Rosa gasped and sat up straight in her bed. she looked around the dorm room she shared with Angelina and Alicia. The gray light that came before sunrise filtered through the windows. Rosa groaned and fell back amongst her pillows. She knew that she wasn't going to get anymore sleep now that she was awake.
Reluctantly, she grabbed the notebook on her nightstand and started writing in it with a muggle pen.
Half an hour later she stopped writing. The other two girls were still sleeping, even as the sun finally made its appearance. Seeing as there wasn't much to do, she went ahead and got up. Out of her trunk came a simple white shirt and a pair of dark jeans. She pulled her black school robe on over the muggle clothing before slipping on a pair of dark leather boots that laced up the front. She placed her notebook into her bag as well as some parchment, quills and ink.
Rosa walked down the stairs into the common room while braiding her dark hair into two french braids. she finished the second as she was stepping out of the portrait hole.
Walking quickly, she arrived at the Great Hall while it was still empty of students, for the most part. Rosa saw two Hufflepuffs and seven Ravenclaws at their tables. Slytherin and Gryffindor tables were deserted of students. Rosa looked at her own empty table and walked over the the two Hufflepuffs.
"Do you mind if I sit with you guys while I wait for some people in my own house to show up?" She asked them.
The two looked at each other and the girl shrugged at the boy and said, "why not? There's no sense to sitting by yourself unless you're trying to study."
"Thanks." Rosa said, grinning at them as she sat down. "What are your names?"
"I'm Cassie," the girl said, "and this is Cedric."
"Nice to meet you, My name is Rosa."
By the time most of Gryffindor House had made it to breakfast, Rosa was still at the Hufflepuff table. More Hufflepuffs had join the group and names, as well as stories had been passed around the group. Some students were surprised to see the large group in the middle of the Puff's table, others just ignored it. Some of the sharper eyed students noticed the lone Gryff amongst the yellow and black.
The Weasley Twins didn't notice. They sat down to eat and were spooning food onto their plates when Lee came in and asked them where Rosa was. The two looked at each other and shrugged.
Lee sighed and glanced up and down the table, looking for the missing girl. It wasn't that unusual for the twins not to notice when someone wasn't there, even if that someone was a friend.
Lee could see some people glancing over the timetables they had just received. Others were dishing out food and talking to each other. He noticed a few were watching one of the tables behind him, so he turn and scanned those tables to find the point of interest.
That's when he spotted her, sitting next to Cedric Diggory and laughing at something one of his friends had said.
Sighing, he glanced at the twins, then got up and walked down the aisle between the two tables.
"It's dangerous, having friends on different Quidditch teams, especially if the Weasley Twins are your friends." He said once he reached her.
"Don''t worry." Rosa smiled up at him. "I can handle anything they can throw at me, can they say the same?" Lee laughed as the Hufflepuffs around them stared at her.
"You're going to continue hanging out with us, even if it is offering the Twins a pranking target" Said a pretty blonde girl sitting across from Rosa.
"I don't really care." She replied. "I'm good with pranks and I love a challenge. If Fred and George don't like me associating with members of Quidditch teams, they'll have to get over it."
"As much as I love this conversation," Less said, "we need to be at our table in order to get our timetables." Rosa nodded and said goodbye to her friends before walking back with Lee.
"Were you serious about pranking the twins back if they started pranking you?" He asked her while still out of the twins earshot.
"Yeah." She shrugged. "I had some experience at my old school. Any of my old classmates could tell you that starting a prank war with me is a bad idea."
He looked at her doubtfully. "Have the twin told you about any of their pranks, or shown you their 'tools'?" Lee asked.
She laughed. "Yes, they have. The 'tools' are decent, and their pranks are quite brilliant. But they aren't up to my standard."
Lee stared. "What?"
Rosa laughed again. "I'm going to have fun with this." she said as she sat down.
"Have fun with what?" One twin asked, looking up from his plate.
Rosa studied his face before smiling and saying, "nothing." She pulled a plate toward her and placed a piece of buttered toast on it. "I need to ask the house elves if they could serve grits*." she muttered, reaching for the strawberry jam.
Someone grabs it before her and she finds it in the grasp of the other twin. "What do you mean by, 'nothing'?" he asked.
She stares at him as well, then smirks and says. "I mean that its not any of your business, George." Rosa ignores his shocked face as she took the timetable offered to her. She glanced it over then stood up. "see you in class." She grabbed her toast and walked out of the Great Hall.
"What just happened?" George asked.
"I don't know, mate." Lee said, finishing his plate. "She's different, that's for sure. She's also right, we need to get to class."
After an interesting class about some of the more medicinal plants, they were off to Potions. Rosa thought that it was a brilliant system. Learn about cultivating the plant and it's uses, then learn how to properly use the plant as an ingredient.
Apparently, she was the only student who held this view. Everyone around her was complaining, or making derogatory comments about the teacher. This was confusing because even if the teacher was mean, you should still try to learn from him and respect his rules.
They entered the classroom and she sat next to a student who was sitting by himself. The student, a dark haired, thickset boy an inch or two taller than herself, turned to look at her and did a double take. He glanced around the room, then looked back at her.
"Are you sure you want to sit here?" he said, in a slightly mocking tone.
Rosa looked around. "I don't see anyone else without a partner." She pointed out. "So yes, I do want to sit here."
"But you're a Gryffindor!" He exclaimed.
"Yes, yes I am." She countered. "Why? Does that matter?" Her innocent response had apparently shocked the other student: he hadn't come up with a response by the time the teacher had pulled out his student list and begun reading off the names.
Rosa heard the sharpness in the man's tone as he laid out the rules and wrote out the potion they were to make that day. She left to get the ingredients while her unwilling partner set up their table.
Returning to her station, she set the supplies in the center of the table and started setting up her cauldron. Her partner, who she still didn't know that name of, got to work cutting up some of his ingredients.
Rosa read the instructions, then looked at the ingredients for the first two steps. She started to prepare them, and put aside the ones that were ready. Then she began heating her cauldron. Using the methods she had learned from her past teachers and her experiences while cooking, she began to construct her potion.
Making sure that she had the ingredients needed for the next step prepared, she looked around the room. Most students were working on their individual potions, though there were a few from both sides of the room throwing dark glances at other students cauldrons.
Her stirring finished, she poured the yarrow powder into the potion, turning the green mixture a strange yellow color. Exhaling, she dropped a crushed myrabolan fruit into the steaming liquid and turned down the heat as the potion started turning black. She was turning to gather the chopped seeds for the next step, when a small explosion erupted from the back of the class. Rosa turned to look, even as she scattered the seeds across the top of the potion.
A fuming girl and an ashamed looking boy stood next to a smoking, melted cauldron. Professor Snape stalked to the back of the class, vanished the mess and reprimanded both students. He took twenty points from Gryffindor, then went back to his desk. The two students sat down and began pulling out writing supplies for the essay he had given them to do b the end of class.
Rosa returned to her cauldron, the potion inside now a satisfying brown. While she thought that Professor Snape's teaching manner could be improved, she did understand his harshness. This particular potion was extremely volatile when mishandled. Those two were lucky that it was only a melted cauldron.
The end of class was in sight when Rosa bottled her final result. The red potion sat in it's flask as she cleaned up her side of the table. She cleaned her cauldron, put the ingredient scraps into separate glass vials and wiped down her desk. She brought the flask up to the teachers desk, as well as the vials.
He didn't look up, so she left them on he desk and went back to her seat. The bell hadn't rung yet, so she pulled out her Potions book and started reading it.
She put the book away when students around her began taking their flasks up to the teacher's desk and packing their stuff up. Rosa remained seated as her stuff was already put away, and waited to be dismissed. The bell rang and students began leaving, but Professor Snape didn't look up from his work. Confused, Rosa followed the other students out into the corridor and up to the Great Hall for lunch.
When she sat down at the Gryffindor table, she asked those around her, "Why didn't anyone wait for Professor Snape to dismiss us?"
"Why would we?" Fred asked, biting into a roll.
"It's respectful." she said, dishing some carrots onto her plate.
"No one is respectful to Snape." George clarified.
"He's a git." Lee concurred.
Rosa bit into one of her carrots. she swallowed and continued, "So? He's still a teacher, and he holds a position of authority. Shouldn't that be enough to respect him?"
"Rosa," Lee explained. "Snape looks down on Gryffindors as it is. You saw how he was in class, he uses every excuse to take points from us. It's worse if you're on his bad side."
"Alright then. Lets give him a reason to respect us. Have you guys ever heard the term, 'Kill them with kindness'?" She asked, smirking.
Fred looked at her, interested. "What do you have in mind?"
"Nothing much." she admitted. "Only a starting point. Small things."
"Like what?" George asked, suddenly wary.
"Simple things." she said. "Things like, saying thank you, waiting to be dismissed, and treating him respectfully." she pointed her fork at them. "I bet you two can't do it."
The twins eyes lit up with the challenge and they began a whispered conversation, while Lee and Rosa finished up Lunch.
"You shouldn't have done that, Lee said, draining his glass. "They'll beat your bet."
"I know," she said, eating the final bit on her plate. "That was the plan."
"You're evil, you know that?"
"Yup."
The class after lunch was Transfiguration. Rosa liked the stern professor, she taught fairly and didn't put up with nonsense. Though Professor McGonagal could lighten up on the homework she gave out.
Charms came after Transfiguration and was quite fun. The little professor gave them a speech about O.W.L.s, then gave them some charms to warm up with. Rosa and the twins had fun with this. They used the summoning charm and the color-changing charm on each other, causing Professor Flitwick to send them to opposite sides of the room, not that it helped.
After Charms, Rosa slipped off to the library. She had been around enough mischievous kids to know that they didn't appreciate getting told to do their homework, and they sometimes looked down on those who did complete their homework on time.
In the library, she managed to get through the assigned homework from Professors Flitwik and Sprout. She left McGonagal's for tomorrow, then wrote out an outline for the potion she had made that morning. The outline was a habit from her previous school, one she was unwilling to break because she learned more from doing the outline than from making the potion.
Dinner was different from the previous night. The Great Hall was somehow even louder and rowdier. She guessed that it had something to do with the lack of a train journey, but it was driving her crazy. For some reason she was getting more and more frustrated with the people around her, so when she had finished half of her plate, she got up and left the Great Hall.
Instead she wandered through the castle. With all the different paintings, statues and tapestries, the castle was wonderfully mysterious and Rosa loved it. The empty halls lit by flickering torches were fascinating to her.
She barely made it back to her common room before curfew. She wasn't the only one. Several other students were hurrying through the halls and there were a few around the Gryffindor entrance.
The large amount of Gryffindors in the common room was startling. She had imagined most of the Gryffindor Tower occupants getting ready for bed, but most of them didn't seem like heading to bed.
Feeling the irritation starting to come back, Rosa started for the girl dorms. Halfway there she was waylaid by the twins. She pressed her lips together in an effort to not yell at them and tried to listen. It didn't take her long to figure out that they weren't going to stop anytime soon.
"Guys, it sounds lovely, but I have to go to bed." she told them.
"But it's only ten!" George exclaimed.
"I know it is." She replied.
"So why are you going to bed?" Fred asked.
"Because it's ten and I still haven't gotten used to the time change." she snapped.
"Just let her go to bed, you two." Lee spoke up. "You could tell that she was trying to get to her dorm as soon as she entered the room." The twins sighed, but didn't argue. Rosa shot Lee a grateful look, then escaped to her dorm.
so, I finally finished this chapter. And it went a lot deeper into Rosa's character than I thought it would. Please tell me what you guys think, if this chapter was way too crazy or if it was just right. Thank you for reading!
