Chapter 9

Second Round

5th October 1991, Hogwarts, Scotland

After the intervention of Dumbledore brought back a relative calm to Hogwarts, the days seemed to pass at supersonic speed for Alexandra Potter. She was still friendless as ever, and the looks of fear, anger or ignorance were present in quantities, but Alexandra had decided to let it go. If people were not willing to make the distinction between her and her father, then she had obviously no interest in befriending said persons. She had been alone at Privet Drive and in primary school, it wasn't exactly a new situation. In the meanwhile, the school year passed.

History class under Professor Binns and Tiroflan had become officially rest time or nap time, depending on the person which spoke about it. No one except Hermione Granger, the most motivated student of Hogwarts, could figure what Binns was muttering in his ghostly ramblings. No one, and this included the aforementioned Hermione Granger, could manage to motivate Professor Tiroflan into teaching History. The man was simply too lazy, period. Alexandra and the rest of Ravenclaw House studied the history books on their own free time, the Hufflepuffs used the archives left by countless generations of Hufflepuffs predecessors to study, the Slytherins stole or copied the information from the two first Houses, and the Gryffindors did nothing. Except Granger of course.

The same situation repeated itself in Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Professor Quirell passed his time stuttering and inventing fictional stories of his supposed-adventures in the Balkans, and Professor Devkins losses of memory were worsening. Sometimes, the latter even forgot he was a teacher for goodness' sake, and the former was ridiculous with his stuttering and his turban. Three days ago, Quirell had finally agreed to teach them a basic offensive spell, the Flipendo Charm. Alexandra, who knew the spell for more than half a month now, had understood nothing of the teacher's explications. The Defence Against the Dark Arts Professors were useless, so it was self-study, self-study and self-study. Contrary to History, the Gryffindors showed more enthusiasm to learn and improve their repertoire of hexes, although to what extent the performance of Neville Longbottom in this course boosted them was unknown.

Potions, on the opposite side, had rapidly become the bane of the first-years existence. Contrary to what Alexandra had expected, Professor Snape had not improved his manner of teaching the Ravenclaws-Hufflepuffs after the first session. A short tutorial had been given on the different safety measures to brew in class. That was all. There was no explanation or lesson how to brew dangerous substances: on the best of days they had a short lecture and the instructions to brew the potion on the blackboard. On a bad day (which had already happened once), the children had to search the instructions themselves in their book. No help was forthcoming; either Snape passed his time grading their essays during their brewing times, or he walked around them, making awful remarks and lapidary comments, criticising the first-years for every mistake they did, no matter how minor and unimportant it was. Snape had not the behaviour and the patience to be a teacher, and it showed. About half of the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff first-years were outright failing this class for the moment. The only consolation was that they did better than the Gryffindors. If Potions class was a moment of worry for the Ravenclaws, it was pure hell for the Lions. Any abuse directed towards the Eagles and the Badgers by Snape was multiplied ten times by Snape when it came to the Gryffindors. Incorrect answers removed House points by the dozens. Leo Black was often expulsed before the end of the class for having the temerity to answer back to Snape. House Slytherin was supported, complimented, trained by their own Head of House (some rumours said Professor Snape taught his class beforehand how to brew the Potion of the day). Snape's favourite, the whining Draco Malfoy, took no greater joy than throw diverse volatile products in the cauldrons of his rivals and enemies, as well as his housemates who risked making a better Potion than him at the end of the hour. The children belonging to House Gryffindor were denigrated and given awful marks, whether they deserved them or not. Sometimes, it was a wonder there had been no deaths, although Nigel Wolpert visited the infirmary every Friday.

Alas for the House of the Snakes, Potions seemed to be the only area where they had the opportunity to shine. If the courses of Transfiguration the Ravenclaws shared with them were any indication, pure-bloods were at the bottom of the rankings when "real" and complicated magic had to be practised and the Professor had a modicum of impartiality. To be honest with herself, Alexandra had to admit the subject of Transfiguration was horribly difficult. None of the other classes managed to reach such levels of challenge. The theory was hard enough; casting the spells was tiring in terms of concentration, imagination and sheer power. After having first changed a match into a needle, they then had the task to change it back. By the fourth week of school, they had to transform different small objects built in wood into metal, then to bring back to their original shape. So far, only Padma Patil, Morag McDougal, Hermione Granger and Alexandra herself had managed to succeed all the transformations demanded. Unlike History or Defence Against the Dark Arts, where every class of the week brought no advantage whether you had listened or not, efforts mattered with Professor McGonagall. Achieving the transfiguration for the class and giving back your essays on time limited the amount of homework and assignments you had to give back at the next lesson. The vast majority of the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs, Houses academically-inclined, handled it more or less well. The Slytherins and the Gryffindors did not. Crabble and Goyle had yet to transfigure their first match into a needle. Bulstrode, Vaisey, Nott and the Carrow Twins were still trying to transfigure back the needles in a permanent manner. As sad as it was, the only Slytherin first-year on the level of the Ravenclaws was Draco Malfoy. Which gave a very sad idea how bad the level of the Snakes really was.

In some manners, the same thing repeated itself in Herbology, even if it was more a dilemma to say if it was the Slytherins who were bad or the fact the pure-bloods really disliked putting their gracious and noble hands in the mud. Still, the warm and humid atmosphere of the greenhouse was less and less difficult to handle, as the temperatures in Scotland were dropping at an alarming rate. After a month of studying fungi, they now were studying the different types of magical mushrooms and growing them. A thing that should have been absolutely harmless, if Gregory Goyle had not proved his lack of intelligence yesterday by eating one, which revealed to be the equivalent of a magical laxative. Sending Crabble with him to the infirmary had been one of the funniest things that had happened since September 1st.

Speaking of the other classes, Alexandra had decided she really didn't enjoy Astronomy once the moment of novelty was past. Not only it disrupted her sleep schedule, but seeing the same constellations, stars and planets was boring after a while (which for her was two or three sessions). To add to this lack of interest, Astronomy was rarely an important factor in magic use. There were certain rituals, some potions, a few spells who needed a deep knowledge of Astronomy to function. Most of them were banned for being "Dark" by the Ministry, of course. No, Astronomy was not very interesting. Once she left Hogwarts, Alexandra could buy a non-telescope in a non-magical shop and observe the stars when she wanted, she truly doubted there would be more difference from what was seen in the sky.

Charms, on the other hand, was her favourite class. Professor Flitwick, in her humble opinion, was the best teacher of Hogwarts, as her tiny Head of House managed without effort to put a lot of magic practise in his lessons and give them a clear understanding of the magical theory behind each charm. The first two weeks, Flitwick had taught them Lumos and its variants allowing to use blue light, green light,...then the lessons had taught them useful charms for everyday utilisation: charms to sharpen your quills, prepare correctly your parchment, charms to clean your clothes, the Mending Charm Reparo, to repair objects which had been broken, and plenty of others useful magical tips. The fact that the Ravenclaws were with the Gryffindors also guaranteed a lot of fun, with Seamus Finnegan creating an explosion half the time he drawled his wand, Hermione Granger always looking like she tried to jump at every question, Ronald Weasley giving no attention to the class and sometimes sleeping through the course, Lavender Brown and the other Gryffindors girls gossiping in their corner.

The private lessons of duelling, always with Professor Flitwick, had become her moment where every week she lost most of her confidence and certainties. After one month and one week of magical instruction, Alexandra knew now four transfigurations spells, nine charms, seven jinxes, five hexes and three curses. As far as she knew, only Neville Longbottom and Leo Black knew more magic offensive spells among the first-years than her, a fact she was particularly proud of. It made no differences against Flitwick. In five private lessons, she had not managed to hit her Head of House once. The tiny Charm Masters had not sweated once either, or raised a magical shield, or taken off his smiling grin when they duelled. In fact, calling these spars "duels" was greatly stretching the truth, in Alexandra's opinion. Every round consisted in half a minute of her trying to launch a volley of spells, dodging, jumping, running and doing her best to survive a few seconds to the multiple stream and waves of magic coming her way. Flitwick was simply on another planet compared to Alexandra, moving at a superhuman speed and landing hits with a devastating precision. Last night, he had launched a vast blast of wind to end the last round, sending her like a doll in the middle of a tornado over the room until she admitted defeat. She was still sore of it right now, fifteen hours after the deed.

For now, it was a Saturday afternoon, and as she had finished her homework in the morning, Alexandra had gone exploring the castle. It had been a month Alexandra had entered Hogwarts, and she was confident she hadn't seen half of the rooms, to say nothing of the secrets the old castle was guarding. Marching through an abandoned corridor, she noticed all the rooms in that wing seemed to be abandoned.

Letting her curiosity take the best part of her, the Potter Heiress opened the last door before the stairs. By the atrocious noise the door made when she opened it, she concluded it hadn't been used in at least a decade. Judging by the maps, the old wizard photos and the dusty decorations, the piece had at one point or another in Hogwarts history been used as the base or headquarters for some kind of club. A long time ago obviously, because the vast amount of dust, the blocked windows, the ruined colours of a Slytherin banner made painfully clear Alexandra was the first visitor this room had for a very long time.

After a search of several minutes, she found a photo still in good condition compared to the ruined others on the walls. On it, about sixty or seventy students were smiling under a large banner proclaiming them as "The Hogwarts Adventurers club of 1970". It was interesting to note Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, Slytherins and Gryffindors were present on the picture, proving that the divisions of today between the Houses had not been that bad when the photo was taken. Today Slytherin and Gryffindor posing for a photograph was simply unthinkable. They were also all concentrated on the same year of school, if the heights and the size of the students were any indication. That was a sobering fact for Alexandra. She had never heard of the Adventurer's Club, so she supposed it had been disbanded, but her own promotion at the Hogwarts Sorting Feast had welcomed only forty-five students. She counted the numbers of persons figuring on the photo taken in 1970 and arrived to the number of 58 students. It was not very likely wizards and witches had at one moment or another been all participating in the same club, so this promotion was in all probability even bigger.

Leaving the room and closing the door behind her in a loud rumbling, she watched the corridor with a new look now. Initially, she had believed the castle had had empty wings because it was the way the Headmaster and his staff wanted it: as a result if a new teacher was hired, the new professor could take an entire wing for himself, his classroom and his office. The photo was delivering things in a more sinister view: Hogwarts was looking emptier because it had less students, and so less need for professors and adults to teach them. The only question was where all these students had gone.

Even with her limited knowledge of Wizarding History, Alexandra felt she knew already the answer. War. The only event of note which could explain between 1970 and 1991 the disappearance of more than a quarter of the children enrolling at the best magical school of the British Isles was the magical civil war which had been fought between 1977 and 1981. Still, she hadn't realised the war had been so bad. All the History books in the library were so busy trumpeting the exploit of Neville Longbottom and singing the praises of Albus Dumbledore and the Ministry that there was no real account of the dead and the casualties list. Not at Hogwarts anyway. But if half of the magical student population had really left Britain in one fashion or another... that wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.

"Potter!"

Her thoughts brutally interrupted, Alexandra turned and grimaced. Alex Sykes and two fourth-years Ravenclaws were behind her in the corridor. They had all drawn their wands. Damn.

"Remember me, Potter?" Snarled Sykes.

His tone convinced Alexandra there was no point in trying to appease the older Ravenclaw: his face was a picture of hate. She noticed several scars on him that had not been there previously; as Madam Pomfrey was quite efficient in healing these sort of injuries, either he had left before the nurse could heal him or she had not wanted to leave without a reminder of the Sorting evening's battle.

"How could I forget the courageous and noble Alex Sykes," answered Alexandra in her best sarcastic tone, taking the opportunity to draw her wand from her holster and take a battle stance."The man who believes fighting a first-year on twenty-to-one odds is fair game?"

Sykes's face grew red at her insinuation he was unable to win unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favour. His two followers behind him grew uneasy, the reminder of this particular night not a pleasant memory for them.

"I am going to kill you Potter," Sykes shouted in a crazy voice."Because of you I will never be prefect and I lost all chances to get a good job when I leave Hogwarts! This is your fault! BOMBARDA MAXIMA!"

Alexandra ran to the stairs nearby just in time, as an enormous explosion rocked the door and the wall where she had been one moment ago. When the smoke cleared, there was a huge hole where the door had been.

She felt sick at this moment. Sykes had truly wanted to murder her. Then the training Professor Flitwick had taught her asserted itself. She shouted back a "FUMOS!" to disappear in the smoke, then began to rush up the stairs on another floor, leaving half a dozen of the basic Trap Jinx at the bottom of the stairs.

Alexandra heard a "AFTER HER!" from an enraged Sykes and she smiled. An angered enemy didn't think well, a fact she had learnt well with Dudley and his band of brutes pursuing through Little Whinging.

A shout of pain informed her one of her traps had caught at least one victim. Alexandra ran into the first corridor of the fifth floor in range and hid behind a pillar.

"So who is a coward now Potter?" Snarled Sykes, emerging from the smoke alone."It's not me who is running away like a- "

Alexandra did not left him the time to complete the sentence. Sykes in his precipitation had believed she was still on the stairs, while in fact she was in the corridor just behind him.

At the moment he started to taunt her, she casted a "PETRIFICUS TOTALUS" which took him in the head. Sykes collapsed on his back, immobilised on the spot.

The other two Ravenclaws, emerging in turn from the smoky stairs and seeing their leader fall, began to rain destruction on the corridor screaming the same incantation over and over again: "BOMBARDA! BOMBARDA! BOMBARDA! "

Alexandra rolled and ran behind different pillars, throwing several "FUMOS" to hamper the visibility and the precision of her opponents. And then when the two older students stopped for a moment to catch their breath, she counterattacked.

Against the power of the spells she had just been targeted, the two Tongue-Tying curses she hit her enemies in return with lethal accuracy were quite unimpressive, but they did the job. The two boys were not able to speak, and so apparently could not do any magic to counter her last magical attack. They were defenceless. It was time for pay-back.

The next thirty seconds were a one-side fight. As her two Ravenclaw opponents had just tried to murder her, Alexandra was not in any mood for mercy. She threw a good dozen of her nastiest jinxes and hexes on her two targets, and when she was finished the two young men looked like strange orcs with boils, pustules, tentacles, mucus and different colours plastered upon their skins. For good measure, Alexandra applied the same treatment to the paralysed Sykes and then hit them again with three overpowered Petrificus Totalus.

Tired, she took the time to grab the wands of Sykes and his friends, and then left the junction between the corridor and the stairs which looked like a battlefield. While she had planned to go to Flitwick to tell him of the incident, Alexandra was exhausted and only managed to reach the Ravenclaw common room before falling on her bed, mentally and physically drained.

6th October 1991, Hogwarts, England

When she woke up on Sunday morning, Alexandra was really surprised to see the assassination on her had been completely unnoticed by the rest of Hogwarts. Not that she was kidding herself in believing she was among the students the staff of the school would mourn should the professors and the children learnt of her demise, but attacks on students tended to be notorious events even at the worst of times, and Sykes and the other boys being admitted to the infirmary should have made the news.

But as she arrived in the frequented corridors, the students whispering in low voices the names "Malfoy", "Longbottom", "Weasley" and "Black", she realised the reason why Sykes and his little plot to murder her had been missed was because the Headmaster and his staff had bigger fishes to catch. Just before passing the double doors of the Great Hall, a glance at the hourglasses showed a stunning contrast to the previous count the day before when they had been plenty of emeralds in the Slytherin hourglass and a few rubies in the Gryffindor one. Now the two hourglasses had only black, charcoal stones, in them, proclaiming to the entire populace of Hogwarts the Lions and the Snakes had dropped in the negative points for the second time of the year. Or the third. Or the fourth. Oh, well, they had dropped in the negative points again. Ravenclaw was now solidly installed in first place, with Hufflepuff a distant second. The count of the points was as followed:

Ravenclaw: 246 points.

Hufflepuff: 214 points.

Slytherin:-50 points.

Gryffindor:-120 points.

The Slytherins and the Gryffindors had lost each nearly 150 points in a single day when there were no classes! What sort of stupidity Longbottom and Malfoy had done this time?

Settling at her favourite place on the Ravenclaw table, Alexandra began to eat, listening discreetly a Hufflepuff recounting the latest exploit of the Boy-Who-Lived. Unlike the broom-and-necklace affair in the first Flying lesson, this new chapter in the struggle between Houses was far clearer in its reports. It had been another rather straightforward attempt initiated by Draco Malfoy to have his revenge on Neville Longbottom. As the leader of the first-year Gryffindor had received a brand-new broom or another thing from his grandmother, the leader of the first-year Slytherins had challenged Longbottom to an honour duel. The place of the duel? A corridor on the third floor. Specifically, the corridor where their dear Headmaster had promised the students "a very painful death" to those who dared to enter on the first night at school. Longbottom, Black and Weasley had walked there, ready to give the Slytherins a new humiliation, only to be welcomed by Professor Snape and the caretaker Filch, who took one hundred and fifty points from Gryffindor for being out of bounds and a month of detentions.

Draco Malfoy had never had any intention to go this honour duel. It didn't avoid the loss of one hundred and fifty points Professor McGonagall took from Slytherin for the "joke" of Malfoy. As Alexandra turned her eyes to the Slytherin table, she noticed Malfoy had lost quite a bit of reputation on the last day, seeing the disgusted face of some sixth and seventh-years young adults. Flitwick lecture in her private lesson had been accurate: honour duels, while absolutely illegal in the eyes of the Ministry, were quite deadly and serious affairs, where the reputation of each wizard who participated was deeply involved. Draco Malfoy had just thrown this custom away like dirt for a temporary advantage.

His threats of "When my father hears of this...", "My Father is on the Board of Governors, you will see..." and the accusations which went with them "This is all Longbottom's fault...", "Bloodtraitors, all of them..." didn't boost his reputation anymore and apart from Crabble and Goyle, every Slytherin was trying to ignore Malfoy this morning, except Pansy Parkinson and done or two Slytherins completely servile to the Malfoy family.

"POTTER!"

The shout was so loud all conversations between the students stopped immediately to see who had the bad manners to intervene like that at breakfast. They didn't have to wait long.

Alex Sykes and his two friends entered the hall, under the laughs and the applauds of the students. The three of them had apparently not been at the infirmary between the moment of their defeat and now. Indeed, the three fourth-years Ravenclaws had the appearance she had left them with after throwing at them her torrent of hexes. Before dozens of students, in full light, they looked absolutely hideous.

"GIVE ME BACK MY WAND POTTER!" Screamed Sykes, who sounded even more insane than yesterday, if that was possible.

She could not refrain herself to sigh.

"Why should I?" She politely asked. "You tried to murder me the day before Sykes. Why would I give you your wand when we both know the moment you have it back you will try to murder me again?"

The silent in the Great Hall was absolute, with only a few murmurs coming from some students.

"Why you little..." Snarled Sykes."I will ... I will..." The words were evidently failing him.

"Miss Potter, I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding between you and Mr Sykes," interrupted the soft, reasonable and venerable voice of Headmaster Dumbledore. The man, draped in flamboyant violet and gold shining robes, was showing to the world the very image of a noble Gandalf-like wizard, with the silver hair, beard and the pointed hat.

"If you give back their wand to Mister Sykes and his friends, I'm sure all will be forgiven."

For the first time, Alexandra watched the man in open disbelief. Surely the Headmaster of such a prestigious school like Hogwarts could not be that delusional, right? But as she watched the man smiled genially, she realised he really meant it. That left only two options. Either the man was really senile or he simply didn't care about the truth. In every case, he had no place being a Headmaster in a school of children.

She stood from her chair, and walked in direction of the Head Table. The Headmaster smile even got larger, until she reached Professor Flitwick.

"Miss Potter? What are you doing?" the voice of Albus Dumbledore asked her.

She withdrew the three wands she had taken from her opponents and gave them to her Head of House. The silence was total in the hall. No conversation, no whisper was coming from the students or the professors.

"Sykes tried to murder me with a Bombarda Maxima Professor," she told Flitwick, ignoring the Headmaster. She saw the tiny teacher paled at that. Several gasps were heard among the boys and girls assembled. "The others all used a lot of Bombardas and other potential lethal spells." The Potter Heiress continued.

"They were all prepared to murder me. Sykes shouted it loud and clear. You can check the wand with Priori Incantato, if you want."

Her Head of House simply nodded and by the murderous glare he sent to Sykes and his accomplices, he had a good idea what they had tried, and failed to attempt, contrary to Dumbledore.

Turning around, Alexandra marched outside the Hall in the same silence of death. Silence that was broken by Sykes, who shouted "This is not over Potter!"

Alexandra looked at him, and a quick glance at his eyes and his face saw only anger, hate and pure loathing. Whatever grief he had with Alexandra and House Potter before she arrived to school, his quest of vengeance was now over the limits of sanity. Sykes would not cease his efforts to kill her until she was dead and buried. He could not be reasoned. She left for the library, hoping against all hope Professor Flitwick would manage to convince the Headmaster to expulse the three teenagers from Hogwarts or at least Alex Sykes. If not, she had the sad certainty at least one Ravenclaw was going to perish before the end of the year. And if someone had to die, Alexandra intended firmly not to be the one to leave this world.

8 October 1991, Hogwarts, Scotland

It was well beyond curfew when the two figures shrouded in dark robes met in a long abandoned section of the fourth floor.

"Well?"

"I have managed to gain a troll for the diversion." Said a cold, sinister voice which had nothing pleasant. "Have you managed to disable the wards of the corridor?"

"This ward-breaker stone will do the job." Replied the second figure, handing an unremarkable box to his interlocutor.

"Excellent. Now we have only to decide the moment to strike."

"What about Halloween? All the students are gathered in the same place, it will be easy to make the Muggle-lover and his followers panic."

"Agreed. Halloween it is."