Alicia Spinnet's hair was purple. That was it, really. There was no way around it. Her hair was purple.

She was a nice enough girl, Angelina knew. They were in the same year and had all their classes together, and Alicia was always the first to offer help or give advice. She was also pretty clever, Angelina had noticed. Everyone liked her, and so did Angelina. She wasn't as good in Quidditch as Angelina was, that's why Angelina got immediately into the team and Alicia was only in the reserves - but considering she was Muggle-born and had never even flown a broom until a year ago, even making the reserves was an achievement. But despite all that, they never really became friends. Angelina couldn't think of a reason, except for the obvious.

It's just that her hair was purple.

She wasn't like that Hufflepuff seventh-year, who was a Metamorphmagus and could often be seen sporting bubble-gum pink hair. No, Alicia was a regular witch. Except that she dyed her hair.

"What does that even mean?" Angelina whispered to Fred one day. "'Dying' your hair?" It sounded nasty.

"It's this Muggle trick, I think, I think it's actual dye." He shrugged. "Makes me wonder, y'know. If it's chemicals and all - what else could you do with it."

Typical Fred. He was probably coming up with all kinds of plans how to dye Filch's cat or something.

Other people, of course, noticed it too. Alicia didn't look like it mattered to her at all, even though Angelina knew she had to have heard some of the whispering. Oliver Wood, on the other hand, took it more seriously.

"Anyway, those of you who are new to the team," he told them a week before their first game, "keep alert. Slytherin like to, well, they're not nice before games." He looked awkward, almost reluctant to say so.

"Slytherins are never nice, Oliver, that's why they're in Slytherin," Fred pointed out.

"I mean more than usual." And then he gave Alicia an odd look.

Angelina wasn't at all surprised when he asked Alicia to stay afterwards. Angelina stayed as well - they decided to go to the library after practice to work on the Transfiguration essay for McGonagall. It was hard to partner with someone not from the team when they had practice five times a week, and Fred and George, while being both fun and clever, didn't seem to care much about their essays.

"Listen," she could hear Wood saying in a low, tense voice, "can you do something about your hair?"

"How d'you mean?" Alicia asked, and sounded genuinely confused.

"Well... thing is... it's just... it's going to draw attention."

"It already draws attention."

"I know. It's just... Slytherin... they can be vicious. And you're Muggle-born. And, well... it sort of draws more attention to that."

To Angelina's surprise, Alicia smiled. "I'm okay, Oliver," she said. "I can handle it."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay. Alright. Just - look, if they do anything or say anything or anything at all - you tell me, okay?"

"Okay."

Alicia didn't tell him, though. Angelina knew because she was sitting next to her in Potions, when that awful Macnair boy from Slytherin started making fun of both of them. Angelina didn't pay him much attention, at least not until he had called Alicia 'Mudblood'.

"Shut your mouth, you slug," she didn't even bother to keep her voice down. Fred and George, who were sitting at a nearby table and overheard the slur as well, already drew their wands. They didn't care that Snape was there, and he, of course, was more than happy to take off points from Fred and George and from Angelina as well, because he had heard what she had called Macnair but acted as if he didn't hear what Macnair had said. But when he took off five points from Alicia with some ridiculous excuse, that was when the three of them really lost it, and started shouting at him too.

It was quite the unpleasant detention, and it was made all the more unpleasant because he had included Alicia in it, even though she had done nothing wrong.

"Say something," Angelina urged her quietly as she pretended to be sorting Flobberworms.

"No," Alicia shook her head, and her plaited - and purple - hair shook with it.

"But if he knew what Macnair said..."

"No," Alicia shook her head again. "Look, don't worry about me."

Angelina did worry, though, and would have argued more, but at that point she heard Snape say, "Ms Johnson, if you open your mouth one more time, I shall take off fifty points from Gryffindor." Fixing her expression to show as much venom as she could possibly muster, she stared at him, then returned to sorting her Flobberworms.

Alicia didn't get to play that Saturday - after all, she was just the reserves - and they lost to Slytherin and it was all a bit depressing. "I just want to wipe that smile off Flint's face," Angelina hissed angrily as they walked out of the showers.

It was worse on Monday, when Macnair sniggered behind them and said, "The Gryffindor team are so bad, maybe they should have let that purple-haired Mudblood clown play, after all, they couldn't possibly be any worse, could they?"

Macnair's expression after she had hexed him was worth each of the four hours she had to spend in detention with Snape that night.

To her surprise, Alicia was waiting for her in the common room when she was back, together with Fred and George.

"Hey," she said, slightly confused.

"Hey," Alicia said. "How was detention?"

Angelina shrugged. "It was - the usual, really."

"More Flobberworms?"

"Yeah, but this time, they all kinda looked like Macnair."

They all laughed.

"Anyway," Angelina asked, "what are you lot doing here?"

"Well, we thought it'd be nice to get back at Macnair without landing in detention," Alicia said lightly.

"I'm in. What's the plan?"

Fred and George looked at one another. "She didn't tell us yet," Fred said.

"Said she was waiting for you," George added.

"Well?"

"What I was thinking," said Alicia, completely calm, "is that since he seems to like the colour of my hair so much, we should go and change the colour of his robes to purple."

Fred and George looked at one another, then at Alicia. Angelina just stared.

"Er," she said at last, "how are we supposed to do that?"

"His robes are in the Slytherin common room - "

"And we don't know where it is - "

"And we don't know the password - "

"And all the Slytherins are sleeping there."

"Which shouldn't be too much of a problem," George conceded, "if we could just get in, which we can't."

Alicia simply raised an eyebrow. "Oh yes we can," she said.

"How?" the three of them demanded together.

"The Slytherin common room is in the cellars, under the north tower - more or less. The entrance is through a blank wall. Their password is Salazar."

Even Fred took a moment before he found his voice. "How do you know that?" he demanded.

Alicia just shrugged. "So, are you coming or not?"

"How do you know that?" Fred asked again. "Even we don't know where the Slytherin common room is - and definitely not what their password is!"

"Macnair's been getting on my nerves for a while," Alicia said simply. It was an explanation of sorts, and Angelina appreciated it all the same, because she remembered the calm, contemptuous way with which Alicia had looked at Macnair. Alicia, it seemed, didn't get mad - she got even. Which sounded just about right to Angelina. "I'm in," she said. The twins looked at one another, then smiled their identical smiles. "Count us in too," they said.

"Brilliant. Let's go."

The halls were dark and deserted at that time of night. There was no sign of the teachers - not even a sign of Filch. "Brilliant," Fred said gleefully, only to be hushed by George. They started tiptoeing down the stairs.

None of them really knew where they were going - they all relied on Alicia. At some point, after the third staircase which Angelina thought would lead them to the cellars only to be proved wrong, she started worrying that perhaps Alicia didn't actually know where she was going. But Just as she opened her mouth to ask whether she was sure she knew where to go, Alicia stopped in front of a blank wall.

"This is it," she whispered, and to the wall she said, "Salazar."

A door appeared out of nowhere. This time, George's 'brilliant' was just as gleeful as Fred's.

"Shhh!" Angelina hissed, and the four of them tiptoed through the door in the wall and into the slimy, stupid, green Slytherin common room.

Inside the dormitories, the rooms were set in a very similar fashion to the Gryffindor dormitories, except that they went down, not up. They found the second-year boys' dormitories soon enough, and in there they found a sleeping Macnair - and his trunk.

"Do you know the spell?" Fred asked, and Angelina realised that, like herself, he did not know how to turn black robes into purple.

Alicia, however, came prepared. She picked up a robe and tapped it experimentally with her wand, muttering an incantation. Even in the dark, they could see the black material turning lighter. She repeated it once, twice, three times; digging into his trunk, she made sure to get each and every robe, and turn them all purple.

It wasn't five minutes, and they were done. Tiptoeing back to the Gryffindor common room, they barely avoided Peeves this time, but in the end, they made it back in one piece, and much happier than they were going out.

The next morning, Angelina was deep into her toast when Alicia tapped on her shoulder and said, "Look." Looking up, she saw Macnair blunder into the Great Hall trying - and failing - to hide his now purple robes under a cloak. Everyone was watching.

Just when Angelina thought it couldn't get any better, McGonagall descended upon him from the teachers' table, and started shouting: what did he think he was doing and how dare he wear purple robes when the Hogwarts ones were black. And Macnair made the mistake of shouting back. It was like Christmas had come early. By the end of breakfast, Macnair was in detention for the rest of the week and Slytherin were down twenty-five points, and while it wasn't the fifty Snape had taken off Angelina, it was close enough.

From their journey to the Slytherin common room onwards, Angelina always sat next to Alicia Spinnet in classes. And by the time their next Potions class arrived, she was looking at Alicia's hair, not in amusement or criticism, but in actual appreciation.

"I wonder," she told Alicia while they were supposed to be cutting their ginger roots, "how my hair would look purple."

"Oi!" Alicia protested. "Purple's my thing. Although," she looked at Angelina critically, "I think you'd look cool in electric blue."

"Electric blue?"

"Yeah... it's a bit brighter, soI'm not sure how much it will catch, but it really looks cool. I could ask my mum to buy it, there's a shop right where we live, and then -"

"As fascinating as your discussion must be," they heard Snape's voice right behind them, "my classroom is not the place for it. Twenty points from Gryffindor."

Angelina waited until he turned his back on them before she whispered to Alicia, "We should have dyed his robes purple!"

Alicia looked back at Snape for a moment. "No, I think maybe the hair?" she said. "And not purple. Bright pink. Like that girl from Hufflepuff."

The image of Professor Snape with bubble-gum pink hair was too much for Angelina. She had to choke her giggles in her fist.

Once she calmed down, Alicia added, "The password to his room is 'Veritaserum'."