Okay, this is an interjection on my part, but there is more to the story after this. I know there's a few spelling errors, but they're typing mistakes, and if I have a lot of time and patience on my side, then I'll change them. For now, you should be able to figure out goos means good, etc.
Please please please review! Criticize, commment, everything, I want to fix what I'm doing wrong so I don't do it again in the future. Thank you all so much!!!!!!!!



Chapter 3

Soon the commotion in the Gryffindor common room cooled down, with help from Ron and Harry saying every imaginable bad comment to send every girl up back to their dormitories.
"We didn't mean it like that," Harry shouted up the girl dormitory stairs.
Well, not every girl. Luna Lovegood stayed in the common room.
"I know that, Harry."
Ron looked wearily around the common room. There wasn't much else to say that hadn't already been said. Slowly he turned around and headed back up to his dormitory to finish school work.

Frances smiled. "I'm glad I got this house. It's the one I wanted."
"Gryffindor is a very prestigious house. I figured you would get that house because you had to have been very brave to go through all this. Now I'm going to ask you a few questions.
"First, would anything odd happen to you in everyday life back where you lived?"
"Yeah."
"Like what?"
"Well, whenever I'd put on a costume, my face would change to fit the costume or my body would change."
"Ah. Okay, try really hard to look like... Snape. Try to make your face look like Snape."
"What?"
"Just try it. Say in your head you want to look like Snape and concentrate on it."
Frances obliged, confused, and tried hard to make her face look like the unlikeable professor. She tried and tried. Finally Dumbledore smiled.
"You are a very lucky girl. You are a Metamorphmagus. You can change your appearance at will."
"Wha- um. Wow. All witches are Metamorphamegathingies?" Her face changed back to normal.
"No. Not every witch and wizard, very few actually. As I said, you're lucky."
"Well, that explains a lot."
"It should. Well, besides that, I think you're a normal witch."
Frances tried hard not to look too stunned at what Dumbledore had just said.
"Are you sure normal and witch belong in the same sentence? No offense or anything."
Dumbledore laughed. "That's true. But do you want to be normal?"
"Well, I guess not. I've never wanted to be normal. Normal's boring."
"Good. Now, we'll get you robes." Robes appeared out of thin air. "Some books." Books came toppling down on Dumbledore's already-messy desk. "We'll wait for the wand. I'll walk you to your house."
Frances smiled and took her robes and tried for the books, but Dumbledore stopped her.
"Allow me," he smiled.
With a snap of his wrist the books floated in mid air.
"Wow. You know, I could probably get used to doing that kind of stuff."
"I'm sure you could." They walked to the Gryffindor common room. Frances looked around. It was very beautiful, she thought. The pictures were nice- were they whispering? Moving?
"Do the pictures... talk?"
"Of course we talk!" said a soldier portrait. "What, do you think we're up here for display?"
"Um, sorry."
"It's alright dear. You've never seen active pictures before, have you?" said a plump, older, nice lady.
"No, can't say that I have."
"Here we are," Dumbledore announced to Frances. A picture of a fat lady was right in front of them.
"Hello Dumbledore," she said kindly. "Password?"
"Fruitbasket." And with that the portrait of the lady swung open and Frances found herself looking at about ten boys and one girl- Luna- in the common room.
I know I'm supposed to be a bit less boycrazy, but I think I've hit the jackpot, Frances thought.
Dumbledore smiled at all of the students in there. He noted that some of the girls had poked their heads out to see who was there. Upon noticing the new girl, they timidly came out of their dormitories, with much whispering, making Frances feel a bit uncomfortable.
"News travels quickly," Dumbledore said.
"Professor McGonagall told me," Dean said proudly.
"Interesting. And did you already know what house this girl was going to be in."
"No, Dumbledore," Harry replied.
"Ah. Well, now you know. Anyway, this here is Frances, she comes from America. We apparently had forgotten about her. Our deepest apologies from the entire wizarding community."
Frances bowed her head in response.
"Well, I'm sure all of you will help Frances get acquainted. Welcome, Frances, to Hogwarts."

After a thank you to Dumbledore from Frances and a bit of a silence before Dumbledore headed out, Frances looked around at all of the students in here. Some of them didn't seem very brave, why would they be in the bravery house? Grithindum, was it called? She couldn't remember.
Finally a red-headed boy stepped out from the croud. "Hello, I'm Ron Weasley, nice to meet you," the boy said, holding out a hand. Frances shook the proffered hand.
"Frances- but you already knew that."
Ron giggled a bit nervously. "Nice to meet you," Frances continued.
"You too."
The stares from all around were intoxicating. "Um, how long have you been going here, Ron?"
"I'm a sixth year."
Frances looked around. "Ah," she responded. What was a sixth year? Finally she got the courage to speak up. "What's that?"
A few snide comments were heard, and Frances, embarrassed, stood there with nowhere to go.
"Stop that!" a girl with frizzy hair said. "Stop it now!"
The laughter increased a bit, and Frances felt herself redden in the face. This was not the way to start off the year. What was so wrong with going back to how she was before? A muggle? Maybe there's some stuff she knew about the muggle world that they didn't. She reached into her pocket and, yes, her iPod was there.
"A sixth year," Ron proceeded to explain, "is, um, someone who has been going here for six years. Like, in your first year, you would be be called a first year, a second year would have completed their first year and is learning their second year, and so on."
"Oh," Frances said absent-mindedly.
"How old are you?" the girl with frizzy hair asked.
"Fifteen," Frances responded quite truthfully.
"Oh, so you would be a fifth year. Oh." That last oh was said as if she had just realized something. "Gosh, you would have the O.W.L.'s soon."
"Owls?" Frances said, fingering her iPod.
"Ordinary Wizarding Levels," the smaller, red-headed girl answered.
"What are those?" Frances asked.
"Tests, tests that determine what kind of job you can get in the wizarding world."
"So they'd be quite useless in the, um, muggle world, then, huh?" Frances said a bit sarcastically, but the sarcasm was spread very thinly.
"Well, duh," the boy with black hair and a lightning shaped scar on his forehead said.
"It was a joke, Harry," Ron said. "Do you know what that is?"
"Well it wasn't a very good one," Harry huffed, going up the stairs to the male dorms.
"He has an odd scar, doesn't he?" Frances said. After receiving some stares that reminded her she had no idea what was the current events in the modern wizarding world, she looked imploringly at them.
"He-who-must-not-be-named gave him that scar when he was a baby, killing his parents," an average-looking boy with a fair amount of freckles told her.
"Wait, his parents died because this guy that can't be named gave him a scar?"
"No, Dean isn't very good at explaining things. That man attacked the whole family, and his parents died but Harry was only left with a scar."
"Oh. What's the man's name, do you know?"
The room shifted uncomfortably. Finally the frizzy haired girl spoke up. "Lord Voldemort."
The gasps after she said the name and the calls of "Hermione!" and "Don't say that name!" were all Frances could do to stop her from laughing. She really tried, and all that came out was a giggle that nobody heard.
But after that giggle she knew they were serious. This man was a murderer. Was he still alive? Was he still killing? Have they caught him? What kind of prison would he be locked in? But it could have been just a one-time instance, Frances knew that as well.
But not with all that hush-hush and don't-say-his-name crud. "Is he still alive?" Frances finally asked.
"What?" someone spoke up.
"Is Lord Voldemort still alive?" Again the gasps and whispers were heard.
"Yes," a voice said from behind her. She turned to see an elderly professor making her books and cloaks float magically. "I'm Professor McGonagall, in charge of the Gryffindor house. You must be Frances. Yes, he is still alive, but you shouldn't throw such a name as his about. He could kill you in less than a second and make you feel pain you've never felt before."
Frances felt ashamed. "Sorry, Professor McGonagall."
"It's quite alright." She sent the clothes up to her dormitory. "Don't let it happen again, though."
"Yes, Professor."

Okay, this was a very slow chapter that accomplished absolutely nothing, so I promise the next chapter will have something interesting in it. And... that's it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review!!!!!!!!!!!! Or is nobody reading my special story...