Hope - George Potter

20 - Typical Ravenclaws

Coming into the Ravenclaw common room that evening, George was thankful for the sixth years who held the door open for Henry and him. He was dreading the moment he would actually have to solve one of the riddles. This morning, it had only been a lucky guess that had allowed him to get through the door.

When they walked into the room, Rebecca and Frederic waved them over. The other first years were already sitting around them at one of the tables near the windows.

"Henry, George, there you are!" Frederic called.

"Oh really? I hadn't noticed," George said.

"Thank you so much, Frederic. Now we finally know that we are here," Henry added, "We will be forever grateful."

Frederic just rolled his eyes in return and the two boys got seated at the table. Rebecca turned to them.

"George, I was supposed to inform you about the situation with Professor Binns. The headmaster was able to find him with the help of the ghosts and portraits. He was unresponsive and the only solution was obliviating him, which was extremely difficult, as ghosts respond differently to spells than living humans. You are asked not to talk to him about being a ghost again. If you do, you will have to deal with severe consequences," Rebecca told him in a strict tone.

"It would be pointless to ask him about being a ghost anyway, as he isn't exactly informative about that and doesn't seem to know anything about it," George answered.

"I swear he was a Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. Not noticing that you are a ghost! That would never happen to a Ravenclaw," Henry said, shaking his head at the sheer stupidity of their teacher. They all laughed together.

"Anyway, I asked you all to come here because you should learn a very useful spell, so we won't have to wake you tomorrow. It is called the 'Expergiscio' spell and it is fairly easy. We managed it on our first evening at Hogwarts, too. Of course, you won't be able to master it perfectly at the end of the evening, but you should be able to use it for tomorrow."

Rebecca continued to explain the spell to them and it was extremely difficult for George to hold back a laugh. The spell basically had the same effect as any normal alarm clock, but she talked about it like it was such an incredible invention. The wizarding world sure was a bit strange.

After explaining how to do it, the prefects left them to try it out on their own. It really was easy. The wand movement and the pronunciation was very simple and the only difficulty was your determination. You had to think as hard as possible about when exactly you wanted to be woken up the next morning. On George's third try, the ringing sound could be heard that signalled the successful use of the spell.

He looked around proudly. "Wow. You already managed to do it. No wonder you were put into Ravencalw," Bellatrix said. The other girls also complimented him and he couldn't help but enjoy the attention. Henry just rolled his eyes.

It took half an hour until they had all managed it. George had used the time to sit around and watch the other students in the common room. He didn't see the sense in helping the other first years perform the spell, as he had managed it on his own as well and they would remember it better if they actually learned it on their own.

The Ravenclaw common room was completely full and the other pupils were very funny to watch. George was sure that the people in the other houses were not as interesting as the Ravenclaws. Creativity, originality and individuality were some of the most important traits Rowena Ravenclaw valued, after all.

Some of the students had already changed into normal clothes - or at least as normal as an average Ravenclaw's clothes would be. The colours blue and bronze were quite prominent in the clothing. House pride was an important thing in Ravenclaw - but probably in all the other houses as well. But they also wore many other colours, preferably all the different colours combined. It seemed like a competition of who wore the most colourful clothing. Some students wore funny looking pointed hats or were using their tie as a headband.

A group of second or third year girls walked around and asked the other students for their shoes so they could bind them together in order to play a special version of rope skipping. Some refused, but others willingly gave them their shoes and walked around on socks afterwards.

In one corner, several students were painting a huge banner together, which showed a lion being attacked by an eagle. Yes, house pride definitely played a big role in Ravenclaw.

"I think they are already painting banners for the Quidditch match against Gryffindor," Henry answered after George had commented on the rather violent picture.

On several tables, there were people sitting around alone, engrossed in different kinds of projects. Even in Ravenclaw, not everyone had friends, despite them supposed to be extraordinarily accepting. But maybe they wanted to be alone so as to work on their projects.

One boy was scribbling very fast onto parchment - which was quite an achievement; George found it extremely difficult to write with a quill. Meanwhile, the boy was beating eggs. He seemed to write down how exactly the eggs were falling and what they looked like. The entire table was full of little bowls he was examining.

At another table, a girl was looking at about ten different star maps she seemed to be comparing. That wasn't all too peculiar, many students were sitting around, doing research and looking through many different books. The peculiar thing was the position of the girl she was talking to. She was lying on the floor and looking up to the ceiling of the room which was painted with stars. Every now and then, as if to emphazise something she was saying, she pointed her wand at the ceiling and one or another star was blinking in different colours. It looked very beautiful and George just felt so lucky that he had ended up here, in Ravenclaw.

At the table right next to them, two sixth or seventh year students communicated by making sparks come out of their wand to form words in the air. One of them accidentally lost control of some of the sparks and they hit another student who turned around angrily, as he had been disturbed in his studies. There was a little argument but it seemed like the other student gave up and returned to his work.

Then, apparently out of nowhere - but George had seen the student wave his wand under the table - a stack of books, that had previously been on the book shelf, fell down onto the table of the two seventh years. One of them turned around to the responsible student with a dangerous look on his face. Instead of screaming at him like anyone else would have done, he instead let the sparks that were coming from his wand form very colourful language. A little duel broke out, but soon enough, the fight was stopped by the prefects.

The room wasn't exactly as quiet as pupils of other houses would probably think of the Ravenclaw common room: lots of pupils were talking to their friends and joking around. In one corner, a boy was playing a cheerful song on a strange looking instrument. It consisted of many pipes which all emitted different coloured sparks. And there was of course also the constant noise of students hammering at the door and screaming for someone to let them in. Nobody seemed to care, though, and some even laughed at them and called back taunting comments. George even overheard some students placing bets on who would solve the eagle's riddle in the end or on who hadn't managed to solve it.