Raven knocked on the door to Snape's office and entered it for a third time that day. Pix, being used to living outdoors in the winter weather, was not feeling the effects of the cold. Raven, on the other hand, very much was. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and she could barely control her shivering, but she didn't particularly care. It was such a relief that Draco now knew the whole truth. For too long she had kept the secret to herself in fear that if she told anyone else, they would betray her as Cassius had. But she knew that Draco would never betray her. Besides Felix, Draco was the person that she was closest too. Of course, not all twins got along perfectly, but Draco and Raven had been as thick as thieves since they were born.

As usual, Snape was sat behind his desk, his fingers steepled and placed on his chest as he leaned back in his chair.

"Sit down, Miss Malfoy." His deep voice filled the quiet office.

Raven rolled her eyes.

"Can't you call me by my first name when no one else is around? I hate all the formalities." She said whilst practically flinging herself into the chair opposite him.

The Potions Master sighed. "If I must."

Raven gave him a small smile in return and reached up to brush her hair out of her face. "So what did you want to-"

"Why are your hands purple?" Snape interrupted. He leaned over the desk and looked at Raven pointedly with his infamous onyx eyes.

"That..." She pointed at him with a shaking finger, "is a very good question."

"Raven," Snape said sternly, his black eyebrow arched in question.

Raven grinned guiltily. "Draco and I were outside talking and, well... we had a snowball fight,"

Now it was Snape's turn to roll his eyes. "Very mature," He said, the sarcasm virtually dripping from his voice.

"Hey! Draco was the one who started it!" Raven pouted.

Snape raised his eyebrow again and shook his head, a faint smirk playing at his thin lips.

Raven's mouth almost dropped open in shock when he took out his wand, flicked it and the tiny flame in the fireplace grew, blowing a gust of warm air in their direction. Well, at least Snape didn't want her to die of hypothermia.

"Now, we need to discuss the arrangements for your Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. I have talked with the Headmaster and he has approved it, for whatever reason I am unaware. I am fairly sure the old man is losing his mind."

Raven let out a small laugh.

"According to your timetable, you have Defence on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and it just so happens that I am not teaching during those hours. I want you to come to my office at the beginning of those lessons and I will instruct you from there."

"As I mentioned earlier today, I may not be able to teach you Defence all the time because of my numerous other duties. If that happens, I will inform you beforehand and you will have to attend the class with the rest of your peers." Snape's gaze fixed solely on Raven and she saw a flicker of concern in his eyes.

"I know you do not wish to be in the same room as Professor Stagburn so I will try to pass the duties on to another professor but that may not always be possible."

Raven nodded her head. "I understand."

With five minutes to spare before Potions class began, Snape asked how far into the sixth year DADA curriculum Raven was when she had been at Beauxbatons, and whether she was more skilled at the offensive or defensive spells.

When the sound of approaching students echoed into the office, the Potions Master dismissed Raven and told her to go join the others in the corridor.

Cassie and Nellie were waiting for her outside the potions classroom and they both gave her huge smiles.

"Does Tessa not take N.E.W.T. level potions?" Raven asked the two.

Cassie shook her head with a laugh. "No. She always hated potions. Specifically, the fact that potions ingredients are mostly cut up pieces of rats or toads. She's very squeamish."

Considering the way Tessa had reacted when Raven had talked about woodlice and insects at lunch, she did not doubt Cassie.

"Come on, let's go inside," Nellie said and the three walked into the dark classroom.

They took their seats near the front of the room and soon the rest of the class filed in, bringing a wave of noise along with them. The noise, however, immediately ceased as the door slammed against the wall and Snape sauntered up to the front of the classroom.

"I expect you all spent the Christmas holidays lazing about, but if I see any lack of effort from anyone in this classroom, I will not hesitate to throw you out."

Raven rolled her eyes as Snape scanned the room for any students who weren't listening. Luckily, everybody had been paying attention.

"Today you will be brewing a Wound Cleaning Potion. Turn to page 86 in your textbooks and begin."

The students wasted no time in doing as he said, flipping open their textbooks, scanning the list of ingredients and hurrying over to the storage cupboard to get what they needed. Raven followed suit and soon all the students were engrossed in chopping, dicing and crushing their ingredients, preparing everything for the potion they were about to brew.

Raven thought that she was fairly good at potion-making. Except for that one potion that she could never get right when she was nine, every potion she made was practically perfect.

Half an hour went by and the majority of the class were almost two-thirds of the way through the brewing process. Raven stirred her potion and watched as it turned from blue to the correct deep purple.

"Miss Malfoy." Raven jumped slightly, having not noticed Snape sneak up behind her. "Pets are not allowed in the potions classroom, surely you were taught that at Beauxbatons?"

"But-"

"Give me the Bowtruckle, Miss Malfoy."

Letting out a loud sigh, Raven carefully picked Pix up off her shoulder and placed her in Snape's waiting hand, glaring intensely at him. She watched Snape walk up to his desk and place Pix on the wooden surface before he started patrolling around the room once more.

As she continued on with her potion, Raven kept catching sight of Pix in the corner of her eye. The Bowtruckle was exploring the contents of Snape's desk, lifting pieces of parchment and staring, confused, at the words written on it, and poking a long finger at some of the glass jars with random potions ingredients inside. Raven tried not to laugh when one of the things inside a jar jolted forward and startled Pix. She fell backwards and scurried to the other end of the desk. Pix stayed on that side of the desk for the rest of the lesson.

Finally, Snape announced that the students should have almost finished with their potions. Raven gave her potion a last stir and poured it into an empty vial. On her table, Cassie and Nellie were both finishing up as well.

"Time is up!" Snape stated. "Bring your potions to my desk, labelled and named, then clear away your things."

The class hurried to the front, one by one placing their vials on the Potion Master's desk. Some of them lingered for a few seconds, intrigued by Pix, who was hiding nervously behind an empty glass jar which only served to make her bigger and more visible to the students.

Just as the lesson ended and Raven was about to leave with Nellie and Cassie, Snape called her over to him.

"You go ahead." She told the two Ravenclaws. "I'll meet you in the common room later."

The remaining students quickly left the classroom, eager to get back to their common rooms so they could spend some time relaxing before dinner in the Great Hall.

Raven strode up to the front of the classroom and stood defiantly across from Snape.

"You know, you could have told me that Pix wasn't allowed in the classroom before the lesson began?" Raven said, very much annoyed with the Potions Master.

Snape, knowing that it was best not to rile up Raven any more than she so clearly already was, held back a biting reply. He did not want her to get worked up and lose control of her magic as she had in his office earlier that day when Draco was there.

"Make sure it doesn't happen again and I won't have to tell you at all."

Huffing loudly, Raven bent over slightly and allowed Pix to climb onto her hand and up her arm. Pix nuzzled herself in Raven's platinum blonde hair. Snape picked up the vial that had Raven's potion in, swirled it and lifted it to his nose. He breathed deeply and placed the potion back down.

"It seems all those potions lessons when you were younger paid off." He said and Raven smiled. He almost sounded proud. Almost.

"That, and the fact that I'm just naturally gifted in many things."

Snape scoffed. "I beg to differ."

Raven sent another glare his way. "Is that all?"

"No. Tell your brother that your father wishes to have a reply to his letter. Apparently, neither of you are good at replying to letters." He was obviously referring to the fact that Raven's mother had contacted him only yesterday, after not receiving a reply to the letter she had sent to her daughter.

"Okay," said Raven and gave him a guilty grin.

"Good. You are free to go now."

With a wave, Raven left the potions classroom and headed for the Ravenclaw common room.

When she reached the common room, she saw her roommates sat around a table with books and pieces of parchment sprawled out around them. Seeing them like that reminded her of when she and Felix used to study together in the library at Beauxbatons. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she approached their table and sat down.

"Pix!" Tessa exclaimed, her attention fully focused on the tiny Bowtruckle.

"Hey, Raven." Nellie and Cassie said whilst shaking their heads at Tessa.

"Oh, yeah, hi Raven," Tessa mumbled and they all burst out laughing. From what Raven had gathered so far, Tessa was a very sweet girl but she often tended to focus on anything that was cute rather than other, arguably more important, things.

"So, what are you doing?" asked Raven.

Cassie looked up from her parchment and pushed her glasses back up her nose from where they had slipped down. "Homework. We want to get it finished as soon as possible. Now that we're in our first year of N.E.W.T.s, we have so much more work to do and last term we barely managed to hand in everything on time. Hopefully, this term will be easier, but getting homework out of the way is so much better than leaving it to the last minute."

Raven pulled out her textbooks and joined the girls in doing their homework. She was able to get through two essays before it was time for dinner. They all went up to their dormitory to put their things away and then they headed down to the Great Hall.

The Great Hall was as noisy as ever. The house tables were full of students and some were wandering from table to table, talking to their friends from other houses. Raven told the girls that she would join them later and made her way over to the Slytherin table.

Draco saw her approaching and flew towards her, enveloping her in a tight hug.

"Draco!" Raven said and playfully hit his arm. "I told you to stop launching yourself at me!" She laughed at Draco's grin.

"Come on." He said, pulling her over to sit with his friends.

"So how was your first potions class?" Draco asked as he put a fork load of food into his mouth.

"It was alright. Although, Snape did call me out in front of the entire class for having Pix on my shoulder." At the mention of her name, Pix clambered down Raven's arm and plonked herself down on the wood, glaring in the direction of where Snape sat at the High Table.

"Yeah, he can be a bit of a git when he's teaching." Theodore Nott piped up. Raven blushed. She hadn't noticed he was there, let alone that he was listening in on their conversation.

"It was like I was nine all over again and being lectured for doing something wrong while brewing." She said with a laugh. Of course, Theo knew that the Malfoy twins had been taught the basics of potions by Snape before they started school. He had often been at Malfoy Manor playing with Draco and her when Snape had come to get them for a lesson.

Theo smiled handsomely at her. Raven blushed profusely.

"Oh, by the way, Snape told me that Father wants a reply to his letter." She said to Draco.

The blonde boy almost dropped his fork. "Shit!" He said. "I completely forgot to write back!"

Raven ruffled his hair and stood up. "Well, I'm off. I need to go eat something before I die of hunger."

She felt Theo's eyes on her as she walked over to the Ravenclaw table.

Raven practically inhaled her food and left the Great Hall with Nellie, Tessa and Cassie. They spent the evening reading in the common room and, before long, it was dark outside and they went up to their dormitory to get ready for bed.

Raven dug inside her trunk and pulled out an old fluffy jumper. She placed in on the table next to her bed and lifted Pix off her shoulder, carefully laying her down on the piece of material. Pix prodded the fluffy jumper first, before curling up on it and falling fast asleep. Raven followed suit and soon the only sound in their dormitory was the light breathing of four girls and a Bowtruckle.

A/N Reviews, Follows and Favourites are very much appreciated and I'd love to hear how I can improve my story!