A/N: Yet another cheesy opening, but you might get over it. I was re-reading the first few chapters, and I don't think it's quite as overly dramatic.

Chapter 4:

Thin and worn scraps of cloth spun wildly in the wind, wrapping themselves tightly around a thin body. Long hair was hardly distinguishable from the cloth—but the colors made a difference clear. The woman in the midst of the flapping violence was a shade of ivory, a stark contrast to the deep blue of the cloth and the messy gold, brown, and blue of the hair. Adele became fascinated with one particularly long strip of cloth, and she stared at it, entranced by its dance, until it suddenly elongated into the wind. Suddenly, Adele couldn't tell where the strip ended. The woman followed the strip into airy infinity and out of sight.

Adele looked down and saw the same strips of cloth clinging to her body—one was already straining for nothingness, and she was tempted by the beating winds to slip away with it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blinking the traces of last night's dream from her eyes, Adele tried to focus as Carlye repeated herself for the third time.

"He's not at breakfast." Adele assumed Carlye meant Draco. And she could only thank the morning that he had chosen not to show up to further bother her. Also, she hoped that he would be late for class, because they had Potions first thing this morning. Maybe Snape would be in a bad mood. She would hope. Fervently.

"Thank goodness" Adele replied, helping herself to another slice of sourdough toast from the center of the table. "We need to come up with some sort of story though, because if I know Draco, I know that he will not give up until he is completely satisfied." Carlye commented.

"Let's hope that's purely a second-hand observation, dear." Adele said rather sarcastically. "But you're right. We need to tell him something.. Any ideas?"

"Well, we could just stick with the classic, your parents wish to keep themselves unknown—although they surrendered you to a random family in order to keep you from the Dark Lord. But unfortunately, you ended up in Slytherin so it was all for nothing on their part. But that story will only distract him for a short while—he'll want to know the details. And your real family."

"So then you think the best idea would be to discover the truth? And then we'll figure out what to tell him?" Adele asked.

"Probably…you should write to your parents. Adopted parents. Just to see if there are any other details."

"Alright." Adele said in a low tone. Carlye' eyes seemed distant. She couldn't help but wonder if there was something Carlye was not telling her—she hadn't mentioned researching the ring, and it wasn't like her to forget details. And she did get quiet on the train seeing the ring. But then, maybe Carlye was just tired.

She looked up suddenly, and saw that the room was nearly empty. "Carlye, we're going to be late!"

The two girls jumped up and walked at a brisk pace toward the potions dungeon. (Slytherins never ran. Obviously. They had a thing called dignity.)

Dun. Dun. Dun.

"Wow! If it isn't my two favorite potions students!" Snape drawled with a malicious tongue as they entered his class several minutes late. "Fortunately, Blaise and Draco can pick up for some of their – deficient – housemates. Adele! Sit with Draco! Carlye, Blaise."

Of course Snape wasn't entirely loving toward his late students, but this was a form of favoritism, because he had intentionally paired their little foursome together, even though Adele wasn't particularly thrilled by Draco on this morning.

"Today," Snape began. "We will have a sort of friendly competition between partners. I sincerely hope that you all did your summer reading, because otherwise you will suffer most painfully when you taste your own Mendaecis potion. The losing partners will write an essay about why exactly their potion failed, and why they are inferior to their partners."

Adele was very lucky; she had just read up on this potion on the train to school the day before. It was a very tricky and delicate potion. But she had dealt with worse potions before. She was looking forward to seeing Snape force one of the Gryffindors to take the potion—a potion that would cause a person to be entirely pessimistic/ fatalistic for up to three hours. The potion had a bad reputation for the numbers of people who had committed suicide because they were unwittingly under its influence.

She had to compete with Draco, potions king. Just. Lovely. But her potions skills rivaled his, although admittedly he could top her in a pinch. She would really need to focus.

Snape stood at the front of the room, a dark and tense figure. "You may begin."

Students rushed to the supply cupboard, but Adele and Draco remained behind. "Accio sage. Accio ant-eater talon. Accio…" They had all their supplies within seconds. Adele lit a fire under her cauldron and filled it with hot water from her wand. She grabbed a large ginger root and began to slice it according to the potions book that lay open in front of her. When she had the right quantity, she looked at her thin slices in admiration. Absolutely beautiful. She had about thirty seconds before she was to add them to the potion, one slice, then two slices ten seconds later, then on more slice thirty seconds later and so on….She glanced over at Draco, who was leaning over his potion, stirring it gently with the far-off look he always had on his face when he was wrapped up in doing something he liked. Perfect, she thought. Reaching under her robes for her wand, she managed to surreptitiously point the thing at Draco. Hah. Payback time.

Confundius! She mentally threw at him—no one was stupid enough to whisper curses at Draco. He had ears like a cat, and you did not want to get him angry. This curse was subtle. Not as strong as Confundus—it only caused a person to become slightly more clumsy and a bit slower for about 5 minutes. And that was all Draco needed—to lose his dragon's grace for 5 crucial minutes. Success!

She added her ginger root slices, before cutting the sage into small triangular shapes and adding those to the now boiling water….in short, she followed the instructions beautifully.

After adding the last bit of powdered snake eggshells, Adele sat back with a sigh. Her potion would be perfect. And she was ahead of Draco, who was finishing grinding the shells. He threw her an innocent glance every now and then—trying to look as though he was intentionally slower than she was with the potion. She watched his confident hand rolling the pedestal around in its stone bowl, slowly but forcefully. She watched him measure out the correct amount of the powder to tip into the cauldron. Ever so slowly brushing each little bit into the bowl. She hated how the little git wouldn't just accept that she had defeated him. No, it had to be according to his "plan." It was rather amusing to know that she was the reason for his slowness. But he would never admit to clumsiness, so she would never have a chance to gloat.

But she wouldn't be stupid enough to gloat to his face. She'd really regret it.

"Very well done, Miss Mathinee. The clear winner." Said a slippery voice from right behind her. She restrained herself from jumping in shock. Snape loved to do this to his students. She knew it would frustrate him to know he hadn't managed to surprise her. Snape moved past her with a brush of his cloak. "Draco, a bit slower than usual today, aren't you? I hope you didn't catch something from one of the other students."

Draco glared at the back of Snape's head, refusing to look at Adele. She ignored him for a while, gloating at her beautifully contrived win. She moved over to Draco after a minute. "Are you alright Draco? Snape was right—you do seem a bit slow today. Maybe you should go sleep after class. Miss Charms if you have to."

"You're probably right, Adele. I have been feeling tired this morning." Draco admitted, looking over at her. "Will you tell Flittwick for me?"

"Of course, Draco." Adele responded kindly. "It's not a problem at all."

As soon as they had stepped out of the room, Carlye was laughing at Adele like a madwoman. "I knew you two would do this. The 'let's be extremely polite and pretend like nothing happened so that we can secretly try to kill each other in peace.' This is going to be so much fun to watch!"

"Thanks, Carlye."

"So is he really sick? Or did you do something? You did something didn't you!" Adele looked at Carlye with an expressionless face. "You did? You sly little rabbit you! You're going to be dead by the end of this week, you realize."

"I don't think he realized. And he didn't act like he had realized afterward. I'm pretty good at picking up on those things. He was just being his usual polite ass self."

"A lovely word combination."

"Thanks."

Charms was a large class of Slytherin and Ravenclaw students.Today they learned how to bewitch instruments so that they would play on their own. "Unfortunately, the instruments can only play music that the spell-caster knows well. They cannot create music and they cannot play music you have only heard once or twice—Remember, the spell is only as strong as your memory of a particular song is!"

Adele tried out the charm with the song "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and she had her guitar playing the song with a piano accompaniment by the end of class.

Then she and Carlye left together for lunch.

Feel Free to review. and i might Feel Free to update. if you like the story. I'll probably keep writing it anyway, because writing is extremely amusing for me. I just don't know how well that translates into what i have written here... any suggestions, or anything that's extremely annoying-- let me know. I might just fix it.