Things Will Never Be the Same Again

As soon as the hat had called out my house I heard an enormous cheering from the table second to the left. It seemed like that was where I was supposed to go. I whipped the hat off and left it on the stool for the next person while I raced to the table. I was just looking for a seat when Cho stood up and waved me over.

“Hi,” I said, smiling gratefully and taking a seat to the left of her.
“Hey” She grinned back.
“Congratulations on making it into the best house,” Said a bright eyed boy from the other side of the table “I’m Michael Corner”
“Uh thank you, I’m Jess,” I replied.
“Yeah, I figured when your name was called” He grinned. “I’m guessing you’re not a first year”
“You’re a good guesser” I smiled back. “I’m a fifth year”
“Same, we’ll have lots of classes together then” He looked quite pleased at the thought.
“I think it depends which subjects she’s taking Michael” Cho laughed as more eruptions of applause broke out around the room. More people had just been sorted and I’d missed it, I tried to turn back to watch the few first years still standing at the front.
“I didn’t look that terrified did I?” I whispered to Cho as we watched a girl walking toward the stool, her eyes goggling at the hat as if she expected it to try and eat her.
“Nah,” Michael replied leaning across the table to me and Cho “You looked worse, petrified” He whispered, chuckling.
“Oh thanks,” I replied curtly before turning to my left and noticing a pretty girl with the longest blonde hair I’d ever seen, sitting and staring at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked, waiting for her to look away. She never did.
“Not yet,” She responded in a soft tone.
“Well, ok then” I smiled before turning back to the ceremony. I looked just in time to see the last student being sorted into Hufflepuff.

The stool and hat were taken away once again and a man at the front of the hall with long grey hair and a beard to match took to his feet, walking to the edge of the stairs and gazing around the hall.
“Welcome new students, old students and teachers,” He spoke just loud enough to be heard by everyone. “I’m glad to see you all sitting and eagerly awaiting the new school year. I hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will. Now, I think it’s time we all had a bite to eat,” He announced, sitting back down. I turned back around and saw all the plates had been filled with food, anything you could want. Roast pork, chicken wings, steak, potatoes, salads, sausages. It was all there waiting to be eaten.

Everyone at the Ravenclaw table started eating straight away; they didn’t need to be told twice. It reminded me of the Weasley boys.
“Cho, which tables belong to what houses?” I asked innocently.
“That table there is the Gryffindor table” She said pointing to the table the furthest to the left “That one there in the middle is the Hufflepuff table and the table on the other side belongs to Slytherin”
“Oh thanks” Now I looked across at the Gryffindor table, searching for the Weasley twins, wondering if they were somewhere at that table. I felt a little sad that George had never come to see me on the train; maybe Harry had just been messing with me earlier, maybe George hadn’t even mentioned my name on the train..

“It’s quite odd that you are starting your first year at Hogwarts as a fifth year, don’t you find?” The girl with the long blonde hair suddenly asked.
“I never really thought about it as odd” I admitted “It’s just, how it is” I shrugged, taking a bite of the roast potatoes. They were incredible.
“I suppose you are right. We’re going to be good friends,” She said suddenly, watching me again. I choked on the rest of my potato.
“How-how do you know?”
“How do you not know?” She responded with a confused expression, I nearly laughed.
“I guess I don’t see into the future much” I shrugged; I could hear Cho giggling from the other side of me. The blonde haired girl didn’t laugh.
“Not much? So you see into the future sometimes?”
“Um, no?”
“Is that a question or your answer?”
“How could that possibly be a question?”
“Well that was a question”
“Yes, wait, what?” I asked, getting a little lost in the conversation. The blonde girl tilted her head and continued to look at me with a blank stare. I looked away, feeling a little uncomfortable and continued eating, I’d only just realized that I hadn’t eaten much at all in the last few days and my hunger seemed to be catching up with me. When I turned back to the girl she had gone.
“Who was that?” I asked Cho.
“That was Luna Lovegood” She smiled
“Loony Lovegood more like it” Michael snorted “Ouch!” He suddenly yelped. I think it was Cho that had kicked him under the table.
“Nice,” I whispered.
“Thanks,” She whispered back.

It looked like the feast was coming to an end sooner than I would have imagined. Students started filing out through the double doors and first years were being called to the back of the hall by the prefects so I knew it was almost time for bed.
“Do you think they mean me too when they call for the first years?” I asked Cho. She laughed and shook her head.
“I don’t think so, we’ll show you around,” She replied with her usual friendly smile. I was very thankful I’d landed myself in Ravenclaw, Cho seemed lovely.

Once we were done Cho introduced me to a girl named Padma who I found out I was also sharing a room with.
“There’s Cho, Luna, Marietta, myself and now you,” Padma explained as we walked through the corridors toward our Common Room. We climbed up a series of staircases and found ourselves at the entrance to a small spiral staircase; it was only large enough to walk up in single file. Padma took the lead with me behind her and Cho following afterwards, it took a few minutes of walking in small dizzying circles to reach the top and when we did there was another door. This door had a bronze eagle shaped knocker prominently stuck to it. Padma reached out and knocked only once, the beak of the eagle opened straight away.
“It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?” A voice spoke from the knocker.
“What the heck was that?” I whispered to Cho. Padma laughed.
“The way in to the common room, other houses have passwords they have to remember to enter theirs and we have riddles we must answer,” Padma explained.
“Right, so what’s the answer?”
“Well, we have to figure it out don’t we.” Padma sighed, giving me a strange look. “Anyone have an idea?”
Ten minutes later and we were no closer to getting into our room than we had been when we were sitting down in the Great Hall.
“Can we give up?” I asked, mostly just to break the silence.
“Of course not,” Padma snapped. Cho smiled sympathetically. Soon there was the sound of footsteps echoing from below, someone was coming.

Luna leapt up the stairs a peaceful expression on her face, she looked around at us.
“It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?” Cho repeated the riddle for Luna. She smiled.
“A person!” And with that answer the door creaked open. Now it was my turn to stare at Luna.
“What?” I blurted out.
“It’s quite simple really, a person crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult and uses a cane when they grow older which counts as their third leg,” She answered turning and walking in behind Padma.
“That’s insane, how could anybody think of that?” I whispered to Cho as we followed “I think I’m gonna be waiting for someone to open that door every day”
“No don’t worry, it gets easier with practice. Oh and welcome to the Ravenclaw common room,” She said suddenly, remembering that she was showing me around. It was a beautiful room, wide and circular.

There were enormous graceful arched windows which weren’t covered in the slightest by curtains. Hanging from the walls were blue and bronze silks. The domed ceiling was painted with stars, and bookshelves ran right the way around walls and chairs and tables were placed in a loose half circle around the fire.
There were a few people lying on the rug in front of the roaring fire, looking like they were catching up with each other and sharing news but apart from that everyone else seemed to be in their rooms already.

“Come on, I’ll show you our room,” Cho said, pulling me toward another door across the room. Thankfully this one had a handle instead of a questioning knocker.
I followed Cho up another staircase which branched off a few times to closed doors but we kept on walking.
“Wow, we must have to leave real early in the morning to make it to our classes on time,” I sighed dreading the early starts to come.
“Yes, we do” Cho nodded “I think we’re the furthest from most of the classes and we definitely are the furthest from the great hall.” Finally we reached the top of the staircase and Cho opened the door to reveal another circular room, it looked like a miniature version of the common room with the same arched windows and deep blue carpet.

Five four poster beds were spread evenly through the room with blue and bronze hangings that wound around the beds like curtains. Luna and Padma were already sitting on their beds happily chatting. Luna noticed me walk in though and suddenly walked over to where I had just flopped down on my bed which seemed to be in between hers and Cho’s.

“Is that your owl?” I noticed she was pointing to Joseph who was asleep in his cage on my bedside table.
“Yeah, isn’t he adorable?” She nodded in agreement and stared at him some more. Her staring didn’t bother me so much anymore, after she had answered that riddle I’d gained a new kind of respect for her.
Marietta entered the room a few minutes later and I was finally able to see all of my new roommates together. She seemed nice and apparently was the fifth year Ravenclaw prefect. She launched into a deep conversation with Cho about who had been made the other prefects in our year. I stopped listening when I heard them laughing at the fact Ron Weasley was Gryffindor’s prefect instead of so many other suitable choices.

I felt very happy as I lay down that night looking out into the night sky to see the full moon glowing above the castle. I had made it through the part of Hogwarts I’d been dreading, meeting the people I’d be spending most of my time with.
I had been imaging the worst, that everyone would already have their clichés and would not want to accept me into them. But I knew the people surrounding me weren’t like that at all, they all seemed very friendly.
I drifted off to sleep that night, content with the new people I’d met and excited to start the next day.