Chapter 55: The Heinous Beginning

Starlight shone brilliantly.

Silver moonlight poured down from the towering tower windows, piercing the night like a thin stream, illuminating a corner of the interior and casting a soft silver glow over the ancient stone walls and wooden structures.

"Don't shove. Upperclassmen, please make way for the lowerclassmen."

"Almost, just a second away and I would have fallen to my death! When is the school going to expand these stairs? Those stubborn professors have no flexibility whatsoever!"

"My dad was right, Hogwarts is dangerous indeed!"

...

Two Ravenclaw prefects were leading the students back to their common room.

While the procession had been reasonably orderly as they traversed the long corridors, the constantly shifting staircases caught the first-year students off guard as they headed toward the topmost levels.

Consequently.

The once-neat line turned into a holiday tour group crush, with everyone shoving each other, terrified of missing the precise moment the stairs moved and failing to reach their House common room.

"Damn it! Prefects, do something! Some older witch is touching my backside!"

Moving all the way up.

Because of his slender build, Ian had dared only to squeeze himself near the front, never expecting to suffer several mysterious assaults from behind.

Perhaps.

A young boy even more handsome than Leonardo sometimes found it difficult to protect his purity when away from home.

"The term has barely started, what are you people doing? Show some restraint!"

Penelope, the female prefect, sharply reprimanded the older girls in the line, while Dietrich, the male prefect, hurriedly pulled Ian over to his side.

"Our House students have always been much bolder than those of the other houses," Dietrich whispered by way of explanation to Ian, casting a warning look at the witches—and... certain wizards—behind them.

The queue continued its upward climb.

Soon.

Led by the two prefects, the group arrived at the topmost tower. This was the exclusive common room for Ravenclaw students, a location some Ravenclaws believed represented the wisdom of overlooking all living beings.

"Welcome again to Ravenclaw. From now on, this will be the place where you study and live." The two prefects stopped the group in front of a bare wooden door.

There was no doorknob on the door, nor any keyhole to be seen. It looked entirely like a plain wooden panel, with a bronze knocker embedded right in the center.

The knocker was shaped like an exquisitely crafted eagle, bearing many traces of the passage of time. After all, as a millennium-old school, calling it a historical artifact was entirely reasonable.

"The doors to all the other houses require a password to enter. Only we Ravenclaws are different; if we wish to pass through the door, we must answer a question."

"It is a test of our wisdom."

With that.

Penelope, the female prefect, knocked on the door.

Immediately.

The bronze eagle sculpture seemed to come to life.

Instead of a bird's cry, it spoke with a human voice, its tone soft and gentle.

"Knowledge and power—which of the two is more capable of changing the world?" A very obvious philosophical proposition.

This alchemical creation had a very tender voice, somewhat reminiscent of Nana Mizuki. Upon receiving the question, female prefect Penelope did not answer immediately.

"Let's start with you, first one."

Penelope called upon Cho Chang.

"Me?"

Cho Chang looked somewhat nervous, yet she stepped out from the crowd and, after a moment of thought, provided her answer.

"I think it's knowledge, because knowledge can enlighten human hearts and is the foundation of the world's development, whereas power is merely a derivative dependent upon that development."

Though she appeared somewhat constrained, her voice remained resolute and clear.

"Reasonable."

As the bronze eagle's words faded, the common room door swung open. Penelope gestured for Cho Chang to enter, then promptly closed the door again.

"????"

Ian was also standing near the front and tried to follow her in, only to be blocked.

"This is our welcoming tradition."

Penelope smiled as she knocked on the door once more.

"If you could choose one wise figure from history as your mentor, whom would you choose?" The soft voice issued from the bronze eagle again.

"Rowena Ravenclaw."

Ian looked around his surroundings. In this place, could he possibly offer a second answer?

"And the reason?"

The bronze eagle asked, sounding puzzled.

"That would have to count as a second question. Ask me why the next time I come back."

Ian shrugged.

"Even more reasonable."

After a moment of thought by the bronze eagle, the door opened once more.

Ian hurriedly dragged his luggage inside.

The door closed behind them.

"You're really fast."

Cho Chang was examining the decor of the common room when she saw Ian being admitted the very next moment.

"Lucky, I happened to run into an easy question."

Ian began to look around as well.

The interior of the common room was dominated by blue and bronze.

The walls were hung with silk draperies in these two colors, and the domed ceiling was painted with stars, echoing the stars scattered across the deep blue carpet.

Standing by the door leading to the dormitories was a tall statue of Rowena Ravenclaw carved from white marble, exquisitely lifelike, accompanied by a brief biographical plaque of the lady herself.

"Actually, the questions can be very difficult sometimes. I've heard that some people have had to go in and out of the common room dozens of times a day, just for the sake of intellectual sparring with the bronze eagle."

Coming from a pure-blood wizarding family, Cho Chang seemed quite well-informed about Hogwarts.

"Well, I imagine that senior must have fallen into a deep depression after graduation." Ian stood before the statue of Ravenclaw, reading the text beside it.

"Ah? Why?"

Cho Chang turned her head in confusion while examining a sofa.

"Because his romance probably ended the moment he graduated."

Ian responded with a cheerful laugh.

It took Cho Chang a moment to figure out the meaning behind Ian's words.

"Who on earth would fall in love with a door?"

She couldn't help but chuckle.

Meanwhile.

Outside the door.

Seeing yet another classmate successfully pass through, the other young wizards revealed eager, eager-to-try expressions.

Just as Cho Chang had said.

For Ravenclaw students, thinking and answering questions was not a torture but a form of entertainment, one that might even evolve into a pleasure as they advanced through the years.

"What kind of door has no doorleaves?"

The bronze eagle, having been outsmarted by Ian, changed its questioning style.

"A goalpost."

The Q&A continued.

The door opened once more.

Watching another young wizard being let in,

Ian looked somewhat surprised.

The door knocker's questions even included riddles?

"The question bank really is a bit too messy."

Ian muttered thoughtfully.

He felt that his house's bronze eagle lacked a certain rigor. Perhaps he should take some time in the future to help the bronze eagle "improve" a little.

Introducing more advanced calculus problems, for instance, sounded like a good idea.

After all,

mathematics leaves no room for ambiguity.