For those who belong in Ravenclaw House, in the middle of the Great Hall is where your table awaits. Blue banners containing an embroidered bronze eagle float above the polished table in honour of the wise Rowena Ravenclaw. Already placed on the tables are silver plates with accompanying cutlery and goblets. All that is missing right now are the mountains of food and pitchers containing your favourite beverages.

Though your stomach might be growling as you take a seat on one of the long benches next to the table, it is important to not get hangry -- gnawing your arm away or jabbing your fork repeatedly on the surface of the table will do no good whatsoever. Give everyone some time to get settled in and wait for Headmaster Winterbottom to deliver his speech. Keep yourself preoccupied by catching up with your fellow housemates until it is time to sink your teeth into the hearty and delicious meal prepared by the house-elves.

Greer had taken a seat for her final start of term feast. It was so surreal that she was entereing her 7th year at Hogwarts. She felt ready to take on the world - or at least most of it. The magical creatures were a solid no and she was so glad she was able to drop that class the second she could.

Taking out of her new text books she hoped to the chapter she had left off on and began to read. She was sure that the table would fill in around her. She was more than willing to chat with anyone if they so chose - may she could find a first year to take under her wing? You know show them them the ropes? But who knows! All Greer knew is she was ready for whatever adventures this term was to bring.

Harvey was here, present and accounted for, and quite ready to take on the challenge of his second year. Not that he anticipated much of a challenge, except if something absolutely unhinged decided to happen at Hogwarts. His first year had been a breeze; Harv knew that it had everything to do with his nonchalant mannerisms. Life was so much easier when one rarely stressed about anything. Even now, sitting at the Ravenclaw table, he was lazily clapping along with his House as fresh faces joined them.

Hi, hello, everyone! Welcome!

There was no need to hop down the rabbit hole that was reading textbooks just yet like Greer was. Chatting was an option too!



By the time she made it to the Ravenclaw Table, Saina’s round face was light pink. She blamed the applause and all the spotlight that came with being newly Sorted. She disliked being in the spotlight so Sai hurriedly took a seat, hoping that that would be of some help. Still, she couldn’t exactly escape it all just yet. How rude it would be if she didn’t at least greet her Housemates.

“Hi, everyone,’’ came her greeting, albeit a tad breathlessly. “My name is Saina. It’s wonderful to be here!” To ground herself and not be too caught up in the excitement, Sai lightly tapped the wand stowed safely in its holster. The object brought her some level of comfort as she felt quite connected to it. That was when she spotted an older girl {Greer} reading a textbook. “Should I also have started reading my textbooks?” she blurted out.

Third year. New classes. New ideas. After planning all summer, Cat felt ready. So, she was exuding about as much confidence as a thirteen-year-old girl could as she approached her table.

There were only a few other people already there. Cat recognized one of the boys from the blue-hair fiasco that occurred at the last start-of-term feast, but the others were either new or new to her. She sat near the group, not wanting to appear rude, and gave them all a smile and a wave.

She arrived just in time to hear the newly-sorted girl ask a question and even though it definitely wasn’t directed toward her, Cat answered anyway. “It’s okay that you haven’t started. But I’d get going as quickly as you can. You’ll get a lot of information from your classes right off the bat, so it’ll probably feel better for you if you have some knowledge of what you’re getting into.” She was speaking from experience here. Although in her case, she’d absolutely devoured her texts and anything else she could get her hands on before starting school. She was planning on chilling out only slightly this year - other things to worry about, you know. But she’d still gotten through most of her third year texts by this point.

The journey back to Hogwarts had passed quietly, but because of an absence of noise. Iris had occupied a compartment with her dormmates who, having apparently forfeited sleep entirely the night before, had collapsed almost immediately, leaving her with uninterrupted hours and a floor scattered with parchment, notes, and a text far too delicate to risk mishandling.

It had been… productive.

The first hour alone had yielded a partial translation she had been circling for weeks — something rooted in grief, in guilt, in the way certain emotional states could anchor themselves to residual magic and distort it into something sentient, something volatile. Not quite possession. Not quite transformation. But adjacent to both in ways that felt uncomfortably reminiscent of documented obscurial instability. A fragile theory but still promising.

By the time the train had slowed into Hogsmeade, her notes had been carefully packed away and left behind with the rest of her things. Not the sort of material one brought into the Great Hall. Which left her, somewhat uncharacteristically, without a book since she had forgotten to retrieve it from her trunk during her haste to tidy up.

Still, she had entered the Great Hall with a lightness to her step that had not been there at the end of last term. Time, distance, and a particular afternoon had shifted something ― not resolved, but enough. The rotation between her aunts and uncle had also been a surprising breath of fresh air, but it had been absolutely incredible laying her head on her own pillow the last week of summer.

Her gaze drifted, just briefly, toward the Slytherin table — the smallest hint of a smile touching her expression before she looked away again. Instead, she moved toward her own table, slipping into a seat beside Cat and set neatly wrapped parcel set down in front of the younger Ravenclaw.

"Hi," she greeted softly, smoothing a hand over the paper unnecessarily. "One of my aunts took us to this massive outdoor music concert over the summer... and these made me think of you. Might help you stay out of trouble?"

Doubtful, but for a certain grump of a man's sanity, Iris could hope.

Her attention shifted again, softening as it landed on Harvey as she offered a polite and composed smile. One that was a hair warmer than her usual formalities, but didn't linger before her piercing blue eyes shifted to the newly Sorted first year.

"Welcome to Ravenclaw, Saina. I'm Iris." Her gaze flicked, almost wistfully, toward Greer's open textbook and the quiet envy of someone abruptly deprived of her usual shield settling in her chest and pout of her lips. "I've always been of the mind that it is never the wrong time to start reading, so long as one does it."

Beginning as a suggestion of silver blue drifting into form at the far end of the Ravenclaw House Table, Helena's presence unfolded like mist. The air thinned around her, and from that hush she unfurled — soft as breath on glass, luminous as moonlight caught in water. For a moment, she simply lingered there, gaze passing over the gathered students with an ethereal distant knowing, as though she were reading not their faces, but the thoughts tucked quietly behind them.

"Another term begins," she said at last, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper, yet it carried with perfect clarity, like ripples traveling across still water. "And with it… the same question, asked in countless forms." She tilted her head slightly as she glided forward, the hem of her translucent skirt just grazing the top of the table. "What will you choose to understand… and what will you be content merely to know?"

She grew still once more, her drifting quieting into a poised, weightless calm.

"Welcome, then… to Ravenclaw," she murmured, a warmth beneath the distance of her tone, faint as light through frost. "Where curiosity is both compass and companion… and where the pursuit of understanding is never quite finished. May you learn not only what is written,” she continued, her voice thinning into something more ephemeral still, "but what lingers between the lines… and within yourselves."

Her attention drifted along the table, pausing here and there without settling, her form wavering faintly as she did with her edges dissolving and reforming in a quiet rhythm before she continued with a delicate smile curling the corners of her lips.

"And so," she breathed, "let us begin… not with answers, but with a question.
I am not the words, yet I give them breath.
I am not the mind, yet I wander its depths.
I bridge what is written and what is understood—
What am I?"
Her form stirred with delicate intent, a faint ripple passing through her as though some unseen current had shifted. One pale, translucent hand rose, the motion unhurried and fluid, tracing a soft arc through the air. As it did, the candlelight bent subtly around her fingers, refracting in quiet shimmers.

"Do not be shy,” she encouraged. "Thought, after all, is meant to be shared… when one dares to give it form. This is but a warm up for what the Bronze Knocker has in store for you this term."

"Are you a piece of parchment?" Mira offered up as an answer to the Grey Lady's riddle. She had quietly slipped into a seat near the middle of the eagle table as their house ghost had made her translucent appearance. "Hello everyone," Mira now greeted with warm smiles all around to her fellow peers. "Did everyone hear? We are getting three new professors this year in Herbology, Flying and Transfiguration." Mira wondered curiously as she let her eyes trail up and down her house table and landing on the newly sorted first year [Saina]. "Welcome to Ravenclaw Saina, I'm Mirabelle."

Iris sitting next to her was a pleasant surprise, but Cat was even more surprised when the older girl placed a gift in front of her. Cat smiled, holding back her greeting and all the questions that popped up in her brain until Iris was done speaking.

“I need all the help I can get with that,” she said, only half-joking. She didn’t try to get into trouble, it’s just that things usually happened in her general vicinity and she was nothing if not nosy full of curiosity. Speaking of which- “Can I open it now?”

Though, it was at that point that Helena appeared. Cat’s eyes nearly sparkled in awe at the woman. Any chance to speak with her was a special one in Cat’s book. She stayed quiet, eyes locked on the ghost as she came closer, focusing on her words hard enough for a line to appear in the center of her forehead. When Helena had finished the riddle, Cat finally looked away, eyes landing on her friend and dormmate. She gave Mira a smile and a small wave before turning back to Helena.

“Are you intuition?” she guessed, head tilting slightly to one side.

Harvey was thinking along the same line when he laid eyes on Cat. About the blue hair, that is. What a moment in his first year that moment turned out to be! He would be thinking about it for years. “Hi, Cat!” He grinned before turning to Saina. “Happy to have you here, Saina. I’m Harvey.” As for her question? “I echo what Cat says, though it’s a good start if you already have some basic knowledge of the wizarding world.” She wasn’t Muggle Born, was she? They were unfortunately the ones who usually had so much to catch up with.

Though Iris had never been unfriendly, her extra warm greeting momentarily took the second year aback. It took him a couple of seconds to recover, but recover he did. “Hi, Iris. I have a feeling you did excellently on your OWLS.” Excuse him while he channelled his inner Professor Curious.

One second the Grey Lady was absent, the next - she was present. Harv was slightly startled at her sudden appearance. This told him that he was not yet used to this. He listened to her intelligent words, waiting and waiting for… there it was! The riddle! He put on his thinking cap - not an actual one, mind you. “Um… I’ll go with ‘thought’ as the answer.” Because him dwelling in exactly that only moments ago inspired his answer, and not the fact that the word was literally just said by his House Ghost.

“Oh, hi, Mira. I did notice changes at the Staff table. It’ll be interesting to see what they bring to the School.” Not physically or materially he meant; but rather teaching styles and personality.


Saina was immediately regretful for not paying detailed attention to her new books. She had mainly flicked through them to look at the pictures. Her mind had been otherwise occupied - with finishing the painting of her family so she could gift it to her parents before departing for Hogwarts. “Maybe I’ll get started on one tonight,’’ she told Cat. If she had the energy. The long train journey was not an easy feat. “There’s much to learn indeed. Which text did you start off with?” Sai hoped she wasn’t prying. To Harvey, “I do, since I was born into a wizarding family.” A faint smile played her lips; she missed everyone but Tòmas, and that was only because he was somewhere around Hogwarts.

It had been wise to make the assumption that she wouldn’t be out of the spotlight just yet. However, there was a shift now that the conversation had managed to stay on the subject of textbooks. This helped the girl to feel at ease. “Lovely to meet you, Iris. You are very pretty, by the way.” Sai meant that; she wasn’t one of those jealous-beneath-the surface-but-still-gave-compliments sort of female. “That’s wise, similar to the saying ‘better late than never’. There’s so many textbooks, I just might need some help deciding which to start with.”

Her first encounter with a Hogwarts Ghost! Saina was starry eyed because… LADY HELENA! “Thank you,’’ she managed to squeak, her voice simply not what it was a moment ago. As for an answer to that riddle… oh no! The poor girl could not think quite clearly right then but she so dearly wanted to impress the lovely Lady. She cleared her throat. “Voice?” If only she could find the usual pitch that was hers.

“Hi, Mirabelle. Do professors leave often?” She was curious about the turnover rate of the Hogwarts staff.

Helena regarded each bright young mind in quiet succession, her form gliding through goblets, plates, and their candlelit reflections as though she belonged more to the light than to the Hall itself. She wavered faintly, silver translucence skimming polished wood, just shy of concealing her gentle disappointment.

Her gaze settled first on Mirabelle [Nordic Witch]. "Parchment may hold words, but it does not give them breath as I can," she said softly, "a parchment is a vessel, but it is not a bridge as I."

She drifted on, trailing a dimming shimmer across the table's surface as she came to Cathryn [squidnie]. "Intuition may guide you toward meaning," she murmured, "but skips the process that is I."

The candles nearest her seem to dim as she glides by, their flames bending ever so slightly toward her wake. Her attention drifted then to Harvey [Fearlessleader19]. "Thought is where meaning arrives," she observed with the faintest tilt of her head. "But I am how it gets there."

She turned once more and for an instant her form aligned perfectly with her reflection in a polished goblet as she faced Saina [Fearlessleader19]. "Voice gives sound," she said gently, "yet I require none." Her gaze softened, just slightly. "I exist just as fully in silence as I do aloud."

She resumed her glide, her form loosening into strands of pale drifting light before gathering itself again.

"As this is the beginning of term," she offered, her voice now seeming to echo faintly along the length of the table, "I will permit you one further round of guesses. After that... I shall take this riddle to the bronze knocker, where it will serve as tonight's password."

So she did very much hope they sorted it out by the time the prefects escorted them to the common room… or else they would find themselves sleeping in the corridor just outside it on their very first night.

Inbetween the rounds of the guessing game Mira turned to her dormate Cat asking curiously. "Will you tryout for quidditch or gobstones this year Cat?" She wondered if her friend was going to tryout and if she was, then maybe Mira could brave doing it too. Turning to Harvey next she nodded in unison to his statement. "Yes, it will be interesting see how the Professors will be in our lessons. Are you going to try any new extracurriculars this year Harvey?" Mira herself was thinking about maybe trying the health and wellness group and the art club. Mira felt how hungry she was when her stomach growled loudly and she looked up at the staff dias. Please let the sorting be over, but no there were still some firsties waiting to be sorted.

Hearing the voice of the new girl she turned to Saina and answered thoughtfully. "No, most of our professor like Professor Khanna, and Professor Feirgrund for example have been at Hogwarts for many years and they are both well liked and popular. You probably even met Professor Khanna when you took the boat ride across the lake?"

Turning to Lady Helena again to give a new guess since her first guess had been inaccurate Mira offered up. "Are you the soul?"

Iris inclined her head slightly at Harvey's comment, the warmth in her expression remaining but tempering into something more... polite in its self deprecation.

“That’s… generous,” she replied, voice light but precise. Her fingers traced idly along the edge of the table, following the grain of the wood for a bit before slipping into her robe pocket and curling around the small oval object it housed. "I did... well enough."

There had been variables... disruptions she had not accounted for, lapses in focus that had very little to do with aptitude and far more to do with everything else she had been attempting to hold together at the time. The Acceptable in Divination still sat extraordinarily poorly with her. But, at least, she had not failed.

"Sometimes... no matter how carefully you've prepared, something still shifts on the day…" or month before "...and the outcome reflects that instead of the effort."

Turning back to Cat, Iris' lips curved with something much warmer than her usual composure. "Of course," she nodded, inclining her head toward the parcel. "It would be rather cruel of me to expect restraint at a feast."

Inside Cat would find, nestled carefully in soft wrapping, were several strands of vibrant blue hair extensions threaded with a faint, almost iridescent sheen that caught the candlelight.

"They're charmed," Iris added, tone slipping easily into something a touch more instructive. "You braid them in and, with a light tap of your wand, you can shift the colour at will. No poorly brew potions required." Her gaze softened again but with a little glimmer of amusement. "I thought you might appreciate the versatility... and noticeable lack of beard."

Her gaze shifted then, softening again as it settled on Saina... only to still and widen entirely at the compliment. For a fraction of a second, Iris simply stared.

"Oh—" Her hand lifted instinctively from her pocket to adjust her glasses, though they did not need adjusting, aa faint flush rising across her cheeks and softening the constellations of freckles there. "Thank you. That's… very kind of you to say." Her eyes flicked briefly, unintentionally, toward the Slytherin table before returning again to the first year again.

Books were far easier to navigate than compliments on her physical appearance.

"It can all be overwhelming at first, even if you’ve grown up around it," she continued, a small, reassuring smile settling into place. "I tend to keep a book with me at meals — all times, really — it helps narrow the focus and scope of things and the mind something defined to follow." A faint exhale, almost amused at herself. "Though today is an exception. I spent the entirety of the train ride with Dark Magical Theory and bindrunes, so I suspect my eyes would object if I attempted more now."

She tilted her head slightly, tracing back through her own first year ― the missteps, the overreaches, the things she had learned too quickly or not quickly enough.

"I'd say to start with something foundational," shesaid, a soft breath of a laugh escaping her. "Establish the structure before moving into anything too specialized — otherwise it becomes… unnecessarily difficult to follow. But...especially as a first year, it really all is foundational." Her expression softened just a touch more. "When in doubt, there is always alphabetical order."

Iris had been quiet through the guesses of Helena's riddle, weighing the ghost's words as though they were lines of a text being annotated in real time. In the absence of her notebook, her fingers moved lightly once against the table as they mapped exclusions, not conclusions.

"It isn't a thing,” she murmured at last, more to the pattern than to anyone in particular. Her head tilted slightly, brows knitting with quiet focus. “That sounds less like an object… and more like a process,” she finished, the word chosen carefully, deliberately as she glanced in the Grey Lady's direction. "An action." Her gaze flickered briefly toward the others at the table then and anything in anyone's hands or on it that may serve as an additional clue. "Something you do… rather than something you have."

Cat gave Mira a smile, shaking her head. “Nyle said that he’d teach me to play Gobstones this year. So I can learn, but also to see if I like it. So maybe I’ll try out next term.” Quidditch, however, was another thing altogether, and she still had absolutely no desire to try that. Flying wasn’t really her thing.

She returned her attention to Iris just as the older girl did the same. She couldn’t help the little bounce of her shoulders and excited smile when given permission to open the parcel. “It’s hard to call someone potentially cruel when they’ve just given you a gift, she countered good-naturedly as she carefully tore open the paper.

An odd tightness appeared in her chest when she realized what it was. Hair extensions. Bright Ravenclaw Blue hair extensions. She felt like she was going to cry.

She held it in, though, blinking rapidly a few times and swallowing the lump in her throat. She ran her hand gently over the hair as Iris explained the gift. The iridescent gleam made her smile. They were beautiful.

Before she could consider her actions, Cat threw her arms around Iris and squeezed her shoulders in a gigantic hug. “They’re so pretty!” She exclaimed, pulling away again. Now her smile was smaller, slightly embarrassed. “And I do appreciate the lack of a beard.” Among other things.

She continued to carefully, slowly pet the ends of the extensions as her attention turned back to the Grey Lady’s riddle. Her gaze flicked again to Iris, practically hanging on the girl’s words and using them for her own consideration.

“It’s a process," she said softly, just to Iris and anyone else close enough to hear. “Like… learning, or something, maybe?” She hoped that Helena wasn’t paying attention to her brainstorming, as Car was not about to answer a question incorrectly for the second time.

Iris had not anticipated the hug and she should have. No tea dredges, or crystal balls, or lingering flavors of mint and toffee required.

Her entire posture stalled for a fraction of a second at the sudden warmth of it, shoulders tensing instinctively before easing just as quickly beneath Cat's enthusiasm. Surprise flickered openly across her features for a moment before something bordering on panic warped her features ― and her hands too far away from her pocket. Her heart leapt into her throat and for a few, painful, beats she stayed entirely still.

But, when nothing happened, the whole of her relaxed and something softer, warmer, settled on her face.

Her arms lifted after another beat of delay, returning the embrace lightly, carefully, as though she were still reacquainting herself with the shape of casual affection.

"You're welcome," she murmured, unable to entirely suppress the small smile threatening at the corners of her mouth. "And I'm pleased the beard deterrence feature is being properly appreciated. Though I do suppose you could tim and style those to suit a beard should the desire arise. Just use a Sticking Charm."

Once Cat pulled back, Iris adjusted her glasses again — more from the lingering fluster of being hugged than necessity — and instinctively glanced before her attention drifted naturally toward the Slytherin table before refocusing the riddle and Cat's whispering.

"Learning is close," she replied thoughtfully, her gaze lowering toward the table as though the answer might reveal itself somewhere between the grain of the wood and the Grey Lady's phrasing. "But I think learning is more… the result of it. Or what comes after."

Her fingers tapped lightly once against the tabletop again.

"She said it bridges what is written and what is understood," Iris continued softly. "So if we considering learning and understanding as the end result... what is something performed that―"

Her brows knit faintly, thought trailing off into silence as her bright blue eyes fell on Greer again and her book. Something sharpened in her expression and her gaze shifted sideways toward Cat again, giving the younger girl a little nudge with her elbow before jetting her chin out subtly towards the seventh year. "Another action so constant, especially at a school, that people stop recognizing it as a process at all."

And then the Headmaster gave his speech and, while Iris had no previous interest in photography, she found herself intrigued by the concept. Though, more importantly, she was interested in the food that appeared ― she had missed lunch on the train and snacking had likewise been forgotten in favor of research.