Forgive me, my dears. As Guest reviewer, Maria pointed out, I said I would update every week or so and it's been more than a month and a half now. I'm sorry! I've had a lovely combination of writer's block (fickle muse!), computer issues, midterms and a lovely roommate who started me on no less than five animes (she got me into the genre and now we can be nutty together). While I won't promise anything, because we know how that went last time, I should be up and running again and able to post at least semi-regularly. Wish me luck and enjoy this chapter.

We underestimated Professor Sinistra's adoration of her precious telescopes just a bit. None of us pranksters were present at the discovery, but rumor was she swore vengeance on the culprit or culprits. That vengeance would take the form of a minimum of three weeks detention and forty house points. Anyone with even a bit of information about the crime was given five house points and extra credit. No one could prove it of course, but plenty of fingers were pointed our way. Professor Sinistra took to quizzing all four of us on subjects we couldn't possibly be expected to know and docking house points when we couldn't answer correctly. The boys responded to this unfairness by shrugging it off. I, on the other hand, threw myself into studying up on astronomy. As a result, my grade skyrocketed and when she realized that baiting me only made me succeed more, she laid off. After some time, I did too, though I stayed in one of the top three spots from then on.

My performance rose in Transfiguration as well, though for a different reason entirely. Serving as a TA gave me the opportunity to brush up on first and second year material and to learn material from the more advanced years, both of which boosted my own work. I interacted with every grade on some level. I was in the classroom with first, fourth and seventh years and assisted with grading for all years. For first and fourth years, I assisted with practical spellwork, walking though the class and helping when they struggled, just like Professor McGonagall did. The first years were easy. This early in the year, they needed help pronouncing the incantations and figuring the wand movements more than anything. Small adjustments like that brought out successful spells and it was entertaining watching their faces fill with the wonder of "look what I did!" The fourth years though were another story. First off, the magic was more advanced and there were gaps between my level and theirs. I spent most nights studying to close that gap and practicing the spells that they would be learning the following week. As a consequence, I became the top of my year in Transfiguration. However, dealing with the fourth years was far more annoying.

The fourth years took offense to having a third year help them. They demanded that I prove that I had the proper skills, but even so, most refused my assistance. Only after a stern lecture from Professor McGonagall and a series of covert hexes from the twins did they all allow me to help them, aside from one very stubborn Ravenclaw.

However, I was no help with the seventh years. Even attempting their spells resulted in a depressing lack of reaction or a heart-stopping explosion. Lee noted that if we could channel the explosions into the candy, we would make millions; I threatened to try a spell on him until he ran away. So during the seventh years' class period, McGonagall gave me a stack of essays and rubrics and set me to grading. The material came from all different levels and I was able to learn a bit every time.

Detentions with Snape continued much as they had at the end of the previous year. I was put work with short orders and then promptly ordered to get out when my work was completed. For the most part, during those detentions, he ignored me aside from the usual snide insults. It was almost easy. Easier, at least, than dealing with some other Slytherins I knew.

Most of the Slytherins knew me well enough by now. My uniqueness as the muggleborn in Slytherin house had caught everyone's attention. I had, for the first while at least, been relentlessly and cruelly bullied. However, I had earned myself respect which meant something to Slytherins. Unfortunately, they seemed to have forgotten that respect over the summer. They returned to the castle with the sneers, taunts and slurs. A very specific slur in fact: mudblood. I ignored them, to a point. My friends were with me, of course. Isaac, Justin and Terence stood by me against every taunt. Joshua was there too, on the edges, looking on. Thinking back, he looked stuck, like he was dangling on an edge. At first, I was mad about how he never spoke up, but he looked so sad. I started to pity him. But then, one evening in the common room, the taunts from turned to hexes.

There was a first year, a little pureblood who had been groomed to believe that only those of status were of any value and that those who were not like him were worthless. After several weeks of practicing, he had figured out a jinx to make my ears grow long, like a goblin's, and he bravely shot it at me from ten feet away. It hurt, and I shrieked at him as my ears lengthened into pointed tips. While I clapped my hands over the sides of my face, my friends jumped forward with their wands raised at the obstinate little boy. It wasn't any of the three boys I had been sitting with that fired the hex that made a welt blossom against the kid's unmarked skin. It was the one who had been sitting halfway across the common room, the one who had been avoiding my gaze for the last three weeks. "Learn your place, kiddo," he scowled, standing in front of me and blocking my view of the first year. Without another word to anyone, he dropped his stuff next to me on the couch, took a seat and started back on his homework. "Did you get the fourth question?" he looked up at Justin.

"Er, yeah." And that was it. Joshua was back with us and acting like he had the year before, for the most part. He was still distant from time to time and there was an unspoken agreement not to speak about his home. We respected his privacy and he relaxed, even when we weren't looking. However, as Joshua drew closer, someone else started drifting.

"Ginny!" I called across the corridor. Her head turned to me slowly and she gave me a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She didn't move toward me, but she didn't leave either as I approached her. The month of school seemed to have already put a good deal of distance between us. I worried that the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry had drawn her in, but when I brought up my worries to the twins one evening in their common room, her brothers told me she had been keeping everyone at a distance. Percy, who had wandered over during our discussion, suggested that she was ill.

"The common cold is sweeping through the school," he said. "I'll have her go get a Pepper Up potion from Madam Pomphrey in the morning." Ginny was not amenable to this idea. In the end, Percy had to practically drag her the entire way to the Hospital Wing while she protested the entire way that she was perfectly fine. Due to the effects of the potion, she had steam spewing from her ears for the rest of the day and I heard several people comment, quite accurately, that in combined with her red hair, it looked like her whole head was on fire. Her mutinous expression didn't help matters and anyone who caught her eye looked away quickly as if she had burned them.

"She won't talk to us," George told me that evening.

"She won't talk to anyone," Fred added. "Could you try?"

"She might listen to you—"

"—being a girl and all."

I agreed to try, though I'm not sure what we all expected to happen. Ginny was a stubborn girl, always had been if her brothers told any truth, and if she didn't want to tell you something, she wouldn't.

And she very much did not want to tell me anything.

I went up to her dormitory that evening, entering without knocking since the door had been left slightly ajar. "Hey, Ginny," I announced myself, trying to sound bright and unworried. She had been writing and she snapped her little diary closed as soon as she heard my voice, looking up to scowl at me. The steam really did make her look like she was just a word away from exploding. I was sure I would not escape that sort of incident unscathed.

"What do you need, Skylar?" she asked deadpanned.

"Uh, the boys asked me to check on you," I transferred the responsibility for this potentially disastrous talk off of myself, hoping she wouldn't hex her brothers in their sleep. "They said you haven't been feeling too well lately."

"I'm fine," she snapped and I took a step back. She looked surprised at my reaction and her face softened. "Sorry," she said, "but I really am fine. You can tell all of them to back off a bit."

"Will do," I said, risking taking a few more steps into the room. "Do you mind if I stay up here for a bit anyways so Percy doesn't blame me too much though?" She considered for a moment before nodding that I could stay. "Thanks." I settled on one of the currently empty beds while she returned to writing in her little diary. What was she writing so desperately in there that she couldn't tell anyone else? "Are…classes going alright?" I asked after searching for something to say. She looked at me oddly, not closing the little black book.

"Classes are fine," she said.

"Good." I wracked my brain for something else to say. "Have you been making friends alright?" She looked at me with an annoyed expression, but I didn't retract the question.

"We get along fine," she said in a clipped tone, "but they're all silly and trivial. I swear, none of them have a single intelligent idea in their heads." Well, that's rather harsh, I thought. True, perhaps, but harsh. And Ginny, though a confident and resolved girl, was not harsh.

"Well, you should give them more of a chance," I said. "They're only eleven. They'll mature. Besides, there's no way you've met every single first year in the whole school."

"I don't have to meet all of them to know that none of them are worth my time," she snapped. I raised my eyebrows.

"How…Slytherin." She shrugged and my eyebrows rose to somewhere around my hairline. As similar as we could be, Gryffindors hated being described as Slytherin, and vice versa. It was one of the easiest ways I had found to irritate either group, often irritating them both simultaniously. But Ginny didn't care. And unfortunately, I knew her nonchalance was not a result of successfully avoiding the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry. She had been raised in a family of Gryffindors and had six brothers who had taught her all about the horrors of Slytherin from the time she could talk. She and the rest of them might have accepted me as a relatively non-evil Slytherin, but that didn't mean they hadn't each ridiculed me for my house at least once over the summer. Even Ginny had taken part in the gentle jibing, despite the fact that she had yet to attend Hogwarts. Yet here she was, shrugging off the word like it didn't matter. It was eerie.

When I stepped back into the Gryffindor common room after speaking to Ginny, Fred, George and Lee were pouring over books, researching explosions, still working on our exploding candy. "Find anything?" I asked, slumping next to Lee.

"Not yet," he said. "Most of these would maim or kill the eater."

"Might be good for a weapons shop, but not a joke shop," Fred said, closing the book on his lap and stretching before pulling a new volume towards him. "Is Ginny feeling better?" he added while browsing the table of contents.

"I don't think so."

"Maybe she's just homesick," George suggested, his forehead wrinkled lightly with brotherly concern.

"Maybe that's it," I agreed, though I doubted it.

"We'll write to Mum and Dad about it," Fred said. "They'd know best how to help. After all, they've had all of the rest of us to deal with."

"Were you two homesick when you came to Hogwarts?" I asked, the idea of melancholy twins foreign to me.

"Of course not!"
"Never!"

"They moped for two weeks," Lee smirked.

"We did not!"

"Lies!" I laughed, tension from my visit with Ginny dissolving. "Percy was the mopey one," George continued to defend himself and his twin.

"Bill wrote home every couple days for a month too," Fred added.

"Sure he did," Lee grinned. "Skylar, what do you think about this potion?" he asked, changing the subject and directing me to read the section on crackling potions.

The final difference between this year and the last was, unfortunately, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Quirrell may have been evil and Voldemort may have been hiding under his turban, but at least he knew how to teach. I almost missed his stutter when compared to Lockhart's utter idiocy. He had no idea what he was doing. The first day had included a test about what we might have picked up from his books which he expected we must have been avidly reading over summer vacation. Since I hadn't yet read any of his books, when he passed out the packets of parchment, I figured I would fail. When I read the questions, I knew I would fail. Not a single question had been about something we could be expected to use in our lives, unless we planned on starting the Hogwarts chapter of the Gilderoy Lockhart Fan Club. Each and every question was about Lockhart—his likes and dislikes. There was even a question about his dating history, the answer to which he later told us could be found in chapter seven of Break with a Banshee. Personally, I had only tried to answer the first page of question, resorting to doodling over the rest. Sometimes, the doodle related to the question. Sometimes, it didn't.

"Miss French," he tsked as he collected the tests. "Perhaps a bit more focus next time, yes?"

"Yes, sir," I said innocently, swatting my snickering friends when Lockhart turned away.

After that quiz, things only got worse. Word was, the first class he had had was the second years and he had brought Cornish pixies into the class, releasing the little troublemakers to wreak havoc on the room. He had been unable to control them and had ended up running out of class with the rest of the students. Colin Creevey had gotten a picture of Lockhart with his hair frazzled and his cheeks red. I paid the kid five sickles for the picture and spell-o-taped it to the inside of Holidays with Hags. It was a blessing when he was getting particularly annoying during class.

Since that very first class, he preferred to teach theoretic material. That is, if it could be considered teaching. He acted out his books with gusto, choosing a student at random to act as whichever creature he was besting. After the third time of being called to act as the banshee, I took to hiding in the back of the classroom. It had only taken a few weeks for nearly all the boys and most of the girls to be disillusioned about Lockhart's 'great' experience and only the most infatuated of the girls remained in the first few rows of desks. After another couple weeks, no one with any intelligence really paid attention to his words and as long as we pretended to pay attention to his theatrics, he didn't seem to care. A few Ravenclaws, all of whom were repentant for having boasted that Lockhart belonged to their house, started a study group. That study group was the only reason anyone learned Defense Against the Dark Arts. During class, notes were passed and we all played grand games of Hangman. After class, we gathered to practice spells and learn their uses. Within a month, we were all more adept than our teacher was. A group of fifth and seventh years who were studying for their OWLs and NEWTs that year went to Dumbledore about the issue and asked if there was anyone else who could teach the class. They reported that the headmaster just smiled and promised that everything would pan out eventually.

Somehow, I doubted that would happen without a few helpful explosions.

And I was just getting good at those.

I know, I know, it's mostly a filler chapter, but next up is Halloween. And that's when things get really fun…