I still don't own any of the characters owned by anyone else.

Lenora smirked as she opened the curtains that normally blocked the view of the window from Gabrielle's bed. She giggled as Gabrielle groaned and turned her head away from the light streaming in from the open window. A muffled, "Light bad" came from Gabrielle as she buried her head into her pillow. "You young lady, came back drunk as a skunk on magic last night." She pulled the covers off Gabrielle.

Gabrielle winced at her sister's voice as she tried unsuccessfully with one hand to keep the warm covers over her. "Not so loud Nora, my head hurts." She gave up in favor of keeping her face buried in her pillow.

Lenora smiled as she enjoyed watching the light play over Gabrielle's pale skin. "Multicolored sparkles were bleeding out of your skin wherever anyone touched you last night. How much magic did you drink last night? Do you even remember stumbling back here?"

"It feels like Illyria hit me too hard in the head right now, so please stop shouting. I don't know how much I drank in… after the first few dozen items it was a little hard to keep track."

Lenora patted Gabrielle's tush, "So you going to do that again? Or do I have to put a leash on you to keep you behaved?"

Gabrielle gestured toward the curtains. They slid closed with hardly a sound as she rolled over onto her back. "If I remember right sister mine you're the one that wears the leash in the family."

"Only because you like it." She reached out and traced Gabrielle's right breast with a finger. She smiled as she took in the sight of her sister laying sans clothes with her messy long blood red hair framing her face. "You need a shower then some food before you face the day." She leaned down and kissed Gabrielle on the nose. She opened the curtains facing the window crawled out of bed, turned and left through the narrow gap between the wall and the bed. She was glad it was set up that way so that they didn't have to worry about anyone seeing something they shouldn't.

Rose smiled for the first time that morning since reading the Daily Prophet as she watched her sister walk into the great hall. She grinned from her place at the Gryffindor table. Her sister was doing much better after her shower. She noticed that Gabrielle's hair was still more blood colored than normal, she figured it would fade as the extra magic bled off. She waited until Gabrielle sat down in her chair before whispering, "You feeling better?"

Gabrielle started to shake her head but thought better of it, "I'll live."

Rose chuckled, "You should at least try to eat something."

Gabrielle sighed grumpily before making a plate filled with fruit. "I'll try any word about the attack?"

Rose's face blanched, "Yes but I don't think it's a good idea for you to read the paper right now."

"That bad?"

"Yeah that Rita is a piece of work. But eat your food first."

Gabrielle could hear vague whispers talking about the attack as she finished her food but with so many voices it was hard to pick out any details. Her heart leapt into her throat as she finally snagged the paper from Rose and read the front page article about the Boy Who Lived's muggle guardian's death. Gabrielle clenched her fist around the edges of the paper as she read a detail filled description of how they found Harry's uncle staked in the back yard. The painful detail would have been bad enough if the author hadn't made snide jokes about his death all through the piece. One of the tamer ones was where she compared him to a pig spit for roast. Her knuckles were white as she flipped to page seven and continued to read the story about the supposed abuses Harry had suffered in his childhood. The added part of the story was a smear piece carefully veiled as a historical piece detailing the Boy That Lived.

Rose winced but understood as the paper was consumed in purple fire as Gabrielle angrily ripped the still burning fragments apart. The other students near her inched backwards as she stormed out of the great hall. "That went better than I thought."

Trista winced, "They didn't say very many nice things did they?"

"Not really no, Rita needs to have a flaming quill stuffed up her arrogant arse." She glanced down the table at her dad. He didn't appear to be taking it much better than Gabrielle did. She turned back to look at Trista, "Not much we can do about it though, free speech and all that…"

Trista nodded, "Still we should probably get to class."

"Hopefully we have another Snape free day."

Gabrielle was very disappointed when she arrived at the dark arts room to find not professor Dumbledore but a sickly pale looking Snape. She tried to keep her emotions in check as his arrogant gaze swept the students.

Snape kept a groan from escaping his mouth with effort as he inspected all of the first years as they walked into his classroom. He was just happy that he didn't have any Gryffindor and Slytherin double classes this year. Snape tapped the chalk board with his wand as the last students filed in. Words materialized on the chalkboard. "Defense against the dark arts." He ground his teeth at some of the expressions on the faces of the muggleborn at that simple use of magic. "You have as first years been spared the last several years of horrible teachers in this subject." He ignored the shocked looks on some of the student's faces. "I believe that professor Dumbledore set you some homework for me to collect?" His gaze swept the room before he pointed at Trista, "You there, collect the papers and hand them to me."

She nodded and went to work collecting everyone's papers.

He glared at the students before taking the papers from Trista. "Thank you."

Trista blinked at the thank you before finding her seat.

"Let's see if anyone has any interesting answers." He read through the first paper for a few seconds before gesturing toward the chalk board. Three columns appeared then large words formed to label the columns Dead Students on the first heading and next to that Probably Dead students and finally Alive students. He glanced at one of the Gryffindor students, "Dead on the first monster. You apparently did not read the section on your monster well enough, if you had you would have noticed that it said in large black letters extremely magic resistant." He glanced over the class, "Does anyone have a suggestion on a better approach?" He noticed that the Granger twins had their hands raised but he ignored them. He wondered how they were connected to the other Granger but he pushed the thought out of his head. "Werewolf girl."

Trista blinked but assumed that there was really only one person he could be talking about. "You could have used a spell to create fire or light in front of the creature to distract it. It would have given you a few seconds to get away."

He smirked at Mortimer, "Shown up by a werewolf." He glanced back at Trista, "It would have been a better answer if you had listed the spell but it is still adequate."

He groaned as he made his way through the list marking the answers that were completely wrong. He explained why a number of the answers were wrong as he went along. He glanced up at the board as he finished the last paper. The werewolf's name was one of only two in the probably dead section, there were only six names in the alive section. The rest of the names were listed as dead. "Lillian Granger, Lenora Granger, William Weasley, Rose Summers all gave good examples of how to keep your head against dangerous monsters. Mr. Trimble has a passable list that would likely keep him alive with luck." Snape paused for a second as he read Gabrielle's name in the alive section, "Gabrielle Rosenberg did an excellent job with her work other than my doubt that a first year could cast some of the spells she suggested." He pushed on when it looked like she was going to interrupt, "However they are in the standard book of spells so I'll let it slide. The werewolf did a good job until her last choice. Making a floor slippery while inventive is not guarantied to stop a troll. Nor Mr. Potter is levitating a club to bash a mountain troll in the head a wise move even if it has by some miracle worked in the past. You might do better combining the two approaches. The rest of you dunderheads are dead, congratulations you failed. However sadly, this isn't real life, it's a class so I expect anyone that was labeled dead to correct their mistakes and turn the paper in again." His glare silenced the protests that were on people's lips.

Gabrielle wasn't sure what to think of the guy, while he seemed like a complete arse in some ways he seemed to be trying to actually instruct the students in how to defend themselves. She listened as he launched into his speech about the dark arts being many and varied. She didn't have to like him but she could learn from him.

That night Gabrielle frowned as she glanced around the busy common room. She was only listening with half an ear while working on her transfiguration homework. She was sort of annoyed that McGonagall had hauled her and her siblings into her office during lunch and tossed a bunch of tests on the table and said do these. The long and short of it being that she wasn't going to allow them to skate by with the other students as she knew they were much better than other first years. She couldn't stick them in a more advanced class but that didn't stop her from giving them more work and more theory than they would have otherwise received.

Gabrielle sighed it was nice to have work that was a half a challenge but it would have been nice to not have so much homework right off the bat. She could just make out Leo complaining to William about Snape being unfair while they played a game of wizard's chess.

Leo frowned, "It's not fair I tell you, he already has it out for me."

William shook his head, "What do you expect?"

"At least I didn't lose any points."

"There is that, sort of curious isn't it?"

"Yeah sort of weird from what Harry said."

"Well at least it's better than History of Magic. They should have fired him years ago. It takes real talent to make a goblin revolution sound as boring as he does."

"I guess it's because he is a ghost that they haven't fired him."

"Probably."

"So how is your transfiguration homework going?"

William shrugged, "I already got most of it done. It wasn't that hard I figured I would do the rest after the game then get Lenora to look it over."

"Probably better than Gabrielle, I'm not sure she always remembers the theory that well."

"Would you if you barely needed it?"

"I guess not, besides she hasn't been in the best mood lately."

William grinned, "She just needs to get snogged more."

Leo's shook his head, "That's your answer for everything isn't it?"

William grinned, "That or shagged."

Leo was distracted from that horrible mental image by Harry's loud voice announcing the tryouts for quidditch. "I wish we could play."

"Next year."