MetaFic

September 1, 1991

“Here’s your room.  Your trunks have already been brought up and put next to the beds.  You’re welcome to trade beds if everyone involved is agreeable, though.”

Hermione nodded and smiled politely at the prefect, who had introduced herself as Penelope Clearwater.   Her trunk, which somehow looked much more mundane than the others, waited at the foot of the second bed from the left in the round room.

“The toilets are across the landing.  Once you’re settled here, please go back up to the common room.  We prefects want to make a few announcements.  Any questions?”

None of the five first-years said anything, so Penelope smiled at them and left the room.

A slender girl with strawberry-blonde hair and fine features stepped towards the centre bed and addressed Hermione.  “Hello.  I’m Mandy Brocklehurst.”

“Hermione Granger.  It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.  Are both your parents Muggles?”

Hermione remembered all-too-well the awkward conversation in which the Deputy Headmistress had explained the basics of the magical world to her and her parents.  She did not much like the word ‘Muggle’ because it sounded vaguely condescending, but she knew it was the only word the magical people knew.  “Yes, they are.   Are yours?”

“Mine?  Goodness, no.  I’m not sure I’ve even met a Muggle before.  I just wondered why your trunk looked so odd.”  Mandy turned around to face the golden-skinned girl on her other side, who was examining the four-poster bed.  “Hello.  Mandy Brocklehurst.”

“I am Su Li,” the black-haired girl said, tilting her head slightly.  “I am happy to meet you.”

Beyond Su Li, at the other end of the row, was a squat, brown-haired girl named Morag MacDougal.  The blonde standing at the first bed, next to Hermione’s, introduced herself as Lisa Turpin.

Once the girls had all greeted each other, Mandy crossed the room towards Morag.  “I wonder . . . would you be interested in trading beds?  I’m used to having a door to my left, you see.  You might like the centre bed better as it has windows on either side.”

Morag nodded, lifted one end of her trunk, and dragged it across the floor.  Mandy, smiling distantly, pulled out her wand.  “Wingardium Leviosa!” she said.  Her trunk rose into the air and floated serenely towards the bed furthest from Hermione’s.

“That’s wonderful!” Hermione said.  “I read about that spell, but I’ve never actually seen it done.  Where did you learn?”

Mandy tossed her hair over her shoulder and bent down to open her trunk.  “Oh, you learn a few things here and there as you grow up.  Well, I did, at any rate.  I suppose you didn’t, with the Muggles.”

Hermione blinked at the rather dismissive remark, the word ‘Muggles’ echoing in her head.  She took a breath and then turned to her trunk.

“Don’t mind her,” Lisa Turpin said quietly from Hermione’s left.  “She’s from one of the old families.  Some of them are a bit stupid.”

“Isn’t this supposed to be the house for clever people?” Hermione whispered back.

Lisa shrugged.  “Yes, well, there are different types of stupid.”

For a few moments, the girls were mostly quiet as they examined their wardrobes, opened their trunks, and arranged a few of their possessions on the small tables next to their beds.  Then Mandy moved purposefully towards the door.  “I’m going up.  The prefects are expecting us.”

Su Li, who had been sitting quietly on her unopened trunk, rose to her feet and followed Mandy out of the room.

Hermione turned to Morag.  “Are you ready to go?”

“Aye,” the shorter girl said.  “’M ready.”

“Lisa?”

“Sure, let’s go.”

They left the dormitory and walked up three flights of stairs to reach the common room.  Hermione had examined it briefly on the way into the dormitories, but now she had a chance to look around more carefully.  The round room was two stories high, with arched windows that stretched almost to the domed ceiling.  There were two fireplaces, one on either side of the door to the rest of the castle, and bookshelves were spaced evenly between the windows.  The open space in the middle of the room was scattered with tables, sofas, and armchairs, all made from light-coloured woods and blue fabrics.  The entire room was hung with airy blue and bronze silk, giving Hermione the impression of an open-air solarium.  It was, she decided, one of the most beautiful rooms she had ever seen.

“Hello!  Hermione, isn’t it?”  She lowered her gaze and saw an older girl wearing a prefect’s badge.  “I’m Elisabeth Rhodes, seventh-year prefect.  Come on over.”

She led Hermione towards one of the fireplaces, where the other first-years and prefects were gathering.  Hermione smiled at Michael, who nodded and waved back, and sat at the edge of the cluster of students rather than trying to move through the group that was already there.  When they were all settled, Elisabeth and the other seventh-year prefect, a dark-skinned boy named Daniel, stood up in front of the group.

“Welcome to Ravenclaw!” Elisabeth said.  “I’m sure you have dozens of questions, and we’re all happy to answer them at any time.  For now, we’d just like to give you some general information.  As you’ve already seen, you take that door next to the statue to get to your rooms.  This year you’re below us, near ground level, but as you advance you’ll work your way up.  Fourth years move to just above the common room, and seventh years are at the top.  There are toilets on each landing, but they’re guarded with gender-sensing charms.  Boys can’t go into the girls toilets, and vice-versa.”

“You can go into each others’ rooms,” Daniel said, “but only before curfew.  After that, another set of wards are activated which prevent you from mixing.  If you’re in the wrong gender’s room after curfew, we’ll all hear a really horrible buzzing sound until you leave.  Everyone hates that sound, so please get out of your friends’ rooms before ten o’clock.”

Elisabeth waved at the rest of the room.  “The common room is where you’ll likely spend most of your time.  Generally we socialise closer to the fireplaces and work further away from them, so please be conscious of which area you’re in.  We have a small library of our own, there along the wall, which can be very helpful when doing assignments or revision.  You can read any book you care to, but please don’t take them outside the Tower.”

The two of them talked for a while about how daily life worked in the Tower, how to get to the library, the Great Hall, the Owlery, and the Hospital Wing, as well as what to expect on their first day of classes.

“And remember,” Daniel concluded, “we’re all here to help you if you have questions about your lessons or your homework.  There’s a chart over there,” he pointed to a large rectangle of canvas, “showing which upper-form Ravenclaws are available to help you at which times.  We’ve arranged it so that for every subject there’s always someone available who’s doing a N.E.W.T. in that subject.  You can also ask a prefect for help at any time, though we may tell you to speak to someone else if we’re revising ourselves.

“I think that’s . . .”  Daniel trailed off as another of the prefects cleared his throat.  “Oh, right.  Geoffrey here is in charge of our record book, so you need to talk to him for a minute before bed.  Just make a queue here; it won’t take long.”

Puzzled, Hermione stood and joined the queue facing a round table, where the boy named Geoffrey sat with a large book and a quill.  When she reached the table, the broad, bespectacled boy smiled at her without quite meeting her eyes.  “Hello.  Could you remind me of your full name, please?”

“Hermione Jean Granger.”

“Yes, of course, thank you,” he said, writing her name in the book.  “We like to keep our own records here.  Mostly just basic facts about the people in our House, going back to the fourteen hundreds.  We keep a few historical charts and lists, and a few of us study the patterns we find.  It’s quite interesting.  If you’d rather not answer any of the questions, you don’t have to.”

Hermione liked the idea of contributing to a historical record, and she looked forward to seeing the charts.  “All right.”

“Thank you.” Geoffrey bent over the book, his quill poised.  “Your birthday?”

“Nineteen September, 1979.”

“And where did you grow up?”

“Cambridge.”

“Thank you.  Are your parents magical, non-magical, half-magical, or squibs?”

Hermione paused, unsure what a ‘half-magical’ person might be.  “They’re both non-magical.”

“Oh, excellent,” Geoffrey said, glancing up at her.  “Mine, too.  Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Breathtaking,” Hermione said.

The boy bent over his book again.  “Did the Sorting Hat speak to you during your Sorting?”

“Yes.  Wasn’t it supposed to?”

“It varies a lot,” Geoffrey said.  “Now that I think of it, you were up there for longer than others.  Don’t worry, it’s not that unusual.”

“Oh.  All right.”

“When the Sorting Hat spoke, did it offer you a choice of houses, either explicitly or implicitly?  You can just say yes or no, you don’t have to tell me what it said.”

Speaking to a dilapidated old Hat had been one of the strangest parts of a very strange day, and Hermione remembered it with perfect clarity.  “Yes, it did.”

“If you don’t mind, will you let us record which houses it offered you, or which houses you were interested in?”

Hermione shrugged.  “I don’t mind.  It came very close to putting me in Gryffindor.”

At this, Geoffrey sat up straight, his eyes bright and interested.  “Really?  That is unusual.”

“It is?”

“Yes.  Look.”  He flipped to the back of the book and extracted a piece of graph paper, which was clearly not of magical origin.  On it was a coloured graph with seven bars of varying heights.  “This shows which other houses people were offered before being Sorted into Ravenclaw.  These first three show the number of people who were offered only one other house.”  

His fingers bracketed the yellow, green, and red bars.  The green bar was nearly twice as tall as either of the other two, and the yellow bar was slightly higher than the red.

“The red one is Gryffindor.  That’s the house we see the least of.  Some of us think that if we had the same sort of data for all four houses, we’d find that . . . well, nevermind.”  He flipped back to the page where he had been writing.  “So, anyway, Gryffindor is the rarest alternative choice, but it still comes up often enough.  What makes your information interesting is that you have non-magical parents and you were offered Gryffindor.  There have only been a handful of people like that.”

“Oh.  Does that mean anything?  Are they particularly unusual people?”

“I’m not sure.  I could get you their names if you’re interested.”

Hermione glanced over her shoulder and saw that three of her housemates were still patiently waiting in line to speak to Geoffrey.  “Perhaps another time.  I think this is a fascinating project, though.  Would you show me the other graphs and lists some time?”

“Sure.  I’m in sixth year, so I have a bit more time than the other prefects.  I’ll talk to you later.”

Hermione smiled and moved away from the table.  The first-years who had been ahead of her were not in sight, so she assumed that they had gone back to their dormitories to unpack.

For a moment, she stood near the centre of the room.  Ravenclaw Tower had been fantastical when she first entered it, but in the last hour it had somehow become even more incredible.  Magic was evident in every stone, portrait, and person in the room.  Hundreds of books waited on shelves for her to read.  There was a chart full of people who were ready to answer any question she might have.  There were even people who kept records and studied patterns in hundreds of years worth of students.

Ravenclaw was a House of knowledge and learning and thought, and Hermione loved everything about it.