6 September 1991, Hogwarts, Scotland
Thankfully for Alexandra, the rest of her first week at Hogwarts was not worse than her first day at the school. Of course, given how bad this first day had been, it was a pretty low bar to pass under. That was not to say there was no room for improvement. Waking up and going down for breakfast on Tuesday, she noticed that while nobody was shouting "Dark Lady!" anymore (well nobody save the Weasley Twins, but they didn't count), there were plenty of student whispering on her way to the Great Hall. Oh, and once again, the Ravenclaws at breakfast did their best to eat the furthest away from her. It was like she had contracted the plague or some other nasty disease.
The first class on Tuesday for the Ravenclaws was Transfiguration, which as it happened was done in common with the Slytherins. In fact, Tuesday was a Slytherin morning, as the Ravenclaws were doing the same classes as the House of Snakes: Transfiguration and Herbology.
From the beginning, Alexandra's impression of the senior professor of Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall, was that the woman was strict and didn't tolerate any chaos in her class. The woman was the Deputy Head mistress and the Head of Gryffindor, and warned from the start the Ravenclaws and the Slytherins in the classroom that any kind of pranks or disorder would not be tolerated.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," the Senior Transfiguration Professor had said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then she changed into a cat and then reverted back into a human, before transforming her desk into a cow and back too. Even the most cynical students of Slytherin House had been in awe after this magical demonstration, and everyone in the class couldn't wait to get started.
Alas, they had been forced to acknowledge changing a desk into the animal of their choice was way over their heads for the moment. Nearly half the period was passed doing calculus and learning weird transfiguration theories Alexandra could honestly say she had not understood even half of.
After writing a lot of notes, they had been authorised to try changing a match into a needle. It had been horridly difficult: by the end of the lesson, Alexandra thought she had one of the best attempts, and while her match had turned completely silver, it was not pointy at all. Her work had gained one point for Ravenclaw, but she had not avoided the mountain of work Professor McGonagall had assigned them.
Following Transfiguration, they went to Greenhouse number 1 and the class of Herbology.
The Senior Professor of Herbology was Professor Pomona Sprout, a rotund woman who was convivial to all the first-year students and the Head of House Hufflepuff. As it happened, Alexandra had no doubt Herbology was going to be a nightmare for the Slytherins during their time at school. As the person who was supposed to do all the chores at the Dursleys', Alexandra had been forced to do gardening. Granted, it had been not her idea of a pleasure task, and no plant or flower Aunt Petunia wanted in her garden was magical (the very idea of that would have sent her into a coma), but she had done gardening in her childhood.
Noticing all the Slytherins first years and about half the Ravenclaws had hands perfectly manicured and their hair in a perfect fashion, she had to conclude the greenhouses were the closest things to hell for them. The greenhouses of Hogwarts were warm, far warmer than the Scottish climate of September. It was also extremely wet. After half an hour, each student was swimming in their own sweat, as the sun over the greenhouse bombarded them with all its light and warmth.
Draco Malfoy, a pale blond-haired pureblood boy took the opportunity of whining and whispering about a hundred times "When my father hears of this...", as the rest of the class studied the different sorts of fungi, and ended up costing his House five points, as he forgot to close his mouth when Professor Sprout passed by to see what they had learnt of the fungi they had before them. When the bell rang to signal the end of the first class of Herbology, Alexandra had not needed to read minds to know the Slytherins, and Malfoy in particular, had utterly loathed this class. The unneeded confirmation came from the blond pureblood's own mouth when he ranted about being forced to do the work of "peasants, blood-traitors..." as they walked back through the grounds of Hogwarts.
Leaving the greenhouse, she went like the others to lunch, and then after a rapid shower to erase the fetid odours of Herbology, ran to the wing where the History of Magic classes were taught. Rapidly, she realised she shouldn't have bothered. The Senior Professor of History of Magic was named Binns, and for an unknown reason which escaped Alexandra, someone had thought it was a great idea to let him continue to teach long after he was dead. Binns was a ghost. Worse, Binns was a boring ghost. In less than ten minutes, the majority of the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors were no longer listening. After twenty minutes, there were only three students who were not sleeping: Morag McDougal, Hermione Granger, and Alexandra herself.