An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Nine

My Tuesday morning started bright and early with a another walk with Percy, some debugging, and then my first class of the day: History of Magic. Even though we had it with Slytherin today, it was still insanely boring.

It didn't help that I was already extremely behind in the class, since I'd been focusing on practical magic and had zoned out during our first lesson. About halfway through I realized Professor Binns really didn't notice anything his students did, so I pulled out my laptop and continued working.

To my relief, I actually managed to finish fixing everything before class ended. I opened my email to send one to my dad (since my phone was a whole other hurdle I'd have to handle later), but stopped short when I saw the first thing in my inbox.

It was from the MIT pre-college program. My team and I had won.

"Yes!" I yelled, jumping out of my seat and pumping my fist. "Suck it smart house!"

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten I was in the middle of Professor Binns' lecture. I got lucky though, and he barely glanced at me before continuing. I sat back down and waved off a few confused looks from my friends, opening a new email to my dad.

"Psst. Hey. Stark." I looked to my left and saw one of the Slytherin boys leaning over to me.

"What?"

"What the hell was that supposed to be?" He sniggered and so did a few of his friends.

I just rolled my eyes and returned to my email. They kept throwing jibes at me, but I tuned it out. I'd gotten good at ignoring noise since everyone moved into Avengers Tower.

I was just getting back to the email to my dad when class ended, cutting me off.

"Dammit," I muttered, standing up to leave. I'd just have to write it quickly at the beginning of Herbology.

"So what was all that yelling about?" asked Lee as we headed into the hallway.

"Oh, I did this competition over the summer, and I just found out we won."

"Congratulations," said Fred and George at the same time. That still freaked me out.

"Thanks guys. I—"

I stopped short when a glowing circle of golden light appeared in the entrance hall, making everybody stop and stare.

I recognized that light.

To my horror, a man stepped out of the now human-sized portal.

Dr. Stephen Strange.

One of my dad's friends, and a pretty cool person to hang out with, unless he was appearing in the middle of my new school. Then he was just embarrassing.

"Alexa!" he yelled, looking around. I face palmed, then walked over to him quickly, trying to ignore all the stares I was getting.

"What are you doing here?" I hissed, arms crossed.

"You never told your dad if you got here safe. He was about to take off in the armor until Pepper reminded him he doesn't know where the school is, so he sent me instead. You're fine?"