As a pink smoke rose from her cauldron and the potion took a blue colour, Snape came back and whispered a new "Passable", before saying in a snarl: "Three points from Hufflepuff, Smith! If you want to do nothing in a class of Potions, the door is in the other direction!" He had just finished pronouncing these words when the cauldron of the pair of Wayne Hopkins and Roger Malone melted and the failed potion seeped across the floor, burning holes like acid. A powerful acid. In an instant, all the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were standing on their personal stool, except Roger Malone, who had been drenched by his potion and had now huge red boils springing up all over his body. Alexandra grimaced, the boils were rather big and the Hufflepuff was groaning in pain. Evidently, it seemed even a simple potion of first year-level could create significant damage.
"Stupid boys!" roared thunderously Snape, vanishing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand, leaving only the ruin of the Hufflepuff cauldron as witness to the disaster that had just happened. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"
The voice of the teacher was more rhetorical than a true question, she noted. The two Hufflepuffs were likely not the first to make such a mistake. Wayne nodded, as Roger was crying on the floor.
"Take him up to the hospital wing," Snape spat at Wayne. "Three points from Hufflepuff."
The Potions class ended shortly after that. Of the eleven pairs of students, only she and the pair of Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot seemed to have functional potions in their cauldrons. Or at least Potions which didn't make Professor Snape make an insulting comment. As a result, the two Hufflepuffs and she were spared writing a five inch essay on what went wrong in their work. They still got five inch essay on what could be improved in the Boil Cure for the next week, though.
When the entire class left the classroom in the dungeons, she noticed her reputation at Hogwarts had already fallen further. Zacharias Smith was already shouting to his housemates she was "horrible" and "dark", while her fellow Ravenclaws looked at her with faces divided between envy and hate to have the temerity to correctly prepare her potion when they couldn't.
Lunch after that was much like breakfast all over again, except someone (no doubt the Weasley twins ) had had the time to charm and raise a large banner proclaiming "WELCOME THE DARK LADY TO HOGWARTS!" over the Ravenclaw table. The Slytherins looked like they found the whole affair very funny, but the three other tables, in particular the Ravenclaws, watched her as if she was going to attack them at any moment. Alexandra didn't stay in the hall a moment longer than she had to. Putting her school bag over her shoulder, she went in the direction of the Charms class.
Finding the Charms corridor was difficult, as the stairs moved by themselves and not in any logical direction she could guess. Not knowing any short-cuts, Alexandra arrived only with five minutes to spare after having climbed five endless stairs. As she sat on the first row of desks, she saw she was still one of the first students to arrive, only being preceded by Hermione Granger and Nigel Wolpert from Gryffindor. Half a minute later, all the Ravenclaws entered the room, followed as the bell rang by the Gryffindors, who had managed to arrive just as the last second. The Boy-Who-Lived Neville Longbottom was not among them, and neither was Ronald Weasley. Once again, her fellow students sat as far away as possible from her, leaving her alone in her section of the first row, and the Gryffindors took seats on the other side of the classroom. And she thought the Lions were supposed to be courageous. Well, braver than the Ravenclaw at least.
As the teacher prepared to present himself, the door opened again, with Neville Longbottom, Leo Black and Ronald Weasley rushing into the class, looking like they had raced all the way from the Great Hall to be more or less on schedule.
"Try to be on time next time, boys!" The teacher said in a fluted tone, letting the three Gryffindors install themselves without removing any House points, unlike Professor Snape.
"Welcome to the class of Charms!" said the little professor, jumping on a stack of books to be seen by every student. "I am Professor Filius Flitwick, Senior Charms Master of Hogwarts, Head of House Ravenclaw and for this year, I will be your Charms Professor."
He then flicked his wand, and made a dozen of books dance, levitated half of the tables and coloured the room in no less than five different colours. All the students were immediately in awe at this demonstration and broke into applause.
Professor Flitwick was short, only about four feet in height and from what she had heard from her fellow housemates this was due to him being part goblin. This was extremely odd, due to how rare inter-species marriages were according to Hogwarts: A History.
Watching the man who was her Head of House, she noticed everyone was smiling at the sight of the little teacher calling names on the register, trying to balance himself his way on the book stack at the same time. When he called the name Neville Longbottom, the Professor jumped so high he destabilized the books, before landing on his feet after a somersault with an agility Alexandra knew she didn't have. The Professor got a round of applause from the students for this spectacular and acrobatic performance.