Hi, sorry I never got to say much on the last chapter, but you still have to review! I do not own anything even remotely related to Harry Potter. Also, I have posted pics for the characters.

R&R please

He not looked at a girl like this since, since her. He was soon thinking, 'Oh, god why do I have to think about her now? I just found out there are wizards, that I have some super half-god thingy inside of me and I'm thinking about her.' He put his head in his hands, but when he looked up he saw the girl again and saw that she was also looking at him. But not like any of the other 500 kids who were staring at him. He met her gaze, and she smiled at him. He felt like he was going to melt in his chair.

Dumbledore stood up, and the hall immediately got quiet. He addressed them as they took their seats at the four long tables. "Greetings to all of you who are returning to Hogwarts, and now let us meet our newcomers," his voice boomed as the huge doors opened once again and in walked tiny little man who had a little wispy beard and miniscule half-moon glasses carrying a stool and a hat, and being followed by a bunch of 11 year olds.

He placed the stool in front of the staff table and put the hat on top of it. Ian looked at the hat confusedly. "What the?" he was saying as the hat suddenly tore and started to sing. Ian stared wide eyed at the hat, not hearing a word of it because he was trying to get used to the idea that an old, ripped hat was singing to hundreds of Wizards and Witches. When it finished he repeated the statement, this time a little louder earning him disapproving looks from the teachers situated close him.

Suddenly the students broke out into applause and the hall filled with cheering. The little man instead started calling names. "Addison, Brian." A small, terrified looking boy slowly walked up to the stool being beckoned on by the four foot tall wizard holding an old hat.

He sat down on the stool and he placed the hat on his head. After several long moments the hat ripped again and boomed, "HUFFLEPUFF!" The boy stepped down and walked towards to a table that had erupted in load clapping and cheering.

Confused, Ian leaned over to Dumbledore and whispered, "What's Hufflepuff?"

He quickly whispered back, "Hufflepuff is one of the four houses here at Hogwarts. There is Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor (which he saw contained the pretty girl), and Slytherin." He said while pointing to a different table for each.

Their conversation was interrupted by a roar of "GRYFFINDOR!" and a little girl skipped happily over to the corresponding table, taking a seat next to the girl he was staring at who patted the newcomer on the back. The sorting went on like this for about ten minuets. Ian wasn't really paying attention though. His mind was on the beautiful girl sitting fifteen yards away from him.

But his daydreaming was cut short by Dumbledore's booming voice. "Now that that is finished, I would like to introduce the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Professor Snape. There was an odd silence in the hall except for a few scattered claps coming from the table Ian remembered to be called Syltherin as a surly looking, greasy-haired man stood up and bowed. Now, Dumbledore said to the awkward silence, "I'm sure you are all famished from your long trip, so, tuck in! He said to much applause. Ian almost fell backwards in his seat when all sorts of food, sauces, and drinks appeared out of thin air on the table.

Bewildered, he muttered, "Does everything have to be either floating or magically appearing?" Dumbledore just smiled and offered him some delicious looking turkey. He dug into it greedily, realizing that he had not eaten all day and was famished. He picked up a pitcher containing an orange liquid sipped it. Delighted, he asked Dumbledore what it was.

"That my dear boy is pumpkin juice. It is a very popular drink among wizards" He answered politely. Ian nodded and took another sip as his thoughts and gaze once again traveled to the brown-haired beauty that had just walked into his life. She was talking to the bright red haired boy sitting next to her. On the other side of her was sympathy boy with his body entwined with a female carbon copy of the red head. But no matter where he looked he kept on glancing back at her.

As the remains of the food began to be consumed, it suddenly vanished as quickly as it appeared. Seconds later all the puddings, cakes, ice creams, and tarts you could ever eat popped up and this time Ian did fall over backwards. He quickly righted himself, but earned disapproving looks from the staff and several snickers coming from the students, including the girl which caused him to turn as red as the cherry cake sitting in front of him.

He sat through the rest of the feast silently nibbling on a tart trying not to embarrass himself any further. After what seemed like eternity, the food once again disappeared, and Dumbledore stood up. "Before we retire to our warm beds, I would like to remind everyone that the Forbidden Forest is strictly off-bounds and to inform you that Mr. Filch has posted shortened lists of forbidden objects in the hallways but the full thirty-four page list may viewed in his office. Now prefects, please lead your classmates to their dormitories, and sleep well so you will be rested and ready for a brand new year of learning." He finished and sat down.

"Um, excuse me Professor?" Ian asked as Dumbledore turned to look at him. "Where will I be staying?"

"If it is okay with you, I was thinking of putting you in the same dorm as the sixth year Gryffindors. They are all the same age as you and I'm sure you will get fine with them. Just follow Miss Hermione Granger and Mr. Ronald Weasley right over there." He said and pointed out the girl he had been staring at all night and her red-headed friend.

He nodded. "Got it, but how do I know which room the sixth year's is"

"Just ask them. They will answer all of your questions for you. Now, if you could come to my office at 9:00 tomorrow morning that would be splendid. The password is 'pumpkin patties'" Noticing Ian's confusion, he quickly added, "Simply speak the password to the gargoyle and it will open. Good night." And with that he walked off taking to McGonagall.

Ian ran to catch up with the crowd led by the beautiful girl, or Hermione. 'Hermione, a beautiful name for with a beautiful girl' he was thinking to himself as he walked along the stone corridors. As he was lost in his thoughts, he bumped into a 12 year old by the look of it when the crowd stopped.

Being tall for his age, Ian looked over everybody to see that they were standing in front of a portrait of an immensely fat lady. He heard someone say something to the picture and it suddenly swung open revealing a giant, circular room with lots of couches, chairs, and tables scattered around the room. And in the back there was a giant fire place with a huge roaring fire burning in it.

Most of the group ascended immediately up either a stairway on the left of the room, or one on the right. Only a few students remained, all of them he recognized as being first years. Hermione addressed the crowd, not noticing Ian in the back of the crowd. "This is the Gryffindor common room. Boys, your dormitories are up that stairway on the right, and girls are on the left. You will find all your belongings already in your rooms. Good night."

The students filed up their respective stairs, so only Ian and Hermione remained. She breathed deeply and stepped forward. "You must be mister Stillwell. Dumbledore owled me and said you might be coming. What school are you transferring from?"

Ian was thinking, 'Oh, shit. I bet she thinks I'm a wizard and transferring from some other magic school.' "Um, my school was called Halsted High, but-" he was cut off though

"Halsted? I've never hear of a magical School called Halsted. There was a school called in Lexham, but that was a muggle school."

Ian nodded "That's the one. Wait, how do know about my school? I've never met anyone who lived elsewhere that has even heard of Lexham." He asked suspiciously.

"I grew up there. I would have gone to Halsted if I hadn't gotten my Hogwarts letter. Are you telling me you've been going to muggle schools?" She said as if he had been working in some Malaysian sweat shop for the last five years of his life.

"Well you see, I'm not really a wizard." He winced as soon as the words left his mouth.

She looked at him funny. "What do you mean you're not a wizard? If you weren't a wizard you would not be going to Hogwarts. It's a school of magic."

"Well, apparently there's some weird blob of concentrated magic flying around inside of me, and this psycho guy Voldemort is trying to find me so he can use the blob thingy to make himself powerful again. At least that's what I've been told. Oh, and it's called dues dimidium." He explained.

"Oh." She said strangely. "So you're a muggle with magic inside of you. Wow." Ian nodded, and yawned a little. "Well, I guess I should show you where you'll be sleeping" She led him up the stairs on the right and stopped in front of one of the doors. "This is it. And when you see Ron, the one with red hair, tell him he needs to take his prefect duties seriously. Good night Ian." And with that she turned around and walked down the steps.

"Good night" he said focusing on a certain part of her anatomy located around her waist. When she disappeared from sight, he took a deep breath and opened the door. He walked inside and five heads turned to look at him. He recognized two of them as sympathy boy and the red head he now knew as Ron. "Uh, hi. I'm Ian.

Sympathy boy got up to face him. "Can we help you?"

"Um, well, I was told that I was staying here." He said cautiously, not wanting to get on the bad side of five teenage wizards.

"Oh, you a transfer student?"

"You could say that." He shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

"Well this is Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom," pointing to a plump, red faced boy, "Seamus Finnegan, and Dean Thomas" pointing to the other two boys. "And I'm Harry Potter"

Ian shook his hand. "Nice to meet you. Ian Stillwell."

Harry smiled. "You can have that bunk, right above Neville. Wait, where's your stuff?" At that moment a bag that Ian recognized as his appeared on the bed. He unzipped it and inside was a bunch of his clothes and few of his possessions. He shook his head and grinned. "What school are you coming from?" Harry asked as he flopped back onto his bed.

"Halsted." He tried to avoid the fact that he was not really a wizard.

Harry nodded, but Ron furrowed his brow. "I've never heard of any Halsted. Where is it?"

Ian sighed. "It's in Lexham, but it isn't a magic school. Actually, I'm really not a wizard." He said, deciding to just get it over with.

The boy called Seamus cut in. "What do mean you're not a wizard? This is a school for witches and wizards. And by the looks of it you're not a witch."

Realizing that he was just going to have to go through the exact same conversation a hundred more times, he told them everything he told to Hermione.

Ron was the first to break the awkward silence that followed. "So how does this thing work? Does it give you any magical abilities?"

"It supposedly comes in flashes called umm, what was it called? Oh yeah, vicis du vox. It happens when I have bursts of extreme emotions, and it apparently gives me a shit-load of power during those bursts. At least that's what Dumbledore told me." When he finished a load snore filled the room. He turned around to see Neville fast asleep. "Jeez, I didn't think I was that boring," he joked.

Harry shook his head. "Damn. Well, we should probably follow Neville's example. Night everybody" He said with a yawn. They all clambered into bed and were asleep within seconds. All except for Ian, who was laying on his back staring up at the ceiling. With all that has been going on today he had not had to think about her at all. He had even forgotten all about her until the feast. When he had seen Hermione.

When it was over, he had not even considered being with anyone else but as he was talking to Hermione, he was thinking that this was someone he could be with. Someone who could easily replace her. He soon drifted of into sleep, his dreams filled with singing hats and a certain girl he just couldn't get out of his head.

Hermione's POV

Hermione rushed upstairs to her dorm and sat down on her bed, ignoring her other roommates. She covered her face with her hands and lay down. Ian's story freaked her out. But not as much as her feelings she had felt for him from the first time she looked up at him sitting at the staff table, looking terrified. He was hot. Oh god, what was she turning into? Some kind of slag? And what he had just told her somehow, in a strange way deepened her feelings. She had never felt this way about anyone before. Sure, she thought a few boys were cute and she admittedly developed a bit of a crush on Victor Crum and even Sirius Black, but they were nothing compared to this. And she had first set eyes on him not one hour ago!

Ian's POV

He awoke the next morning wearing the jeans and t-shirt he had worn yesterday. As he got up and stretched, he noticed distant dreams of Hermione had awoken something else too. Thankfully he was the first awake so no one else noticed his condition. He stripped off his wrinkled clothes and reached for the bag, pulling out some running shorts and a wife beater.

He quickly changed and crept down the stairway, glancing at his watch that read 5:42. After taking several wrong turns, he finally found the entrance hall and opened the doors. When he first looked up at the school, seeing a magnificent castle with huge spires and towers he was surprised, expecting to see a run down, decrepit old mansion. Then he had remembered that Dumbledore lifted the enchantment just for Ian's eyes. He took a few minuets to just look at the beautiful landscape he had missed when he first arrived. He started to jog. He ran around the entire castle, stopping at the front doors for a quick breather. Then he did it again. And again. And again. He occasionally ran past some of the students eating breakfast on the lake side, including Harry and his red-head friend making out under a tree.

After his fifth lap around the huge complex, he lay down on the front steps and looked up at the sky, lost in his daydreams. He lay like this for about twenty minuets. Just starring and thinking. When he finally snapped out of his daze he looked at his watch. 7:56. Realizing that he had missed breakfast and the students would be starting classes soon; he walked through the doors and navigated his way back up to the portrait of the fat lady. "Can I go in?" he asked politely.

"Password?" she responded.

He looked at her in confusion. "Password? You need a password to get in here! Oh shit." He sat down on the flagstone and sighed. But only a few minuets later Hermione came running up to the fat lady yelling, "Fiddlesticks, Fiddlesticks. Oh, hey Ian. What are you doing here?" she walked in, grabbed a book of a table and turned to Ian.

"I was outside running and when I tried to get back in when she said I needed a password, so I was waiting outside for someone. Don't your classes start about now?" He said flopping down on a couch.

She started to leave the room. "Yeah, I just left my textbook here. See ya!" He smiled and waved as she left. Deciding he had better get ready for his appointment with the man, Ian walked up the stairs and stripped down to take a shower. He turned the water on hot and stood under the steaming water, macho style. He walked back into the dormitory with a towel around his waist and picked out a pair of slacks and a blue polo. Not too fancy.

Seeing he still had half an hour, he decided to explore the castle. After drying his hair, he left the common room and started walking along the many corridors. He was doing this for a while, marveling at the many suits of armor and moving portraits, until he looked at his watch and realized he only had three minuets till his appointment. And he had no idea where he was or how to get back.

He started pacing nervously in front of a painting of a troll in a tutu doing god knows what, thinking that he should have asked for a map or something. After the third pace, he stopped dead. On the wall opposite the painting a door had suddenly appeared. Curious, he opened the door and gasped when he looked inside. Except for a thin path leading to a small table, the floor was covered in rolled up parchment. There must have thousands of scrolls. He picked one up and saw it was a map of some forest in Lithuania. He picked up another one, also a map. He picked three more, all maps. Then he walked to the table and saw a single folded up piece parchment. Carefully, he unfolded the map a gazed wide eyed at its contents.

"Is this Hogwarts?" He said to himself as he boxes labeled Great Hall, Hufflepuff Common Room, and Charms Classroom. But there was another feature to the map. In some of the boxes that he concluded were rooms, and other parts of the building there were little dots with labels on them. Labels that looked like names. And they were moving. Some were just twitching, and some were moving steadily down what looked like hallways. He scanned over it until he found what he was looking for. Right next to a little dot labeled Harry Potter, there was a Hermione Granger. He found he was soon drooling and shook his head. 'Man, I need to get laid. I mean come on, I falling for a fuckin dot.'

Remembering the crisis at hand, Ian snatched up the map and ran out of the room. He ran his finger over the paper until it stopped at an Albus Dumbledore. Then he found his own name and traced a route from his dot to the professor's. He started running down said path, full size, and saw his dot going along with him on the map. It stopped when he did, sped up and slowed with him and all Ian did was shake his head in disbelief.

When he saw is dot stop in front of a mini gargoyle, Ian looked up and said, "Pumpkin patties." It sprang to life and Ian sprinted up the staircase it revealed. Fully aware he was a good fifteen minuets late to a meeting with a wizard, he took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Enter," A wispy voice called from beyond the door. Ian walked in to find the old man sitting behind his desk smiling, his eyes twinkling behind the little spectacles.

Ian shuffled his feet nervously, "Sorry I'm late professor, I kinda got a little lost on the way here."

"That's fine. After all, we have the whole day in front of us. I noticed you were up bright and early," gesturing towards the window overlooking the lake. "Please, sit." And he conjured up a puffy arm chair using his wand.

Ian hesitated to sit in it wondering if it was only a projection, but once assuring it was actually there by poking it, he sat.

"Now, Ian. There is one matter that I feel must be taken care of. I will get strait to the point. Do you remember me telling you the concentrated magic that resides in the dues dimidium cannot survive on its own? The reason it needs a host is because the magic was so compressed if it were to remain alone in its own state, after about three seconds it would, well, it would explode. And it would not be a small explosion. I estimate the force of the blast could easily level Hogwarts if it were to explode inside the grounds. A living host contains it though. I do not know how, but it stops the magic from combusting. But, as all things do, it comes with a price that must be paid. It eats away at your strength, slowly at first, but with every vicis du vox it gets faster. This goes on until," Dumbledore's voice trailed away.

"Until I die," Ian finished quietly. Dumbledore nodded solemnly. Ian continued to speak in a very soft voice. "How long does it take?"