Her eyes were paralyzed. And locked in their view was a nice rounded snapshot of Snape's potions classroom – ancient stone walls and torches placed sporadically, a rather dismal setting. A brilliant, candy-colored stained glass window toward the front of the room swept a beacon of rainbow, faerie-dust sunlight across the face of Seamus Finnegan, the subject of this candid photograph. He was a sixth-year Gryffindor, beautifully nonchalant as he mentally evaporated into the sky, his head poised atop and supported by his left arm, and his right used to take occasional notes… which she should be doing as well – the potions final was less than two weeks away. But Seamus… a much more interesting subject, in her opinion. And yet he was so tragically unobtainable. After all, she was Alice Malfoy – a Slytherin. Slytherins, much less Malfoys, did not get involved with Gryffindors.

-"Alice?"… a dangerous, silky voice interjected into her wonderland like a knitting needle into a balloon, painfully and disquietingly, creating a rather unpleasant surprise.

It was Snape. It was the usual teacher thing to do, pick on the ones who aren't paying attention.She'd always thought the practice was rather cruel, and she especially reprimanded herself for not expecting it from Snape, of all people.

"Alice, what is the homework for Monday?"

She took a moment to regain composure and almost admitted that she had no idea, that she didn't know because she had been ogling that damned beautiful Irish boy for the past hour and fantasizing over how sexy he'd be with blue spiked hair. But she didn't think Snape would take well to such an excuse, and thankfully noticed that Hypothia Swingward, her friend and fellow Slytherin (as well as her brother Draco's current "love interest", which was slightly weird but she'd gotten used to it) had written down the homework on her parchment (adjacent to the repeatedly traced-over phrase "I (heart) Draco").

"The homework," Alice said in a matter-of-fact tone as if to mock him with her luck, "is to write a report on any famous alchemist in history, including a bibliography." (she had always relished the satisfaction in getting back at teachers like that when they pulled their clever little tricks.)

"Very well." he said, with a look that said I'll get you next time. "Have a… nice… weekend, class."

The sound of books and papers being shoved into bags filled the room, and it was emptied and a vacuumed flurry of small-talk and flowing cloaks.

…

"God, I love corn!" squealed Alice in delight at the culinary selection at lunch. She grabbed two ears of corn on the cob from the bowl and put them on her plate.

"I think you love something else, too." teased Claire (another fellow Slytherin).

"Yeah," joined in Hypothia. "I saw you staring at that Seamus kid all throughout Snape's class!"

"Who's… Seamus?" Alice did a horrible job at pretending she didn't know.

"Oh, you know very well 'who's Seamus'. You couldn't take your eyes off of him!" Hypothia said mockingly.

"Snape's so sexy when he tries to get people in trouble…" mused Claire. After Hypothia and Alice had stared at her blankly for quite some time, Claire blinked twice, looked around, and said, "What the hell are you looking at?" in a demanding tone.

"Nothing," grinned Alice. "Nothing at all." Claire was prone to mentally drifting off like that, and Hypothia and Alice had become accustomed to it.

KaBOOM! A noise that sounded like the earth splitting in half and a flash of light that might have been the sun exploding shook the great hall. All eyes turned toward the Gryffindor table, where Seamus Finnegan sat with his wand dangling delicately in his right hand above a goblet of water, his face and hair blackened from the explosion. "Poor kid, I don't think he'll ever get that spell right," said a voice from the Ravenclaw table, near enough that Alice could hear.

"I am so asking that boy out," she declared to Hypothia and Claire, who looked at each other and exchanged amused grins as Alice dissolved into the task of conquering her corn.