Finally, after quickly answering the bronze knocker's riddle, Richie made it safely back inside the Ravenclaw common room.
Climbing all those stairs in one breathless sprint had his little arms and legs aching, his heart pounding, and his lungs burning.
"Whoa, Harland. What happened to you?"
Richie looked up to see Joel Rogers, the sixth-year prefect who had guided them on the first day, looking at him with curious amusement.
There were only four older students left in the common room—two guys and two girls. They were huddled together in the reading area, clearly deep in discussion.
Richie held up his woven bag of food and his stack of books, giving them a brief rundown of his harrowing escape.
It wasn't a secret, and there was no point in hiding it. Besides, lying about something this trivial would just mean inventing more lies later to cover it up. That sounded exhausting.
"I see. Looks like our Seven-Pointed Star is pretty quick on his feet!"
One of the older girls waved him over. Richie hesitated for a second before walking up to their circle.
"Have a seat."
Richie obediently sat down.
The girl smiled warmly at him. "I'm Penelope Clearwater, fifth-year prefect."
The other two quickly introduced themselves as well.
"Tristan Hall, fifth-year prefect."
"Renee Barnes, sixth-year prefect."
Richie finally realized what he'd stumbled into—a prefects' meeting. "I'm Richie Harland," he said, introducing himself just to be polite.
Seeing how formal and serious the first-year was acting, the four prefects chuckled.
"You mentioned a ghost earlier?" Penelope asked. "I don't think any of the actual Hogwarts ghosts are quite that obnoxious."
Tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, Penelope decided to educate him. "What you ran into was actually a poltergeist."
> "According to Hogwarts: A History, it's an entity formed from a thousand years of accumulated mischief and malice from Hogwarts students. It's semi-corporeal and lives entirely to prank people. Everyone just calls him Peeves."
"He can shift between being solid and intangible whenever he wants. When he's intangible, he's completely immune to physical laws and magical attacks."
"When he's solid, he can physically interact with the world—like throwing rocks or dumping buckets of mud on people."
Richie frowned deeply at that.
Can shift at will? Immune to physics and magic? That sounded basically invincible. He could attack whenever he wanted and retreat without a scratch. How the hell was Richie supposed to get his revenge?
As if reading Richie's mind, Joel chimed in. "He barely has any weaknesses, but Hogwarts students have never lacked creativity."
"After years of dealing with him, people figured out that Peeves actually has a sense of smell. He absolutely hates foul odors. If you hit him with something truly putrid, he'll run for the hills."
"That's not all," Penelope added. "Peeves is absolutely terrified of the Bloody Baron—the Slytherin ghost. He's so scared of him that he'll follow his orders without question."
"So..." Penelope blinked playfully, her long eyelashes fluttering. "If you're planning any sort of retaliation, I'd start with those two angles."
The other three prefects nodded in strong agreement.
Literally no one at Hogwarts liked that menace. Everyone who crossed paths with Peeves immediately wanted to punch him in the face.
First- and second-years were usually too terrified of breaking school rules—and too clueless about what Peeves actually was—to do anything about him.
But the upperclassmen? If Peeves messed with them, they would team up and bombard him with the most foul-smelling magical creature dung they could find. Sure, it was a mutually assured destruction tactic, but at least Peeves got driven away.
As for asking the Bloody Baron for help... well, ignoring the fact that the Baron looked terrifying enough to send most kids running, he was incredibly elusive. Tracking him down wasn't easy, making that method a lot less practical.
That was exactly why Peeves preferred to target first- and second-years, or kids wandering the halls alone at night.
(Though to be fair, the castle caretaker despised both Peeves and the students equally.)
Hearing this, the gears in Richie's head immediately started turning. He offered the helpful prefects a genuine nod. "Thanks for the tip. I know exactly what to do now."
---
"Alright, alright. Funny enough, we were actually just talking about you," Tristan said, smoothly pulling the conversation back to their original topic. He didn't seem to mind Richie sitting in on their meeting.
"Thanks to Richie here, Ravenclaw is already leading by over sixty points. Because of that, I think we legitimately have a shot at the House Cup this year."
"But like we were just saying, aside from grinding out points in class, the best way to secure the Cup is to win the Quidditch tournament."
Renee shook her head, taking over. "The problem is obvious: our Quidditch team just can't compete with Gryffindor or Slytherin right now."
"We all know why. First, Gryffindor logs way more practice hours than we do. Second, Slytherin's brooms completely outclass ours."
"On top of that, Gryffindor just recruited Harry Potter as a first-year Seeker... their tactics are probably going to change entirely. Winning the Quidditch Cup is going to be insanely difficult."
Renee's blunt assessment immediately killed the mood, bringing a heavy silence to the circle.
Richie, meanwhile, simply pulled a crispy biscuit out of his woven bag and started munching on it. He hadn't eaten in hours, and the adrenaline dump from the chase had left him absolutely starving.
Crunch, crunch.
The four prefects turned to stare at him. Watching Richie happily demolishing his midnight snack suddenly made them realize how hungry they were.
Ahem.
Someone coughed politely. That was when Richie finally noticed the dead silence in the common room.
He looked up and jumped slightly at the sight of four pairs of eyes boring intensely into him. Richie glanced down at the biscuit in his hand. He slowly moved it to the left; all four pairs of eyes tracked it. He moved it to the right; the eyes followed.
Uh...
Pouting slightly, Richie pushed the woven bag to the center of the table. "Help yourselves."
Seeing the first-year take the hint so smoothly, the prefects' faces instantly broke into delighted grins as they each reached in and grabbed a biscuit.
Snacking away, the prefects picked the meeting right back up.
"Ravenclaw hasn't won the House Cup in five years! The other houses literally just see us as a bunch of library shut-ins now!"
Crunch, crunch.
"Exactly. I still remember what the Grey Lady told us right here at the end of last term: True wisdom is never forged behind closed doors!"
"It was a wake-up call!"
Crunch, crunch.
"..."