A/N: Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for the wait! I had a horrid combination of laziness and a perma-cold, so I wasn't really feeling up to writing anything. Also I sort of fell out of the Harry Potter fandom (gasp!) but I'm slowly climbing my way back in, which will definitely help this along :p Half of this has been written for like a month now, before I was hit with the cold of death, so I just got around to finishing this. Next chapter should hopefully be up next week unless I have too much stuff to do, in which case it'll be the week after, I promise (and if not you can all come at me with pitchforks!). So er, enjoy?

When Kayleigh woke up it was with the strangest sense of nostalgia as she took in the clean white infirmary walls, the portly gray-haired matron bustling about and doing her rounds, the twinkling blue eyes belonging to her headmaster peering at her from the foot of her bed, and the beginning feelings of a hangover.

"Professor Dumbledore sir, I don't think the spell worked," she informed him sadly, hanging her head in shame, "I just hallucinated for a bit before I woke up."

"Indeed? You believe that to be the case?" the Professor asked her carefully, his eyes dancing with a merry light. "Because I've never seen you before, and if this note," he smiled as he held up the note in question, "from my 'future counterpart' is to be believed, whatever spell you may have cast on yourself did in fact work."

"Wait, so I am in the forties, not nineteen eighty-nine?"

"Unless I am being seriously misled I believe this to be the case Miss..."

"Quieras. Kayleigh Quieras." She murmured in wonder, looking around in fascination, cataloguing everything she could see.

"Ah yes. Now, in regards to the… unusual situation we find ourselves in—"

"Wait, I'm sorry, I'm glad you believe me and all," Kayleigh began dubiously, "but why do you trust me? And how come she can't hear us?" she asked, nodding her head towards the matron who now stood staring out the window and the dark sky.

"Ah, well that certainly is an interesting question, and it has only one logical answer. In my experience, when one is to lie in order to do something horrible, the lie is usually believable. Therefore, since your particular lie was so outrageous that one could never believe it was someone to be told, the whole point of the lie would come undone, as nobody would believe them, negating the whole existence of the lie because nobody doing wrong doings wants to be caught out so easily as to use an unrealistic excuse for their actions."

"Meaning?" she asked, her already frail attention drifting further away as she finally allowed herself to feel the headache that had been buzzing around in her head since she woke up.

"The more outrageous the lie, the more likely to be true." He clarified, obviously amused by her blank expression. "And as to why our dear Madame Berger cannot overhear us, well let's just say I have my ways." He said with a mysterious wink.

He stood up to leave and out of a knee-jerk reaction Kayleigh's arm shot forward and grabbed hold of her future headmaster's sleeve.

"Please," she begged desperately, "please stay. I don't know anyone or anything about this time a-and I sort of know you, so please just stay. For a little while at least."

It hurt her pureblood pride to be observed in a moment of such weakness but as she was currently in a new time period and knew next to no one so she decided she could forgive herself.

"Well although I'm sure Headmaster Dippet will be upset that I missed the sorting, we have a while yet until the feast is over."

"Oh, um... thank you." She attempted, unused to expressing gratitude in any form.

"It's no trouble I'm sure." He smiled genially at her.

"Oh, and um, Professor, how am I going to be sorted? I mean, will the hat still sort me or will I have to do some sort of test or something?"

At this Professor Dumbledore paused, unsure. "Well," he began slowly, "this has never happened before, so I assume we shall try to sort you using the hat and if that doesn't work, we can try other methods. Perhaps it would be easiest to sort you into the house you are in in your time?"

"No!" Kayleigh cried quickly, ignoring the spike of pain the noise caused.

"No? Why ever not?" Dumbledore asked, the twinkle in his eyes showing his amusement.

"I hate it there! Everyone's so... amiable." She complained, unable to keep the whine out of her voice.

"And that's a problem for you, is it?"

"Yes! I need people to be jerks, I'm always surrounded by nice people and it gets so tiring!"

"Well I'm sure we can work something out Miss Quieras."

"Thanks Professor." She sighed happily. "Oh, but I have one other question."

"Fire away." Dumbledore said.

"My hair... is it stuck like this?" she asked unhappily, tugging at a short curl.

"I don't believe so, if I know myself as well as I think I do, I don't believe I would actually cut your hair without your permission."

"So it's like, a glamour or something?"

"Indeed."

"Can you, I don't know, remove it?"

"Do you think that's wise? If you want to fit in here you'll have to adapt to the trends."

"But I have hair like my grandmother!" she whined, giving Dumbledore her best puppy dog eyes.

"All right, but if you're not considered stylish don't blame me." He chuckled as he waved his wand lazily. Kayleigh suddenly felt her hair uncurl and fall to her shoulders in her natural waves.

"Thanks." She yawned, suddenly extremely tired.

"You're very welcome Miss. Quieras," Dumbledore chuckled as the Hospital Wing darkened and blurred, "welcome to Hogwarts."

The next time Kayleigh woke up she had a clear idea of where (and when) she was, and a fairly clear plan of action. The steel-haired matron bustled over to her bedside, glaring at her and tutting disapprovingly.

"Honestly, a duchess like yourself should hardly be gallivanting around in lakes with that Tom Riddle, no matter how much of a drooly he is; it's not proper!" she scolded, ignoring Kayleigh's blank look as she attempted to decipher the clearly foreign language.

"Err, okay?" she attempted, feeling her head ache as the matron forcefully pulled her upright. "But I'm not a duchess Madame..."

"Berger. And you're not a duchess? You sure look like one to me."

"Well thank you, but I'm not, just run of the mill upper class." She explained, rubbing her head carefully.

Madame Berger stared at her for a second before laughing suddenly. "Oh you're a hoot and a half miss, I thought you were serious for a moment there. You can't trick me; I ain't no fuddy-duddy, no matter what all you hep cats and kittens may think, I got my boots on all right!"

"What?" Kayleigh asked weakly, tears burning from behind her eyes as she struggled to understand this crazy woman. "I honestly don't care about your shoes Ma'am, could you please just make my headache go away?"

"Oh, sorry miss! I won't be just a tick!" she grinned, rushing off to a back room to (hopefully) get an anaesthetic.

Kayleigh felt herself sink back down into a lying position, glad to have the opportunity to rest before the far too loud and now far too friendly matron came back in. Which she eventually did, bringing with her a foul smelling and particularly vile looking potion that quite frankly looked entirely poisonous. She took it from the matron with no small amount of trepidation and quickly said a prayer before throwing her head back and downing it in one.

"What is that?" she sputtered, glad she swallowed it all quickly or else the pristine white sheets on her bed would be stained with the horrid potion.

"Why, it's nothing but a Helping Head potion, don't they have them where you're from?" Madame Berger asked curiously. "Where is it that you're from anyway little Miss? You don't look English."

"I'm from Mexico actually, but erm... something happened and I had to come live here with my grandmother... Lucinda?" she tried to explain as the excuse Dumbledore had given her slipped through her mind.

"Well I'm sure you'll have a ball, this here school's the smoothest this side of the Atlantic!"

"Well that's just faboo isn't it?" Kayleigh drawled, feeling much more herself now that the potion kicked in and vanished her headache.

"Oh course it is! Well, you're free to go Miss, but you'd best head up to Professor Dippet's, that old hat will probably want a word with you."

"Why?"

"Well cause you're new! He'll certainly want to help you understand the scene and just give you a welcoming hi-de-ho!"

"Of course," Kayleigh said, "but does he you know... talk like you?"

"What? No, that old fuddy-duddy doesn't get the lingo like I do!" Madame Berger laughed.

"Oh thank god." She sighed in relief, climbing out of her bed.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing." Kayleigh said, already mentally preparing herself for the meeting with the headmaster. Hopefully Dumbledore would be there to act as a liaison. She walked confidently out of the hospital wing but faltered as she passed several students, all who were muttering things like 'B.Y.T', 'dilly' and 'able-grable'. Resigning herself to her new fate of living in a horridly incomprehensible time period, she couldn't help but think:

This plan just got a whole lot more complicated.

In case you were curious, here are the translations for the '40s vernacular:

Duchess- girl; Drooly- cute boy; Fuddy-duddy- old fashioned person; Got your boots on- understand what's happening; Smooth- good; Scene- situation; Hi-de-ho- hello; Old hat- outdated; B.Y.T- Bright Young Thing; Dilly/Able-grable- cute girl