The next two days passed relatively peacefully. I wasn't attacked in my bed, and while no one attacked me in the halls, no one went out of their way to associate with me either.

Even my roommates seemed afraid of me; I didn't associate much with them, instead focusing on my studies. The next attack might not come for a while, but I couldn't depend on that; it was going to happen sooner or later, and I had to come up with strategies for that.

The Gryffindors tended to stare rudely at me. The Slytherins pretended that I didn't exist. The Ravenclaws seemed slightly less afraid of me than the others, and I caught a couple of them whispering about asking me about the Levitation spell, although they never did.

Herbology was pleasant enough, and I could see the use for it. The Hufflepuffs didn't seem as dumb as the Slytherins kept whispering, but they also all seemed to shy away from me more than those in the other houses, so maybe they were a little less brave.

Apparently Hogwarts greenhouses were separated by the danger level of the plants inside. I approved of this heartily. Eleven year old children shouldn't be dealing with man-eating plants. However, I found myself interested in what exactly was in those more dangerous greenhouses. I suspected that some of them might be useful.

Sprout seemed to be a down to earth teacher. I wouldn't have any particular advantages in her class, but I doubted that I would need any. It struck me as one of the easiest classes, and hopefully the skills we learned there would translate to potions or one of the more useful classes.

Astronomy though seemed like a waste of time. We had class during the day, with labs by night once a week. I couldn't understand why we were supposed to study it; all the other classes had practical applications for becoming a functional Wizard. Astronomy... not so much.

There wasn't any magic related to it, and wands weren't necessary. It was basically just a science class. If it had been me setting a curriculum I would have replaced it with a mathematics class, or something It was all about learning the names of the stars and planets, and was pretty simple. Still, I felt I could be using my time more productively doing anything else.

Looking through telescopes that night was mildly interesting, but it didn't feel like something I should be bothering with. The fact that this was a class they expected us to take for years bothered me.

History of magic, though, made Astronomy look positively brilliant. It was interesting being taught by a ghost, for the first five minutes, but it was soon clear that he was a terrible teacher. He essentially read from the book in a monotone voice, and the only one taking notes at all was Hermione.

The problem was that it should have been one of the more interesting classes; it should have been like learning about capes in Winslow; a temporary bright spot in the middle of the day. Instead it was a terrible slog to get through, and while I wasn't falling asleep like some of the other students, I did find my attention wandering.

I found myself listening to the second year Charms class being taught down the hall. It was a lot of theoretical work that I didn't really have the background for, but it was a lot more interesting than listening to a lot of racist claptrap about the goblins.

Not that I loved goblins, but Binns really didn't seem to like them, and I couldn't understand why. There had been several goblin rebellions apparently, but the reasons behind them, once you looked past the Wizard propaganda seemed fairly sound.

Wands were apparently forbidden to the goblins, something they resented and with good reason. They'd been marginalized, and many of their career options had been curtailed by Wizard bigotry. It wasn't surprising that they rebelled every few decades.

The only surprise was that some enterprising Dark Lord hadn't promised them equal rights in return for their backing. He probably would have gotten it. Most likely, all of them had feared that doing that would have united their enemies against them.

I was happy to get out of History of Magic, and after listening to Flitwick teaching second years, I was already predisposed to liking him. Not only did he seem competent, but his class was actually useful.. Presumably this class, Transfiguration and Potions were the three classes that were the real meat and bones of what it was to be a Wizard. The other classes seemed to be less useful.

Stepping into the class, I saw the professor's head snap up. He was very short; about three and a half feet tall, which meant that I was only a foot taller than he was. He would probably look a lot smaller once I got taller.

I'd heard some of the Slytherins whispering that he was half goblin, and that it was a shame that he'd been allowed to teach at the school, but he actually seemed like one of the better teachers.

"Miss Hebert!" he called out. His voice was squeaky. "I heard about your outstanding use of the Levitation spell yesterday! We aren't even supposed to be teaching that spell until October."

"It seemed like one of the more useful spells," I said. "There were some other spells that I tried that I couldn't get to work."

"It's surprising that you got it to work at all," he said. "It requires a precise set of wand movements."

"I experimented with it," I said. "It didn't work at all with some of the other spells. Once I got it down, I practiced it over and over until I was able to do it every time."

"It will help once you learn the theory," he said. "And once you understand the reason that some wand movements work with some spells and not with others, it will get easier to learn some of the spells. We will be going over the theory of wand movements this year."

I nodded.

"If there's any books you can recommend to help me with self study, I'd be thrilled," I said. Getting on the good side of this professor was important, and he was so friendly it was hard not to like him.

If part of me felt a little suspicious because of it, I couldn't help it. McGonagall was strict, and Snape was an ass, but the kind of ass I could actually understand. Sprout seemed so harmless that it was possible that she was dangerous, bit she wasn't exactly in a position of power.

"I'll get you a self study list after class," he said. "I've already been asked for one by Miss Granger, so I've already got the list made up."

Trying to get ahead of me... how ambitious of her. Having him as head of house was going to give her a leg up with it too. I'd have to work hard to keep ahead of her; while I had the benefit of greater age and experience, those benefits would vanish as we got older.

I'd never been as brilliant as she was when I was her age. I only looked that way now from the outside because of being an adult in a child's body.

He clapped his hands. "It's wonderful that we have so many ambitious students this year... and muggleborns too."

"We've got to prove that the purebloods are wrong about us," I said. "Which means we have to work three times as hard to get the same credit."

He looked uncomfortable for a moment. "I'll be watching your progress closely."

I nodded.

Hermione stepped into the room, and we found our place at the front of the class. If I didn't have my bugs to give me eyes in the back of my head, I never would have sat with my back to everyone. It would leave too many opportunities for people to attack me from behind.

However, sitting at the front had benefits. It told people that I was confident that I could deal with anything they'd throw at me, and it put me close to the Professor, where they were more likely to see if something was done to me. That fact alone might keep people from doing anything in the first place, which was better than my having to retaliate.

The one thing I couldn't afford was for every day here to become a running battle. My ingenuity and skill had limits, and sooner or later I would fail. A reputation for infallibility was important. Every person that was too afraid to attack me was one more day for me to get stronger.

Eventually I'd be strong enough to not worry about anything except sleeping, and I'd read that there were spells designed to protect the bedchamber. It was likely that I'd have to get a lot better at magic to use them, which is why I was going to pay a lot of attention to charms.

Flitwick spent the first half of the session on theory; he explained everything in a rather simplistic style so that even the slowest of my classmates could understand what he was saying. I'd heard his second year lecture, which was much more complex, and so I knew he was dumbing everything down for the newbies.

Even so, taking notes with a quill was unpleasant.

I found myself resenting it more and more, and Hermione made it look easy. She'd explained to me that the Ravenclaws thought that Wizards required quills to be used because they helped the hand get used to the same types of movements as wands. I thought that explanation to be a little fishy.

More likely it was simple prejudice about adopting muggle technologies. I was essentially living among the magical Amish. Even if strong centers of magical power stopped electronics, as Hermione insisted, I'd seen wristwatches working on some of the muggleborn students. If clockworks worked, it was likely that ordinary pens or pencils would work just as well.

Using the quill made my hand cramp, and that made me irritable.

Thus once lunch came, I was sitting by myself at the table. Fortunately, the Ravenclaws and Slytherins tables were next to each other, and so Hermione sat as close to me as she could, and she occasionally called things out to me.

I felt some of my bugs begin to die, and I looked up. Owls were flying into the room, and some of them were snapping up some of my bugs as they went to land on the tables.

Pansy Parkinson had ostentatiously left a seat between me and her, but as an owl landed on my table, she looked over at me curiously.

It lifted it's leg at me, and I saw that it was carrying a letter in its claw. Snape had talked about my getting an owl, and I'd decided against it. The school had its own owls, should I need to send correspondence out, and I hardly needed a pet for some bigot to kill just as I became fond of it.

I shook my head and kept on eating. There was no one in the world who knew me, so most likely the mail wasn't going to be something I wanted to read. It was probably a death threat, or some sort of racist diatribe.

"You've got mail," Pansy said.

"So?"

"The owl comes, and you take your mail," she said. "You muggleborn are so stupid. Don't they have mail where you come from?"

"It's probably a bill," I said.

"What could you possibly owe?" she asked. "What, do you have a gambling habit?"

Did Wizards even have casinos? What could they possibly bet on that someone wouldn't use magic to cheat about? For that matter, were Wizards prohibited from winning at Muggle games? It might break Secrecy if every lottery winner was a Wizard, but access to a lot of muggle money would make even a Wizard's life better.

"Every day's a gamble," I said. "I'm still not opening that letter."

The bird hopped up and down and looked at me angrily. Finally it dropped the letter and flew off. The letter sat on the table, sitting in a pink envelope without any writing on the outside.

"When's the next time a muggle like you is likely to get a letter?" Pansy said. She scowled, "Fine, I'll open it."

She reached over and grabbed the letter before I could say anything. She opened the letter, and then frowned. She dropped it, and began scratching at her hands.

Boils began to sprout up on her hands and she screamed.

Looking over her shoulder, I saw that the letter simply said in big block letters, "You aren't wanted here, Mudblood."

I could see the professors rising to their feet, so I quickly stood up and away. If she was going to explode, I didn't want to be anywhere near her.

The other Slytherins seemed to be of the same mind, as those closest to us rose to their feet and quickly moved back.

Snape was the first to reach the table.

"Bubotuber Pus," he muttered. He looked at me. "What happened here, Miss Hebert?"

Was that some sort of Wizard Curse?"

"Pansy opened my letter," I said. "I wasn't going to."

Snape pointed his wand at Pansy, and muttered some words I couldn't quite hear, even with my bugs. He seemed satisfied with whatever he saw, though.

He glanced at it, and scowled. He gestured to Gemma, and said, "Please take Miss Parkinson to the infirmary, and take care not to touch her hands."

Her hands were swelling up to the size of sausages. She was crying and wailing like it was the end of everything. I'd seen civilians menaced by Leviathan who made less of a production about it. Of course, most of them had been frozen by fear.

Snape pointed his wand, and a moment later the letter levitated to be placed in a bag that he either conjured or pulled out from somewhere inside his robes. He was careful not to touch it.

"Have Madam Pomprey check Miss Parkinson for curses more thoroughly," he told Gemma, who was helping Pansy to her feet. Pansy started wailing louder.

Hopefully she'd learn not to open other people's mail.

Learning to put curses on objects seemed like a really useful skill; maybe I could get Snape to show me what to study. I'd pretend that I was interested in learning about how to avoid cursed items, which of course I was.

I hadn't known items could be cursed. I had an uneasy feeling that it was an oversight like this that was going to end up causing me more trouble than anything I could anticipate or plan for.

"Curses are upper level subjects," Snape said. "Fifth year and above. You will not be ready to use them for some time yet."

Challenge accepted.

While Snape was seemingly refusing my obvious interest in curses, he was also giving me a clue as to who my attacker was. Essentially he was saying that it had to be a fifth year or above, possibly a gifted fourth year, or a professor.

While it was possible that the people who had killed my body had found out that I was here, I suspected that they'd have used something much more lethal. I would have expected that a professor would have been more lethal too; I couldn't see any reason for a professor to focus on me as a subject for attack.

Most likely it was an upper year Slytherin, and most likely a boy. The girls would have access to my room; if they'd wanted to trap something they could simply slip whatever they had used into my covers.

The boys, however were more limited... unless this was a statement, an attempt to show all the muggleborn what happens to mudbloods who thought too much of themselves.

Still, it was a risky play. It ran the risk of getting the professors involved, and while some of them might be sympathetic to the pureblood cause, the Headmaster certainly was not. The smarter thing to do would be to wait until I was alone and ambush me in a deserted hallway where no one could hear my screams.

Most children my age would be easily intimidated into keeping quiet, although surely not all. It had been one reason that I hadn't wanted an owl; owls could be easily killed or held for ransom.

Also, they ate bugs.

"Miss Hebert," Snape said. "I will be escorting you to the Headmaster's office."

I sighed and grabbed a chicken leg. I'd barely even gotten to eat.

"Pansy's going to be all right," I asked. "She's not going to explode?"

"I did not see any curses that would immediately endanger her life," He said. "I will, of course check on her once I have seen you safely to the Headmaster's office."

I nodded.

"While there are lethal curses that can be transmitted by objects, they are forbidden at Hogwarts," he said. He glanced at me, as though I was planning to immediately begin using them on the entire population of Slytherin.

As if...I was probably going to have to wait until at least next year before I got strong enough.

"And so they'd get in trouble if they'd used them?" I asked. "Not that it would bother me, since I'd be dead."

"Perhaps you should endeavor to stand out less."

"I'm like a mongoose in a nest of snakes," I said. "I'll never fit in, and I'm going to have to keep moving if I just want to survive."