AN: The short excerpt from Snape's speech is from JKR, PS, UK-Version.

A Star Called Bellatrix

The following week was more intense than anything I had ever experienced before. My plans to do research in the library weren't carried out because I was too busy with everything else. I didn't really want to go anywhere on my own either.

One of the reasons for that was the entrance to our common room. When you rapped the door, the knocker would ask us to answer a riddle. I wasn't that good at this kind of thing. That's why I was afraid that I might get left outside if I arrived there alone. Having to sleep outside would be so embarrassing and everyone would think I wasn't good enough for Ravenclaw. I was quite scared they might think that anyway. I really didn't wish to go anywhere else, Ravenclaw house was wonderful. The people were nice, the rooms were beautiful, you could look all over the grounds from the tower, it had been founded by a woman and the emblem was an eagle. I had always loved birds of prey for some reasons.

Finding my way through Hogwarts was extremely difficult as well. That was another reason why I didn't want to leave the company of the others. I might get lost and there were dangerous things lurking here, Professor Dumbledore had told us that much during our first evening.

The poltergeist Peeves gave us quite a fright when we met him for the first time, but Roger and Morag's sister assured us that he was only annoying but not dangerous.

At least I had my wand back even though I didn't know how I could use it to defend myself yet.

On the first day, we received our timetables. Most lessons were only for us, the only exceptions were Herbology and Potions. The first was together with Slytherin, the latter with Hufflepuff. I didn't look forward to meeting Draco Malfoy and the other Slytherins three times a week but there was nothing we could do about that.

Our first lesson was Charms which was taught by Professor Flitwick who was also our Head of House. He looked a bit odd because he was very small but seemed to be. Flitwick spent the first lesson with various notices about school rules, house points and the House Cup which seemed to be quite important to the teachers. We would earn points for our house if we did well in class and could lose them for bad behaviour.

It was a rather clever way to keep us in line, I thought. People were motivated to do what the teachers told them and it was supported by their housemates who also wanted to win the Cup. In my old school, people with good marks often hadn't been too popular, especially if it was Mandy and me. Maybe that would change here but we couldn't know if we'd get good marks here as well of course.

During the second part of our lesson, we were finally allowed to do some magic. Flitwick showed us a spell called "Lumos" which made a light appear on the tip of our wand. This would be really useful if you got lost in a dark corner of the school.

I was extremely nervous when I tried it for the first time. I had never consciously used magic before. Flitwick seemed to know how inexperienced we all were and showed it to everyone. My hand was shaking slightly as I held my wand up and said the spell: "Lumos." A search of power seemed to seep through me and a bead of light appeared at the tip of my wand. I couldn't keep myself from grinning broadly.

"Excellent, Miss Lestrange," Flitwick said, clapping his hands.

Mandy didn't manage it when she tried for the first time but her second attempt was successful. We were quite happy about our achievement. By the end of the lesson, everyone could do the spell but few people had been as quick as we were.

After Charms I walked into Transfiguration quite confidently if a little too late because we had gotten lost on our way to the classroom.

Professor McGonagall looked at us with narrowed eyes. "I expect students to arrive in my lesson on time, Miss Brocklehurst, Miss Lestrange and Miss Turpin. I won't take any points from you today because it's your first week at Hogwarts but be warned; I shall do so if it happens again."

We apologised and I hoped that we hadn't given a bad impression right away. Professor McGonagall had already met us though and she knew that we weren't unreliable.

Professor McGonagall started her lesson with notices as well. She warned us that we weren't allowed to fool around in her lesson which we hadn't planned to do anyway. McGonagall was the Head of Gryffindor but our lesson was only for the Ravenclaws. If Morag's sister told the truth, she didn't favour the Gryffindors too much.

After she had finished her speech we had to write down all kinds of things. I didn't really understand much of it; you probably had to grow up with magic to do so. Afterwards we were given matches that we were supposed to transform into needles. After my experience in Charms, I hoped this was going to be easy but it was not. I could picture the match changing into a needle in my head and say the spell as much as I wanted, nothing happened. At first, the same thing was true for the others as well but after a while, Anthony Goldstein managed to turn his match pointy and silver. Professor McGonagall was quite pleased with him and I felt a twinge of jealousy. Lisa managed slight changes now as well, but my match stubbornly refused to be anything other than a match.

When Anthony's friend Terry Boot made his own match silvery as well, I started to grow impatient and frustrated. I could barely keep myself from screaming at the stupid thing to finally change into a needle. Instead, I used as much magical power as I could reach or at least, that's what I thought I did.

The match caught fire.

"Miss Lestrange be careful. Anger and impatience won't get you anywhere in this class," Professor McGonagall had seen everything of course. As if admonishing me wasn't enough, she also used the opportunity to make another little speech to the entire class. My face was burning with shame.

"Using a greater amount of force will not allow you to reach your goals in Transfiguration and neither in other branches of magic I daresay. Subtlety is in order if you want to excel in magic. I require you all to work carefully and precisely. At the moment, we're only transfiguring inanimate objects but soon enough, we will start to work with living animals. I'm not going to tolerate anyone making one of the animals suffer for his or her ineptitude."

Her eyes were boring into mine.

I felt anger mix with the embarrassment. She almost made it seem as if I was one of those children who enjoyed torturing animals for fun. There had been people like this at our orphanage. One of them had turned criminal and was in juvenile prison now, the second had stopped acting that way and the third had been moved to a special institution for problematic children. He kept hurting the other children he considered weaker. Luckily, he had quickly learned not to put Mandy and me into this category after he had received a taste of our powers. I had never harmed an animal though. I wasn't anything like them.

After taking a deep breath, I said: "I'm sorry Professor. I didn't know that something like this could happen and I will make sure that it won't happen again."

Professor McGonagall seemed to accept the apology. At least, she gave me another match so I could try again. It didn't work though. Now, I had become unsure as to how I could use my magic without causing trouble and nothing seemed to work anymore.

When I left Transfiguration, I was quite frustrated.

"Don't be upset," Mandy said. "McGonagall's supposed to be really strict I've heard. At least you did make something happen. More than I can say about myself."

Our first Herbology lesson didn't pose any difficult magical challenges but we had to meet the Slytherins. I prepared myself for a new argument with Draco Malfoy but he didn't seem to be interested in us at all. Instead, he kept going on about how annoying Harry Potter was and how everyone was supposed to favour him because he was famous, until Professor Sprout opened the door to Greenhouse One.

"I'd really like to know what's so important about this Harry Potter," Mandy said as we walked inside. Another point on our list of things we had to find out when we finally had the opportunity to do so.

Professor Sprout was a rather grumpy woman but I couldn't really blame her. We were supposed to fill plant pots with a mixture of soil and dragon dung fertilizer so we could plant our first magical plants later this week. The Slytherins obviously believed that this kind of work was far beneath them and didn't bother to hide their derision. I could imagine more enjoyable tasks as well but I knew it was necessary to plant something later and we were allowed to wear gloves.

Towards the end of the lesson, Draco Malfoy managed to throw a piece of dung on his shiny robes and started to fuss like the spoilt rich girls in some of the funny Muggle movies we had seen. The sight made both Mandy and me giggle.

"No surprise that you don't mind this," Malfoy said on his way back from the sink, screwing up his nose. "You're used to this kind of filth growing up with Muggles."

The insult completely missed its purpose, Malfoy's behaviour made us giggle even more. He swept away, shaking his head and muttering something about mud. I didn't understand the details and probably didn't miss much of importance. At least, Malfoy didn't seem to be a real threat. We'd just have to throw a bit of dirt to his face and he'd start talking about how he wanted to run to his daddy.

Tuesday night was our first Astronomy lesson. Getting there was a difficult and exciting endeavour in itself. The ten of us had decided to meet in the common room and stick together for this purpose; no one knew what dangers were lurking in Hogwarts at night. There had to be a reason that first-years had to be back in their common room at 8.00 pm.

With nine other people by my side, I wasn't too nervous though, despite of the strange noises that could be heard. I thought I heard some sort of eerie wailing when we walked past a toilet but the presence of ghosts was normal here after all. This must have been one of them. I wouldn't want to use this toilet though.

Creepy as it was, the journey to the Astronomy tower was quite enjoyable as well. We were almost late again though but Professor Sinistra didn't seem to mind too much. She was quite young and seemed very competent. Sinistra told us how to use the telescopes and gave us star charts. We were supposed to find as many stars as possible on the night sky and make a cross behind the name of each one we found.

We had never done Astronomy at primary school and I hadn't even known that stars had names until now. Finding the stars wasn't anywhere as easy as it sounded. Especially if you weren't used to looking through a telescope which probably was true for most of us. There were many parts on my chart which didn't have any crosses.

When I looked at it again, I felt a jolt in my stomach when I read one of the names. Bellatrix. I couldn't remember where but I was sure I had heard this name before. As the name of a person rather than a star. I really wanted to remember but I didn't work. I tried to find the star called Bellatrix but it was really difficult and I wasn't sure if I had found the right one. It felt really important to be sure though, that was why I asked Professor Sinistra for help when she walked past us.

"Excuse me, could you show me the star called Bellatrix please?"

"Of course," Professor Sinistra said, giving me a very sad smile. She let me look through the telescope and told me exactly where to look. Soon I had found the star shining brightly in the dark night sky.

I spent quite a while looking at it, looking down upon me from the sky. Professor Sinistra had already walked on to help the others.

At the end of the lesson, we compared our star charts. I hadn't done as badly as I had thought; no one had been able to find all the stars. Only Padma and Terry had been better than me. While Professor Sinistra explained a few things to us, I tried to look for Bellatrix again and I tried to remember. I did find the star but not the memories.

On our way back, other things caught my attention again however. The school was completely deserted now because the older students had to be in their common rooms at this time as well. Everything was dark and we had to use the Lumos spell to be able to see anything. I was really glad that I could do this without any trouble. When we passed one of the doors, there was a very creepy growling sound.

"Isn't that the third floor?" Lisa asked nervously. "The corridor where we aren't supposed to go?"

We walked one more quickly and I looked back to make sure that the door was still closed. I had read quite a few stories in which young heroes or heroines encountered dangerous monsters in old castles and I had liked them but I didn't really feel like experiencing something like this for real. I didn't have a weapon and no useful spells for fighting either. The only thing I could do was blinding the monster with the Lumos spell and I didn't think this would be very helpful.

We had all hoped that Defence Against the Dark Arts-class would remedy this problem but it did not. Professor Quirrell seemed to be extremely scared of his own subject, kept stuttering and his lessons were deadly boring. We didn't learn anything useful at all.

The only class that was even more boring was History of Magic. After reading the text book for this subject, I wasn't too surprised about this but Binns managed to make it sound even more boring. The fact that he was a ghost was the most interesting aspect of his lessons by far. History of Magic was a real waste of time and I was quite sad about that. I was really interested about the History of the new world I had entered but I probably wouldn't get any useful information about that from anyone official. The only useful thing I managed to do during History of Magic was writing a list of subjects I had to research:

- Magical families

- Harry Potter and the reason for his fame

- Magical etiquette

- Legal system and legal rights

- Magical history

Friday arrived really quickly this week. The day started with Herbology, the lesson afterwards would be Potions.

In Herbology we were finally allowed to plant something. It was only daisies which were supposed to be replanted from the small pots they had arrived in into larger ones we had prepared during our lessons before. I was happy to be able to plant something but the Slytherins complained about the boringness of daisies. Those spoilt brats were really annoying and they were making Professor Sprout unhappy with teaching our class, something we felt as well. She was speaking very curtly to me even though I was trying to do everything as well as possible.

"She's the Head of Hufflepuff house and both Ravenclaws and Slytherins don't get along with the Hufflepuffs too well," Padma explained on our way back to the castle. "Flitwick and McGonagall are the only Heads of Houses who are treating everyone fairly. Snape's much worse than Sprout though. He keeps favouring the Slytherins. We're really glad we don't have Potions with them. My sister Parvati has just had the pleasure."

Potions was taught down in the dungeons of Hogwarts, a place where we had never been so far. The idea of dungeons made me a bit uncomfortable and Mandy seemed to feel the same way.

"They're not locking people up down there if they've done something wrong, do they?" she asked.

"No, no," Padma reassured us. "They say it has supposedly happened in the past but not anymore. It's mainly used for Potions nowadays because the climatic conditions are good for storing the ingredients. The Slytherins have their rooms down there as well."

"Doesn't sound very pleasant," I said, once again glad about being up in light and airy Ravenclaw.

Parvati's sister Padma had been waiting for us on the way downstairs. She looked quite distraught. "You really have to be careful," she said. "There's already been an accident in our class. Neville Longbottom's in the Hospital Wing."

I hadn't seen Neville since we had arrived and I didn't really mind that. Not after the way he had acted at our last meeting. Still, I didn't want to see him harmed and was a bit worried.

"What's happened to him?"

Parvati sighed. "They did something wrong and he got covered in boils. Poor him, Snape was livid of course. He hates Gryffindor anyway. You should have seen him pick on Harry."

"I'm sure Madam Pomfrey will be able to put this right again," Lisa said reassuringly. "She's the school matron and she's really good I've heard."

"I hope so," Parvati said. "Neville's really unlucky. Probably born under a bad star."

Her choice of words made me think of Astronomy class again. Bellatrix, if only I knew.

"Thanks for warning us but we really have to get going now," Padma said. "We don't want to be late for Snape's class."

We managed to get lost again down in the dungeons, an experience I could have done without. Still, we weren't the last people to arrive. Some of the Hufflepuffs were even later but no one too late.

Snape was a thin man with half-long, slightly greasy black hair and very dark eyes. Mrs Richards probably wouldn't have let him stay near the orphanage. We had learned enough by now to know that wizards often had tastes that were very different from what we were used to however.

When Snape started to speak I couldn't help paying attention though. Something about the way he was speaking awakened some half-forgotten memory inside of me. Either I had met him before or someone, maybe my father, had spoken in a very similar manner. I knew one thing for sure; no teacher had managed to capture my interest in such a way before.

When he talked about the beauty of shimmering fumes, I started to smile with anticipation. The smile grew wider when he spoke about "the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins." This was an extremely fascinating subject indeed, as I had thought it would be.

"Ravenclaw house is famed for the intelligence of its members," Snape said now. "I hope that this year's Ravenclaw students will live up to this ideal but my hopes are low. That does not mean that I do not expect each and every one of you, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff alike to complete the tasks set in this class with utmost care and diligence. I do not wish to see any disgraceful displays such as I have seen in the lesson before."

He was probably talking about Neville now I thought. I'd try my best to get everything done well.

We were allowed to work together in pairs, Mandy worked with me while Lisa partnered with Padma. The potion we were supposed to brew was called Cure for Boils. Poor Neville had obviously managed to do the potion wrong in a way that made it cause boils rather than cure them. I really hoped this wouldn't happen to us. I did have a thing for simple healing magic but I didn't know if this would help me here.

"We simply have to follow the instructions carefully," Mandy said.

Snape had written them on the board even though the potion was in our book as well. At first, I thought that we could simply use our books rather than copying everything down but then I noticed that Snape's instructions were different in some places. So we'd better follow them.

At first, I was very nervous. I really didn't want to annoy this teacher or give the impression that I was stupid. As soon as I had started to carefully cut my ingredients I felt better though. Snape's presence wasn't important anymore; there was nothing besides me, Mandy and our potion. I put the ingredients into the cauldron, making sure that I added them slowly and at the right moment. The potion changed its colour for the first time and I was glad to see that it looked the way it was supposed to. Watching the colourful vapours was really as fascinating as Snape had said but I needed to take care of the work.

Snape walked past us, his long black robes billowing behind him. He was watching me intently for a moment; I turned back to my potion after a short glance. If I allowed him to distract me, it would go wrong. I was glad to see that Mandy seemed to feel the same way.

Snape walked on and we completed the next stage of the potion. It still had the right colour. When the double period was over and Snape checked everyone's potions, he paused in front of our cauldron as well. "That's acceptable, Miss Lestrange and Miss-"

"Brocklehurst, Sir."

"Miss Brocklehurst, yes." Without another word, he walked on. I was relieved.

I still felt impressed and excited at the same time, when we walked back up to the Great Hall. I knew that Potions would be my favourite subject. I had never done anything with the same amount of attention I had put into my potion. Professor Snape was rather intimidating but fascinating as well.

"You must have been really good," Padma said. "I've heard "acceptable" is really rare praise when it's coming from Snape."

"I think it's good that we're not with the Slytherins in Potions," Mandy said. "He doesn't have anyone to favour this way."

"Yes, we're quite lucky. We have neither Herbology nor Potions with the people from the teachers' houses," Lisa said.

I didn't really care about that at the moment; my mind was still full of potions.

Researching potions was another item on my list of things to do in the library when I finally found the time to go there. We finally made it there Friday afternoon but only managed to finish our first assignment from Professor Flitwick. Afterwards, Roger Davies turned up and told us that there would be Quidditch tryouts now.

Mandy and I considered it for a moment, but decided to watch the Quidditch tryouts in the end. We had seen books before but not Quidditch.

Actually watching people fly on broomsticks was great but I thought that flying yourself would be even better. Hadn't Professor McGonagall mentioned that we were going to learn that? When was this supposed to happen? I tried to learn from the people I watched.

At first, they were looking for a Keeper who had to keep the ball from the goalposts. It was rather easy to see who was good and who wasn't. When it was the chaser's turn, it became more difficult. We could hardly see who was flying better but it improved after watching for a while. In the end, they had found someone and we could go back inside. It was almost time for dinner now. I didn't mind though. This had been really interesting and it couldn't hurt to spend a bit of time outside.

Saturday was taken up by homework as well. It took really long; at least if you tried to do it the way we thought it was expected from a Ravenclaw. Professor McGonagall's assignment took the greatest amount of time. Transfiguration really wasn't my thing and I still didn't get the stuff I was writing down. Maybe I'd be better there if I did. It was really frustrating. I was a Ravenclaw and supposed to be intelligent and now this.

Our only break was for lunch; afterwards we did Herbology and Potions. When we had finally finished we managed to look up who Harry Potter was. Apparently, he had survived an attack with something called the killing curse carried out by a very powerful dark wizard who had killed Harry's parents before. So Harry like us was an orphan. He had barely ever known his parents because he had been only one year old when the attack had happened. For some reason, the killing curse had hit the dark wizard instead and now he was gone which made Harry famous.

"It must be awful to be famous for something that happened when your parents died," Mandy said. "People keep reminding him of this situation."

"Yes, I'm sure it's hard," I said. At least Harry knew who his parents had been though. He also knew that they had been something like heroes, it was much better than the things most of the others at the orphanage had experienced.

"It's strange that they don't mention the name of the wizard who tried to kill him," Mandy said. The wizard in question was referred to as either "You-Know-Who", "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "Dark Lord." We didn't really understand this but maybe it was some wizarding custom we weren't familiar with. We really needed to get more information about this kind of thing.

"I wonder if something bad's really going to happen when someone uses the name," Mandy said.

"Well, we won't find out because we don't know it," I said. I couldn't really believe this but I didn't know much about magic.

"Excuse me, we're closing now," Madam Pince the librarian told us and we sighed. No chance to find out anything more today. At least our homework was finished. I wasn't really looking forward to going through this amount of work every weekend. Maybe we'd be able to finish more quickly when we knew where to find the right books and how this magical stuff worked.

We planned to return on Sunday but Lisa had a different idea.

"We need a strategy. It can't be that we keep getting lost and waste so much time," she told us at breakfast.

"And what do you have in mind," Mandy wanted to know.

"Well, I can draw quite well. I thought we could try to find the shortest ways from the Tower and the Great Hall to our various classrooms and draw them on a map. This way we can look it up whenever we need to go somewhere. But I'll need help. It takes too long if I do it alone. Will you help me?"

We hesitated. We had wanted to learn more about the wizarding world but Lisa's idea was good too. It probably wouldn't take all day and we might be able to find everything better afterwards.

"Alright, let's do it," Mandy said and I agreed.

"I'm not sure if we're supposed to put the way to our Tower on there though," I said. "If someone loses it, the wrong people could find it. We have no locks and no password, only the riddle." This system didn't feel very safe to me but there was nothing we could do about it. At least, we weren't alone in the Ravenclaw rooms.

Lisa and Mandy agreed and we only did the other routes. We knew how to get from Ravenclaw to the Great Hall by now anyway, we had to go there at least twice a day after all.

Making the map took us much more time then we had expected. We had to walk through the entire school and finding the shortest way took even longer. In the end, we had a satisfying result but the day was almost over again.

We returned to our common room and Lisa made both of us copies of the new map. Afterwards, she wanted to explain to us how to play Gobstones and we didn't want to refuse this so we could go back into the library.

The game was fun and the last hours of our first week at Hogwarts passed quickly.