Can't Stop the Rain

It seemed only minutes later that the alarm clock was ringing. I whined and rolled over.
Six o' clock.
"Bloody hell," I groaned.
I turned it off and pulled the covers back over my head, desperate to grab a few more minutes of sleep but Hermione would have none of it.
"Up, Alexandra! Get up! What did I tell you? You stayed up late last night, it's your own fault you're tired today and that you didn't get enough sleep! UP!"
I sat up in bed and whined.
"But, Hermione, can't I just miss breakfast?"
Hermione wrinkled her nose.
"Oh no! We get our schedules at breakfast plus breakfast is an important part of your day! It's the most important nutritional meal; you can't just skip it like that!"
Remembering Fred and last night, I got up, reluctantly enough.
"Hermione? You sound like a Kellogg's commercial," I told her.
Hermione gave me a wry smile.

I headed for the bathroom and saw one of the girls who had been asleep when Hermione and I had entered the room.
"Hi," said the girl, "Lavender Brown."
I extended my hand.
"Hi! Alexandra Evans, but you can call me Alex, that goes for you too, Hermione." Sorry, Lavender, but do you know when's breakfast?" I asked.
Lavender looked back at me and wrinkled her nose.
"Yeah, it's at seven."
"DAMNIT, Hermione! You could have let me sleep another forty-five minutes and I could have skipped my shower and just brushed my teeth and stuff. I had a shower yesterday before I came to the train station!" I said.
Hermione looked back at me and smirked.
"Well, Alex, what's the use of an extra forty-five minutes of sleep?"
A light-haired, fair-skinned hair girl exited the shower and looked at me.
"Erm, hello," she said. "I'm Sally-Ann Perks but you can call me Sally."
"Oh," I said. "Hello, Alexandra Evans, but you can call me-"
"Alex, I know," she said, smiling. "I heard."

The three of us got ready, grabbed our books and headed downstairs. Once we had descended, I saw a boy sleeping on the couch. Neville was sleeping on the couch but when I moved closer I saw that it actually looked more like someone had knocked him out. I could tell that Hermione, Ginny and Lavender were uncomfortable because they didn't want to leave him behind but they didn't want to be late for breakfast either because...I didn't know why. On the other hand, I really didn't care. I walked towards him and called him.
"Neville? Neville, come on wake up, you'll be late for breakfast! Come on, Neville."
I shook him desperately by the shoulders. He was showing no signs of stirring. I started to get jittery when I noticed that he had scorch marks on his face. He was gripping a red envelope in his right hand. Gently prying it from his hand, I held it up.
"Umm, you lot? Any ideas?"
Then a boy descended from the boy's dormitories and saw Neville and started laughing.
"Oh this is funny to you is it, Seamus? He's unconscious and you're laughing?" Hermione said, all in a huff.
"Hermione! Calm down!" I said turning towards her and then back to the boy. "Hi, Alexandra Evans, you can call me Alex."
The boy had brown hair and smaller eyes and also an accent...maybe Irish?
"Hello, Seamus Finnigan. Nice to meet you. So you're the famous new addition to Hogwarts."
"Well, I'm not sure I could be considered famous," I said, smiling sheepishly. "Anyways. Can you help us out here? Neville seems to be unconscious," I said, holding up the envelope.
"That's a Howler that is," he replied, grinning.
I stared at him, puzzled.
"Don't know what a Howler is, do you?" I shook my head. "You lot don't know what it is either?" he asked, gesturing towards Hermione, Sally and Lavender.
"Actually, we do know what a Howler is," Lavender said snottily.
"Well then why didn't you explain to the poor girl what it is instead of letting her worry herself sick over Neville? Bloody hell, Lavender," he said.
Lavender turned red in the face and looked down at her feet.
"Oh really, a Howler is a message. A person encloses a message inside a red envelope by yelling and shouting into it. It is usually used to send angry lectures to a person far away. Even if your son, or grandson," she looked at Neville, "is far away, you can still give them the effect of you yelling at them through a Howler. If a Howler is not opened immediately upon delivery then it explodes. If opened on time, it simply shreds itself into pieces at the end of the message," Hermione said.
"And it looks like Neville's got a Howler from his gran again and that he didn't open it on time. Don't worry about it, Alex, he'll be fine," Seamus said with an encouraging smile.
"And that's how he got the scorch marks," I said in relief.
I saw Seamus leaving the common room to go to breakfast. I looked at the clock.
"Its seven twenty-two. We're so late for breakfast. Does anyone know how to revive him?"
"Well I know that there's a revival spell for it but we don't know it yet," Lavender said snobbishly.

Oh how helpful Lavender, thank you so much!

"But!" she continued, I've seen him be revived by Seamus and Dean before without the spell. They just dumped a whole lot of cold water on him and he woke up pretty fast."
"Okay," I said brightly. "Let's try that then!"
Hermione, Ginny and Lavender went to Neville and pointed their wands at him and I saw steady spouts of water come out of the tips of their wands.
"That'll take forever! I'm hungry. You know what? Sometimes you just got to do things the old-fashioned way," I said with a wink and I ran up to our room and came back down with a big bucket of water.
Hermione, Ginny and Lavender looked at me really confused until I dumped the water all over Neville. Then they screamed because some of it had splashed back onto them and it was ice cold. Neville quickly regained consciousness and started shivering. Lavender took pity on him and conjured a hairdryer and magically dried his robes. In a few minutes he was completely dry but still cold.
"You guys go ahead to breakfast; I'll stay here with Neville by the fire until he warms up," said Lavender, wrapping a blanket around Neville and placing him in front of the fire.
We nodded and left, twenty to eight.

We ran down to breakfast to find that no one was there. Thankfully the food was still on the table. The three of us sat down and scarfed down a quick breakfast. Three owls came soaring down over and three pieces of paper came floating down landing in front of us. Hermione, Ginny and Sally opened theirs and all said in unison: "Schedules."
Then I remembered Lavender and Neville sitting up in the common room.
"Hey, you guys, what about Lavender and Neville? They haven't gotten their schedules yet, we should get theirs for them and run up to Gryffindor tower and give it to them shouldn't we?" I asked,
"No need," Ginny said between mouthfuls, "owls will have already flown into the common room with their schedules."
"Oh no," said Hermione looking at her schedule.
"What?" I asked.
"I knew it," said Hermione.
"Uh, Hermione you'll have to be a little more specific than that. You know a lot of things," Ginny said, laughing.
I joined Ginny in laughing for a bit.
"But seriously, Hermione, what?"
Hermione gave a huge sigh.
"Double Potions with the Slytherins today."
I couldn't believe it so I checked my schedule, it was true. Hermione looked at me with a grimace.
"I told you so. I had a nasty feeling yesterday and I knew this would happen."
"Bloody hell! We have double Potions today, tomorrow and a single on Thursday," I screamed in distress.
Hermione and Ginny looked up at me, a little taken aback by my screaming.
"Well sorry guys but I have Transfiguration so I've got to go, see you later!" Ginny said brightly.
"Yeah, Alex we should get going too, its six minutes to eight and we've got double Herbology with the Hufflepuffs," Hermione said.

Hermione and I got up and headed down towards the gardens where I could see a large group of people waiting outside the old greenhouses. There were explosions coming from inside. Hermione and I looked at each other and sprinted down the path to the greenhouses. We got there and bumped into Ron, Harry and Neville from behind.
"Sorry," I said. "What's going on?"
There was an explosion, followed by black smoke coming through the skylight in the main greenhouse. I heard yelling from inside and saw the outline of some small creature hit the wall from inside. It was something really small but it had the weirdest shape I had ever seen... It was still, just stuck against the wall, then it slid down and it snarled. All of a sudden I saw its shadow getting bigger and bigger until it reached the ceiling. A very short, stout woman came out of the greenhouse, flustered, and shut the door behind her. She looked around at all of my classmates and then at me quizzically but then she faced everyone again and announced,
"Hello, class, sorry for the wait. I'm grieved to announce that class will have to be canceled today for I had prepared for us to study and root a Fligbyte but unfortunately, they seem to have moved into the mutation stage sooner than I expected. You are free to go."

The woman, whom I assumed to be the Herbology professor, took a deep breath and turned around to re-enter the greenhouse. I wondered how a woman of such small stature would take on such a huge...thing.
"Hey, Hermione, who was that woman?" I asked.
"Professor Sprout. She's our Herbology professor. Shame this had to happen today, Neville was really looking forward to this class, Herbology is his favorite class," she answered.
"Hello, Granger, I see your hair hasn't gotten any sleeker over the holidays but I see you've become even more of a know-it-all if that's possible. Oh hello, Longbottom, I see you're crying about something again. I do admit that it gave me a great deal of satisfaction though to see you cower as I kicked you out of your compartment on the train," Draco said.
"Hello, Draco, I see you still haven't grown any brains over the holidays. Pity. Your father pays so much money to keep you enrolled in this school and it's all wasted away," Hermione said.
"Shut up, you stupid girl! What would you know about paying for anything? Hanging around with the riffraff you hang about with?" He gestured to Ron. "Pity. All those brains and you haven't even got the wit to respect your betters," he said with a smirk.
"Surely you're not talking about yourself?" Hermione asked.
"Why you filthy mu-"
I cut him off and stepped up to within a few inches of his face.
"Draco, shut it," I hissed.
As I uttered these words, I couldn't help but think about being that close to Draco, there was been a connection, I felt guilty about it after him insulting Hermione but I just couldn't help it. I tried to shake the feeling and walked away.
"Well, you lot," I said. "How about a tour of Hogwarts for the new arrival?"
"Who's the new arrival?" Ron asked, looking around.
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Well, Alex, I suppose, but it will take a really long time because there are a lot of secret passages in the castle and the staircases have a habit to change and shift and-"
"Noooo, Hermione! Not the inside, the outside!" I laughed. "Look at all this grass," I spun in a circle and waved my arms. "And what about the lake? I would like to see that too."
"Okay, but can we first go back up to Gryffindor tower? I really don't feel like dragging my bag around for two periods," Neville asked.
Everyone nodded and we all headed up towards Gryffindor tower.

After dropping off our bags, we headed back towards the main entrance to leave the castle and I heard an all too familiar WHOOSH from above.
"Peevsey knows what the new girl has been doing!"
He swooped down over, dropping water bombs on all of us.
"Shut up, Peeves!"
I heard a familiar voice from behind and saw something round go up and hit Peeves – Fred and George being the culprits.
"Hey, Alex?"
"Yeah, Ron?"
I turned around.
"What is Peeves talking about? What have you been doing?"
I blushed, I really didn't want to answer but luckily enough Fred answered for me.
"Oh come off it, Ron, since when has Peeves ever made any sense?"
"Yeah," chimed in George, "he's just on your case because you're new, Alexandra, don't worry about it."
"Hey, George call me Alex, that goes for the rest of you too," I answered.
"And why aren't you two in class?" Hermione asked.
"We got kicked out of class because we got bored in Potions so we added some extra crushed bat wing powder in our potion and it filled the room with pink smoke and bubbles," Fred said, chuckling.
"Yeah!" continued George. "It was brilliant! Snape was furious, he accused us right away of doing it on purpose and for once in his greasy life he was right. He kicked us out of class and gave us detention. But I don't reckon we'll show up."
"Oh no!" said Hermione. "You can't skip detention! You'll lose house points!"
"Yeah, you two, normally I wouldn't agree with Hermione," Hermione glared at him but he just ignored her and continued, "but Snape already hates us enough as it is."
"Yeah I guess you're right, but it doesn't mean we can't have some fun while we're there! Where are you lot headed?" Fred and George said.
"We were just about to give Alex a tour of the grounds," Harry answered.
"We think not!" said Fred and George and grabbed Harry under the arms and pulled him away.
"Sorry, Alex, but I told Lavender that I would give her back her cloak after Herbology but she doesn't have classes now so I should probably get it back to her now," Neville said apologetically.
"But, Neville, she's in Gryffindor too, why don't you just give her back her cloak at din-"
I touched Hermione's arm and squeezed slightly before turning to Neville.
"Oh, go on, Neville, see you later!"
Neville smiled gratefully at me and left.
"What was that all about? He could return her cloak at any time, she's in Gryffindor too," Hermione asked.
"I'm telling you, Hermione, there's something between the two of them," I said to her, she laughed.
"Oh come on, Alex, Lavender and Neville?" then she looked at her watch and whined. "Oh sorry, Alex, but Ron and I are going to have to leave on you too, Madame Pince opened the library minutes ago and we have a paper to do, oh come on, Ron! The library will be so crowded!"
Hermione grabbed Ron's arm and ran off, dragging him behind her.
"Oh don't mind me, I'll just give myself a tour," I muttered quietly to myself.
"SORRY, ALEX! SOME OTHER TIME!" Hermione yelled over her shoulder, leaving me standing alone in the corridor.