An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Fourteen

A/N: So Pietro and Wanda are briefly mentioned in this chapter and I know Pietro was definitely dead by the time Strange was in the picture, but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, he's alive and well and spreading his snark at super speeds. Just thought I'd remind everybody that this isn't going to follow the Marvel timeline at all, so if the character relationships don't line up with the movies, don't worry about it. They're not supposed to 😉😄

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Even with astronomy, I managed to get a decent amount of sleep Thursday night so that I wasn't a complete zombie Friday morning. After all, I would be exploring the castle with Fred and George. I needed to be as awake and alert as possible, and I wanted to have enough energy to keep up with them.

I finished my last walk with Percy that morning, and as great as it was to have his help, it would be nice to have a little extra time in the mornings next week.

My first class of the day was Potions, which is not the best way to start the day. I'm not much of a morning person, and Snape isn't much of an any-time-of-day person, so we clashed a little bit. Fortunately, I managed to escape without any point deductions. I'd only had his class a few times so far, but I'd heard he was ruthless about that. Especially with Gryffindors.

After a quick DADA with Slytherin (Lupin was still THE BEST, although a bunch of the Slytherins didn't seem to like him), it was time for another History of Magic. This class always seemed to drag on longer than the others, so I decided to check in with my muggle school, which had officially started yesterday. With everything else going on yesterday, I just hadn't had time to look at it before now.

Fortunately for me, the assignment was easy as heck. We just had to get our parent to sign and fax a form, and then actual classwork would start next week. I sent a quick email to my dad, and then went to lunch feeling remarkably relaxed for the first time in a while.

"Alexa, you're sure learning quickly," said Lee as we sat down to lunch. "I think it was a full month before I completely stopped listening to Binns first year!"

I laughed. "Yeah, I learned by observing. When Fred and George started taking a nap I figured I was good to work on my laptop."

"Hey, it's not our fault!" cried George.

"Yeah! After Astronomy Lee dared us to take an energy potion and we couldn't get to sleep!" added Fred.

Angelina, Alicia, and I just stared at them like they were idiots.

"Why the hell would you take that dare?" I finally asked.

"Because! You can't back down from things like that Alexa."

"Exactly. You're a Gryffindor now! That's what we do!"

Both boys tried to give me a very serious look, but it didn't really work. After a few seconds of trying to hold it, we all broke down laughing.

"You know, I missed this," I finally said. "I had my head burried in my laptop for so long that I didn't get to actually relax with you guys very much."

"We missed you too," said Alicia, giving me a bright smile. She leaned over and gave me a side hug as the guys smiled and Angelina rolled her eyes.

"Yes, it's good to have you back. Now, let's talk Quidditch! Tryouts are Monday, and if I remember right you wanted to prepare to score ten times on Wood," she said.

"Oh shoot, that's right! Okay, we need to come up with some expert plays, stat. I have this thing where I can't lose."

Angelina laughed. "I definitely understand that feeling. Fortunately, all of us together should be able to take him down."