Zara had just finished eating her breakfast. She had to admit, it was delicious..as always. Of course it was. Rubbing her stomach, she stood up from the Gryffindor Table and made her way to where the Slytherins were, searching for Aurora.

'Hm, she should be here somewhere. I wonder,' she thought as she scanned the faced seated at the table and those standing up. Aha! She spotted Aurora and went over to where she sat. Grabbing some butter croissants, she sat down beside her. "Well hello there," she smiled and took a bite from the croissant. Yeah she just ate but you can't keep a person for wanting to eat more.

"Good morning!" said Aurora as Zara sat down. "Oooh, croissants!" she had finished her sandwich and leant across to pick one from the huge pile in the middle of the table. "Did you get to your dorm alright?" she asked Zara, grinning playfully.

"Good morning," Zara smiled, taking another bite of the croissant. Oohh, yumyum.

"Yeah, but I fell asleep on the floor. I didn't know but the next morning I was at the couch. Weird, really. I don't know how I got there." Now really, who was that?

The hungry Snake...
 

Aurora giggled "House elves. Ours used to put my brother o bed whenever he came home... Intoxicated. They're pretty useful." She took another bite of her croissant. "I managed to climb down all three flights of stairs to get to my dorm in case you were wondering." she said dramatically, obviously joking.
"So are you going to herbology? It's on the ship!" Aurora grinned excitedly.

"House elves? I thought they were only in the kitchen? Besides, they need a password to enter the common room," she said. Really, she hoped it was Patroclus. GAH, what an assumption. He would never, and Zara hardly saw him anymore. *sniff* No more stalking.

"Oh really? I think I would've rolled my way down the stairs if my common room was at the dungeons," she chuckled. Yeah, she would. Hahah.

Herbology? They had a class on the ship? Zara blinked, now why didn't she know about that? Maybe it was the exhaustion that made her forget. She hasn't checked the announcement board yet. "Thanks for that, I never thought that the class was starting." Well now that she knew about it, "And I'll go. Now that I know."

"The House Elves can get anywhere, who do you think cleans the place?" Aurora chuckled. "But you look disappointed. Boy trouble?" It was a wild guess but she suspected it was accurate. Aurora tilted her head to one side, an understanding expression on her face. "I can always get Mother to send some Amortentia if you want it..." she smiled, trying to cheer Zara up.

"I'll have you know that I walked in a very graceful and respectful way." she laughed, she may be rich and slim but graceful was something she was still working on.

"No problemo, it should be brilliant, it's cold outside though so remember your cloak. And your dragon hide gloves, Merlin knows if the professor is strict on that..." she shivered with excitement, she was actually getting to go on the ship!

Zara let the subject drop. She refused to believe that house elves carried her to the couch. Nuh-uuuhh. She had her dreams to live. But her attention was caught by this word. "Amortentia? What's that?" Zara never heard of it at all. Maybe her parents didn't want her to know about it.

"Okay, miss graceful. You know, I should call you Grace." Zara laughed. Yeah right, as if Aurora would agree to that.

Nodding, and making a mental note in her mind to bring all those, she said, "Well, Herbology will have to wait a little. We still have to meet with Headmaster Tate right?" She smiled. But what were dragon hide gloves? Oh well, whatever it is, Zara'll have to think about that later. Now, they had a mission.

"Never heard of Amortentia!?" Aurora raised her eyebrows "It's only one of the most powerful love potions in the world! Probably the most powerful ever!" Ahhh potions, her forte. She smiled to herself. "And my mother is a very good potioneer, that's where I get my love of potions from. I can acquire some for you if you like?" Aurora grinned wickedly. "Just be careful with the dosage..."

Grace? "Grace is such a muggle name." Aurora scowled. "Something to do with religion or something I guess, everything is with them. I'd prefer to you call me by my name." She refused to be called by anything else most of the time. Her father liked to shorten her name though.

Tate! She was excited about that if a little apprehensive. "Yeah! want to go when we've finished eating?" she asked, taking another croissant an spreading jam on it. "I promise I'm nearly finished..." She laughed, people always told her they hated her because she ate more than an elephant and still stayed thin. That's exercise for ya...

Love potion? Zara blinked. Nah, she knew she was hopeless. Besides, love can't be manipulated. If she wanted Patroclus to even notice her, it'd have to be on his own will and not because of a silly love potion. "I think I'll pass," she smiled.

"Fiiiineee." Aww, it seemed like a nice name. Zara's never heard of the name Grace before. Probably because she's never gone out of home. Always stuck inside, never meeting anyone--no Muggles, no wizards, no witches. But now that she's here in Hogwarts, she was finally meeting people. And since Aurora said it's a Muggle name, that's probably why Zara's never heard it.

Headmaster Tate, right. Hopefully, he'll let them in his office. He was supposed to be accommodating and all right? "Yeah after we eat." She smiled. But she finished the last bite of her croissant. Oh well. She reached out to get a ham sandwich and began eating again.

"Shame." Aurora laughed. "If you ever need help with potions... I love it!"

"Good." Aurora smiled, "So you don't seem familiar with muggle names, have you been lucky enough to avoid them?" Aurora had, for the most part, avoided muggles throughout her life but she had, frequently, had to deal with them for one thing or another.

Aurora took a sip of her pumpkin juice. "We really need to figure out what we are going to say to him though." she said. "We can't just walk in and stand there can we?" She laughed, that would be ridiculous.

"Sure, sure." She said. Potions. Maybe she could use some of them one day. Yeah, one day. But not now.

Raising her right eyebrow at this statement, "Lucky enough?" Zara asked. Muggles were...supposed to be avoided?

Zara chuckled, "Yeah, you're probably right. I can imagine standing there and both of us speaking at the same time, with different words." Nuh-uh. She didn't want to look completely idiotic in front of the headmaster. Nonono.

"Mhmm, wish I'd been able to live solely in the magical world. You seem to have been pretty sheltered." Hmmmm, not knowing about muggles? If only.

"So how should we start?" asked Aurora, finishing her croissant.

"Well, I've seen them outside the gate. Passing by, on the way to work--others to school. Sometimes playing," she said. Zara envied them. Being able to freely play outside. Not that wizards didn't play. She also knew that someplace out there magical kids also played together. It was just that Zara's unlucky enough to be limited to being in her mansion only. *sigh*

She shrugged the thought of and proceeded to answer the question instead, to take her mind off of things. "Something like greeting first. Then we'd tell him we have an idea. He'll ask what it is. Then we explain." It sounded easy. But it wasn't. Maybe.

"So you... you've never spoken to them? Never left the house or something?"

Aurora nodded. "So who explains it? We're going to have to think about how to explain it properly..."

"Never," sums it up all in one word. Yeah, never. Hogwarts was her first time out of that place.

"You explain it," Zara grinned. Yeah, Aurora was supposed to be the cunning one between the both of them. "Start with the fact that we need to learn real DADA." She pointed out. Was that right? Probably, yeah. They did need to. Why were they attending school in the first place? To learn. And they weren't learning anything at the subject.

Walking towards the Slytherin table, Matt felt rather strange; maybe it was due to the whole fact that the last time he was here was with TJ and he just didn't want to think about that girl anymore now, trying to avoid her was definitely a problem since they had to share a common room and he knew that there was no possible way to avoid her forever either. He took a seat at the table and stared blankly at the table, so what if he looked a little weird now? There's no need to write to Raven about this despite the fact that you know she'll somehow find a way to get involved and really just make this whole situation twice as worse as it already is.

Once he heard Kyle ask him what was wrong, he wondered if he should mention the whole situation that was currently causing him to act rather like a shell of his former self but once he saw her expression; that decision was instantly made. "Well you know how things were cool with me and TJ? They went wrong really quick after she ran into Ivan again, they kissed which I found out about from her; needless to say I was a little angry with that but it was completely justified." Matt stopped talking for a second, trying to figure out exactly how to word the next bit of what he had to say since he didn't want to make it seem like he needed to be pitied when he really did not need to be. "Things didn't stop there, she proceeded to tell me that we were pretty much over; so that was fun." Now Kyle knew everything that was going on with him lately.

Whoa, once Kyle discussed any kind of revenge on TJ; Matt's expression changed to a surprised look since despite the girl had wronged him, he didn't feel like that warranted any physical altercations since words could always be the solution to the problem. "Maybe you're right, I mean I do have things to keep me busy like classes and of course the yearbook; so dating really is kinda on the back burner now so to speak. I totally dunno what to do about Raven finding out cause knowing her she'll find out somehow and really make things worse since that's what she does and it's all gonna come back and hit me in the face like a rogue Bludger." Ah more Quidditch references, despite the fact that he really didn't have much interest in the popular wizard sport after certain incidents that he was involved in.

"If I told her everything but the fact that TJ broke up with me, she would figure it out; Raven might be a little crazy at times but she's smart and she knows when I'm keeping something from her and doesn't stop annoying me until I tell her what's going on." Matt actually defended his cousin for once which was rather surprising since he was normally apologizing for her behaviour and unnecessary commentary, but he knew that the letters would be coming soon and he'd have to explain what had gone on with him and his ex. When Kyle mentioned that she made the Quidditch team, he smiled slightly and immediately pushed the earlier negative thoughts from his mind since they were doing any good now. "That's awesome! You know I'll have to watch you play since I'm somewhat curious of your skills." Obviously he wanted to know, since he was quite the player before he started surfing.

"Really? So, you've been in the house all your life? Whoa, well that must be weird. I would have thought you'd have been more... messed up." she said. Never left the house... she couldn't imagine that. When she was growing up most of her life had been outside the manor, picking ingredients, playing with friends and just generally being outside.

"Ok then... We don't want Tate to think we're insulting his teachers so... how about this: We think a study group would really aid our learning as Lord Borr is absent and we feel that we should be trying to learn more in our spare time. We think it would also help with the assignment given to us by Lord Borr." Aurora frowned, that should work right?