Severus Snape normally didn't pay much attention to the students. Normally, unless they were in his classroom, he went above and beyond to avoid them as he personally found most of them annoying as all get out. But when he'd finally gotten a lead, somewhat at least, on his daughter, and he'd tracked that lead, thanks to a little help from former enemies turned friends, and it'd lead to one of the students here at Hogwarts, he found himself wondering which of the girls attending the school could actually be his flesh and blood, which one of them was his daughter, the only family the man had left.

Students filed into the Great Hall for the feast and the speech, the sorting ceremonies and he scanned the crowd of faces.. He'd just about given up on his trying to pick the girl out of a crowd when he saw the girl slink in, slide relatively unnoticed into a seat away from the other kids at the Ravenclaw table and take a book out, start to read it as she ate the food in front of her. He noticed that she wore mostly Muggle things underneath her house robes, the shirt she wore stuck out from beneath the arms of the robes, covered her hands almost to the knuckles. There was a blue bandanna tied into her long and curly dark hair and to his surprise, unlike most of the girls here at the school, her face was completely devoid of makeup.

He'd seen the girl around a few times, he'd sort of felt this odd connection to the girl.. Not to mention the girl did resemble Caroline, the woman that had apparently given him a daughter then given her away because she was afraid he wouldn't want a child, and she knew she was most certainly going to die. And tonight, something in him just clicked, sort of.. They say that maternal instincts are strong ones, but currently, Severus Snape was wondering if paternal instincts weren't equally as strong.

The girl looked up when a girl behind her at the Hufflepuff table elbowed her and leaned in closely, whispering something, nodding to Dolores Umbridge who was currently speaking. He rolled his eyes in disdain at Umbridge, she'd gotten the job he'd always wanted, this annoyed the man a great deal. But he watched the girl carefully and as covertly as possible.

Could this quiet Ravenclaw be his child?

He'd need more proof to back up his suspicions, confirm or prove untrue this 'lead' that Lupin got for him, of course.. But he'd always been painfully aware of the girl, to some degree.

Enough so that he knew that the girl didn't have a particularly good home life. Her parents were well off, but there were rumors that they mistreated her a great deal.

"Snape's watching our table, Izzy, for the love of Merlin act your age." Mirabelle said as she looked at her best friend in mild annoyance, a grim look on her face as she chewed her roast. Izzy shrugged and then asked, "What are you reading?"

"Call of Cthulu." Mirabelle said as she turned a page, stopped only long enough to turn her water in the goblet in front of her to rum, and then take a sip, before looking back down at the book again. Izzy blinked and asked her, "Did you just spike your water?"

"Merlin yes.. There's not enough rum in the free Wizards world to make this woman's insufferable drabble any more bearable." Miri mused as she sipped, held out the goblet to her best friend, a hint of an amused smirk when Izzy coughed and asked, "What is that?"

"Rum."

Izzy fanned her mouth because the alcohol was still burning her insides and it was already in her stomach by this point, and after taking a generous sip from her own unspiked goblet, she asked, "So.. Come up with any plans of torment for our darling DADA instructor?"

"Only her death by an army of bats." Mirabelle mused quietly as she shifted around her seat, looking around the Great Hall. Someone somewhere was staring a bloody hole right through her and she wasn't entirely sure she was fond of it, really. She hated to be watched when she was eating. When her gaze briefly met with those of her favorite professor, Severus Snape, she gave a polite yet stiff nod of recognition, got back to eating her food.. The sensation still remained, so she grumbled and looked up, surveyed her fellow students with vague disinterest as she bit the inside of her cheek nervously.

Her gaze met with that of Fred Weasley when she cast a moments glance over at the too noisy Gryffindor table and she did her usual scowling and poking out her tongue bit then turned her attention back to Cthulu, biting her lower lip as she did so. That made twice today she'd looked up and been locked in the curious gaze of notorious prankster Fred Weasley.. Was he planning a prank to humiliate her?

The look in his eyes didn't seem to indicate any mischief intended on his part, still, she worried about it, because she had gotten nervous, thrown up all over him when she'd tried to even say hello to him after a Quidditch House Cup qualifying game the year before. The dark haired Ravenclaw drummed her fingers impatiently on the tabletop as she hummed a Muggle hard rock song, (Sanitarium by Metallica) and found herself wishing Fred would stop looking at her the way he was currently.

It was cruel, in her opinion, to toy with her when she'd had such a long spanning crush on the male.

Fred winced as his twin's elbow dug sharply into his left side and George leaned in, asked cheekily, "What is it about that one girl, Gred?" as Fred shrugged. Since the day he'd noticed her, coincidentally, when she'd been trying to say hello after a Quidditch match he'd done outstandingly well in and when she'd thrown up on him instead of saying hello, there had been this strange pull there to the even stranger petite Ravenclaw.

He'd watched her enough to know she wasn't a people person, she seemed skittish as all hell around more than her only real friend, another Ravenclaw who was notorious for being wild and a bit of a troublemaker with a shaky reputation with the men, Izzy. And occasionally, when Izzy was in one of her mischevious moods, she seemed jumpy around her also.

He knew that the girl spent ungodly amounts of time in Professor Snape's classroom, even when she wasn't in class.. That for whatever reason, she viewed the man as a mentor of sorts and for that reason, she excelled in Potions, her marks being just two below Hermione's which was something to brag about.

He also knew that she seemed to enjoy Muggle hobbies, she preferred Muggle music (and most of it was dark, scary sounding, he'd heard her playing it once, on an old piano in one of the castle's forgotten closets, not to mention she hummed lyrics when she was nervous or upset) to wizard bands, and she loved scaring people, it was probably the only real trickster trait she showed.

She didn't seem to be afraid of much, other than people and feelings.

"I don't know, Forge.. But suppose this year, brother, I explore that?" Fred mused quietly as he watched the girl in deep conversation with her one best friend as the girl sat unknowing that she was being observed of course, at the Ravenclaw table.

"Do before it drives us both mad." George teased gently as he smiled at his twin brother. He'd often wondered if Fred was going to actually find a girl he liked for more than ten minutes, and since that one Quidditch game last year, when the girl had taken apparently all the nerve and moxie she posessed to actually say hello to Fred, Fred had been on and on about her nonstop.

The feast ended, and before he could catch up to the quiet Ravenclaw, she'd disappeared into the masses. "Damn it. How in the hell is she so damned good at that?" Fred wondered aloud as George chuckled and nudged his twin then said "Let's go brother.. We've got a business to run. And it looks like our business might just bloom wildly this year."

"This could be our year, Forge."

"Aye, it could, Gred."