Scarlet admired her reflection in the dark window. As she had only her satchel with a small amount of spare clothes when she had timeturned, she had no robes to change into. Therefore, when Ron and Harry left her and Hermione to change, she had changed into different clothes, so as to make a good impression on the most famous graduating class Hogwarts had ever seen. She wore a long-sleeved, mesh top under a short black t-shirt with a skull and crossbones on the front that showed off her mesh-covered stomach, the chunky black books she had worn with her jeans over, a pair of thigh-high red and black striped socks, and a short black skirt.

Ron and Harry re-entered the carriage and they both stared directly at Scarlet. "Whoa," Ron said.

"What?" Asked Scarlet fearfully. "Is my skirt tucked into my underpants or something?"

"Ronald has apparently never seen a pretty girl before," Hermione said coolly. "Shut your mouth, you'll let the flies in."

Ron looked scandalized. "Hermione!" He cried. "Harry's looking too! And he's the one that's supposed to be your boyfriend!"

Hermione stared at Harry for a moment, and then thwacked him upside the head. He looked sheepishly at her, rubbing the back of his neck. "Sorry, Mione."

-----

They had expected to have to seek out McGonagall after the sorting ceremony and the feat, but she swooped down on them bare minutes after they entered the Great Hall.

"Why are you out of school uniform?" She asked, then without waiting for an answer, continued – "I will have to remove points from your house. Erm… which house are you in?"

"Professor McGonagall," Scarlet began, slightly bemused to see the familiar face of her old headmistress with fewer wrinkles and less grey hair. "I'm from ten years in the future, I used my timeturner to get here accidentally but it's broken and –"

"I think you'd better come up to my office," McGonagall cut her off, then gestured towards the trio. "And I suppose you'd better come too."

There was complete silence all the way up to McGonagall's office. Scarlet opened her mouth to say something a few times, but thought better of it and closed it again. Once they had reached the safety of the office, Scarlet began to talk, placing her broken timeturner on the table.

"Professor, this broke when I arrived," Scarlet said. "Do you have one? I know the Ministry has loads –"

"They may have 'loads' where you came from, Miss…?"

"Lennon, Scarlet Lennon," Scarlet said. McGonagall continued.

"Miss Lennon, but the Ministry's entire stock of timeturners were broken a couple of years ago. According to Scrimgeour, they need to locate the proper method of creating timeturners before they can create new ones, and that is located somewhere in the Ministry's deep libraries…"

"So I can't go back…" Scarlet muttered, the reality sinking in.

"Not until the Ministry creates more timeturners, and then we will see what we can do about getting you one." McGonagall shuffled papers on her desk. "Now, I think the only thing left to do is to arrange for you to complete your final year of schooling here, or at least until we can get you a timeturner to return to your own time. What house did you say you were in?"

"Slytherin…" Scarlet muttered, her mind elsewhere. If she had nothing to do but wait until a new timeturner was procured and then she could go back to her own time, she felt as though she definitely needed to create some chaos for this time period. I'll have adventures, oh yes I will, she thought to herself evilly. But what she didn't realise were that three of the occupants of the room she was in were staring at her, horror-struck.

"Slytherin?" Harry echoed.

"You're a Slytherin?" Ron demanded incredulously.

"Yes," Scarlet said tersely. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if you're a bloodline-obsessed, muggle-hating twat," Ron spat.

"Look here!" Scarlet shouted. "I may be a Slytherin but the Sorting Hat's songs have always said that the traits for Slytherin were ambition and cunning, not how much you hate Muggles. After all, Godric and Salazar were the best of friends before Godric started acting all jerky and decided Salazar wasn't good enough for him anymore. I don't know how things are run in this archaic community, but in my time we treated each other with respect, no matter what house we were in. Why, my… friend is in Ravenclaw!" The last sentence was feeble as she had edited it slightly, making the word 'boyfriend' into the word 'friend', but she knew she could have twice as many adventures if she was unattached. Besides, she thought, who's gonna know?

"You have house unity?" McGonagall asked curiously, once Scarlet and Ron had stopped glaring daggers at each other.

"Yes," Scarlet said proudly, even though it was not her doing that had caused the houses to unify. "Hogwarts: A History – Revised states that there was an event that happened about ten years ago that unified the houses, perhaps forever." Hermione looked impressed at this statement, and smiled broadly at Scarlet. Scarlet returned the smile, wondering what she had done to merit this show of friendliness.

"Ten years ago?" McGonagall echoed.

"Well, ten years for me, so I guess it should be happening soon-ish," Scarlet said offhandedly. The other occupants of the room noticeably bristled. "Anyway, I'm going to bed. I'll see you later," she said, then rounded on Ron. "Oh, and it's lovely for you to call me a racist when you're immediately prejudiced just for the house I'm in." At that, she walked out of the room, head held high. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard a yell and turned around to see Ron bounding towards her.

"I wanted to apologise," Ron said, and it was clear that he loathed admitting that he was wrong. "I shouldn't have been prejudiced towards you. I just find it hard to talk to girls that I like –"

"You like me?" Scarlet laughed.

"Well, you don't need to laugh in my face," Ron said, angry again.

"No, it's not that, it's just… the famous Ron Weasley, likes me."

"Oh," Ron said, blushing. "So I was thinking… do you maybe… doyouwanttogooutwithme?"

"Yeah, okay then," Scarlet said, and smiled before walking away. "And so the adventures begin," she muttered under her breath.