Maria woke up late the next morning. She yanked the hangings apart and groaned as she glanced at her watch. It read, " 9:30".
"Shit!" she groaned. She pulled on her uniform quickly, then pulled it off again, having put it on inside out, then she had to clean off a spot on her black robes. Luckily, it just took a simple spell, but by then it was already ten o' clock. Maria braided her hair into pigtails, then ran all the way to the great hall, but it was already empty.
"Double shit!" she gasped, holding a stitch in her side.She sunk into a seat at Gryffindor table and caught her breath. After her heart had stopped beating painfully, she got up.
"What am I even doing here? Everyone one is already in class." she thought, then she groaned. Hermione had mentioned that students would be getting their timetables at breakfast.
"Where am I supposed to go?" she wondered aloud, walking out of the hall. A nearby suit of armour sniggered, and she glared at it.
"Shut up!" she said irratably. She was just about to rush off, when she heard a familiar voice behind her.
"Hey! Walker!" she stopped, tensing her shoulders.
"Malfoy." she growled. She slowly turned around.
"What, not happy to see me?" he said, a smirk on his pale face. Maria narrowed her eyes.
"No, I definetly am not. What do you want?" she asked, hands on her hips.
"I want what any other teenage guy wants." he said quietly, smirking at the faint blush that was creeping up Maria's face.
"Stupid guys and their hormones." she thought angrily.
"So basically, you need to be neutered." she said impatiently.
"Hostile thing, aren't you?" he said, moving closer towards her.
"Stay back, ferret." Maria said coldly.
"Fine. I have to get back to class anyways. I don't want to miss Professor Snape's rain of insults on Potter's pitiful potions." he said carelessly. He turned on his heel and headed down a flight of stairs. Maria stood there a minute.
"Harry is in his class?" she thought. She gasped and hurried after him silently. The stairs led down to a drafty passageway that got colder and colder the further she went. Maria hardly dared to breathe as she crept behind Malfoy, knowing that if he knew that she needed his help getting to class she would never live it down.
There was a door up ahead, smoke was billowing through the crack at the bottom of the door.
"Following me, Walker?" he said, without turning around. Maria stopped.
"What? I wasn't. The world doesn't revolve around you." she said, rolling her, eyes, but she was blushing slightly as she pushed the door to the classroom open.
The room was dark, and there were multi-coloured clouds obstructing her vision. Suddenly, a figure swept out of the smoke, black robes billowing. His greasy hair fell on his face, and his eyes glittered cruelly.
"Malfoy, back to your cauldron." he said, looking at Maria with distaste.
"Do you realize that you are over an hour late?" he said in a dangerously soft voice. The previously murmuring class was now silent. "I don't condone lateness in my class. Being new won't get you any sympathy."
"So? I don't remember asking for any." she said coldly.
"Why you insolent little-" he started, voice coldly, but he was cut off by a drawling voice.
"Professor, I-" I heard Malfoy say. The man stopped, breathing a little heavily.
"Quiet Draco." he said, his eyes glinting malevolently. "Detention Walker, and fifty points from Gryffindor." he said smoothly. Maria glared at him a minute, then headed into the smoke.
"Walker! Over here!" she heard Harry call out. She turned and saw him motioning for her to sit down with him. Hermione and Ron were sitting together two seats up, shocked expressions on their faces, but Harry looked supremely pissed.
"He's such a bastard!" he growled when she sat down beside him. "The year has hardly even started and he's already taking off fifty points! Git..."
"You know how unbalanced Professor Snape is. Dumbledore took him off his special mission, he lost the defense against the dark arts job to Professor Lupin again..." Hermione said, adding a couple drops of bat blood to her potion. It hissed and turned a dark blue. Before Maria could ask about the secret mission, Ron interrupted.
"He deserved it, the over-grown bat." he snarled, pouring half the vial into his potion, which exploded.
"Bloody hell!" Ron yelped. Everything the potion touched started to bounce up and down. Snape appeared out of nowhere, sneering at Ron's failed potion.
"Two drops of bat blood, Weasley. After seven years here, you still can't read. Obviously even a simple levitation potion is too much for you. Ten points from Gryffindor." he sneered. He took a small bottle out of his pocket and poured a drop of the light blue potion on everything that was bouncing around. With looks of contempt at Harry and Maria, he turned around and went back to his desk.
"Nice one, Weasley." Malfoy muttered from the table to Maria's right.
"Malfoy, please, just shut up." Hermione said exasperatedly. Malfoy smirked and went back to his own potion.
"Whoa. That was weird. No come back!" Harry said in surprise.
"I'm not complaining." Maria said, rubbing her temples. Parvati and Lavender had stayed up late, their high-pitched giggling echoing through the room. Finally, at three in the morning, she had come to her senses and told them to shut up. They got indignant and started storming about how rude she was, but she put an Unperturbable charm around her bed and immediately fell asleep.
A high pitched cry filled the room. I troll-like boy was screaming as his potion fell in his lap. His legs started floating off the ground, lifting him upside down, his head bashing against the cold stone floor.
"Wow. He actually got it right!" Hermione said amusedly. Maria cringed at his girly cries.
"You okay?" Harry asked her, noticing her wince. She shook her head and told them about her night, grinning at Harry when she told him what they said about him. He was blushing by the time Maria was done.
"Erm-that's...erm-well, weird." Harry said, face red. Ron was looking quite pleased though.
"Third in the school, eh? Wicked! I think I'll go talk to Parvati sometime." he said, leaning back on his chair with a wide grin on his face. Hermione looked at him in disgust.
"Honestly Ron, you are-" But they never found out what Ron was because at that moment the bell signaling the end of class rang. Hermione stormed out of the room, leaving them staring after her, bewildered.
"What's with her?" Ron asked bemusedly. Harry shrugged, looking equally perplexed, but Maria caught his eye, and those emerald gems revealed that he knew exactly what was going on. Maria smiled sadly.
"She likes him." she thought, pitying Hermione at that moment. Hermione, one of the hottest girls in the school fancied Ron, and he was too clueless to realize it. She was about to tell him, but Harry shook his head slightly.
"Let's go." he said quietly, and they left the dungeons in silence.
A/N: You know the drill! mwuahz!