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Sorry for being away so long! I've been extremely busy and had no time to write! Still, I thank you for your amazing reviews and I hope you continue to read this fic!

Now...

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Chapter 9

And It Begins

"So, I hear Trelawney's retiring," Rose commented as she smeared strawberry jam over her toast.

It was the first day of school and as usual the Great Hall was noisy and full of activity as students wandered around trying to find their friends, compared timetables, and shoved the delicious Hogwarts breakfast fare into their mouths.

"Yeah," Jasper said in response to Rosalie, "I heard she said she'd had enough of 'attempting' to teach students who had no gift for the mystical arts."

"She's leaving at the end of this year though, innit?" Emmett said through a mouthful of sausage, "We're all going to fail Divinations."

They all nodded solomnly.

"Well, except for Alice," Bella said just as the pixie-like girl sprung into the seat next to her.

"Someone call?" Alice asked smirking cheekily.

"Finally decided to join the living?" Rosalie asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Alice had a tendency to sleep in late, Bella and Rose had long since given up on waking her in the morning, she slept like the dead and if you did manage to wake her then you had bad luck because the usually cheerful girl became unbelieveably grumpy if she was woken up before she was good and ready. So, it was much safer to just let her get up on her own.

"Never mind that," Alice said waving off Rosalie's teasing, "What did I miss?"

"I was just saying that you're the only one who'll pass your Divinations OWL," Bella said.

Back in first year, in the beginning of their friendship, Bella and Rose began to notice that Alice sometimes knew things about them that they had not told her yet, that she was always right when she 'guessed' what the weather would be like the next day and that occasionally her eyes would glaze over momentarily and when she came to she would suddenly be able to answer questions that she wouldn't have known a second before.

Eventually, Alice came out with the truth. She was descended from a long line of seers and when she was very young she discovered that she had the ability to predict the future. However, unlike most seers, she did not go into trances and make prophecies, rather she had quick flashes of future events based upon decisions she herself or the people around her made. As such, her visions were never completely set in stone as they dealt with the consequences of human behaviour and thought which, as everyone knows, change as frequently as Alice herself changed the clothes in her wardrobe.

"Oh, I hope so," Alice agreed, pulling food onto her plate, "at this rate it'll be the only OWL I'll pass."

"That's not true," Jasper disagreed, "you're really good with Charms."

"Oh well, that and Charms then, atleast I'll have two OWL's," Alice said sarcastically but her cheeks had turned pink at the compliment Jasper had paid her.

"Er, where's Edward?" Bella finally worked up the courage to ask. She tried to say it as casually as possible but she still saw the looks Alice and Rose gave her. Even Jasper smiled at her in his quiet, knowing way.

Emmett, blissfully oblivious, guffawed.

"Oh, he's only gone to give Tanya a tour of Hogwarts," Emmett laughed, "Honestly, if Edward weren't such a goody goody I'd bet they were off snogging in a broom cupboard somewhere."

Bella felt her face fall. Feeling sick, she pushed her breakfast away, no longer hungry.

"Merlin's pants Emmett!" Rosalie exclaimed, "Have you always got to be such an idiot!"

"What?" Emmett asked in astonishment, "What did I do to annoy you this time?"

"The fact that you don't know just proves what I've been saying all along!" Rosalie hissed, "You're a complete idiot!"

"Oh yeah?" Emmett said angrily, "well atleast that's better than being a stuck up cow!"

Rose gasped, then her eyes narrowed dangerously, she reached into her robes and pulled out her wand.

"If you don't take that back McCarty, I swear you'll be throwing that breakfast up out your ears in a minute," Rosalie warned, pointing her wand directly at his head, "Go on, I'm listening, you ignorant arse-"

"Okay, come on Rose, we need to get to class," Bella said quickly grabbing onto Rose's arm and tugging her away. She knew Rosalie well enough to know that her threats were never empty and she didn't fancy giving one of her bestfriends a detention on her first day as a prefect, nor did she want to see Emmett be sick out of his ears.

"Come on Alice," Bella said grabbing hold of her other bestfriend who had been tucking into her breakfast with gusto and had therefore missed the entire fight.

"Wha-" Alice managed to get out before Bella was frog marching her and Rosalie out of the Great Hall. Once in the corridor, Bella spun to face Rose.

"What was that all about?" she asked in annoyance, "honestly Rose, I really don't want to give you a detention but I'll have to if you carry on like that."

"Sorry," Rose huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, "he's just so infuriating and thick and just...ugh!"

"Right," Bella said frowning, "Look, I know you and Emmett don't really get along, but just try to control your temper, you can't just hex people left right and centre!"

Rosalie nodded slightly and shook out her long golden hair. "Come on, we've got potions," She said testily. Bella sighed knowing that Rosalie was angry that she'd somewhat told her off. The school year was really not starting out the way she's wanted it to. What with Edward's close relationship with Tanya, Rosalie and Emmett's fighting getting even worse and OWL'S swiftly approaching, she could sense that this year was going to be difficult.

"Ugh, potions," Alice groaned loudly ending the silence, "I can't wait to drop it next year. I swear professor Everard hates me!"

With that the tension was broken and the three girls walked to the Dungeons together chatting as though nothing had happened. Infact the only acknowledgement of the matter was given when, over Alice's head, Rosalie passed Bella an apologetic smile which Bella returned.

Professor Everard was his usual self. Once everyone had arrived in his class he proceeded to inform them that he believed most of them had no chance of passing their Potions OWL and that he would not be accepting any students who failed to achieve atleast an 'Exceeds Expectations' into his NEWT class. Then he proceeded to set them a tricky potion to brew and when none of them, not even Bella, managed to complete it within the two hour class he gave them a 20 inch essay on the properties of wormwood and echinacea and how these properties combined to enhance the quality of the antidote they had been working on.

Bella was disappointed in herself and she knew professor Everard was too from the look he gave her, truthfully the only reason that she hadn't completed her potion was that she had been distracted by continually glancing at Edward who had been almost late coming to class and who had dashed away the moment professor Everard dismissed them.

"If this is what OWl year'll be like, kill me now," Alice grumbled as they left the class.

"With pleasure Brandon," A sickly sweet voice intoned, "although I never knew you were suicidal."

All three girls turned to see Victoria Dashwood smirking at them. Behind her, Heidi Velnore and Lauren Mallory grinned, obviously excited to begin the yearly tradition of insults.

"I never was," Alice replied quick as a whip, "But that was until I saw your hair today Dashwood, Merlin, what did you do to it?"

"Oh my!" Rosalie exclaimed then, as though she had just noticed, "What on earth happened?"

Heidi and Lauren turned to look at their leader curiously. By this point Alice, Rosalie and Bella had begun to stare hard at Victoria's head with horrified expressions on their faces. For added drama Rose started shaking her head in pity and Bella raised her eyebrows as though she was in shock. Victoria self conciously raised a hand to her flaming red hair. Truth be told, after spending two hours over a steaming cauldron, it was even more frizzy than usual. Some strands of it were actually sticking almost vertically into the air. She looked as though her head was on fire.

With her usually sallow cheeks flushed bright pink, Victoria rushed away, presumedly to the loos to check on her hair, with Lauren and Heidi in tow. The three of them looked back a few times only to see Alice, Bella and Rose still staring at them in amazement. When they had disappeared down the corridor the girls burst into laughter.

"Did you see her face?" Alice gasped as she cackled madly.

"Yeah, that'll keep her occupied for the next half hour," Rosalie smirked.

"I do feel a little bad though," Bella said, even though she had yet to reign in her own giggles.

"Oh come on!" Alice snorted, "She's a right cow and you know it!"

"And anyway Bella, it's not like we were lying," Rosalie laughed, "Her hair did look bloody awful."

At that the three girls fell about laughing again as they thought about how Victoria had looked scurrying away with her arms covering her hair. Ever since that day in first year when Bella and Alice had intervened when Victoria and her friends were taunting Rosalie, the two groups of girls had hated eachother. More so on Victoria's side as she seemed to put more effort into coming up with ways to annoy the Gryffindor girls than they ever even thought of her. As far as Bella, Alice and Rose were concerned, Victoria was just an annoying person who wouldn't go away. They were only thankful that she and her cronies were extremely thick, otherwise who knew what mischief they could create.

As the girls proceeded, still giggling, out to the Great hall Alice suddenly grabbed Bella and Rosalie's arms and dragged them behind a huge statue of a centaur.

"What the hell Alice!" Rosalie hissed rubbing her arm.

"You nearly pulled my arm out of the socket," Bella complained, prodding her shoulder gingerly.

"Shh you two," Alice whispered, not paying any attention as she was peeking, on tiptoe through the crook of the centaur's arm, "look."

Bella and Rosalie exchanged a confused glance before ducking down to find a space through which they could spy, unseen, whatever had caught Alice's attention. Bella ended up doubled over, with her head bent at a funny angle, under the Centaur's stomach. Rosalie ended up crouched under it's tail with her back pressed against the wall.

"This is really uncomfortable," Bella moaned trying to shift her body and mistakingly kneed Rosalie in the ribs.

"Ouch!" Rose hissed, "Stop squirming about, atleast your face isn't up a centaur's arse!"

"Would you two shut up!" Alice said urgently, "I'm trying to listen."

The other two tried to follow her line of sight and immediately saw what she was looking at. Jasper was leaning lazily against a wall smiling down at a girl with long wavy dark hair who was obviously chatting him up.

"Do you recognise her?" Rose asked, trying to crane her head and in the process banged it on the stone tail.

"No, I can't see her face," Alice said angrily, "she is obviously desperate, look at how she keeps creeping up on him."

"Yeah she's coming closer each second," Bella agreed, mostly to be supportive and also because she really wanted to get out from under the statue quickly.

"Who is that?" Rosalie wondered aloud as the girl actually reached out and ran a hand down Jasper's arm. Alice audibly snarled.

A moment later Rosalie got her answer as the girl flicked her hair revealing her face in profile. It was no other than Maria Villanueva. Maria had become infamous at Hogwarts the year before when she was caught in a broom cupboard with a sixth year boy called Craig Matthews, the latter's trousers had been around his ankles and word had spread quickly.

Maria quickly became what she had been threatening to become since the age of thirteen, an easy girl. It was almost common knowledge to the young men of Hogwarts that you didn't have to do much to get Maria to go 'somewhere private' with you. She really put herself out there too. She wore her school skirts short and tight and her blouses were always about two sizes two small and stretched across her boobs which seemed to have gotten even bigger over the summer.

"Ugh!" Alice said in disgust, watching as Maria flirted with Jasper, "she is such a slag, there is no way he likes her."

"No, of course not," Bella agreed nodding once and stopping abruptly when she hit her nose on the centaur's flank.

"Yeah, he'd have to be mad to fancy her," Rosalie said, "although..."

"What!" Alice snapped, "Although what?"

"Well, guys don't neccessarily need to fancy someone for them to...well, you know," Rosalie said wisely.

"Rose!" Bella gasped ducking out from under the statue rubbing her nose furiously.

"No, she's right," Alice said bobbing her head forlornly, "I mean, my mum always say that boys his age are only after well...that."

"Sex," Rosalie clarified bluntly, "Merlin, if you've got any chance of competing with Maria you've got to atleast be able to say it."

"You didn't say it before," Bella pointed out.

"Well I was trying to be sensitive to Alice's feelings," Rose explained.

"Oh of course," Bella rolled her eyes.

"But, I...well...I don't want to do...that," Alice squeaked drawing their attention back to her, "I mean, I'm not ready!"

"Of course you're not!" Rosalie said, "we're only fifteen, blimey I'm not saying to turn into Maria!"

"Well what should I do?"

Rosalie took on the air of an all knowing love guru. Well, as much as one can do that when their head was pressed up against a centaur's bum.

"You need to make Jasper realise he's in love with you," Rosalie said, "This is the year to make it happen, I'm tired of hearing you moan about him all the time," here she paused rolling her eyes, "this goes for you too Bella!"

"Me?" Bella said in surprise.

"Yes, you're always going on about how Edward sees you as just a friend," Rosalie said, "well, do something about that before some other girl snatches him up, and you know they will. The girls at this school are like bloody vultures!"

Alice and Bella looked at each other and nodded.

"You're right," Bella sighed.

"Yeah, this year we'll get them to notice us the way we want them to," Alice declared with a determined gleam in her eye, "they won't be able to resist!"

"I hope not," Bella muttered peering around Alice, only to see Edward walking into the hall with Tanya beside him.

There we go! Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Please forgive any typos, I have checked it over but in my rush I may have overlooked some things!

Leave us a review, they make my heart sing, and hopefully I'll be able to get the next chapter out faster!

Alrighty, Til the next!