"Ah..."
Andrew yawned as he climbed out of bed, put on his thick clothes, stretched, and glanced outside out of habit—it was snowing again.
"I wonder if they'll get into another fight today."
He shook his head, locked his dormitory door, and headed out of the Common Room—after the obligatory step of asking what today's entrance question was, of course.
The bronze knocker had been going far too easy on them these past few days, leaving the students staying over the holidays on edge, afraid it would suddenly return to normal and spring an impossibly difficult question on them.
So, quite naturally, the Ravenclaw students had spent the past few days exploiting a loophole in the bronze knocker's rules—or, as the older students put it, making reasonable use of the rules.
They never all left the Common Room together before finding out the question, so someone could open the door from inside if they couldn't answer it. This method was normally forbidden, of course, supposedly so that Ravenclaw students would truly learn to think rather than rely on clever little tricks.
But the knocker had no intention of making things difficult today either, much to Andrew's relief.
After taking the long stairs down to the entrance hall, he drew his wand and cast Transfiguration on his shoes. Then he carefully stowed his wand away to make sure it wouldn't snap if he accidentally fell, before cautiously stepping into the snow and running toward the Black Lake.
Thanks to the holidays, the snow hadn't been trampled firm yet. Running through it took more effort, but at least it wasn't too slippery.
"Huff, huff... Percy's a bastard!"
Nobody would be crazy enough to come out here at this hour anyway, so he cheerfully shouted his admiring slogan as he ran. It reminded