A/N: Really, really sorry I've taken so long updating! Please enjoy this chapter!! I know it's rather short…I'm a terrible person!
DISCLAIMER: I do not, and never will, claim to own the series. And naturally, JKR owns herself…
Classes. The very thought scared me half to death. Our first class was Potions, with Professor Snape. I hadn't yet perfected his character, but I knew his appearance. I wondered how it would be, experiencing a class I used to be able to manipulate…
The Slytherins were with us in the class. Draco Malfoy…it was hard not to stare, though he kept smirking. His hair, a pale, silvery blonde, his eyes, grey and mysterious; appealing, to be sure. But no, I had to focus.
Professor Snape had a hooked nose and greasy hair, as I had expected. "Ms. Rowling," he said, his lip curling, "what have you read in your book so far?"
I blinked. Why me? I thought, but then, I did know the book backwards and forwards, so I said, "All of it."
He tutted. "Then what is there to learn?" he asked dangerously.
"I—I don't know, sir. Perhaps technique?"
"Correct!" he said, his ugly face breaking into a smile-like thing, though I found it resembled a grimace, more or less. "We have a worthy Ravenclaw!"
I blinked again, which I'm sure was unattractive, but frankly, he was confusing me. "That question had a correct answer?" I stuttered.
"Of course it did! Everything has a correct answer." And then he began to compliment Draco, who I tried desperately to forget about. He was a Slytherin—I was a 'mudblood', and it could never happen.
Only—could it?
My next class was Transfiguration, taught by Minerva McGonagall, whom I'd come to regard as Minnie half the time. Her character (my favorite, I must admit…) was so well explored that I knew about her mother, her love life, and her secret passion for Firewhisky with Albus late on Friday nights.
Never would she let any of this slip in class, though, so I had to pretend she scared me, like everyone else, and that I didn't know she longed for Mondays, because she had no children, and she loved us like her own.
I had to remind myself not to call her Minnie…
I shook my head to rid myself of the thought.
By then, the class was already half-finished. All I heard Min—no, McGonagall—say was, "Pair up," in her prim way.
I looked around at the Gryffindors, whom we were sharing the class with. To my dismay, I hadn't yet made a Ravenclaw or Gryffindor friend (I'd met a Hufflepuff girl on the train, however) and so I had no partner.
"A—are you Joanne?" asked a nervous voice. I turned quickly.
"Yeah. You're Hermione, right?" I asked, intrigued. I knew that Hermione was muggleborn, smart, and bossy, and that I wanted Hermione and Ron to end up together, and that it would take until Halloween for her to make friends with Ron and Harry, but not much else so far.
She blushed red. "I—I haven't any partner," she said in her quaint, old-fashioned way.
"Neither have I," I responded.
"Miss Granger! Miss Rowling! Get to work!" McGonagall trilled.
"Oh—oh, sorry Professor!" Hermione said, flustered.
"So we're partners, then, Hermione?"
She nodded, still blushing.
She was great. We had only started transforming feathers into quills, but she could do it so fast, I didn't see it change.
"See, Joanne? All you do is—" here she flicked her wand—"swish, say the incantations—" here she repeated the words we were taught—"and voila! Your quill."
She beamed at me, and I stared, openmouthed. "How did you do that?"
She giggled at my expression. Then she urged me to "try again, and see the results."
When I did, I gasped in pleasure. "It worked!"
"Of course it did, Joanne!" she said with a confident smile.
"Thanks. And call me Jo."
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.