The purplish liquid hissed as I added wormwood to it, which was not at all the reaction that I expected. That should have cooled it, not heated it. Clearly, my calculations were off. I frowned at my mortar and pestle, decided that the wormwood was already crushed and not worth saving anyway, and scraped the rest into my palm. I carefully stood up and positioned myself as far from the cauldron as possible while still being able to reach my hands over it.

"Oy!" The first-year boy, trying to write as largely as possible to meet his length requirement for a paper, snapped his head up. His eyes widened when he realized that he'd just spent the last hour sitting in the common room with an active cauldron. "You might want to clear out." He nodded vigorously. "The sooner the better." I like to think it was the sweet smile I flashed that prompted him to squash up the parchment, knock his ink over, leave the mess for someone else to clean up, and run up to the boys' dormitories. Then again, it might have been because I also edged myself away from the cauldron as I spoke.

"Geronimo," I sighed before releasing the wormwood. As the crushed bits fell towards my concoction, I jumped back and pulled my wand to protect from the inevitable explosion of boiling liquid.

When the potion let out another hiss, no louder than the last one, I frowned again and looked around the common room for someone, anyone, to explain what was going on. Carefully, I edged back up to my cauldron and peered over the edge. The potion was still a shade somewhere between purple and pink, it was not bubbling from reaching a boil, and no steam was rising from it. Now curious, I sat back down on the window seat, reached into my small chest of plants, and pulled out my last sprig of wormwood. I would have to either buy more on the first trip to Hogsmeade or steal the school's supply from the student closet of potion ingredients and let Snape worry about it. Or I could not test my theory. Clearly that option was out, and I always preferred to save money, so I threw the final sprig in my mortar, crushed it, and dumped every last bit into the potion. It let out a long, loud hiss from such a quantity, but there was no boiling over or mass explosion.

Excellent.

Upping my stupidity, purely for the sake of curiosity, I reached out my hand over the cauldron but felt no warmth rising. I smiled to myself as two people sank onto the window seat next to me.

"What're you up to?" Roger Davies, my Quidditch captain and best in-house friend, questioned. Cho Chang leaned forward to look curiously into my cauldron.

"Potion making," I answered simply, snapping a porcupine quill in half with my hand and dumping it in. A large bubble formed and popped on the surface, but a quick check showed that it was not from heat.

"What are you making?" Cho asked. I shrugged.

"Haven't the foggiest."

My friends immediately slid as far away from me as the curved window seat would allow, which was at least a meter on either side. Roger eyed me with a mixture of horror and disgust. "You're just throwing ingredients into the cauldron?"

"I'm not throwing them!" I insisted. This was a good idea, though. If I could get more distance between me and the potion with some of the larger ingredients, that would be safer. "I need a rotten egg."

"That's disgusting," Cho wrinkled her nose. "Why?"

I have to give her credit for at least being curious. Not many people can be interested in why someone needs smelly, dangerous food. If I had an answer, I would have been more than eager to share.

"More importantly," Roger interrupted, sliding closer to me so he could grab my wrist before I added a full sprig of knotgrass to the potion, "why are you just throwing things in a pot instead of following a recipe like sane people?"

I sighed and dropped the sprig harmlessly to the side so he would free me. "I was making a swelling potion, but I accidentally added beetle eyes instead of puffer-fish eyes, and the whole thing turned bright blue. And since it didn't explode, I thought I'd experiment a bit."

"Why were you making a swelling potion?" Cho asked, lunging to grab my other arm so I didn't put in another porcupine quill.

"To make things swell. Obviously." Honestly, no one understood me in that school.

"Alright, alright," Roger waved his hands in front of his face to show that he was done with the entire conversation, "putting aside your potentially life-threatening stupidity for a moment," he grabbed my fist before I could fling a beetle eye at him, "I just came from a meeting with Flitwick about our Quidditch schedule, and instead of telling you later at dinner, I thought you two should hear the news in private." Now he had my attention. I let my arm relax and, the second he released my fist, tossed the beetle eye into the potion. He gave me a look but let it slide so we could focus on the most important part of our friendship. "The cup's back on this year. They only took it off last year because of the triwizard, and our first match is against Hufflepuff."

"What?"! Cho and I exclaimed at once. To get over my shock, I threw in that porcupine quill. Roger let out a frustrated groan, and Cho decided I might be onto something and threw one in, too. The potion gurgled and definitely shifted towards the pinkish side.

"They can't ask us to play them first thing!" Cho protested. "That's not fair."

"They know how close we are with the Hufflepuff team," I agreed.

"I know, but there's nothing I can do about it. I've got to run practices like nothing's different. No reason we can't try, right? I don't expect they'll have much of a team now, no offense Cho."

"Don't count them out," she defended meekly. I rolled my eyes. She would defend that boy of hers to the end, and he had passed his intensity and devotion on to his teammates. It was part of what I liked about him. His dashing good looks didn't hurt, of course.

"The Slytherins probably think they're too wonderful to bother even practicing this early," Roger continued, knowing that the best way to keep Cho from crying or pouting was to plow on with the conversation. "If we can keep it up, maybe we'll stand a chance for the cup this year."

This was being dramatic, of course. Cho was a good seeker, but she was nothing compared to Potter and Malfoy. The twins were amazing beaters; I'd seen first-hand how they could judge how fast someone was flying and know how hard and at what angle they should hit a bludger to nail their target dead-on. The only thing I felt mildly good about was our keeper, and that was because the job was mine. I knew that I could keep the quaffle on the right side of the hoop, no matter what strange route Angelina and Alicia flew at me.

So, really, it didn't really matter if we beat Hufflepuff. It would almost feel wrong if we did, as if we were taking advantage of their misfortune. Roger and Cho knew this, too, and sank back into their seats with matching sighs of resignation. To calm my own anger, I frowned back at my potion.

"I wonder," I muttered to myself, but they both perked up anyway, "if Snape has any Ashwinder eggs."

My brainstorming was met only with groans of ignorance from people why could never understand how much thought I put into my concoctions.

FGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGFGF

It was my first breakfast as a Ravenclaw, and I was miserable. I was already annoyed by my fellow females, who spent the hour or so between the welcoming feast and finally falling asleep discussing our textbooks and wondering what classes we would have the next day. I scooped sausage onto my plate with an overwhelming feeling that they needed to find themselves a new Sorting Hat at this school.

I continued to mope as a young boy sat down next to me and snagged a piece of toast before I could. Even in my grumpiest state, food was worth feeling slighted over, so I smacked his hand. He dropped the toast in surprise, and I picked it up and put it on my plate.

"Ladies first," I scolded, smoothing a bit of butter on it.

"Sorry," he grinned at me. "My mum always yells at me for stuff like 'at. I'm Roger Davies."

"Mel Harper," I nodded. I thought the name sounded familiar, so I took a chance and asked, "You a first year?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, taking another piece of toast for himself. "I remember you from the sorting. The hat took it's time with you." I must have grimaced, because he laughed. "It doesn't make mistakes, though. If it said Ravenclaw, it meant it. I wish I'd ended up with that lot, though," he cocked his head towards Gryffindor.

"Me, too," I grumbled, noting as Fred, George, and Angie laughed their way to the table and sat down behind me.

"Oh, you want to play Quidditch, too?"

Clearly, we were not on the same page. I wrinkled my nose at both his nonsensical train of thought and the scrambled eggs he continued to pile onto his plate. Now, I could shovel down food with the best of the boys, but the mound on his plate disgusted even me. I glanced over my shoulder to make a face at Angelina, and was greeted by a matching expression. Apparently, Roger had similar eating habits to my other male friends at this school. At least I only had to deal with one disgusting eater.

"Nnnnnnooooo," I let out slowly. "Do you?"

"Oh, absolutely! And Gryffindor's brilliant!" I narrowly avoided the bit of egg he sprayed in my direction and gave him a pointed look. "Sorry. I've been flying ever since I was little. My brother, he's down there," he pointed down to the far end of the table to a dark haired boy who shoved a sausage in his mouth and listened intently as a pretty blonde witch emphatically pointed to a book with one hand and him with the other, "he used to throw apples at me and tell me it was training for when bludgers flew my way."

"That sounds like…excellent training," I lied, forcing a smile. Professor Flitwick began walking down the Ravenclaw table, handing out parchment to students. The other house heads did the same, so I reasonably assumed this was not bad news.

"Oh, it was terrible," Roger shook his head. "But it was better than when he used to use actual bludgers. Mum made him stop doing that in case they got loose and Muggles saw, y'know? I'll take apples any day." He paused to shovel another forkful of eggs in his mouth. "First years don't play. No point, since we can't have brooms. And we'd get killed against a 7th year beater. But you watch; next year, I'll be a Ravenclaw chaser."

"It's, uh, good to have goals," I smiled weakly. Professor Flitwick chose that moment to slap slips of parchment between us, one for me and one for Roger, and I grabbed mine quickly to change the subject.

"Look! We have flying lessons this afternoon!" Roger beamed. Damn. "Yuck, but we start with Transfiguration! I've heard that's really hard."

"What do the G's next to Herbology and Potions mean?" I frowned. Roger studied his schedule intently before answering.

"Must mean we have them with Gryffindor. Then that means we have flying…"

I didn't listening because I leapt up from my seat, cleared the few steps between our tables, and forced my way in between Angelina and one of the Weasley boys, whom I assumed was Fred. He confirmed this when he let me know that he didn't like how I'd forced him to move over by poking my stomach with his fork and, when I tried to grab the offending silverware, tugged on my ponytail. After landing a solid smack on his shoulder blade, I shoved my schedule under Angie's nose and used her confusion to snatch hers. "Herbology and Potions," I announced happily, knowing she understood my meaning even if the twins looked confused.

"Is that it?" she frowned. "That's not fair! I can't be stuck with them all week! You haven't even met their other friend. Lee is…"

"A wonderful man?" Fred interrupted.

"A lovely dancer?" George piped up.

"More entertaining than a Filibuster firework anonymously set off in a pot of stew?"

"Easy on the eyes?"

"I was going to say," Angie narrowed her eyes, "more annoying than both of you combined, but I take it all back now. Are we allowed to change houses?"

I laughed. "You want to be in Ravenclaw? I'll trade you. Half of my house is reading a schoolbook over breakfast, and we haven't even officially started term yet. There's been a horrible mistake."

So, I know this story is moving a bit slowly right now. I really wanted it to focus not only on her relationship with the twins and their friends but also on the impact that Cedric's death had on other students. OoTP from an older perspective, I suppose. So the story is going to follow a lot of the main events of the original work from her perspective with the addition of things happening to these older students the Golden Trio never particularly found out about. Bottom line, it will pick up. I promise! Really, I do! If you think it's moving waaay to slow, or have any other opinions (good or bad!) PLEASE let me know! I love hearing what you have to say.

Next Chapter: Eating Habits and Ground Scarabs