A/N: Hey! Everyone! I'm baaaaack! Well now, I'm extremely sorry you guys had to wait so long for this chapter. It was Cursed.The important thing is that it's finally here! There's not much to say, other than Thank you all for waiting, and special thanks to Lone Astronomer, for being so incredibly patient
Disclaimer: It's all JKR's. She owns the universe, but I own Erin.
****
Erin yawned. She was sitting in the Great Hall, trying to eat breakfast. She groaned inwardly as she looked at her porridge. It wasn't that she didn't like porridge; she did. Especially when there were chunks of walnut, raisin and apple. It was the fact that this morning was going to include her first classes here at Hogwarts, and she was nervous.
She glanced at the boy sitting beside her and grimaced. He was inhaling his breakfast like it was the last meal he'd ever eat. She nudged him. "Ron, when do we get our schedules?" she asked.
Ron grabbed a cup of pumpkin juice and took a gulp before answering. "Soon, McGonangall's coming now." He nodded towards the black robed woman advancing on their table.
Erin felt her stomach drop again. 'Why didn't I read the texts?' she thought frantically.
Ron seemed to notice her anxiety. "Don't worry, Erin; the teachers will be fair. They can't expect you to understand everything. You've only known of this world's existence for..." he counted on his fingers, "a month and three days," he said reassuringly. This made Erin feel a bit better, but she was still hoping her stomach would stop doing somersaults as she was handed her schedule.
"Here you are Ms. Davis. If you have any questions, you may visit me in my office." Professor McGonagall continued down the table and handed Hermione her schedule.
Erin quickly examined her timetable. She noticed that the first class on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays would be Potions. Hadn't Seamus said that mean-looking head of Slytherin taught that? Erin swallowed hard and was about to verify this when Ron beat her to the punch.
"Oh no!" he groaned, waving his sheet around. "Double Potions with Snape and his Slytherins. What are they thinking?"
Hermione spoke up for the first time since leaving the dormitory earlier that morning. "Probably that our year has had the worst Potions marks for four years running," she remarked gloomily.
Erin gulped and glanced at the Slytherin table, where Snape was busy handing out schedules. She shuddered. There was something about that man, something about him that threw her off balance. She quickly looked down at the cold, gooey mess that had been her porridge.
There was a flurry of feathers and Paisley came to a halt in front of Erin, bearing a letter. 'But I don't have anyone who would owl me,' she thought in confusion. Tentatively, she reached out and untied the cream-coloured envelope from around Pais' leg. With an encouraging hoot, Paisley perched herself on Erin's glass of pumpkin juice and helped herself to refreshments. Erin stared at the letter. It was addressed to a "Miss E. Davis" in a delicate script. Erin had just begun to open the letter when she was bumped from behind. She turned in her seat to see a set of Hogwarts robes. Her gaze traveled upwards to the face of the wearer. The robes belonged to a boy about her age with skin the colour of milk chocolate and eyes to match. He looked slightly familiar; he belonged to Gryffindor, that much was certain. He muttered a quick, distracted, "Sorry," and hurried away. Erin turned back to her letter.
Just as she was pulling out the contents, she was elbowed by Ron. "We've got to head to Potions now," he said, making a face. "Come along when you're ready, will you?" He, Hermione and Harry rushed off without a backwards glance.
"But I don't know where..." Erin began. "Oh, bollocks!" She looked around the table and saw Lavender and Parvati still sitting, finishing up a conversation, and figured she'd ask them. She leaned towards them and said, "Um... Lavender? Parvati?" They looked up. "Would you mind showing me the way to Potions?"
"Oh! Sure," Lavender answered, glancing at Parvati. "The famous trio left you already?" she added with a knowing look.
"The famous... Oh, you mean Ron, Hermione and Harry," Erin replied. "They just sort of went off; I'm sure they didn't mean to. They probably forgot that I was new."
Parvati gave Erin a knowing look. "Don't worry about them, Erin. They just have a way of doing that to people who try to join their group. I mean, they're so close... They just don't seem to realize."
Erin thought about this, confused. What were Parvati and Lavender trying to tell her? She got a feeling that there was a warning under their light-hearted tones.
"Um... I understand..." she lied. "Yes, I see..." After a few moments of awkward silence, she decided to change the subject. "Right, so, shouldn't we be getting to Potions?" she asked a bit desperately.
"Quite right," Lavender answered, "Come on, we'll show you."
****
Once they got out of the Great Hall, Lavender and Parvati led Erin down a long corridor. They seemed to be heading down to the dungeons.
Parvati was chattering on about a certain "him." Lavender was nodding enthusiastically at Parvati's euphoric descriptions of the someone. Erin wasn't paying much attention, as she was trying to memorize the way down to the Potions as she walked it. However, she focused on them once again as she was addressed.
"Oh, I'm sorry. What was that?" she said, a bit embarrassed about her mind wandering.
"Don't you think George Weasley is just about the closest thing to a Greek God to grace this earth?" she repeated with a spacey, far-off look on her face.
Erin choked. "W-what? George?" Erin fought the urge to ask incredulously if George had put Parvati up to saying that. Instead, she mumbled, "I just met him... He looks all right though, I suppose."
"All right?" Parvati all but squeaked. "He's just... heavenly!"
Erin mentally saw her rise another two feet off the ground. "Erm, right," she mumbled.
Lavender gave Erin a wry look. "Parvati gets... excited about boys sometimes," she mentioned casually. Then, "Oh, great. We're here."
Erin looked to her left to see a group of students filing through a doorway and into a dungeon. She, Parvati and Lavender joined the queue.
****
They filed into the classroom. Erin glanced about to see exactly what this new place was like. What greeted her first was the smell. It was quite unlike anything her nose had ever been subjected to. It was as if someone had taken all the smells in the world and squeezed them into this dungeon. The end result wasn't entirely disgusting, but it was really different. Erin's nose stung, registering its shock.
After a brief pause to acclimatize herself, she realized that Parvati and Lavender were now beckoning to her from behind a workbench with three cauldrons set on top of three fires. With a wistful little glance towards the three people Erin had expected to sit with, she made her way towards the two girls. She could do worse, she reckoned. They were very nice, if a little... giggly.
As she reached them, Erin grinned. George Weasley indeed!
Across the little aisle from her new seat, sat Seamus and the boy from breakfast. They were whispering to one another, looking very serious. Erin was about to ask Parvati the boy's name when she was stopped by a cold, drawling voice from the door.
"Well, would you look at that? It's the madwoman." Erin glared at Malfoy, who was regarding her with a strange look in his icy eyes. "Guess we'll see if the mentally unfit can-" He stopped suddenly and his smirk spread into a full-fledged, nasty grin. "Where's your boyfriend, Davis? Tired of you already and gone back to his Mudblood friend?" he hissed.
Erin was taken aback. She sensed that Malfoy was being nastier than usual by the stiffened outrage that was radiating from Parvati and Lavender beside her. She flushed at the thought of Ron being her boyfriend. It was crazy! She was just a friend- or was she even that? Malfoy's words hit a nerve, but not the nerve they were intended for. Erin decided to deal with him before Parvati got over her stunned state.
"Malfoy, don't you have anything better to do than pick on people who don't care?" she said, keeping her voice low. "Now, how about you run along? I'm sure your-" she paused deliberately, eyeing the two hulks at his back, "friends will help you find your seat if you're lost." Erin turned back to Parvati, who was now sitting and shaking with silent laughter.
Once she was finished catching her breath, Parvati muttered, "I've never met someone who dealt with him so efficiently." Here she started to giggle again. "He may be one of the best-looking guys at Hogwarts, and rolling in the galleons, but only Slytherin girls will brave his acid tongue," she finished, a tad of bitterness seeping into her tone.
Erin looked at Parvati in disgust. Sure, George was all right looking, and he had a great sense of humour; she could understand Parvati's crush on him. But Malfoy? She had to admit that he was good looking in an aristocratic, stuck up, conceited sort of way, but Parvati had sounded as though she was sorry that he only dated Slytherins!
There was a little voice at the back of her head, mumbling something about last night and eyes, but Erin pushed it away. Just as she was about to open her mouth and tell Parvati exactly what she thought about Draco Malfoy, Professor Snape swept into the room.
Snape glared at the Gryffindor side of the room, particularly the bench that held Hermione, Ron, and Harry. He then swept a cursory disapproving glance over the other Gryffindors. "Back again, class? Believe me, it's much sooner than I'd been hoping for, as well. Let's see if you can improve on your dismal performance from last year. Today, we are making a very advanced Sleeping Potion. Try not to foul this up. You'll need it if you are going to pass your OWLs in June. Get out your books and open them to page 14, even the stupidest of you-" here, he paused to stare at a small boy. As the intimidating glare dragged on, Erin tried to place the poor Gryffindor. She thought his name started with an N… Was it Nathan? Norbert? Neville, that was it! After succeeding in making Neville quail leaf-like in his seat, Snape continued, "-Should know how to prepare the necessary supplies."
The Slytherins all chuckled delightedly at poor Neville's discomfort.
Erin was really nervous. She grabbed her textbook and flipped through to the fourteenth page. Reading it, she felt her jaw drop. A list of ingredients from powdered Dragon Shell to shredded Belladonna root, and then a complicated set of instructions! She knew that the OWLs were a sort of wizarding standardized exam; Professor McGonagall mentioned them quite a lot during what Erin liked to refer to as "The Day I Lost My Muggle-ness." She fervently hoped that these tests wouldn't be anything like her KS3 SATs. She'd really failed those. She had never been much good with testing. She would freeze up, and her mind would go blank.
Erin was jerked back to present as her elbow slipped and bumped the edge of the work counter, sending horrible tingles up her arm. She sat up with a yelp, surprising Parvati and making her cut her finger with the knife she'd been using to shred her root. Parvati said a very non-Parvati word and stuck her fingers in her mouth. By the time Professor Snape was beside them, Lavender was shrieking something incoherent about blood and Erin was frantically apologizing to Parvati, who had gotten a strange look on her face, doubled over and started to turn blue.
"Idiot girl!" he hissed at Parvati, who was still clutching the knife. "I expect you cut yourself with the knife you were using for the Deadly Nightshade?" He ran frantically to the fire and tossed in a handful of powder. "Poppy, quickly! It's urgent. A student needs to be Poison-Guarded," he spat, a trace of panic slipping into his voice as Parvati's new skin colour progressed to violet. She seemed to be desperately trying to say something, but no sound could be heard.
A spinning form solidified and a teacher that Erin recognized from the Head Table strode out from the flames, producing a bottle from her robes. She went directly to Parvati, whom the whole class was now gaping at in horror. Parvati seemed to be labouring for breath and Erin could see beads of perspiration standing out on her forehead. The woman quickly put the bottle to Parvati's lips and tipped her head back, forcing her to swallow every last bit. After pulling out her wand, the nurse mumbled a few words and Parvati relaxed into her grasp. A stretcher had been conjured by Professor Snape and Parvati was set on it, then taken back through the fire.
****
After a few minutes in which Professor Snape carried on several conversations through the fire, he strode over to the bench on which Erin and Lavender, who was now shivering convulsively due to the anti-hysteria charm that had caused a bucket of ice water to be poured over her head, sat.
"Which one of you caused this?" he asked accusingly.
Erin opened her mouth to explain when Lavender pointed a shaky finger at her and screeched, "She did it! She pushed poor Parvi's hand into the kn-knife!" She paused to take a breath, and Erin tried to defend herself.
"What? No! No, I didn't mean-"
"What did she ever do you?" Lavender demanded, not paying any attention to Erin's stuttering. "She's never even laid a finger on you! You..." She trailed off and started taking rapid, deep, breaths again.
Erin felt as though she were in a dream. How could Lavender even think that she'd done it on purpose? She opened her mouth and started, "I never would have-" but she was stopped by Snape, who pointed his wand at both of them and said, "Silencius." Erin's mouth closed of it's own accord and stayed that way. By the frightened look on Lavender's face, it was obvious that the same had happened to her.
"Now," Snape said in a barely controlled rage, "You are both going to the Headmaster's office, and you will explain to him more fully exactly what happened. I suggest you both come up with the right story by then." Here he fixed Erin with a black gaze. "Follow me. Mr. Malfoy, you are in charge of the class. Don't disappoint me." And he turned and strode out of the class, with Erin and Lavender trailing after him.
****
They walked quickly until they reached a narrow corridor near the Great Hall. Professor Snape stopped in front of an impressive gargoyle. He looked it in the face. "Phoenix Arizona," was all he said.
The gargoyle came to life and jumped to the side to admit Snape, Erin and Lavender.
All Erin could think was that she was going to be expelled. 'Oh, how quickly the dream came and went,' she thought sadly.
****
A/N:Yes, yes, I know, you all hate me because I left it hanging. I'll have the next one out soon. Muahahahaaaa *returns from her power trip* Eh? Oh! Yeah, thank you's go out to:
Slytherinfirebolt, Hildagard, Adam, Comett and Torett-hime, Ava Bekes, Mountain Dew, Firebolt7, Lain, AnimeGirl, Water Sprite, Chibi Zelphie, Lucinda, Amber (Merci beaucoup for the con crit!) and Amanda "Scary Girl" Mancini (*grins at Mana*) for reviews. Also, a big thank you to everyone at the Penumbra_fic Yahoo! Group. You're all wonderful people (Join Them! They make you *Strong* heehee. Though they're not quite as insane as I am.)
Love,
:o) Chupa