The Slytherins laughed as they exited the dungeons, and Hermione wore a smile too broad to be normal. At lunch Sian enlisted the twins for the low-down of what they did at detentions.
"For Snape?" George asked. "It depends on what you do, tell us the whole story."
Sian laughed and recounted the days events.
"Hmm, tonight you say? Fred when is our detention?"
"Tonight."
"Should I cancel practice?" Harry asked.
"Yeah." Fred told him.
"So you talked back to him, were sarcastic, and you yelled at him?" George asked making sure that he had heard her right.
"I defied all power he held over the class, yeah." Sian laughed.
"Eck, I have no idea, we've never done all that in one class, what do you think Fred?"
"Hmm, I'd say, he'll ask you to mix up some nasty-ass cleaning concoction, and have you clean all the tables after he's poured something hazardous on them." Fred guessed.
"What did you two do?"
"Uh, we exploded some Filibusters over by the Slytherins' cauldron, you should have seen them run!" Both boys laughed hysterically and Sian soon joined in.
Care of Magical Creatures, she hoped during lunch would be lots of fun. It looked promising until Hazel told her that they normally had it with the Slytherins. Hagrid beamed at the class as they arrived, greeting them all like they were old friends. Hagrid praised Sian more than everyone else for her control over her book.
They learned first about the Jabber knolls. Jabber knolls were small blue-speckled birds that ate small insects and were living in Hagrid's apple trees. They were silent and cute, but the Slytherins found them to be dull and boring.
After dinner Fred, George, and Sian made their way past the loitering Slytherins to the dungeons where their class was held. "Did you hear that the Gryffindors had to cancel their Quidditch practice because three of their players got detentions?" Pansy Parkinson told her group loudly as they passed.
"That's because we're so good we don't need to practice everyday," Fred told them.
"Is that why you start so early in the season?" A short blonde girl asked.
"Yeah, they need the practice, because the Gryffindors have no Keeper," a scrawny kid laughed.
"We have a Keeper," George told them.
"A girl?" The boy laughed again, "Girls aren't Keepers, they're too easy to frighten, they're just a side show to unnerve the guys so they can't score."
"Yeah," another kid with black hair chimed in, "Cuz, the girls in Gryffindor are far and few between, and you'd have to find one with talent and one that would risk her pretty little face to turn down a few guys."
"Actually, it's easier than you think," Sian told them all, and the guys shut up, none of them had realized that the Weasleys' companion was a girl.
"So you have-what looks like a girl-" laughed a seventh year Slytherin, "but can she play? Or is she just there for looks?"
"Wait for the game kid, and you'll see," George told their audience.
"Five points for being late," Snape glared at them all as they entered.
"What would you like us to do?" George asked innocently while his companions struggled to keep a straight face.
"My last class can not clean so you boys will reorganize the ingredients they were incapable of doing. As for you MacDonal" Snape rounded on her, "you can sweep and mop the floor because some of the younger girls failed to listen to my directions and now I have a sticky mess in the back corner. I expect you to clean the whole floor and not just the back corner. Do your womanly duties," he commanded Sian handing her the broom.
Sian glared at him and her narrowed eyes stared past him not believing what she had heard.
Snape smiled seeing that her words had effected her, but was shocked to notice that her eyes turned grey and vaguely remembered a diviner's vision from his previous line of work. When Snape had been working with Voldemort they had a diviner who had predicted Voldemort's loss of powers and he was killed. So they got another one that touched on the subject and informed them that,
"The child with angry grey eyes will be the cause of your second death, and will fight against you with a fire burning in their eyes. You can control their power to rekindle your own and with watchful, doe-like eyes, they will sadly watch your every move."
Snape jumped back to his normal composure, but Sian had sensed something- fear? It was blowing past her like a breeze through an open window. Snape had seen something in her that he was scared of, was that good or bad?
Sian took the broom and swept the entire floor, creating a pile of dust, dirt, grime, and cobwebs in the middle of the floor. She then swept that up and dumped it into a wastebin. She pulled out the mop and started mopping. About half-way through her job, three Slytherins traipsed in requiring Snape's help. They took the roundabout way to his desk, completely dirtying her clean floor. So Sian went and asked Snape for a large rag. The three Slytherins and Snape gave her quizzical looks, but she got what she requested. Every time Sian cleaned a part, she would dry it so the floor wouldn't get dirty again. Two more Slytherins joined the original three and they too tried to destroy her cleaning job, only to find that the floor was not only clean, but dry.
The twins congratulated her and continued on. After they had all finished they asked Snape if anymore work needed to be done. There was none so they left, half an hour early.
BJ and Sian snuck down to the broom shed with a football they had stolen from Hazel. They passed it around a few times, before BJ decided he wanted to be the Keeper. While he flew to the other end Sian waited patiently, not seeing the two figures who were about to join in their game. When they reached her level, it was then she heard the wind change, Alicia and Angelina, another Chaser for the House were playing as well.
Two of the girls flew head-on in the direction of the goal, but neither of them had the ball BJ noted. Then, at the goal farthest away from him Angelina dove to score. BJ sped fast in her direction making the broom go as fast as it could, and he caught the ball mid-way.
"Nice," Angelina commented as she went to retrieve the ball from half-field.
The girls flew at him again, this time with Sian in possession, she flew towards the goal BJ was guarding poised to throw, and instead passed it off to Alicia who scored at the goal next to them. The game continued on, and BJ proved to be a very good Keeper. Sian went to bed after commenting that she wouldn't do her homework and caught a glare from Hermione.
It was all too familiar, so she ignored it. The next morning Sian remembered to put on her robe over her normal dress and descended the steps carrying both her CD player and her book bag. She crawled into the seat beside George and yawned.
"Good night?" He asked.
She laughed and hide another yawn, "I'm not a morning person," she told him.
"Right," he replied and poured them both glasses of orange juice.
Sian glanced at her schedule, "Defense Against the Dark Arts? Is the teacher any good?"
"Yeah, he's almost as good as Lupin."
"Lupin?"
"A teacher we had two years ago, he got kicked out because Snape made it public that he was a werewolf," BJ added sitting down.
Sian noticed right off that he had dropped his accent, but the other guys hadn't noticed, yet.
Fred turned to him suddenly, "Wait, what's your name?"
"BJ."
"What year are you?"
"Sixth."
"Are you a Yank?"
"No," Sian pitched in, "he's Irish."
"Where's his accent?" George asked.
"So what if he doesn't have one?" She retorted.
"Don't take it personally," Fred commented.
"How would you feel if someone was putting down your home turf? What would you all say if I didn't have an accent? And I made one up instead would you all notice? No, you're all Northern Irish men, and the lot of you are English. Some places they sound just like Yanks, but they've been living in Ireland their whole lives. What do you say about them?"
"Nothing," Seamus added, "Guys I told you not to get her started, she's passionate about her Irish blood."
"I'm not passionate about some ruddy Irish men that let the English ruin their soil for money, it's incredibly cheap and disgraceful," Sian told them.
"So she's passionate about Ireland," Fred said.
"Guys I'm right here, I know who you are talking about so you have no need to refer to me in third person, it's rather degrading, and if you say anything to enhance that comment I can promise you face damage," Sian grabbed a banana, apple, and a slice of buttered toast and left. She sat on the front steps listening to her CD player and eating her breakfast, she wasn't very hungry anymore.
She felt someone slide down next to her, it was Ron. "Don't you have friends?" She asked rather flustered, there were way too many redheads to keep track of.
"What do you mean?" He asked. "
Like your punk brainiac who chills with '80's fashion magazines, and your famous Harry Potter," Sian waved her hands to emphasize her point.
"Why would I want to hang with them?"
"Because you always do, and men are creatures of habit, now go away."
"I am not a creature of habit, though I am not denying my gender, I came to talk."
"Talk? Guys always have more on their minds than talk, especially when they confront girls alone on the cold, granite steps of their school."
"You're cold?"
"No, I'm just trying to prove my point."
"And your point is?"
"That men are persistent annoying creatures of habit."
"Are you doing a study on the behavior of the opposite sex?"
"Yes, I'm trying to find guys that hate people like me, they are far and few between. An example would be Hermione, only she's a girl, or at least that is what I have come to conclude, because I can hardly see what's underneath those layers of hair."
"Very funny," he told Sian.
"See this is exactly like most guys I find, they don't even bother to defend their friend, I am, in fact the reason some guy-girl relationships no longer exist. I say something to shut them down and they agree, it's stupid, do you have a mind of your own?" Sian waved a hand in front of Ron and got up, "I have a class." Sian got up and left him, stunned.
"That was interesting," he told himself.
She got to her class before anyone else and was able to learn about the teacher. When she first met him she vaguely remembered him from somewhere, it was her mom's old friend.
"Sian?" He asked.
"Yeah," she answered rather uncertainly.
"Wow, you haven't changed much since I saw you last, except you are oh, over a foot taller than you were before."
"Why thanks Ken."
"It's Professor MacAlan, remember."
"Oh yes, thanks Prof." He grinned and pulled up a chair as the rest of the class filed in. Seamus took his usual seat next to Sian and Hazel sat on her other side.
When the class was silent MacAlan started. "Alright kids, I've heard about past teachers and it seems a lot of you seem to favor Lupin and Moody. Lupin for his down-to-earth attitude and Moody for his over-all experience. I will tell you I have had loads of experience, though not as much or Dark as Moody, and you will find I am very much like Lupin, only not a werewolf," he grinned. "I am a strict teacher and will not stand any misbehavior among you, I do have the power to turn you all into ferrets, but that is only for the worst of you."
A lot of kids laughed, the most of them out of nervousness.
The professor laughed as well. "For our first lesson I have decided to study the Toros, a human male with a bull head. They are ferocious creatures that kidnap young girls. Please turn to page 276." The class continued in much the same manner, MacAlan was funny and unpredictable making jokes the whole class and Sian concluded he was a very good teacher indeed. Her next class Muggle Studies was even better though she had it with the whining, snobby, know-it-all Hermione. After they had taken their seats they were ushered to the Quidditch pitch where the lines on the green field greatly reminded her of...
"Known to the Americans as soccer, Muggles in the British Isles call it football...can anyone tell me about it?"
