a/n; Thanks for the reviews, xJALDx (what is your first name? doesn't have to be your real first name, just gimme something to call you because I'm tired of xJALDx and I can't spell your new name without going back to check. so yeahhh. xD) and Love is the key to the world ! :D I really need to bake you guys cookies, you're always so nice! :)

ANYWAY. Sorry about the crappiness of the last chapter, but like I said, I just needed it OUT OF THE WAYY. :P So I hope this chapter is slightly better (maybe not the beginning) and that you'll try and enjoy it. :D

simply desperate

althea

And I can barely look at you

Cause every single time I do

I know we'll make it anywhere

Away from here

xx

"So, let me get this straight," Roxanne was saying as Dumbledore lead her down to the Great Hall. It was now September 1st, and the hundreds of other students were arriving soon. Dumbledore had given her a bed to rest in and free roam in the school - she had spent most of her time in the library, since she never did her OWLs, and she'd be in sixth year in this time period. "I'm supposed to call myself Roxanne Anderson, not Weasley, since my Uncle Bill - who is, by the way, over ten years older than my dad - is a first year?"

"Yes, that is correct."

"But why Anderson?" she persisted, ignoring Dumbledore's always-cheerful attitude. She had grown fond of him over the past couple days, but still. Her dad was right - he did get annoying.

"Because there are three Andersons at this school, triplets, and two of them are a year ahead of you. The girl, however, got held back because of chicken pox a few years ago. The three are Muggleborn, and have a great number of half-siblings they've never met."

"So you're disguising me as one of their siblings?"

"You're very quick on the uptake, Miss Anderson," his eyes twinkled as they descended the marble staircase. She could hear, distantly, the sound of laughter and carriages through the open door. "You wait in there." Dumbledore indicated the ante-chamber off the Great Hall where Fred had to eat all his meals in his third year, after starting more food fights than even Neville could handle. Roxanne stifled a giggle at the memory of sneaking in to eat the special feasts - Halloween, Christmas - with him. But the memory made her sad, too. She probably wouldn't ever see Fred again.

However, her father was going to be born in a couple years...that was a scary thought. And her mother, as well. Would she be able to see them? Could she just waltz up to the Burrow and say to Grandma Molly; Hi, yeah, I'm your grandchild from the future. Can I see my dad and the uncle I never met since he died when he was 20? Thanks. Yeah. That would fly. Not.

She sprinted into the antechamber, ignoring the startled looks the teachers at the staff table were giving her. She heard the students entering the Entrance Hall as she sat down in a chair, leaving the door open a crack.

"Violet!" Roxanne exclaimed happily, finding herself looking at the old portrait. Violet, who was always nice to her, was now looking at her like she was insane. Then again, this was nearly fifty years before Roxanne had met her. To cover her excitement, she hastened to add, "I've heard so much about you! You're quite famous here, you know."

As she had hoped, Violet flushed with pleasure and fluffed her hair. But before she could respond to this flattery, Dumbledore appeared in the open doorframe with a smile.

"Miss Anderson, we're ready for you. The Sorting is about to begin."

"But I'm a Gryffindor!" she panicked. "Gryffindor, Gryffindor, Gryffindor!" Dumbledore chuckled at her anxious expression.

"I don't doubt that, the way you're handling this. But you still have to put on the Hat, so we may introduce you to the rest of the school."

A thought occured to her in a flash of a long-forgotten memory. "Is...James Potter here? Or Remus Lupin? Or Severus Snape?" Roxanne was almost nervous to hear the answer. She'd never met these men, but she'd heard so much about them. Oh, and - "What about Sirius? Black, I mean, but how many Siriuses can there be?"

Dumbledore seemed both a little confused and more than a little surprised, but he continued to smile. "Yes, they're all here. Mr Potter, Mr Lupin and Mr Black are in Gryffindor, as you so desperately hope to be again, and Mr Snape is in Slytherin. Do you know them?"

Roxanne shook her head. "I've heard so many stories, though. They're all dead in my time. But Remus' son just married my cousin, and my other cousin's middle name is Severus, and his dad's mum and dad are James and Lily Potter, but we never met them - neither did Uncle Harry, actually - but I probably shouldn't have told you that."

"Our little secret," Dumbledore winked, but he was obviously digesting this information. "If you wish to tell me more about the future, perhaps we can change it. Perhaps this...Harry Potter, did you call him? Yes. Perhaps he will be able to know his parents. But we'll discuss it later. The first years are lining up, please join them."

Roxanne jumped up and trotted out of the room. She saw a few Gryffindor heads turn toward her, and then she heard the whispers. Soon, the entire Hall was staring at her. Her natural instict was to run right back in that room, but she channeled her brother.

Think, Roxy! What would Fred do?

She tilted her chin up and smirked, raising one eyebrow at them all. With her head held high, she marched over to where the first years were lined up - and staring at her in fear. So what if she was tall? Those were her mother's genes - and joined them.

She gave the Slytherin table a cold glare, and they hastened to return it. What an obvious Gryffindor. Then she nodded in respect to the Ravenclaws, who nodded back approvingly. She greeted the Hufflepuffs with a big grin and a wave, which made nearly everyone at the badger table smile and wave, too. And then, finally, she swiveled her head to meet the Gryffindors. There was two boys close to the back that were smirking at her. They looked cocky, and arrogant, and immature, and - one of them looked identical to Uncle Harry.

So that's the famous Black and Potter. Roxanne thought, sizing them up. They look just like I thought they would. That boy there must be Remus. Dear God, he looks like Teddy. When Teddy's sleeping, I mean...I didn't want to watch him sleep, but back in first year, Dominique videotaped it to put it on Youtube and, well...

Instead of continuing with this pointless line of thought, Roxanne crossed her eyes at the boys and made them both laugh. She felt smug. But then again, they didn't seem all that hard to amuse.

A very pretty red-haired girl turned and glared at James and Sirius for snickering. When she turned back to look at Roxanne, she saw a flash of rage behind the familiar emerald eyes. But they cooled down just as quickly as they had heated up, and Lily Potter - Evans? - was back to looking like a female version of Uncle Harry. Defiant, suspicious, but still willing to be as kind as possible. Then, Dumbledore stood up, and all heads turned to him.

"Welcome to Hogwarts! Or, for most of you, welcome back! Before we begin our Sorting, I have a very quick announcement. As you all have apparently noticed, we have a new student this year that is not eleven years old. Her name is Roxanne Anderson, and she was being held away from the Wizarding World until recently. So I hope you will treat her nicely. Let the Sorting begin!" By the end of his speech, Roxanne was forcing herself not to turn red. It wasn't difficult, considering her dark skin didn't red nearly as easily as Fred's lighter complexion did.

"Abbot, Jeminiah!" A much, much younger McGonagall starting calling out names. Roxanne's palms began to sweat. Normally her name would be called last, but now...

"Hufflepuff!"

...Now she would be right at the beginning.

"Anderson, Roxanne!"

She didn't dare let her anxiety show. She grinned and hopped up to the stool, pulling the Hat over her eyes so she didn't have to see the hundreds of faces turned in her direction. Again.

You're not a new student.

Yeah, well. Who can you tell?

Not a soul, of course. You know where you are.

Yes, I'm very confident of which House I'll be in.

I can see that. I probably shouldn't disappoint you -

- No, you shouldn't -

- so....

"Gryffindor!"

Roxanne pulled the Hat off, laughing with relief. She had been worried the Hat wouldn't listen to her. As she jogged down to her table, she was met with quite an odd sight.

Two of the older students, both dark-skinned and so alike they had to be siblings, were standing on the bench making war cries. The boy - who had his hair braided to his shoulders - was pumping his arms up and down in time to the war cry, and his sister - she had to be, she looked just like him - with her hair curly but not frizzy like Roxanne's was when she took hers out of their dreadlocks, was simply flailing in all directions, having trouble balancing on only one foot while the other nearly hit a cute, but clueless-looking, boy in the head.

But apparently this was normal, as the boy ducked effortlessly and James and Sirius, a few seats ahead of the two crazy siblings, were cracking up. Remus, however, looked sympathetic and patted an empty seat next to him. Roxanne smiled at him and sat down, not even close to out of breath.

"Hi guys," she chirped, sort of quietly, since the Sorting was still going on. "I'm Roxanne, but you can call me Rox, or Anne, or Roxy, or whatever, if you want. Sirius, James, Remus. I've heard of you." Roxanne then extended her hand to a startled Remus with a friendly smile.

"You have?" Remus asked curiously, but he looked wary as he shook her hand.

"Of course she has!" James was ruffling his hair, making it look even more messy than usual. Sirius was grinning, and his posture suggested he liked - no, loved - attention. She decided to mess with him a bit.

"How could I not have? You three are the greatest pranksters ever, and since my...mum, she's a Muggle, owns a joke shop, I knew from the second someone told me about you, that I needed to meet you!" she gushed, laying it on thick. Remus caught on and smiled, but James and Sirius were just lapping it up.

"Really?" James asked, excitedly.

"No!" Roxanne replied, her tone just as excited. It took the two a moment to understand what she said. James' hair seemed to droop with sadness, but Sirius threw his head back and laughed.

The food then appeared, and it took the four teenagers - or five, if you included the ignored Peter Pettigrew, watching them laugh enviously from the other side of Remus - a second to realise the Sorting was over.

Roxanne tried to reach for a chicken leg, but Remus grabbed her hand and shook his head in warning. Before she could ask, she saw why. James had kicked into warp-speed and was grabbing everything in sight with lightning fast fingers. It must come from being such a good Chaser. And I've heard he's good with a Snitch, too. Sirius, on the other hand, was taking the food from James' plate as soon as James had tossed it on.

A couple seconds later, it was over, and Remus let Roxanne's hand go, a little awkwardly. Roxanne happily grabbed some chicken, brushing off the moment. She spooned quite a bit of mashed potatoes and turnip on her plate as well, followed by roast beef and steamed vegetables. She then covered it all in gravy and proceeded to ravage it. Remus was giving her an exasperated look.

"Wut?" she demanded, her mouth bulging.

"You eat like a guy," James pointed out while he was taking a break from eating. Only because Sirius had stolen his breadstick, and they were now playing tug-of-war over it, though. Roxanne just shrugged. She'd been told this many times. Sometimes in disgust - Aunt Fleur, Uncle Percy, Molly - sometimes in amusement - Uncle Harry, Mum, Papa Arthur - and sometimes in pride - Dad, Uncle Ron, Teddy.

She and Fred used to have contests, when they were little, to see who could eat more of Grandma Molly's cooking in one sitting. They did this every year at Christmas, and they'd recently beaten Uncle Ron. He'd gone and sulked in his old room for about an hour, before coming back downstairs and congratulating them - grudgingly - on a good game.

Her plate was clean before any of the boys', and she had the time before pudding to look around at her new classmates. She accidentally caught the eye of the crazy-war-cry girl, and looked away as quickly as possible, hoping the girl hadn't noticed. No such luck.

"You must be Roxanne! Roxanne Anderson! Hey, that almost rhymes! Sort of, don'tcha think?" the girl squeezed herself in between Roxanne and the girl next to her, who was very reminiscant of Neville. "We must be related, my last name's Anderson, too! You're probably my sister, my dad's a bit of a man-whore and all, so he has like fifty million kids I've never met! I've only ever met two of my brothers, since we're triplets, and one of my sisters, who came to meet my dad! She lived with us for a while, but her and Dad got in too many fights, so she went back to Whales! So what did you do over the summer, Roxanderson?" the girl was talking a million miles a minute while chewing on a piece of chicken. It was a little overwhelming.

Roxanne responded automatically as the puddings showed up, feeling so at ease she forgot where she was. "Your mom."

James and Sirius howled with laughter, and even Remus chuckled quietly. The girl stared at her for a second.

"My mom?"

"No, your mom. It's an insult my brother taught me. College slang, you know?" Roxanne was searching for a way to explain this twenty-first century saying without giving away her identity. Wouldn't it suck if she couldn't even last a day?

"What does it mean?" Remus asked with interest. Roxanne smiled at him. He was exactly like Teddy. Inquisitve, quiet, hungry for knowledge. Or was the saying thirsty for knowledge? Oh, well. He wanted to digest knowledge, anyway.

"Well, it doesn't really mean anything. The way I used it now was reflex. When someone asks what you're doing or what you've done, or what someone else is doing or has done, you reply with 'your mom'. That context is pretty sexual, but hysterical nonetheless. Or, you could do it my brother's way - just say it after every question someone asks you. You're bound to get odd looks."

"What's your brother's name?" Sirius asked, still sniggering.

"Fred," The name sent a sigh through her body. To cover up why her eyes were suddenly filling with water, she added, "But I haven't seen him in forever. He's at college, so I only ever see him sometimes." Sirius reached across the table and patted her hand easily.

Before anyone could respond, Dumbledore stood up and the Hall fell silent.

"You can now go to sleep, I'm sure some of you are close to falling asleep in your pudding!" he chuckled at his own joke, and made a sweeping gesture. All the plates disappeared.

"Oooh! You'll be in my dorm room!" the girl squealed, and grabbed Roxanne's wrist. "We're going to be best friends!" She started to skip away, but Roxanne spun and grabbed James' wrist, slowing them down.

"Help me!" she hissed at him, but he just laughed and shook his head.

"There's nothing and no one that can save you from Althea Amelia Anderson."

xx

a/n; So yeah. Hope you liked this - longer! - chapter muuuuch more than you liked the first one. :D If you have questions, or if I messed up on something, lemme knowww! :D