The castle was dark at night, but the blonde witch knew its twists and turns better than she did the back of her own hand. She knew how many steps to take before the next turn, the places to hide in each and every hallway when she heard a teacher, the portraits to climb through to reach her destination more quickly. Her intelligent mind was able to memorize many complicated ideas and plans, which was the reason she was in the prestigious house of Ravenclaw.
She was on a mission, one assigned by one of her good friends. Her goal? The Room of Requirement. Her objective? To secure a certain textbook that they knew had been stored in the said room. They hadn't told her how they knew it was there, not even which class it was for, only what it looked like; but she was determined to succeed in her mission.
After all, Ivy Collins was not the type to accept defeat easily. Not at all.
She paced back and forth before the brick wall that was a few feet away from her. She took confident strides, knowing it would work—her friend had informed her it would.
I need to find a place where things are hidden… a place of refuge… a place to hide my possessions or myself… a sanctuary…
She recited the words that they had told her to, and by god, there it was, it was opening. One moment She was fixatedly staring at the stone in front of her, the next there was a black iron gate on it. Not surprised, she didn't waste time before reaching for the handle of the newly formed door and turning it.
Many years' building up of garbage and used magical objects was the cause of the mess that was this room. Books, desks, moth-eaten sofas, worn-down rugs, empty portraits were among the heaps that inhabited it. How the hell was she supposed to find a simple textbook in this disaster? Blinking the anxiety out of her clear blue eyes, she got to work.
Her first idea was to use a summoning charm, but Ivy had been warned by her friend that Accio would not work here, so that was obviously not an option. She next considered sorting the mountains of trash into smaller, neater piles, so that all the books would be in one area, but she remembered that not only was Accio ineffective but all other cleaning charms as well. The Room of Requirement did not want its patrons messing with its possessions. That left her with only one option.
She would have to search the entire mess.
Ivy dragged her feet as she approached the Great Hall the next morning. She had been awake almost all night last night seeking the stupid little brown book, her thorough searching methods taking hours at a time for each pile. Luckily for her—for Ivy had pretty good luck—the book had been sitting patiently at the foot of one of the larger piles, so she had seen the leather-bound textbook instantly. Though it was thick—it must have had at least eight hundred pages—it looked small in comparison to the mound of garbage objects beside it.
The sixth year slumped onto her wooden bench, her face against her palm, her white-blonde braids falling to the table. Her eyelids drooped, and there were dark shadows under her eyes from lack of sleep. To avoid suspicion from her fellow Ravenclaws, she decided to blame them on the upcoming semester exams.
The Ravenclaw table was buzzing with the sound of gossip and excitement as Ivy stabbed her innocent pancakes. "Whass all de fush abut?" she asked as she turned to face her acquaintance Cho Chang, who was seated beside her.
"Have you heard?" she asked Ivy excitedly, her usually calm demeanor replaced with one of pure giddiness. After all, the Hogwarts students had been locked up in the large castle and for weeks at a time had gone without any outside news. The Daily Prophet had been oddly quiet lately, so any tiny tidbit of information set the rumor mill on fire.
The blonde swallowed her large bite. "Obviously not, or else I wouldn't have asked." There was an irritable tone to her voice; she wasn't good friends with many girls: they were too flaky and couldn't focus on anything but boys and the newest edition of Witch Weekly. In fact, most of her friends were boys.
"Oh, right." Cho rolled her eyes at her stupidity; of all the Ravenclaw girls, this was the one that Ivy liked the best. She realized when she was being irrational or girly. She cleared her throat. "Anyways… we just found out there are intruders at Hogwarts!"
"Intruders?" Ivy put her silver fork down, eyeing the girl carefully. "Where did you hear this?"
"Oh, some Slytherin girl," Cho said vaguely, waving her hand as if dismissing the matter. "But that's not important."
"Hmph." The blonde rolled her blue eyes and got up from her seat. She refused to believe anything ridiculous as that unless and until she had solid proof to see and touch. "I'm full. See you, okay?"
As she walked out of the Great Hall and began her ascent to the Ravenclaw Tower, she saw the very student she was looking for. Now she would be able to get rid of the thick textbook weighing down her satchel. She turned around and began heading back down the stairs, fighting against the flood of students that were going the other way.
"Wait up," she called after the student, and they turned immediately. "Do you still want this? You better, because it took me all night to find it…"
"Yes, thank you very much." The student snatched the textbook from Ivy's pale-skinned hand, carrying the textbook as if it weighed nothing. "I'm really sorry, I'll talk to you later but for now I've got to run."
Ivy shrugged and headed back up the stairs as the Gryffindor witch raced down to the dungeons, her long bushy hair flowing out behind her.