The rest of the story was less reliable, as Lavender Brown had been busy singing the exploits of the Boy-Who-Lived, who heroically and with great risk to himself had managed to recuperate Nigel's necklace in a furious aerial battle. The Slytherin version was much different. Pansy Parkinson was telling everyone Neville, Leo and Ron had cornered Draco in the air three-on one, and the air battle had never existed in their version. In the Gryffindor report, Neville had managed to catch the necklace after three loops and a dive of fifty feet.
According to all witnesses, it was just after Neville grabbed the necklace Professor McGonagall had made an apparition, and taken Neville Longbottom and Leo Black away. Finnigan, Crabbe and Goyle had been sent to the infirmary, the three of them having been caught in a magical explosion made by Finnigan himself. The Great Hall was full of rumours by dinner that Neville Longbottom was going either to be awarded a medal or expulsed, when the news came in from Longbottom himself: he had been recruited to play in the Gryffindor Quidditch team as Seeker. Alexandra had no idea what a Seeker was, in fact she didn't know a lot about Quidditch, only having deduced it was played on flying brooms and that it was a very violent sport. Apparently, being Seeker was great news in the Wizarding World, because a good half of the school had stood up to acclaim him. It was like a famous professional football player had entered her former primary school by mistake.
What Alexandra knew was the strict minimum: an absolute rule of the younger students not being authorised to play this brutal sport during their first-year, as well as being forbidden to own their own broom. That this rule did not seem to apply to the Boy-Who-Lived proved once more to Alexandra that Hogwarts was decidedly a very weird institution. As she finished to eat and prepared to leave her table, she heard Ronald Weasley shouting Neville was the youngest player in a century to play Quidditch with his mouth full of food. Watching the Slytherin table, she saw a wave of green and silver boys flaunting their displeasure. She really hoped for Neville Longbottom he was as good as the rumours said on his broom. He was going to need this skill.
Finally, the end of the week brought Friday and her evening duelling lesson, with her lasting three rounds against Professor Flitwick before being too tired to continue. She had learnt two more offensive spells in the interval, which she unleashed against her Charms Professor. The first, named Flipendo, created a minor blast of blue wind, with more powerful versions allowing the caster to materialise and control a small tornado. Vermillious was a minor hex sending a mix of red light and red sparks to the target, creating mild discomfort. These new addition to her growing arsenal of spells did not had any effect on her grinning professor, who smiled with delight when Alexandra bombarded him with sixteen incantations, trying her best to survive a few seconds against him. The longest time she managed was twenty-nine seconds in definitive, and she knew Flitwick had toyed with her every time.
And with this session of duel her second week ended. No one had charged her in the corridors to assassinate her, but that didn't mean it had been an uninteresting week at Hogwarts. Ravenclaw House as a whole had decided that, as they could not expel her without their Head of House's agreement, they could always ignore her and give her an eternal silence, mocking her behind her back and spreading dirty rumours on her in the hope she came back begging at their feet to admit her officially in their ranks.
If only they knew most of her life thanks to the Dursleys had been already like that before, maybe these not-so-clever students could have imagined a cleverer and sounder scheme. Or at least one presenting higher chances of success. Alexandra herself was not going to tell them. Long ago, she had wanted to have friends and persons she could trust, but the terror inspired by Dudley during ten years in Little Whinging had killed these aspirations. People who wanted to be her friend one moment and scorn her the moment after would not have been good partners to trust. If the Ravenclaw boys and girls weren't interested in her, then she was more than happy to reciprocity in the same fashion.
With Ravenclaw in general trying to ignore her presence, Alexandra was free to observe the power struggles among the students and to eavesdrop on the others' conversations. Neville Longbottom, hero of the wizarding world known as the Boy-Who-Lived, was leading the "prank war" on the side of the Gryffindors. By Wednesday, Alexandra had seen students as older as fourth-years go to him before or after the meals to meet him, whether it was to present themselves or to submit pranks against the Slytherins. She had tried to do the same thing, by pure courtesy. Once. The Boy-Who-Lived tirade, how she had a debt towards him, had killed instantly any desire she might have had to become his friend.
It would have been bad enough to see this level of devotion and servility given to one first-year, but the same thing happened with Draco Malfoy in the House of Slytherin. Unlike Neville, Draco's followers seemed to lack conviction, though. Alexandra supposed it was because Draco's father had pressured somehow older students to bow to his son's authority, because the blonde pure-blood had nothing in his charisma inspiring devotion or loyalty. Everything he was close to her, Alexandra was more struck by the odour of his shampoo and other perfumes than his intelligence.
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