In the time of the Order of the Phoenix, a mysterious transfer student from the United States of America comes to Hogwarts. With hair to rival Hermione's, and a tongue to rival Draco's, the suspicions and tensions rise in Professor Snape's classroom. And we thought Dolores Umbridge was the problem...

This story will be told in many different parts, in many different times. It will jump from the years at Hogwarts to the years after the war, and it'll be up to you to figure out the puzzle.

Draco 15

"And here's the Slytherin dormitory. This is the common room. The Girls' dormitory is up that way, and the boys' is this way."

Ella Zamora wandered around, smiling, her mouth open just slightly in awe. The Slythern common room was truly something to behold. Thick drapes, dark mahogany wood, glowing green light, and the windows that showed the lake. Draco was quite sure it must have all been most exciting to a yank. The new Slytherin First years were a mixture of cowering and admiring, sticking with the group in front of Pansy and himself.

"This is beautiful. Are we underwater?" Zamora asked from the window.

"We are," said Draco. "Sometimes, at night, you can see the giant squid swimming 'round. You can hear the mermaids singing, too, on full moons. Don't go thinking they're friendly, though. They're highly territorial. They'll eat you, too, if you wander too close." Some of the first years gasped in fear.

Pansy stepped forward annoyed. "Let's get started, of course, with dispelling any myths. You should all be proud, elated to have been selected into Slytherin house. You have all been selected because the seed of greatness is within you. Some may look at their fellow Slytherins and think otherwise, but they were chosen to be great, just like you—" Pansy then shot Draco a look for some reason. "—and don't you forget it. The Great Merlin was a Slytherin, and you'll be following in his footsteps.

"Another thing to remember in Slytherin: We look after our own, which is more than you can say for Ravenclaw, I must say. Our emblem is the serpent, the wisest of all creatures, who is always aware when the danger is near. Do others fear you? Perhaps. Do others respect you? Absolutely. Slytherins get respect, no matter what.

"The password changes weekly, so be sure to pay attention to our bulletin board, just over there. And do not, under any circumstances, bring any members of any other houses into this room. The Slytherin common room hasn't been penetrated for over seven hundred years, than you very much, and we'll be keeping it that way. Furthermore…"

Draco watched Zamora walk around, half-listening to Pansy's speech, stepping gracefully almost as if she were dancing. He wasn't sure if she was listening, but he knew that he certainly wasn't listening. She was an American, certainly, but if she was in Slytherin and an Animagus, she was certainly an ally. She was someone of importance. She was someone he could use. He glanced at her wand, which was a light color of a wood that he wasn't sure if he recognized. Oak, maybe? It certainly was an unusual-looking wand.

Pansy cleared her throat. Draco snapped to attention. She nodded pointedly towards the boy's dormitory. She then turned her head. "Zamora!" she all but shouted at their new exchange student, who then about-faced towards Pansy. "I said 'move on.' The girls will be going up to the dormitory now."

"Hmm? Oh, no, you go ahead and show the first-years. I'll find my dorm later. I want to—"

"I'm not asking," snapped Pansy.

"It's not listed on the bulletin board?" asked Zamora.

"Follow. Me." Pansy growled. Draco never noticed how big her jaw was…

Zamora gave Draco a look and then followed Pansy up the stairs with the other first-year girls. Draco led the boys further downstairs into their dormitories, and showed them the ins-and-outs of it all. Once all were settled in, Draco decided to check and see if there were any stragglers in the Common room. It was late, by then, and he should have been getting to bed, but there were almost always a straggler or two, so it never hurt to check.

When he came back up to the common room, he heard a faint singing. It was the mermaids again, he guessed; when he first arrived there, he liked to pretend he was a ghost pirate living in a sunken ship where mermaids attended his every whim. Looking up, though, he saw that the figure of mermaid was reflected in the glass, projected onto the floor…

He came closer and saw that it wasn't a reflection, but Zamora with her hand up against the glass, touching to a mermaid on the other side. She was lying on her front under the window, her long legs out behind her, her pretty black shoes kicked off. Was she the one that was singing? The mermaid suddenly looked up and swam away, frightened. Zamora snapped her head around with a rather annoyed glance indeed.

"You frightened her!" she shot in a whisper.

"And you shouldn't be up this late. I've the right to punish you for that, you know."

Zamora squinted. "Oh, it's you, Mister Prefect—sorry it's a little dark in here." Draco stepped forward, a little closer to the glowing green of the lake's water; Zamora's skin was glowing in the light. He smiled.

"O fille douce , doux visage baigné dans le doux clair de lune," he said.

Zamora gave a tiny laugh then covered her open mouth with glee. "Parlez-vous Francais?" she whispered.

"Oui. J'appris a parler francais a Marseille." This was met with a blank stare, then a bit of a frown.

"Sorry, something about Marseille?" Draco then looked a little annoyed.

"So you don't speak French." Bloody yank, anyhow, he thought to himself.

Zamora shrugged. "Only enough to know you were telling me I was beautiful." Draco smiled.

"It didn't sound bad, for an American."

"I suppose that's a compliment?" There was a pause. Zamora shifted in her seat at the bottom of the grand window and turned over to face him. "To tell you the truth, I only remember a little. My grandmother was French and my mother only spoke it when she was feeling emotional."

"What part of France was your grandmother from?"

"Monaco. She actually attended Beauxbatons when she was a girl. Meme wanted my mother to attend Beauxbatons, too, but my grandparents were living in London at the time, so my mother came to Hogwarts before she moved to America. I think she was a third-year when she came to finish her education at Ilvermorny." Draco's interest was piqued. He lounged on one of the large leather armchairs by the bookcase and crossed his legs casually.

"And what house was she in?"

"My mother? She was a Slytherin, as was my grandfather."

Maybe she's not so bad, for a yank, thought Draco. "So you're a legacy, then? I'm a legacy, too. There's not been a Malfoy that wasn't in Slytherin for generations."

Zamora smiled. "Your parents must be thrilled you've kept the legacy going, then."

"It's not just me being Prefect, y'know," he said, crossing his one leg over the other. "I'm the Slytherin Quidditch team's Seeker. My father said it'd be a grave disgrace if I wasn't chosen to play for my house."

Zamora nodded with approval. "I thought you looked athletic when I saw you. But I pegged you for a duelist, not a jock. Which reminds me—" she bent to the side and pulled out a green envelope; it was the one that all new Slytherin students get when they join the House, the one with all of the information they needed to know "—do you not have a Dueling club here?"

Malfoy thought back to his second year, with that git Lockheart. "We had one, but had no instructor suitable enough to run it, what with Snape being occupied as Potions club head."

"Oh, darn," sighed Zamora. "I was so looking forward to joining. I was the Captain of the girls' Dueling team at Ilvermorny. Our club was huge. We had a three-page spread in our yearbook." Draco wasn't certain what a yearbook was, but he wasn't about to ask. She held the letters in her hands, thumbing through the pages of the parchment. "But you have a choir, I see—and your extracurricular activities seem good. Not as good as Ilvermorny, of course, but still good."

"Extracurricular?"

"Well, yeah, what's the point of being at a sleepaway school if there's not a million things to keep you entertained? Speaking of which, I've noticed that I'm missing my social events calendar. Do you have one?"

"You're missing your what?" sneered Draco.

Now Zamora gave a sneer; only it wasn't a sneer of disgust, but more like a sneer of confusion and annoyance. "My social events calendar? You know, the thing that tells you the whats and the whens, for all the dances? The fundraisers, festivals? Picnics by the lake? Those things?" Draco cringed in confusion. "What, you don't have those here?" Zamora said with a laugh. When Draco said nothing, Zamora's face fell. "Wait. Wait, you can't be—you mean you don't have those here?! What the—? What in sodding flames do you do for fun around here?!"

Before Draco could answer, she flopped herself on her back and groaned loud. "Ugh! I can't believe this! I'm stuck in this crappy country with its crappy food and no Dueling club and I have nothing to look forward to?! How can you stand this? And those ugly uniforms? Don't get me started—the high-waisted skirts are going to cut my figure in half. I'm sure that some of these other girls can go just fine but those of us that have one would like to be able to appreciate it. And box pleats of all things, honestly—I wouldn't be caught dead in them. It's going to make my ass look fat, and not in a good way…" She sighed deeply. "I thought that Tracey was joking when she said there were no dances here…"

"Tracey Davis? You're rooming with her?"

"Yep—and what is that, by the way? You don't have your own rooms here? Do you have to share with the boys?"

Draco swaggered in his chair with an arrogant grin. "Prefects get their own special rooms." This was a bit of a lie, but...

"Oh." She sighed through her nose. "I had my own room at Ilvermorny. It was tiny, but it was mine. You can get your own room if you pay extra, or if you're a scholarship student, like I was." She held her high a little high just then, proudly. "I got a full ride for my potion-making. I'm quite skilled. Not that it matters, I guess, here, because now I'm crammed in with four other girls…"

Absurdly, Draco felt a strange heat, and a twitch in his trousers. The Yank's cute when she's mad… "I wouldn't worry about it too much." Zamora turned her flushed-red face towards him, her cheeks a little puffed and pink. "I personally like a girl that leaves a bit to the imagination."

Normally, that'd have gotten a much more positive response. Zamora, on the other hand, gave an extremely annoyed stare. "I don't dress the way I do for boys," she all but growled. "I dress for my reflection when I walk past a shiny window. And I don't want to look pretty, by the way, before you get that into your head—I want to look otherworldly and vaguely threatening. What good is it being a pretty witch if you can't plant the seeds of jealousy into the hearts of others with your good looks?"

After a moment of consideration, Draco shrugged and nodded in understanding. She then sat up on her knees and crawled towards him slowly.

"Do you still want to be my friend?" Draco didn't say anything, but he was guessing that she took the way he looked at her as a yes.

"Listen," began Zamora, "I don't like beating around the bush, and I've got a feeling that you're the kind of man that knows what he wants. Am I right?" Draco's eyebrow quirked. "I am going to rule this school. I was the Queen Bee at Ilvermorny and I'm going to be the Queen Bee here. I've got a feeling that if you and I teamed up, we would be an unstoppable juggernaut of power and sass. You with those…striking features, athleticism, and that Old World je ne sais quoi…and me, with my ethnic ambiguity and willingness to do whatever it takes. It doesn't have to be a true partnership, if you prefer otherwise, but just enough to show the school that we've teamed up. You can do whatever you want behind closed doors, if that's what you want."

Draco paused. "Not very romantic, are you?"

"Business first, pleasure later," said Zamora. "Besides, aren't you and Brun-Hilde a thing?"

"Psh—no, of course not." This was a lie, in a way, but…

"Oh! Well, in that case…" She leaned up on her knees and put her hands on his thighs. "We can mix business with pleasure." She leaned forward a little, so Draco could see straight down her—

"But I think it's only fair to tell you that I expect certain things of you. You'll walk me to my classes, and we'll share at least one meal together each day, as a requirement. You can choose if it's breakfast or dinner. I'll come to all of your Quidditch games and support you wholly in every endeavor, so long as you come to any of my choir performances and whatnot. I don't hold hands, but I'll take your arm and lean on you, so long as you can keep up with my power-walking pace. Oh, and you'll have to look at me like you want to either devour me or be devoured by me when I walk away from you…" She brushed against his cheek with her fingers to snap his attention back up to her eyes. "But it seems like you can handle that. These are my basic terms. Do you accept them?"

Draco leaned forward, barely an inch from your face. "So what do I call you, then? Girlfriend?"

"If that's where you want to take it, then sure." He could smell the chocolate pudding on her lips from the evening meal. "But I'd prefer if we just started with 'Ella.'"

"Ella," he whispered. "I'm going to have to teach you how we do things around here. Wheeling and dealing on the first date? I'm afraid that Yankee vulgarity won't get you far."

She scoffed a little; he felt her breath on his lips. "Did I make a mistake in thinking I could speak freely with you?"

"Not at all," said Draco. "But you're not going to get anywhere like that in this school. We don't lay things out on the table. We like a little intrigue. Gossip fuels Hogwarts, and you can't get any gossip when you're a straight-shooter."

"Hmm…" She leaned back to sit on the floor, folding her legs up beneath her. "I suppose that this will be a different sort of game, won't it?"

"You'll not want to step on the toes of the wrong sort, or the right sort, for that matter. I can help you there."

Ella stood up in one fluid motion and held out her hand. "Shake on it, then?" Draco stood and smiled, then shook her hand firmly. He leaned into her, but Ella put her finger on his lips. "I want you to know something—" she leaned in and whispered in his ear "—if you welch out on me, I'm going to unleash a Hell upon you that will make your nightmares seem like a happy place." And she nibbled on the lobe of his ear.

Draco pulled away and frowned. "I don't like threats."

Ella raised an eyebrow. "Tell that to him," she said, pointing downwards at the growing bulge in his trousers. Horrified, Draco withdrew, causing Ella to laugh. "Don't worry, I won't tell." She winked and kissed the corner of his mouth. "Hey, you're in this, now, too. We can turn on the romance, if you want. I just think it's fair to tell you what you're in for. I want to be straightforward with you because I like you."

He sighed through his nose. "It's late. You should get to bed."

"Do you not like me, too?"

"See, this is what I was talking about—subtlety escapes you, I see?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't think you were the shy type." There was an awkward and rather tense pause. "It's okay to be shy. I think it's completely okay for boys to be shy, too." She walked towards him and kissed him on the cheek. "You can set the pace on where we go for the romantic stuff. Okay?" There was another silence; Draco shifted uncomfortably. She then pointed at her own cheek. Reluctantly, shyly, he kissed her at the junction of her neck and jaw, causing her to give a tiny squeal of delight. "Okay, see you in the morning." She skipped off towards the girls' dormitory. "Save me a seat next to you at breakfast."

A quick thank you to my followers and commentors! You mean a lot to me! (Also, I LOVE that I'm having to look up slang from the 90s for a proper American teen conversation.) Also, I don't know if Prefects get their own rooms(but it never states that they DON'T. I figured that since they get their own bathrooms, they should at least have the option to have their own space. I'm just taking a little artistic license over here...