I lied...you get three. :D

------Chapter 5-----

Amalia sighed. Severus was in a worse mood than before. Sela had refused to let go of him and he'd been forced to Floo with her clinging to his robes. Once they'd managed to get her to let go of him, Albus suggested that they needed to spend time together and get to know each other. With that he'd promptly gone back to Hogwarts. Amalia had taken care of most of the shopping, as Severus had flat refused to go in Madam Malkins and had disappeared on his own.

Amalia stifled a laugh when she glanced at Sela clomping along beside her in a pair of dragonhide boots that were at least six times too big for her. She'd insisted that she'd grow into them and no, she didn't want a different pair. The kitten trotted along beside Sela with a string tied around his chest. Sela had been distressed when he'd attempted to take flight after an owl and had tied him so that he wouldn't injure himself.

"After all," Sela had said, "One of those big brown owls could just chomp him down whole."

"What's that?" Sela asked pointing at some strange muggle device. A few shops had muggle things, more as curiousity than for use.

"I'm not entirely sure. It looks like something you're great-aunt would have made up." Amalia said looking at the thing. It was a box with a flat table on it and a long arm that swung over the table. Amalia tentatively gave it a push and the table spun.

"It's a thing that plays music." Amalia jumped.

"Severus, I swear one time you will regret sneaking up on people." she said. "How do you know anyway?"

"I saw one once." Severus offered without any further explaination.

"Well...play music thing." Sela said poking it with her finger.

"It needs elekitracy." the shop owner said. "We could charm it to work, but the Ministry frowns on that sort of thing. Misuse of Muggle Artifacts you see."

"Elektratracy...muggles are wierd." Sela said.

"We'd better get to Hogwarts...unless that is you'd rather stay here?" Severus said, rather hopefully. Amalia poked him. "What?"

They walked on to find a place to floo from, Sela following along, puzzling over the music machine. The Ministry said you couldn't charm muggle artifacts...but what if a wizard made a copy of the muggle thing...then it would be all right. The more Sela thought this, the better she liked the idea. At some future point, she was going to make one of those boxes.

"Come on...quit staring into space and get a move on." Severus pulled her into the fireplace and said "Hogwarts" tossing down the floo powder as he did so. The next thing Sela knew she was standing in what was apparently an office. There were portaits hanging on the walls and they looked down at her. Some smiled, a few whispered to their neighbors and a few weren't there at all. Sela blinked. She had seen some of the wizarding world, but not all of it. This was the first time she'd encountered magical paintings of people. The Estate, which is what the Snape family called their home, had some of hunting scenes and boring things like that. This was much more interesting than watching the fox in the dining room pee on bushes during tea. Sela looked around the rest of the office and noted the various apparatuses and the large red bird. She tightened her grip on the end of the kittens makeshift lead. Sela reached out to take a closer look at one of the strange devices and Severus pulled her back.

"Don't touch anything...who knows what you'd do to it." Sela looked at him and then back at the device.

The door opened and Albus Dumbledore walked in.

"Ah, I see you've made it back," he said with a smile. "and no one got lost in the process."

Sela was now looking at the bird doubtfully as the kitten crouched on the floor staring up at it. The pheonix stared back at the kitten with something like amusement.

"Don't even think about it...you have a deathwish, don't you?" Sela said picking the kitten up and moving to the other side of the room.

Severus looked at Sela irritably. "Why don't you go explore the place? Surely not even you could get permanantly lost." he said. Sela frowned but went out the door anyway.

"Severus, that wasn't nessecary." Albus said.

"It was nessesary to me...she hasn't left me alone all day."

"She likes you."

"Impossible. No one likes me. Look at how the students behave around me."

"The students don't like you because, what did that third year Hufflepuff call you? Yes, I remember, he said you were 'an insufferable bully who swoops around the school like a great malevolent bat'" Albus said sagely.

Severus merely grumbled something about Hufflepuffs and changed the subject.

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Sela looked first one way, then the other as she stood in the hallway in front of the gargoyle that guarded the headmasters office. She chose to go right and see where it led her to. The kitten followed her, ocassionally flapping it's wings in a mad attempt to defy gravity.

"I need to call you something...I can't keep saying 'kitten, kitten'. Let me think...it should fit your personality, that's what my m-, well, that's what I heard. How about Flying Monkey?"

The kitten mewed.

"Ok, then what about "Chicken Blood"?" another mew.

"Ratface?"

"Mew"

"Dogfood?"

"MEW"

By now Sela had wandered downstairs and was walking into the Great Hall. The other teachers were there already, having lunch, Albus had insisted that Amalia stay for lunch at the very least and she'd agreed.

"I've got a really good one...Vlad the Impaler"

"MEOW"

"Hmm...mew mew mew mew meow...I wonder if meow is 'yes'" Sela mused as she walked by Professor McGonagall, who was talking to Amalia.

"That's her then...what are you doing, child?" McGonagall asked looking at Sela and the kitten.

"Well, I'm trying to name this kitten, I tried Flying Monkey, and he said mew. I tried Chicken Blood and he said mew. Then Dogfood, but he said mew again. Then I said Vlad the Impaler and he said Meow. I wonder if I should call him that."

"Do you even know who Vlad the Impaler is?" a witch with a stack of papers on the table in front of her snapped, not looking up.

Sela nodded, then added "Yes." when she noticed the woman was absorbed in her paperwork.

"I doubt it." she sniffed. Professor McGonagall frowned.

"Who is that woman?" Amalia whispered to Minerva.

"Oh, that's Fredirica Falweather. She's the new Defense teacher...frankly, from her attitude so far I wouldn't mind if a couple of dragons swooped down and carried her off." Minerva whispered back.

Sela gave the Defense teacher a scowl worthy of her father and snapped out, "Vlad the Impaler, or Prince Vlad Tepes, sometimes called Dracula, was ruler of Wallachia, not Transylvania as is popularly believed. He is principally remembered for his many exectutions and torture performed on people. His favorite method of torture and murder was impalement, hence his nickname."

"Hmph. You don't understand what you're talking about." Professor Falweather hissed.

"I do so! Impaling someone means you put a long stick up their ar- bum and let them slide down it. If you do it right, the stick will come out of their mouth. It can take weeks before the person dies."

"How do you know so much about him?" Professor Trelawny asked. She and Firenze were contemplating sharing the Divinations classes, but it wasn't going well.

"He was my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great-"

"Ok ok, we get the point Sela." Amalia chuckled.

"Great great grandfather. On my mothers side." Sela finished quickly.

"I see. You also know what he was then don't you?"

"Yep. He was a vampire." Sela said cheerfully.

"How could you be so cheerful about it? Don't you know what vampires do? Go on, get out." Falweather said.

Sela grinned wildly. "Sure I know all about vampires. They like blood, they like the dark, they long fangs like this..." Sela showed her teeth at the teacher. She did indeed have unusally long canine teeth.

Professor Falweather stared at Sela a moment. "What are you? Some sort of half-blood freak?"

"She's not half blood." Professor Dumbledore said jovially as he walked by.

"Then what is she?"

The other professors looked slightly uncomfortable and many of those who'd been there longer stifled grins.

"She's full blood." Severus snapped as he stepped into the room. He glowered at Falweather and as he walked by Sela followed him.