After the Sorting Ceremony, the young Ravenclaws gave Victor a very warm welcome. Not because he had the audacity to pull out his wand and cast a spell on the Sorting Hat during the ceremony, but because they were all in awe of how he had managed to cast such a powerful Scourgify spell.
As it turned out, Victor wasn't the first person to try to clean the Sorting Hat with that spell. In the past two hundred years at Hogwarts, since the Sorting Hat only left the Headmaster's office for the Sorting Ceremony, some bold students would try to clean it during that time, usually with the Scourgify spell.
But because of the hat's incredibly stubborn grease, every one of those attempts had failed. The young Ravenclaws had once heard from the ghosts that the last time something like this happened was decades ago, and the person responsible was currently sitting at the professors' table, the one who could turn into a cat!
At that moment, Victor was sitting at the Ravenclaw table, stuffing his face with food. Cream cakes, fried chicken legs, steak, lamb chops, fried fish, french fries, apple pie... he was eating whatever he could get his hands on, much to the astonishment of the people around him. The only thing they found strange was that Victor didn't eat any mashed potatoes.
Victor ignored their curious stares. He took a piece of still-warm fried pork chop and placed a slice of cheese on top. He then pulled out his wand and used an Incendio spell to melt the cheese, which fused with the pork chop. He then took a bite of his homemade cheesy pork chop.
This is it! This is the taste!
At the Hufflepuff table next door, the young badgers saw this and immediately looked at the fried pork chops on their table, trying to imitate him. When they tried it, their eyes instantly lit up.
Wow! This is delicious! Why isn't he in our house?
In addition to pork chops, the young Hufflepuffs also tried it on fried chicken legs, and it was equally delicious.
Meanwhile, at the professors' table, Dumbledore was thoughtfully watching Victor wolf down his food. He was very impressed with this student, not just because of the Sorting Hat incident, but also because Professor McGonagall had mentioned his name a month ago.
Now, it was clear that Minerva had been right: Victor Dreyar was a special student. Very special indeed.
After dinner, as was the tradition, the prefects of each house led the first-year students to their common rooms and dormitories. The current Ravenclaw prefect, a girl named Ivanna Blanchard, was leading Victor and the others to the Ravenclaw Tower.
"Hello, everyone. My name is Ivanna Blanchard, the Ravenclaw Prefect. I'm very pleased to welcome you to Ravenclaw House," Ivanna said as she led the students through the moving staircases.
"Our house emblem is an eagle, and our colors are blue and bronze, symbolizing soaring high on an unreachable peak. Our common room is at the top of the Ravenclaw Tower, hidden behind a door with a magical knocker. Through the arched windows of our circular common room, you can see the entire Hogwarts campus: the Black Lake, the Forbidden Forest, the Quidditch Pitch, and the greenhouses. No other house has the privilege of such a view!"
Ivanna proudly introduced the various features and advantages of Ravenclaw House, and she led the students to an old wooden door with a bronze eagle knocker.
"I don't mean to boast, but Ravenclaw is truly where the cleverest witches and wizards reside. As our founder, Rowena Ravenclaw, once said, 'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure!' We don't need to hide the entrance to our common room like the other houses. Our common room door is at the top of a long, winding staircase. It has no handle, just a magical bronze eagle knocker. When you knock, the eagle will ask you a question, and you need to answer correctly to enter. Just remember, there is no single right answer. I can tell you, however, that in the last thousand years, no one from another house has ever gotten past this simple barrier. So, who would like to try?"
Ivanna turned around, her back to the door, and addressed the students. The students looked at each other, and a moment later, a first-year Ravenclaw student volunteered and walked up to the door. "I will!" he said, and he knocked the knocker. The eagle rattled a few times and asked, "What looks like the left half of a donkey?"
"Um…"
The question completely stumped the student, as there was no standard answer. The other young Ravenclaws started whispering to each other.
"I'll give you a hint: the answer isn't a single one, and any answer the eagle accepts is valid. So don't let your usual way of thinking restrict you," Ivanna said, reminding them.
The young Ravenclaws started to brainstorm, but after several minutes and a few attempts, the eagle was still not satisfied.
Victor looked around, getting more and more impatient. He didn't understand why these students couldn't answer such a purely nonsensical question. To get to his room and sleep as soon as possible, Victor walked straight to the wooden door and said to the eagle, "The other half of the donkey!"
"Correct!" The eagle answered without any hesitation, and the wooden door immediately opened. The other students were surprised by the answer.
"Well done, Dreyar!" Ivanna praised, then said to the other students, "Don't be discouraged. The more questions you answer in the future, the more you will naturally learn the pattern. Now, follow me!"
Ivanna pushed the wooden door open, and the students followed her inside. Before entering, Victor glanced at the door and thought to himself, 'This door is made of wood, right? So if I can't answer the question, can I just smash it open?'
The wooden door slowly closed, but for some reason, the bronze eagle knocker on it suddenly rattled again, as if it had felt a deep-seated malice directed at it.
The Ravenclaw common room was a large, circular room with a blue and bronze color scheme. It had the best view in the entire school. Elegant arched windows lined the walls, and blue and bronze silk curtains hung in front of them. Students could pull back the curtains to admire the beautiful scenery outside.
The ceiling of the common room was a dome, studded with stars and moons, which were reflected on the dark blue carpet below, which was also decorated with stars. The common room also had sofas, tables, chairs, lamps, and other furnishings. Fresh fruit was placed on the circular tables.
Directly opposite the entrance was a niche with a white marble bust of Rowena Ravenclaw. Behind the statue was a large bookshelf with at least a thousand books. Next to the bookshelf was the entrance to the dormitories upstairs.
"This is the Ravenclaw common room. We call it the roost of the wise. The bookshelf has one thousand one hundred and twenty-six books that you are free to read. But please note, these books can never be taken out of the common room, as they are part of a thousand-year collection belonging only to Ravenclaw.
"Our house ghost is the Grey Lady. She is Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter, and she is a very beautiful lady, but she rarely speaks. She does, however, talk to Ravenclaws, and it is said that she and the Bloody Baron of Slytherin had something between them, but we never ask about it. She will help you if you get lost or can't find something. So, I wish you all a wonderful night.
"The entrance to our dormitories is next to the bookshelf. Upstairs, you will find four-poster beds with sky-blue silk comforters, and the sound of the wind blowing through the windows is quite soothing. Of course, you can also look out the window and enjoy the beautiful scenery of Hogwarts and the starry sky."
This was the welcome speech Ivanna gave to every new student.
After she finished, Victor didn't stay in the common room but hurried upstairs. The entrance to the dormitories was a mirror, and Victor was a little dizzy from looking at them all. It took him a while to find his own bed, and his luggage was already waiting beside a four-poster bed.
Seeing that no one was around, Victor opened his space-altering pocket and took out the pillow, blanket, and other bedding he had prepared. He first swapped the pillow for his own, laid a pillowcase over it, then replaced the school's silk blanket with his own blanket cover. He then threw his own large pillow onto the bed and hung the Fairy Tail guild emblem on the headboard.
Done!
Victor clapped his hands with satisfaction. He did this not because he didn't trust Hogwarts, but because his previous experiences in Diagon Alley and on the Hogwarts Express had left a deep impression on him regarding the hygiene of the British wizarding world.
Victor looked at his neatly made bed and snapped his fingers.
A nonverbal Scourgify spell.
No, in terms of hygiene, he didn't even trust Hogwarts.
After making his bed, Victor hurried to the lavatory to shower and brush his teeth. When he returned, he immediately flopped onto his bed.
Victor was actually very tired. Constructing Mind Ward had drained a lot of his energy, so all he wanted to do was get a good night's sleep. He didn't care about thunder, lightning, earthquakes, or fires. Whatever happened, he would deal with it tomorrow.
But after a short while…
Bzzzzzzzz…Bzzzzzzzz…Bzzzzzzzz…
A loud, 3D buzzing sound assaulted Victor's ears, and his eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Then he felt a sharp, itchy pain on the sole of his foot, which was sticking out from under the blanket. His blood pressure immediately shot up.
"What the fuck! How are there mosquitoes in this weather?!"