Author's Note

ALL feedback is much appreciated! Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like. Have an idea that you think would be fantastic? A certain character trait that you would like to see more of? Or, you know, if you just wanna tell me 'hi' or whatever, that's cool, too. I'd just really like to hear from you if you're kind enough to read the whole chapter and especially if you DON'T read the whole chapter. I want to know what might have turned you off so that I can use that to write better! Thanks for reading this little rant. Please, enjoy my story.

-N.G.F.-

Back at Hogwarts. Home at last. Well, my second home at least. My first home was in Franklin, Tennessee where my adoptive father and I had lived happily until my fourth year at Hogwarts when McGonagal and Dumbledore had to pull me out of D.A.D.A. to tell me that he had been on his way home from work and slid on a sheath of 'black ice.' He slid in to the opposite lane and was hit by a woman in a BMW. She had died on impact and my father died in the hospital shortly after arriving. In May, I was sent to live with Blanche Mitchell in the upper class side of London. She was my aunt on my birth mother's side, a successful reporter for Witch Weekly, and a social climbing witch from 'old money' as Seamus Finnigan had informed me. His mother was a fan, apparently.

I, however, was not a fan. Blanche Mitchell was a heartless, selfish, promiscuous... bitch for lack of a better term. Unfortunately, she was the only family that I had left. My adoptive father's parents were dead and he was an only child. My birth father was 'unknown' but according to Blanche, his parents were dead, too and she was a saint compared to his relatives that were still living. My mother and Blanche's parents were incapable of raising children since they were both enjoying the blissful and ignorant life of Alzheimer's at one of St. Mungo's classy retirement/care-taking homes. I wasn't sure if they really suffered from Alzheimer's. That's just what Blanche called it because she didn't care enough to actually check up on them.

Just thinking about Blanche made me irritable. I scanned the Great Hall blankly until I came across the Hufflepuff table and immediately looked away from it as a sharp pang shot through my chest. Then, Daphne Dodson, a cute fourth year in my house (Ravenclaw), came to sit next to me.

"I like your hair this year. It reminds me of a sunset sort of," she told me with a smile. I liked to alter my hair in crazy ways over the summer since it pissed Blanche off. The previous year, I had buzzed the left side of my hair while leaving my right side un-touched and in its naturally wavy state. She had called me an "unruly street urchin" for it. To her content, it had grown back to an acceptable length by September although it was still noticeably shorter than the right side. This year, it was a soft pink hue with equally soft lavender accents around the ends. Blanche had called me an "80s cotton candy nightmare" for this alteration.

"Thank you, Daph. I had it charmed by one of my aunt's stylists. Would you like her business card?" I asked her with a smile as I forced myself to clear away my previous thoughts about the Hufflepuff table.

Daphne shook her head with a giggle, "No. My mother would... well, I don't know actually. She'd probably have a fair laugh if I had the gall to do something like that."

"Your mother? The professor at Levton Academy? S. Cartwright?"

"S. Cartwright is her pen-name, yes."

I smiled, "She would have a fair laugh, wouldn't she?" I had read plenty of her mother's books when her older brother, Chiron, who was in the same year as me told me that her books were a lot easier to understand than the ancient ones Snape had us read. He was right. Not only did I understand potions better, her books were thoroughly more entertaining. A couple of them even had optional study alarms charmed in where if you found yourself dosing off as you read, or becoming distracted by something, her voice would sound cheerfully, "You're never going to brew this potion if you don't learn to focus!" or "Hello! Are you still there?" or my favorite, "Chin up lazy bones! You're drooling on my pages! Yuck!"

Cho Chang then approached us solemnly and sat next to me, "Morning."

"Cho, it's night time. Are you okay?" I asked placing a hand on her shoulder lightly as I asked such a rhetorical question that I managed to make myself feel sick.

She shrugged, "It's just different without him."

She was talking about her boyfriend, Cedric Diggory, a Hufflepuff seventh year that had died in the Tri-wizard Tournament that Hogwarts hosted the previous year. The whole school had been affected by Cedric's death but not as much as Cho and perhaps, Harry Potter who had witnessed the whole incident. I had been trying not to think of it, myself, being such close friends with her... and him for that matter.

I gently placed arm around her shoulder and guided her head down to lay on my shoulder, "I know."

It was all I could say.

I looked up harshly and met Harry Potter's own sharp gaze. It was no secret that he had a crush on Cho and Cho even liked him back sort of. I smiled a bit pathetically at him to let him know that everything would be fine. It was quite charming that he was so concerned for her despite the mess that he was in with the ministry and the rest of the student body for 'fabrications' of Voldermort being back and murdering Cedric that night. All I could think was, "Why would Harry create such a horrible lie?" I believed him whole-heartedly. To make something up like that... why, it was just too cruel.

The hat began the opening ceremonies with a rather ominously reprised version of its normal song before sorting the first years. Then, I noticed her. The squat, toad-looking woman dressed head to toe in pink that was sitting where all of our previous D.A.D.A. professors had sat. She looked like she would be a lot of fun. Apparently I wasn't the only student that thought so, not only were Fred and George Weasley exchanging diabolic grins to one another, but Chiron Cartwright and his best friend, Taeryn Something-or-another were as well. I rolled my eyes in pre-annoyance then returned my attention to Dumbledore as he spoke. Then Professor Pinky Toad stood up with a candy sweet 'ahem' to interrupt him. Cho was still resting her head limply on my shoulder but she even managed to choke out a surprised, "Did she just?"

I nodded, "Yeah. She must find herself pretty important to interrupt and add her own commentary to Dumbledore's speech."

As she began to speak in her sweet condescending dull tones, I became bored and uninterested thinking that her attempt was 'cute' to say the least. I was more concerned with getting Cho to eat something and try to cheer up just a tiny bit. I saw Marietta Edgecomb flirting with a handsome fifth year and rolled my eyes before throwing a dinner roll at her and hitting her in the side of the head. She turned with a glare to find out where the roll had come from but immediately smiled excitedly upon seeing me, already loaded with another dinner roll if I needed to use it. She jumped up disregarding the boy and came over to us.

"Merlin! Your hair! I love it!" She plopped down in front of me and reached out her hand to touch it. Cho then looked up and smiled lightly at me, "Oh yeah. You changed your hair."

She then sat up straight, smiled brightly at Marietta, and grabbed a piece of French bread and served herself a few turkey slices with gravy. Somehow, I knew Marietta would do the trick. I think it was because I babied Cho too much where as Marietta was always pushing her.

In our dorm later that night, Cho gave us a more detailed recap of her summer. Her mother and father barely brought up the subject of Cedric and pretty much told her that death was simply a part of life and that she needed to focus on her studies at school more than ever with such a tragic burden weighing her down. She had felt too depressed to write us over the summer because all she could do was study for her N.E.W.T.S. to keep her from screaming at her parents and crying over Cedric all of the time. She had contemplated writing to Harry but couldn't force herself to do it out of guilt because she really did like him and wanted someone that could understand her pain and relate to her but she didn't want to give Harry the wrong impression... or the right impression and feel like a horrible girlfriend for just pushing him aside for the next best thing. She then spent a good thirty minutes sobbing and apologizing to us for complaining to which Marietta and I both just looked at each other in honest confused shock.

I rubbed her back gently, "I don't think Cedric would hate you for wanting to talk to Harry about everything. For starters, he's too nice for that and secondly, he wouldn't like seeing you this way."

Marietta nodded in agreement, "Yeah. Cho, you can't just keep dwelling on this like it's only your cross to bare. We're all sad that Cedric is gone. Like the sorting hat said, we have to unite. We're here to help each other through everything. Good and bad. It's sad to see you like this."

She sniffled and sat back up rubbing the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, "Alright. I'll talk to Harry tomorrow. I'd like to hear just exactly what happened... no... I need to hear it. Because, if he's back... for real... I don't want to lose any more of my friends to the same fate."

I brushed a tear from her cheek with my hand and leaned over to kiss the top of her head before hugging her, "You're absolutely right. Let's go to sleep."

Marietta then gave me a nurturing pat on the head and leaned closer to me to whisper so that Cho wouldn't hear, "You know, you don't have to be strong for her if you miss him, too. It's not your cross, either."

Her words stung and I swallowed hard.

"I know," I said with a half-assed smile before telling her goodnight and crawling in to my bed fighting to keep the lump in my throat at bay.

The next morning, it seemed as if everyone was up in arms about Harry Potter and Voldermort and whether they believed Harry or not. Well, once we were outside of the Ravenclaw common room, that is. Most of housemates tended to keep their mouth shut about this sort of thing.

As we were coming out of D.A.D.A. and the seventh year Gryffindors and Slytherins were going in, Fred and George Weasley seized the opportunity to further annoy me as if Professor Umbridge hadn't done a proper enough job.

"Vivi, darling. You haven't said a word to us at all this year," Fred notified me in a sing song manner as he placed an arm over my shoulder.

I smiled (though, it was more of a grimace) and removed his arm gingerly, "It's only the second day of the year, dearest."

"You've usually insulted me by then, though, love."

"I haven't the energy for it, I suppose. I'm sure I'll have thought of a nice zinger by tomorrow, though. What do you want?"

Fred clutched his heart feigning pain, "What do I want?"

He then grinned wildly and leaned in closer, "Well, since you asked, I'd actually like to know if you'd be interested in a little something special Georgie and I have been working on recently. It's called an insta-beauty mask. The name's a bit iffy but it's just a proto-type. Anyways, it's a cream you salve on your face before you go out that enchants your features. Have a bad zit? No one else has to know about it. Bags under your pretty blue eyes from all of those lonely nights of studying? You don't have to show them off. We aren't exactly sure how long the enchantment works, though. I assume it's a good six or seven hours."

"Are you implying that I need such a product?" I asked a bit sharply causing him to step back.

"Uhh, is it a bad thing? No?" he looked down at me in bewilderment with his big watery blue-green eyes. I could tell the look had been rehearsed by the slight twitch of the corner of his mouth as he fought back an amused grin.

I sighed, "fine. Just hand over the cream, Weasley. I'll advertise for you just this once."

"Thank you, Vivs. You're the best," he cooed sweetly as he handed me the small jar of cream and headed in to class.

I looked over at Cho and Marietta who were holding a tube of lip-gloss and a small bottle of perfume.

Marietta smiled kindly and held up the perfume, "George said they attempted to mimic the properties of Amortentia with this. I figured that's quite some handy work."

I rolled my eyes, "Couldn't they have asked Angelina or Alicia or Katie, even?"

"They already have," Alicia answered with a sigh as she rounded the corner, "coaxed me in to a bottle of color changing mood fingernail polish. Right now, it's just a yucky pea green color. I imagine I'm supposed to be really happy about something or really stressed out. Funny thing is, I'm neither. I think the color is just plain ugly."

I looked down at the small jar in my hand, "And you get to go right in to the first trash bin I see."

Cho grabbed my hand lightly, "That isn't fair. They may be crude but they worked hard at all of this, I'm sure."

I sighed and jammed the jar in my pocket, "fine. I'll actually use it, I guess. I just hope it doesn't cause me to break out even more or anything."

At lunch, while Marietta was flirting with the same fifth year from the previous night and Cho was off to find Harry, I pulled out my compact and began to apply the mint green colored cream. It had a nice feel to it, cool and refreshing, wet... like actual water unlike the oily consistency of most facial creams. I then put it away along with the cream and began to fill my plate when Arianna Smith, a vivacious third year with beautiful auburn hair came over gaping at me, "Vivian! Your face!"

My initial reaction was boils. Fred Weasley had pulled one of his heartless pranks on me and I now had boils! I was going to murder him when I saw him.

"It's... radiant! I mean, you're practically glowing. You must share your secret with me! Is it a home-brewed muggle treatment? Or a charm that you made up? Or do you just drink a lot of water? Because that's bullocks! I drank water for a month straight and all I did was sweat more."

I blinked at her in utter surprise and confusion.

"What?" I pulled my compact out and looked at myself. Rather than boils (my worst fear), my skin looked perfect. She was right. It did glow in the light of the Great Hall sort of. I blushed a little feeling a bit guilty for doubting Fred and George but also a little silly for actually admiring them for succeeding.

"Actually," I gritted my teeth at the prospect of what I would say next even though I smiled at her kindly, "Fred and George Weasley gave me one of their new products to try out. It's called an insta-beauty mask or something. You can have some if you'd like. Oh, and don't let anyone else know because I don't want to spoil their business, but... they only made me pay half of the price for it. I'm sure that if you catch them alone, they'll work with you as well. They only have a few small batches made, so I wouldn't doddle if I were you."

"Really?" she asked taking the jar in her delicate hands as I held the jar out to her along with my compact. She quickly applied a thin layer to her face and thanked me as she went off to hunt them down, I assumed.

"You're welcome, Weasley. Don't say I never gave you anything," I muttered to myself as I returned my attention to my plate.