Chapter 5

Click…

Arianna Malfoy held her breath as the painting slowly slid open, creaking. She cast Lumos and held her wand up to the crevice that was opening up. She sharply inhaled as the light illuminated the dark space, shining into the hole and…bounced off smooth stone. It was empty. Arianna exhaled slowly, trying to push away the sinking feeling in her stomach. What had she expected to find anyway? She sighed and shut the painting and collapsed on the bed, missing the yellowish glint of old paper in the back corner of the safe.

The next morning was rainy and as Ari looked at the clock, she realized she was late! She changed faster than she ever had before, screamed "WAKE UP YOU SLEEPYHEADS! WE'RE LATE" in the main room. Everyone else jumped out of their rooms with grumpy expression and pointed their wands at her. "WHATS WITH ALL THE SCREAMING?" Rose screamed herself. Ari threw her arms up, palms facing outwards "Jeez guys! I'm not a monster" "Oh yes you are, who wakes people up by yelling at them?" Star grumbled under her breath.

After more grumbling and yawns, they finally managed to get to the class. Their first session was transfiguration with the Ravenclaws. It was a remarkably interesting class, but she was a little sad that they weren't able to do actual magic. She understood though that theory was just as important if they didn't want to end up turning into a mouse forever, no matter how annoyingly boring it was. After transfiguration, they had a free period and as Ari was heading back towards the common room, the Weasley twins caught her in the middle of the hallway. They were grinning like crazy and gestured her to follow them. She raised her eyebrows but followed them anyway.

The twins led Arianna into an empty classroom that looked like it had been used for exploding things. Half of the desks were covered with candy and some thing that looked like half-finished prototypes of inventions of some sort. The rest of the desks were covered in paper, ink and quills.

Fred looked at her and grinned even wider than before and said, "This is our hide out, where we let lose the creativity in our minds and develop, and test, products for our future joke shop!" "Right. Is it…supposed to be this…messy?" She said looking around at the chaotic room. Before Fred could answer, George emerged from a pile of papers and held up one with a triumphant smile. "Found it!" Ari picked her way through the mess and stood next to George. "You see, we've been trying to develop this project and well…We could really use your help." He admitted. "Me?! Why a Slytherin and a sworn enemy to your family? Why not your brother or another fellow Gryffindor?" "We know you're talented with magic" said Fred. "And we don't really have any particularly smart Gryffindors, and Percy is a total jerk." George finished. "All right I'll help. But not in this mess. Let me clear it up." She agreed and waved her wand. All the scorch marks on the walls vanished, the room was cleared of dust, all the prototypes were sorted organised by different categories and the paper sorted themselves into neat, organized piles. "That's better" Ari stated, satisfied. "Now let's fix this product of yours".

She studied the notes, and her eyebrows went up as she read the purpose of the product. This is interesting. She sat there for a while, correcting some notes and occasionally summoning some books from her dorm for reference. After she had fixed the notes, she got Fred and George to show her their prototype and worked for the rest of the session to perfect it. Then they tested it out on George and made a few more changes and tried it out again. Finally, they managed to finish it and they stood around a table with a bowl full of Dew Drops (the candy).

"All right, this is it. It worked on George, but we still need to check if it works the same way with other people" Arianna announced. "Oh don't worry, we have a test subject in mind." Fred assured her. "Just get to your next class" "OK?" Ari said, confused and hurried of to get her stuff from the Slytherin common room.

Ari checked her schedule and found that her next class was potions with Uncle Sev and the Gryffindors. She left the common room with her roommates and chatted with Star about the twins. "They actually asked you for help? YOU?!" Star asked, flabbergasted. "Trust me, that was my reaction internally too." Arianna chuckled.

When they reached the potions classroom, a small group of Gryffindors were already there and suddenly she caught sight of the Weasley twins slipping out of the classroom and smirking devilishly. Oh I see what's going on. Ari smiled at the thought. This was going to be an interesting class.

All of them entered and took their seats. "Silence" Uncle Sev spoke. "Today we are focusing on the sacred art of potion making. Flip to page 3 of your books and you will find a simple cure for boils. Read through the instructions carefully and then begin making your potion." There was a noise of rustling paper as everyone hurried to follow his instructions.

Arianna skipped to the part of making the potion as she had read through it several times before. There was more noise when everyone had caught up to her and started bringing out their cauldrons and ingredients. Soon the entire classroom was filled with many scents and multi-colored steam. Ari was pleased to see that her potion was doing very well which was much more than she could say for some other people.

Uncle Sev was moving around the classroom and occasionally yelling at some poor student but nothing interesting had happened. Yet.

It was around the middle of the period when the long-awaited moment finally arrived. Snape walked back to his desk and looked around disapprovingly. He sighed and reached for his plate of candy, popping one in his mouth. Arianna's smirk widened as Snape's eyes did and music began to play from the Gryffindor side of the classroom.

Arianna Malfoy couldn't hold in her laughter as Snape spread his arms jumped onto his desk. Then he started dancing, leaping from his desk onto a table of Gryffindors while doing the splits in the air. His face was terrified as he tap danced on and around cauldrons. Then the music swelled, and jumped, landing on an empty and covered large cauldron and pirouetted while swinging himself on a chain on the ceiling right after that in one swift movement.

The entire class was in peals of laughter now and when Snape picked up a random Slytherin student and started waltzing with her, Ari started laughing so hard that she fell of her chair and she sounded like she was cackling.

Snape spun one more time then finally dropped the poor traumatized girl back in her seat and went back over to the Gryffindor side and started doing grand battements across the tables, spilling the contents of the cauldrons. One of them spilt on to a girl who had wild, fiery red hair and she cursed as boils started appearing from the spots where the unfinished potion touched her skin.

Arianna, between intense giggling, poured some of her finished and perfect potion into a flask which she the proceeded to dump on the swearing girl. The girl gave her a disgruntled but thankful look as the boils disappeared off her dripping skin. Unfortunately, crazy dancing Snape decided to choose that table to finish his mid-air pirouette.

Ari quickly dived out of the way as Snape reached to pick another partner. He picked up the red headed girl and started to dance with her. She screamed and used alarming colorful language. She kicked Snape and sent him flying to the other side of the room. He landed in front of Nisha and Rose who cartwheeled in different directions. Star jumped behind Arianna as Snape turned towards her and left poor Ari facing him.

Arianna frantically searched for her wand, but it wasn't under her sleeve. Oh Shi-

Her thought was cut off when Snape grabbed her arm and she had to shake him off. In desperation, she found her knives underneath her sleeves and pulled two of her daggers out of their sheathes, holding them crossed in front of her.

"THE ANTIDOTE" she screamed out loud, hoping Fred and George got the message. Thankfully, they did and the entire class was suddenly filled with purplish smoke. Everyone coughed and waved the smoke away. Once it cleared, it revealed Uncle Sev standing in front of the table. His face was purple and red from embarrassment, his hair sticking up like he'd been electrocuted. "GET OUT! CLASS DISSMISSED!" he screeched, panting and vanished inside his office.

Ari inhaled slowly and put her knives away. She found her wand on the ground and tucked it safely in her sleeve, sighing in relief. It was really quiet except for the occasional chuckle after Snape dismissed them. Ari shook her head when Nisha gestured for her to join them. "I'll catch up with you guys later" she called as she headed towards the Weasley twins.

"Well that went well" she said, making them jump. "It was pretty impressive." Fred admitted. "If a little terrifying." George added, shivering a little. "Seriously! Choose a better test subject next time will you?" Ari scolded them lightly. "Hmm…" they both hummed at the same time before waving and heading towards their common room.

Ari smiled at them and turned around to find the fire-red hair girl from potions. "hey" Ari greeted, nodding. She nodded back and asked, tilting her head "Do you always carry around knives? Do you even know how to use them?" The other 11-year-old laughed. "Pretty much. And yeah I do know how to use them. I train in secret because…you know, muggle weapons and yeah." "Ahhh. A pureblood family. Which one?" The Gryffindor smiled knowingly. "I'm Arianna Malfoy, Ari for short." She introduced herself. "Dabria Cox" She replied, holding out her hand. Ari shook it and chatted for a while with Dabria until it was time for the next class. She and Bria, which turned out to be Dabria's nickname, agreed to meet up near the whomping willow after classes were over.

Arianna walked back to the common room thinking about her new friend. Apparently Gryffindors aren't all bad. She sighed. I just need to hide these thoughts from father. Ari pressed her hand to her temples, just wanting a rest.

This had been an interesting day indeed.

A/N: Hello, how was this chapter? I'm not personally happy with it and I re- wrote it multiple times. I finally decided to put a crazy dream I had into this story. Did it work out? Please let me know in the comments and just a little shoutout to my mum who edits all my chapters and is a big supporter of my writing. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for this story, I will consider putting it in when it matches the plot. Just make sure you put in a name (fake or real) so that I can give proper credit.

-Bella