A dreamless night.
"Richie, Richie?"
"Wake up, Richie!"
"Haha, even Richie sleeps in..."
Feeling someone calling his name, Richie's eyelids fluttered, and he finally blinked open his eyes. He was greeted by three curious faces staring down at him.
"Oh, morning," Richie muttered, sitting up. He stretched, feeling incredibly refreshed.
"Morning!" the three of them chimed in unison.
Terry quickly reminded him, "Richie, it's already 8:00 AM! We need to head down for breakfast!"
Eight o'clock? Richie paused. How did he sleep through the bells?
He smacked his forehead, a little annoyed at himself for wasting the morning. Without overthinking it, he scrambled out of bed, threw his uniform on, washed up, and gathered his textbooks for the day. Thankfully, there wasn't much to pack, so he was ready in no time.
"Let's go," Richie told the guys. They nodded and headed out of the dorm together.
Out in the common room, a massive crowd had gathered. Instead of heading out to the Great Hall, they were all clustered around the notice board, buzzing with heated discussion.
"Whoa, what's going on over there?" Terry asked, immediately picking up his pace. Morbidly curious, he pushed his way into the crowd.
Figuring something major had just dropped, the other three followed right behind him.
Slapped dead center on the notice board were two pieces of parchment. The one on the left listed a series of questions:
> During flight, do the vibrational frequencies of the brooms sync up? And if so, under what specific conditions? >
> At high speeds, does a broom's dive create a low-drag slipstream? >
> During a match, does the Golden Snitch's flight path alter based on the Seeker's starting coordinates? >
> If two targets are at the exact same distance, what variable dictates a straight-line Bludger's target selection? >
> ... At a glance, there were at least a dozen similar questions.
The parchment on the right featured an introduction to the Ravenclaw Quidditch team roster, followed by a short poem and a single closing statement.
The poem read:
> When we treat the Golden Snitch and the Bludgers as raw variables, and the pitch as our parchment for seeking truth. >
> Then our brooms are our quills, and the sky is ink waiting to be spilled. >
> Thus, Quidditch is no longer merely a sport, but a live-fire test of intellect. And the final line was blunt:
> Only through practice does true knowledge emerge. Seeing the painfully familiar text, Richie's heart skipped a beat.
He remembered. He remembered everything.
That cake last night was spiked. He had gotten... drunk?! And the contents of those two parchments were word-for-word exactly what he had pitched to the four prefects! His entire drunk rant about how to boost the house's Quidditch hype...
After double-checking to make sure his name wasn't actually on the boards, Richie let out a massive sigh of relief. He instinctively looked up and locked eyes with Joel through the crowd. Catching Richie's eye, the prefect just offered a knowing, amused nod.
Richie managed a polite nod back.
It seemed the upperclassmen had the decency to keep his name out of it and cover for him.
Talk about dodging a bullet... Richie patted his chest, calming his racing heart. Sure, flexing in front of people felt good, but standing out too much was a terrible idea. The tallest tree catches the most wind. He already had the whole "Seven-Pointed Star" title hovering over him. If everyone found out he was the mastermind behind this stunt, he couldn't even imagine how obnoxiously deified he'd become.
Pressed for time and herded by the prefects, the Ravenclaws finally filtered out of the common room and headed down to breakfast.
Naturally, they brought the unresolved debate from the notice board straight to the Great Hall. The unusually rowdy Ravenclaw table instantly drew stares from the other houses. Before long, the gossip had rippled across the entire hall.
But while the Ravenclaws were aggressively debating the physics questions, the other houses were just talking about them.
"Oh, they've completely lost it!" Ron muttered around a mouthful of sandwich, complaining to Harry. "They're literally treating Quidditch like a pop quiz!!"
"Merlin's beard, doesn't that sound exhausting?"
Harry was still riding the high of being drafted as the Gryffindor Seeker, so he just tuned Ron out, not really offering a response.
"Hey, Harry!"
The Weasley twins, Fred and George, shoved Ron out of the way and slid onto the bench, sandwiching Harry between them.
"I'm Fred Weasley."
"And I'm George Weasley."
"We're the Gryffindor Beaters. Our main job is to bash the other team and make sure you don't die!"
"Oh, nice to meet you," Harry said. He recognized them—Ron had mentioned his older brothers were in Gryffindor, including a set of identical twins.
"Did you hear about the Ravenclaw declaration of war?"
"Sounds like they're actually throwing down! Captain Wood is already threatening us with extra practice!"
"We came to give you the heads-up, Harry!"
Shoved to the side, Ron glared but kept his mouth shut. He was still borrowing one of Fred's books and hadn't finished it yet; he didn't want to risk them taking it back.
But hearing the phrase "declaration of war," Ron looked up, genuinely confused. "Wait, declaration of war? Are you talking about that weird test thing?"
"Obviously! Try using that rusty brain of yours, Ronnie!" Fred grabbed Ron's cheek, conveniently wiping a smudge of sauce from his fingers onto his little brother's face.
George looked over at Harry, who looked equally lost, and broke it down for them.
"What is Ravenclaw best at? Studying, right? Look at what they actually wrote in that poem."
Seeing George take the lead, Fred immediately jumped in to tag-team the explanation. The two of them seamlessly bounced off each other.
Fred: "They're treating the Snitch and Bludgers as variables, and the pitch as a parchment."
George: "That means they're turning Quidditch into their home turf!"
Fred: "The brooms are their quills."
George: "They're basically claiming they can handle brooms as effortlessly as levitating a feather!"
Fred: "Quidditch is no longer a sport, but a test of intellect."
George: "They're completely writing us off! They're saying Quidditch is just a test that they already have the cheat sheet for!"
The twins chorused together: "Which means they think stealing the Quidditch Cup is going to be as easy as passing their finals!"
"Oh, Merlin's beard," Ron gasped, his jaw dropping. The bread slipped from his hand and hit his plate. Combined with the jam smeared on his cheek, he looked utterly ridiculous.
"That right there is a declaration of war! Harry!" Ron looked at his friend in a total panic. Harry just stared back, totally out of his depth.
The Weasley twins watched their reactions and nodded in smug satisfaction.
"Don't sweat it, though. Ravenclaw hasn't won the Cup in years."
"They're only a threat to Hufflepuff!"
"Treating Quidditch like an exam is the biggest mistake they could make."
"We've got your back, Harry. Don't worry about a thing!"