CHAPTER TWO

WIN

DAN
Dan was always the first one to wake up. He was the only male student at Hogwarts who was allowed to share a room with not one but two female students. Seeing as he was a dragon and they were humans no one should have a problem with it. In actuality there was only one room at the top of the tower. The teachers figured it was worth the risk in order to keep him away from the rest of the Ravenclaws. Besides even Dumbledore figured there was no way these three would do anything naughty.
It was true that they hadn't done anything but the three of them had talked about it on several occasions. One night during the previous year they had all three decided that they needed practice kissing. Huddled together on one bed they sat in silence waiting for one to kiss the other. Slowly Dan turned towards Tracie and with a loving growl leaned in to kiss her. Tracie's reaction was not what he expected. She started to seizure. Even she didn't understand why. She was sure she only had feelings for Snape. Somehow the thought of kissing her friend had still sparked enough emotion in her.
Dan feeling somewhat disappointed turned away from his seizing friend and went to kiss Deidra instead. She wasn't even there any more! Now she was across the room drawing concentric circles with chalk all over the wall. Dan huffed a little and then remember that he was saving his first kiss for Hermione anyways. He curled up into a ball next to Tracie's knowing that as soon as she was done with her spasm she would kick him off her bed. Dumbledore would never know these times when the three of them had come close to doing things forbidden at Hogwarts.
After waking up Dan would go about his early morning routine. This was one of the few times he could practice spells without anyone seeing him translate the spell into dragon speak. He didn't like keeping secrets from Deij but he knew she would give him away on accident. It would just take a single slip of the tongue and then everyone would know he wasn't a dragon. Tracie knew but they had an understanding between each other. She wouldn't tell on him as long as he pretty much did anything she wanted him to do. Luckily she hardly ever had any requests for him. Usually he just had to taste her potions which so far had not killed him.
After translating spells Dan usually fell back asleep until Deij's morning singing woke him back up.
"It's time for breakfast! Breakfast with Neville! Hey Tracie what rhymes with Neville?" Deij said as she jumped around on her bed.
"I don't know what?" Tracie said as she rolled out of bed.
"I don't know either. I was hoping you could think of something. Hey DAN! Wake up I need to ask you something!" Deij yelled as she hopped down next to him.
"I though I slept in. If you keep sleeping so much Dan your gonna start missing breakfast. Then you wont get to see Hermione." Tracie said teasing him.
"Grrr." Dan growled sadly. Then he flew out of bed and threw his stuff together. Some how he was always the first one ready to leave for breakfast.
Once they all arrived at the great hall they usually split up for breakfast. Dan would attempt to eat with Hermione, Deij would find Neville and Tracie would sit with her house. This morning Dan was surprised to find Hermione eating alone. He headed straight over and sat right next to her then rubbed his head against her shoulder. As she always did she put her arm around him and squeezed him close.
"Dan I am so glad you made it to school! I heard about the demetor attack and was so worried." Hermione said with relief.
Dan growled with a huge smile.
"I also have to ask you a huge favor. It's really a favor for Harry but seeing as he is also one of my best friends in a way it's a favor for me as well."
Dan looked puzzled.
"You like Harry right? He's always been nice to you."
Nodding his head in agreement Dan took a bite out of a sausage as he thought about Harry. He hadn't really spent much time with Harry but he couldn't think of anything bad. If it had been a favor for that bastard Ron he wouldn't have done it no matter what.
"Good then here is what we would like you to do for us. In the Ravenclaw wing there is a library. In the library there is a restricted section and inside that restricted section is a special book harry and I need. It's a book called 'Rowena's thoughts on forbidden magic'. We would get it our self's but it's almost impossible for non Ravenclaw students to get in there.
"Growl." Dan answered.
"Trust me we tried to get in."
"Grrr. gr. Grrrrrrrrr."
"Well I am one of the brightest witches of my time..." Hermione laughed." but I still couldn't out smart that cursed Ravenclaw door. I answered so many riddles correctly but it still knew I was not entering the right house. Slytherin was so much easier to enter." Hermione now looked angry and ashamed. Before Dan could respond Ron sat across the table from them.
"I see your keeping the stray company." Ron scowled at Dan.
"Seriously RON! It's too early for this." Hermione huffed.
"If it's not too early for you to cozy up to that imitation dragon then it's..." Before Ron could Finish Dan had already jumped across the table and had his claws ripping into Ron's chest. Ron fought back and punched Dan in the side of the head, then kicked him off.
Dan scrambled up for a second assault. Instead he found himself frozen in place by McGonagall's spell.
"Mr. Weasley, Mr. Bedeaux, I'll see you both in my office immediately." McGonagall unfroze them and stormed off to her office.
As Dan, Ron and McGonagall were heading down the hallway they saw Deidra go running by. Curiosity peaked in all three of them and they hurried after her. At the end of the next hallway they found her in the corner staring at something on the ground. A closer inspection revealed a Rat that was scared to death.
"Ms. Hill What in the world are you doing chasing that rat?" McGonagall asked.
"Oh it's not a rat, It's Neville!" Deij said as she grabbed the rat up and went to turn away.
"Oh dear!" McGonagall cast an unknown spell on the rat and it turned into Neville again, whom seemed very alarmed and confused.
"I can explain..." Deij said in her defense.
"Well you can do it in my office! Ms. Hill, Mr. Longbottom my office immediately." McGonagall continued on with the now four students in tow. Upon entering her personal office everyone was surprised to see Tracie already sitting on a chair waiting inside.
"Ms. Brazie might I ask what brings you here? I am quite busy so make it fast."
"Professor Snape sent me here for staring at him during breakfast. He said he hoped you could help me reflect on my actions." Tracie replied.
"It is way to early to deal with all of this so I am going to make this quick. Ms. Brazie stop staring at Snape, I know he has a certain charm to him, but they do say you can have too much of a good thing. I'm taking fifty points from Slytherin, so either you will stop staring at Snape or Snape will stop sending you to me for punishment so that his house doesn't lose any points." She waved Tracie out of her office.
"Deidra, I don't care how you turned Neville into a rat. From now on don't do it at breakfast. Neville you are very helpful in this young witches education, remember that the next time you let her cast a spell on you. I'm taking ten points from Gryphindor. Please go back and behave."
"As for you Mr. Weasley and Mr. Bedeaux why are we fighting on the first day of classes? Please don't tell me this has anything to do with ms Granger!" McGonagall said. Before either of them could respond she continued. "Actually never mind I don't want to know. I am sick of the constant bickering and fighting between you two. I could remove points from both your house but I don't think that will fix the issue. Instead I am going to make the two of you serve community service together until you either learn to get along or the school year ends. Report back here this afternoon and I'll tell you what you'll be doing." McGonagall looked to some papers on her desk as the boy and dragon left her office. Ron ran off back to the great hall. Dan was surprised to find Tracie and Deij waiting for him.
"I hope you'll tell me all about that later, right now I have to catch the other rats I made. Will you please help me Dan." Deij started hoping down the hall. When Dan was sure that no one else was around he leaned over and whispered into Tracies's ear.
"We have a quest! I'll tell you about it later tonight." Dan said and then went to help Deij.
Tracie smiled slightly, She liked quests almost enough to cause a seizure, but not quite enough.

TRACIE

Tracie's small smile quickly faded as minutes of rat hunting turned to hours, hours in which she was left alone to do her own thing whilst the other two ran about trying to fix the havoc they wreaked at every turn. And of course, leaving Tracie alone to do whatever she so pleased often turned into a bad thing, especially when she found herself aimlessly wandering the dungeons just outside of Snape's office, where she now stood staring at the door.
She knew her obsession with the tall and dark potion's master was completely illogical and full of emotions—the thought of which made her shudder, though she was good enough at ignoring said emotions that she kept from seizuring right at that moment—but no matter how hard she tried to deny herself the obsession, the harder she felt the obsession. And said obsession kept nagging her to open the door and see if said potion's master was inside. The urge finally gave way to action and she opened the door, finding no one inside.
But sitting neatly on his desk was a tea cup; black with the Slytherin emblem and a small chip in the handle.
She would have sighed, should she let herself escape into feeling, as her mind instantly compared the dark and scarred cup to the poor victim of her obsession. But seeing as emotion was completely illogical and led to certain uncontrollable convulsions, she decided instead that she would just steal that beautiful cup, and so took a step inside and stretched out a hand.
And fell to the ground in a seizure as she realized it was Snape's cup she was stealing and his lips had inevitably been on it as his fingers wrapped their way around the handle.
The door connecting the office to Professor Snape's classroom opened as the man emerged to retrieve some herbs for his upcoming class. His gaze fell onto the seizuring girl and he straightened before rolling his eyes. "Bloody hell…" he muttered. He crossed his arms and waited for her convulsions to stop and was moments from lecturing her when something small and hairy ran over the girl's body and underneath him. Some minute scratching sounds could be heard on his cupboards and he turned at the sound of a screeching noise. He came eye-to-eye with a rat, a white one nonetheless that seemed slightly too large to be a normal rat.
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I FOUND DRACO RAT!" Deidra shouted. Snape quickly whirled around, knowing that if Deidra was shouting something about a 'Draco rat' as he stared at an abnormal white rat, that something very wrong happened and something even worse was about to happen, and inevitably it did. "GO GET IT, DRAGON DAN!"
Dan charged through the doorway of the office, narrowly missing trampling Tracie as she attempted to pick herself up from the floor, and launched himself into the air at the rat, seeming to not take into consideration that Snape was standing between him and said target. And so Dan went crashing down into Snape, sending them both into the cupboards—effectively shattering any containers on the shelves and cracking almost all of them—and sending Draco into the air.
Deidra jumped into the air and landed on the desk, grasping the rat in her hand and, amazingly, not killing it as she did so. "Aw yeah!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air and, in the excitement of her epic success, tossed the rat into the air, which managed to land gracefully on the floor and scurry off in terror. "Aw fuck…" She turned as the rat ran out of the room before looking down to Tracie, who propped herself up from the table and stared up at the girl.
The two stared at each other a moment, Deidra merely staring and Tracie trying to figure out how her attempt at stealing a tea cup led to this, before Deidra pointed to the door. "DAN, AFTER THE RAT!" she exclaimed before running out the door. Tracie watched, suddenly noticing a red, Gryffindor blanket tied around the girl's neck in a mock cape, before looking to Dan and Snape, who seemed to take the brunt of damage from the fall.
Dan let out a snarl of determination before running out of the room and down the hallway. "Professor are you ok?" Tracie shrieked before falling into a fit of uncontrollable flailings on the floor.
Snape managed to pull himself to his feet and sighed, mentally checking over himself to ensure nothing was broken or bleeding. "I need a year off…" he muttered.

DEIDRA

And thus, the first week of school passed by without incident. Don't we love Hogwarts?
Yes. Yes we do.
"Neville! Wait, wait, wait, Neville…!" Deidra said jogging to catch up with the timid lad who, seeing her coming, immediately took up the petrified expression he'd become so good at. When she finally caught up to him, she took a couple moments to pant and wheeze before snapping up straight and looking him in the eye. "Um… You lost Trevor again…" She handed him the frog, who like him, looked petrified but miraculously unharmed. "You have a hard time keeping track of him huh?"
Neville, blushing slightly from the unusually reason for her attention, smiled crookedly and took the frog from her "Thank you. How's your day then?"
Beaming at his curiosity, she actually forgot about the squirrel running above their heads on a tree branch. "OH it's—I'm-I'm awesome!" She said. "But! Noo… dammit I'm not awesome! I um… need to…. Need toooooo…." She seemed to be trying hard to remember something before finally she seemed to get it and continued "I need to apologize to you!"
"Oh…?" He said, surprised. "Ab-bout what…?" He asked even though he could think of a hundred occurrences off the top of his head.
"Turning you into a rat. I think I should ask you next time."
"Oh!" He said. "Yeah or… you know, just not do it…"
"Okay." She said. "I was thinking you know about… All kinds of stuff but one of the things was you and how I am to you… I wanna try and um…" She thought again before grasping it and saying "harass you a little less. I know you've put up with me sitting next to you all these years but I'll leave you alone a little more okay?"
He was genuinely confused by this. She didn't seem to be hurt by the notion as though she just wanted what was best for him and that was enough to make her happy. "You… You what?"
"I'm gonna leave you alone!" She smiled. "So you can focus on other stuff and not have to worry about me so much."
"I don't know if that's such a good ide—"
"OH LOOK A SQUIRREL!" She said finally, pointing her wand at it and waving it in a bizarre circular motion before, not the squirrel but Draco Malfoy, fell out of the tree.
The blonde boy stood up, miraculously not saying a word but rather turning at once and attempting to climb the tree again in a state of flight but Deidra waved her wand a second time. He floated over to her –students were now gathering to watch this- and as she set him down on the ground in front of her, she patted his head gently and made little clicking and chittering noises at him.
Seeming to understand, he stood upright and walked passed her, out of the courtyard and into the hallway, scratching his head and saying nothing as he made his way along.
Neville was flabbergasted. "What did you DO to him?"
"Oh that's actually just a squirrel." The girl said. "But I like him much better than Malfoy. Maybe he'll be more pleasant to be around."

"Professor, I'm sor—"
Snape, head on his desk and hands on his head, groaned helplessly. "PLEASE." He said. "Just leave me in PEACE!"
Tracie's expression, however, did not falter. "But Professor I can't leave until you accept my apology."
One of the man's hands slid off of his head and thudded onto the wooden desk. "Go away… I don't want to see you until I have to."
"Professor, you must know how damaging it is to me for you to say such things. You've already mentally damaged nearly every student you've had so please just accept my apology. If you don't, I'll be up all night thinking about you. In your bed. Sleeping. So quiet and relaxed…."
He lifted his rogue hand to stop her. "Ms. Brazie, I am in my right to dismiss you. I have to oblige if you have a QUESTION—"
"Will you accept my apology?"
"That doesn't count— but the point is, you could get in trouble for bombarding me like this. I would do it myself but I'm at a loss. I can't give you detention because you seem to like it so much and McGonagall's only free so many nights….. Just get out."
"I must insist professor, that you accept my apology—"
"ALRIGHT FINE! I accept. NOW GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!"
Tracie smiled. "Thank you, you're very kind." She then laid down and began to spasm.
Rolling his eyes, Snape stood up from his desk, walked around to wear the girl was seizuring and picked her up in his arms before kicking open the heavy wooden door leading to the outside of his classroom, and laying her there before slamming it shut again.
She spasmed for a good four more minutes than usual.

"Are you certain you're alright doing this Dan?"
"Rrr…" Dan growled gently as he and Hermione made their way to the library that night in order to fetch the book she needed from the Restricted section.
Upon request, Hermione had asked both Ron and Harry to stay behind tonight since it was a simple task and Ron and Dan were likely to kill each other before it was even put into motion. "Thank you. You're very kind for doing this. I feel rather terrible about asking it of you but it's very important to us you see."
Dan rolled his eyes, unnoticed by her. He didn't care much about the book; in fact he didn't care at all. He was just happy that Hermione was spending time with him.
They made their way quietly down the center isle of the Ravenclaw's wing of the library before finally reaching the end where the restriction section had been placed. The door was very thin and delicate looking but it was obvious that one could not fool it. Rowena Ravenclaw had made it herself.
Dan scratched the surface gently and waited for the three required riddles.
THIS SEGMENT WILL INVOLVE TRANSLATION
In a cool voice the door said
1.) If I tell you "Everything I tell you is a lie", am I telling the truth or a lie?
-Grree grreeraaah greeaaaghh grrrr rrrrrraghr hheee grraeh.
-A lie. It can't be true without contradicting itself and therefore being a lie.
2.) What work can a painter never quite finish?
-Grrrahhhggghhh hearrgghh grr.
-Their autobiography.
3.) What becomes only wetter the more it dries?
-Grrrahgh.
-A towel.
END TRANSLATION SEQUENCE
Hermione was so impressed by this, that she felt her heart pounding rather fast. "Dan…? You speak DRAGON?"
He perked an eyebrow at her almost sarcastically.
"Oh— n-no I just mean…! The door understood you as though you were speaking English!" She didn't want him to know that she honestly never thought he could actually speak the language.
He plopped down on the floor for a moment before reaching up with a hind leg and scratching his ear in a bizarrely flexible manner.
"Oh never mind… thank you Dan." She walked timidly into the Restricted Section looking very small as she passed under the door as though it might attack her.
Dan was about to follow her in when he heard a "Hermione!" whispered rather loudly from a couple isles over in the regular library. "Grrr….!" He growled recognizing the voice of his nemesis easily.
Hermione's head popped back out of the doorway. "Ron…!" She gritted her teeth and whispered loudly back. "Go back to the dorm!"
But he was already at the other end of the center isle looking down at them. He began to stride forward and Hermione rolled her eyes.
Dan stood next to her in the doorway and waited.
As Ron finally reached doorway, Dan stuck a foot out, tripped him and then quickly closed the door in his face.
WIN.