Rumors had a nasty habit of catching like wildfire in both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds which meant Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was no exemption.

All morning the only subject on the students', and faculty's, lips had been the mysterious stranger who showed up in the middle of the night and was escorted to Dumbledore's office by the caretaker, Argus Filch.

"It's probably one of Dumbledore's spies," said a boy with bright red hair and freckles in a nonchalant tone.

"Come on now, Charlie, why would Dumbledore have spies?" asked another boy who bore a striking resemblance to the first.

Charlie Weasley shrugged, "Then who do you think he was?"

"She," interjected Moira O'Connell, a first-year like Charlie. "The visitor was a girl."

"Oi, Bill, does Dumbledore have any family?"

The second boy, Bill Weasley, lowered the copy of the Daily Prophet he held in his hands and looked to Charlie with a raised eyebrow. After a long moment he gave a shrug of his shoulders to his younger brother and resumed reading an article on Gringott's.

"You're no help," Charlie grumbled, turning his attention to the bowl of cold porridge before him. He really wasn't hungry.

Pushing the bowl back, he turned on the bench to talk to Moira who was sitting to his left braiding her long black hair as she read the backside of Bill's paper. "Who do you think she is?"

Moira shifted her gaze to her friend in a deliberate, almost dreamy, manner. "Who who is?"

Charlie visibly grimaced. He had met Moira on the Hogwarts Express and, since they were both first-years, shared a compartment and a box of Bertie Bott's. Since then he had come to realize several things about the girl:

She should have been in Ravenclaw, not Gryffindor, as far as he could tell.

She was very intelligent, wise, and creative.

She had the worst short-term memory loss problem he had ever heard of.

"The visitor, Moira."

"Hm? Oh! The girl. Well, what would bring one to a school in the middle of the night?"

"Beats me. I barely remember why I come in the day."

Moira giggled. "A light in the night needs someone to keep watch on the wick or it will burn itself out."

Charlie stared blankly at her. There were times that she reminded him of a Muggle fortune cookie.

"You two should probably head along. Professor Snape's tough and you're almost running late," came Bill's placid voice from behind the barrier of newsprint.

Rising from her seat, Moira slung her bag over her shoulder and tugged at Charlie's sleeve. "Let's go!"

He almost expected her to go skipping off ahead of him, but she didn't. Moira lingered until he had grudgingly pulled himself up and headed off for the dungeons.

As was to be expected of a dungeon, it was dark, dank, and smelled funny. What caught Charlie off guard though were the voices drifting from out from the classroom.

"Professor, I believe that using a viper's fang is over-doing it a smidgen."

"Miss Delacroix, you are here to learn, not advise."

Through a crack in the door, Charlie could glimpse the bat-like Snape and a redheaded woman he had never seen before.

Miss Delacroix, as she had been called, was rather lovely despite the frown she wore and the way she had her hands on her hips. She reminded him of his mother in that stance.

Accompanying the frown was a look of "Fine, but I warned you" on her features which turned into a smug smile as the dungeon shook with a loud "bang."

Charlie couldn't help him as he and Moira stood crowded in front of the ajar door and burst into laughter.

Snape's dour face was smudged with soot and bits of something that looked like a spider. Hearing the laughter from outside the door, the potions master flicked his wand and sent it flying open, revealing the two spies.

"Weasley!"

Charlie cringed and thought to flee, but before the thought even occurred to him, he was being dragged into the dungeon by the collar of his robes by a furious Snape.

"That's twenty points from Gryffindor for sticking your freckled snout where it is not meant to be," hissed the Professor as he released the boy halfway down the aisle.

Miss Delacroix watched over the greasy man's shoulder from the front of the room where she had set to cleaning up his mess. She looked as though she felt sorry for Charlie and offered him a kind smile while Snape wasn't looking.

"I know her," came Moira's dreamy voice as she drifted in after her friend. Setting her bag down on a table, she took a seat in the middle of the room. Charlie followed.

"You do?"

"Yeah, she's the visitor. Oh, and a fairy princess."

"Silence!" snapped Snape, turning to glare at his students before disappearing into his office.

Charlie frowned. A fairy princess? Now he was sure that Moira was quite mad.