Alright…. My first every story! Hopefully you like it, and if you don't, review, cause it won't get better if you don't! (you can review if you like too…)

Disclaimer: I wish I owned it, I don't.

Well. I had to re-start this story…. I kind of loaded a random chapter and forgot about it

She didn't seem to notice them at first, and made for the girl's dormitory stairs by supporting herself on the back of a sofa heavily. She seemed to be about to pass out.

"Er. Dariene!" cried out Hermione, ignoring the boy's dirty looks. "Are you alright?"

At the sound of Hermione's voice, Dariene looked up, and crumpled to the floor as if in slow motion. She leaned back against the sofa, and her eyes fluttered shut, but she seemed to yank herself awake.

"Uh… yeah, I will be. I just got hit by a potion… Stupid Malfoy." She muttered. Ron and Harry immediately stopped pretending as if she wasn't in the room. The three friends got up and crowded around Dariene. "What happened?" Harry asked.

"Malfoy is brewing… a potion… The draught of the Sleeping Dead…" managed Dariene. Each word seemed to cost her a tremendous amount of effort, as if it was coming from a long, long way away. "I can't tell… more now… vapor makes you sleepy… have only limited immunity… tell in the morning." With a last sigh, Dariene gave up and fell into an unconscious sleep.

"Well." Said Ron. " That was interesting. What are we going to do now?"

"Get her to bed, obviously," Hermione snorted. "D'you think the locomotor spell would work on her?"

"We could just carry her up-oh wait, the staircase turns into a slide, doesn't it." Harry interrupted himself.

Hermione looked sheepish. "Actually, there's a way around that, but I'm not supposed to know, so don't use it, eh? If I walk behind you guys, the stairs will stay normal."

Harry and Ron stared at her, and Ron seemed about to ask when she had had the experience of taking a guy into her dormitory, but thought better of it. Harry, who had grown up over the summer, and now was the strongest of them, picked her up. "Wow. She needs to eat more or something. She can't weigh more than 90 pounds," Harry said.

Indeed, she did look fragile and almost angelic in the flickering, sinister firelight, an almost boneless bundle in Harry's arms. They got her into her bed without difficulty, and resolved to curb their curiosity until the morning.

Dariene woke with a slant of sunlight biting into the back of her eyes. With all of her effort, she tried to open her eyes. Failing that, she tried to remember why she was so groggy.

Flashback

Malfoy's cold voice rang out, "Well, Dariene, my dearest, in that room is something that I think you'll like… it is familiar to you, no doubt."

Dariene reached out a hand and cracked open the heavy oak door, and stepped inside. The first thing her eyes took in was a glowing cauldron, then the brown-ish vapors seeping from it. Her curiosity turned to panic as she viewed the potion she had been forced to brew many times before. Knowing her immunity only lasted so long, Dariene staggered from the room, and groped her way back to the common room, Malfoy's cold laughter ringing out behind her.

End flashback

Dariene gave a gasp from the memory and woke up. The bright Saturday morning light cut into the back of her head like a knife. As her vision returned, it was filled with Hermione's, Ron's, and Harry's curious faces. Dariene had to bite back a groan, knowing that the three would think she was even more of a stupid prat if she told them the story. Mentally preparing herself to spare them the details she said "Uhm. About last night-thanks for helping me. Now, excuse me, I need to go." Dariene swung her feet out of bed, cringing as she hit to stone floor, and stood up. And fell right back down onto the bed. "Shit" she swore, "I forgot how it makes you…" Dariene trailed off. Hermione spoke up. "Listen," she said, "I know we're not exactly friends, but you have to tell us, if not because of our help last night, then because Malfoy is our greatest enemy here, and we need to know what happened."

"No," said Dariene, "you don't because it won't make you all think I'm any less of an idiot, and I- uh, I-" Dariene had trouble coming up with another reason.

When faced with the prospect of dirt on Malfoy, Ron was pretty quick to come up with a response, "Please, tell us. We haven't been… quite as fair as we should have been… Maybe we should give you a chance…"

Jaime drew in a deep breath. "So. Last night, Malfoy told me he had something to show me, after din-"

"Dirty scum," interjected Ron, before he was silenced by a look from Hermione. Dariene went on.

"So he started taking me down to the dungeons, where I guess his lab is, but I don't really know."

"How can you not know," said Hermione skeptically.

"Because," said Dariene, annoyed, "he said he couldn't show me exactly where it was, so he had to knock me unconscious-"

Harry exploded. "Are you a total IDIOT?" he shouted. "What did you think? He was just going to knock you unconscious and be all nice and do nothing?"

Dariene turned red. "What, and you don't think I can protect myself? The DADA I know makes you look like a four year old! And besides…" Dariene whispered, "I thought he was nice…" she blushed

"Anyways," Dariene went on determinedly, ignoring Ron and Harry mouthing silently in frustration, "when I woke up, they told me to go into this door, and I did, and the first thing I saw was all this brown vapor floating towards me, which I knew was the Drought of the Sleeping Dead, so-" Dariene was cut off again, this time by Hermione.

"But how did you know?" Hermione asked, confused.

"Hm. Lets…er… I-er-just know," stuttered Dariene, before going on again, "Anyways, the Drought of the Sleeping Dead was originally developed for use by Healers, but its use was discontinued when it was determined that it had varied effects. It seemed to have the adverse effect of hitting good people harder than normal people, probably because of the Angel's bane in it-Good people," she said quickly, seeing Hermione open her mouth, "are people who are resistant to Dark Arts. Not just against them, but resistant to all Dark Arts. Like Harry. Anyways, you can gain an immunity of sorts if you are exposed to it, which means that you can fight it off longer. So when I saw the vapor in the room I left as quickly as possible, because I have some immunity, but when I go down, the Drought hits me harder than most people… I'll probably be all weak and disgusting like this for 2 days or so…"

Dariene was visibly tiring, and she laid her head back on the pillow. Harry said, quickly, before she fell asleep, "Listen, Sorry that we were so bad to you… We'll make it up to you…"

"No need…" murmured Dariene, "I just want to be friends with…you…guys…"

"HEY!" Ron noticed suddenly. "You're AMERICAN!"

Dariene fell back asleep with a soft smile on her face.

It was about 7:30 when Dariene finally reopened her eyes. Dariene's lips curved into a smile at the thought of her new friends as she swung her feet out of bed again, hoping that this time she would be able to hold herself up. Dariene waved her away and weaved her way towards the bathroom in the dorm. She came out 5 minutes later dressed in baggy green trackies and a beige off the shoulder shirt. Her hair, an intricate web of auburn, gold, and red was swept back off of her face, her gold eyes shimmered, and she looked better, sick as she was, than most girls did when they were trying. She looked exhausted still, but she bravely stumped down to the common room.

Her gold eyes scanned the boisterous common room tell she spied her newfound group of friends. Dariene sat down and inwardly congratulated herself on not wobbling, but she didn't let her emotion show on her face. She had long ago learned that once someone knows how you feel, they can exploit it very easily. Harry looked up quickly from his work and said, "Feeling alright?" before going back to working feverishly on his Potion's essay.

Dariene grimaced at the thought of all that work. It would be so much easier if she just…Inwardly smiling, Dari (as her friends would come to call her) brought her wand slowly to her golden temple, and quickly formed the thoughts she needed for her Potions essay in her mine. As easily as Dumbledore using his penseive, she brought away the thoughts that had attached themselves to her wand, and pointed the wand towards the parchment. Within 10 minutes, her essay was finished.

Even those 10 minutes, however, were taxing to her. She leaned back into her chair. Because her eyes were closed, she missed the admiring and jealous look Ron sent her. "Hey, American Girl! How d'you do that?"

Dari cracked an eye open. "I'll teach you." Ron immediately smiled, "But not tonight. I'm… ugh… so tired…" she said

"Well, then go back to bed!" said Hermione, impatiently. Harry grinned, knowing that Hermione was just tetchy because Dariene could do all these things she couldn't.

"Because I need to talk to you guys," said Dariene, managing to pull herself upright again.

"There's more to the Draught than what I told you last night. Malfoy brewing it… well… he's probably going to use it soon, because that potion has an extremely limited shelf life. Unfortunately… the major use for that Draught is to put large bodies of people out of commission so that the big bad boys can do their work. Since our next big gathering is tomorrow night… we need to be ready, since I suspect some dark wizards just might show up… Harry and I will need to fight them because we know the most about DADA… Hopefully, our efforts will be enough…"

She fell silent, God, she thought, that was really exhausting… No more long speeches for me!

"Uhm. Dariene?"

"Dari." Dari said.

"Ok. Dari? How do you know all this?" ventured Hermione.

"Eh. Experience." She said, and almost fell asleep.

"Come on, let me carry you upstairs again." Said Harry, being the only one to notice how tired she was.

He bent down to pick her up, and she flinched away. Fear and… revulsion?… were written on her face, as much as she tried to hide her emotions.

"No." she said harshly, and pushed herself up and out of the chair, stumbling back to bed.

What was that about? Harry wondered, I thought she didn't hate me anymore…

I'm not a fan of that chapter… it's sort of like a spring cleanin/basics chapter… some stuff I had to get out of the way

R+R or it can't get better!

(uhm… so no one's reviewed yet…. Ahhhhh! )