"Gracie! Wake up! We have classes!" What a pleasant way to wake up! Having a screaming eleven year old jumping up and down on your bed. Nothing's better right? I groaned into my pillow and put it over my ears, trying to make her go away.

"Gracelyn Paige Black, if you don't get up right now, I'm going to get Harry to come wake you up!" Natalyn snapped, sitting on top of me. I smirked under my pillow.

"He can't. The boys can't get into the girls dormitory because the stairs turn into a slide!" My voice was muffled because of the pillow, but I'm pretty sure she heard me. But then again, Hermione just had to butt in.

"So if I levitated him up here and Natalyn opened the door so he didn't have to stop on the landing, he wouldn't be able to come up here and wake you up?" I could hear the smugness in her tone, but I ignored it. She's bluffing.

"No he wouldn't. They'd probably have an alarm or something. Besides, you wouldn't be able to do it!" I snapped, keeping the pillow firm over my head.

"Oh really? Come on Hermione!" Nat got off of me and I heard them walk out, but I wasn't worried. They wouldn't do it.

"Better get up. They're really doing it!" Ginny said, sounding worried. I rolled my eyes even though she couldn't see me.

"No they aren't Ginny. I'm going back to sleep. See ya later!" I'm not normally this tired, but today I am.

"Gracie is there a reason I've been summoned up here?" Harry's voice came from over beside the door.

"Nice try Hermione. It's probably some charm thing!" I heard her chuckle, but it sounded like him. I buried my head deeper into the mattress and pulled the blankets tight around me. The dorm had a draft to it.

Ginny was tapping on my shoulder frantically. "I'm trying to sleep. What's wrong Ginny!"

"It's not Hermione! She and Natalyn are standing in the door frame. It's Harry!" Deciding I should at least check, I peaked out the corner of my eye. Oh my Merlin he is in here! I pretended I didn't care.

"Harry! We made you come up here to wake her up! Quit standing there and do it!" Mione snapped.

"Yeah Potter! Get a move on!" Nat urged. I rolled my eyes again. They're very frustrating people. I heard footsteps coming towards me and my heart started pounding in my chest. I've probably got morning breath and my hair probably looks like crap!

"But she looks so peaceful!" Harry chuckled, sitting on the bed beside me. "Come on Gracie. Please get up? They brought me all the way up here. You have to!" I groaned but sat up anyway.

"Carry me?" He laughed but nodded anyway. He picked me up and carried me to the bathroom across the room. I smiled when he put me down in the door. "I'll be down in about twenty minutes. Kay?" He nodded again and left the room, waving goodbye at the four of us. "Really guys?" I hissed, walking into the bathroom and shut the door on their chuckling.

First day back. What should I do? Lets go with beach waves for the hair and light browns for the eyeshadow. Then I'll do bottom eyeliner and, what am I saying? I never used to care about that stuff before. I guess it doesn't hurt to want to look nice though. I'll do it anyway. By the time I was done I was pretty satisfied with how I looked. I skipped downstairs, towards the common room, but stopped on the stairs. Natalyn was already down there and she had done the same thing with her hair and make up. George walked past her, took a look, an said: "Hi Gracie!"

"What?" Nat looked confused. It was kind of funny. Fred smiled and continued this soon to be awkward conversation.

"Where's Nat?" She gave him a dumbfounded look, I was silently laughing on the stairs when Harry caught my eye, he was giving me a small smirk.

"Guys that is Natalyn! Gracie is up there!" His eyes never left mine while he spoke. The boys were now the ones looking dumbfounded and Harry looked smug.

"Blimey! How can you tell? They look exactly the same!" The twins chorused, looking back and forth between me and Natalyn. Who were laughing pretty loud at this point.

"The eyes. Nat's are brown, but Gracie's eyes are hazel. Dark brown with little green flecks. And Gracie has really light freckles on her cheeks. You'd have to be up close to see them, but they're there!" He shrugged his shoulders, keeping his eyes on mine. Ron and the twins stared at him, but I continued down the stairs to stand beside him, a smile on my face. We stared into each others eyes for a long time. And then Ron ruined it.

"Alright alright! We all get it! You fancy my sister! I don't want to see it! Lets go!" Ron grabbed a blushing Harry by the arm and left the common room. His ears are red, he's mad. Crap. But how did Harry notice that stuff? I sighed, watching my brother take our best friend out of the portrait hole, life sucks.

"Are you okay Gracie?" Ginny wrapped her arms around my waist and Natalyn and Hermione my shoulders. I nodded my head.

"Of course I'm fine. I'm going to breakfast before classes start!" I shook them all off and headed towards the Great Hall. Why wouldn't I be fine? He's my best friend, of course he noticed. It's actually kind of funny, he seemed so confident in his answer. Maybe Natalyn and I should try to confuse him sometime. Yeah. That'd be fun!

I stopped in the girls lavatory on my way through. I took a long look into the mirror and sighed. He was right. I do have light freckles, and my eyes do have little green flecks. Dad says we look alike. That's good. And of course Harry knew the difference. He's known me since I was a baby! There's bound to be some familiarity there! I wish I could talk to Dad about this, but something tells me he's not going to like the fact that his daughter likes a boy. Even if it is Harry. I want to talk to an adult, but someone I can be close to, so it's not awkward. Someone I know I can trust! Lilly would be perfect. Everyone says I'm like her. I hope I am. From what I know and hear, she's a great person, someone to look up to!

I took one more look in the mirror and left. I checked the watch that I had gotten in Diagon Alley to keep track of my lessons. It's to late for breakfast, which is fine. I'm really not hungry anyway. I took off towards my classes. Wait, I need my schedule. I ran to the transfiguration classroom as quick as I could. "Professor McGonagall! Can I have my schedule?" I skidded into the room and the first person I saw was Ginny. Crap, I was hoping this might be my first class. She nodded and handed me my schedule. Defense Against the Dark Arts. Right down the hall, thank goodness! "Thank you so much Professor!" She nodded and I ran out of the hall, waving at Ginny as I went. I ran into the DADA room and nearly fell on my face. Ron, Harry, Nat, and Hermione all turned to look at me. Hermione was sitting beside Nat and Harry and Ron were together. There was only one seat left, the one beside Draco. I hadn't even thought to look to see who we had class with.

Now that I was looking at the table, I noticed Draco was staring at me too. I trudged to my seat and sat down. "What are you looking at Malfoy?"

"Nothing Black!" He turned around and stared straight ahead. I sighed, enjoying the silence, the whole thirty seconds of it. "Are you okay? You don't seem like yourself lately."

"I'm fine. Just readjusting. Can we just have a normal class? Please?" He snorted, looking at Lockhart who was just now entering the room.

"Normal class? With him as our teacher? Good luck with that!" I cracked a small smile.

"So. Wanna tell me why you were staring at my little sister?" I smirked when I saw his already pale face go even paler.

"I wasn't! Everyone knows the Weasley's are blood traitors!" He spat, turning to look at the professor. He was going on about some test about himself. One flew in front of me, it was like five pages! Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was a long test!

"We are family Draco. If you like her, tell me. Maybe, here at school, you could attempt to be nice? Keep the bad boy thing for your parents. If you were really all that bad, you wouldn't have cared on the train. You would have laughed or something like that!"

"Fine. She's," he paused, looking at his test. He wrote down some random answers and turned back to me. "Pretty. But that's all I'm saying!" I nodded, smiling at him.

"That's all I needed!" I turned back to work on my test. If I wasn't the good student I am, I wouldn't know any of these answers. I don't know half of them, but that's better than none! I scribbled down the answers to the ones I knew before filling in the ones I don't. Seriously, what does his favorite color have to do with defensive magic?

By the time I was done class was over. Since I was in the back and the other four were up front, I had to wait for them. I was going to say hi when Ron interrupted me. "What did Malfoy want?" He was glaring at someone over my shoulder, probably Draco. I rolled my eyes before I answered him.

"He's my cousin Ron. He asked me if I was okay. I told you how nice he was on the train. I told him he should try treating everyone like that. Save the whole bad boy thing for his parents." I shrugged, looking at him over his shoulder. We all watched as Crabbe knocked over a first year and Draco shoved him away. He helped the kid pick up her stuff and turned around and looked me straight in the eye. I nodded at him with a smile, to which he returned.

I looked back at Ron who looked like he was going to be sick. "You know, he's only doing that because you saw! He's trying to impress you!" Ron fired off at me.

"Ronald he's my cousin! Why on earth would he try to impress me?" He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and reshut it. He left with out saying another word. "Great! Now my brothers mad at me! I can't take this. Today's not my day. I'm leaving. See you guys at lunch!" I took out my schedule to check my next class. Herbology with the Hufflepuffs. I headed out to the greenhouses and took a seat between two occupied ones. I'm not in the mood to talk to any of my friends right now. I'm just annoyed and I don't know what's wrong with me. I was fine all summer, I've been dying to come back to Hogwarts, and now I'm here and I just feel, out of place. I feel different. I looked at the two people either side of me. It was Lavender and Parvarti.

"Oh I'm sorry. I know you guys are best friends. Do you want me to move?"

"Oh no! Your fine! Your Gracie, right?" I nodded, smiling at Lavender. "I'm Lavender Brown, and this is Parvarti Patil! My bestie!" I smiled at the two of them, shaking each of their hands. Harry, Hermione, and Natalyn walked in, they all flashed me a small smile, Ron was with them too, but he ignored me. My heart sunk in my chest as I looked back at Lavender and Parvarti.

"Why aren't you with those four? You guys were inseparable last year!" Parvarti whispered, eyeing my best friends.

"We still are. It's just, Ron's not just my friend, he's my brother. But my adopted brother. It turns out someone he hates is my cousin, and I'm trying to get to know them, and I don't know. He's mad I suppose," I whispered, twiddling my fingers and looking at the ground.

"Don't worry Gracie. It'll work out!" Lavender patted my arm sympathetically. Then Natalyn came over and I felt a lot better. I switched Parvarti seats so that I could sit beside her.

"What are you doing over here?" The next thing you know, Hermione was plopping down beside her. She gave me a smile and both girls hugged me.

"Your our best friend and my cousin! I'm not going to choose Ronald over you!" She miffed, looking me straight in the eye. I nodded, smiling at her and Mione. I didn't think I wanted them to be over here, but now that they are, I feel a lot better. Professor Sprout came in and started talking about mandrake roots and of course Mione had all the answers. I sighed, resting my head on my elbows. I saw Ron staring at me so I turned to give him a small smile, but he grunted and looked the other way. Today is just NOT my day!