A Mad Tea Party

Alice kept finding herself dozing off especially during history. Luckily every other kid was also falling asleep, listening to the Professor Binns drone on and on, undeterred by the symphony of snoozes that Alice heard from the rows behind her. That's when Alice decided to pull out the papers that were enchanted with the message enchantment and slide it over to Daphne that was next to her.

At first, the history-loving ghost drifted over to see if there was a note but continued his speech when he saw nothing. Daphne was a bit confused by this invasion of space and looked at Alice with an incredulous look.

Alice shook her head and tapped her ink pen on her paper. She left a simple "Hi Daphne" on the paper which sunk quickly and appeared on Daphne's end. Alice tapped the paper and urged the Slytherin to look down.

Daphne was confused and shocked when the words appeared on the simple paper in front of her. She wrote back and looked at how the words seem to sink and leave the paper perfectly white.

"Alice? Can you see this?" Daphne's message asked.

"It's pretty nice isn't it?" Alice wrote back. "Now we can chat without disturbing the lesson."

"Where did you buy this? We got to get some of these to Pansy and Millicent. They would love it." Daphne asked. She glanced at her other friends who we trying hard to stay awake. Millicent was trying to lean on her hand but ended up not being able to prop herself correctly. Her face quickly landed on the desk. Pansy was trying to distract herself by looking at Draco, but even that was hard with a constant droning from Professor Binns.

Alice smiled. Those are the words that she would like to hear. That meant that she could make a profit off these pieces of paper if she did things correctly.

"How much do you think?" Alice asked Daphne.

Alice was hoping to sell this type of paper for about two galleons and seven or so sickles. One galleon was about five pounds in conversion, while a sickle was about 30 pence. A novelty item sold to children should be only twelve pounds at most in her mind. It's not like it is a video game or a tablet that could provide entertainment for days or even years.

"Did you pay five galleons?" Daphne replied.

Five whole galleons? Alice could see how a relatively new item could sell for twenty pounds, but it would get old quickly, especially at the range limitations that they had. She resolved that Daphne would give better input to what old and rich families would pay for this than maybe what a Weasley member would pay for this. Although, Alice wasn't quite sure that her price would have been okay for that family since a wand only was worth thirty-five pounds and yet Ron Weasley couldn't get a new one.

"I made this, but it's only a cheap test," Alice wrote. "I can one that the four of us can use if everyone pitches in."

Daphne looked at Alice and looked at the paper. She turned around to look at the runes that were on the enchanted paper and looked at Alice again. The runes were very methodically spaced and extremely neat. Something that Daphne hadn't see before. Normally runes that were written for an enchantment were a bit shakey from the sheer number of hours that one that to write each rune and pour magical energy. Daphne didn't know that the paper had a distance limit, so it was extremely impressive.

She originally thought that Alice was a muggle-born because of her knowledge of muggles, but Daphne felt wrong. An understanding of runes is not something that an eleven-year-old muggle-born should even have. She only knew of some runes because of her private tutor.

"Excuse me," Hermione interrupted, almost comedically. "Can you go into more of the 16th century? The book only briefly mentioned Malodora Grymm and Zygmunt Budge."

The few that were awake groaned at the overeager child. Professor Binns was even thrown for a loop since he normally just lectures without getting any interaction by the students.

"Of course," Professor Binns said. "That's actually an interesting time. Not very well recorded, because it involves the muggle side of the world..."

As the ghost continued to trail on about the history of the Beautification Potion, Daphne practically melted into the seat. She then thought to herself, "Maybe muggle-borns are just weird."

---

Friday morning, Alice finally has gotten used to waking up to dark murky waters of the lake. She had broken out a clock to have across the room. She originally wanted to put it by the bedstand, but she found that she had a habit of snoozing it half-asleep because of her late nights. Luckily Alice was woken up by her little group in time for breakfast. This was the first day that Alice managed to get to breakfast without any help.

"Alice! You're here," Pansy exclaimed. "You're such a sleepyhead. I was worried we'd need to babysit you forever."

Alice smiled sheepishly. "It's dark in the dungeons, you know."

"Oh did no one show you?" Daphne asked. "You can set the fire charm in the fireplace to turn on when the sun rises."

She looked at Daphne, dumbfounded. It was the wizards' and witches' alternative to a sun lamp. Alice was so entranced by her work, she forgot to examine the work that was done in the room. Pansy giggled at the sight of Alice's face.

"Don't worry, Millicent also didn't know until yesterday," Pansy explained. Millicent was busy with her breakfast. It was a french toast that was loaded up with strawberries, bananas, and a ton of whipped cream. She had vowed that wasn't getting to eat too many french toasts this time around and simply topped her one with a lot of love. Pansy leaned closer to Alice and with a hushed voice she said, "She has a very good internal clock when it comes to food."

Alice's face didn't react to Pansy's casual shade as she claimed her spot at the table. She brought out her business smile and looked at the three of them.

"Remember that I promised to have more of that message paper for our group?" Alice asked.

"Oh is it coming in the mail today? It better be worth the 3 galleons," Pansy said as she put her hands together. She looked up in hopefully since she was already feeling a little homesick.

"No we won't have to wait for the mail," Alice said, happy that Daphne kept their promise about keeping the invention secret until Alice could figure out what it took to get a patent on this idea. "I have the four sheets here."

Alice took out the four sheets. Each paper was divided into four equal rectangles. Each of the rectangles had a neat little drawing in the bottom corner. When the girls held these papers they were severely confused.

Unlike the prototype, the runes were not exposed since that would make it easier to copy, Alice found. She had enchanted another paper to not allow light to pass through and glued the papers seamlessly together so that no outside force could mess with the formula. The three pure-blooded witches thought that Alice gave them a blank paper with a few doodles.

"You see here," Alice said as she wrote on her share. "If I write to this cake. Millicent should have it on her paper. Read what it says."

Millicent looked down at her message paper and saw words that emerged in the rectangle that had a galleon icon.

"Oh it says...Millicent you have cream on your right cheek," She said before the words registered in her head. She quickly took a napkin and wiped it away. "Oh, how did you do that?"

"Wait a moment, it gets better," Alice said as she wrote in the fourth section that she had that had the images of a wedding ring, cake, and teacup mingling together. "Now the three of you, look down."

Daphne looked at her paper and looked over at Pansy's. She smiled in amusement. The three of them had all received the message that Alice wrote. It was just the word Slytherin, but it was enough to show what each section was made for.

"The best part is, that as long as we're within Hogwarts, it should work," Alice said. She remembered climbing up the tower that Ravenclaw resided just to test how far the paper's capability could handle. It was the farthest place that she could practically think of from the Slytherin's dungeons. Her legs were still burning from the sheer amount of stairs. The seventh-year Ravenclaws probably had buns of steel.

"So these pictures represent us," Pansy asked. "Am I a diamond ring?"

"Oo, that makes me a cake," Millicent said and looked at Daphne with a face full of pity. "That makes you a book! Might as well transfer you to Ravenclaw."

"Why am I a book?" Daphne asked Alice.

"You are always in the library," Alice responded. It was easy to say always since they had been at the school for less than a week. Alice knew that Daphne's younger sister had a curse that was passed down the Greengrass family and that Daphne would spend her time in the curses and hex section. There was no need to expose a private matter so she kept it vague.

"I've got an idea," Pansy said with a mischievous smile. "Let's use this next class."

"Potions? How would we do that?" Millicent asked. "We are supposed to get the recipes from Professor Snape."

"Oh ho ho," Pansy said with a smile. "You are quite short-sighted. I heard a rumor from the older students that Professor Snape likes to test the first years on the first day."

"Test!" Millicent exclaimed, calling attention to her from the other students, especially Snape who was wondering why his house was acting without decorum. This caused Millicent to curl her shoulders up in a sad attempt to hide her shame. "What can we be tested on? It's the first bloody day."

"Well ingredients, potions," Daphne said, "And other commonly known facts about the class I guess. Things that we shouldn't have an issue unless we were muggle-born...Or didn't have private tutors."

Millicent grumbled a little. She felt like Daphne was directly attacking her since the Bulstrode family was more known for their physical capabilities than their knowledge. She had more self-defense taught to her than basic magic since her family felt that she would receive the education at Hogwarts.

"That why we're going to use this...wait what is this called Alice?" Pansy asked.

Alice shrugged and said, "Chatbox?"

She wasn't very good with names. It was normal to outsource that work to a third party company.

"Okay, we're going to use this Chatbox to help us score some points," Pansy said with a mischievous grin.

At least, Alice liked Pansy's idea, but when it was time to execute it. Snape wasn't offering any questions at all. He threw a bunch of questions at the famous Harry Potter, more so than in the movies. Alice vaguely remembered that there was some meaning behind the string of questions when she checked the news around 2016. Unfortunately, since she wasn't into theories of fictional stories she didn't bother to click it.

Alice was more focused on the opening statement of the class. Bottling fame, brew glory, and stopper to death? Alice was already sold onto the potion gravy train. Even though the ingredients seemed to be expensive, the profit from these potions must be large since it had such a high difficulty curve. Most of the students in the room wouldn't be even able to see a bottle of luck, Felix Felicis, let alone spend six months brewing it. That drink would bring her a lot of boons if she could learn how to brew it.

She was frustrated that Snape spent the time focusing on Harry. It was one of the rare classes that Slytherins had with Gryffindor and she found that the class's quality seemed to drop significantly when the two houses were together. There wasn't a large sample size since she had only had a class with them once, but Alice remembered that Quirrell's lessons with Gryffindor would be described as laughable. When Professor Quirrel taught only the Slytherin, the Voldemort favor to the pureblood heavy house showed as they had learned a few spells to use in duals. If Alice could get a restraining order for the Golden Trio, then she might make some progress in potions.

"Enough with Potter," Severus said as he looked to the rest of the class. "Before you even touch your tools, I expect you to take notes on my demonstration of Cure for Boils. Some of you will find this very useful in the coming years."

Alice sighed in relief and looked down at her book. She casually flipped to the page that she had hidden the Chatbox paper and found that Daphne had written all of the answers in the group chat rectangle. How Alice knew it was Daphne, was that she had their text come in as blue for Daphne, pink for Pansy, and purple for Millicent. Alice's ink comes out as green in that spot, but she wasn't going to see it.

Daphne was a lot smarter than what Alice thought. Unlike Hermione, Daphne never raised her hand. If she was called upon, then she would answer, but the teachers didn't choose her. Alice felt like she was the master of being a wallflower.

"Too bad, next time?" Pansy asked through the paper. As another pair of students were yelled at Severus for whispering, Pansy smiled and wrote an additional message to Alice. "Great find Alice. We won't be losing points anytime soon."

Even though Alice was just using the three as guinea pigs for her products, she felt a little satisfaction from the compliment. The confidence glow must have been shining because it caught the attention of Severus Snape.

"Blair, see me after class," Snape stated after finishing up his example.