A/N AAAHHH!! I forgot a disclaimer on the prologue! Don't sue me, please! I obviously don't own Harry Potter! And I'm using way too many exclamation points!

Anyway, that was my official reason for updating again so soon. My real reason is that getting reviews literally made me do a happy dance, and I wanted more. Please. I'm not being greedy at all.

Sorry that this chapter is a little weird- I needed to set up the story a bit. Again, it gets better, I promise.

Mac lay on her bed, thinking about the year that had ended a week ago. Sixth year. It hadn't gone so well, but, then again, none of her years at Hogwarts really had. Still, it was better than being at home with the parents who hated her. She did have Jamie at home, though. He had been her best friend since they were seven, and he knew all about her other, magical life. But at Hogwarts, she had Sev. Most of the time, at least. She had told him to hang out with the other Slytherins. He had enough trouble with the Marauders, he didn't need trouble with them, too.

He hadn't particularly liked that suggestion, but Mac had insisted. Because of this, not many people knew how close they were. That, and the fact that they were both of a secretive nature. So unlike Jamie, but he didn't go to Hogwarts, wasn't in Slytherin, so it wasn't necessary. Thinking about Jamie, Mac decided to go visit him. His parents were much nicer than hers and wouldn't mind if she visited.

She leapt down the stairs next to her room and shouted to her parents that she was going to Jamie's. They shouted back that they didn't care, so she left. It was about a ten minute walk to his house.

She stopped outside the white house, walking onto the porch to ring the doorbell. It was answered by Mrs. Dillon, Jamie's mother, who smiled at her, saying, "Hello, dear. Jamie's right upstairs. One second. JAMIE! MACKENZIE IS HERE!"

Mac smiled as Mrs. Dillon yelled up the stairs. Seconds later, a tall, lanky, red-haired boy came running down the stairs. "Mac! Hey, what's up?"

"I don't know. I was just bored, so I thought I'd visit…" she trailed off.

He just grinned and ran back up the stairs. She rolled her eyes and followed him into his room, where they both flopped down on the blue quilt on his bed. She rolled onto her stomach while he lay on his back. After a moment of companionable silence, Jamie said, "So, what's new in the world of wizards? Any mad duels or explosions?"

She laughed. Jamie always made her feel better. "No, all the fights have been unfairly matched, so instead of a mad duel it was more like watching one person being humiliated and beaten to a bloody pulp. Although Pettigrew's cauldron did explode once in Potions. Then he started growing these massive boils where the potion hit him. It was hilarious. He is such an idiot. What about at your school?"

"Nothing much. After hearing about the magic pranks at your school, my school is rather unimpressive. But still, the kids are nice to me, I have plenty of friends- they just aren't you."

"Well, as you know, I don't have plenty of friends. Just you and Sev. But there isn't anyone else that I would really want to be friends with."

"Am I ever going to get to meet this Sev? You talk about him a lot."

"Maybe someday," she replied playfully, poking him in the side with a long finger.

They chatted for a while longer, about school and people they knew, before Mac decided it was time to leave. She heaved herself up off his soft and comfy bed and said goodbye. When she walked down the stairs to leave, he called after, "Hey, Mac! Want to hang out tomorrow?"

"Sorry," she looked back at him, "Sev's coming over tomorrow."

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The next day when Mac heard the doorbell ring, she jumped off her bed and ran out of her room in a flurry of parchment and broken quills. Yelling to her parents, "I'll get it!" She hurried to the front door and pulled it open. "Sev! You're here!"

With that she pounced on him and pulled him into a hug. He patted her arm awkwardly, not being used to hugs, and said, "Okay, you can stop strangling me now, I'm happy to see you, too."

She released him with an aloof look on her face, not revealing her slight embarrassment at having shown her emotions so blatantly. "Fine, then. Be that way."

But she could only keep it up for a minute before she started to laugh. He smiled, too, not admitting how happy he was to see his only friend again. They had only been apart for a week and a half, but after spending the entire school year together, this seemed like a very long time. Mac pulled him into her house and demanded, "Let's go to Diagon Alley."

"Fine. I'm not sure why you want to, we won't get our school letters for a few weeks," he replied, rolling his eyes. She grinned and pulled him up the stairs to her room, shouting to her parents that she and Sev were going now. Sev stared around her room, wondering how she could possibly be such a slob. He could barely see the floor beneath the layer of random junk. Nothing was in shelves; rather, it was in random stacks all over the room. Sev spent most of his year living in a room with four other teenage guys, and their room wasn't this messy.

"It's an organized mess," Mac commented, seeing his expression. She got her wand off her nightstand, pulled a moneybag out from under a pile of books on her desk, and retrieved a box from her open trunk, which she tossed to Sev. "Here's your birthday present."

"You mean from my birthday last February?" he snickered.

"So I'm a procrastinator," she replied defensively. "Anyway, it was for your seventeenth, I had to find something good. Can I have the hostage now?"

He smirked at her again. "I was just making sure I got mine eventually."

He carefully extracted a box, wrapped in gold paper, from the pocket of his pants and passed it to Mac. Then they both eagerly opened their boxes. Sev pulled the top off his box to reveal a heavy silver and gold watch with a multitude of knobs and dials. Watches were a customary coming of age gift from a wizard's parents, but Mac knew that his parents hadn't given him anything. He slid it onto his wrist and fastened the clasp. It fit perfectly.

Mac's present, unreceived from her birthday in April, was a necklace. She smiled. Sev had seen her admiring it in Hogsmeade once. It was a silver snake with green eyes, about as thick as her thumb. She wrapped it around her neck, where it hissed and shook its tail.

Both of the teenagers were resolutely avoiding the other's gaze. They were Slytherins, after all, not some bloody pansy Hufflepuffs who would cry over a present. Even if they were both very nice, heartfelt presents. Or perhaps because of it. After all, presents like that said it all, so discussion, luckily for them, was not necessary.

"Okay. Let's go," said Sev, his voice a bit harsher than usual, covering his emotions.

"Apparate to the Leaky Cauldron?" questioned Mac, and Sev nodded. After a twirl and a flick of their wands, and a brief sucking sensation, both stumbled to a halt in the coatroom of the Leaky Cauldron.

"So, where do you want to go?" asked Sev.

"Now, don't get mad, but I actually wanted to go to Muggle London, Mac said. Seeing his expression, she finished quickly, "I have my mother's credit card so we can get whatever we want and I was thinking…"

He cut her off, after all, the rest of the sentence was useless if her didn't know: "What's a credit card?"

Mac grinned demonically. "It's used like money, but they charge whoever owns the card later for however much was spent."

Now Sev was grinning, too. "So you basically stole an infinite amount of your mother's money?"

She bit her lip, a move that was counteracted by the twinkle in her eyes, and nodded. Sev lightly punched her arm. "Finally acting like a true Slytherin, eh, Mac? Let's go!"

They went into clothes stores and bought whole new wardrobes. Mac knew more then Sev about Muggle clothes, and they picked out mostly black outfits. Sev had been reluctant at first, until he realized how nice it felt to have clothes that fit. They got new shoes, and Mac dragged Sev into a hair salon and they both got haircuts. Sev saw a tattoo parlor, but Mac convinced him not to get a Muggle tattoo. He had wanted a sword with a snake twined around it. In return, he decided that they should each get a piercing. She complained that it would hurt, but he teased her until she gave in.

To end the day, they went to dinner at a fancy Muggle restaurant, again, courtesy of Mac's mother's credit card. Then they apparated back to Mac's room with all of their bags. Mac dropped her bags in a pile in the corner and laughed. "I can't believe that you just went on a shopping spree with me. It's just so… girly!"

Sev tackled her back onto her bed. "It is not! Anyways, I don't want to just look different. I want this year to be different. I'm sick of getting beaten up and always losing fights."

Mac stopped laughing as Sev rolled off her and, lying next to her, stared up at the ceiling. She could see how much this meant to him and how hard it was for him to say. Neither of them was very good at revealing weaknesses, especially when everyone they knew was so ready to take advantage. Until she answered, she knew, he would avoid looking into her eyes, in case she was planning on using this information. "I'll do whatever you want."

He smiled. "So, I was thinking that this summer we could practice dueling…"