"I don't recognize the surname."

"Does that mean you won't get along with her? I bet Malfoy will trade me Abbott if you'd sooner not share."

"It means I can't guess, can you introduce us?"

"Hey Genevieve!" calls Miranda.

Stoller comes over. "Hi! How was your summer -"

"It was great! We've got more firsties than sixth years, you won't mind an extra, will you?"

"Nah. Hi!"

"Nice to meet you."

"Stoller's good in Defense and she can sing pretty well," Miranda tells Fawley.

"I don't know the family -"

"I'm Muggleborn."

"Ah."

"I'm good in Defense because when I was twelve I had to duel a sixth-year over it. I won."

"- how'd you do that?"

"I cheated. But it's okay, this is Slytherin, and what's important is that everyone knows I could cheat the next time too." She smiles.

"- nice to meet you."

"You said."

Giggle.

And the firsties are shown to the common room. "Why'd you pick her?" Genevieve asks Miranda quietly.

"Hunch, could be nothing."

"Huh."

The sixth years take fewer classes, more intensively. Minor's doing Charms, Transfiguration, a self-study in Ancient Runes now he's finished the curriculum, Arithmancy, and Potions.

Same things minus the Runes and plus Alchemy! She does not find Madam Hirudinea a very useful teacher past the basics and finds herself cleaning more bedpans than she'd like so she's dropped that.

Karen doesn't want to drop anything. Scheduling concerns opt her out of Defense and Runes. She skips Alchemy after much debate.

Miranda's new firstie is impossible to find between when classes get out and curfew, but she always arrives at the dorms by curfew and is apparently getting all her homework done.

Sniff sniff where have you gone new firstie.

Empty classroom somewhere where she drags a bookcase in front of the door to study but doesn't seem to think to keep out cats.

Then she reads some asinine moralistic book series for young pureblood girls and takes notes and mutters to herself.

Hmmm yes this activity needs to be sat on.

Fawley strokes him absently and moves him off the books and keeps at it.

Actually that's On Hogwarts with the cover replaced, and that one's Origins and Bloodlines.

Purrrrr.

She smiles at him and pets him a bit more and then keeps reading. 

When it's nearly curfew she sets the notes on fire (with matches) and then leaves.

Cricket takes an alternate route.

Miranda loans Fawley a demonstrative stick and her first year Charms notes and wand motion transcriptions for the spells.

She appreciates that! It'll make the studying go better!

The next day is Saturday and she's absent all day. In the evening she goes to her rooms and is asked where she was and says 'my mother said she found a secret passage to Hogsmeade in her day and bet me ten Galleons I couldn't find it inside a month. Once the month's up - or I figure it out, I guess - I'll study with everyone else. But I really want the Galleons, I've almost enough for a broomstick."

"Ooooh," one of her roommates says. "Do we get half if we find it?"

"I don't know about half but you could have a Galleon."

"Deal. Fourth floor, statue of the witch, you say 'dissendium'."

" - brilliant," Fawley says, and does not sleep well.

The next day she asks Miranda if Miranda knows of any ways a first-year could get a Galleon on short notice - "I lost a bet."