Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, blah blah blah.

AN: This is kind of a Mary-Sue fic, but written with the intention of Mary-Sueness. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.

And Aubrey wasn't the one that made the first move. It was Draco, during potions class the very next day. Aubrey sat down, looking around at the people filing in. Draco immediately came in and plopped down beside her.

"So…you're the new girl, are you? What's the name and story?" He asked, smirking and leaning back in his chair.

"Aubrey. I'm from around," she said coquettishly, cocking her head to the side. "What about you?"

"I'm Malfoy, Draco Malfoy. You may call me Draco if you wish."

"Ooh, I feel so privileged." Aubrey said with a mock swoon. Then she got a bit more serious and leaned close to him, looking into his icy eyes. "You can call me anything you'd like, Draco," she purred.

Draco looked into her big, blue eyes and smirked. "Alright then, bitch."

Aubrey made a shocked sound and attempted to cuff Draco on the side of his head. Draco dodged easily and smirked further. "Bitch," Aubrey half asked with a barely concealed smile. "How can you call me that when you don't even know me?"

"Fine then…tease!" Draco said maliciously.

Just then Prof. Snape came into the room and silence was suddenly in abundance. "I believe there is one student that is new to this class. Never taken it, or any other class at Hogwarts, despite the fact that she is a sixth year."

Aubrey squirmed uncomfortably under the scrutiny of the professor. His face she did remember from the photo album; although it was a younger, adolescent version of him. The only two consisted of him with a bloody nose, and him stuck in a tree with Uncle Remus at the base of the tree at that…uh, special time of the month for him.

"I also think you will find, Miss Black," Snape spat the name out as if it were a curse so vile it should not be bestowed on anyone. "that my classes are very challenging. Let us hope you will be able to keep up with the curriculum." And with a flourish, Snape turned to the board and began writing the instructions for the potion they would be making on the first day of class.

As soon as his back was turned, Aubrey sighed and rolled her eyes. Really, he

was taking it a bit far. Couldn't he just get over the fact that her father and his friends bullied him a little in school? Come on, get a little mature as you get older.

When he had finished writing out the instructions, he looked critically at the class and started calling off groups of three. He told them that whenever they came into the classroom, they would have to sit with the assigned partners.

By pure good luck and fortune, Aubrey, Draco, and Blaise were put into a group together. Blaise looked over at her and smiled. "So," he said carefully, smiling sweetly, "You're Aubrey. Everybody won't stop talking about you, and it's only the second day of school."

Aubrey rolled her eyes. She knew that she was stunningly gorgeous, but really. How naïve did Blaise think she was? However, she smiled sweetly at him. "You can't be serious? Jeez, I haven't even talked to that many people!"

"Oh, everyone's talking about how pretty you are…I'm so glad that I'm in the same potions group with you."

Aubrey smiled less sweetly at him, and a bit more seductively. She also batted her eyelashes at him for good effect. "Why, thank you Blaise. That's so kind of you, being so nice to the new girl. Unlike some people I know," and here she swayed to her right, where Draco was sitting. This caused her to brush up against him and find that his muscles were rock hard. She nearly swooned then and there, thinking of those strong arms wrapped around her, nearly crushing her during an embrace.

Her thoughts were pulled from Draco when she realized that she had to start working on the potion. Aubrey didn't talk to Draco and Blaise for the rest of the day, and was completely tired out by dinner.

"Rough first day?" Cho asked sympathetically.

Aubrey straightened up and smiled. "Not all that hard, actually. Except Snape absolutely loathes me, but from what I understand that isn't a very rare occurrence."

Then the headmaster stood up and Aubrey groaned inwardly. She didn't have her MP3 player with her, so she would have to suffer the old man's ramblings.

"This year, as a little back to school pick me up," the old man said, with an odd little twinkle in his eye, "we shall be having a Halloween Ball on the appropriate holiday. Fourth years and older only will be allowed to attend, unless of course someone of the allowed age were to ask a younger one…" and his voice droned on and on.

Aubrey was automatically gripped with a sudden and inexplicable panic. She was the new girl, and although she was the adorable, irresistible, gorgeous new girl, she was still new. People didn't know her, but more importantly guys didn't know her. What would she do if no one asked her to go with them? Her mind was in full tilt, unchecked panic.

The dread didn't last long. As soon as the Headmaster sat back down, Draco Malfoy walked over to the Ravenclaw table and tapped Aubrey on her shoulder. She turned to him, and he smirked.

"You wanna go to the dance with me?" He asked in his suave, debonair way.

Aubrey hid her relief with a smirk of her own, and nodded her head. "Sure, but only because you're the first one to ask."

Draco nodded and walked off, feeling fortunate that she had won the split second rock-paper-scissors match against Blaise. It decided who would take her to the dance, and Draco had just been lucky.

Aubrey was all a-flutter when she got back to her dorm. The first day of school, and she already had a date to the Halloween dance! And more then that, it seemed: she had seen the crestfallen look on poor Blaise's face when she passed by him on her way to her own common room.

Her dear little calico cat, Cuddles, was stretched out on her bed, contently grooming herself. Aubrey snatched her up and hugged her tightly to her chest. "Oh, Cuddles," she crooned, "I love you so much!" Then she took a much more serious tone as she set the disgruntled Cuddles back on the bed, where she promptly began cleaning herself again.

"Cuddles, do you think Draco or Blaise likes me more? Who do you think I should go after? I mean, Blaise is so sweet," she intertwined her fingers together in front of her chest, looking skyward dreamily. "He so cute too, with that dark, poetic look about him. But Draco, on the other hand," and now she started to strip down to her skivvies, after she pulled the curtain around her bed shut of course. "He's just so…so…in control, so dominating. And you know I'm a sucker for those."

Aubrey now had her preferred sleeping clothes on: a pair of hot pants and a comfy t-shirt. She looked over at her cat, who was looking up at her in turn with an expression that said haughtily: 'Don't you remember Crash?'

Aubrey's eyebrows knitted together. "Of course I remember him. How could I forget, I only got out of that a month ago."

Now Cuddles looked away, quite clearly showing that she disapproved of Aubrey chasing boys again already. Aubrey rolled her eyes and dug around in her trunk, taking out the infamous photo album. It was a huge thing, with countless pictures.

She flipped through it, scanning the pages until she found the ones that were labeled with Snape and Malfoy's father's names. Aubrey tried also to find pictures of anyone with the last name 'Zabini,' but to no avail. She smiled at the pictures of her parents side by side, at her mother's shyly smiling face.

That was enough for tonight, she was going to end up making herself cry. She shut the album hard enough to make a snapping sound that made her jump a little. Aubrey sighed, put the album away, and crawled into bed. She snuggled up to Cuddles, who had always been her best friend in the world.

Soon enough, if Draco Malfoy was the 'Slytherin Prince,' then Aubrey Black was definitely the 'Ravenclaw Princess.' She made friends easily enough, the popular kids liked her. And she had a string of boys that weren't exactly drooling over her; but given the chance they probably would go out with her.

She was constantly sporting the Ravenclaw colors even though she was most often seen with Slytherins. Aubrey just liked their manner more…they were so rough, so sensual, so sexual, so…ready and rash. She loved guys that didn't take any shit from anybody, and that would take a girl from behind while entangling his hands in her hair and demanding that she say his name.

Yes, that was one of her biggest turn on's. Most wouldn't expect it from her: on the surface she was so flirtatious and seductive, it seemed like she would like to be the one in charge. But that wasn't the case at all.

As Aubrey sat sandwiched between Pansy Parkinson (who hadn't taken all that well to her in the beginning, and still didn't) and Daphne Greengrass (who liked her well enough, but grudgingly) at the first quidditch match of the year, she found herself thinking of her old boyfriend Crash. He had the attitude of Draco, but looked more like Blaise.

His skin had been tanned, he was tall and lanky, and his hair was dark and curly, like Blaise's. Except that Crash's hair had been a very dark green. Crash had a tongue ring and an eyebrow ring. It was because of him that Aubrey got her belly button and tongue pierced, along with that horrible tattoo…but she didn't want to think about that, and what it symbolized. Instead, Aubrey focused on the memories of getting the tattoo: how much it hurt, holding Crash's hand during it, picking it out with him beforehand…all of that was a happy blur.

Their relationship was pretty much a happy blur. Crash had liked to get drunk and just hang out. He was in the outcast crowd at her old school, which was a public school. Aubrey had led Cho to think that the school had been magical, but in fact it wasn't. Her parents had taught her all of her magic abilities at home.

Aubrey managed to fall out of the popular crowd, mostly spending her weekends with Crash at a concert instead of at the mall with Crystal. She had loved Crash, at least at first, and always loved the things that he did. His little pet name for her, doll face, the way he kissed her roughly or bit her ear when she was least expecting it, the way he breathed, even…it was all so nice. And his smirk. It was the cutest thing ever.

Sadly, Aubrey was brought out of her trip down memory lane by Draco not-so-gently but not-so-roughly twinning his hand in her purplish hair and tilting her head back. She was now looking up into his face from where her head rested, right in his lap.

"What were you thinking about?" He asked, looking down at her. His hand didn't leave the back of her head as he told her, "The last two times your team scored you just sat there. Do you just not care?"

Aubrey smiled up at him, and he released her head from his grip. She turned half around and smiled at him. "I care. I was just Away for a little bit."

"Away?" Draco asked, raising an eyebrow. He had heard the capital letter.

Aubrey nodded once, decisively. "Yes. I was Away."

After a moment, he ventured, "Where were you Away at?"

Aubrey looked at him a long moment, looked right into his eyes. He had icy, blue-gray eyes that didn't convey emotion very well. Aubrey knew that she had big, blue, expressive eyes that always conveyed what she forced them too. Most of the time, she felt like they weren't even hers. Crash's eyes had been chocolate brown, and had shown everything he felt at the moment you were looking at them. Odd, how you could get every end of the spectrum with three people.

"I was Crashing," she said in a small voice, thinking about him. That's what she had always told her parents or her friends what she had been doing when they asked: she had been Crashing.

Once again, Draco could hear the capital letter in it, but decided not to ask. He knew that she wasn't going to tell him anything about what the hell 'Crashing' was. So he got her caught up in a conversation about what she had missed in the game, followed by mostly pointless chatter.

Blaise, who was sitting beside Draco, noticed that as soon as the conversation stopped being so cryptic and Draco started directing it, that ever so slight hint of sadness in Aubrey's eyes was driven off. He had listened to the conversation, and wondered for a handful of days what the hell 'Crashing' was. Then he got his chance to ask her about it, in the library one fine day.

She was the one that came and sat next to him, smiling and carrying a few books and rolls of parchment. They quietly worked on homework together until Blaise broke the silence.

"So what's Crashing?" he asked, making certain that there was no way she would be able to mistake the capital in the word.

Aubrey stopped and looked at him with a calculating gaze. She realized now that her first assumption that he was simply shy was blown all out of proportion. He was intelligent, and knew how to make things go his way. At the time that she met him, that required seeming shy. It still did, to an extent.

"Crashing is when you crash," she said with a shrug, scribbling something down on the parchment.

Blaise smiled at her, watching as her cheeks grew a faint pinkish color. It was barely noticeable, but it was there all the same. "No, really," he said, leaning close and whispering. "What's Crashing? It means something important, doesn't it?"

Aubrey nearly laughed at his serious expression, and would have if it were not for the fear of getting kicked out of the library. Blaise thought this was some big, dark secret, when that's not what it was at all. Not in the least.

"Nothing…it means just that, nothing. But at the same time, it means everything and anything you can possibly thing of. Having sex…that's Crashing. Getting high or drunk…that's Crashing. Hanging out with your friends: Crashing. Being by yourself: Crashing. Doing homework, going to class, eating lunch, sleeping. Crashing, Crashing, Crashing, Crashing." Then Aubrey did laugh at the amount of sense she was making, earning her a stern look from the librarian. "But then, I'm sure you don't get it."

"Actually," Blaise said, revaluating her for himself, "I kind of do. But that's not what it means for you." He looked at her, into those big, blue eyes and wondered what this girl was really all about. She had seemed so simple a mere week ago, but now she was anything but. "Or is it what it means to you?'

Aubrey gave a little shrug, as if she didn't really want to think about that question for herself. It was nearly as if she was scared to.

Maybe she was.