A/N: Okay, I should probably warn you know; this chapter has a few explicit swearwords so be prepared. As always, I own nothing of the HP Universe; that belongs to Miss J.K
All I own are Original characters and a special edition copy of the Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead. God that book is brilliant!

Chapter 8: First Day Dramas.

You know how everyone goes on about how the first day is always the worst? Well in relation to mine, that was an understatement. A severe understatement. First of all, Ivy, Alice, Jen and I slept in, as for some reason Ivy's "Wakeup" charm didn't work properly and we all overslept. As a result, we were woken up by Will and Colin who were on their way to breakfast.

In a flurry of Gold, Red, Blue and Green, we hurriedly dressed. Neither having time to do it properly nor nicely the way I'd hoped, I just tugged on a yellow headband and left my long red waves out. We all ran down to the great hall just as the house elves were beginning to clear away breakfast, so we just grabbed the first thing we could. Most of the students had already made their way to classes, and so it was in a flurry we ran back to our dormitory's grabbed all our textbooks and shoved them in our bags, grabbed the timetables which had been kindly left on the table in the lounge room and ran off to our first lessons of the day. For Jen and I, ours wasn't the best option for two people who were yet to know how to cast the simplest charm.

Defence against the Dark Arts.

I suppose the bumbling professor, Professor Graham Greene, who seemed to change personalities as quick as he made us turn the pages in our text books, sort of unknowingly did Jen and I a favour. When he made us turn to a page on information about werewolves, which he was so adamantly concerned were determined to overrun muggle England then declare war on the Wizarding world, I was at least in a realm I knew; Both Jen and I were fantasy romance freaks, and knew heaps of legend on the beasts, so we were able to cruise through the lesson mostly unnoticed.

Professor Graham Greene, an author turned professor, had apparently began teaching at the post since the beginning of the year, and was one in a long line of professors who all seemed to disappear at the end of each school year. He was middle aged and wasn't attractive in the slightest. He was a reasonably tall man with a lanky, almost wiry frame. He had large round tortoise shell glasses which magnified his brown eyes to look almost like a bugs. He had already started to grey and as a result, had what I liked to call, salt and pepper hair. He had a small pug nose and thin reedy lips which constantly seemed to be moving.

Halfway through the class, I was hit in the back of the head by a ball of paper. Frowning, I picked it up and saw the scrawled handwriting with a simple note;

Hey Steve Irwin,

How's the weather down there?

From the crocodile you tackled last night.

Smiling, I turned around to see Hamish who was giving me the most absurd grin, then winked when he saw me looking. Smoothing out the crumpled paper gently, trying not to make much noise I wrote him a letter back, sending it in a rather impressive throw back across the room.

Dear Crocodile,

The Weather is lovely down here. Crikey mate, I'm tired. Went on a huge adventure last night looking for crocks and overslept. Had to run all the way to class as my speedboats broken and in for repairs.

How's the back? Hope I didn't tackle you too hard. *laughs*

From Steve Irwin

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him grin at me, and then he quickly stashed the note in his book as Greene walked past. "Mr McLachlan!" Greene exclaimed, his clipped British accent making Hamish flinch. Greene wore a triumphant smirk, "Why don't you tell the class where the term werewolf comes from, and how it is accepted that these creatures came to be?" I fought the urge to raise my hand as I watched a delicate pink blush cross Hamish's cheeks. "Uh- well. Um" Hamish muttered, his blush deepening. I decided to save the poor bloke.

I raised my hand. The movement caught Greene's eye and he turned to look at me baffled. "Yes Miss… MacKay is it?" I gave him a small smile, "Yes sir. The term werewolf is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word 'Were' meaning man conjoined with wolf, so it consequently means man-wolf. The term is simple enough to describe the condition, though it fails to explain the change. It is described as being a curse and there are many different folklorist tales which describe how it is the creatures came to be. Popular muggle culture has seemingly distorted these tales and presents new ones in their place. It is believed that werewolves were first described by the Ancient Greek writer Petronius. So really, your second question has no certain answer, as each myth seems to contradict each other, so therefore it is impossible to determine which is true." I said, feeling the words rush from my mouth.

Jen was grinning proudly beside me, her green eyes alive with satisfaction that I had just stuck it to a professor. The rest of the Ravenclaws were looking at me absolutely shocked, and the Hufflepuffs were looking at me with a mix of surprise and admiration. My eyes darted over to Hamish who gave me an appreciative look and mouthed Thank You. "That's- that's very impressive Miss MacKay. 10 points to Hufflepuff." Greene muttered, slightly put off that a new coming student had stuck it to him.

I smiled a small smile, but it didn't last long. Greene recovered quickly, seemingly determined to show me up and discredit me. "So, seeing as though you're an expert in the lycanthropy field Miss MacKay, would you care to enlighten us about how, in a fight you could deter a werewolf." He sneered at me, his muddy brow eyes alight with satisfaction. Bugger. He had me there. "Well it depends sir. Is this a muggle fighting a werewolf or a Witch or wizard?" I asked, trying to buy myself some time while I desperately called on my knowledge from my obsessive reading habit.

"Either." He said, perching his wiry frame on the end of his desk and pushing his round glasses further up his nose. I frowned. Think Anna think! I thought desperately, begging my mind to help me. "Well…" I began, pausing as I caught a glimpse of something hovering at the edge of my mind.

"Werewolves are said to have superhuman strength, senses and speed. There is a lot of debate on the best way to kill them. I don't believe there is any way to simply deter them. To kill them there are a few various methods, but I haven't come across anything to deter. If a muggle wanted to deter the creature, they would probably struggle without the aid of a wand or apparition skills, but that being said, a wizard would be hard pressed to find a shield which would stop a physical attack. Most shields a wizard can produce are mental or to block unfriendly spells. Right?" I asked, a frown creasing my brow. I was probably wrong to assume what I did about wizardry as I knew basically nothing about it, but the impressed expression on everyone's faces made me guess I was bang on target.

Greene looked shocked. The idea which had been hovering on the edge of my mind came to me then, and I grabbed it and ran with it. I began to speak again. "Modern muggle popular culture suggests a silver bullet would be sufficient in slaying a werewolf but in traditional legends things like Wolfsbane, mountain ash, mistletoe and Rye were believed to safeguard one from a werewolf attack, though I don't believe these things have been proven as if they failed, the person couldn't report back on it." I added, a hint of dark humour in my voice at the end.

Jen giggled, clapping her hand over her mouth in an effort to swallow all the laughter which was burning on her lips to come up. Greene became angry then, and his mission to see me fail increased tenfold. "Why was the 16th Century in muggle France so important in relation to werewolf History?" I smiled. I knew this one; I had been browsing the web aimlessly about a week before I came to Hogwarts to find some information on some of the creatures I might come up against in this world. You know, wanting to be prepared? That was my mum's favourite saying, and she sprouted it constantly, especially in regards to school work.

"The 16th century was important because the muggles were very superstitious and apart of the phase which was occurring among the various occult and god-fearing folk of witch-hunting, they began to accuse people of Lycanthropy. What was interesting about most of the cases presented in their courts were, that there was evidence of the defendant's use of murder and cannibalism on their victims, but there were no signs at all of there being any relation or condition which would make them change forms into that of a wolf. Eventually though, these cases were dropped, and the French returned to their fear of the werewolves. Later on though, the Beast of Gevaudan raised the fear dramatically in the muggle's eyes in the mid 1700's when 80 people were killed by an unknown source. Naturally, they claimed it was a werewolf and relied on the evidence of a sole survivor who said it was a large wolf. The attacks stopped after hunts which followed killed a few wolves in that area." I grinned, now feeling confident again.

Murmurs erupted about the classroom and a red flush of anger crossed Greene's face. I must have tipped his extremely fragile self-control because he began to thunder about how rude I was in purposely and maliciously making fun of a man whom I should have been grovelling to. He emphasised time and time again how Dare I, a wretched little half-blood, who had no magical ability whatsoever question and defy him. I stood there, for my part, with a carefully placed blank mask, desperately trying to keep it together. All I wanted to do was run out of the room and cry, but I didn't want to give the bastard the satisfaction, so I took a grain of salt and took it all. At the end of his tirade, he dismissed the class early and demanded I return to him for detention at 5:30 sharp that afternoon. When I tried to explain that I couldn't because of tutoring with another professor he simply glared at me and told me I was lying.

He demanded to know who the professor was, and when I told him it was Snape, he merely laughed and said it was my problem to deal with and if I didn't show up to detention, I would get a weeks' worth of them with Filch. Having only seen the creepy groundskeeper from afar, I decided not to push my luck and lamented that I would have to try and explain to Snape.

Yeah, you think that's bad? The rest of the day only seemed to get worse.

Next class was Care of Magical creatures with the haggard and rough Professor Kettleburn. Kettleburn wasn't the most verbose man and tended to grunt half his lesson. I was alone in this class, as no one I knew had decided to take it up as an elective. There were two Hufflepuffs, two Ravenclaw's, three Gryffindor's and three Slytherin's. I sat on my own and naturally, happened to sit in a pile of bindies which caught in my robes and kept sticking me in the butt for the rest of the day. The class was conducted outside, on a grassy hill which overlooked the Forbidden Forrest. Tried as hard as I might, I couldn't pay attention to whatever the hell Kettleburn was rattling on about in regards to Imps. At the end of the lesson, he gave us homework; we had to write a two foot essay about what we had learnt in class that day.

Perfect.

So somehow I had to find time after Greene's detention, when he so desired to finish it, to write a two foot essay on something I had no damn idea of, and a lesson I hardly heard. In Transfiguration with the Overseas Mission I managed to get badly scolded by McGonagall for pronouncing the incantation wrong and turning the little lizard in front of me into a Pen which had a little pink tongue which kept poking out to flick the air. In Charms with Flitwick which was again with the Overseas Mission, instead of levitating my feather like the rest of them, I blew it up and singed the professor's robes.

Lunch was a hurried affair and after getting there late, I managed to spill sauce on my jumper and spent the rest of lunch in the bathrooms trying to wash it out before it set. I had, unknowingly picked a haunted bathroom and was confronted with a furious ghost who kept telling me that I was splashing water all over the floor and behaving like a true gitt. To shut her up I threatened to flood the bathroom and use it as a bath to which she screamed at me then dove down a toilet. As a result, I ended up giving up on my jumper and taking it off, and deciding just to wear my shirt. Turns out, I had forgotten how see through white school shirts were and had thrown on a new lacy black bra in my hurry to get dressed that day, so as I ran to my next class, not only was I shivering like a fool against the freezing winter wind, but also earning lots of appreciative looks from various males

In Divination, after tripping down the long staircase and almost tumbling headlong into a heard of Slytherin's, I managed to hobble into class with a grazed knee where the Divination Professor Trelawney looked me straight in the eye and told me I was going to die a very painful death very soon, to which Hamish, who was standing next to me at the time burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. He clapped me over the back and jokingly told me that my crocodile wrestling days were over. Professor Trelawney took this seriously and fretted that the past time was extremely dangerous and fraught with peril and continued to bring it up for the rest of the lesson.

I really wasn't looking forward to my last lesson of the day though. Potions. I could just sense something was going to go wrong. I get this gut feeling, you see, when something is going to go wrong. It's hard to describe, but it's almost like intuition. And whenever I get that feeling, I know that somewhere in the near future, the shit's going to hit the fan.

Upon leaving Divination, I had the feeling I was forgetting something and after bringing my Rememberball out of my pocket and seeing that there was a cloudy red smoke decorating the inside, I knew I had. I had managed to walk half of the distance to the dungeons when it suddenly occurred to me what it was I had forgotten, and I knew there was no way I could go to potions without it. So I was left with two options; either I could get in trouble with Snape for not having my textbook and notebook, or I could risk it and run back to the dorm to see if I could snag the books and make it back before class began. I chose the latter, hoping and praying to my lucky stars that something or someone "upstairs" was watching over me.

Have I mentioned before how much Mistress Fate hates me?

I ran flat chat the whole way and ended up banging into the painting guarding the door because I forgot I needed a password to open it. After trying a few times to remember said password, I got through and bounded up the stairs, snatched the two offending books off my bedside table, then went hurtling out the dormitories and back down the stairs. Someone must have been really against me because, naturally, I took the wrong staircase and entered the wrong floor, got lost in the maze of hallways, then eventually found my way back to the moving staircases. Taking the right staircase, I finally got the right floor and when bolting at full steam ahead to the classroom door.

As I got a few steps away I slowed into a brisk walk, and then paused at the door, desperately trying to catch my breath, after it had slowed considerably, I knocked timidly on the open door. Everyone's eyes quickly flashed to me, including a pair of furious black orbs.

"Miss MacKay." Growled a livid Snape, glaring holes in my face. "How lovely of you to grace us with your presence." I swallowed nervously, one thought clear in my head.

Oh Shit.

A/N: So here we go chickens! Here is yet another chapter. This chapter was a bit of a filler, and I am really sorry. But I already knew that Chapter 9 was going to be god damn epic and decided to take a chunk out of it and make a new chapter which described the hell which was Anna's first day. I have imparted a lot of personal quirks and qualities to Miss Anna, and my real life friends who are following this story point this out to me constantly. I seem to have dumped a whole lot more onto her in this chapter.

Poor Dear.

So anyhoo. I hope you enjoyed it