The Second Common Room

Those persuasive words had almost fooled Andrew.

He couldn't quite say what was wrong with them. He just felt things shouldn't work that way.

By the time they reached the Ravenclaw Common Room and saw the dense crowd outside, Andrew finally understood.

The older student recruiting him had kept implying that those hoping to enter the Ministry of Magic formed the largest group. But the largest group was actually the students who belonged to no group at all.

Some had failed to make the cut. Some had left because they disagreed with a group's ideals. Others couldn't get along with any existing group and were looking for like-minded people elsewhere. Still others simply distrusted groups by nature. Together, these unaffiliated students made up the largest crowd.

And the main reason Andrew had caught on so quickly was that the Eagle-shaped bronze knocker's question was too hard today. Everyone was stuck outside the Common Room.

On an ordinary day, most students would already have returned to their rooms, with only a few lingering in the Common Room's shared area. It might have taken Andrew days to notice. But looking at the crowd before him, he only had to multiply by the number of first-years to see what was wrong with the older student's claim.

So the Ministry of Magic Faction doesn't dominate Ravenclaw. The whole house is full of factions, and everyone chooses companions who share their ideals... Even the Ministry of Magic Faction is only the largest of them...

Andrew wanted to laugh, but he decided to show the older student some respect.

"Today's question is: which laws would you violate by casting Sonorus on a Mandrake in the Great Hall?"

What kind of ridiculous question was that?

Andrew nearly swore. Hadn't they just said over dinner that the Eagle-shaped bronze knocker usually asked logic riddles?

But after thinking it over, he realized it wasn't such a terrible question. Silly as it sounded, once you got past the absurd premise, it tested how well students knew the law and whether they could spot traps in its wording.

"There's no way to solve this one."

The older Ravenclaw who had brought them upstairs thought for a moment, then gave up.

He turned and explained quietly to Andrew and the others, "Even the people who study legal loopholes wouldn't know this. The Hogwarts Library has copies of practically every version of the laws. Unless you've memorized all those outdated laws, there's no way to answer."

Every version...

Andrew immediately grasped how difficult that made it.

After a discussion among several older students and the Prefects, the Prefects announced the plan for the night. They joined forces to expand the space outside the door, and sleeping bags were brought out one after another.

Watching how practiced the older students were, Andrew couldn't help wondering something.

Why are you so good at this? How many times have you slept out here?

He had joined Ravenclaw and already found a way to spend the night outside without breaking school rules...

"Sorry..." He approached a student who looked to be about a third-year. "If we have classes tomorrow, what do we do about our textbooks?"

"Just answer tomorrow's question. Whether you need a bath or your textbooks, once midnight passes, the knocker gives up and asks a new question. If you're still awake then, you can go in and sort things out. Or you can wake up early and do it tomorrow. If you need a toilet, there's a public bathroom on the Fifth Floor."

"That's great..."

Andrew meant it.

"Students have been working out how to handle this for generations. The bathroom even has hot water, but nobody's solved the bathing problem yet. It would take too much work."

Right... Andrew understood now. The space outside the Common Room was Ravenclaw's second Common Room.

"Great. I'm still a little worried, though. What if no one can answer tomorrow's question either?"

The older student's calm expression froze. After a pause, he sighed. "Then we have to explain it to the professors. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen..."

Wonderful. Add sleeping on the floor to the Ravenclaw curriculum.

Andrew still had plenty of questions, but he could see that the helpful older student was exhausted. They had spent half the day on a train just getting to school.

Even Andrew, who was usually full of energy, felt unusually sleepy. After a few minutes of silence, he could barely keep his eyes open.

He didn't even have the energy to look for his roommates. Many first-years had already picked a corner, climbed into a sleeping bag, and gone straight to sleep.

"Guess that's that..."

He found a spot that wasn't too bad, slipped into a sleeping bag, and promptly fell asleep.

"So tired..."

By the knocker, the Prefects and some senior members of the house's groups waited for time to pass, yawning.

"I'm jealous of the first-years. They can just lie down and sleep..."

Looking at the sleeping bags spread across the floor, one Prefect leaned against the wall and spoke wistfully.

Not every Ravenclaw could happily lie there waiting for morning.

Even after the question reset at midnight, the new one might take some time to solve. Usually, someone had to think it through before an answer could be found and passed around.

If you understood the reasoning or memorized the answer exactly, you could come and go freely that day. If you did neither, you had to wait for someone to let you in.

Ravenclaw prized intelligence. Solve a question no one else could answer a few times, and students would naturally start looking up to you. It was simple and blunt, but everyone accepted it.

If you couldn't even get someone through the Common Room door, who would trust you to lead them in anything else?

Even a Prefect would gradually lose standing after missing several chances to open the door. So although everyone complained, not one of them actually went to sleep.

"All right, it's past midnight!"

The captain of the Quidditch team checked the time, yawned, and stepped up to the knocker.

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

The new question had been posed.

Once he was sure everyone had heard it, the house team captain made a casual guess, said good night, and happily went off to sleep. As long as the team won its matches, everyone overlooked the rest.

His answer was wrong, so he had lost his chance to answer again that day. It hardly mattered. He had only come to find out what the question was, and his work was done.

Under everyone's envious gaze, he climbed into a sleeping bag and happily fell asleep.