The next morning Dill woke up unnaturally early, but that often happens when you are in a new and unusual place. She whiled away the time gazing out her window at the surrounding mountains, and watched as their tips turned from dark blue to faint violet, finally wavering on a pale bluish- grey. To her right she could see a tiny corner of the lake, bordered by dark forest. The grounds appeared still; but faint birdsong could be heard trickling through the glass.

The girls in her dormitory began to stir, and she turned from the window to get ready for the day. As Dill passed the low bedside table on the way out of the room, her fingertips brushed the dark hair ribbon lying sinuously across the polished wood, intertwining it between their thin digits. She would send an owl to her parents that day. Reaching up, Dill tied her hair back in a loose ponytail and left, closing the door softly.

The watery blue ceiling of the Great Hall was occupied by a couple of scudding clouds that morning, and ripples were left in the pumpkin juice. A small man with a shock of white hair was bobbing up and down the Ravenclaw table, handing schedules.

Dill liked professor McGonagall right away. The previous evening's impression of her stern countenance and thin mouth had belied the witty and passionate personality beneath, that Dill now saw winking at her intermittently, as if from behind a curtain, as she sat in an aisle desk of the third row in Transfiguration. The class didn't disappoint. After a lecture and a brief, but sensational transformation of the large mahogany desk at the front of the class, McGonagall caused matches to be distributed among her pupils, and informed them, beady eyed, that she expected to see needles in their place when she checked at the end of the hour. Dill looked about her a bit nervously, but, catching McGonagall's eye, hastily bent over the match she was meant to be silvering. From her glimpse around the room, she had seen that most people were muttering the spell they had learned with different inflections (a bit ridiculously, she thought) or jabbing their wands at the stubborn matchsticks. Dill stared at her own matchstick, sizing it up- although, admittedly, this did not take very long. She drew her wand and pointed it at the rosy tip. Losing confidence at the last moment as someone swept by, she muttered the spell hastily, and the words rushed, bumping, over her lips. Dill watched in disappointment as the match trembled violently and then resumed its' leisure on her desk, decidedly un-needle like.

"Speak louder, Fawcett."

The voice startled her. Looking up, Dill saw McGonagall's dull green back a couple of desks down to her right. " It is very important to say spells distinctly and clearly- that is, if you want what, for most people, are the desired results."

Dill left the unfortunate Fawcett to McGonagall's chiding, and drew her gaze slowly back to her matchstick. Leveling her wand once more at it, she took a breath. Dill let her voice confront and ease into the spell, playing every last syllable.

Dill stepped into the hallway, shoving the handful of needles that McGonagall had insisted on her transforming into her pocket. They would probably tear holes in the fabric and fall or poke out, and Dill, smiling wryly, knew McGonagall hadn't thought of that. She sat gingerly for the rest of the day, and began to sympathize with the bobbing professor Flitwick- although she could think of no good reason why he should have a pocketful of needles, too.

The rest of her classes were mostly interesting but hard, and after such a miraculously successful start, Dill couldn't help but feel a bit discouraged as the day wore on. She ate dinner tiredly that evening and was dropping into an uneasy sleep, when she remembered that she had not written the letter. Grumbling sleepily at a shade, she turned over, putting it off.

As, one by one, the rest of her classes were introduced to her, Transfiguration emerged as by far Dill's favorite. She took to carrying her Transfiguration book with her wherever she went, and read it whenever she could- eventually being told off by her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher for reading during a rather dry lesson. Slightly embarrassed, Dill worked silently until the bell rang and then hurried out of the room. She was halfway to her next class when, shifting her bag between shoulders, she glanced inside it and noticed at once the absence of a familiar spine.

Dill was standing in the Charms corridor, searching futilely for the missing book in her bag, when she saw Pam walk up slowly. She was holding something behind her back, a strange expression on her face. Dill moved towards the wall, expecting to be passed by, and was surprised when the other girl stopped directly in front of her. She drew the hand from behind her back, and it crept forward slowly, carrying a rectangular dark-covered object which Dill suddenly coveted very much.

"I found this in my Defense Against the Dark Arts class," Pam said, looking at the book. "Lucky I was early. I saw the initials in the cover, and thought it might be yours. W.S.- it's not very common, is it?" She paused, looking sheepishly at Dill, and said, " I'm probably dumb for forgetting your name. Wil-something-? W-something-dell-" Dill smiled. " My name's Wendyl."

Pam smacked a sweaty palm to her forehead, wincing slightly. "I knew it was something like that- something long and complicated" she complained from behind the hand.

"But you can call me Dill," Wendyl added helpfully. "Most people do."

Unable to restrain herself any longer, she held out her hand, and Pam, grinning, placed the book into it.

" But you know," she said suddenly, as if continuing a long conversation they had just been having, "Names are really strange. Old maid-ish or outlandish, you have to take them as they come." Dill nodded. "I used to hate my name" she professed. Pam's eyes widened. "Really?! But it's so cool!" She gave Dill a kindly but rough shove on the back. "Just try going around with a full name like mine- then you'll be grateful you're not any worse off." She sprang back towards her class with a wink and a little wave. "See ya later, Dill." Dill waved back, and couldn't help smiling.

The thought of the letter continued to nag at her during the week, bumping against her head like some demented paper airplane endowed with a Clouting Hex, but Dill pushed it to the back of her mind impatiently. She suddenly had a host of things to worry about, and soon, her classes were not the only ones furrowing her forehead.

She was in the hall on the way to class when it happened. Passing a corner, she saw a group of boys huddled together down the corridor branching off from hers. Slowing her footsteps out of inconspicuous curiosity, she pretended to be intensely interested in one of the portraits on the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, a torch flickered lividly on the boys' pale faces. No- wrong, Dill thought. Only one pale face. She shifted over. A curly haired girl who had been following her on their mutual way to class paused, and said a bit huffily, "Come on, you know how Flitwick jumps when we're late."

Dill made a confused hand signal behind her back for the girl to go on without her, trying to get a better glimpse of the close knit group.

" -What you're trying to say, mate-"

"And he jumps enough as it is," the curly girl continued, frowning at Dill's hand.

"-Sounds like you're trying to-"

"-over analyze the hover charm, he said, but it's interesting because-"

"-You're only a filthy little Snape."

There was a small flurry of movement that began to radiate from the center of the group, but it was checked and began to recede and tighten again, like a ripple that had been frozen on the water, and then coaxed back through time until it shrank into a single dot on the surface.

Dill stepped forward, unsure, and was restrained by a nosy arm. Turning, she saw the curly headed girl, a watchful look replacing her usually pensive face. "They're Slytherins." she said shortly. "Or, at least, the one they're ganging up on is. Leave it alone" she advised, more gently.

Dill shook her head slowly. As her head swung towards the torch, she finally caught sight of the center of the group. A familiar dark head disappeared without a ripple.

Dill broke free of the girl's half-hearted restraint and surged forward over the flagstones, the hem of her robes frothing at her feet.

Pushing through the tangled thicket of arms and shoulders, she saw several bemused pimples of faces dot her vision, but she ignored them and pushed as hard as her skinny frame would allow, distress lending her strength and speed. Her hand found another. Dill pulled and a short boy popped out of the group like a shuttlecock. The boisterous crowd swirled confusedly and then re-formed, closing the passage that had been parted between them.

"What're you on about?" one of the boys leered at her.

"Sorry, er, we've gotta go. Class." Gabbling something else indistinctly over her shoulder at the puzzled-looking group, Dill pulled the boy after her down the hallway. The curly haired girl stared at her silently as they passed. She had conjured a flaxen companion to her side, whose pretty cherry mouth was puckered in confusion. "Why'd she do that?" the cherry lips asked. Dill almost saw them forming their next words before they spoke. "She's not a Slytherin, is she?"

"Well, she is a Snape" her friend replied coldly, as she watched Dill's receding back. "So I suppose there's not much difference, is there?"

Dill stopped by a disused stairwell, out of breath. She turned to her similarly constricted companion. "What happened, Seizeus?"

His dark hair was plastered to the side of his face with sweat, and although he tried to grin at her, she could see that the smile did not extend to his eyes. "Been a while," he replied, the vestiges of his familiar mischievous grin hanging about his face. "I didn't know you were doing stunts now, Dill."

"And I didn't know you were making friends with thugs now, Zeus" she shot back. He grimaced slightly. "Those were just, eh, acquaintances" he replied shiftily. "The sentiment around here seems to be pretty anti-Slytherin at the moment, if you hadn't noticed." Dill frowned at the wall behind his ear. Knowing Seizeus, he had probably annoyed the boys by dropping some sort of sly remark- annoying practical jokes to those who knew him, but she shuddered to think what it might cause if directed at strangers who, as Seizeus said, harbored 'anti-Slytherin sentiments'. Actually, she didn't need to think. She had pulled him out of it. Realizing what she had done, she stared at her cousin, troubled. He winced at the expression on her face. "Look, it's none of your business" he said curtly, as she was about to speak. "You might want to think of a better time for a family reunion." "But-" "Class." For one of the first times in her life, Dill felt she did not understand anything that was happening. Her mouth went a little slack. Suddenly, thinking was getting her nowhere. "What?" She spoke with difficulty, her tongue heavy. "Class." Seizeus repeated acidly. "You said you had one to get to, didn't you?"

Dill watched him walk away, but she did not see him. Her gaze was far away.