Chapter Three

The first week back at school seemed to fly by for Anna. Pansy and Blaise were in a few of her classes, and they both kept her occupied by making comments about the professors, or other students, and usually by the end of each class they had been reprimanded at least once. Draco was in all of her classes except History of Magic. In the classes she shared with him, but not the others, she always made sure to sit at his table, since nearly everyone else avoided him. In the two classes she shared with all three of her new suite mates, she always sat between Draco and Pansy, with Blaise on the other side of Pansy. Draco didn't seem put out with their behavior, as Anna would have done if she were in his position. She had mentioned it once, when they were working on a spell in Defense, but he had just shrugged and said he would do the same in their place. The other two didn't want to chance the Ministry suspecting them of anything, and Draco was the most watched and suspected person on their list at the moment. Anna would have thought that the most watched person would have been Draco's parents, since they both hadn't been sent to Azkaban at the end of the war. When she mentioned this to Draco, his eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white. She had thought he was about to yell at her, and had apologized immediately for bringing it up, and he had cooled down, and remained silent for the rest of the class. As they walked together to lunch, he had informed her that his father had been killed over the summer. Anna nodded to show she had heard, but she didn't ask about it.

After that he had returned to their normal cordial attitude toward each other, and both of them had acted as though the conversation hadn't happened.

Anna enjoyed her classes, even History of Magic, and she and Pansy quickly fell into a pattern.

After classes ended for the day, the two girls would sit in the common room, usually in the corner decorated in Slytherin colors, since it was the emptiest, and work on homework together until dinner. They would then go and sit at the end of the seventh year table with the boys, and after the meal, the four of them would go their separate ways. Draco spent most of his time in his room, and Blaise, in an attempt to be seen with him less, spent his time out on the quidditch pitch.

Quidditch teams were being formed, with the stipulation that each team must have people from at least two houses, a rule which would only be in effect for the next few years. There would be a mass tryout in about a week's time, and the team captains, each whom would have had to file a request for said position with the head boy and girl, would choose players they wanted on their team. Before competition began, each team would have to be approved to make sure they met the new rules, and then they would have to apply for a team name.

Anna stayed out of all that as she had no desire to play the game. She spent most of her free time in the music room, wondering how long it would be until her mother would expect her to start writing new music.

Her first letter from her mother came on Friday evening. Anna and Pansy had both been lounging on their beds, reading with their dormitory door propped open, as Blaise had decided to join them. One of the new rules, which was enforced by a particularly complicated charm, was that members of the opposite sex could only be in the dorm so long as the door was open. It was an attempt by the faculty to limit places that the older students could use to 'occupy themselves in an unseemly manner'. It had only taken Pansy two days to point out that, if they really wanted to, co-ed suits could use their shared bathroom to get around that rule. The charm that kept the door from opening when the bathroom was occupied only worked when either the shower door, or the toilet door, were closed. And it only kept the other doors from being opened if they hadn't already been open.

Blaise was sitting in Anna's desk chair, with his feet flung up onto the desk as he leaned the chair back onto two legs and bounced a muggle tennis ball off the wall in front of him. The sharp tap on their window made him lose his balance for a second, and the chair fell back towards the floor. Anna waved her wand, casting a silent cushioning charm, which bounced the chair back up to it's normal position. She ignored the somewhat girly shriek Blaise had let out in favor of opening the window to let in the owl. It was familiar, her mother had bought the owl only two years before.

Anna untied the letter from her mother and fed the owl some treats out of a jar she kept by the window, then she opened the envelope. Her face fell the further she read until finally, she tossed the letter into the bin with a sigh.

"Troubles?" Blaise asked, resuming his earlier position.

"My mum must think I have all the free time in the world," Anna muttered. "And you might want to move."

"Why?" Blaise asked, tilting his head back to look at her lazily. At that moment, four more owls flew in the window, each struggling to carry large bags, which they dropped onto Anna's desk in front of Blaise, then flew off, ruffling their feathers and chirping angrily.

"What on earth?" Pansy asked, climbing off her bed to get a closer look as Anna upended one of the canvas bags, dumping a large pile of letters out onto the desk.

"My mother has very kindly ordered me to answer fan mail, since I'm out of the public eye for a while," Anna said, dumping out the three other bags as well.

"Public eye?" Pansy asked at the same time Blaise said "Fan mail?" in a confused voice.

"Have a look," Anna said, waving a hand at the pile of envelopes, some of which were falling to the floor as there was too many for the desk to hold. Blaise plucked a letter up and read over the front of it with a confused expression.

"Are these muggle letters?" Pansy asked, her voice curious rather than disdainful.

"Yes," Anna said with a sigh, carefully opening one of the envelopes and pulling out a couple pages of lined muggle notebook paper with untidy words scrawled across them.

"Why are so many muggles writing to you?" Blaise asked, pulling the papers out of her hand to read them.

"Oh, thats right, I forgot I hadn't told you," Anna said, pushing her hair out of her face. "I'm kinda famous among the muggles."

"Kinda famous?" Blaise asked incredulously. "This letter has three marriage proposals in it. And a declaration of undying love. And I'm pretty sure it was written by a girl."

"What did you do to be famous to the muggles?" Pansy asked, grabbing the letter from Blaise's hand.

"I sing," Anna said, shrugging as she opened another letter. "Music is really big in the muggle world, and I'm kinda good at it. I won an award last summer, and it was broadcasted on their muggle televisions, so a lot of people saw it."

"Whats a television?" Blaise asked, mispronouncing the unfamiliar word. To Anna's surprise Pansy was the one who explained it to him, getting everything mostly right.

"So you're really famous then?" Blaise asked when the explanations had ended. By that point, Anna had opened and read about a dozen letters, and she made sure to carefully place each one back into its envelope so she would know who to reply to.

"I suppose," Anna said, shrugging.

"Do you want help replying to all of these?" Pansy asked, opening a new letter.

"Why on earth would you possibly want to help me write back to all these people?" Anna asked incredulously, looking up from her current letter, which was a very unflattering drawing done by a young child.

"She just wants to pretend she's the famous one and all these letters are to her," Blaise said in a bored tone, tossing his tennis ball at the wall again. Pansy glared at him for a moment, then next time he threw the ball up, she pointed her wand at it silently. The ball zoomed back to Blaise, hitting his stomach with enough force to knock his chair backwards, into Anna's still placed cushioning charm.

"Oof," Blaise gasped, rolling off the cushioning charm onto the floor by Anna's bed, clutching his stomach as he tried to suck in air. Pansy ignored him and waved her wand to right the turned over chair.

"I know a handy little charm that will change my handwriting to match yours, and you can sign them all," Pansy continued as though Blaise hadn't spoken at all. "In return for help, you can show me that trick with the eyeliner and you can let me borrow that one dress you have with the blue flowers on it."

"As long as you promise to write sickeningly nice things in every letter," Anna said with a shrug. She grabbed a bag of blank envelopes and stamps that her mother had sent her and began using her wand to copy the names and addresses.

"Deal," Pansy said with a grin, grabbing a stack of letters from Anna's desk. Blaise, still wheezing on the floor, was ignored by both girls.

Friday night, and most of Saturday, was spent reading particularly hilarious bits of letters out loud to each other, and then laughing over the motivational things both girls wrote in response. Anna kept the various drawings and other artwork she had been sent. Some of it was better than others, but she liked them all. It was sweet to think that all of these people had spent time making things for her, and she said so in her letters back to them.

She finished going through about half the letters by Sunday morning, and sent the completed ones back to her mother to be mailed out. She would finish the rest of them next weekend, maybe.

Anna walked into her NEWT Charms lesson Monday morning with a sense of accomplishment. Over the weekend, they'd had an essay to write, and even though her mother had given her the task of going through fan mail, and she'd had a complicated potion to study for this afternoon, Anna had still managed to write eleven inches more than required, and she had done a very through job, if she did say so herself.

She placed her scroll on the pile of them that was steadily growing on Flitwick's desk, then went to take her usual seat. She shared this class with both Blaise and Draco, and she made sure to sit at the same table as Draco. Blaise didn't seem to begrudge her for ditching him, in fact, he had told her just the day before that he was glad she was trying to be Draco's friend. Anna thought his easy acceptance of having to find someone else to sit beside was helped along by the fact that his new table partner was an exceedingly pretty girl who giggled and blushed at his flirting.

"Okay, okay, now that everyone's here, let's get started," Professor Flitwick said in his squeaky voice. He was perched atop five or six fat books, which were balanced on a stool, and still his head only just cleared the lectern. "This week we will be starting on a project that will take most of you until Christmas break to complete. I will give you this week to begin working on it, and next week we will return to regular classes and you will have to work on it in your free time as homework. You will be working in groups of two, and one group of three since there will be an odd person out."

A soft whispering took up in the room at this announcement as people began picking their partners. Anna sat silently at her table, not bothering to look around the room. Whoever else didn't have a partner would pair with her, that was how it usually went in these situations. It wasn't that she was stupid, she was actually in the top five of her class, but people liked to work with their friends over someone they didn't know.

"Not so fast," Professor Flitwick called over the talking, and the room fell silent. "I will be assigning you partners at the end of class, based off your essay scores. For now, please open your books to chapter seven and begin reading."

Anna flipped the cover of her book open and obediently turned to the required reading, but she was one of the only few people who did. As Flitwick clambered down from his stool and went to his desk, the pile of scrolls hovering behind him, most of the class opened their books, and promptly began whispering to each other, or passing notes under the desks. Besides Anna, there were nine other ex-Ravenclaws in this class, the highest number of any house. There were six Slytherins, five Hufflepuffs, and five Gryffindors. Of the 25 students, all of the Ravenclaws were diligently reading their books, and besides Draco, and a Hufflepuff girl that Anna thought was named either Reyna or Renee, but she couldn't remember, everyone else in the room, Blaise included, seemed to care less about the assignment.

Anna, however, was completely enraptured from the first sentence. She hadn't gotten an opportunity to read this far ahead in their lessons yet, and she couldn't recall ever hearing about the subject in class before.

The chapter was, for all intents and purposes, about creating new Charms. Anna supposed that someone, many someones in fact, must have been good at this at some time, since all the charms they used these days had to have been created by someone.

There was a lot more to creating new spells then Anna would have thought, had she ever given the subject thought before. Not only did you have to have a firm idea of what you wanted the spell to accomplish, but you had to find the right words and wand movements, which meant finding the language most likely to conduct the proper meaning, and you had to be prepared for any backlash from using the wrong words or movements.

Greek, according to the book, was the most common language used for healing spells. This was most likely because Greek was the language most commonly used by physicians in ancient times.

Latin was used for a wider variety of spells, Anna read, because it was the most commonly known language among wizards in the 1600's when most current charms were created. Usually Latin based spells were the higher-order spells, like the patrons charm, and the disarming charm.

Lower-level hexes and common household charms used in modern times usually had English roots, as those charms varied from century to century and changed with the language in the area it was used.

After you found the correct language to use for your new charm, and studied the words thoroughly to make sure there were no other interpretations of them, then you had to have enough willpower to make your magic work for you in a new way, much like learning a new spell, the book said, except you had to figure it out for your own without anyone telling you.

Anna reread the last couple paragraphs a couple times. Flitwick wouldn't have assigned this chapter for reading during this class unless it had something to do with the project he had just announced, so their assignment, Anna predicted, was probably to create a new charm.

She glanced up at the front of the room for a moment, then towards the clock above the door. Instead of finding the time, she found herself looking over at Draco. He had clearly finished the chapter and come to the same concluding Anna had. Or he was just thinking of something else really hard while staring at the front of the room with his brows drawn a little. He turned to her after a moment and raised a brow. She raised one back, then turned back to her book, a little embarrassed to have been caught staring. She just hadn't noticed until that moment how soft his hair looked. It was a few shades lighter than her own hair, which had been pulled back into a simple ponytail today. She was regretting not leaving it down to shield her face now that her cheeks were undoubtedly red.

She picked up her quill and began taking notes from the book as she read over the chapter for a second time.

Finally, about ten minutes before the class was scheduled to end, Professor Flitwick walked slowly up the aisle of tables, handing back their graded essays.

Anna eagerly unrolled hers, proud to see the note scribbled across the top that read 'Excellent research, O'. Within the scroll was a page of rules for the project that simply had 'Draco Malfoy and Anna Prewett' scrawled across it. She nearly sighed. Of course she would have to be paired with Draco after she had been been caught staring at him only moments ago. She glanced at him now, seeing a note similar to hers at the top of his essay. He also had received an O, but Anna was sure that there had to be others in the class that had also gotten an Outstanding score, so why had she been paired with Draco? As she watched her classmates, she noticed that no one was paired with someone who had been in their previous house. More 'unity' efforts from the staff, Anna supposed.

"When would you like to start working on this?" Anna asked, turning back to her table partner.

"After dinner?" Draco asked, not looking at her.

"Today?" Anna asked, surprised. "But Quidditch tryouts are tonight."

"Oh, were you doing to try out?" Draco asked, looking at her in mild amusement. She was sure she hand mentioned her dislike of quidditch in front of him before, most likely when Blaise had left his disgusting sweaty quidditch practice gear in the bathroom on the floor.

"No," Anna said, frowning as she packed away her book and notes. "I thought you would. Weren't you on the Slytherin team for a while?"

"Yes," Draco said shortly. His face had adopted its usual mask, though moments before he had looked almost playful. "I'm not trying out."

"Why not?" She asked, frowning now. She didn't mind talking aloud now as most of the class had moved to talk to their assigned partners or friends.

"I don't need to explain myself to you," he snapped in a haughty voice, and Anna sighed and turned back to face the front of the room.

"I know. I was just asking," she said, her voice soft. She had thought she was doing a good job of befriending the Slytherins, even with their previous reputation of not talking to anyone unless it benefited them. Draco sighed, then leaned forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the table, head supported by one hand while the other fell to the opposite shoulder.

"I'm… sorry," he said, as though the words were new to him. "I didn't mean to be rude."

"It's okay," Anna said immediately. She hadn't even thought of the words as rude, more like a warning that she was prying. "After dinner is great for me. Should we meet in the common room or the library?" He hesitated before answering.

"The common room," he said at last. "We will need to come up with an idea for a charm before trying to find books on the subject."

"Right," Anna said, still thinking about their earlier conversation. Quidditch wasn't exactly a private conversation topic, though maybe his reasons for not trying out were private. It must have been something that bothered him, or that he was angry about, if it made him snap at her.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the class ended, and Draco was out of the room before she could say anything else. She walked down to lunch with Blaise, listening to him talk about nothing important.

"Why would Draco get upset about quidditch?" She asked at a lull in his words. She hadn't meant to ask but the words just slipped out.

"Upset?" Blaise asked with a frown.

"I asked why he wasn't going to try out tonight and he snapped at me a little," Anna explained, figuring that since she had already asked she may as well continue. "Then he apologized for being rude."

"Did he really?" Blaise asked, surprised, then he grinned knowingly, confusing Anna. "He's probably not trying out because he doesn't think anyone will want him on their team. Only one of the new captains is from Slytherin, and the other five captains wouldn't pick anyone who had… well, its just not likely that he will be put on a team, even if he did try out."

"Because being seen spending time with a Malfoy looks bad to the Ministry," Anna said, rolling her eyes. "I understand, but I think its stupid."

"Most of us were raised to always think about what the 'public eye' would see and how it would affect our family's standing," Blaise explained, his face unusually serious as they walked down to the Great Hall. "Our parents told us who to befriend and who not to be seen talking to. You must understand right? I'm sure its the same being in the public eye of the muggles. There must be people that you being seen with will make your standing among the public raise or lower."

"Yes, I understand," Anna said, nodding. Her mother and her manager had constantly talked about things like that. While Anna didn't really care as much as they did, she knew that there were interviews and events that her mother had turned down because it wouldn't be good for Anna to be seen there. "I don't like it, it doesn't seem right. It sounds a lot like prejudice." Blaise came to a sudden stop at that and looked down at her.

"You're right, it does," he said, frowning again. "Are you sure you weren't a Gryffindor? Don't do something because it 'doesn't seem right'?"

"You don't have to be a Gryffindor to have good morals," Anna said with a sniff, then turned to go into the Great Hall.

"I didn't say you were wrong," Blaise said, catching up to her as she took her usual seat at the almost end of the seventh year table. Draco's usual seat at the very end was empty, but Pansy was in her seat, and she was practically bouncing with excitement as the other two sat down.

"Guess what?" She said as soon as the food appeared. "I have a date this weekend for our Hogsmeade visit."

"Who would be crazy enough to want to spend time with you willingly?" Blaise asked, grabbing a roll. Anna snorted at Pansy's mutinous look. She had quickly learned that what she heard as mean and hurtful comments were actually jokingly playful when shared between Blaise and Pansy, and even Draco on some occasions. The three of them, along with Daphne Greengrass, who hadn't returned this year, had been best friends since before their school days.

"Just for that, I'm not telling you," Pansy said, turning her nose up at them and taking a bite of her food. Anna giggled, as Blaise began to bicker with Pansy.

Anna spent a majority of her time in her afternoon classes thinking about what kind of Charm would be worth inventing. Charms was her favorite class, and her best subject, so she wanted it to be a good one. The list of rules they had been given in class to outline the project had said that variations on current charms would be accepted so long as they did something different, but she wanted to do something completely new.

By the time dinner rolled around she still had no idea what to do. Maybe Draco would have come up with something.

Halfway through the meal, her mother's large brown owl swooped through an open window and glided toward her. She sighed as she untied the letter, wishing that her mother could have written her in the morning like everyone else's parents did. Though now that she thought of it, Anna wasn't exactly sure where her mother was currently at. She had mentioned some traveling with Anna's manager to promote the girl, but Anna wasn't exactly sure what that meant.

The envelope was thick, which made Anna sigh again as she opened it. Thick meant either a long list of things her mother wanted her to do, or one thing her mother wanted her to do that was unpleasant and hence needed a lot of explanation or convincing.

The seventh year table was particularly empty today. Though quidditch tryouts for them was scheduled for after dinner, tryouts for the earlier years had been between the end of classes and dinner, and many of the older students had gone to watch, even if they hadn't planned on trying out themselves, Blaise and Pansy included. In fact, the only person on their usual end of the table was Draco, and he was doing a very good job of ignoring her. He had already eaten, but he had a book propped open against the table, and he hadn't looked up from it once except to return her greeting when she had first gotten there.

Anna pushed aside her mostly empty plate to lay the papers out in front of her, then let out a groan when she realized what lay in front of her. Her mother had sent her a schedule, one that, as she read it, Anna realized would take up every moment of her free time for the rest of the term. Anna suspected that the headmistress had told Anna's mother that she would not be allowed to take her daughter off the grounds on class days until after she was of age, which would be at the end of next month, because thats when the schedule began to include things on school nights.

"Something wrong?" Draco asked, his voice sharp, and obviously annoyed.

"My mum's insane," Anna muttered, fishing through her bag for a quill. Draco didn't respond, but rather, went back to his reading, so Anna returned to ignoring him for the moment.

The actual letter from her mum was surprisingly short, as though she didn't think Anna would need any convincing. All it stated was that she and Anna's manager, a very bossy woman who Anna was now starting to really really dislike, had gotten this schedule approved by the headmistress.

Though she lacked a lot of knowledge about the muggle world, Anna had spent a lot of time in the last few years learning about the music industry, so she had a pretty good idea about which things on the schedule she could skip without too much backlash. She couldn't skip everything though, especially the recording studio that was booked in her name the weekend after next. She had a few dozen songs that had already been written and were ready for recording. The new song she had sung on television just days before coming to school had already been recorded and released as a single after that performance, so she had a bit of time before she would be expected to release anything else, but her mother wanted to have enough songs put together to release an album before Christmas. Anna was sure she could do it, but not if she also expected to keep up with her school work and do all these other social events her mother had scheduled for her.

This was what Anna wrote in her return letter, then she set about crossing things off the schedule, such as the radio station interview scheduled for that weekend, and a magazine photo op for two weeks after that. She also crossed off every single event that had been written in on a school night, which she was sure would cause some sort of backlash from her mother. She finished her letter with a statement that she didn't think needed explanation.

'I will NOT work on school nights. I need time to complete assignments and be well rested for class the next day. NOTHING is more important than my education.'

She duplicated the revised schedule, then folded up the original ones and her letter, attaching both to the waiting owl without bothering to put them into an envelope. She gave the owl some leftover scraps of ham from her plate, she had lost her appetite by that point, and it flew off toward the window with a soft hoot.

"Ready?" Draco asked, and she looked over at him in confusion. "To work on our Charms assignment." He added that as though she were stupid.

"Oh, right," Anna said, stuffing the schedule into her bag. "Let's go." She got to her feet and they began the long walk up to their common room in silence. She was lost in thought, going over her mothers letter. Was she just being stubborn by refusing to leave the school on school nights, even once she was old enough to do so? Surely her marks wouldn't suffer so much if she were a bit tired during classes. Well, it wasn't like she couldn't still work on her music while she was here, the new music room was as seldom used as the old one had been, and Anna was pretty good at silencing Charms, so if she really wanted to she could practice after curfew. Living with the seventh years, which included the head boy and girl, had it's advantages, such as the prefect and teachers patrolling schedules left where anyone might find them by accident.

"Dittany," Draco said, drawing Anna from her thoughts. The wall holding the painting swung open, but neither entered the room. The amount of noise that swarmed over them nearly had Anna covering her ears.

It took her a moment to realize that the noise was not excitement, but rather arguing. Well, there was a lot of excited shouting too, but the parts that Anna could put together were mostly arguments.

"I can't believe you would pick him over me!"

"Ron, stop yelling."

"He's a Slytherin!"

"He's also an excellent keeper, and McKinnon asked me earlier if she could pick you for her team."

"But I'm your best friend! Now we will have to play against each other."

"Afraid of a little competition, Weasley?"

"Lets go to the library," Draco said after a moment. "I don't want to get involved in that."

"Okay," Anna said, nodding in agreement. From what she had gathered, Harry Potter, who had been appointed as one of the six new quidditch captains, had chosen Blaise Zabini to be the keeper for his team, the position previously occupied by Ron Weasley. "I'm surprised tryouts are over so soon."

"They've been out there all day, they probably just did them early," Draco said, shrugging. His voice was completely bored, and she almost believed that he wasn't interested at all.

"Have you thought about what kind of Charm we should create?" Anna asked, not wanting to say the wrong thing about quidditch and upset him again. If he knew why she was changing the subject, he didn't say anything.

"I have a couple ideas, but I'm not sure they are worth looking into," he said. "I want to do something new, not a moderation of a current spell."

"Yes, me too," she said, pleased he was taking the project seriously. This was an opportunity to really put her spellwork to the test, and she wanted to prove to herself that she was intelligent enough to be in Ravenclaw, which was something she had doubted many times over the years. Sure, she got above average marks, but she wasn't the top of her year, or even the top of her year in Ravenclaw.

"Did you have any ideas?" He asked, and she was glad to see that he had let his disinterested bored mask drop a little. She wished she had something to suggest, but her mind was drawing a blank.

"Er, no," she said quietly as they entered the library. It wasn't empty, but it was much quieter than the common room at the moment. "I was thinking about it earlier, but everything I thought of that a charm would be useful for has been done already."

"Lets start by looking through the charms that have been created already," Draco suggested, walking between the tall bookshelves. "Maybe it will give us some ideas. At the very least it will tell us what not to do."

"Okay," Anna said, following behind him as he weaved through the shelves to the section on Charms and began pulling books from the shelf. She held out her arms for him to pile them onto, and the stack was high enough that her arms were shaking with the effort of holding them before he was satisfied. He took the top half of the stack and they went to a table in the back of the library. This section was almost always unoccupied, partially because it was extremely dusty, and partly because it was Madame Pince's favorite place to lurk.

She gave them the stink eye as Draco set his books down with a soft thud, then disappeared between two dimly lit shelves.

Anna set her books down too, then pulled out a blank parchment for notes and dropped her bag beside her chair as she sat.

The two of them worked in silence for more than an hour, and she had begun writing down charm alteration ideas, just in case they couldn't think of anything new to try.

After another half hour, Anna begun to get lost in her thoughts about her mother's schedule. She had been annoyed when she had crossed some of those things off. Maybe she should have held onto it for a bot before sending it back, her mother was bound to be angry.

Anna hoped she wouldn't try to make her drop out of school. It was something that Anna had already considered and decided against, but as her mother hadn't brought it up yet, she probably hadn't thought of it. The end of Anna's letter might set that thought going though. Anna turned seventeen at the end of October, and after that, the Ministry couldn't dictate whether or not she went to school. She had also considered homeschooling, but had immediately dismissed the idea. If her mother was her teacher, Anna would have next to no excuses to skip events.

Some of the social things she had gone to were fun though. Like the VMA's after party, and the various charity dinners she had gone to last summer. And the concerts were the most fun. She had only done two of them, but the exertion from being on stage and the excitement of performing were unbeatable.

She would have to start preparing an argument to give to her mother if she brought up dropping out of school. There were a handful of magical musicians that Anna could think of off the top of her head, and she was fairly sure most of them had finished their education before starting their careers. It was also pureblood tradition for children to complete their NEWT's at Hogwarts, though Anna wasn't sure that argument would work since she had argued against tradition to start her singing career.

Maybe she could look up a family history of the Prewett's and tell her mother that she didn't want to be the first in the family to drop out.

There wasn't exactly a music history section in the library though, and the section of unsorted books took up over ten aisles, not exactly a quick project. And she wouldn't be able to summon any books she needed unless she knew the titles of them. Maybe she could ask Madame Pince, though that idea was one she would rather avoid.

"Oh," Anna said softly, realizing where her mind had just wandered. She looked up, her eyes bright, as Draco gave her a suspicious look. "Muggles have these things called computers," she began, trying to set up her idea so that he would understand it. "They run by electricity, and you can do all sorts of things on them. I sort of learned how to use them over the summer."

"Good for you," Draco said in a bored tone, turning back to his book.

"There's this thing you can do on them though," Anna explained quickly, her voice growing a little more excited. "I don't know the exact way, but you can write something in, and the computer will highlight the word you wrote in if it's anywhere in the document. Like, if I had a book about Potions written in the computer, and I wrote in Lacewing Flies, the computer would tell me all the pages that Lacewing Flies are mentioned on."

"Okay," Draco said, dragging the word out a little. His brows were drawn in a scowl, though it looked as though he was just confused, rather than angry.

"So what if we could make a charm that did something like that, but with books?" Anna said, leaning in a little. Madame Pince had poked her head around the side of a shelf near them, her eyes narrowed in a glare. "For example, when you are trying to find a book about a particular subject for an essay for class, you could cast the charm, and all the books that mentioned the subject would come to you?"

"That sounds like an alteration on the summoning charm," Draco said, frowning.

"It doesn't have to be, we could make the books do something else," she said, not wanting him to reject her idea so soon. "Like light up, or maybe come to you and also open to the needed pages?"

"Hm," he said, frowning in thought again as he stared down at the book he had been reading. "That does sound like it could be useful…" he admitted after another moment, and she couldn't help the grin that broke out on her face. She quickly forced her mouth into a less gloating expression before he could look up at her.

"So we can try it? Even though it might be an alteration?" Anna asked, just to be sure.

"We need to make sure something like that doesn't exist already," Draco said, waving a hand over their books. Anna sighed, looking at the stack they still hadn't looked at yet.

"Right," she said in a resigned tone, flipping a page in her book.

Sometime later, they were both reading silently when Anna happened to glance up at a slight movement in the corner of her eye. She jumped as she came face to face with Madame Pince's scowling face, less than three inches away from her.

"Holy sh-" she cut herself off from the curse just in time, mostly because she had lost balance on her chair and was leaning precariously to the side. She caught herself on the edge of the table, meeting Draco's amused gaze for a half second before they both turned to face the sneering woman.

"Curfew is in ten minutes," her raspy voice reminded Anna a little of the sound a cat might make if it were being run over by a car. "Either check out those books or put them away. Correctly."

"Yes ma'am," Anna said, getting to her feet. Madame Pince disappeared surprisingly fast and silent. Draco chuckled as soon as they were alone, and she turned to look at him, then huffed when she realized he was laughing at her.

"Which books should we keep?" Draco asked when she opened her mouth to make a snarky comment back.

"I still haven't looked through these three," Anna said, patting three very old looking books.

"Alright, you take those three, I'll take these two," Draco said, gesturing at his pile. One of his books looked to be about as thick as all of hers put together, so she didn't bother complaining about the difference. Instead, she grabbed four of the other books and went to put them away.

By Friday afternoon, the only thing Anna knew for sure was that her idea for a charm wasn't in any of the books they had looked through. The newer ones had index's to go through which made them easy, but the old ones were not very well organized and they'd had to skim every page, but in the end, Draco agreed to trying it.

Anna hadn't heard back from her mother yet. She wasn't sure if this was a good thing of not.

"I wish we could get off the school grounds for a bit," Draco said at dinner that evening. Anna looked up, not sure what he was talking about.

"Why?" She asked when he didn't continue. Pansy had gone back up to their room early, saying that she needed to get ready for her date the next day. Blaise was at quidditch practice, and their end of the table was mostly empty, but Draco still leaned in as though they were plotting something.

"I know there are more detailed books about spell creation in the Malfoy library," he said in an aggravated tone. "But I don't know what they are called so I can't just get someone to post them."

"Oh," Anna said, frowning in thought. The Hogwart's library was surprisingly lacking in the department of spell creation books. They didn't have their own section, and the two of them hadn't been able to find anything more descriptive than their very short chapter in their Charms NEWT level book.

"Maybe I could try to get away during the Hogsmeade weekend," Draco continued, but he was frowning a bit.

"Don't do anything that will get you in trouble with the Ministry," Anna said, rolling her eyes as she fished through her bag.

"Oh and you have a better idea?" Draco asked, sneering.

"Actually, I do," Anna said with a sigh. She did have a way, an already approved way, to get off the Hogwarts grounds, but she really didn't want to use it. She flattened the much crumpled schedule from her mother in front of her, quickly finding the small box that corresponded with today's date. There wasn't anything for Friday, but her mother had written in two events for Saturday, which Anna had previously crossed out. She used her wand to siphon off the most recently added ink, the glared down at the paper.

There was a breakfast interview for tomorrow morning, and a dinner party for that evening. She sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. She had begun forgoing makeup the week before, and she hadn't bothered to do much to her hair besides throw it up in a bun or ponytail. She knew there was no way for photographers to catch her unprepared here, so she didn't bother going through the effort.

"Okay," she said, her voice tired. "I have a way to get off the grounds, but it'll be a bit… complicated."

"Complicated how?" Draco asked, frowning down at the schedule, though she was sure he wouldn't understand much of it.

"Well, I can get us both off the grounds tomorrow, but it will involve going to a couple… events with me," Anna said, pulling out a parchment to write a quick note to her mother. "You won't have to do much, and it'll be really boring, but hopefully we will have most of the afternoon free to go to your library."

"You, er, want to come with?" He asked, his face closed off behind a mask again.

"God yes," Anna said. "If I'm getting us off the grounds, there is no way I'm going to spend time with my mother in her crazy mode longer than I have to."

"Er, right," he said, frowning.

"I'll just need to write my mum," Anna said, scribbling quickly. "She won't care who I bring so long as I actually go." She said this more to herself than to him. "But you will need something appropriate to wear. I think I can transfigure your robes though. And you will need a different name. Something more common."

"What's wrong with my name?" Draco asked, scowling at her. Anna nearly giggled as she rolled up her letter.

"Nothing's wrong with it, exactly," she began, choosing her words carefully. "But leaving with my mum will mean spending time in the muggle world, and you will need to blend in."

"Why can't I just leave with you and then go to the manor on my own?" Draco asked, his voice distasteful.

"My mum wouldn't let us blatantly break rules right away," Anna said, shrugging. "But if I build her up to it then we will have a better chance. I can tell her we are going out to lunch and she will probably be too busy to come with, then we can disapparate to wherever. But I still have the trace on me, and I don't have my license, so you will have to do it."

"Whatever," Draco said, shaking his head. "As long as it gets us off the grounds I'll do it."

"Great," Anna said, getting to her feet. "I have to go mail this and then I'll go talk to Headmistress McGonagall and convince her."

She left before Draco could protest, heading for the owlery. She used a school owl to send the letter, then made her way to the staff room, where she was sure there would be someone who could get the Headmistress for her.

As it turned out, she didn't need to find another professor. The Headmistress was leaving the Great Hall just as Anna came back in the front doors.

"Excuse me, Headmistress," Anna called, making the older woman turn, her face drawn into a frown.

"Yes miss Prewett?" She asked, her voice sharp.

"I was wondering if I could talk to you for a moment, about the schedule my mother sent me of when I am allowed to leave the grounds for my music things," Anna said, slightly out of breath. "I have some things tomorrow, and I was hoping to ask a favor. You see, in my charms class we were assigned this difficult project to work on, and my partner and I had been planning on working over the weekend, but my mother says that these two events tomorrow are very important for me to go to. We will have a lot of down time between them though, so I was hoping that I could bring my partner with me so we could work on our project during the day. My mum would take responsibility for both of us."

"And who is your partner for this assignment?" The Headmistress asked, her eyes narrowing a little.

"Draco Malfoy, ma'am," Anna said. She had been hoping she could leave his name out of it. McGonagall's eyes tightened a bit, but then her expression changed.

"Mr. Malfoy has agreed to this? To going out in the muggle world?" She asked.

"Yes ma'am," Anna said, nodding quickly.

"And you would be sure to only work on this out of sight of the muggles?" She asked, and Anna could feel her almost giving in. She nodded eagerly. "Well, as Mr. Malfoy is of age, and this weekend is a Hogsmede weekend, I suppose that arrangements could be made."

"Thank you so much!" Anna said, grinning widely. She was a little surprised that her idea had worked out so easily. Now all she had to do was wait for her mother to agree.

"Wait just a moment," the Headmistress said, making Anna turn back to her. "I hope that you will not let this muggle career you are starting to push your studies aside. A career can begin at any time with very similar results, but your schooling must be completed at this time. You cannot leave and then return when it suits you."

"Yes ma'am," Anna said, nodding seriously. "I know. I already told my mum that I won't be doing anything on school nights, even after I am of age. I want to finish my NEWT's first."

"Very well," she said, then gave Anna a nod and turned to walk regally up the stairs.

As dinner was already over, Anna turned to climb up the levels to her common room to work on some other homework. Before bed, she received a letter back from her mum, that said pretty much what Anna expected it to say. Yes she could bring a friend, so long as they didn't mess up the interview and could conduct themselves properly at a dinner party. Anna went through their shared bathroom and knocked on the door opposite hers until it opened. Draco had obviously been sleeping. His eyes were a little red, and he was scowling, and his hair was disheveled. He wore only boxers, with no shirt, and Anna blushed and looked at a point to the right of him as she relayed her news and told him when to be ready to leave.

"What was that about?" Pansy asked as Anna returned to their room, her face red. Pansy was lounging on her bed, reading a book, though it didn't look like one for class.

"Just some things about our Charm's project," Anna said, flopping down on her own bed.

"Mhm, right," Pansy said disbelievingly. Anna sighed but didn't reply, and Pansy dropped the subject in favor of sleep.

Anna woke at a little after four to a soft beeping coming from the watch she left on her bedside table to use as an alarm. She was lucky that Pansy was a heavy sleeper, or she was sure the other girl would have grumbled about the early hour. Anna knew she would grumble if she didn't have a good reason to be up. She might grumble anyway, she wasn't awake enough to decide yet.

A quick shower later found her dressed in muggle clothes appropriate for the interview, leaning over the bathroom counter in an effort to put on her makeup without getting any on her crisp white blouse.

By five she was ready to go, her wand and a few other things tucked into her purse, and her traveling cloak draped over her arm. While it was still early autumn outside, and therefore quite warm during the days, the nights and early mornings were chilly, even indoors, when there wasn't a hearth with a fire to keep them warm.

She didn't want to knock on the boys' door, not wanting to wake Blaise, but if they didn't leave soon they would be late. She would have tried opening the door, but the charm to keep the opposite sex out of their room while the front door was closed would send nasty little sparks up her arm, or so Pansy said.

She didn't need to worry for long though, because as she went back to the mirror to give her hair another check, the door opened from the other side, and Draco emerged, fully dressed and ready for the day.

Anna waited until they were out on the grounds to speak. Draco didn't look any more awake than she did.

"I think we should call you Drake, instead of Draco, to the muggles at least. Drake is a much more common name," Anna said as they walked quickly through the predawn lit grounds toward the gate.

"Whatever," Draco said passively.

"And I think we should give you a new surname too. Something else common, like Williams, or Taylor," she said. "And I'll need to transfigure your robes." He didn't reply, just shrugged. "And I don't think the muggles will try to talk to you, but if they do could you please be polite to them?"

"Fine," he said, his voice growing irritated.

When they reached Hogsmeade, Anna was quick to spot her mother, waiting for them outside the Three Broomsticks.

"Mum," Anna said in greeting, leaning in to hug her mother.

"You've gained weight," was her mothers return greeting.

"No I haven't," Anna said with a sigh. "I checked this morning. I'm the same as when I left."

"Well you could still do well to lose a few," Anna's mum said, then turned to Draco without leaving room for argument. Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over. "This won't do."

"Mum," Anna began, but her mother lifted her wand and quickly transfigured Draco's black robes into a common looking black muggle suit. Anna sighed again, but didn't comment. "This is my friend Drake Williams."

"I trust you know how to conduct yourself around muggles?" Anna's mother said, peering over him. He raised an eyebrow, and Anna could nearly sense the impolite answer he was about to give.

"Of course he does mum," Anna said. "We are going to be late."

"Right, of course," Anna's mum said, then held out her arm to her daughter, and the other to Draco. When they both had grabbed hold, the three of them disapparated with a crack, leaving the street empty once again.