The Second Common Room

Those highly persuasive words had almost fooled Andrew.

But he couldn't say what was wrong with them. He only felt that things shouldn't be this way.

It wasn't until he reached Ravenclaw's common room and saw the sea of people that Andrew finally understood.

Although the older student recruiting members had kept giving the impression that the Ministry of Magic faction was the largest organization for those trying to get in, the largest group was actually those who hadn't formed any group at all.

Those who had been passed over during selection, those who felt the ideals didn't suit them and had left on their own, those who couldn't get along with existing groups and planned to seek like-minded people elsewhere, and those born distrustful of groups—these scattered people made up the largest crowd.

And the main reason this had been exposed so quickly was—today's door knocker question was too difficult, leaving everyone stuck outside the common room.

On a normal day, people would already have returned to their rooms, with only some students lingering in the common area. It would probably have taken Andrew several days to realize the problem, but looking at this mass of people now, he only needed to roughly multiply the number of new students to see what was wrong with that older student's claim.

So it wasn't that the Ministry of Magic faction stood alone at the top—the whole House was filled with separate factions, and everyone was choosing companions whose ideals matched their own... Even the Ministry of Magic faction was merely the largest one...

Andrew almost wanted to laugh, but he still had to show the older student some respect.

"Today's question is—how many laws would be violated by casting Sonorus on a Mandrake in the Great Hall?"

What kind of crappy question was that?

Andrew felt like swearing. Hadn't they just said at the dinner table that the eagle-shaped bronze door knocker usually asked logical riddles?

But after thinking about it for a moment, he realized it wasn't such a terrible question after all. Though it looked incredibly stupid, setting aside that ridiculous condition, it tested students' familiarity with legal statutes and their awareness of loopholes in the wording.

"There's no solution to this question."

The older Ravenclaw who had led them up thought for a moment before directly giving up.

He turned and quietly explained to Andrew and the others, "Even those people who specialize in exploiting loopholes can't make sense of this. Hogwarts' library has collected practically every version of the laws, which means that unless you memorize all those outdated and messy statutes, there's no way to answer this question."

Every version...

Andrew immediately understood how difficult this was.

After several older students and prefects discussed it, the prefects began announcing the arrangements for the night—after several prefects worked together to expand the space outside the entrance, sleeping bags were brought out one after another.

Seeing the older students' almost practiced efficiency, a question surfaced in Andrew's mind.

Why were they so skilled at this? How many times had they slept outside?

He had clearly entered Ravenclaw and even found a reason to spend the night outside without breaking school rules...

"Sorry..." He approached a student who looked to be around third year. "What about textbooks if we have classes tomorrow?"

"Just answer tomorrow's question. Whether it's bathing or textbooks, once midnight passes, the door knocker will change to a new question in disappointment... If you're still awake then, you can go in and deal with it. Or you can wake up earlier the next day. If you need the toilet, there are public washrooms on the fifth floor."

"That's great..."

Andrew praised him sincerely.

"It's experience accumulated by so many generations of students. The washrooms even have hot water, but no one has figured out the bathing issue yet because it would require too many changes."

Great... Andrew understood now. Outside the common room was Ravenclaw's second common room.

"That's great, but I'm still a little worried—what if no one can answer it even the next day?"

The composed expression on the older student's face immediately froze. After a clear flash of helplessness, he sighed. "Then we can only explain it to the professors. It isn't common, but it does happen occasionally..."

Wonderful. Ravenclaw's exclusive class: sleeping on the floor.

Although he still had many questions, Andrew noticed that the kind older student answering him was already extremely sleepy—after all, they had spent half the day on the train getting to school.

Forget him; even Andrew, who was usually full of energy, felt especially sleepy today. After several minutes of silence, he could feel his eyelids fighting each other.

He didn't even have the energy to look for his roommates—many new students had already randomly found a corner, crawled into sleeping bags, and fallen asleep.

This will do...

He found a spot that wasn't too bad, climbed into a sleeping bag, and fell straight into a dream.

"So sleepy..."

In front of the door knocker, the prefects and some senior students from the House's groups yawned as they waited for time to pass.

"I'm really jealous of the new students. They can just lie down and fall asleep..."

Looking at the sleeping bags scattered across the floor, one prefect leaned against the wall and spoke enviously.

Not every Ravenclaw could happily lie there and wait for dawn.

Even after the question reset at midnight, it wasn't something they could figure out in a moment—most of the time, a question required a period of thought before it could be solved, and then the answer would be passed around.

If you understood the reasoning behind the question, or had stubbornly memorized the answer, then you could enter and leave freely that day. If you had neither, you could only wait for someone to bring you in.

In Ravenclaw, where wisdom was admired, if you solved a few questions no one else could answer, students would naturally support you—simple and crude, yet accepted by every student.

If you couldn't even bring people through the common room door, who would trust that you could lead them to accomplish anything else?

So even prefects would gradually lose their prestige after missing several chances to demonstrate their ability to open the door. Therefore, despite what everyone said, not a single person was willing to truly spend the night in a sleeping bag.

"Alright, it's past midnight!"

The Quidditch captain checked the time, yawned, and stood before the door knocker.

"Out of a hundred Golden Snitches, one is defective. You have only a brass balance scale and no weights. What is the minimum number of weighings needed to find the defective one?"

A new question was posed.

After making sure everyone had heard it, the House team captain yawned, casually guessed a number, greeted everyone, and happily went off to sleep—the House team only needed to win, and everyone would overlook other matters.

Wrong answer—he had lost the right to answer questions for the day, but it didn't matter. He had only come to test the question, and now his job was done.

Under the envious gazes of the crowd, he climbed into a sleeping bag and happily drifted off to sleep.