put it? I need that back."

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but when I couldn't, I closed it again. My hand reaches inside my cauldron and pull out the bean. My concoction had solidified anyways.

He looks down at my hand and inside the cauldron as he chuckles, "What's that?"

"Um… the drought…" I say quietly.

Draco laughs, "looks like a bloody rock to me." This earns laughter from the people around us, especially Marchy, who laughs the loudest. He snatches the bean from my hand and goes back to his table.

After a few moments, I turn to Marcy. "Did you see that? He talked to me!" I whisper to her.

She rolls her eyes, "you're pathetic. He doesn't even know your name. And you've got a red lump on your forehead."

"He doesn't know yours either," I fire back. I'm not usually this forward. I touch the bump and try to press it down.

Marcy stares at me, purses her lips, then turns her chair around. "Hey, Draco, what's my name?"

He glances up from his potion and looks at her oddly, "Marcy…?"

"Thanks!" Marcy says cheerily and looks back at me with a smug grin.

Marcy is my friend. We've been friends since first year. She's in Hufflepuff with me, but she's better than me in everything. Her grades are higher in every class, I mostly get average no matter how much I study. She's in the Quidditch Team and I can't even fly on a broomstick because I'm afraid of heights.

Not only is she better than me in everything, but she's prettier. Much prettier. We're like sun and… mud. Where her hair is a full golden blonde that radiates, mine is coffee brown, limp, and stringy. She's tall and has the full figure of a woman. I'm the shortest person in our class and lucky enough to have graduated from a training bra last year.

Marcy has many friends, but I'm her best. We talk about everything and there's nothing about me that she doesn't know. Like for instance, my family's status was right there with the Malfoys. Pureblood, rich, and powerful. That was until they died three months before school ended last year. She also knows that I'm the first and only Hufflepuff in my all-Slytherin lineage. It was something that many of my would-have-been-Slytherin-friends knew about because they always saw me at dinner parties with my parents. Then the Sorting Hat yelled out HUFFLEPUFF, and I became the social outcast I am now.

I can't blame the Sorting Hat for all my problems though. It's not its fault I'm painfully shy.

So despite my lackluster life, below average skills, and plain appearance, Marcy is my friend. Even when she is being brutally honest and sometimes mean.

I look at Draco as he's stirring his cauldron. I want to ask Draco what my name is. We'd gone to school together since we were eleven and we knew each other before that when our families would go to the same dinners and parties. Surely, he knew my name.

I'd ask him: Draco, what's my name?

And he'd say, with a large grin,: Alice Taylor, of course!

Draco's eyes meet mine and he scowls irritably, "What are you staring at!?"