The Ravenclaw common room resided at the top of the highest tower. Arched windows adorned the walls, decorated with blue tapestries. Ravenclaw house had the best view of the castle grounds; through the windows we could see the Black Lake, the Forbidden Forest, the quidditch field, and the town of Hogsmeade.
About a month had passed since the sorting. Classes at Hogwarts were always interesting. I had come to find that I was good at potions and enjoyed brewing them, even though Snape was not the kindest of teachers. Defense against the dark arts, charms, and transfiguration were fun because we got to practice real spells. I hung out with Jenna whenever possible but that was hard sometimes because we were in different houses. I hadn't really talked to Ella much since a week after the sorting. I'm not sure why, we just didn't really talk anymore. Cassie hadn't managed to produce a single spark of magic. It was getting suspicious. Zelda was fun to be around occasionally but she seemed downright annoyed with me half the time. The other half she spent in her dad's study.
Actually, my best friend at Hogwarts was Maggie Star. Maggie and I bonded over our hatred of history of magic class. We sat next to each other in history of magic and made jokes about Professor Binns. She and I had practically identical personalities: we loved all the same things, especially when it came to books. My favorite thing to do has always been to read. Maggie also loved to read. We had all of our classes together that year so we would mess around in class for several hours a day, then we would head to the library to get some good new books. After that we'd hang out in the common room, where Zelda would occasionally hang out with us too. However if Cho Chang, another one of the Ravenclaw girls in our year, came into the room, Maggie would make up an excuse to leave the room. Simply put, Maggie hated Cho's guts. She said Cho was a stupid, snobby killjoy. I think that why she personally hated her is that she once busted Maggie and her friends, Fred and George Weasley, for one of their ingenious pranks.
The Weasley twins were in the year above us and were some of Maggie's best friends, as well as fellow troublemakers. They had become friends when Fred and George were playing a practical joke on Argus Filch and Maggie had bumped into them and asked what on earth they were doing. They explained their prank to Maggie who told them they were doing it all wrong and that she knew a much more effective way to plant a stink bomb. Weeks later Filch's office still smelled like he had gotten into a fight with an angry skunk. After that, whenever the twins were playing a prank they would literally drag her away from whatever she was doing to help them carry out their ingenious plan; we would just be walking through the halls to get to our next class sometimes and the two identical red-headed pranksters would sneak up behind as and grab Maggie and drag her by the arm or sometimes even pick her up and carry her away to wherever they were headed to plot and carry out their next prank.
But Maggie made it obvious who her favorite twin was: Fred. She could talk for hours about how cute and funny he was. I asked her how to tell them apart and she informed me that Fred's eyes were closer together than George's, and cuter.
One Friday in late October, after the day's classes were over, Maggie, Zelda, and I had stolen Jenna away from her Gryffindor friends and the four of us were sitting around in a corner of the courtyard outside just talking about stuff. Eventually we managed to get on the topic of the most recent addition of the Quibbler and were arguing about crumple-horned snorkacks when Cassie burst into the courtyard crying. She wasn't wailing she simply had tears trickling from the corner of her eyes. The look in her teary eyes was neither sad nor angry, it was confused. Our conversation stopped abruptly and we ran to comfort her. We asked her what was wrong and she told us the news.
"Dumbledore's just told me that he's pretty sure I'm a squib."