Disclaimer:  

I do not own Harry Potter and co. NOBODY OWNS THEM, THEY ARE REAL!!! REAL I TELL YOU AND NOTHING YOU SAY IS GOING TO MAKE ME BELIEVE OTHER WISE!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA…… (A nurse comes and gives me my medication) umm, sorry bout that jk, we all know you own them, and ya know, we love you.

Authors note:   

You love me; you really love me (wipes tears from eyes)

"I would just like to thank everyone that has always been there for me. My mom, my … (realising this isn't the awards for best fanfic ever that she dreamed about last night) …anyways on to the story…umm…yeah bye."

Ok people, here's the deal, I am totally swamped with work at the min and I have exams coming up in January, so I'm putting my story on hold for a bit, not for long though. All I'm saying is that I won't be updating again until the start of February so there's no point in checking in every week or what not. You can however beg and plead in your reviews for more, you never know, I may be swayed lol, anyways, this chaps a little bigger so it should keep you happy.

Remember:

Thoughts = **   **

Thank you's are at bottom.

And of course, you all know the drill, REVIEW!!!!!!!! I like knowing it not just me reading this.

Hugs and kisses

Yeoldecrazy1.

Chapter 4:

Potions was Harry Potter's least favourite class, manly due to the fact that the teacher, Professor Snape, hated him. And this year his timetable meant he had to put up with him first thing in the morning.

"I wonder what happened to Alicia." Ron said from his left.

"Probably went to get her things and come down early." Hermione put in from his right.

"Why do we have to be with Slytherin every single year?" Ron whined. He hated having class with Slytherin as Snape always picked on Gryffindor students and favoured Slytherin as they were his own house.

Walking into class they met one of the most unusual sights they had ever seen in their life. Snape wasn't scowling, and he was talking to Alicia, who was smiling and chatting away. Then Snape moved to the side and another person came into view, Draco Malfoy.

"What the hell is she doing talking to them?" Ron whispered as they tried to get her attention as they went to their usual seats near the back of the classroom.

Professor Snape, seeing the rest of the class entering returned to his cold usual self.

"Class, as I'm sure you all know by now, we have a new student with us. As this is the case try not to foul up too badly and put Hogwarts in a bad light for her, and yes that was directed at you Mr Longbottom."

Neville cowered in his seat. Professor Snape had always picked on Neville's poor potions skills, and apparently this year was to be no different.

Harry however was not paying attention to this as he was staring at Alicia, who had taken a seat next to Draco and was quietly talking to him as if they were friends.

"Why is Alicia talking to Malfoy?" Ron whispered in his ear.

"Mr Weasley, Do you have something to share with the room!" Snape barked from beside the blackboard, where he was still writing up the assignment for the class.

"Um, no?"

"Well then I suggest you keep your mouth shut until the end of class, and you just lost Gryffindor 5 points for disrupting my lecture."

Harry looked over at Alicia and saw her give Ron a 'don't worry about it' kind of smile before going back to copying down the notes.

Thinking better of answering Ron vocally, Harry scribbled on the corner of his parchment, 'Don't know, we'll find out after class.'

*****

"That wasn't so bad." Alicia said coming out of class, "I've done most of the covered topics already so it shouldn't take me too long to catch up, so what's next?"

"Don't know about you, but I've got Ancient runes, but later today we have Care of Magical Creatures together."

"That must mean I have Arithmancy. I should probably find Hermione, ya know, see if she'll show me the way."

"You won't need to."

"Why, do you know were it is Mr Smarty-pants?"

"No, you just won't need to find her, and by the looks on their faces you haven't told them about us being friends."

"What do you m…, oh, um right. Oopsy." Having turned around she could now see what Draco was talking about. Walking down the corridor towards them were Ron, Hermione and Harry, all looking confused and slightly miffed. Smiling brightly Alicia greeted the group, "Hi guys, whaz up?"

"What are you doing talking to him? And why were you sitting beside him in class."

"What are you up to Malfoy; did you cast some sort of spell on her?"

Both of these questions came at the same time so it was rather confusing. Hermione stood slightly to the side and let the boys do the talking, and by the looks of it, all she wanted to be doing at that time was go to Arithmancy.

Draco, who was used to Harry and Ron throwing accusations at him, was the first of the two to recover. "You may need to cast spells on poor defenceless girls to get them to talk to you Potter, but I can manage very well on my own thanks all the same."

Alicia, having figured out what they had asked, turned to Ron in a matter that suggested that she wasn't in a very good mood; "Number One. Ron, Draco is a friend and he offered to show me the way to class as I was talking to him before hand, and as I showed up to class with him, and he introduced me to the teacher and helped me go through the notes seeing what I had to catch up on, I think it was only polite that I sat beside him. Plus that just happened to be were I was at the time when class started. And no, I don't want to hear about how much you hate each other cause I've already heard it from him, and as I told him, you aren't going to stop me being friends with him any more than he's gonna stop me being friends with you guys. But if you can't handle that, fine. Draco doesn't have a problem (Draco coughs loudly), well, ok so he does but he's not going to do anything about it, so I don't see why you should either. And second (rounding on Draco), did you just call me defenceless?"

"Um, yeah?"

"I am sooo not defenceless, thank you very much, I can take care of myself and I would appreciate it if you would keep further insulting comments like that to yourself."

"But then we'll have nothing to talk about."

"WHAT? WHY YOU LITTLE, UUCH!, you just wait mister, if I wasn't wasting precious time here instead of finding my way to class you would be in so much trouble right now."

Glaring at Draco in an exasperated way Alicia wagged her finger in front of his face as if scolding a small child, which he followed with his eyes in a manner that verged on bored.

"Uh-huh. Look, I'm gonna be late for runes, catch ya later?"

The glare disappearing from her face Alicia face broke into a grin, their mock fight forgotten.

"Ok, see ya at lunch, toddles."

"Bye."

After Draco left Alicia turned to find Ron, Harry and Hermione looking very confused and in some cases (Ron) just a tad more than pissed off.

"Hermione, can we go, cause I don't want my first class to consist of being yelled at for being late, doesn't make for good first impressions."

"Umm…, sure, it's not that far anyway, we'll probably get there on time."

"Hay! What the hell was that all about?" Ron shouted down the corridor after them.

"I've already told you, Draco is my friend. If you still want to be my friend, then I'll see you at lunch time, if not, well I'll see you at lunchtime anyway cause there's only one hall and we sit at the same table."

Anything Ron was about to say would have been wasted as the girls had turned the corner and wouldn't have heard. Turning to Harry he said, "What the bloody hell just happened?"

"I don't know, and I don't think I really care. (Ron looks stunned) For all I care she can be friends with anyone she wants, so long as she doesn't expect me to go anywhere near that slimy git we're good. It might even work to our advantage."

"How's that?"

"Well, he'll be too busy being friends with Alicia to be nasty to us, didn't you notice that he was standing there in full insult range and all he came out with was one sarcastic remark? Personally I can do without the hassle of avoiding Malfoy all year."

"Huh, I guess your right, maybe she's a good influence on him or something… weird. I guess you're right, but I refuse to be nice to the git, I don't care what Alicia thinks of him; he was a git in the past, he's a git now and he's probably gonna continue to be a git in the future."

"Yeah, I know. Come on, or we'll be late for Divination."

"Oh no. We can't have that now, can we?" None the less he started walking down the corridor towards their classroom.

"Wonder how long she'll last today."

"I say she predicts your death in the first 10 minutes."

"5."

"You're on."

*****

"So what's the Arithmancy teacher like?"

"Professor Vector, he's really good, I'm sure you'll like him. Plus it shouldn't be too hard to catch up any work we've done so far, we've really only just got past the basics, but if you need any help with anything just ask."

"Thanks, so, um, what do you think about Draco, cause you were kind of quiet back there and I do want to be friends with you guys, it's just Draco was the first person I met coming here and we get on really well."

"I don't know. It sort of came as a shock that you two were friends, ok, so it comes as a shock that Draco even has friends, but I guess I haven't really thought about it. I just don't understand why anyone would voluntarily be around him."

"But it's not like he's the devil or anything, I mean why do you hate each other so much?"

"The only reason I hate Draco is that he never stops picking on everyone for what ever weaknesses they have, he shows no respect for authority, he never gives us a break. Every single time we see him he insults at least one of us, whether it's Harry for being famous or Ron for being poor, or me. He thinks he's better than everyone that's ever walked the earth simply because of his surname."

"What does he say to you?" by the look on Alicia's face was easy to see that she wasn't happy with what she was hearing.

"Well, he doesn't like me because my parents are muggles, so the usual insult would be calling me a mudblood."

"He what!?"

"Guess you really don't know him that well, do you? Well, here we are."

"Right, well at least we made it on time."

"Yeah, were do you want to sit, I usually sit at the front, but if you want to sit closer to the back its ok."

"No, I like sitting at the front as well; it's easier to get the teachers attention if you're confused about something, which I'm guessing is gonna happen a lot."

Smiling slightly Hermione sat at her usual table and Alicia took the seat or her left.

Throughout class both of the girls were slightly distracted, Hermione was going over what had happened in the corridor, wondering what Harry and Ron would get up to, and Alicia was thinking about what Hermione had told her about Draco. Scratching down their homework they left and headed toward the great hall together, both in a state of deep concentration as they tried to figure out their separate issues.

*****

"Hello! Hermione, Alicia, are you guys in there. Weird."

"Huh, oh sorry poeps, was completely in a world of my own, did someone ask me something?"

"Me and Harry were just wondering whether or not we could sit here, ya know, right beside you, like a friend would?"

Alicia's face broke into a smile at hearing this; she had sort of expected them to avoid her, "Sure, if you want."

"Cool." Sitting down the boys began to fill their plates.

"So does that mean that you guys are going to act like adults?" Hermione asked having finally joined the world of the living.

"Harry, I think Hermione just insulted you."

"She insulted you too!"

"Oh no, ya see I never act like an adult so this would actually be the first time."

"Oh yeah, you're right."

   Grinning like idiots over their little joke the boys turned back to their food.

"So what were you two thinking about anyway?" Ron asked between shovelling food into his mouth.

"Well, I was just wondering if you guys would go on some sort of rampage over this and was coming up with ways of calming you down in case someone got hurt."

"I was thinking about Draco."

"Never mind, I don't want to know."

"Ron, I thought you guys were gonna behave like adults."

"Yeah, so long as we don't have to know anything about that ferret then we're going to be very mature about the entire thing."

"Uuch, whatever." Turning to Alicia she twirled her finger in a circle beside her ear (the crazy sign) and said "boys." Like it explained the entire thing.

"Charming Hermione, really." Harry said laughing at the semi-insult.

"Thanks", sticking out her tongue she giggled.

Alicia wrinkled her forehead before asking, "Umm, Ferret?"

"Oh, so he didn't tell you about that, well that just won't do, will it Ron."

"Oh no Harry, it's one of my favourite memories here at Hogwarts."

"So tell me."

"Ok, so our forth year defence against the dark arts teacher was this guy called 'Mad-eye Moody', and well, he had his very own way of teaching…

NOTES:

My goodness it's hard to keep going after a while, I have no idea how all these writers do it. Don't worry, I'm gonna see this baby through to the end, I just think I'm gonna need some motivation, and if any of you have ideas let me know and I might use them.

THANKS:

Writer gurl4: sure thing, I'm trying to update on a regular basis, won't be back to February but this should hold you over. I'm planning to update at the start of every month after that. Does that sound good?

Pam: thank you!! I'm glad you like it so far, hope you like this chappy too. And I would just like to say that I take great pride in my disclaimers and it is so sweet of you to say that you like them. Hope they continue to make you laugh.

Wow: the title; well I didn't mean it like that, I meant it more like, when you have an outsiders perspective you see more things and that Alicia was going to have that sort of influence on their lives. Does that make sense?

Hplova4eva: So I take it you liked it? Lol, well I hope this will keep you going for a while.