As with chapter 1, I don't own ANY of it! It all belongs to J.K. Rawlings! Except for Danna. She's mine.GRIN And the "situation" came from my own head. Anyway, on with chapter 2!

******

It was right at the point between night and morning when Danna woke up. She stared at the ceiling a moment, confused about where she was, then sat up and pulled the bed curtains back. The rest of her roommates were still asleep. She crawled quietly out of bed, cringing slightly at the cold floor. She walked to the window and opened it, allowing the cool, mid-December air to run into the room. She sat on the window sill, dangling her legs outside. She leaned as far forward as she could, spreading her arms wide and closing her eyes. A sudden gust of wind blew into the room, whipping her hair behind her and causing her bed curtains to snap. Danna inhaled deeply, feeling the longing build inside her. The need to just jump and fly into the air. "What are you doing?" Danna dropped her arms and twisted around. The wind slowly died down. She stared at Hermione, who was standing by her bed. The other girls stared wide-eyed through their bed curtains.

Danna considered her options for a moment, then said, "What are you talking about?" She blinked and looked around, as if confused, then backed away from the window. "What am I doing here?!" She allowed alarm to creep into her voice, even though she felt no fear. She backed away from the window until her back was against the door on the opposite side. Hermione closed the window.

"Are you all right?" she asked Danna, concern in her eyes.

"Yes. I must have been sleep walking." Danna felt bad for lying, but it was necessary. They couldn't know. Not yet, if ever.

"Well, since we're up, we may as well get ready for the day," Hermione said, the others nodding agreement. "Besides," she muttered to herself, "I don't think I could go back to sleep after that. It was weird."

Danna knew that she wasn't supposed to have heard that last part, but she couldn't really help it. She overheard more than anyone suspected. But she had practiced the art of guile. No one knew how much she knew.



"It may not be the strangest thing that I've ever seen, but it certainly rates up there with weird," Hermione hissed to Ron and Harry over breakfast, after relaying what had happened earlier in the morning. "And it was creepy the way she sat there, looking ready to jump. She said that she was sleep walking... but she waited too long before telling us that! I think that she has some major issues and someone needs to talk to her about them."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Hermione, you think that you have to save anyone. And just look at how she looks! Of course she's nutters, she's probably been to millions of shrinks to get that looked at." Hermione shot Ron a withering look.

Harry, noticing an argument brewing, worked quick to head it off. "Hermione, I don't think we should say anything. It's not any of our business, after all. And maybe she was telling the truth." He knew it was the wrong thing to say when Hermione glared at him, stood up, and huffed off. He glanced at Ron. "Well, at least we're in agreement."

Ron laughed. At that moment, the owls came to deliver the mail. The two took Hermione's issue of the Daily Prophet since she wasn't there to read it and paid the owl, then went in search of Hermione-after all, they had Potions later.



Danna stared at the dungeon that they met in for Potions. Slytherin students were on one side of the room and Gryffindor on the other. The rivalry between the two was painfully obvious from the snide remarks made by a small, pasty faced boy with white-blond hair. Harry Potter, whoever he was, was the main object of his ridicule. But he also seemed to fancy Harry's two friends, the red head and Hermione. Pasty-Face was backed up by to thugs, neither of which looked very intelligent. The door at the back of the chamber banged open and Professor Snape entered with a swirl of robe.

"Today, class-Neville, put your toad away! 10 points from Gryffindor!-we will be making a Dragonsbane Potion. Who can tell me what Dragonsbane does?" Hermione's hand shot into the air. "Anyone?" Professor Snape asked, completely ignoring Hermione. Danna sighed slightly and lifted her hand into the air. "Ah, the new student thinks to make something of herself," Snape sneered. "Typical Gryffindor." The Slytherin students snickered. "Well, go ahead and embarrass yourself...Dannarae, was it?"

Danna met Snape's eyes coolly and lifted her chin slightly. How dare he? She was a Shatayan! "Dragonsbane is extremely poisonous to dragons. One of their few weaknesses. A little bit will cause them to be extremely sick and weak for at least seven days. A lot will kill them in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on the dosage. Dragons don't have to take it orally, just getting dragonsbane on them will infect them. There is no known cure."

Snape's lip curled. "Well, ten points from Gryffindor for attitude. I will not tolerate that kind of attitude and you would do well to learn that now," Snape said. He turned to the rest of the class. "She is, amazingly, correct. Although I don't know what that nonsense about a 'cure' has to do with anything. This potion is completely harmless to humans, which is why we use it. Dragons can generally smell the dragonsbane, and when you drink the potion, they can smell that you are poisonous to them and will leave you alone. It can also be used to bring a dragon down so that you can study it, or kill it, if it is threatening people. Here's the potion. Begin."

Danna was clenching her teeth in frustration. She hadn't been spoken to like that since before she was a child, and here this...this... She forced herself to be calm and focus on the potion. She made it very carefully, but was even more careful not to spill. At the end of the two hours, she stepped back, carefully bottling her potion. Except that Snape was walking towards her. She forced her eyes down in an effort to appear submissive. "Well, since you were so quicky to answer my question, you can drink your potion to test it and to prove that it doesn't harm humans. If you made it correctly, you have nothing to fear." Snape smiled coldly as Danna's eyes flew up to meet his.

"Professor, I cannot drink this," she said, the words tumbling out of her before she could control them.

Professor Snape's eyes narrowed. "Cannot?" he asked coldly.

Danna licked her lips nervously. "I'm allergic to this potion. I lived in an area heavily populated by dragons, so everyone was dosed with it often. Except that when they gave me the dosage, I stopped breathing and nearly died."

Professor Snape raised his eyebrows. "Oh really? How come this case isn't documented? Perhaps because you made the potion wrong?" His eyes hardened. "Drink it."

Danna stared at him and could find no way around it. She lifted her potion to her lips and barely wetted her lips, quickly setting it down and wiping almost frantically with the sleeve of her robe. Snape scowled. "Enough of these antics! Drink the potion, I say!" But there was no way Danna could. The room began spinning around her and her knees hit the floor. She saw the startled look in Snape's eyes and heard some students crying out in alarm. She gasped desperately, trying to breath, but her throat was closing as if gripped by a giant fist. She doubled over, screaming as her stomach knotted in pain. She didn't remember what happened after that.