Chapter 4

As the next few days wore on, it grew even colder outside, making the students huddle together in groups when having outside classes. Soon, the lake froze over to a drab steely gray sheet of ice.

When the winter break persisted to draw nearer and nearer, Aerin, all of the other boys, and a good majority of the students at Hogwarts tended to goof off a bit more. However, due to the fact that Aerin's Transfiguration seemed to be making no progress whatsoever, goofing off probably wasn't the best idea.

One day during Transfiguration, the class seemed to go increasingly slow to Aerin. She was drumming her fingers on the desk, when Professor Minerva McGonagall turned around suddenly.

"Is there a problem, Miss Lorenta?" she sighed, in a tone that said she was quite fed up.

Aerin rolled her eyes. "Not at all," she replied innocently.

The rest of the class progressed, while Aerin simply drowned out everything that was said. Peh… it wasn't like she would be able to do any of it anyways.

Finally, as it came to a close, Aerin stood up and started grabbing her books as she got ready to go, just like the rest of the students.

"Aerin… I'd like to talk with you for a minute," McGonagall said, just before Aerin was out of the door.

Aerin gave an annoyed sigh as she turned right back around and marched right up to the professor's desk. "Yes?" she asked through gritted teeth.

Minerva sighed. "Aerin, you are failing this class," she told her, point blank. She was the kind of person who didn't approve of beating around the bush. "I really don't know why… if you actually tried, rather than go out of your way to ignore me, your grades could skyrocket."

Aerin stared blankly. Failing? She couldn't fail! Though earlier in class, she had preferred to pay more attention to a fly that had been passing by, the professor certainly had her complete attention now.

"I'm certain that if you worked harder in class for the remainder of the year, and did one extra credit assignment… well, you could scrape up a passing grade. You'll also need to do well on the exams at the end of the year too… but let's just focus on the present grade for now," Professor McGonagall told her.

Aerin nodded, making a silent vow to not only pass the exams, but pass with flying colors- no matter how much she despised Transfiguration.

McGonagall thought for a moment. "Your extra credit assignment will be pretty easy. All you'll need to do is transfigure the element of an object of your choice, to a completely different element, while keeping the object's shape the same. Turn in the transfigured object to me some time in the next two months. I'm afraid I'll be quite busy, so I've no specified date," she instructed Aerin.

Aerin nodded again, though her thoughts were still as sarcastic as ever after she practically fled from the classroom. Heh… she doubted that Peter would want to be anywhere near her while she practiced her Transfiguration.

At first, it surprised Aerin to see that the boys had waited for her right outside of the classroom, rather than go on to dinner, like she had suspected they would. She smiled a little as she then realized it wasn't so surprising after all… there had been plenty of times they had waited for her before.

James looked at Sirius impatiently. "Can we go eat NOW?" he whined.

Sirius nodded, laughing a bit as they started walking.

Remus smirked at James. "Aw, James isn't being frumpy, is he?" he laughed.

James scowled indignantly. "I'm not being frumpy!"

"Are too," Remus replied.

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!" James insisted, looking thoroughly annoyed by now.

Remus let the argument drop, but still looked amused.

As they finally reached the Great Hall, James and Sirius rushed towards a table. Remus and Peter followed them as well. Soon, Aerin followed too.

If this had been one of her first days at Hogwarts again, Aerin would've stared at the boys in complete disbelief for nearly the whole time that dinner lasted. The boys… could EAT. They ate constantly, talking and laughing all the while. Even though it no longer surprised her of the amount of food they managed to cram down into their stomachs, she still found it hilarious to watch them from time to time.

Sirius leaned back in his chair, looking content. "I don't think I could eat another bite!" he remarked happily.

Aerin laughed. "I'd bet you could find some room somewhere in that bottomless pit of a stomach. You seem to every other time!"

Sirius rolled his eyes, but grinned. "Oh, you're so funny," he said sarcastically.

After a few more minutes, they finally all got up, deciding to head back to the Common Room.

They walked on, each of them looking cheerful, when the conversation suddenly came to a stop. A group of Slytherins were approaching them slowly, whispering amongst one another. They reached Aerin and the boys after another moment, examining them. It was obvious who the leader of the group was- a small, lean boy, who was even paler than Remus, with silky light blond hair. He could almost have been mistaken for handsome, save for the fact that his eyes were cold and piercing, and the unquestionable smirk on his face. "Hello Black, Potter…" he addressed them. He hadn't bothered to mention Aerin, Remus, or Peter.

Sirius and James glared, and attempted to walk away. However, the Slytherins followed after them.

"Oh? You won't even let me take a good look at our newest student?" the pale boy asked.

"Bug off, Lucius! Why don't you go have a nice little tea party with Snape, or whatever you normally do for fun?" Sirius snapped.

Lucius's smirk turned to somewhat of a sneer. "Hmm…" he replied. However, the smirk came back just before he turned around. "Have fun with your flunky of a girlfriend!" he remarked, smiling coldly, as he and the rest of the Slytherins walked off in the other direction.

"Girlfriend?" Aerin and Sirius spat out, Aerin blushing faintly.

In the days that came to pass, the nickname Lucius had bestowed upon Aerin became quite popular among the Slytherins. When she was walking in the corridors, they'd often snicker and point at her.

For most people, this would have been extremely humiliating. Aerin, on the other hand, rather enjoyed it. Or, at least, she seemed to. She'd simply smirk and take a dramatic bow, whenever they called her 'flunky'. It was as though the fact that they seemed to loathe her now made her enjoy trying out her new power of pestering them. Soon, it became evident how much she loved having her new nickname, and the Slytherins gave up. Unfortunately for them, the Gryffindors also noticed how much that Aerin accepting her nickname bothered the Slytherins, so they occasionally would keep the nickname going in the corridors. Once, someone even yelled out, "All hail the flunky!"

The only thing that troubled her was why exactly Lucius had called her a 'flunky' in the first place. If it was because of her being kicked out of Beauxbatons, then that was all nice and well. But if he'd somehow found out about what was going on in Transfiguration… she shuddered, not wanting to think about the possibility of her flunking.

One thing that did comfort her quite a bit was the fact that her skills in Transfiguration were improving. They were improving at an extremely slow rate, but she was getting better all the same. She had been practicing on her extra credit assignment late at night, in the Common Room. The object she'd chosen was a large, wild rose, not yet in full bloom, with plenty of thorns up and down the stem. For the first three nights, no matter how hard she tried, there had been no change in the rose, other than the fact that a thorn had broken off and had gotten stuck in her thumb. However, on the fourth night, a small portion of one of the leaves changed to glimmering, shimmering crystal. This gave her hope to further improve.

Ever since the night she had been so sick, Aerin had unintentionally made it a habit to sleep in the Common Room. The girls' dormitory wasn't a very pleasant place for Aerin. They often stared at her and whispered. It would have been better, in Aerin's opinion, if she was able to know right out if they were making fun of her, or simply just wondering about her. She was weird, and she knew it, so it was only understandable for some people to wonder. Still… Aerin couldn't tell, and so she felt she didn't know what to do. Thus, in order to avoid watching, but never quite hearing them whisper, the stayed down in the Common Room, going up to the girls' dormitory only to change clothes.

Sirius hadn't taken long to figure out that she had started sleeping down in the Common Room. Sometimes, he came downstairs to talk with her, before he went up to the boys' dormitory to get some sleep. James would usually be sitting on the edge of his bed, smirking at him, when Sirius came upstairs. In reply to the smirk, Sirius often just threw a pillow at him.

It seemed like an eternity before the long-awaited winter break finally arrived. Aerin had decided to stay at Hogwarts- no surprise there. The four boys, along with a small percentage of the student body at Hogwarts, also had made the decision to stay.

Aerin felt almost sorry for those students who had gone to visit their families for the holidays. The whole school was brilliant and vibrant, with decorations in almost every direction. Despite the bleary dullness and grayness of the grounds outside, everyone who'd stayed behind was about as comfortable and warm as could be. They occasionally enjoyed looking up at the ceiling of the Great Hall, to watch the snow drifting overhead, to and fro, seeing as the Great Hall showed what the sky outside was like.

Aerin was quite weird, in that she was the sort of person who could stay up till all hours of the night, and still wake up bright and early. She didn't exactly like to wake up early… actually, she was grouchy in the mornings. But, for whatever the reason, she was often up at the crack of dawn, save for a few times her body had been absolutely too exhausted to rise. The boys, on the other hand, preferred sleeping as late as was possible to get away with, except Remus, who usually woke up an hour or two before the other three boys. Still, this usually left Aerin with quite a bit of free time before being able to hang out with her four friends.

During one of these early morning free times, a group of girls came downstairs, which surprised Aerin. She was used to being all by herself when she was downstairs in the morning.

Of the four or so girl, it was obvious who was doing most of the talking. She was short, but slender, with smooth fair skin. Her mouth was small and delicate, while her hair was long and sweeping, and midnight black in color. Large, lovely, and gray were her eyes, wide like those of a deer in headlights.

Aerin couldn't help but feel a small pang of disdain for this girl, though she'd never noticed her before. The girl was the spitting image of the girls that had been at Beauxbatons. Then her disdain turned to guilt. Surely this girl wouldn't act like those girls had? She listened to the conversation the group of girls was carrying on. After only the first few minutes, though, she became so incredibly bored, she was tempted to go right back to sleep. The conversation was so overwhelmingly dull, Aerin wasn't sure if she was able to detect a single sign of intelligence. No, she took the guilt back. These girls were Beauxbatons all over again. She sighed, infinitely bored… this was going to be a LONG morning.

Indeed, a long morning it was. Plus, the fact that the boys had decided to sleep even later than usual didn't exactly help. By the time all four of the boys had come down to the Common Room, Aerin had pretty much plugged her ears in hopes of escaping the girls' endless chit-chat.

"Who is that… no, better yet, WHAT is that… that thing?" she inquired, pointing a finger over at the gray-eyed girl.

The boys glanced over in the direction that Aerin was pointing. "Huh? Oh, that's just Dia," Remus answered.

James smirked. "But we know her better as the "Diasaurus Rex." One of the leading monsters of the fan clubs."

"Fan clubs?"

"Yeah! Though the ladies do love me (Here, Remus rolled his eyes), Sirius has quite a few fan clubs. He's pretty familiar with Dia, aren't you Sirius?"

Sirius groaned. "Don't remind me," he mumbled.

Peter, who'd previously been laughing, now stopped. "Okay Sirius!" he squeaked out.

James, however, just laughed. "Tell her what happened! Tell her! Tell her about last Christmas!" James pleaded.

Sirius sighed. "Last Christmas, we held a party here in the Gryffindor Common Room. Everything was going great… until the giggling git trapped me under some mistletoe… enchanted mistletoe, mind you. I couldn't get out from under it, until I snogged someone!" he grumbled.

Remus snickered. "I don't think I've ever seen someone peck a person on the cheek so quickly."

"Must've disappointed Dia! I'll bet that she had been expecting a big long smooch!" James added in, making mock kissy faces.

"Shut up!" Sirius muttered.

Aerin pasted a grin on her face, her dislike for Dia swelling intensely. "Are you serious?" she asked James.

James shook his head. "No, he's Sirius!" he told her. "I'm James! Gee, and I thought you had known that all this time," he added.

Sirius gave James an amused glance.

Aerin sighed. "10,000 comedians at work in the world, and you're still trying to be funny," she told James.

James only looked proud. "Not trying… succeeding!" he corrected her.

Lily Evans, who also had stayed behind for Christmas, stopped by where the group was sitting momentarily. "Potter… the day you're considered funny without having to make a moron of yourself, is the day I eat my left foot," she remarked, shaking her head, before striding out of the Common Room.

"Wait! Lily! Liiiiiiiilllllllyyyyy!" James called after her disappointedly. He had wanted to talk with Lily more!

Sirius grinned, sympathetically. By now, he was used to seeing these sorts of comments Lily gave James. Though he had to admit- James was admirable for how he never gave up in his attempts to woo Lily. "Relax, mate. She'll come around soon enough!" Sirius assured him.

James's look turned to a determined one. "Of course she will! No one can resist James Potter!" he exclaimed. He winked at two of the girls over in Dia's little group, as though proving his point when they let out an elated giggle and began to chatter excitedly.

Aerin let out of a fit of coughing, looking as though she had started gagging. She held her throat dramatically, as though James's words were causing her pain.

James rolled his eyes. "Shut up, giggle butt!" he told Aerin.

Aerin stopped her fake gagging and reddened considerably. "I only did that to get the password for you, dear friend!" she defended.

After a few more minutes of bickering, the two finally ceased the argument, long enough to notice that Sirius and Remus weren't on the couch beside them anymore.

"Incoming!" Remus yelled from behind them, struggling not to laugh as Sirius ran, hurtling himself over the couch, landing right in the middle of it with a huge bounce, causing both Aerin and James to fall off of it, to the floor.

James was laughing as he straightened himself up, pushing his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. "You are, by far, the biggest pain in the butt that it has been my pleasure to band together with, Mr. Black!"

Remus snorted. "How about we just stick with the 'biggest pain in the butt' part?" he suggested.

The very next was Christmas Eve. The boys, and Aerin, spent most of the time sitting in the Common Room, wrapping their gifts for one another.

While Aerin and Remus struggled silently with flattening the wrapping paper, so the presents wouldn't seem lumpy, Sirius and James busted out into laughter as they watched Peter attempt to use magic to wrap his packages. One of the ribbons had now decided to try and tie Peter up nice and neat, rather than the gifts. James and Sirius grinned, and rushed over to help the poor bumbling boy.

Remus growled frustratedly at his wrapping paper. "Perhaps you two should actually get back to wrapping those poor, pitiful forgotten gifts, rather than goof off at every opportunity?" he suggested to them.

James gasped, letting go of the ribbon for a moment. "And let poor Peter be strangled? Really Remus, I had thought better of you! I'd never have expected you to forget about one of your best friends and let him be strangled!" he laughed. It seemed, however, that James was the one who had forgotten about helping Peter, because Sirius was currently the only one yanking at the stubborn ribbon. Peter meeped as the stubborn ribbon refused to come off of him.

In time, James went back to battling with the ribbon, looking triumphant as he and Sirius finally managed to pull it off of Peter. Peter sheepishly went back to wrapping the gifts he'd bought, though he just stuck to bows rather than ribbons, now.

"There. All done!" Aerin remarked as she pushed the last of her gifts off to the side. She chose to pay no attention to the stubborn lump of paper sticking up on the present.

Sirius let out a bark-like laugh. "Same here!" he grinned, pointing back at the small pile of presents he'd purchased for his friends.

"How could you possibly finish that fast?" Remus demanded to know, looking disheveled at his share of wrapping paper, which had turned out to not be enough to completely cover over the current present that he was wrapping.

Sirius grinned innocently. "Why, genius, I used gift bags!" he replied. It was true. Lacking the attention span to take the time to properly wrap a gift, Sirius and James had simply decided to save time and place the gifts in bags, instead.

James finished shortly after. Soon, he and Sirius were amusing themselves by sending pillows flying over towards one another with their wands. The two were forced to stop by Remus, though, when one of the pillows narrowly missed the roaring fire in the fireplace.

Remus also finally wrapped his final gift, all of them miraculously managing to look picture-perfect.

At last, Peter also concluded his session of wrapping presents.

The five of them made their way to the Great Hall for Christmas dinner. As they took their seats, they could smell multiple aromas of all kinds of delicious foods.

Professor Dumbledore waved to them happily from the teachers' table. He smiled cheerfully before going back to humming the tune of a Christmas carol that no one seemed to be quite familiar with.

Course after course of the meal was absolutely wonderful. All of them piled their plates high with mounds of tenderly cooked turkey, pot roast, fresh bread, dripping with hot butter, green beans, and, of course, stuffing. Dessert was even better, consisting of bread puddings, chocolate cakes, chewy biscuits, and an exquisite yet odd, peppermint pie.

Of course, they didn't eat all of those things mentioned- those were simply some of the many choices available.

After all of them were so stuffed, they felt as though they might burst, came the wizard crackers.

Thus, when they all left the Great Hall to finally go back to the Gryffindor Common Room, it was quite an amusing sight, what with James Potter wearing a pair of reindeer antlers, and Sirius Black in a hat similar to that of Father Christmas.

It took Aerin a moment to register that she was hearing voices the next morning. As she slowly opened her eyes, she nearly fell out of her usual armchair, as she realized the boys had already come on downstairs.

"What time is it?" Aerin mumbled sleepily.

Sirius looked slightly proud. "Fifteen minutes after six in the morning!" he replied.

Aerin rubbed her eyes as she straightened up a little. "What? No joke? Why don't you ever get up this early on days we have classes?" she groaned, flicking little specks of sleep away as she rubbed it out of her eyes.

"Because, we only get up early for important stuff!" James replied.

Sirius smirked and nodded his head in agreement with James's statement. Then he looked at Aerin as innocently as was possible, head cocked to one side. "Wow, I wonder how old Saint Nick knew just where to put your presents?" he exclaimed, pointing at the small pile of gifts right beside the armchair that Aerin was still sitting in.

Aerin snorted, not believing the look on Sirius's face for even a minute. "Oh yes, ha ha, what a coincidence!" she laughed sarcastically. "Makes it even more surprising that the wrapping paper and gift bags match the ones I saw you all using yesterday!"

The boys all grinned, and then laughed. Remus finally stopped laughing and grinned again. "Well, what are we waiting for? Time to open presents!" he yelled happily.

They all began to exchange the gifts and open them hurriedly, eager to see what their packages were. After that, it was all a blur of candies, Quidditch supplies, prank books, and butterbeer. Yet there had never been a time when the Gryffindor Common Room had been quite so cheerful.

Later that night, after Remus, James, and Peter had gone up to the boys' dormitory, Aerin and Sirius had decided to remain downstairs and talk for a little while.

Aerin had become a bit more cautious lately. She had one day found that she stared at Sirius a good deal more lately. Also, though she still loathed Dia entirely, it had occurred to her how she had merely disliked her until she had found out that Dia had kissed Sirius. This kind of behavior was so unusual for Aerin, it had begun to freak her out. So, she had closed up, hardly talking to Sirius unless the others were around. As she sat there, Sirius beside her on the couch, she did her best to cover up the fact that she was nervous and uncomfortable.

If Sirius had been aware that that was how she currently felt, he would have had to admit that she was succeeding remarkably well in hiding it. The only thing he knew was that lately, their nightly conversations had suddenly vanished. She had started coming up with some excuse about why he needed to go on up to bed every time he tried to stay downstairs. Tonight was the first night in awhile that he'd been able to talk with her. He felt slightly awkward now. Why did she seem to want to avoid him?

Aerin was at a loss of any possible way to strike up an even semi-interesting conversation, when something on the bulletin board caught her attention. A large piece of parchment was tacked to it, that she had been too busy opening presents to notice it in the morning.

Sirius, noticing where her eyes darted to, walked over to the bulletin board, snatching the parchment up. He went pale as he read it… and read it again. Finally, after reading it about eight more times, he walked back over to Aerin. His eyes darted to the floor for a minute, and he blurted out the question that had come to his mind. "Any chance you'd want to go to the New Year's Eve Ball with me?"

Aerin stared, unsure how to respond. She was positive her heart had skipped a beat.

"As… friends, of course," he added, looking a bit downcast.

"Of course…" Aerin repeated him slowly. "Well… I guess we're going to a Ball together," she finally responded. And it was the truth. There would be Sirius… and herself… at the first Ball she'd ever bothered to attend in her life.