I managed to find my way to the portrait of The Fat Lady sooner then I thought. I arrived there to see a sad and embarrassed looking boy sitting against the wall that the fat lady hung on.
He had dark messy hair, crooked teeth and when I approached him he quickly shot up from the floor. So quickly that he ended up wobbling awkwardly.
"Hello, might I ask what your doing?" I said trying not to be rude.
"Oh I um… I've forgotten the password… again." He sighed embraced.
"Oh, Do you forget it often?"
"Sadly yes. Do you think you could…" he motioned to the Gryffindor entrance.
"Of course." I laughed "Quid Agis" I whispered to the portrait. It swung open and me and the boy quickly climbed inside, closing the picture behind us.
"Thank you… I'm sorry I don't think we've met before." he shyly stuttered I'm Neville Longbottom." he held out a shaky hand.
"Nice to meet you Neville. I'm Olivia Stone." I took his hand and shook it lightly.
"So you're an American? He asked hesitantly.
"Yes I am." I smiled trying to remove my hand from his. He had obviously forgotten to let go.
"Oh sorry-" He quickly released my hand "I don't think Hogwarts has ever had a student come all the way from across the pond before." he said slightly amazed.
"Well theirs a first time for everything." we both chuckled lightly.
"Well thanks again for opening the door." he mumbled looking away from me.
"No problem." I smiled then walked up the stairs to my room. No one was there so I didn't' really have anything to do.
I saw that Hermione had left a few books on her bed. I picked one up and read the titled out loud.
"Everything About Potions: For Young Wizards." I decided to read it. I figured potions would be the only class that I could actually do, since it didn't require the use of magic, just the mixing of magical things.
I had been reading for almost an hour when I heard someone come up the stairs.
"Hermione?" I called out.
I heard steps quickening and getting louder until the brown eyed girl was standing in the room.
"Olivia, there you are." She ran up to my bed, sat down in front of me, and before I knew it she had me in a tight hug.
"Um… nice to see you to Hermione." I laughed while she let go of me.
"You were gone for hours. We thought Draco had done something awful to you." I remembered Draco's weird mood change, and him abandoning me to stay in The Room of Requirement, and anger started to form inside me. "For the look on your face it seems like that's exactly what happened." she looked me over, slightly worried. "What exactly did happen?" she asked hesitantly.
I thought about what I was going to say carefully. Dumbledore told me not to mention anything of Draco's plans, and of him being a Death Eater, so I had to choose my words wisely, and do a bit of lying.
"Well he was rude the entire time…" I started.
"Naturally." she cut in.
"and he refused to let me get something to eat, by the way that problem has still not been solved. I'm starving." I whined. She just laughed at me.
"We can feed you later, now go on." I could tell that she was going to make me tell her every detail.
"Fine, while he was showing me around the 7th floor, The Room of Requirement opened up." She looked confused for a moment.
"How do you know about the? Oh never mind, continue." She interrupted briefly.
"Well I wanted to go inside, and he didn't, no naturally I went in. He followed me in, and tried to lie and say that the room was off limits and that it was a secret break room for teachers."
"So you were alone… with Malfoy… in The Room of Requirement?" she questioned.
"Yep" I popped the p.
"For how long?" when I looked back on the memory it felt like we had been in there for ages, but really it couldn't have been more then 15-20 minutes.
"Not too long, but it felt like forever." I said honestly. She giggled.
"I get that, I mean it's Malfoy. I can't stand to be in the same room with him for more then a few minutes, and you had to spend hours with him. You poor thing." we both laughed. "So what did you do?" she scooted her whole body up onto the bed so that she was sitting Indian style directly in front of me.
"Excuse me?" I asked, not really understanding what the heck she was talking about.
"In The Room of Requirement. What did you two do while you were in there?" I thought about how to answer her for a few seconds.
"We didn't really do anything…we just kind of talked." she looked at me with surprise.
"Well what did you talk about?" Something was telling me that Hermione was a naturally nosy person, who like to know it all. And I was right.
I was trying to think of a response. I didn't want to tell her about his mini freak out, and how just for a moment I felt something for him that didn't make me want to punch babies; it wasn't a strong emotion, I just felt a basic attraction to him, it was a purely physical thing since what I had seen of his personality was so vile. While I was in the middle of thinking about how I was going to answer her someone saved me from having too.
"Hermione?" Harry yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
"What is it Harry?" she jumped off the bed and yelled from the top of the stairs.
"Did you find Olivia up there? You've been gone for a while!" he replied.
She turned to me in embarrassment. "Oh yes I forgot, I was supposed to see if you were up here, then bring you down to the common room with everyone. We've just gotten out class schedules!" she squealed in excitement. I on the other hand was not as excited. All I could think was Great I get to know what order I'll be humiliated in. Since I had barely any knowledge of magic I wasn't looking forward to classes starting and everyone finding out that I'm a fraud.
"Well is she up there or not!" Ron yelled a bit louder than was necessary.
"Yes I'm here!" I replied, Hermione grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the stairs, forgetting all about the conversation we were having, or at least I thought she forgot.
"Oh! We can finish our conversation about Malfoy later." Dam! I thought to myself. "So what's your favorite subject?"
"Um… Potions." I went with the only one really knew about.
"Really? Well your lucky, this year Professor Snape took the job as defense against the dark arts professor, so you won't have to deal with him in that class." We reached the bottom of the stairs where Ron and Harry were waiting for us.
"Finally." Ron sighed dramatically. "You two were up there for ages." he continued.
"What took you so long?" Harry asked while handing me a piece of parchment. I read through it seeing it was my class schedule.
Hermione took hers from Ron and was now reading through it.
"Olivia let me see yours." she took my schedule and hers and put them side by side to see if we had any classes together. "We have all our classes together, well with the exception of one."
"Which one?" I took both schedules from her and looked them over.
"There, see?" she pointed out the difference on the parchment. "I'm taking Arithmancy and your taking Herbology." She then took hers back and did the same thing with Harry's.
"Olivia lets see if were together in any classes." Ron asked tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around and handed him my schedule. A few seconds later he spoke.
"All but one, we don't have Herbology together." he stated simply.
"Well that's a shame, Hermione doesn't have it either, and if Harry's not there with me then I'm gonna be all alone and screwed." I frowned quickly taking my schedule back only to have it taken from me once more, but this time by Harry.
"Well I'll be…" he whispered to himself while reading it over.
"You know it's not nice to take something that doesn't belong to you." I smiled playfully and held my hand out for him to return what was rightfully mine.
"Oh sorry…" he smiled slightly embarrassed at his actions, then filled my empty hand with the paper. "I just wanted to see if we had any classes together. Hermione said we had all but one."
"Well she was telling the truth." I chuckled lightly and smiled at him, then folded up my schedule and stuck it in my back pocket.
"So how'd it go with Malfoy?" Ron interjected.
"Um… it wasn't too bad, well as far as having to spend a day with Malfoy goes." I looked at Hermione silently signaling that I didn't want her to bring up what I told her about The Room of Requirement.
"Well that's a surprise…" he muttered, then slid himself onto the couch.
"How was he?" I looked at Harry, surprised by the question he had just asked "I mean was he acting suspicious or strange in anyway?" he rephrased the question so it would make more sense.
"No, he seemed uh… he was your average everyday jerk of a guy." you know the kind of guy who freaks out and yells about how independent he is for no apparent reason. Totally normal. I thought to myself.
"Okay then. Just tell me if anything changes, alright?" he looked like he wasn't fully convinced by what I said, but I nodded and followed through with my lie.
"Shall we head down to the great hall for lunch?" Ron asked pulling himself off the couch. I looked at the clock 12:20 is what it read.
"Yes!" I quickly replied, then sped towards the common rooms exit, because I was so starving. I went a little too fast and the lack of food and proper nutrients made me woozy and unbalanced. So I ended up tripping on the rug.
"Olivia are you alright? I haven't seen someone get this worked up about food since this morning when Ron dropped his toast." Harry laughed while helping me up off the ground for the second time since I've been at Hogwarts.
"It was perfectly toasted!" Ron defended himself.
"Sure it was mate. Now lets hurry up. Olivia looks like she's going to faint." Harry joked.