A/N: Thank you for leaving such kind reviews! And to everyone who liked and followed: I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. It is the best feeling ever to know that people are interested in a story that you are authoring. Words fail me. Thank you so much! In this chapter, things get pretty intense. You'll know what I mean once you read it. Stay tuned for next chapter, because Lola will be in grave danger and she needs all the support she can get.

"Professor Quirrell!" called a woman in red robes with a matching pointed hat.

Quirrell looked up from the stack of papers covering his desk to find the Arithmancy Professor standing at the entrance to the Staffroom.

"W – w – what is it, P – Professor Vector," he replied at once.

"Are you not coming to the staff meeting? We can walk together if you'd like," offered Septima Vector as she tried hard not to blush.

She was a widowed woman with no family of her own and was ready to open her heart to somebody once again. To her, with his cute stutter and reserved shyness, Quirinus Quirrell was the perfect candidate.

Quirrell faked a heavy sigh. "Unfortunately n – not. I need to finish m – m – marking these by t – tomorrow morning."

Professor Vector pouted with disappointment. "That's a shame," she said. "Do take a break though, Quirinus. You seem really tired these days. You wouldn't want to burn yourself out."

She winked playfully and left the room, closing the door behind her. What she had failed to realise, though, was that every single paper on Quirrell's desk was already marked.

"Stupid woman," moaned Quirrell as he locked the door behind her and walked over to the stone fireplace at the back of the room.

He was not going to the staff meeting that evening, not because he had essays to attend to, but because it was finally time to neutralise a potential enemy.

Quirrell picked up a dash of Floo powder from a nearby table, walked inside the fireplace, threw the powder into the blaze and yelled "Diagon Alley!". The fire roared loudly before tall, emerald flames consumed his body whole and Quirinus Quirrell vanished out of sight.

That particular Wednesday morning, Lola had found it difficult to wake up on time.

None of her roommates had tried to get her up, probably because they didn't want to disturb her. She rushed to the bathroom to put on her uniform and bring her unruly hair under control. She was definitely going to miss breakfast.

At five past nine, Lola was the last person to enter the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. When the whole class turned around to look at her, she muttered a quiet apology to Professor Quirrell.

"N – no worries," stammered Quirrell strangely. "Have a s – s – seat."

Lola sat next to Fay, who had saved her a seat.

"N – now that we are all h – h – here, we can start t – today's activity."

Quirrell told them to draw out their wands and place it on their desks. With the prospect of performing actual magic in their minds, the group of excited first-year students obliged at once.

Quirrell went on to randomly pick up wands from a few of the tables, including Lola's. He started to explain the different properties of wands, like the woods and the cores, and the impact these had on the many abilities of a wand. When he told them to note down these abilities, everyone got to writing – except for Hermione.

"Sorry – sir?" she raised her hand but spoke without waiting to be given permission. "This topic was not listed in our curriculum. Is there a chance it will come up on the final exam?"

Quirrell stiffened momentarily, before telling Hermione to simply do as he had told.

At the end of the lesson, Quirrell returned Lola her wand. Every time she looked up at Quirrell, Lola felt the urge to run for the hills. She wanted to speak to Dumbledore, to explain what she knew, but there were a few problems with that.

Firstly, would Dumbledore even believe her? He was a genius, an extraordinary thinker, but how could she make a man many years her senior believe that he and everyone around him were characters from her favourite book series? Though Lola knew the truth, even to her it sounded insane.

Secondly, she was scared of how much this would change the future – or how little. On one hand, interfering with everything so early on would completely alter the history of the Wizarding World typed up by J. K. Rowling, and Lola wasn't sure how she felt about that; probably scared. For now, she had the advantage of knowing how everything was going to turn out, and she wasn't sure if she was ready to give that up. On the other hand, knowing about Voldemort's secrets, Lola knew it would be impossible for Dumbledore to do anything about Voldemort being alive without destroying all seven Horcruxes. Even if she interfered now or later, Voldemort would still find a way to return and take over the Wizarding World. Hence, she had to come up with a solid, well-thought-out plan.

And finally, Lola was afraid of the implications such an interference would have on her. What if such a drastic change broke the rules of whatever agreement she had made with fate to be in the Harry Potter universe? She, of course, had no way of knowing this without trying, but she hadn't been there for long and wasn't ready to leave just yet.

Lola had a lot to consider before she could finally decide on knocking on Dumbledore's door, but the day had yet to come.

She walked back to the Gryffindor common room with Harry, Ron, Seamus, Dean and Fay. The boys were talking animatedly about the strange garlic smell surrounding the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.

"I am a bit disappointed we didn't get to actually use our wands," Fay was saying to Lola as they walked past a swarm of Ravenclaw girls. "But we have Charms next, and Flitwick did say in our last lesson that we would start practicing wrist movements next – how exciting!"

Their lesson with Flitwick turned out to be a blast. They mostly focused on the diction of spells but did get to practice with their wands during the last ten minutes of the lesson, which was very fun. For some reason, Hermione was acting colder than ever towards Lola. When Lola had asked her what time is was during the lesson, she had glared at Lola before saying she didn't know. When Neville had asked the same question five minutes later, though, Hermione had told him that it was quarter to three.

Though Lola didn't think much of it, Fay was convinced that she had seen Hermione secretly snort when Flitwick praised Lola's perfect pronunciation of the Levitation Charm.

When they arrived at the Great Hall for dinner after an exhausting Transfiguration session, they were approached by Percy.

"Hey!" he greeted Lola, then turned to Fay. "You're Fay Dunbar, right? Professor Quirrell wants to see you in his office right away." He walked off briskly to talk to Oliver Wood about the upcoming Quidditch elections.

Fay looked at Lola with a confused expression on her face. "What's this about?" she said anxiously. "Do you think I did something wrong?"

"One way to find out…" Lola muttered casually, though she did have a bad feeling about it.

Fifteen minutes later, as Lola was halfway through her meal and in deep conversation with Ron, Fay returned with a dreamy expression on her face.

"So, what did he want?" Lola asked apprehensively as Fay sat down next to her.

"Oh, nothing," Fay brushed it off, sounding very calm. "He said I left my notebook in class and told me to pick it up tomorrow."

Lola raised an eyebrow. "Couldn't he give it to you there and then?"

Fay shrugged as she began loading her plate with roast potatoes. "Dunno. I'm so hungry though," she said tranquilly.

Lola was almost sure Fay didn't have a notebook with her that morning. Then again, she had been late to class, so maybe there were things that she had missed. Not wanting to read too much into it, she returned to her food with a quick nod.

That night, Lola didn't sleep too comfortably and woke up in the middle of the night.

With each passing day, she knew that Quirrell, hence Voldemort, was getting closer to the stone. She knew that she had to do something about it. There had been an idea circulating her consciousness right before she fell asleep. Lola had been thinking of how hard it would be to convince Dumbledore of Quirrell's aims, as he did not suspect him at all, before realising that there was someone who actually did suspect him.

Snape!

Not only was he already on Quirrell's trail, but Severus Snape seemed more approachable than Dumbledore, who she hardly saw. They would have a double potions lesson tomorrow, which would be the perfect opportunity for Lola to approach the potions master to talk about what she knew. Lola was sure that he would know what to do with the information that she had, and she could try and come up with excuses about how she knew what she knew.

Feeling way more relieved, she closed her eyes and dozed off back to sleep. But a few hours later, she had to wake up again to get ready for their second Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson.

As she was fixing her tie, Fay came out of the bathroom looking like a mess. "Morning," she said serenely. "Can I use your brush? I can't find mine."

"Sure," Lola said as she passed Fay her hairbrush. "You better hurry up. You don't want to miss breakfast."

Fay nodded slowly and returned to the bathroom.

After breakfast, Lola made her way to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom with Harry and Ron, in this instance right on time. She was surprised to find Fay sitting in the classroom all alone, humming an unfamiliar tune to herself.

"Why didn't you come down to breakfast?" Lola asked as she took a seat next to Fay. "I was waiting for you."

"Wasn't hungry," Fay said coolly. "Must've eaten too much yesterday."

Professor Quirrell seemed very cheerful that day, and they had an excellent lesson about Doxies. Everyone was still talking about the small, fairy-like creatures when they returned to the Great Hall for lunch. A handsome barn owl registered to Hogwarts landed next to Lola's goblet moments later, a small envelope tied to its leg.

Lola tore open the envelope to find a note within written by Professor Flitwick.

"Dear Miss Allen;

I was very impressed with your exemplary performance during our lesson yesterday, and would, therefore, like to formally offer you regular one-on-one lessons every few times a week. I know a student with great potential when I see one, and it would be a huge waste to not put it to use. Come to Classroom 22b after dinner tonight at about 7 pm, where we can have a trial session. To avoid issues related to the sensitivities of certain students, I would strongly advise you to keep this offer strictly between us until further notice. You can tell your friends that you will be visiting the library.

See you tonight,

Filius Flitwick."

Lola gasped with surprise. She had not expected such kind comments from Professor Flitwick, and frankly, she was beyond honoured. Lola had always been branded as a 'good student' throughout her student-hood but had never been approached with such an offer by any of her teachers.

Lola read the letter again, making sure to hide it from curious eyes. 'Sensitivities of certain students'… He was probably talking about Hermione, Lola rationed, who she was sure had not received the same offer.

When three-thirty rolled around, Lola made her way to the grounds with rest of the Gryffindors and Slytherins where they would have their first flying lesson. To say that she was nervous would be a massive understatement. Lola was terrified.

So far, she had not produced any magic and did not have any recollection of proof that she was a magical witch. She was scared of making a total fool out of herself or falling down from her broom mid-flight.

In contrast, Fay was almost jumping up and down with excitement. Her inexplicably strange behaviour had now subsided, which pleased Lola immensely and she smiled whole-heartedly as she watched her friend laugh with joy.

Her best friend.

In many ways, Fay had reminded Lola of her best friend Ellie. Physically, they looked nothing alike, but from the way they both liked to talk a lot, to the way they both liked sport (Ellie was on the female soccer team of their high-school), Lola felt complete when she was with Fay.

The flying lesson went better than Lola thought it would. Both Lola's and Fay's brooms obeyed at once when they stuck their right hand over them and shouted: "Up!". They didn't get to test their flying skills, however, as Neville got injured badly and got scurried away by Madam Hooch. Lola could do nothing as she watched Draco and Harry fight over his Remembrall, and felt furious as he saw the triumphant faces of all the Slytherins as a shocked Professor McGonagall walked away, followed by Harry who looked petrified.

She knew she shouldn't have, but she couldn't help herself. "Don't get too happy," Lola warned the Slytherins. "He who laughs last laughs best."

At that time, no one could tell what she had meant by that.

But the news of Harry's recruitment onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team had spread like wildfire by dinnertime. The Great Hall was drowned by the opinionated babbles of hundreds of students from every single House. Some were happy for him, while others, like Fay, were envious.

"He is a brilliant flier though," Fay said quietly between mouthfuls. "Never seen anything like it."

Lola didn't reply, as she had just heard Hermione's voice.

"- and you mustn't go wandering around the school at night," she was saying with concern. "Think of the points you'll lose Gryffindor if you're caught, and you're bound to be. It's really very selfish of you."

Lola remembered what this was about; Malfoy had just dared Harry to a Wizard's Duel. It would be a huge trap for Filch to catch them out and about during curfew.

"I agree with Hermione," Lola said quickly, startling all three of them. They hadn't realised that Lola was eavesdropping. "You can't risk getting caught."

For the first time since they met, Hermione gave Lola a genuine smile.

"We know how to be careful," Harry said to them.

Ron backed Harry up. "This also doesn't concern neither of you, does it?" He then looked back at Hermione, who stood right behind them with a look of deadly fury. "Goodbye to you."

When Lola finished her food, she lingered on a little longer to chat with Parvati and Seamus about double potions with Slytherin tomorrow, which neither of them was looking forward to.

"I heard he's nasty," Seamus said with a hushed tone.

Parvati nodded enthusiastically. "They say he always defends his House no matter what."

Lola was actually looking forward to potions tomorrow. She would finally be able to share some of her secrets, and actively do something to hinder Voldemort's evil plans. Strangely, thinking of Snape gave her hope.

It was almost 7 pm, so Lola told Fay that there was a Charms book that she wanted to check out at the library before it closed and left quickly to find Classroom 22b.

When she finally found her way and entered the classroom, she saw that not Professor Flitwick, but Professor Quirrell waiting for her. Lola heard the door close shut behind her. She had instantly grasped what was happening, but it was too late to do anything about it.

"Stupefy!" Quirrell screeched.

The last thing that Lola Allen saw before she fell to the ground, was a jet of red light coming towards her.

A/N: Thank you for reading! And as always, don't forget to leave a review. They make me happy :-) See you next chapter!