Someday, I will own something of great value. This will not be Harry Potter, as J K Rowling already owns it.

Studying

Ryua woke up the next morning to find her dorms blessedly empty, as she'd managed to sleep past even Millicent. Lucky it's a Saturday, she thought as she tried to remember how to move. Carefully unwinding Parsyl from her hair and neck, she went to push herself up, falling back down with a hiss of pain as her right shoulder collapsed under the weight. Rolling cautiously out of bed, she grabbed a loose set of very soft, very loose green robes and walked slowly to the bathing rooms.

She breathed a sigh of relief to see no one else present. Locking the door behind her, she started to painfully wriggle out of her quidditch robes. Her arm no longer felt so wrong as yesterday, and could move slowly, but it still hurt an incredible amount. And no wonder. Her entire right shoulder was tinted a nasty greenish-purple. Between the bludger, Harry's broom, and Marcus wrenching it back into place, she'd taken some fairly serious damage. A long, hot bath then...

Apparently, everything hurt, not just her shoulder. She hadn't really noticed until the steaming water started to relax her tense muscles. I don't think I've ever played that hard before, she thought as her aching body soaked up the heat. Parsyl came to join her, and became rather fascinated by the new bubble soap Ryua had found. The cobra chased neon blue bubbles all around the surface of the water, hissing with annoyance when they bounced out of her reach. Ryua chuckled. "Come on then, let's go see if there's anything left for breakfast."

Much more comfortable for her long soak and the loose robes, she made her way up to the Great Hall, where just a few stragglers were still eating. She sat down beside a little first year, who jumped at being addressed by a Malfoy. "Could I sit here?"

"S-sure." After Ryua had eaten two muffins, three glasses of juice, and six slices of bacon in the space of about three minutes, the little girl spoke up again. "You, you're one of the quidditch players, aren't you?"

"Yep. I don't suppose you'd pass over what's left of those pancakes, would you? That last match killed just about all my energy."

"I bet." Her eyes were wide as she passed over the dish. "Is quidditch always that, you know..."

"Violent?" Ryua grinned down at the girl. "No, not often. It was just the last game, and both sides wanted to win. Of course, Flint's a vicious person, and we always play hardest against Gryffindor. He's an excellent chaser, but rather ruthless. Although, he'll be done now, this is his seventh year, so we'll be having a new captain next year. Should be a completely different style now."

"You got hit by that bludger, didn't you? It looked really painful..."

Ryua grimaced. "It was. Dislocated it. Oh," she said when she saw the horrified look on the girl's face, "nothing serious, but it kept me from moving my arm properly throughout the game. It's fine now, just a little sore. D'you play quidditch at all?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, everyone plays a bit, and I'm pretty good at catching and throwing things..."

"Hmm, maybe you could be a chaser next year, then. I'll talk to the new captain about it. I bet he'll be more likely to take girls on now. Hey, you never told me your name!"

"It's Snape, Ashley Snape."

"Professor's your... uncle, right?"

"Yeah," she looked around, then leaned in close to Ryua, "He's always telling me to wash my hair, but don't you think he needs to do it more?" Ryua laughed. "Yes, he does. But, I like him anyway. He treats me, I dunno, like someone he really cares about, like family. I think he's a fourth cousin on my Father's side, or something, actually."

"That means we're cousins then!"

"Yep! And don't tell anyone," Ryua leaned in conspiratorially, "But I think you're nicer than most of my other cousins." They both giggled over that, then giggled even more when Parsyl appeared attempting to eat an orange three times the size of her head and chased it across the floor under the Hufflepuff table, causing a wave of mayhem. After polishing off nine pancakes, two bagels, five pieces of fruit, and a couple cherry strudels for good measure, Ryua was finally re-engergized. "Well, I should go do some homework, and study for those stupid exams..."

"Ugh! Yeah, I've got them too. Do they get any easier?"

"Well, not particularly, but they don't get much harder. Or if they do, you get smarter, at least. Bye!" Ryua went down to the common room to get her books. Once there, however, she decided to go study out in the sun outside. She piled her stuff into a shoulder bag, slung it over her shoulder, winced, slung it over the other one, and went up to enjoy the fresh air. It turned out that the entire Gryffindor house had woken up not much earlier than she had, thanks to a huge party that carried on late into the night. Ryua walked over to a very sleepy trio. "So, congratulations to the victor, I suppose?"

Harry shaded his eyes as he looked up. "Oh, yeah. Thanks. I hope you know that was the dirtiest match I've ever played."

"Me too, don't worry," Ryua said as she plunked down on the grass next to them. "When did those bloody chasers of yours get so good?"

Harry groaned. "Wood's been having us up nearly every morning at the crack of dawn, not to mention after school, evenings, weekends... Although, your team's better than we expected. I mean, we expected the cheating..."

"Yeah, well, we were desperate. Flint figured, we had to keep you distracted long enough for my useless twin to catch the snitch before you got 370 points ahead. And we would have had you too..."

"Not!"

"Oh yes we would. I played nearly the entire game left-handed, thanks to Bole's clumsy aim. If I could have kept even one more quaffle out of my goal hoops, we would have won. Actually, that was your fault too."

"It was?"

"Yes. Remember when you went headlong into our little mob? Remember colliding with anything?"

"Not head on, maybe a little resistance as I pulled out..."

"That was me. You knocked my dislocated shoulder so far back I nearly blacked out. I couldn't even focus enough to get back to my goals."

"Ouch, sorry... How bad is it?"

"Oh... nothing I can't live with. Marcus put it back in, and I've been sleeping it off. It's turned a fantastic shade of purple, but I can move it again now."

Ron seemed to have paled from the casual conversation about injuries. "Didn't you go see Madam Pomfrey? She could have given you something."

"No, it's no big deal. Anyways," she said, switching the topic, "do you gaggle of hopeless Gryffindors feel ready for the exams yet?"

"We're not hopeless... and no, we don't."

"Especially Hermionie. She's got twice as much to do as the rest of us, hasn't stopped writing since she got up." Ron looked down at the frantically scribbling Hermionie. "I don't think she's even noticed you're here yet..."

"Of course I have Ron. Ryua, I don't suppose you have those notes on weather prediction exceptions for Arithmancy, do you?"

"Of course, just a minute..." she started rummaging through her bag.

"Well fine, she's noticed you, but what a one track mind, eh?"

"At least she's going to pass her exams," Ryua said as she passed along a sheaf of number charts and paragraphs to Hermionie, who set them down with her other books without even looking up. "Speaking of which, I'd better start too... and so should you two. Especially Potions, Professor Snape was saying something about mind-altering brews..." she laughed as the two boys pulled out notes and obediently started flipping through to the correct chapters.

Author's Note: Ashley Snape is a character belonging to a friend of mine. I wrote her in on a whim, and she's probably quite different than the original character. I'm still looking for people who want to be in Slytherin, I just need a name, any name, you don't need to send any sort of information if you don't want to. And spells, please. Especially curses. They can be just evil sounding names, and I'll invent an effect, or a nasty effect and I'll invent a name, or better yet, give me the whole thing.