Author's Note: Sad to say, all I own is Alex and anything else you don't remember reading in the original series.

Chapter 6 The Potions Madam

Alex was sitting in the train compartment sketching Ron and Harry as they played wizard's chess, green blurs flying by as the train sped toward Hogwarts. Wizard chess is a lot like Muggle chess, only that the pieces move of their own accord, and talk to you when they feel you're making a bad move. Harry's knight was arguing with him about sending him against the queen.

"Fine!" said Harry angrily, "I'll send the pawn then!"

Alex chuckled as she watched Harry's pawn move ahead, leaving Ron to take the king and win the game. Earlier that day, the four Weasley's, Harry, Hermione, and Alex had packed up their trunks into Ministry cars that Uncle Monty managed to get for them all. Alex smiled as she remembered the hurried good-byes on the platform. Mrs. Weasley had made sure she hugged all of them, going back twice with Harry and Alex and Hermione. Uncle Monty told her to be careful like always and swiftly kissed the top of her head before helping her onto the train just before it took off for the station.

The guys interrupted her thoughts by demanding to know what she had been up to while they were playing. She happily turned her book towards them and showed them the sketch.

"Is my nose really that long?" Ron asked, squinting at Alex's drawing.

"Why is my forehead all wrinkly?" Harry asked.

"For Ron, from my angle it was but only because of how your head was tilted. And Harry, your forehead is like that because you've been frowning about losing to Ron, yet again."

Everyone laughed and Ron pulled out a newspaper clipping, showing it to Alex. As Alex's eyes darted across the page, she saw it was about her dad. The ministry was giving up its all-out mad hunt for Black but assured the public that they would keep a look out. They seemed to think he was not as big a threat as before.

"He was never a threat!" said Alex, handing the clipping back to Ron, "I wish Fudge believed us when we told him! If it weren't for Snape telling everyone we were confused, we would have had a chance."

Just then, Ginny raced into their apartment and all talk about Sirius stopped immediately. Ginny seemed to notice something was up, but didn't ask.

"What's wrong, Ginny?" Hermione asked.

"Crabbe and Goyle are going around the compartments taking everyone's sweets," she panted, clutching a handful of candy, "I only just got out of my own and ran here."

"Stay with us, Ginny," Alex said, pulling out her wand with her eyes glinting with excitement, "I've been meaning to give those two morons a good jinxing."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Do I need a reason?" Alex asked mischievously.

Unfortunately for Alex, she never got the chance. The train slowed down as they arrived at the Hogsmede Station. The students grabbed their animals and trunks and set off to the carriages while the first years went to the boats. As they approached, Alex saw the thestrals who pulled the carriages. Slipping away from the others, she came over and stroked one of their heads.

"Did you have a good summer?" Alex whispered to the bony, horse-like creature.

"I did, thank you," the thestral replied, "It's good to see everyone back here where things are better than the rest of the world."

Alex patted the creature's nose and went into the carriage with her friends. They arrived at the oak front doors and they went inside the Great Hall.

The Great Hall was the biggest room in the castle, although it may have been thought that because of its ceiling enchanted to look like the sky. This made it seem as though there was no ceiling in that room. Alex, Harry, Hermione, and Ron sat down at the Gryffindor table and waited for the Sorting to take place. Once all the little first years were Sorted, the headmaster stood up and the hall was silent.

"Welcome everyone to another wonderful and exciting year at Hogwarts!" Professor Dumbledore said to the school, his bright blue eyes winking cheerfully behind his half-moon glasses, "Just a few announcements before we all eat and become too full of supper to pay attention. First off, our caretaker, Mr. Filch, has a list of banned items on his office door and part of the floor as well. If you have any questions about what is considered banned, please see Mr. Filch before you decide to use it.

"Also, the Forbidden Forest has that name for a reason. Please do not go wandering around in there for I do not wish to have the centaurs bring you back to the castle because you were in their territory. They tend to, ah, make sure that if you do trespass on their land, you are properly shown the way out."

Alex shivered when she remembered Harry telling her about the centaurs in her first year.

"A new announcement this year, though very important, in light of a series of events last year, I must ask all students to stay well away from the Whomping Willow. As some students can tell you, the name describes the tree perfectly." Dumbledore turned his eyes to Alex and the others and she smiled sheepishly.

"And finally, we have a new professor this year. He just sent word that he is running a little late and will be here very soon. Now, everyone dig in!"

Food appeared on the golden plates and Alex felt her stomach growl loudly. She took all the food she could find and began eating, listening to the discussions about the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"Can't be Snape," said Lee Jordan cheerfully, "He's up there now sulking into his turkey."

"They had a werewolf last time, do you think they'll get a vampire?" Parvati Patil, a girl in Alex's year and dormitory, asked nervously.

"I don't think so," Lavender Brown, Parvati's friend, said, "I mean, look at the uproar over Professor Lupin. He was the best teacher we ever had and people still sent letters to Dumbledore for him to be fired."

"I wonder what happened to Professor Lupin," Alex said to Hermione in a whisper.

"Maybe he found another teaching post?" suggested Hermione.

"I hope so, he was very good."

Desserts appeared after the main course and Alex was about to take a bite of her brownie when the door of the Great Hall opened and a man came in. That is, if you could call him a man. His face was hard with scars everywhere, as though a wild animal had clawed at his face. His one eye was small and dark while the other one was large and bright blue. As Alex watched it, it seemed to move of its own free will and not affecting the man's other eye in the least. The man carried a staff and was leaning heavily on it, his one foot making a clunking sound when he stepped on it. As Alex took a closer look, she saw it was made of wood, the same kind as the staff he was carrying.

"I don't believe it," said Ron, "It's Mad-Eye Moody!"
"Who?" Harry, Alex, and Hermione said together.

"He's the most famous Auror, or dark wizard catcher, ever! Almost all the dark wizards who are in Azkaban are in there because of him."

"He looks pretty beat up," noted Harry as Mad-Eye Moody walked up and greeted the Headmaster.

"Yeah well, we thought Lupin was beat up too, and he lasted," said Alex.

"Everyone," said Dumbledore over the noise and the hall was quiet, "This is your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Alastor Moody!"

Everyone clapped, although most seemed awestruck that such a famous person was teaching in their school. Moody never smiled, but nodded to the crowd of students. Both his eyes fell on Harry and Alex and his blue one began whizzing from one to the other. Alex frowned, could he know about her scar? No one seemed to know about it, except those who had been there that night and those she had told.

Alex returned to her dessert, but found she wasn't hungry anymore. She had worked hard to keep her secret hidden from the school. She didn't want people looking at her like some thing on display or blaming her for things beyond her control like they did with Harry. Alex was quite happy when it was time to go to the dormitories. She and Hermione were the first ones for the fourth year in a row, thanks to the many passageways they had learned. They called their usual beds and watched as Maggie and Lavender fought over the bed by the door.

Maggie was a short girl with blonde hair and cold blue eyes. All of her family had been in Slytherin and she was upset in being a Gryffindor, taking her anger out on her roommates, usually Alex. Finally, Maggie ended up with the bad bed, for the fourth year in a row, and everyone fell asleep.

…...

The next day, Alex was up before the sun was. Quietly, she went to the bathroom and got ready for school. She pulled on her robes and her favorite pair of jeans, which now had a few stitches where she had torn them last year when she broke her leg.

Alex stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide on what to do with her hair. As she stared at herself, she noticed she wasn't as scrawny as she had been when she first came. She seemed to be filling out in areas, making her look more grown up. Alex smiled, her face still the same, and decided to leave her hair down today. She took a hair tie, just in case she had Potions and had to put her long, thick hair back.

Alex left the bathroom and found everyone still asleep. She looked at her watch and saw it was still four in the morning. Sighing, Alex took her bag and went to the common room. She pulled out a piece of parchment and wrote two letters, one for her dad and the other for Uncle Monty. She told them both that she was at school and hoped to hear from them soon. Seeing she still had time until breakfast was served, Alex headed to the Owlry, invisible to anyone how would be walking the corridors thanks to her necklace.

Alex's necklace not only served as a locket to keep a picture of her parents in, but it was also an Invisibility Necklace. It allowed the wearer to become invisible with a turn of a knob. As she walked, Alex opened her locket and smiled. She had changed the picture to her real father, but put a strong charm on it so that anyone who was looking at it that didn't know the truth would see her mother and her supposed father instead of her real one. Alex wished she could let everyone know who her father was but, in Sirius' first letter to her, he made her swear that she wouldn't say anything for fear the students would think she tried to help him get to Harry.

Alex opened the door to the Owlry and became visible again. She called up to Monty, her pure black owl named after her uncle, and he swooped down.

"I need you to take this to Uncle Monty and Sirius," Alex said to Monty as she tied the letters to his leg.

"No problem. Can I go see Henry while I'm in the neighborhood?" Monty asked pleadingly.

Alex smiled and nodded. Henry was Erin's owl that Alex had given her at the end of her school year. Erin had decided not to name him Sirius for fear of people confusing him with the madman. It was Malfoy's owl's baby that she helped bring into the world and Malfoy had given it to her because he couldn't take care of two owls.

"Once you finish your visit, I have one more thing to ask of you," she said, "You think you could find Professor Lupin? I'd like to keep in touch with him but I have no idea where he is now."

"Of course! I'll ask around as I fly. I haven't failed you yet and don't plan on doing so anything soon."

Alex laughed as she led Monty to the open window and watched him fly off into the rising sun. She stood there for a few minutes, not looking at anything in particular when she saw a very large figure moving across the grounds. Alex recognized the broad shoulders of her friend Hagrid, the school gamekeeper and her Care of Magical Creatures teacher.

Alex went back to the common room and up to her dormitory to find the room in a strained silence. She looked at Hermione, who only shook her head and jerked it to Maggie's four poster bed. Alex sighed and waited for Hermione to finish getting ready. Once they were both out of the dormitory, Hermione spoke.

"Apparently Maggie had a pretty rough summer," Hermione said bitterly as they walked to the Great Hall, "Her mother didn't want her to come back this year-"

"Wish she didn't," muttered Alex.

"-because of what happened with Professor Lupin. She was going on about how it was stupid of Dumbledore to hire a werewolf and how things around here are going downhill and they need a better head of school to run it. Then, she suggested Professor Snape take over to Dumbledore."

"Is she mad?" Alex cried as they sat down to eat, "If she really wants to see things go downhill, let Snape run the school. The entire place would be devoted to Dark Magic and we'd all learn how to curse each other's brains out!"

"Well, all three of us let her have it," Hermione said, "Lavender was saying how if she really wants to be a Slytherin, ask to switch houses and stop taking everything out on us. Parvati was swearing in another language and saying how she has some nerve to talk about change when she's too much of a chicken to change houses."

"And what did you say?" Alex asked curiously.

"I simply told her that if she had a problem with how this school was run," Hermione said calmly, but she was turning red with embarrassment, "Then she should take it up with the Headmaster and quit being such an idiotic-"

But Ron and Harry joined them and Hermione's face, if possible, went even redder. Alex looked at her with raised eyebrows but bit into her toast and remained silent. Professor McGonagall came around with their schedules and Alex looked at Hermione's.

"Hey, you dropped Muggle Studies with Divination!" Alex said happily, "Now you don't need to do the whole time-travel thing!"

"It was getting to be way too much for me to handle," Hermione said with a smile, "I was missing out on so much, so I decided to drop the subjects that weren't for me."

"Damn, I'm going to miss you and Trelawney going at each other," said Ron as he swallowed a mouthful of porridge with difficulty, "That was always the highlight of my day."

"Thanks Ron," said Hermione and gave him a light shove, causing him to spill hot porridge all over him. Alex laughed along with the rest of the table as Ron cursed and wiped his robes.

"EW!" Alex exclaimed, looking at her schedule, "We have double Potions on a Monday first thing! That's like waking up, getting punched in the face, and then having to brew the Polyjuice Potion!"

"Oh stop it, Alex," said Harry, as they finished their breakfast and headed to the dark dungeons, "At least you're good at Potions. Not only does Snape hate me, but he can take it out on me during class. He can't do that with you because you do everything right!"

"Trust me," said Alex as they waited outside the classroom, standing far away from the Slytherins, "If I were to get one tiny thing wrong with my potion, I'd never hear the end of it."

The door opened and the Slytherins and Gryffindors entered the classroom. Alex and Hermione sat in front of the boys and began pulling out their books, cauldrons, and ingredients. Alex's leg moved up and down very fast in anticipation of their new year of Potions. Inside, Alex knew that Snape would start out with a "hard" potion to get them back into the swing of things, and she was ready for a challenge.

Alex was right. They had to create a potion that, if brewed incorrectly, would likely poison the drinker. Once Snape told them to get ready, Alex began pulling out the ingredients and read the directions to herself, her finger running along the words. She was in her element right now; Potions was one of the only classes where she felt at home in. Sure she loved her other subjects, with the exception of Arithmancy and History of Magic, but in this class she always knew what she was doing.

As Alex read the last set of instructions, she frowned slightly. It said to put the powdered petals into the potion and then stir clockwise. Yet in another potion Alex had done last year, she had found that if you add a counterclockwise stir every seventh stir, the color of the potion became clearer. Throwing caution to the wind, Alex put the powdered petals in and stirred clockwise seven times and then counterclockwise. She did this until the potion turned a "bright emerald green" as the directions said it should. Looking around, she saw that everyone was far behind her as usual. Alex was always the first to finish her potion, no matter how hard it was supposed to be. She spat into her potion for good luck, and to help the ingredients reach their full potential, and bottled a sample of the potion. She placed it on Snape's desk and went back to her cauldron to clean her area up. She found Snape standing by her cauldron, his eyes unreadable.

"See me after dinner tonight," he said menacingly, so that almost everyone could hear.

"Have I done something wrong, sir?" Alex asked as politely as she could.

"We need to discuss something of great importance," Snape replied and continued going around to all the other students.

"What was that all about?" Ron asked as Alex sat down, slightly pale.

"I have no idea," Alex said, "But I have a feeling it isn't going to be good."

After the double Potions lesson, the four went to the Great Hall for lunch. Alex slumped into a chair and began eating her meal, her face betraying her inner worry.

"Relax Alex," said Harry encouragingly, "Snape's probably going to give you an award for being the best Potion student since my mum. He only acted upset because he doesn't want to."

"What do we have next?" Alex asked, waving her hand at Harry and shaking her head.

"History of Magic and Arithmancy," Hermione said and Alex groaned, "But after that is a free period. We could visit Hagrid!"

"I'd like that," Alex said, cheering up a little, "Maybe he got another hippogriff!"

Last year, Hagrid had introduced hippogriffs to the class, large creatures that were part bird and part horse. During that first lesson, Malfoy had gotten attacked by one, named Buckbeak, because he insulted it. While traveling back to rescue Sirius, Harry and Hermione had saved Buckbeak from being executed.

The four left the Great Hall and went to History of Magic. This class was unanimously the most boring of all classes at Hogwarts. It was the only one taught by a ghost, only because he never realized he had died. Professor Binns would spend his class lecturing the students about battles and wars, which Alex would have found interesting if not for the fact that Binns had a droning sort of voice that made almost everyone fall straight to sleep. Only Hermione seemed to break Binns' spell and stay awake so she could take notes.

The bell rang and everyone began packing up for their next class. Alex and Hermione walked to Arithmancy, which was taught by Professor Nellie, a white haired man with dark eyes who wheezed when he talked but was very kind.

The girls walked in and found the professor sitting at his desk. He smiled as they entered and nodded to the two small tables they had used last year.

"I'll let you all chose your seats this year," Professor Nellie wheezed, "Only four per table and please try to intermix with all houses."

Alex and Hermione sat down and began pulling out their books. People began to file in and the girls were joined by the Ravenclaw boy while Ernie Macmillan and the other Hufflepuff girl sat at the other table. Malfoy and the other Slytherin boys came in and looked around. The other Slytherins darted for the two empty seats and Malfoy calmly walked over to Alex's table.

"Welcome back, everyone!" Professor Nellie said with a smile, "I'm glad to see some inter-school mixing this year! I decided to start of with another packet to see how much you all have retained during the summer months. This year's prize is a homework pass for a two nights' worth of homework. So, try your best and you can come up and get the packets."

The Ravenclaw boy went to get the packets and the two Gryffindor girls were left with Malfoy.

"Your friends left you hanging," Alex said, gesturing to the other Slytherins at the other table.

"Just because they're in my house, doesn't mean they're my friends," commented Malfoy, "I'm surprised they even passed the exam. They spent all last year cheating off the others at their table, I would hear them bragging about it afterwards."

The Ravenclaw came back and handed out the packets. For the first few problems, Alex was able to figure them out. Once they got further on, however, she struggled to comprehend the problems and took to letting Hermione do the work while she tried to follow along. The others seemed to know what they were doing and Alex felt more embarrassed by the minute. She was quite glad when they finished the work and Malfoy took the packets to Professor Nellie. Alex let out a sigh of relief and looked at her watch. They still had fifteen more minutes left until freedom.

"That wasn't so bad," Hermione said, "I think we managed to get them all."

"Yeah, that last one was tricky though," the Ravenclaw boy said, "I'm Nick by the way."

"I'm Hermione and that's Alex," she said and Alex smiled, "I think I've seen you in the library before."

"Probably," Nick said, a small smile appearing, "I practically live there during the school year."

"Same with her," said Alex, nodding at Hermione, "We have to drag her out of there for meals and sleep."

Malfoy came back and they sat in silence for the last couple of minutes. When the bell rang, as Alex put her stuff away, she heard the other table scrambling for answers. She and Hermione left the classroom and walked to the common room, dropped their stuff off with the boys, and headed outside to Hagrid's hut.

Author's Note: Hello all! So what did you think of this chapter? It's more of a filler because the next one has a lot of fun stuff in it. Still, all opinions are greatly appreciated. Just remember that any and all flames will be taken and stored for the Battle of Hogwarts scene to be used against the people of Hogwarts. Would you really want to fuel the Death Eaters to destroy the Hogwarts castle? Didn't think so…

On another note, I will try to update as often as I can. However, I have my graduation in a month so things are gonna be kinda crazy around here. I'm in the middle of AP testing which is a living hell. If you don't know what they are, you are very lucky. I also have finals at the end of May as well as a bunch of senior class activities. I just wanted to keep you informed in case I'm not very regular with my updates.

Now that business is taken care of, don't forget to let me know what you think of this. Thank you to all who put me on alert and in their favorites, as well as those lovely readers who reviewed. You all are amazing! :D