Well, the holidays are over, I'm heartily glad of it. Just got to do a few more things before normality can return and I can write more often. I'm hoping to get this chapter out by New Year's, so if I don't at least I tried. Hope you all had fun holidays wherever you are. Huh, guess I don't really have much more to talk about. That's new. Hopefully there isn't going to be a recurrence. I do not own Harry Potter or Ed, Edd and Eddy. They are owned by J.K. Rowling, At&T and Warner Media.

The Potions Master

"There, look." "Where?" "Next to the tall kid with the red hair and the short girl with blue hair." "Wearing the glasses?" "Did you see his face?" "Did you see his scar?" It had been nearly a week since Marie had come to Hogwarts and so far she could say that the entire experience has been a mixed bag. The castle itself was very interesting, with sentient suits of armor that walked the hallways with the students, paintings that left their frames in order to visit other paintings and numerous passageways, hidden doors and doors that weren't doors at all. The staircases (of which there were 142) would move on their own at different times of day, some that had a trick step in it, and others that were more slides than stairs. She could deal without the ghosts though. She had one walk through her when she was opening a door and the experience was like being drenched by freezing rain. Okay, Nick was fine. Peeves was also something she could do without and his pranks, if you could call them that. Pulling rugs from under people, turning invisible and shouting "Got your conk.", dumbing paper baskets on people's heads and throwing chalk at others was something that Peeves seemed to do often. And Marie couldn't tell if she didn't like him because she hated him as a person or if she was infuriated at how amatuer the pranks he made were.

The only other person that she met that she disliked more than Peeves (besides Malfoy) was Filch the caretaker. She had gotten on his bad side with Ron and Harry when they were trying to get into a locked door on their first morning of classes. Turned out the door they were trying to get through was the locked door to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor and he didn't believe them when they told him there were lost. In fact if it weren't for a passing teacher named Professor Quirrell, they would've gotten detention. Filch was a foul man with strands of greasy hair and skin that looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks, a few missing teeth and beady, malevolent stormy grey eyes. It wouldn't surprise Marie if his deepest desire was to kill all of them at the Starting Feast as coldly and as bloodily as possible. His cat, Mrs. Norris, was almost as bad, acting as his eyes and ears as it patrolled the corridors on her own, finding trouble makers before drawing Filch towards her like a moth to a flame within thirty seconds from some hidden passage that only he knew about. All the students hated him and many dreaming of giving Mrs. Norris a good kick or throwing her scrawny, dust colored body off of the nearest tower.

And then there were the classes. Some of them Marie found to be rather useful. Astronomy was had every Wednesday night in the Astronomy Tower, where they learned about the different stars, the movements of planets and the constellations. Marie found this to be one of her favorites, if it was a little basic, due to the combination of mathematics and science. She had actually talked to the teacher, Professor Sinistra, about it the next day in between classes and was surprised to find out that she was a big fan of Stephen Hawking and even had a copy of Hawking's Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Herbology was also very interesting. Three times a week, she would go with her classmates down to the green houses and learn about magical herbs and fungi, how to take care of them and what they were used for from a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout. It was essentially botany and after looking ahead in her science textbook (which her mother had gotten for her along with her other muggle textbooks before she left), she made sure to take meticulous notes.

Other subjects were more interesting than useful, at least in her mind. Charms was a particularly fun class, as Professor Flitwick, who was a small wizard that had to stand on books stacked on a chair in order to see over his desk, was a cheerful yet engaging teacher who taught them basic spells that he said were useful in everyday life, but Marie found to be rather frivolous and even unnecessary, which caused her to think that the spells might've been made because the creator was lazy. Transfiguration was stressful. McGonagall had proven how stern at the beginning of their first class when she gave them all a dressing down to. "Transfiguration is some of the complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts." she stated. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned." With that ultimatum hanging over their heads, she changed her desk into a pig and back. The whole class had been excited about doing something similar, until McGonagall told them that they wouldn't be doing that until at least fifth year. Instead, they were given a match and told to turn it into a needle. By the end of it only she and Hermione had really done anything, Hermione having made the match silver and having a pointy end while Marie had made a wooden needle and gotten rid of the white phosphorus, but had failed to change its color or from wood to metal. McGonagall had still praised them for doing that much and had even given Marie ten points for technically making the match into a needle, even if it wasn't complete.

Others meanwhile were agonizingly disappointing. History of Magic was taught by Professor Binns, an old ghost who had fallen asleep one day in the staff room and left the next morning to teach while leaving his body behind. That unfortunately was the only interesting thing about him. With the look of a sentient turtle and the droning voice of Ben Stein, Marie decided after two minutes of her first class that she was either better off napping or working on her homework for other classes and that she could learn more about goblin rebellions and leaders like Uric the Oddball and Emetic the Evil by reading her textbook in her spare time and most of her classmates agreed with her as by the end of the same class only Hermione was paying attention to Professor Binns, and even then Marie could tell that she was bored out of her mind.

But even that wasn't her least favorite class. That was Defense Against the Dark Arts and it all had to do with the professor. Professor Quirrell was a shattered wreck of a man, with fearful teal blue eyes, a wiry thin frame with constantly shaking hands, a chattering stutter and a giant purple turban that smelled heavily. He claimed that he had gotten the turban as a thank you gift from an African prince for getting rid of a zombie, but when she and Seamus Finnegin had asked him how he had done so, he changed the subject and started talking about the weather. His classroom wasn't much better as it smelled so heavily of garlic that it was hard to breath. Most claimed that it smelled that way because of a vampire had met in Romania that he feared to this day. The Weasley twins suspected that he also carried garlic under his turban so that he was protected wherever he went. As for what they learned, Marie found that this was another class that she had to read the book outside of class if she wanted to learn anything, as Quirrell's stutter was so pronounced that it was difficult to understand a lot of what he was saying.

On top of that Marie had to fulfill her promise to herself and McGonagall in order to complete her private muggle studies. While she didn't have to worry about P.E. or extra curricular activities like Home E.D., Tech class or music, she still had to do the primary classes she was taking and learn two languages. She spent a lot of her free time when she wasn't in class working on worksheets and writing translations of French and German sentences that she turned into Professor McGonagall after dinner everyday (she had apparently gotten a BA in Education back in the fifties and an M.A. in the sixties). It was fortunate that she wasn't miles behind everyone else and that she was stubborn before reason otherwise she would've cracked.

Surprisingly, the best part of Hogwarts so far were her roommates and the other Gryffindors of her year. Except Pavarti Patil and Lavender Brown. They were two girly girls obsessed with looks, fashion and horoscopes and were aghast when they saw Marie change into boxers on the first morning. Since then they would turn her noses up at her whenever they passed each other. Her other roommates were better, but not great. Sally-Anne Peaks was a rather demure and shy girl that was so quiet that whenever she answered a question she was constantly being told to speak up. The fact that she was the only other person in their year besides Harry that wore glasses was her only distinct feature. Marie tried being nice to her, but she seemed almost afraid of her, so Marie decided to wait for her to make the first move. Eliza Runcorn was a normal posh girl from an old pureblood family that was remarkably intelligent and sharp witted, so naturally Marie got along with her the best, but they didn't have much in common so they were good acquaintances at best. Hermione was more focused on her studies, so she didn't interact with her much.

The boys were a different matter. On the first day of classes she had caught a group of third year Slytherin's picking on Neville on the fourth floor. Within two minutes all five of them were on the ground unconscious with several broken limbs, cracked ribs, a few bruised spines and a cracked pelvis. In that instant, Marie became his idol. While he was demure and accident prone and remarkably forgetful, he would perk up whenever he saw her and was more confident whenever she sat next to him in class. She wouldn't be lying if she said that she wasn't tempted to take advantage of him, but she found his puppy dog attitude enduring. Dean and Seamus were like two peas in a pod. While they weren't as joined at the hip as the Weasley twins, they tended to spend almost all of their time together. Dean was calmer and laid back, with a love for Futbal and art. They had bonded after Dean had seen her reading a book on the works of Frederic Bazille. Turned out, he was Dean's favorite artist and wanted to be a realist painter just like him. Since then they have had debates about Baroque versus Renaissance Art, the ethics of enjoying the works of Edgar Degas and which was the worst art form (Marie said it was Ottonian art, Dean said that it was Postmodernism). Seamus was more hot heated and rash, with a tendency to blow things up with even the simplest of spells. He was Irish to the core and tended to have a vulgar sense of humor that Marie enjoyed and he was starting to teach some U.K. swears.

Somehow though she had found herself spending the most time with Harry and Ron. Maybe it was because they were the first people that she met before coming to Hogwarts, maybe it was because on some level she just liked them for some reason but she couldn't seem to keep away from them. Harry was soft spoken and rather reserved, which was no surprise given that most of the school was staring at him as if he were a zoo exhibit, something that he was clearly uncomfortable with. Marie couldn't put her finger on why she liked him. Maybe it was pity given how bad his home life was. It certainly made her evaluate her homelife. Sure her mom was absent most of the time and she fought with her sisters often, but she cared about her and she them. Harry didn't have that, and she was already making plans to introduce his cousin Dudley to some, 'proper discipline'. Ron was more of a jovial companion, and their personalities was remarkably similar to each other. They were both frustrated about how poor they were, they both had a rather lax attitude and they both wanted to prove themselves better than where they came from.

Maybe that's why she was so possessive of them, as she glared at another crowd of whispering fanboys and fangirls as they made their way down to the Great Hall that Friday morning, finally making it there without getting lost for the first time. She appreciated her comradery with her sisters but there was always an isolating quality to being part of the Kanker sisters. They had a well known reputation to them, and not a good one either, making it impossible to make friends with others because of it. Here, an entire ocean away in a school where nobody knew anything about her, she felt that she could break free of those shackles. She could no longer be Marie Kanker, the devious second child of the Kanker Sisters, she could instead be Marie Kanker, a devious, yet intelligent and loyal friend. It felt strange to her, frightening even. And yet there was this pull that she was starting to respond to. And she didn't know how to feel about it.

"What've we got today?" Harry asked as he poured some sugar on his porridge. "Double Potions with the Slytherins." Ron replied. "Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them, we'll be able to see if it's true." "Wish McGonagall favored us." Harry muttered, his mind going to the pile of homework she had given them the day before. "She's the Deputy Headmistress, so she has to set an example of not showing favoritism." Marie said. "Besides, I don't think she can get away with giving Ron's brothers leeway. The whole school would be flooded with orange paint if she did." Ron chuckled at this, before they were distracted by the arrival of the mail.

It had been a shock for Marie the first morning when dozens of owls descended from the windows in the upper rafters to deliver mail to the multitude of students below. From screech owls to barn owls to great horned owls and the many species in between they dominated the sky, their daily ritual of bringing tidings from home bringing cheer to the majority of the children. Marie had initially had a twinge of jealousy and sadness at the various owls delivering packages of candy and treats and letters to their families, but she had quashed that after she saw Harry's interactions with his snowy owl, Hedwig. A refined and dignified owl, she would come everyday, despite having no mail to deliver, in order to keep Harry company and sample some of his food. This time though, she had a letter to deliver, which she dropped on Harry's plate.

The letter was written in an untidy scrawl.

Dear Harry,

I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three?

I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig.

Hagrid

Harry borrowed Ron's quill, scribbled Yes, please, see you later on the back of the note and sent Hedwig away.

Marie didn't know what to expect when she followed her friends down into the cold, damp dungeons of the castle and into the creepy room with pickled animals floating in glass jars, but she certainly didn't expect to find herself meeting the most unpleasant man in the world. He came in just before class started, his black cape billowing behind him like some overgrown bat. He was a tall, sinister looking man with long, greasy, oil black hair, sallow skin, a large hooked nose and black eyes the same color as his hair that looked at each red and gold tie wearing student with unhidden disdain. He read the names of each student as he did roll call, his eyes coolly passing over the Slytherins and glaring as they passed over the Gryffindors before he stopped at Harry's

"Ah, yes." he uttered softly. "Harry Potter. Our new-celebrity." Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle sniggered behind their hands. Marie frowned. This wasn't the first time a teacher had stopped at Harry's name as just the other day Professor Flitwick had squecked and fell off his stack of books when he came to Harry's name. But this was different. She could understand if he had said it dismissively, even sarcastically, but his tone, the way he stressed 'celebrity'. This wasn't dislike, this was outright loathing.

Snape finished calling names and looked up at the class, his cold and empty eyes gazing at them like dark tunnels, as if he were staring into their souls. "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact act of potion making," he began, speaking in a whisper that gripped his audience with it's hypnotising drawl. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you to really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses...I can teach you to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death-if you aren't a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach." More silence followed. Marie saw that Hermione was on the edge of her seat, as if desperate to prove that she wasn't a dunderhead. Neville, who she was sitting next to, looked like he was about to have a panic attack.

"Potter!" Snape snapped. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" 'Powdered root of what to an infusion of what?' Marie looked over at Harry, who looked about as stumped as she was. Hermione meanwhile had shot her hand up into the air. "I don't know sir." Harry replied respectfully. Snape's lip curled into a sneer. "Tut, tut-fame clearly isn't everything." He ignored Hermione's hand. "Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?" This one Marie did know. Her mother was a nurse and had to help remove some from people's intestines. She raised her hand slightly at the same time Hermione raised her hand as far as she could go without leaving her stool. Harry however looked as though he didn't have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. Marie saw that Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were shaking with laughter. 'Oh like you morons know what it is either.' she thought snidely. "I don't know sir." Harry again replied politely. "Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?

Marie lowered her hand, setting it on her desk as it clenched into a fist. She glared hatefully at Snape. Did he really expect an eleven year old to remember everything from Magical Herbs and Fungi? Sure Hermione probably did, but he was ignoring her still quivering hand, so that wasn't it. He was just targeting Harry for seemingly no reason. "What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?" Marie saw Hermione practically leap out of her seat, her hand stretched towards the ceiling. She rolled her eyes. 'Can't she see that he doesn't want the answer? He's just doing this to humiliate Harry in front of the entire class.' "I don't know," Harry answered quietly. "I think Hermione does though, why don't you ask her?" A few people laughed, Seamus catching Harry's eye and winking at him. Snape however, was not happy.

"Sit down." he snapped at Hermione, forcing her to cower back on her stool. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat that is a cure to most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which goes by the name of aconite." His eyes flickered around the room. "Well? Why aren't you all copying this down?" There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter." Marie snapped her quill between her clenched fist.

Things didn't improve as the lesson went on. Snape put them into pairs and set them to mixing up a cure for boils. Marie was paired with Neville as Snape swept about the room, his long cloak billowing behind him as he watched them weigh dried nettles and crushed snake fangs, criticizing all of them as they went. Except Malfoy, who he seemed to show blatant favoritism to. Marie was watching Malfoy with disdain when she saw that Neville was about to add porcupine quills to the simmering mixture. "Neville wait." she grabbed his fist. She was about to tell him to wait until she had taken the cauldron off the fire before putting them in when she saw Snape regaling the class to see just how perfectly Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs, his smug voice projected towards the Gryffindors in the class. Her stern frown morphed into an evil grin. "Wait until Professor Snape comes over." Neville looked at her with concern, but listened. She then turned to Harry, who she was sitting next to. "If you hear something loud, just get up on your stool." Harry looked at her grinning face debiusely, but nodded nonetheless. Snape finished his posturing and was stalking over towards them, his snide expression etched on his face. "Okay, now." Neville dumped the quills. Almost instantly the potion started to bubble and hiss. "Marie, is that supposed to happen?" Neville whimpered. Marie turned to him with a cheshire grin. "Nope. Better get back, my friend, things are about to get fun." she replied giddly. Neville's eyes widened and he backed away from the table as far as he could just when Snape was peering into their cauldron.

The potion exploded up into Snape's face and melted Neville's cauldron into a twisted blob of metal. Acid green smoke filled the dungeon, making it hard to breath as the students stood on top of their stools in order to prevent the remaining puddle of potion that was seeping across the stone floor from eating their shoes. Above the coughing and Snape's cursing in pain was Marie's hyena like cackle, caring little for the boils that spread across her hands as she was lost in the throes of mirth.

"You!" Snape yelled as he forced his face into hers, boils covering his face as he glared at her in anger. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?!" "Yep." she answered smugly, her grin stretching from ear to ear. "Why did you do it if you knew that this would happen?!" Snape snapped, his eyes glistening with hate. "Well," Marie started matter of factly, tapping her boil covered finger against her chin, pretending to think about it. "I just thought that you could do with a bit of a facial professor. And honestly, I think your new look is a big improvement." Most of the class chuckled as Marie gazed at Snape maliciously, a wicked grin replacing the smug one. "Really goes with the hooked nose and greasy hair. Like a man who hasn't showered in months." The Gryffindors now roared with laughter, Snapes ire raising to levels he hadn't reached in years as his eyes bored into Marie with intense, uncessing venom. "20 points from Gryffindor for deliberately harming a teacher, another 10 for mocking them in front of their classroom and a detention with me on Sunday!" he spat, spittle flying into her face. "Longbottom, take her to the hospital wing!" Marie's grin never left her face as she was escorted from the classroom.

"No way!" "Wicked!" "I can't believe you were able to do that!" Word had spread quickly about her exploits in the potions classroom. By the time she was out of the hospital wing and entered the great hall, the whole school knew and when she sauntered over to the Gryffindor table, a satisfied smile on her face, people started to come up to her to shake her hand, or ask her for details, the bright smiles on their faces and the excited gleam in their eyes showing that Snape was very unpopular. Fred and George were had pestered her along with their friend Lee Jordan for full details and were amazed that she was able to pull it off. "That, was amazing." Fred stated. "Yeah, not even Fred and I were able to get detention with Snape in our first week. Pretty sure that's a school record." George replied. Marie's smile grew. "The greasy bastard had it coming. Humiliating Harry in front of the class for no reason. Going on and on about how great Malfoy's potion was, frankly, he got what he desired." Lee chuckled. "He is a slimy git. Maybe we should give him a forgiveness basket filled with shampoo and conditioner." The four of them laughed uproariously.

"I must admit, that was rather amusing." a regal monotone stated from behind Marie. "Oh hey Daphne." Marie said as she turned around, a small smile on her face. "Good to see that I made your day." The emotionless blonde's mouth twitched upward for a second before settling back into her statue like mask. "It was rather foolish though. You just painted a massive target on your back. I wouldn't be surprised if Professor Snape is planning ways to make your life miserable as we speak."Marie scoffed. "Please, he's a bad teacher with a grudge and I grew up in Englewood before moving to a rundown trailer park, I think I can handle him." Daphne's eyes pinched slightly. "You are a first year student with very little magic experience, he is a wizard who is well regarded as one of the strongest and most talented wizards of the last twenty years. You are literally fighting an uphill battle on this." Marie looked over her shoulder at Lee and the twins. The three of them flashed back a set of evil grins. "I think I'll take my chances." Daphne shook her head. "Well, I wish you the best of luck. Merlin knows you're going to need it."

Lunch passed by uneventfully after that. Marie asked Daphne if she wanted to go with her, Harry and Ron to Hagrid's but she revealed that she had Transfiguration at the same time and couldn't make it. So at five before three the three of them left the castle and made their way across the grounds. Hagrid lived in a small wooden hut on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door. When Harry knocked, they heard a frantic scabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid's voice rang out, saying, "Back Fang-back." Hagrid's big, hairy face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open. "Hang on," he stated. "Back, Fang." He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound. There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.

"Make yerself at home," Hagrid said, gesturing to the table as he let go of Fang's collar. Fang immediately bounded over to Ron and started liking his ears. Like his owner, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he seemed. "This is Marie and this is Ron." Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes onto a plate. "Another Weasley, eh?" Hagrid uttered, glancing at Ron's freckles. "I spent half me life chasin' yer brothers away from the forest." Marie chuckled as she helped herself to a rock cake, a misshapen lump with raisins. "Sounds like them." She took a bite into a cake and nearly broke her tooth. "Exquisite." she said through her pain filled jaw.

They told Hagrid about their first lessons while Fang rested his head on Harry's knee and drooled all over his robes. They were delighted to hear Hagrid call Filch "that old git." "An' as fer that cat, Mrs. Norris, I'd like to introduce her to Fang sometime. D'yeh know, every time I go up to the school, she follows me everywhere? Can't get rid of her-Filch puts her up to it." Harry told Hagrid about Snape's lesson. Hagrid roared with laughter at what Marie had done to the potions master. "Heh Heh Heh Heh. I'm not supposed to speak unfavorably of my colleagues, but if there's a man that would bring that on himself it would be Severus Snape. Why did you do it anyway?" Marie leaned back in her chair, a smug grin on her face. "Slimy git was using his position to bully Harry in front of the class, so I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine." Hagrid looked over at Harry in concern. "Now don't worry about it Harry. There's always some student that he decides that he needs ta bring down. I wouldn't worry too much 'bout it." "But Hagrid," Harry responded dejectedly. "He really seems to hate me." "Rubbish." Hagrid asserted. "Why should he?" Marie noticed that Hagrid couldn't quite meet Harry's eyes as he said this.

"How's yer brother Charlie?" Hagrid asked Ron. "I liked him a lot-great with animals." Marie rolled her eyes, seeing the obvious attempt to change the subject. She had seen Eddy try to pull the same thing multiple times in an attempt to save himself from the mob and failed miserably. While Hagrid was better, as the conversation he switched to was a reasonable one to make at the time, he could've at least ended the conversation differently. While Ron was telling Hagrid about Charlie's work with dragons, she saw Harry grab a piece of paper that was lying under a tea cozy. From where she was sitting she could only make out the words at the top of the page that said Daily Prophet before Harry read the paper with inraptured vigor.

"Hagrid!" Harry exclaimed. "That Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It might've been happening while we were there!" "What, really?" Marie moved over and read the article from over Harry's shoulder.

GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST

Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that had been searched had in fact been emptied the same day.

"But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.

Marie looked over at Harry, who was in a state of deep thought. She could hardly blame him. She remembered the poem and those goblins had looked particularly nasty. The only reason why she could think of why someone would risk crossing them and attempt to steal from them would be either because they had more balls than sense or if they were looking for a specific object that they knew the location of. As they went back up to the castle, their pockets loaded with rock cakes that Marie intended to moisten by the fire, Marie couldn't help but wonder what was taken and where it had been moved to, but most importantly why someone would want it.

You thought I was going to put Snape and Marie in the same room and not have her try to make his life miserable? Come on, it wouldn't be in her character not to do something him someone as loathsome as Snape. Don't worry about the cleaning jokes, I won't use them that often. I've seen them used to often for them to be completely original anymore, and even the jokes I did are probably found in some other fic that I'm not aware of, so I'm going to use them sparingly. I do plan on giving Peaks and Runcorn more character as I plan to use them in some omake chapters. Not everything at Hogwarts is conspiracy, monster attacks and life and death situations, so I hope to give the main characters some down time, as well as give them some development that I feel I can't do in the regular chapters. As for Hagrid, I hate writing for him. I have to deliberately misspell his dialogue and I find that to be kind of irritating at times. I can copy J.K. Rowling's fine, but when I have to give him original lines, I can never tell if I did or didn't misspell it enough, so it tends to be frustrating. Also, I reached a deadline this time! It probably has to do with having less work hours this week now that the holidays are over but I'm not complaining. The next chapter will hopefully come out by Monday, as I'm working with another Harry Potter chapter. I'll see you soon, have a happy new year and I hope this decade is better than the last one!