A book is a powerful thing. A magical thing. You can be anyone, do anything, go anywhere. A book is like home.
Books are the only home Raven knows. She lingers in the library during lunch and after school, knowing she shouldn't. Harry's cousin will find them. Hurt them.
But when she's tucked away in a corner, dusty paperback balanced on scabby knees, she can't quite bring herself to care. There are so many people to meet, distant lands to explore, adventures to start...she simply can't bring herself to even remember about the squinty-eyed big-boned bully she called a cousin.
For a while, The Lord of the Rings is her favourite. She likes a book with magic, though she doesn't know the magic that courses through her veins just yet. She treks with Frodo as she reads, gasps with her heart in her mouth as Gandalf stands his ground. The librarian, Mrs. Staret, lets her stay whenever she tiptoes in through the doors, that apologetic grimace on her face as if she is too aware of the space she takes up and hates it.
(For Mrs. Staret's part, she is quite pleased to have a student who actually appreciates literature as much as she does. Harry is a very quiet boy in the library, a very awed boy, and a boy who loves books like that is always more than welcome. She can see the wonder on his face every time he turns a page, the way he falls headlong into enjoying the story, and it is a magical thing, even for a very old librarian who can't quite believe in wonders anymore.)
But after a while, Raven can't really decide on a favourite. How do you choose the best among friends? She's fallen through the looking glass with Alice, she's discovered the secret garden with a very disagreeable young girl, she's transported herself to old, bleak streets with Oliver Twist. They are her friends in a way that outside people can never be.
And when she has to go home, as eventually she must, back to the fear and pain and never-ending turmoil that is the Dursleys' residence, she often caresses a spine here, the turn of a page there, as if she is reassuring old and familiar faces that she will return, she will not leave them.
Until they get their Hogwarts letter, she never does.