Ch.2

The morning had come to find Draco and Blaise sitting in the commons waiting for Stephanie to come down. They both jumped and stared at each other when they heard a bloodcurdling scream.

"PANSY!!!!"

They saw Pansy come flitting down the stairs.

"Oh no you don't, you little witch!"

Then, right before Pansy exited the room, Stephanie came down the stairs. Draco and Blaise gaped at her and her hair, or lack of. She had a peter pan type hair-cut. She still looked gorgeous, but apparently that didn't matter to her because she was obviously very pissed. She was still in her pajamas at that.

She turned to Pansy and shouted the word 'impuerto' as she brought up her arm and said 'nati-eh gryffindora!' and extended her arm towards Pansy. The spell hit her and knocked her over. She sat up looking like she wanted to scream bloody murder, but doubled over holding her head and belched up slugs instead and promptly hiccuped. And then the last utterance of the incantation kicked in and Pansy was sporting a red mane, golden tail with a red tip, and alternating red and gold nails. Pansy jumped up crying and ran out of the room, the portrait door slamming behind her. Blaise and Draco turned their attention from the closed door and looked at the smirking form of Stephanie. Draco was the first to speak up, "Bloody hell, that was awesome!...remind me not to get on your bad side."

"That's a…weird way to react to your girlfriend getting hexed."

Draco shrugged and looked away, causing Stephanie to raise her eyebrow.

"Where'd you learn that anyways?", Blaise said, breaking the small tension that had settled upon the trio.

"Well, I found it in one of the books in the library at the manor."

Blaise began to grin, "That wouldn't have, perchance, been the Slytherin manor?"

Stephanie smiled innocently. "Maybe."

Draco's mind was spinning with all these questions.

"Slytherin Manor? How do you have access to that? Father can't even get in there."

Stephanie turned to him, "You mean you don't know? And here it was I thought everyone knew."

"Knew what?"

"Well....through some long and distant link, my aunt and I, along with my distant cousins, are of Slytherin blood."

Draco was doing a very lovely impression of a goldfish when he flopped on a chair.

"Are you serious?"

"No, I just find it funny to see peoples glazed expressions when I tell them that.", Stephanie said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"As much as I'd like to chat about Stephie's blood relations all day, I think we should head down to breakfast."

"Right.", Draco said as he stood up from the chair.

"I would come with you guys but I have to get this,", she said motioning to her hair, "fixed."

"K, see ya Steph."

"Bye." Draco said, with that glazed over 'no body's home' look.

Stephanie ran upstairs and got dressed and ran over to her aunt Sanya's room, hoping that she'd catch her before she headed to breakfast.

Luckily, when Stephanie knocked on her aunt's door, it opened. Sanya opened her mouth in greeting but stopped and snorted before asking Stephanie what happened.

"House-mate."

"Mm-hmmm. I see. Well, better get you fixed up then."

Draco and Blaise were sitting in the first class of the day, Transfigurations, waiting eagerly for Stephanie, wondering what was taking so long to fix her hair. Draco looked at the clock on the wall noticing that class was almost ready to begin.

Professor Mc Gonagall walked up the main aisle of the classroom to close the door and had to move to the side quickly, to avoid being hit by a snidget(more commonly know as snitch) that flew to the middle of the aisle and turned into Stephanie and landed. Stephanie jumped to the side, sitting rigidly in the seat beside Draco that he had left for her. If it wasn't for Draco's quick seeker skills, Stephanie would have been in the floor. But luckily Draco caught her and the chair, putting them both upright. Mc Gonagall turned to Stephanie in surprise.

Stephanie grinned at her, "Hello professor."

"You're an animagus?"

"Yes."

Mc Gonagall smiled at her, "20 points to Slytherin for a good example of the transfigurance of oneself."

"Thank you professor."

Mc Gonagall gave them their assignment. Stephanie rolled her eyes and banged her head on the desk. Draco looked at her. "What's wrong?"

"Transfiguring pennies into mice. We covered that at the end of last year over at BB.", she said with a sigh. Then rather quickly without any thought she turned the penny into a white mouse and then flopped back in her chair.

"You look kind of red in the face."

"You try being pale...ok, so you are really pale, but that's not important. I'm red in the face because I ended up running from my aunt's room, which is sort of in the dungeons, to the staircase, when it decided to switch on me. So then I turned into a snidget, because that's the fastest thing I could think of, and flew as fast as I could to this classroom."

"Oh. I was just saying.", Draco said before turning back to his...thing. Needless to say, his penny wasn't looking very mouse-like.

All of their classes seemed to go this way. Apparently Hogwarts was a couple weeks behind BB in teaching. Better behind than ahead. In all the classes, Stephanie tried not to stick out too much. But in the last class of the day, she had no choice in the matter.

Stephanie walked into the dark and cold dungeons classroom and took her seat. She felt a bit creeped when the teacher came walking, quite quickly, into the classroom with his robe flowing dramatically behind him in his wake. One word coming to mind to describe him perfectly, black. Except his sickly white skin, that is. He stood at the front of the class, his dark robe draped around him, his arms folded. He looked over the class, surveying them. Then he picked out just the student he was looking for.

"Miss Romaine, I understand that you're a descendant of one of the founders of this school."

"Yes, professor, that's right."

"Understand that you will not get special attention."

"Of course not, professor.", she said, nodding, fully agreeing with him.

"What are Mancalla rinds and their uses?"

Stephanie got a blank look on her face, as she always did when she began gathering the information in her brain to spew out. Snape took her blank look the wrong way and began to speak,

"Clearly you-"

"Mancalla rinds are the outer shell, or more accurately rind of a moderately rare fruit that is typically found in dark areas, normally forests. Unless they are wizard grown, but in that case the properties in which they are used for are not as powerful. Research is being done on that matter but, so far, there are no results.", Stephanie stopped long enough to take a breath, "The uses of Mancalla rinds are typically used in transforming potions. But only of the body. Or physical form of something, rather."

Snape smirked. "I'm impressed. Could you tell me then, what it takes for a transforming potion of the mind and/or spirit?"

"Nightshade. Or more precisely, white Nightshade. Any other Nightshade is used in poison, but you know that. Now back to the question, Nightshade is the key ingredient for mind and/or spirit changing potions, that being said, it is an extremely rare flower. Mainly due to the ministry tracking down any traces of it and killing it because potions that alter a person's soul are illegal in every form of the word....sorry if I ranted.", she finished off with a smile.

"Ah. But you for-"

"Oh! Sorry to interrupt you again professor, but another thing is that if applied under the right circumstances, white Nightshade and Mancalla rinds can be paired together to create a combination of a body altering and spirit and/or mind altering potion. But if done wrong the two ingredients have a violent reaction to each other and explode."

"Excellent. 8 points from Slytherin for interrupting me-twice." Steph got ready to protest but stopped immediately."35 points to Slytherin for an explanation that couldn't have been said better even by myself."

Stephanie walked out of the classroom after the bell, beaming. She loved this place! Draco came up beside her. "How'd you know all of that? You're like a bloody encyclopedia!"

"As it turns out my aunt Sanya is brilliant at potions and the like."

"That makes sense."

"Yep. Hey, I'll meet up with you guys later in the commons. I'm gonna go check up with aunt Sanya."

They parted their ways as Stephanie headed just up the hall from the potions classroom to her aunts room.